Thoughts after the election

If you believe the after-election commentary, the American people have “repudiated the policies of this administration and embraced conservative ideals.” Republicans are saying that gaining control of the Senate and increasing their control of the House is “a mandate” from the American people. In a sense it is, but almost certainly not in the way that they apparently believe and, more importantly, want you to believe.

For the president’s opposing party to take control of Congress during midterm elections is nothing new. Republicans did it in 1994, and Democrats did it in 2006. Historically, it’s unusual for the opposing party not to gain seats during the midterm. The media pundits and party propaganda twits will come up with all kinds of complicated reasons, often based on the belief that the winning party lied or cheated, but I think the real reason is much simpler: voters are expressing their discontent by throwing the bums out.

Throwing the bums out is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. Unfortunately, they just elect a new crop of bums and it’s business as usual.

The American electorate has an incredibly short memory and an even more limited imagination. They’re smart enough to see that things aren’t working well, and know that we need a change in Congress. But their imagination is limited to one of two flavors: Democrat or Republican. They’ll happily throw out the Democrats in favor of the Republicans, despite having been burned by the Republicans eight or ten years ago. And at some time in the near future they’ll throw the Republicans out in favor of the Democrats, forgetting that things weren’t any better the last time Democrats controlled Congress.

For some unfathomable reason, Americans lack the imagination to throw out Democrats and Republicans. That would send the right message. As it stands, all we’re doing is swapping one crowd of blood sucking parasites for another.

I liken it to being given the choice of having your face slapped repeatedly or getting punched in the gut repeatedly. We get tired of slaps after a while and switch to the gut punchers, but then our stomachs start to hurt and we go for the face slapping again. But what we really want is for people to stop hitting us. And yet we don’t have the imagination or the will to do anything about it.

In part, that’s because we long ago allowed Congress to make rules that enforce a very strict two-party system. The party that has the most seats in the House or Senate gets to make rules and control what legislation is presented. That in itself encourages an adversarial relationship, which is especially bad when the President’s party controls one house and the opposing party controls the other. In that case, the opposing party is forced to do whatever it can to block the president’s every move. To do otherwise would alienate their base and anybody else who might be discontented enough to vote for them during the next election cycle.

When the president’s party controls both houses of Congress, we’re in real trouble. Especially when they hold a super majority that can completely block every move of the opposing party. In that case, there is no opposition to whatever grandiose scheme the president’s party can dream up. We usually regret such laws that are enacted without careful consideration and lively debate. Giving a single party full control of two of our three branches of government is dangerous. So far we’ve been fortunate that the parties aren’t quite as tightly controlled as they could be. It’s a good thing that sometimes a party member will vote against the wishes of the party leaders.

We’re best off when one party controls the Executive branch and the other party controls the Legislative. In that case, the two parties are forced to work together. When one party controls both houses of Congress, the people who elected them expect them to Get Things Done. Sure, some of the party faithful think Congress should adopt an adversarial posture towards the president, but that leads to idiocy like the Clinton impeachment trial. Most of the people will want Congress to work with the president and enact meaningful legislation. Or, one would hope, repeal stupid legislation that was imposed on us when one party had a little too much power.

If Republicans can work with the president over the next two years (one year, really, because the second year will be dedicated to the mud slinging and political posturing we call campaigning), Republicans have a chance of gaining the White House again, and perhaps can keep from losing too much ground in the Congressional elections. If, however, they adopt an adversarial role and refuse to work with the president, the 2016 elections will be a repeat of 2008.

What I’d really like to see, though, is a meaningful third party or, preferably, a serious independent (i.e. no party affiliation) movement. Our system of party politics, especially the artificial two party system, is a serious impediment. It just encourages tribalism and perpetuates the dysfunctional governance we’ve experienced for the last 25 years or more.

The Toothpaste Rant

I’m cranky this morning. Like many people, I have kind of a ritual I go through when I get out of bed. The first thing I do is wander, bleary-eyed, into the bathroom to do my business. Then I stop by the sink and brush my teeth. The day just doesn’t seem right if I can’t brush my teeth first thing.

So why am I cranky? The toothpaste tube was empty, and I grabbed one of those little sample tubes that come in the mail from time to time. Crest wanting me to try their new flavor, I guess. Heck, it’s toothpaste, right? I squeezed a bit out onto my brush, put the thing in my mouth and … nearly vomited.

