Obama wants judges with "empathy". Which is about the same as "sympathy". Presumably Obama is looking for judges who will render decisions in favor of the poor, the down trodden, the individual, and give the back of the hand to corporations. In favor of personal injury, asbestos and malpractice plaintiffs over companies and doctors.
Not sure I like this. There are two parties to lawsuits. I want judges to decide fairly between the two parties in accordance with the law, not decide that one plaintiff deserves to win 'cause he is so adorable and sympathetic.
Recent malpractice case decided empathetically by the current Supremes. The plaintiff suffered terrible injuries from improper administration of a powerful drug. The court socked it to the drug manufacturer. The court decided the warning on the bottle label wasn't strong enough, even though the label had been approved by FDA. The decided to take money from an innocent party to compensate the sympathetic victim. Which raises the price of drugs and health care for all of us. Court decisions like this cause health care to eat up 16% of GNP. They could have ruled the medical personnel liable for improper administration of the drug, but the medics don't have enough money to be worth suing.
Monday, May 25, 2009
The road ahead
Between Bush's $750 billion TARP and Obama's $787 billion porkulus bill, the credit of the United States has been pretty well used up. The government won't be able to do another big spend, the money is gone and it won't be able to borrow that much more.
Too bad that neither seem to have helped the real economy. The real economy is 70% consumer spending. Until consumers stop worrying about getting laid off, they aren't going to spend on anything except groceries. The car companies are in the tank because car sales dropped from 17 million new cars per year to 10 million new cars per year. Why the drop? Simple. People worried about loosing their jobs don't buy new cars.
With the economy in the tank, require new cars to get 35.5 mile per gallon. That's are real sales killer, pay more for smaller cars.
With the economy in the tank, increase the amount of money going to health care. right now 16% of GNP goes to health care. Offering free health insurance to everyone will jack that up. Health care costs slow the economy, they don't grow it.
With the economy in the tank, propose a giant fuel tax, aka cap and trade. That ought to cut another whacking big slice off the GNP.
The future don't look good. And Obama is making it worse.
Too bad that neither seem to have helped the real economy. The real economy is 70% consumer spending. Until consumers stop worrying about getting laid off, they aren't going to spend on anything except groceries. The car companies are in the tank because car sales dropped from 17 million new cars per year to 10 million new cars per year. Why the drop? Simple. People worried about loosing their jobs don't buy new cars.
With the economy in the tank, require new cars to get 35.5 mile per gallon. That's are real sales killer, pay more for smaller cars.
With the economy in the tank, increase the amount of money going to health care. right now 16% of GNP goes to health care. Offering free health insurance to everyone will jack that up. Health care costs slow the economy, they don't grow it.
With the economy in the tank, propose a giant fuel tax, aka cap and trade. That ought to cut another whacking big slice off the GNP.
The future don't look good. And Obama is making it worse.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Welfare for Watermeters
Just got a letter from my water board about meters. Up 'til last year, nobody had a water meter in this town. There are so many weekend houses that use very little water to matter. Billing was done by dividing the revenues needed to keep the water on by the number of customers. Which makes sense, the water flows out of the wells for free. The cost comes from laying and maintaining all those pesky pipes. The pipe costs the same whether water runs thru it or not. Billing based on metered usage would let all the weekend homes off free, and make the full time residents pay all the bills. The water board is all full time residents so that wasn't going to happen.
Turns out the staties and the feds are in love with water meters. Unless we installed meters thru out the town, they wouldn't lend the town money to replace that pipe. The pipe in question was laid back in the 1930's, and replacement is not unreasonable after all this time. Between increased demand and increased leakage, water pressure in town was getting too low to meet state standards. If water pressure drops below zero, the system starts sucking water back in thru all the leaks, and back out of any improperly plumbed drains, which is a health hazard. The state has been on the town's back to fix this for several years now.
