Rework vs. Karl Rove

I don’t know what I think about this book, but this commercial is amusing:

What evidence is there that faster internet spurs economic growth?

I like fast internet. Who doesn’t? But what evidence is there that faster internet spurs economic growth?

I wonder because the Federal Communications Commission just came out with a new plan. “It’s “a 21st century roadmap to spur economic growth and investment, create jobs, educate our children, protect our citizens and engage in our democracy,” says FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.” Apparently faster internet is an elixir for anything that ails you.

USA ranks as low as 15th in the world in broadband adoption, threatening “America’s global competitiveness.” according to the FCC Chairman.  What evidence is there for the claim that our internet threatens our global competitiveness?  I’m not saying it couldn’t be better, but I just do see our internet as being a problem. How do people use broadband right now in the 14 countries with faster internet? What are all of the amazing things they are doing with the internet that we can’t do? Also, there are places in the U.S. that have fiber to the curb? What are the amazing things these people doing with the internet or than pirating music faster.

There is a role for the FCC to make improvements. Here are some ideas:

1. Fight against monopolies. The reason, in many cases why we have monopolies in the provision of internet is because local governments have granted monopolies to Comcast, Cox, Verizon, etc. When monopolies are created by the government, they harm consumers by limiting choice.

2. Widen the reach of mobile broadband. The FCC proposes to do with by charging fees on the channels TV broadcasts current use. Government ownership of the airwaves is the problem, not the cure. The problem with government ownership is that the government makes decisions based on politics. The FCC should propose to auction off this spectrum, not impose fees. When the spectrum is in private hands, either those of the broadcasters or other people, they will have the incentive to better utilize the spectrum. I don’t know how the spectrum will be used, but I’m sure it will be used better than it is today.

The age of people who experience “sudden acceleration” in their Toyotas

From Overlawyered.com:

Dating back to 1992 models, LA Times reporters found 56 deaths reported to NHTSA over the course of 19 model-years. If Toyota is suffering from electronic problems, these electronic problems should affect all drivers equally. If Toyota sudden acceleration is caused by driver pedal misapplication, then we should expect to see a disproportionate number of elderly and short drivers. Unfortunately, we don’t have driver heights, and in only 24 of the 56 cases, did the Times list the age of the driver.

The ages: 18, 21, 22*, 32, 34, 44, 45, 47, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71**, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89.
*Passenger victim was 22 and “friend” of driver.
**Passenger victim was 71 and married to husband-driver for 46 years.

Huh. I’m sure that driver error has nothing to do with it. Nothing.

**Update**

Megan McArdle read the same post and made some graphs.

Why should anyone attend the State of the Union?

I loved this article by George Will on the State of the Union: 

The increasingly puerile spectacle of presidential State of the Union addresses is indicative of the state of the union and is unnecessary: The Constitution requires only that the president "shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union." But a reaction may be brewing against these embarrassing events. Speaking in Alabama, Chief Justice John Roberts said "to the extent that" this occasion "has degenerated into a political pep rally," he is "not sure why we’re there." He was referring to Supreme Court justices. But why is anyone there?

 

Roberts was responding to a question concerning the kerfuffle about Barack Obama’s January address, wherein Obama criticized — and flagrantly mischaracterized — a recent Supreme Court decision that loosened limits on political speech. The decision neither overturned "a century of law" nor conferred an entitlement on foreign corporations to finance U.S. candidates. Nevertheless, the Democratic donkeys arrayed in front of Obama leapt onto their hind legs and brayed in unison, while the six justices who were present sat silently. Justice Samuel Alito, in an act of lese majeste, appeared to mutter "not true" about Obama’s untruths.

 

When Republican presidents deliver these addresses, Republican legislators, too, lurch up and down like puppets on strings. And Congress wonders why it is considered infantile.

…

Many conservatives were congressional supremacists until Ronald Wilson Reagan arrived possessing the rhetorical skills requisite for a Wilsonian presidency. His unfortunate filigree on the dramaturgy of State of the Union addresses was to begin the practice of stocking the House gallery with ordinary but exemplary people whose presence touches the public’s erogenous zones.