High on the list of things that you just shouldn’t mess with is toothpaste. Long before I started brushing my teeth, civilization figured out that the proper flavor for toothpaste was mint. It doesn’t really matter what kind of mint, as long as it has that … well, that minty flavor. And consistency matters, too. Toothpaste is done.

But can they leave well enough alone? No! Some idiot at the Crest toothpaste company decided that they needed a cinnamon flavor. To compete with cinnamon Altoids, perhaps? Who knows what goes through their minds? I know it’s hard to believe that they even thought of making a non-mint toothpaste, but for sure their taste testers should have nixed this crap before it ever got out of the lab. The stuff tastes like bathtub caulk mixed with just a hint of fake cinnamon–maybe from one of those Atomic Fireball candies. And it left a sour aftertaste in the back of my mouth. To top it all off, it has the consistency of bathtub caulk, too. Toothpaste is supposed to be a little moist–almost runny. It’s not supposed to suck all the moisture off your tongue when you put it in your mouth.

Fortunately, I was able to get rid of that taste by gargling with Listerine, and I brushed my teeth with Scope, if you can believe it. So I’m not as cranky as I could be. But it was a close thing.

Fair warning: check the flavor on that toothpaste tube before you squeeze some out onto your brush. You do not want the kind of rude surprise that I got this morning.

And to the people who make toothpaste: Stop messing with it! Just make sure that it cleans my teeth and leaves my mouth feeling minty fresh. Some things are perfect just the way they’ve been for a hundred years, thank you very much. Spend your time on real problems, like figuring out how to make a floss that doesn’t get stuck between my teeth, or maybe a “scrubbing bubbles” mouthwash that I can swish around instead of having to use the dang brush. But make sure that it’s a mint flavor, okay?

The password rant

Every time I have to come up with a password for a Web site, I end up spending 10 minutes trying to find one that I can remember and that will conform to the rules for that site. You’d think there’d be some kind of standard. But, no … every site has its own bunch of rules.

One site requires the password to be “at least eight characters long.” Others specify a minimum length and require at least one number, one capital letter, and one special character. Others specify an absurdly short maximum length. They’ll limit the characters you can use, make you use at least two numbers, prevent you from using any word that’s in an English dictionary, or for all I know require that you type it with your toes while standing on your head. It’s maddening.

I could understand this idiocy 10 years ago. Today it’s simply unacceptable. The key to a good password is that it be long, unusual, and easy to remember. But the most important point is length. Next most important is easy to remember. And I guarantee that a password like “stupid.password.rules.suck” is easier to remember and harder to break with a brute force attack than something like “Stup1d.pw0rd”.

To make matters worse, sites often don’t tell you what the password rules are. It’ll say, “enter password.” So you enter something like “my.mom’s.maiden.name” and it will say, “Passwords must contain at least one number and one capital letter.” So then you enter “3rd.rock&Roll.act” and it will say, “Passwords may only contain the characters [list of characters that doesn’t include ‘&’]”. So then you type, “Please.save.M3.From.Stupid.Password.Rules” and it will say, “Passwords must be between 8 and 14 characters in length.”

Why can’t they tell me all of the rules up front? Do they think I’m here to play 20 passwords? This evening my hosting provider told me that my password had expired and that I need to create a new one. Fine. I’m now on my fifth attempt at creating a password that I can remember, that others won’t likely guess, and that fits the rules that they’re revealing to me one at a time.

People who create Web sites: please update your password rules. Force me to create a password that’s at least 15 characters long, and let me put whatever characters I want in it! If you really have to put a limit on the length, make it something reasonable like at least 32 characters. Limiting me to 12 (a banking site, no less) or 14 characters and making me choose from three or four different classes of characters to boot just pisses me off and makes me think that I should find some other place to take my business.

Making me crazy

I don’t travel as much as I used to, so I’m not up on all the latest changes. The last time I traveled by air was two years ago, and somebody else made the reservations. I don’t remember the last time I booked a flight.

