Nom de plume: Rivrdog

The "Single-Payer" Fallacy

Even the most die-hard liberal seems to believe that the SCOTUS is about to either gut or utterly destroy Obamacare, so there's angst all over the media.

Too bad it's misplaced angst, for angst can be a good thing if it leads to logical solutions.

The misplaced angst here is the failure of the entire liberal side to look at the One Big Question* in the single-payer scheme of health insurance.

That question is simply this: shouldn't any mandated insurance plan have, at it's core, efficiency in payment? Let us not forget these points:

An insurance plan is just that, and that only: a plan to arrange payment for a service: rebuilding your home after a fire or other loss, rebuilding YOU after an illness. All those restorative services have COST associated with them, so PAYMENT is required.

It almost seems like liberals think that a health insurance plan must first change health care delivery. No, it doesn't have to, all it has to do is arrange PAYMENT for services. This is where Obamacare over-reached, it attempted to reconfigure health care delivery, then pay for the new delivery system.

Obamacare was a deliberate attempt of the President and his party to use health care services, or the control of them, to drag the USA into a new political system, socialism. You see, the health care insurance system we have now is not mandatory. People can and do forgo health care. They can and do shop around for the best price for health care AND health insurance, and their choices lead directly to the efficiencies in the health care marketplace. The LACK of efficiency in the health care marketplace is due entirely to non-payers. Yes, a health-care services bill is the easiest one to refuse to pay. All you have to do is declare that you can't afford to pay, and the bill will either be put off, or reduced, or some arrangement made to pay it from public funds.

The lack of certainty in payment for health care services causes the ineffiencies. To solve that one, relatively easy problem, Obamacare proposed to re-write the entire idea of delivering AND paying for health care services. This is the equivalent of using a SWAT team to bring an overtime-parking violator to justice.

BTW, your Rivrdog won't keep you in suspense. The way to solve the problem of uninsureds in the system is to have a pool of money for payment. This has been done in the auto insurance industry almost since the start of auto insurance some 80 years or so ago. It's called "assigned risk", and the system works well. If you are in the assigned risk pool, you pay higher premiums, but you get insurance, the equivalent of using a SWAT team to arrest an overtime-parking violator. The higher premiums encourage you to do whatever it takes to improve yourself so that you get OUT of the Assigned Risk pool.

All the Feds had to do to execute Universal Health Care was establish the Assigned Risk Pool for those payers who couldn't find normal insurance, and make paying for medical care the same level of debt that everything else is. Establishing that pool would have required only a small fraction of the bureaucracy and a small fraction of the money which Obamacare demands from us in it's various forms. Assigned risk wouldn't have imposed insurance, it just would have paid for all those who don't have insurance to get it.

The health insurance system in this country works. It can and should be made more efficient, but most of the job of making it more efficient would be done by establishing the Assigned Risk pool.

The Assigned Risk solution isn't glitzy though, it doesn't require a "Czar" to run it, and it certainly wouldn't require the pogrom against health care that is now in place and hopefully, will soon be erased by the SCOTUS.

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* The "One Big Question" is a construct of Joe Huffman, who blogs frequently, here. He says that most propaganda can be unraveled by the simple technique of digging out the One Big Question, and examining it for the truth.

Put on those green eyeshades...

Yep, it's time to visualize the US economy, if you can. Yes, it's a hard job, what with both the Government and the Banks try to out-do each other in generating smoke to puff up our hoo-hoos and to hide the facts indicating that we are in big trouble.

This article explains the dire state of the economy as well as any I've read lately, though, so go there, then come back here for the discussion.

Fresh coffee (might better have some "fortifier" in it though) is now in order, and keep the Tums handy.

