Something to read

Take a look at David Brooks Hookie awards.

I find most people in the US are insufficinetly widely read. Here is a way to maybe rectify that.

Much of this is of a conservative bent and I don't agree with the conclusions but it is better to have a honest discussions of why we disagree on the conclusions than to continue the sound-bite discourse of the mass media.

Incompetence

According to yahoo and Reuters:
Hundreds of Tons of Explosives Missing in Iraq
377 odd tones of high explosive were lost on Bush's watch.
Apparently the UN IAEA knew about the stash as they monitored the site. So everyone knew about this pile of explosives. Further, the site is one of the known sites where Saddam was working on nuclear weapons; so you know Bush and company were going to visit it real fast to lock down the whole WMD excuse.

But they forgot to either secure or destroy the explosives.

Now, there are times in the course of a battle where you make a decision with limited information and sometimes you get it wrong. Part of the job. Wise soldiers look at their decisions and learn from them.

This is not one of those situations. We knew what was there. We knew where it was. We did nothing.

This is just more blow-back from Bush and Rumfield's insistence that they could conquer a country on the cheap. Stupid. There is a big difference in the number of troops needed to destroy an army and the number needed to conquer a country. But Bush fell for the NeoCon fantasies of being greeted as liberators ('with flower petals'). Why would anyone who had been crushed under ten years of economic sanctions think we were their friends? Stupid.

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Also check:

Timeline of looting and incompetency at Mouse Musings.

Bush's Philosophy in a Cartoon

Check out this old Calvin and Hobbes Cartoon:

http://www.ucomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/09/21/

I can't post it here due to Copyright so you have to go to the ucomics web site to see it.

I think this captures the essence of George W Bush.

Covering Health Care

Here in Austin there are lots of people with little or no health care coverage. Many are Artists and many own small businesses. Periodically there will be someone with a crisis and the community will respond with some sort of benefit to raise funds. People donate time and money because they know they too are at risk.

Morally, this is indefensible. Economically, this is inefficient. Surely we can do better?

Let me propose a partial solution: the not very good health plan.

Sign everyone up for a federally and state funded health care plan which does not cover very much. This plan would cover preventive care, basic medicine, treatments for common diseases, and other very basic services. It would not cover heroic care.

This sort of minimal care should help people transitioning off welfare stay off by keeping themselves and their children healthy. It can help keep everyone's health care costs down by ensuring all have access to preventive and well-baby care.

We can make it efficient to run by outsourcing the care to existing non-profit health care services. A stable source of funding will help areas which don't currently have such providers start them. If the community wants, they can add more services without worrying about funding for the basics.

One big advantage: we can get this idea through Congress. It will be simple for any existing service provider to compete against this plan so there should be few complaints about Socialized Medicine.

Roger Mollett

For those in Austin, Roger Mollett, the former head chef at Central Market's cooking school, is quite ill. To help cover his expenses, there is a benifit on 19 September:

The Details:
When: September 19th, 2004
Where: The Barr Mansion, 10463 Sprinkle Road
What Time: Banquet and Auction at 6pm, Movie Screening at 8pm (seating at 7:30pm)
How much: Banquet, Silent Auction & Movie $50, Only the Movie $10

I have all this from EGullet so I can't say for sure that Roger is ill. There is a benefit concert.

There is an ad in the 3 Sep 04 Chronicle on pg 97.

Looks like Alamo Draft House is putting this one with many others. Check out: http://www.drafthouse.com/ and look under Rolling Road Show.

This might get you there directly:
Road Show

Trusting a Jury

Tort Reform has been a popular topic of late in Texas. The argument is that:

• Doctors are forced out of business by ruinous insurance rates
• Insurance rates are skyrocketing due to ruinous awards in malpractice suites

As is typical in politics, the proponents site specific, apocryphal stories but never mention any well done study of the long term effects to back up their argument.

Setting aside the validity of the argument, the solution proposed is to cap damage awards in civil trials.

Implicit in this solution, but never discussed, is that the proponents don't trust Juries to deliver justice in a Civil trial. However, they do seem to trust these same Juries to decide to put a man to death.

Why the double standard?

Well, it is likely that most people think they will never face a death penalty but can see they might face a Civil trial.

There is also the attention effect: The press love to cover civil trials which produce Huge awards; they tend to not cover death penalty cases except when the crime is heinous. So people often read about dubious large awards in civil trials but only read about the death penalty in cases that seem cut and dried. The effect is more pronounced as the Press give very little attention to the final outcome of civil trials. Thus, most people hear about the initial Huge award but never hear that most of these are overturned on appeal.

Perhaps a more effective solution would be to figure out ways to help Juries do a better job and thus restore trust in a fundamental aspect of our Nation.

Check this out

Paul's Cranium has a very clever piece on paying attention to how your actions effect others:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/lovvik/20040826

Paying for Roads

Lots of turmoil here in Austin about the plans for Toll Roads. This is Texas so actually paying a fee to drive on something is considered a plot by the Reds. :-) The issue is one of many where we, the body politic, ought to be working out how to pay for services.

The way it used to work, we all paid our various taxes and then that money got allocated to services and projects. In the case of Roads, we paid Federal income tax and gas taxes as well as various State taxes and portions of each ended up in TxDOT's budget and roads got built. There are many reasons to like and to dislike this system but that is not the point of this musing.

Ever since the Reagan Revolution, the Republican Party has been pushing the idea of less taxes. At the Federal level, this generally meant the divesting (or returning) the taxes and the responsibility to the States. As the movement has matured, it has also meant less taxes at the State level. Less taxes means less services but that is rarely mentioned.

So, along comes the Texas State budget for 2003 and we have a problem. The economy is in the tank and Tax revenues are declining. Since the Republican Party controls the House and Senate, the budget gets balanced without raising any taxes and with cutting services (big time).

Now it is 2004 and the board responsible for building roads in the Austin Metropolitan area have to figure out how to pay for all the roads people have been demanding. There is too little money from the State so they vote to use the new Toll Road authority to build the new roads as toll roads and to cover the maintenance costs of some existing new roads by making them toll roads too.

This is very fiscally responsible of them but the result is near universal condemnation and a move to recall all the members of the board State law permits to be recalled.

So what is going on here? The majority got what they wanted: no new taxes. Toll roads are an obvious consequence. Why the complaints?

The problem seems to me to be that the low tax mantra was sold without any honest discussion of how we were going to pay for the services we wanted. Nor was there much discussion of what services we ought to expect the State to provide. So the not very introspective among the Republican base (Ditto heads, this is you) never realized the consequences of the low tax candy they voted in.

So, If the Republican Party has any cojones at all, now is the time to have this discussion/argument. My prediction: the good old boy network got what they want (low taxes on their businesses and property) and are content to leave things unresolved.