This evening I was making reservations to go to southern California. I typically just go to Southwest Airlines because their rates are competitive if not always the lowest, and I always get good service. But seeing the cost of the flight I thought I’d shop around. Several carriers showed much lower prices for the trip I wanted. Until I took into account restrictions, extra charges, etc. Their Web sites don’t make it easy for me to feel confident that I’m getting what I think I’m getting, and by the time I added everything up it wasn’t a whole lot cheaper than Southwest.

I entered my Rapid Rewards account (Southwest’s frequent flier program) with my flight information so I’d get points for the flight. Why not, right? But then I couldn’t check out. You see, my Rapid Rewards account has my name as Jim Mischel. But new (new to me, at least) government regulations (“Safe Travel” or some such) insist that the name on the ticket match the name on my driver’s license, which is James Mischel. Uff. Southwest’s helpful Web site suggested that I change the name on my Rapid Rewards account.

But the Rapid Rewards account information page says:

For security purposes, we do not allow name changes online. Instead, please forward your Rapid Rewards card, along with photocopies of legal documentation (ex. driver license, marriage certificate, etc.) and an informal letter indicating your legal name, to Rapid Rewards, P.O. Box 36657, Dallas, TX 75235.

Just shoot me.

The only solution I could come up with was to remove the Rapid Rewards number. So I won’t get my points for the flight. Probably wouldn’t matter, anyway; I don’t fly enough for the points to mean anything.

Ain’t technology wonderful?

You mean that didn’t fix anything?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 512 points today, down 4.31%. The S&P 500 is down 4.78%. NASDAQ down over 5%. That’s on top of a 2+ percent loss on Tuesday. I can’t blame it all on the debt ceiling deal, but that’s a major contributor. Let me explain why.

Investors hate uncertainty. When they don’t don’t know what Congress is going to do, investors get nervous and they tend to flee from stocks like rats deserting a sinking ship. During the run-up to Tuesday’s historically idiotic culmination of the most recent tempest in a teapot, investors believed that Congress would do something to resolve the issue. Instead, Congress passed and the President signed a bill that just kicks the can down the road a bit, which is what they’re best at. They’ve put the whole thing off until November. Investors, now with no idea of what train wreck Congress is going to perpetrate next, are pulling their money out of the market. They’re going to sit on it for a while (a week, a few months, a year or two, who knows) until they can figure out what the new rules are.

It’s fitting that the new legislation was called the Debt Control Act of 2011. Congress excels at passing legislation that does exactly the opposite of what one would expect, based on the bill’s title.

The stock market is not the national economy. Often it’s not even a good indicator of the national economy. But it acts like the national economy in many ways. In particular, the primary driver of the stock market is investor sentiment, much as the primary driver of the national economy is consumer (and, to some extent, producer) sentiment. If people think that things are getting better, they spend money much more freely. When people think things are getting worse or not going to change, they tend to sit on their money and only let go of it when absolutely necessary.

Recent polls show that most people believe that things aren’t getting better. That’s due in large part to their belief that government drives the economy–a belief reinforced by the mainstream media, either on purpose or as a side effect of superficial reporting. Both major political parties, and most of the smaller parties count on that belief and do everything in their power to reinforce it. It’s wrong, but it’s beneficial for some that most believe it to be true. And it’s convenient for the masses, because it relieves them from any responsibility.

When people armed with that belief see Congress wasting months on a spending bill that ultimately amounts to more of the same, they are not going to be filled with confidence. A poll taken yesterday shows that of the people polled, 41% believe that the new Debt Control Act will make the economy worse. 17% believe it will make it better. And almost one-third of respondents said that it won’t make a difference.

It looks to me like 83% of people are going to sit on their money until they see what Congress does next.

It’s kind of funny that back when things were going well, people were spending money they didn’t have on things they didn’t need, because they thought they could make it up in the future. Now, many of them are reluctant to buy things they really need with money they already have because they’re unsure of how long their money will last. This probably points to a basic flaw in the way that most people see the world.

As long as the American people believe that government controls the economy, we’re going to see longer periods of contraction or stagnation, and fewer and shorter periods of growth. My conclusion, based on 30+ years observing Congress in real time, and my reading of history from prior years, is that government can create short-term bubbles at the cost of long-term problems. Government policies that use borrowed money to target certain industries or certain groups of people usually result in short-term gains for those affected areas. But those policies almost invariably lead to unintended negative consequences, particularly when the temporary programs end and the industries that were built up to take advantage of those programs fail.