Note in the article, that withdrawals of money from circulation (re-financing to lower interest rates) have certain effects, one of them being that there is a multiplier involved. This article puts that multiplier at 10, but doesn't give support for that figure, so it might be less. I remember from ECON 203 (Money and Banking Theory) way back in the early 1960s when this level of deficit spending horrified everyone with a finance education, that such multiples existed because of the interdependence of all the houses of finance. It works like this:

Financial House A makes a loan to a consumer, and then sells that paper to Financial House B. The Government backs, or guarantees the performance of the loan (didn't back when I learned this stuff, but does now). So, B owns the paper, but for various reasons which are over my head, A is allowed to show that loan on their books for a while past the point that it sold (possibly because of the legal liability involved with originating the loan). That's a multiplier. Any money on the books for either A or B is creditworthy for those financial houses to borrow against, so that's also a multiplier. The money the houses borrow then has multipliers, etc, etc. House of cards, but hey, I didn't invent this system, so don't shoot me. Suffice it to say that the entire financial world operates on the basis of this shadow money as if every penny of it existed and could be produced on demand.

The article talks about "reserves". Substitute the words "Actual Cash" for reserves. In Europe recently, reserves had been allowed to fall to below 2 percent of available credit. That's right, the banks were able to play their games on TWO PERCENT MARGIN. Bear some history in mind. The Crash of 1929 was caused, in large part, by people playing the US equities market on TEN PERCENT margin. Well, Europe is considering raising the margin requirement a percent or two, but that raise is getting bad reviews from Socialist France, which wants to print it's way out of it's current financial malaise. In the mose austere of circumstances, it is unlikely that Europe will agree to reserves of over 5%.

Then, there is the well-known factor of panic. In fact, stock market crashes used to be called "panics" in the history books. We saw a modest panic in 2008, but despite that the equity losses barely got down to 50%, it took 4 years for the market to regain those losses (the Real Estate market has yet to regain ANY losses of equity).

So, what does this mean for us, Campers?

What it means is that the entire civilized world has no financial confidence left, no confidence that the system will heal itself as it has done before. That sets the stage for another panic, and since the actual money level behind Government and Bank debt has gotten smaller, the next crash WILL be much more severe. It is likely that entire governments, and most, if not all Banks will be bankrupted in the next crash (actually, most current Governments meet the fiduciary definition of bankrupt NOW). Every government bankruptcy creates a multiplied panic, and if enough of them occur together, the world's economy goes over a cliff.

Yee-haw, free falling economies! Can it happen here? It did before, most notably in 1929, and as previously stated, the reserves were much bigger then.

The real question for YOU, Campers, is, Can you farm? Can you be responsible for your own food, shelter, health and safety?

If any part of that answer is NO, your future is as bleak as your Government's.

You know what you need to do. Get busy.

Springe is Sprunge...

...the grass is riz...

...oh, what a grass-cutting dervish my Honda HR-214 izz...

...and it's a 1982 Honda, never having been rebuilt. Soichiro Honda was a bloody genius with small engines...30 years and still putting out it's rated level of work.

...been there, cut that 4,500 ft/sq lawn for the first time this year. Survived it, but had to take the "medicinal waters", at age 68, and those medicinal waters are taken internally...they be the Waters of Life...

Next, the gudwife broke in her new skillet, it being a Calphalon Cuisinart 13" model (100 simoleans), made necessary by my FUBAR of yestiddy, having burned up the previous gen-1 Calphalon pan by inattention to the hot stove due to an exciting NBA game on the telly, then using chemicals (TSP) to try to handle the burned-on grease (yes, there was a smoke detector activation involved), but the chemicals leached out the non-stick coating instead...the first meal in the replacement skillet was penne pasta and primavera sauce al meat (no pink slime, I grind & freeze my own), and it was outstanding!

Oh, and the bottle of Chateau Ste. Michelle 2006 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon (appelation, Columbia Valley) wasn't so bad, either.

The prospective S.I.L. wants me to instruct him in the ways of Oregon big-game hunting, according to the Dr. Daughter in her Skype report from NZ today, and I have a new membership in some OR and CA hunting leases that fits his pistol perfectly...I haven't hunted much big game lately myself, so it's catch-up time for me, too. First things first, though, I'll have to check out his rifle skills. He's already a pistolero of good repute, and an OR CHL...but we'll find out how well he reaches out to touch Bambi on Long Range Thursday at DRRC...

Springe looks to be a busy season around here.