So, in order to get a $3.5 million loan at 2.75%, the town had to blow $750,000 installing water meters in every house. I should buy stock in a water meter company.
The letter from the water board then explained that billing would be done the traditional way, $200 a house, pretty much irregardless of meter readings. I'm so glad we paid for all those meters.
Turns out the staties and the feds are in love with water meters. Unless we installed meters thru out the town, they wouldn't lend the town money to replace that pipe. The pipe in question was laid back in the 1930's, and replacement is not unreasonable after all this time. Between increased demand and increased leakage, water pressure in town was getting too low to meet state standards. If water pressure drops below zero, the system starts sucking water back in thru all the leaks, and back out of any improperly plumbed drains, which is a health hazard. The state has been on the town's back to fix this for several years now.
So, in order to get a $3.5 million loan at 2.75%, the town had to blow $750,000 installing water meters in every house. I should buy stock in a water meter company.
The letter from the water board then explained that billing would be done the traditional way, $200 a house, pretty much irregardless of meter readings. I'm so glad we paid for all those meters.
Agincourt by Juliet Barker
Some light reading for a rainy day. Agincourt was the third major battle of the 100 years war where at Henry V of England inflicted the third crushing defeat upon the French. An English army of perhaps 7000 men slaughtered a vastly larger French army in hand to hand fighting. This all took place nearly 600 years ago (1415 to be precise).
The author read the surprising large amount of documentation that has come down to us. It's mostly English, the French revolution destroyed much of the French records. There are enlistment papers, army payrolls, bills to suppliers of arrows and ships and victuals. We have the names of the ordinary soldiers. The author remarks that most Englishmen bore ordinary names like Tom Dick and Harry whereas many French casualties bore names from Arthurian legend, Lancelot, Gawaine, Tristram.
Out of all this material the author spins a well documented, highly readable and fascinating look at the late middle ages.
Interestingly, Juliet Barker's account matches extremely closely with John Keegan's account of the same battle written back in 1976. Keegan, being a military historian (Juliet Barker is a general historian) concentrates on the issue of HOW the much smaller English army inflicted such a smashing defeat upon a vastly superior enemy. Mrs Barker instead offers a never ending stream of fascinating details, of costume, of finance, of recruiting practices, shipping, the taking and ransoming of prisoners, and the massive victory parade in London after the victory.
I enjoyed it.
The author read the surprising large amount of documentation that has come down to us. It's mostly English, the French revolution destroyed much of the French records. There are enlistment papers, army payrolls, bills to suppliers of arrows and ships and victuals. We have the names of the ordinary soldiers. The author remarks that most Englishmen bore ordinary names like Tom Dick and Harry whereas many French casualties bore names from Arthurian legend, Lancelot, Gawaine, Tristram.
Out of all this material the author spins a well documented, highly readable and fascinating look at the late middle ages.
Interestingly, Juliet Barker's account matches extremely closely with John Keegan's account of the same battle written back in 1976. Keegan, being a military historian (Juliet Barker is a general historian) concentrates on the issue of HOW the much smaller English army inflicted such a smashing defeat upon a vastly superior enemy. Mrs Barker instead offers a never ending stream of fascinating details, of costume, of finance, of recruiting practices, shipping, the taking and ransoming of prisoners, and the massive victory parade in London after the victory.
I enjoyed it.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Obama-Cheney TV speeches
Obama was first on Fox. He spoke at length about closing Gitmo, and how opening Gitmo was a mistake (that he is correcting). He went on to talk about torture, CIA, and some other stuff. For a change, Obama say one thing of real substance. He plans to move the Gitmo prisoners to US "super max" prisons. He claimed that no one has ever escaped from such a prison. We will ignore the urban legends about the guy who escaped from Alcatraz. Actually, the risk is not escape, but some judge turning them loose.