“Government money” in the economy, either through higher taxes or borrowed money, is like taking amphetamines. It’s go, go, go until the drugs wear off, followed by a crash. Our economy is now suffering from the equivalant of amphetamine dependence, where it takes larger and more frequent doses to get any kind of reaction.

As with amphetamine dependence, whereas decreasing or eliminating government’s role in the economy would be a Good Thing, doing so will involve some very painful withdrawal symptoms. Unfortunately, I doubt that we have the national will to suffer through that pain, even though the result would be a much more stable and robust economy.

Here we go again

We’ve been hearing for the last couple of months that Congress needs to raise the debt limit before August 2 in order to prevent the U.S. Government from defaulting on its obligations. This isn’t new; in the past, Congress has increased the debt limit as a matter of course. The only thing different this time is that there are members of Congress who have to show their constituents that they are “doing something about the problem” of excessive government spending.

Don’t get me wrong. I agree that our government squanders entirely too much money. I’ve noted many times in the past that I think our government’s spending is completely out of control and that we must rein it in if we want to maintain our standard of living and our status as a leader in the world economy. But refusing to increase the debt limit is not the way to do it.

Those who say we shouldn’t increase the debt limit are, at best, confused. In the first place, we’ve already committed to trillions of dollars in new spending–money that we don’t currently have. We will have to borrow in order to meet those commitments. We can’t just say to our creditors and others we’ve made those commitments to, “sorry, we’re out of money.”

Second, there’s no way that failing to increase the debt limit will prevent us from meeting those commitments. Our government will meet its obligations, at least for the immediately foreseeable future. It’s not like government will stop functioning on August 2. We will be “breaking the law” by continuing to spend beyond the currently authorized debt limit, but government will continue to function.

Those who think that the way out of this mess is to increase taxes haven’t been paying attention. Congress has shown that it’s unable to exercise any kind of restraint when it comes to spending. If government takes in more, it just spends more. We’ve seen this happen as recently as the Clinton years, when a combination of an unusually prosperous few years and a President and Congress who actually kept each other in check produced a projected budget surplus. That surplus wasn’t nearly as large as some would like you to think, and it disappeared pretty quickly when the economy turned down, helped of course by the next President and Congress who had a “you wash my back and I’ll wash yours” approach to spending.

Our current President and the previous Congress had the same type of relationship, and as much as the Republicans who control the House would like you to think otherwise, that hasn’t changed much since last year’s election. Neither really cares how much money is spent. They just want to make sure that when money is spent, they can spin it to make the other guy look bad. Or, if that fails, make themselves look good. That is, it’s best if one can say, “The other guy spent that money!” It’s almost as good to say, “Well, yes, I spent that money, but it was for this Good Thing.”

All the noise you hear coming out of Washington recently about the debt limit boils down to nothing but a bunch of hot air. Members of both parties will blame the other for reckless spending, obstructionism, confiscatory taxation, stealing food from the mouths of babies, “playing politics” with our grandchildren’s futures, balancing the budget on the backs of the poor (or the rich), and all manner of other heinous crimes.

The whole mess is a result of Republicans insisting on some type of deficit reduction as a condition of increasing the debt limit. Whereas I think they’re right in raising objections to our profligate spending, their choice of battleground is not particularly wise. They somehow think that the good press they’ll get from “making a stand” against excess spending will outweigh the bad press they’re getting from all corners. I suspect that they’re going to come out smelling like they rolled in a pig pen.

President Obama and the Democrats in Congress said they were willing to participate in a discussion. The original proposal was to cut four trillion dollars off the deficits over the next 10 years. The project deficits over that period amount to about $15 trillion. So even if the four trillion figure were attainable, we’d still amass $11 trillion in new debt. But Republicans won’t entertain any kind of increase in taxes, and Democrats at first weren’t willing to pass anything that didn’t include more revenue (i.e. higher taxes). Increased taxes are now off the table, and current proposals by both parties amount to about $2.5 trillion reduction over 10 years. Those proposals are so full of holes that the Congressional Budget Office estimates they’ll result in a savings that’s between 25% and 30% lower. Not that either proposal will fly. The House bill is D.O.A. in the Senate, and likewise the Senate bill in the House.