The FL "stand your ground" case

After hesitating some (and they should have hesitated more), all the anti-gunners have jumped on Race Pimp Sharpton's "Hoodie Hoopdie" and are in full cry.

Problem is, all the facts aren't in, so they are all jumping the gun, so to speak. Jumping the shark, too.

I have gleaned one important trend from this case, since it's not dependent on understanding the entire chain of facts.

When your opponent's hoodie goes up, you pull your pistol.

This entire hoodie thing bears some looking into.

The hoodie, or hooded sweatshirt, is a piece of casual athletic attire. The hood is meant to ward off the chill of a cold breeze on your flushed head after exertion, since more body heat gets radiated by the head and neck than any other body part.

That's the science of the hoodie. Everything else is custom and emotion.

The hoodie was adopted years ago by the hip-hop generation as their symbol of rebellion from the preceding generations. From there, it was adopted by the gangsta-rap pukes as their symbol (when they weren't wearing formal pimp attire).

So, the idiot race pimp Sharpton does us all an unintentional favor, by highlighting the hoodie thing with his "million hoodie march".

Get this straight, people: the hoodie is meant to intimidate.

OK, if it is meant to intimidate, be properly intimidated.

What do you mean, 'Dog, "properly intimidated"?

What I mean, is that in every defensive shooting situation, or even in cases where you just pull your pistol and don't have to use it, there has to be a justifying factor. The hoodie is that factor. Your opponent wears a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up for only two possible reasons: he has just exerted himself and wants to keep from chilling down too fast, or he is trying to intimidate those around him. If he's been exerting himself, you'll likely see sweat, or heavy breathing, or some other sign that he has. If you don't see those signs, and especially if it's warm out, he's wearing the hood up to try to intimidate. Your state of mind now turns to stronger defenses, if you are thinking tactically.

Now, consider aggravating factors: your opponent, who has been walking away from you, turns towards you, advances on you AND pulls up his hood. Pilgrim, if you DON'T take that as immediate aggression on his part, you are about to be a victim yourself. No race involved. In my part of town, there are few blacks, but all the pukes of all races wear hoodies or hooded parkas in their gang colors.

So, thanks very much, Sharpton. You're not smart enough to avoid these pitfalls, so now you've brought the whole hoodie thing out into the open. If there ever WAS a "cool" factor in wearing hoodies, and I don't believe there ever was, it was a rebel factor, there isn't now. You, "Reverend" Sharpton, have just helped to remove the "cool" factor of that garment.

The hoodie is about intimidation, that is all. Take that to the bank AND the Grand Jury.

Besides, the hoodie makes your opponent more closely resemble that silhouette target you practice and qualify with at the range. Three shots, two to center of mass and one to the head.

Bang-bang, beak. practice it.

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IMMEDIATE UPDATE: After posting this blog, I note that Geraldo Rivera is thinking along the same lines.

St. Potty's Day AAR

Yep, you read the title correctly, so this post will contain some crap-blogging.

The Fourth Amendment lives!

In a scant two weeks, statism has been dealt two sharp kicks to it's collective groin by the Fourth Amendment, which is apparently still alive, thanks to the SCOTUS and the US District Court in Eugene, OR.

The SCOTUS case, the Supremes ruled, unanimously, that the police may not attach a GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) tracker to a suspect's vehicle without first obtaining a warrant.

In the Eugene, OR case, the civil jury empaneled to hear the civil damages case of an arrested enviro-nut returned a verdict in favor of the enviro (but not much money damages, the lawyer got almost all of those), but more importantly, the jury found that the arresting officer had improperly seized the video camera of the protester, which the protester had used to record the initiation of the arrest sequence. The video probably didn't survive the concrete face-plant which ended the arrest sequence, but we don't get to see it, so we don't know.

There are two victories here for the Fourth Amendment, which says that no unreasonable search or seizure may be made, and that persons arrested may expect that warrants will be obtained before seizures of property.

This second case may be one of a less-then-brilliant cop underperforming the standards set by everyone, including his own Department. There IS an Oregon law on "intercepting communications", and it DOES say that both parties of a recorded conversation must agree to be recorded, but there are some exceptions. Being a cop is not, by itself, one of those exceptions.