…

Next year, Roberts and the rest of the justices should stay away from the president’s address. So should the uniformed military, who are out of place in a setting of competitive political grandstanding. For that matter, the 535 legislators should boycott these undignified events. They would, if there were that many congressional grown-ups averse to being props in the childishness of popping up from their seats to cheer, or remaining sullenly seated in semi-pouts, as the politics of the moment dictates.

Poor Ezra Klein

Ezra Klein’s article in Newsweek is pretty amusing. Ezra is another Democrat who has taken to blaming the Filibuster for the Senate not passing the a deeply-unpopular health care bill. His article contains some interesting history of about the filibuster, but it lacks any reason why the Senate should do away with the filibuster. Ezra opines:

This is the consequence of running the Senate by twisting the rules rather than following their spirit. It’s not just that you have the 60-vote filibuster process competing against the 51-vote reconciliation process. It’s that you have the Senate wasting days and weeks in cloture votes for doomed filibusters and rewriting legislation to conform to the odd limits of the reconciliation process. And as the minority becomes less responsible with the filibuster (and hoo boy, have minority Republicans become less responsible with the filibuster), the majority needs to use reconciliation more often.

 

Even a kid in civics class would recognize that this is all nuts. The Senate should eliminate the filibuster and budget reconciliation, and require either a 51- or 60-vote majority. Exploiting loopholes is no way to run a country.

You are right Ezra, exploiting loopholes is no way to run a country. A better way is by being bipartisan. If the Democrats had worked from the beginning to be bipartisan, they could have passed a bill a year ago. If you have minority Republicans being “less responsible with the filibuster”, you might have why. In this case, we have a Democratic majority that wants to ram through a partisan health care bill that the public doesn’t want. I’m not speaking to all cases of the Republicans using the filibuster, but in this case it looks like it is the Republicans who are responsibly using the filibuster to try to defeat a program the American people don’t want. That’s a reason to keep the filibuster, not repeal it. 

Would Reagan vote for Sarah Palin?

Steve Hayward has an interesting piece in the Washington Post about Reagan, Palin, and the tea parties.

Sarah Palin invokes him. Mitt Romney glorifies him. The "tea party" movement hopes to recapture him. And the Republican Party still can’t get over him.

 

Six years after his death, and almost a century since his birth, conservatives are more transfixed than ever by Ronald Reagan, so much so that I fully expect a Gipper anxiety disorder to appear in the next edition of the psychiatrists’ diagnostic manual.

…

You can’t assume the Reagan mantle simply by repeating his name ad nauseum or by bickering with primary opponents over who is more like him. (Romney and Huckabee duked it out in the 2008 campaign, engaging in a Reaganer-than-thou exchange memorable for its inanity — lots of good it did them.) That said, there are two largely unrecognized elements of Reagan’s statecraft that his imitators should recognize and study if they truly want to emulate him.

 

The first is the deliberate but unseen crafting of Reagan’s public profile. As we have come to learn with the opening over the past decade of Reagan’s personal papers, his public style was a product of enormous discipline, hard work and calculation. Long before Palin was ridiculed for writing reminders on her hand, Reagan was derided as the 3-by-5 note card candidate (actually, he used 4-by-6 cards) — but his cards were his means of staying succinctly on point and delivering his message in a compelling way. Reagan’s speeches, including his State of the Union addresses, were typically much shorter than average. He knew from show business the power of leaving your audience wanting more. Is there a politician today who you wish gave longer speeches?

 

The second underappreciated aspect of Reagan’s statecraft is his idiosyncratic ideology — entirely a product of his self-study, much of which he concealed. Some of it was orthodox, small-government conservatism (he once stated that "the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism"), but it was leavened with an older liberalism, part of which he inherited from FDR.