Both parties are playing a game of chicken, arguing over what amounts to at best a 12% reduction in deficits over the next 10 years, and holding up an increase in the debt limit that probably doesn’t matter at all and most likely will eventually be passed, regardless of how this particular little squabble turns out. In other words, all this noise is just an argument over an imaginary spending reduction that started over a routine bit of meaningless bookkeeping.

The real issue has nothing to do with spending, taxation, deficits, or debt limits. If you’ve been paying attention at all, you can see that the real issue is simply election politics. Next year is a big election year. Republicans are pushing for a small increase in the debt limit, hoping that we’ll have to go through this again next year, shortly before the election. Democrats want a larger increase in the debt limit so that they can skip having to discuss this until after next November’s election. Republicans are hoping to make President Obama look bad going into next year’s election, and Democrats are trying to prevent that.

Of course, each party is accusing the other of “playing politics.” And the mindless parrots who make up the majority of the American electorate go along with it happily, never stopping to consider that their selected tribe is doing the same thing that they’re excoriating the other tribe for doing. It never occurs to the denizens of either tribe to engage their brains and figure out that they’re being hoodwinked by their tribal leaders who don’t give a damn about the American people, our economy, or the long-term health of our country. Their only consideration is power: how to get it and how to keep it. Whatever helps the tribe amass or retain power is good. Everything else is irrelevant.

There’s no doubt that we need to rein in spending, but the people currently in charge of the purse strings aren’t going to do it. They’re not even interested in it, and neither are any of the people who are thinking about standing for election next fall. You might think that a “throw the bums out” reaction in next year’s election will “send a message,” and it will. The message received will be, “Suckers! You think you can get rid of us that easily?” The new crop of elected parasites will set up shop and continue to fleece you.

The only way out of this mess is to throw off the idiotic illusion that your tribe is better than the other tribe, and that if your tribe has control everything will be okay. Ditch party politics. Think for yourself. Refuse to vote for anybody who claims a party affiliation. Judge based on actions and on real answers to real questions.

You can continue in your slavish devotion to your tribe, and continue to blame the other tribe for things getting worse. And they will get much worse. Or you can engage your brain, see the parties for the manipulators that they are, and elect real people who actually care about doing what’s right rather than what will keep themselves and their tribes in power.

Keep on digging!

Last month the Congressional Budget Office released their 2011 Long-Term Budget Outlook. Unsurprisingly, this was not reported by the media or mentioned by any of the players in the fiscal tug-of-war that’s currently occupying our elected parasites. It’s likely that most of them haven’t even read the report.

They should, and the the media should be all over this, because the CBO report paints a very bleak picture of our fiscal situation. You should also understand that historically the CBO almost always overstates revenues and understates expenditures. In addition, the language of their reports is purposely vague. Even with that, the picture they paint is frightening indeed.

The report analyzes the impact on the budget under two scenarios. Under the most optimistic scenario, things are bad. Under the more likely scenario, things are catastrophic.

Under the Extended Baseline scenario, expiration of tax cuts, changes in tax law, and the way that the tax system interacts with the economy result in increasing revenues, with revenue reaching about 23 percent of GDP by the year 2035, and continuing to grow after that. At the same time, spending on everything but health care, Social Security, and interest on the debt would decrease to the lowest levels since World War II.

The projected result of the Extended Baseline scenario is that federal debt will increase to about 84 percent of GDP by the year 2035, from about 69 percent now. Interest on the federal debt will be about 4 percent of GDP, or about 17 percent of all federal spending.

The Alternative Fiscal Scenario incorporates several expected changes of law. The 2001 tax cuts, extended in 2010, will be extended again, the reach of the alternative minimum tax is reduced, and in general tax law will change to keep revenues at their historical average of about 18 percent of GDP. In addition, health care costs are projected more realistically and spending on other government programs are not expected to decrease as much as in the Extended Baseline scenario.

Under the Alternative Fiscal Scenario, federal debt explodes, reaching 100 percent of GDP by the year 2021, and 190 percent of GDP by 2035.

According to the report:

Many budget analysts believe that the alternative fiscal scenario presents a more realistic picture of the nation’s underlying fiscal policies than the extended-baseline scenario does. The explosive path of federal debt under the alternative fiscal scenario underscores the need for large and rapid policy changes to put the nation on a sustainable fiscal course.