Obama seems to understand the need to hold Al Quada fighters in jail, even though they aren't guilty of crimes. Other than bearing arms against the United States, they haven't done anything that would convince any kind of American court of their guilt. If they were wearing uniforms and soldiering for a real government, they would be prisoners of war. As it is, we need to hold them for the same reasons we hold prisoners of war, but we don't feel like granting them the privileges associated with POW status. Such as freedom from interrogation and Red Cross packages.
Then it was Cheney's turn. He spoke at length and ably defended the Bush Adminstration's war on terror. He made a lot of sense, and it's too bad Bush didn't say these things back when he was president. When Cheney speaks, he speaks about facts, rather than Obama's style of standing fore square for motherhood and apple pie.
Obama seems to understand the need to hold Al Quada fighters in jail, even though they aren't guilty of crimes. Other than bearing arms against the United States, they haven't done anything that would convince any kind of American court of their guilt. If they were wearing uniforms and soldiering for a real government, they would be prisoners of war. As it is, we need to hold them for the same reasons we hold prisoners of war, but we don't feel like granting them the privileges associated with POW status. Such as freedom from interrogation and Red Cross packages.
Then it was Cheney's turn. He spoke at length and ably defended the Bush Adminstration's war on terror. He made a lot of sense, and it's too bad Bush didn't say these things back when he was president. When Cheney speaks, he speaks about facts, rather than Obama's style of standing fore square for motherhood and apple pie.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
How to gain 3 mpg in your CAFE
Seems like CAFE isn't just the average fuel economy. Make "flex fuel" vehicles and it bumps up your CAFE by 3 mpg. This was in yesterday's Journal, back page somewhere. The US CAFE is not 25 mpg, its more like 22, but credit for the "flex fuel" vehicles pulls it up to 25.
It's super easy to make a flex fuel (alcohol burner) vehicle. Just make sure the elastomers in the fuel system (gaskets, seals, flex tubing and such) can withstand alcohol as well as gasoline. Most such things are OK, as is. You just need engineering to go over the specs of this kind of stuff and add "Shall withstand immersion in 85% alcohol for 10 years". Alcohol resistant elastomers are available and cost about the same as whatever they use now. It's just a matter of telling purchasing to buy the alcohol resistant type. And programming the fuel injection microprocessor to do the right thing, it has to squirt in a good deal more alcohol than gasoline, all things being equal.
Gee, maybe we could make the same kind of "allowance" for hybrids. Each hybrid sold lets you sell a 15 mpg SUV...
It's super easy to make a flex fuel (alcohol burner) vehicle. Just make sure the elastomers in the fuel system (gaskets, seals, flex tubing and such) can withstand alcohol as well as gasoline. Most such things are OK, as is. You just need engineering to go over the specs of this kind of stuff and add "Shall withstand immersion in 85% alcohol for 10 years". Alcohol resistant elastomers are available and cost about the same as whatever they use now. It's just a matter of telling purchasing to buy the alcohol resistant type. And programming the fuel injection microprocessor to do the right thing, it has to squirt in a good deal more alcohol than gasoline, all things being equal.
Gee, maybe we could make the same kind of "allowance" for hybrids. Each hybrid sold lets you sell a 15 mpg SUV...
NH Gay marriage bill stalls in House
According to the Manchester Union Leader, the House could not muster the few extra votes needed to amend the bill to make it acceptable to Governor Lynch. Lynch demanded language be added to the bill to protect churches and ministers from lawsuits should they refuse to conduct a gay marriage, or allow one to take place in the church. A not unreasonable protection IMHO. The amendment failed to pass last night by just a few votes. Everyone assumes the Governor means what he says and will veto the gay marriage bill with out that amendment.
The issue isn't dead yet. Supporters are maneuvering to try it again.
Jeez, just last year we passed a civil union bill. Now they want to upgrade civil union to marriage. Camel's nose in the tent.
The issue isn't dead yet. Supporters are maneuvering to try it again.
Jeez, just last year we passed a civil union bill. Now they want to upgrade civil union to marriage. Camel's nose in the tent.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)