The other thing the arresting officer could have done is make sure the prisoner's property was protected. The prisoner has a right to expect that. The video camera should have been carefully handled, and after the arrest, during the 5 hours the prisoner remained in jail prior to bailing out, it would have been easy for the officer to consult with a District Attorney, make a case to the DA that he needed a search warrant to examine the recordings of the camera for evidence of his arrest contained thereon (there should have been some such evidence), get the warrant and keep the camera when the suspect made bail, issuing a proper evidence receipt for it to the bailed-out suspect.

The arresting officer did NOT follow that extremely standard procedure which is taught at the Oregon Police Academy, and his penalty for not following it is to lose his case.

The counterculture's vast unwashed street mobs will now fire up an extra spliff or two in celebration, or drain a short dog of Maddog, but they really ought not to celebrate so much. It is the Constitution of the producers which the SCOTUS and the Judge in Eugene have protected, and in the Eugene case, the Judge was simply pointing out some sloppy police work. If I'm a Sheriff or a Chief of Police, I don't lose any sleep over this, I simply call in my Training Division people and remind them to highlight the procedures on treating evidence properly when next they give my officers an update on court decisions, and I might blast a memo to everyone on that advice in meanwhile.

I'm going to celebrate myself, because the Statists have just been told, twice now, that they must encourage their police officers to actually USE the smarts they were supposedly hired with and for. I'm not cheering for the enviro-nuts. They didn't win a thing here, and they ought to remind themselves that while MY Constitution protects their right to assemble and call for the destruction of MY society, that when they actually take STEPS to destroy that society, they WILL be opposed, and that wrapping themselves in that Constitution at that point does not make them bulletproof.

Word about singing the National Anthem

I don't care who the Hell you are, what your level of fame as a singer is, there are some RULES about singing the National Anthem in public.

The Rules:

• The song has music which goes with it. Learn the music, which means learning the beat and the meter of the stanzas you are going to sing. Sing the music according to it's original beat and meter.
• The song is a hymn of praise to our Nation. Never forget that. The song is never about YOU, it is ALWAYS about the Nation. Respect the Nation by singing it properly and well, and YOU will be respected. This is the consequence of not singing it well. Do not have the production crew broadcast your image from weird angles, such as waist-level, focusing on your mouth as you hit high notes and hold them too long. Remember, the song is not about YOU.
• If you don't know how to sing the song, You Tube is full of fine singers, Madeline Edwards comes to mind, who have sung it properly. You Tube is also full of fine bands/orchestras who have played it properly, the USMC Band comes to mind.

Do it right or don't do it. It's not supposed to be a show-stopper, it's supposed to be a sincere gesture of respect for our Nation and it's values. If you don't feel that respect, on a daily basis, this old Veteran suggests you just keep silent. If you DO feel that respect on a daily basis, and have a decent voice, PRACTICE the National Anthem, many times, before you sing it in public. It is a technically-difficult piece to sing, and if you try to "wing" it, you will mess it up.

Gizmo alert

While commenting at this thread over at Og's place, I clicked the link to P3, the outfit that sells the "Kill-a-Watt".

There are a bunch of other slick gizmos over there, too.

How about this Camera Detector? Unless you just got off the slow shuttle from Zargon-6, you know that wireless camera technology has progressed to the point where they can be hidden anywhere, to spy on you. The Detector would, at least, allow you parity with the spies, and what could the pervert say if you found, extracted and flushed his expensive little spy?

Or, how about this Light Owl? I can see a use for that. A couple of them placed in strategic locations in that motel room you really didn't want to stay at while travelling, but was (a) the only one you could afford, or (b) the only one for miles; could give you just the light you needed to shoot that cat burglar (or the pervert coming to take revenge for flushing his camera). BTW, you DO put your carry pistol where you can reach it when in strange places/beds, don't you? My fave place is in between the mattress and box spring, with the grip protruding just enough to grab it. That way, I can just grab it and shoot, or I can roll off the bed for cover if I'm getting shot at, and the gun presents itself for counter-fire. There's no danger of rolling over it and discharging it, either.