Note that the current spending is not sustainable, nor is either of the scenarios outlined above.

Scary as those projections are, the really frightening part of the report is contained in the section entitled The Impact of Growing Deficits and Debt. The first paragraph is so alarming that it should have every American calling his elected representatives to demand immediate changes to put us on a sustainable path:

CBO’s projections in most of this report understate the severity of the long-term budget problem because they do not incorporate the negative effects that additional federal debt would have on the economy, nor do they include the impact of higher tax rates on people’s incentives to work and save. In particular, large budget deficits and growing debt would reduce national saving, leading to higher interest rates, more borrowing from abroad, and less domestic investment—which in turn would lower income growth in the United States. Taking those effects into account, CBO estimates that under the extended baseline scenario, real (inflation-adjusted) gross national product (GNP) would be reduced slightly by 2025 and by as much as 2 percent by 2035, compared with what it would be under the stable economic environment that underlies most of the projections in this report. Under the alternative fiscal scenario, real GNP would be 2 percent to 6 percent lower in 2025, and 7 percent to 18 percent lower in 2035, than under a stable economic environment.

In other words, the budgetary impact of our fiscal overindulgence results in a reduction of GNP in the next 15 years.

As I said before, CBO projections in the past have typically been overly optimistic because they are based on current policies and projections of historical averages. They don’t take into account the rate at which government spending has increased over time. Regardless, even the CBO’s most optimistic projection here is unsustainable.

Meanwhile, Congress and the President are wrangling over a plan to reduce deficits by up to four trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Whereas that sounds like a lot (about a 27% decrease in deficit), it still saddles us with about $11 trillion more debt by the year 2021. Assuming, of course, that the plan actually has the projected impact. More likely, flaws in whatever convoluted legislation they cook up will result in much lower savings, and future legislation will negate whatever actual savings is realized.

When you find yourself in a hole with a shovel in your hand, sinking ever deeper, the first thing you should do is stop digging and drop the dang shovel. When you find yourself sinking deeper into debt, the first thing you have to do is stop borrowing money!

Any fifth grader can do the math. If you keep taking more than you’re getting, eventually you have nothing.

Putting our government on a sustainable fiscal path will require pain. A lot of pain. Historical evidence and the most recent CBO report indicate that raising taxes will not have a positive impact on our budgetary problems. The only way we can solve the problem is to reduce spending. As I pointed out in Out of Control, more than 60% of federal spending is on “mandatory” programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, welfare, etc. We spend more on those programs alone than we take in every year in revenues. Those programs must be cut.

But cutting any of those programs is political suicide. Because our elected “leaders” are more interested in keeping their jobs than they are in prolonging our way of life, Congress and the President will end up passing bullshit “reform” legislation that just whitewashes over the problem, perhaps extending the inevitable for another few years–long enough that some other suckers have to worry about it.

So go ahead, Mr. President. Mr. Speaker. Mr. Senate Majority Leader. Have your fun. Make all your silly speeches and look good for your constituents. Play the game of making the other guy look bad so that you and your parties can remain in power. But please don’t expect those of us who actually paid attention in fifth grade math class to swallow the shit you’re shoveling.

Stay out of Libya

When announcing the U.S. involvement in the U.N.-approved action in Libya, the President stressed that we would not be sending ground troops. Now, we have a diplomat on the ground discussing possible humanitarian and financial assistance to the Libyan rebels. I suspect that soon there will be U.S.-based aid organizations in Libya, funded in large part if not entirely by the U.S. government.

That’s mostly good, I suppose, but when members of those organizations become casualties you will hear many in this country crying out for us to “send in the troops.” I’m not convinced that President Obama (or any other President in recent memory, come to think of it) has the strength to say no to those cries if it looks like sending in the troops will help him win re-election in 2012. The same goes for every Congressman and Senator who will be standing for re-election.

I supported President Bush and Congress when we sent troops to Afghanistan. I thought the idea was to remove the Taliban, who openly assisted the terrorists who carried out the 9-11 attacks, and to dismantle al Qaeda by arresting or killing its leaders and support network. For reasons that aren’t clear to me, we’ve not been wholly successful in that. However, I still believe that supporting the action was correct.