Sometimes even Mother Jones gets it right

Every once in a while environmental groups get an environmental issue right. Now if they only would have fought ethanol subsidies from the beginning, we might not have wasted billions upon billions trying to support an unsustainable industry.  Here’s the conclusion from a recent post on the Mother Jones website:

Bottom line: corn ethanol is no greener than gasoline. In fact, it’s almost certainly less green, and at the very least, there’s no urgent need for the U.S. government to pay billions of dollars to subsidize its production. Too bad Iowa is the first state on the primary calendar every four years, isn’t it?

Now if only Mother Jones would see that subsidies are wasteful—both financially and environmentally.  Then we really might be on to something. 

What I love about Sarah Palin

My favorite thing about Sarah Palin is that her mere existence drives many lefties into braindead apoplexy. The latest example is that lefties are losing their minds when they learn that Palin’s grandson has received healthcare through the Indian Health Services and the Alaska Native Medical Center. They believe it is hypocrisy for Palin’s daughter to use government-provided services.  I guess they think that Tripp Palin shouldn’t go to public school, or ever set foot on public lands, or use public roads…

A perfect description of Paul Krugman

From Tom Smith:

Some might conclude from this and other missives that I am critical of Professor Krugman.  But this is not really so.  I regard him as a national treasure of sorts.  Nobody I can think of does a better job of exposing the sneering yet half-baked, the condescending yet ill-informed, the pedantic yet misguided, the professorial yet creepily unnerving, and the self-aggrandizing and deeply unappealing face of contemporary American progressivism than does the good Doktor Professor. It takes talent to inspire distrust that profound. 

Pfizer’s Bad Political Bet

Kim Strassel has another good article in today’s WSJ:

The sight of ObamaCare on life support has many Democrats disappointed. It could be worse. They could be Pfizer CEO Jeffrey Kindler.

 

The twin events of an Obama presidency and a financial crisis rattled corporate America. Public anger put companies on the defensive. A liberal president vowing to punish firms that didn’t aid his agenda got companies scared.

 

Fortune 500 execs could stand up for a free market that benefits consumers and shareholders, or hitch their cart to the new Democratic majority. Pfizer’s Mr. Kindler is a case study in the hitch-and-hope mentality—a CEO who became the motivating force behind Big Pharma’s $80 billion "deal" on reform, and industry support of ObamaCare. With that health agenda burning, the choice isn’t looking so grand.

…

Mr. Kindler surely believed Democrats would treat his industry gently. The strategy: The industry would pledge $80 billion to reform. In return it would get greater volume and a requirement that people buy brand-name drugs. Democrats would also fight against drug reimportation and forgo price controls.

 

No one pushed harder than Mr. Kindler. The CEO made no fewer than five trips to the White House last year. He was the man prodding Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America head Billy Tauzin every step. He wrote an op-ed with the SEIU’s Mr. Stern demanding reform. He pressed the industry’s $150 million ad campaign promoting ObamaCare, rolled out with liberal activist groups.

 

Critics warned the legislation would lead to a government takeover and price controls. They warned Democrats would take the money and double-cross them. None of it fazed the industry, right up until ObamaCare imploded.

 

Mr. Kindler and Co. are left with the ashes. Having got this far (with Big Pharma’s help), Democrats are more desperate than ever to pass "something." It won’t include any upside for drug companies. There is talk instead of "popular" stand-alone legislation, including reimportation, Medicare price controls, and slashing the industry’s 12-year exclusivity on biologics.

 

Big Pharma can’t count on former conservative protectors. Republicans were sympathetic to its decision to "sit at the table," but grew furious when it engaged in active advocacy of the Democratic agenda. One House Republican staffer predicts the next time drug companies "ask us to stand in front of the train," the answer will be: "Since you were so happy to work with Democrats, call them. Go on, go: Call Rahm [Emanuel]. Call [Henry] Waxman."

 

Public anger over ObamaCare doesn’t help the industry’s reputation. Many Americans now view drug companies in the same light as "crony capitalist" banks or energy firms that turn to government to bolster the temporary bottom line. Pfizer’s stock price has been decent (due mostly to Mr. Kindler’s business restructuring), but the industry faces threats from a slowdown in innovation.