Yep, gizmos. Just the thing to stimulate the imagination on a cold winter day.

Thursday Truths

Too much cheery Christmas noise around here to hear any Thud! sounds, so we will content ourselves today with the ringing sound of the Truth, fortified by the side-tones of Irony.

Truth the First: No "mission accomplished" in Iraq. Nothing has changed there since Saddam was toppled, lo, these past 8 years. Before the dust from the last Army convoy out of Iraq settled, the Sunnis and Shiites were at each other's throats again. Last night's death toll: 63 dead, almost 200 injured in various car-booms and IEDs. I think I can speak for at least some of the 4,000+ KIA in OIF, and some of the 30,000+ wounded, when I give both the Bush and the Obama Administrations a hearty, "Thanks for nothing, cretins" I should really say that a bit stronger, but it's a family holiday, don't you know? To this old 'Nam vet's lights, both Administrations get the blame, but Bush's get's most of it. He opened the hostilities there, and he was Commander-in-Chief when his Army began to think of other things to do besides kill the enemy, things like putting idiotic ROEs in place, and prosecuting our own people for following their own combat training and proven combat skills. Obama told us he was going to end the war, and he did. He ended it too soon, but he did what he said he would, idiotic as his idea of cut and run was in the first place.

Truth the Second: You can put a "green", "totally sustainable" plan into place for handling garbage, as was just done in the City of Portland, but you can't get by the ringing Truth: garbage stinks. Portland's Sustainable Fairy Mayor, Sam Adams' new plan was that wet garbage collection would be cut back to bi-monthly from weekly (but the cost to residents did NOT go down, heh!), and kitchen scraps (i.e. rotting food) were to be dumped into the garden-waste recycling cart, which was still going to be emptied weekly at curbside. OK, so far, so good. The only problem was, that this program adds rotting animal waste products (meat scraps, etc) to the garden waste (most of it lawn clippings or raked-up leaves), giving that compost a new, fierce decomposition smell and many new pathogens growing in that compost. Of course, the Citeh wouldn't manage any of that within it's own City Limits, it imposed that burden on the City of North Plains, a part-suburban, part agricultural area a half-hour West of Portland (I used to hunt pheasant out there before liability insurance killed off public hunting on private land). Depending on the wind direction from the offending compost heap, lots of folks are learning the Truth about Holy Sustainability.

Truth the Third: Is that any Government process, left in place long enough, soon begins to warp any acceptable rules or ethics to suit itself. The Portland Fire Bureau (Portland doesn't have Departments, it has Bureaus, as if that catchy French word wards off the usual corruption that goes with internal City administration) seems to have an internal promotion scandal on it's hands. Typically, police and fire administrators want to promote their own choices, and those choices are those have the best abilities to "get along" kiss ass, not necessarily the best leadership and mental strengths. It's always been this way, at least since I first ventured into Civil Service in 1973. So, the PFB simply showed a copy of the promotional exam to those it wanted promoted. Now, this appears to have taken place for some time and down through all the bugles (fire officers' rank is denoted by how many bugles they sport on their collars or epaulets). Interesting that this major corruption inquiry is being handled internally in the PFB. That shows how strongly-emplaced the corruption is. They should have turned this one over to State Justice or some other State agency to have the Truth ferreted out.

Truth the Fourth: The current pouting session pissing contest game of tag over the Payroll Tax Holiday continues apace. As I hear news reports, it seems every third word out of any reporter's mouth is "Obama". Excuse me, have ANY of these spreaders of lies even read the Constitution? The President has NOTHING to do with revenue and finance of the Government until a properly passed Bill hits his desk, at which point he may choose to sign it or not. The current flap is not at that stage, since there are two different Bills, one from the Senate (where the Constitution says that such Bills may not originate, they must originate in the House) and one from the House. The competing Bills must be sorted out in Conference Committee, and that hasn't happened, because the Senate went Home for the Holidays without finishing that vital work, and the tax law contained in the Bill becomes moot and taxes will boost (by revoking the Tax Holiday) automatically, in nine days. The whole thing is a charade, anyway, and has been ever since the Holiday went into effect during the past current Depression Recession business slowdown. The government put every working man and woman on the Dole by forgiving their contribution to their Social Security Account, and putting it "n the cuff", and now times are bewtter, according to the Gummint, so why are we arguing about this, let's just start paying our tiny share again, shall we? Nothing hammers the Ruling Class harder than ignoring all their advice, most of which is guaranteed to ruin your life anyway, and THAT'S the Truth.