I also supported us going into Iraq because I believed in the President’s assessment that there was a clear and present danger. I also thought that we had a plan. It turns out that the “clear and present danger” was most likely inferred by selectively paranoid interpretations of incomplete intelligence reports, and our “plan” consisted of “kill the bad guys and gather everybody else around the campfire to sing Kumbaya.” I was wrong to support our involvement in Iraq.

I won’t say that our action in Iraq has done nothing positive, but the most important and visible outcome is that we created a power vacuum in the region and there’s only one country with the power to take advantage of it: our good friends in Iran. The Iranian leaders curse us publicly, but I have to believe that in private they thank us every day for removing any possible regional threat to their power. We’re the best friends the Iranian leaders ever had.

We should not be getting more involved in Libya. There is even talk of providing arms for the rebels. Of course, with those arms will almost certainly come “advisors” to show the rebels how to use the weapons. But I suppose those aren’t considered “ground troops,” any more than humanitarian aid workers are. Right? I predict that, if the conflict in Libya draws out, those “advisors” will soon be augmented by other special-purpose personnel who are also, ostensibly, “non-combat troops.” Interesting, though, how often those “non-combat troops” are carrying weapons and actually firing them. Must be one of those definitions of “non-combat” that I’m not aware of.

Let the people of Libya figure it out for themselves. Yes, Gadhafi and his henchmen are slaughtering civilians and armed rebels alike. The same has been happening throughout Africa, Asia, and parts of South America since I can remember, and rarely do we do anything about it. It’s a tragedy, but it’s not our place to stop it. The U.N. seems to think that they have the responsibility to prevent these kinds of atrocities, but the organization is so hampered by politics and bureaucracy that it’s amazing they ever get anything done, even as ineffectively as they do.

If it is our place to stop these kinds of atrocities, then we should stop them: quickly and decisively. Otherwise, we should stay the hell out of it because when we go in pussyfooting around, we invariably make things worse than they would have been had we stayed out of it. Since we don’t have the political will to take decisive action, we should keep the troops–all the troops–at home.

President Obama, now that you’ve shown the world that you have the balls to commit troops and drop bombs, show us that you have the brains to bring the guys home before you get us stuck in another conflict from which we have no good way to extricate ourselves.

More fun with CSS

I just spent an embarrassing amount of time wondering why my Web application wasn’t displaying things the way I thought it should. When in desperation I made a totally outrageous change to the stylesheet and the display didn’t change, I finally figured out the problem. In my stylesheet, the class name was newVidPreviewImg. In the JavaScript code, it was newvidPreviewImg.

Yes, I had a case problem. My mistake, true, and I’ll own it. But I’ll also say that making names case-sensitive is perhaps the dumbest design decision I’ve seen in CSS–a language that’s chock full of idiocy. The entire language, if you can call it that, is so full of exceptions, limitations, and inconsistencies that it’s pretty obvious the thing is the result of a failed design that was repeatedly patched to handle special cases rather than redesigned to make logical sense. It’s a kludge of the highest order.

Case sensitivity in file names or in programming language identifiers causes an incredible amount of confusion. Development environments that include features such as Intellisense lessen the impact, but don’t eliminate the problem completely. When you’re coding HTML, for example, and you write something like:

<div class="myCoolDivName">

There’s nothing that checks your CSS stylesheet to make sure that “myCoolDivName” is in fact defined. If the name is instead “myCoolDivname”, you’re in for a bit of confusion. The same kind of thing happens in JavaScript.

I’ve yet to see a good argument in favor of case sensitivity in identifiers. Certainly, a programmer would be foolish to define two identifiers in the same scope that differ only by case. It can only cause confusion and lost productivity, especially when you’re working with tools that can’t tell you that you’re making a mistake.

There are many programming language features that, over the years, have been found to be more trouble than they’re worth, and they’ve been eliminated or restricted. Modern languages, for example, restrict the use of the goto statement to prevent you from jumping into the middle of a function or a control structure (you can’t jump into the middle of a loop, for example). C# disallows the shorthand if (a = b) (combined assignment and conditional) because it’s entirely too easy to mistakenly type that construct when you really meant if (a == b) (simple conditional, without assignment).