Truth the Fifth: Sportz Truth: NFL players are the modern version of Roman Gladiators, sacrificing their bodies for our vicarious enjoyment. Some of them are going to get head injuries, and some of those head injuries are going to lead to later problems off the gridiron. That's the Truth, so get over it, NFL Players. You don't see Muhammad Ali suing professional boxing, do you? There's no crying in football, men. Suck it up.

The Tinkerer & The Sword

No, this is not a D&D-inspired tale, it is straight out of the history of my family...

My late father (1906-1993) was a tinkerer. Defined here:

"3.  a person skilled in various minor kinds of mechanical work; jack-of-all-trades."

Ever since I was old enough to descend the basement stairs (we usually lived in houses with basements), I would often find him at his workbench, bringing some device or other back to useful life with his tinkering. There was the 1930s waffle iron he used until he died, for example. My Mom put up with the countless hours he spent in his workshops, probably because it kept him out from under her feet as she kept house.

Dad was a military man, of high field-grade rank all my life, anyway, so he could have afforded to do things like collect cars, play golf at swank country clubs, own a yacht, or some other pleasure of the well-off head of family of his day.

He didn't do those things. His cars became collector items, solely because he kept most of them for 25-30 years, carefully maintaining them and keeping them going, until he more or less had to give up driving when he turned 85. He never played "Pasture Pool", and although expressing interest in buying a cabin cruiser, he didn't. He saved his money, I got a third of it, and am relatively well-off myself as a result.

He tinkered, and tinkered well, too well. My Dad had an eye for well-built things, things that although old and valuable, still could be made to function.

One of those things was the Hunting Hanger. While we were stationed in England in the mid-50's, he found the sword at an antique place in Portobello Road in London (we made regular trips there, it was a great family entertainment). When he got this sword, it was in OK shape, but the pommel was dismounted, and the haft of the blade had simply been peened over the grips to make the sword stay together. It had no scabbard.

 

Dad put the sword back together, sharpened it properly to usefulness as a weapon, and "gave" it to me. It was mine, but I couldn't carry it, mainly because it lacked a scabbard, and I was just a lad, not trained in the ways of discipline and war just yet. Besides, D&D hadn't come on the scene just yet, so people with swords hung at their sashes were generally looked upon as strange.

Then, Dad tinkered together a scabbard. He made it the way they used to be made, with carefully shaved hardwood, brass mountings, and all covered with the finest glove-leather.

 

Note that I've not kept the brass polished, nor the leather oiled. The sword stays in a nice, dry closet.

Now, for the rest of the story!

The sword and scabbard, fine examples of English sword-making as they are, are probably worth little. The sword is worthless because it has been tinkered back to life, not restored. The scabbard is worthless because although it represents a lot of (pre-Internet) research and hand-craftsmanship in wood, metal and leather, it is of modern construction and has no "antique" provenance.

It's priceless to me, though, because my Dad repaired the sword with his tinkering skill (and the then-recent invention of Epoxy Cement), and he built the scabbard, with it's fittings, with brass, Dremel (although his die-grinder predated anything Dremel, we would call it a Dremel today) butane torch, solder and patience, lots of patience.

I do not have that sort of patience, so I am not a Tinkerer. I repair things or Re-cycle them, but I don't tinker much back to life. That part of the family skill-set died with my Dad and his two brothers, all of them were excellent tinkerers.

Tinkering used to be a part of our culture, and it's gone now. It would take a cataclysmic societal upheaval, something to prevent manufacturing of the useful things we need to continue life, to bring it back. That could yet happen, but I probably won't live to see any possible restoration of the art of tinkering.