Case sensitivity is one of those “features” that should not have been included in the C# language, and I suspect it would not have been if the designers weren’t concerned with making it easier to port existing C and C++ code. At least C, C++, and C# have the benefit of a compiler that will tell you when you’ve referenced an undefined identifier. Try working in JavaScript, where identifiers are defined on first use and they’re case-sensitive.

Case sensitivity: evil incarnate. I would suggest that you avoid it if at all possible. It can only hurt you.

A health care plan is not insurance

One argument put forth by opponents of the recently passed health care legislation is that they object to subsidizing others’ health care.  A common counter-argument, often made by intelligent people who should know better, is that you already do that for auto or homeowner’s insurance, and nobody complains about that.  The counter-argument does not bear close scrutinty.

As I’ve pointed out before, the idea behind insurance is that individuals voluntarily contribute to a fund that is used to reimburse members in the face of a catastrophic loss.  This works well in situations where catastrophic loss is relatively rare.  For example, you can get quite good homeowner’s insurance coverage on a $150,000 home for less than $1,000 per year.  If your house burns down (a rare catastrophic loss), you’re covered:  your participation in the insurance fund insures that you’re compensated for your loss.  This kind of insurance works well in any situation where there are large numbers of people who individually have a small risk of loss:  property insurance and auto insurance being the types of insurance most people in the U.S. will be familiar with.

There are three very important conditions that must be met in order for insurance to work in the long term.

  1. The sum of the premiums (annual payments by those insured, plus expected income from investing those funds) collected must equal or exceed the expected cost of all losses experienced.
  2. In order to be fair, each individual’s premium is calculated based on the calculated risk of loss and the expected cost of such a loss.  In the case of auto insurance, the premium is based on your age group and driving record (calculated risk), and the value of the car that you’re insuring (expected cost of loss).
  3. The pool (the insurance company) must have the right to increase an individual’s premium as conditions change, or to refuse coverage (i.e. kick the person out of the pool) if the calculated risk for that person is unacceptably high.

If any one of those conditions is not met, then the pool will become insolvent because the accumulated cost of losses over time will exceed the premiums collected and any income generated from investing the collected premiums.

Note that insurance only covers unexpected losses.  Depending on your coverage (based mostly on how much you’re willing to pay), your auto insurance might cover glass breakage and hail damage, or it might cover just the cost of replacing the car were it to be “totaled” (cost of repairs exceeds the vehicle’s fair market value).  Usually, you choose your coverage based on two things:  how much you’re willing to pay for coverage (your monthly or annual premium), and how much you’re willing to pay out of pocket whenever a loss occurs (your deductible).

Insurance does not pay for gas, oil changes, tires, or other things that are considered normal wear and tear.

A health care plan is a much different thing than insurance.  The new health care legislation provides for the following:

  1. Everybody contributes, whether they want to or not, based on their ability to pay.  And before you tell me that the new legislation doesn’t provide for this, you might read it again.  There are subsidies for people earning up to $88,000, and much of the additional cost is covered by increased taxes on people who earn more than $250,000.
  2. All services are covered, with little or no co-payment (deductible) required.
  3. The pool is prohibited from refusing anybody for any reason.

Let me point out here that the new health care legislation didn’t invent the health care plan.  Most people who currently have “health insurance” actually have a health care plan that’s similar to but much more limited than the one described above (i.e. participation is voluntary and there are limits on services).  They’ve been around for decades.

Health care plans under the new legislation are akin to a “transportation plan” in which you obtain whatever car you can get hold of and, in exchange for a token monthly payment, everything but gas is covered.  You don’t have to pay for oil changes, tires, or scheduled maintenance.  If you fail to check the oil regularly and your engine burns up, the pool is required by law to replace your engine.  If you buy a trashed out 1955 Mercedes Gull Wing, the pool is required by law to restore it to original condition and maintain it.  No matter what you drive or how you abuse your car, your token monthly payment (amount based on your ability to pay) ensures that you’ll always have a working car to drive.  In addition, even those who don’t drive are forced to contribute, again based on their ability to pay.

Yes, I and any person who accepts the responsibility for his own driving habits would object to being forced to pay for that kind of transportation plan.  And yet that’s the kind of health plan I’m being forced to contribute to.  Of course I object!