Mimsy Were the Borogoves

“Today Democrats Dale Kildee and Jim Oberstar announced that they would be supporting the healthcare bill and the media had a spasm reporting that they were ‘Stupak allies’ who were bailing on him. This is an extension of the argument over the weekend that Stupak’s Dozen were really Stupak’s Half-Dozen and that even they were crumbling.”

“This is a misleading attempt to scare wavering Democrats into thinking that momentum is building for deeming the Senate language good enough for pro-life Democrats. Look down at my ‘Stupak’s Dozen’ category. Guess who was never in it: Dale Kildee and Jim Oberstar. Of course they’re voting for the bill. Everyone knew this. Their announcement today, intended only to burnish their own dubious pro-life credentials for furious constituents and put pressure on Stupak, does not change the numbers. Their votes do not get Pelosi any closer to 216.”

As the health takeover vote comes down to the wire, it’s reminding me of the Democrats’ weird shenanigans on S-CHIP. Remember that? The Republicans wanted to spend more on S-CHIP. The Democrats wanted to increase spending even more than the Republicans did. So the Democrats brought out a bunch of sick kids to show why their spending increase was better than the Republican spending increase… and every one of their props already qualified under the then-current system. Neither the Republican nor the Democrat spending increases were necessary.

Now Obama is claiming he had to come to Ohio because of a woman who wasn’t getting health care. But she couldn’t show up… because she was getting health care, and not having to pay for it. Under the current system.

Meanwhile, our cash cow has been milked to death. Our other really big social “reform” and ponzi scheme, Social Security, is drawing down its reserves. The problem is it doesn’t have any: we already borrowed it all for other spending. All it has are a bunch of IOUs.

This is not the time to start another spending boondoggle.

Especially not on a plan guaranteed to cause spending to skyrocket. The Democratic plan takes an expensive system and makes it more expensive; it takes an unresponsive system and makes it less responsive. It mandates everything stupid in our current system and jettisons the parts that are working. A money quote comes from Ace of Spades commenter HeatherRadish:

You have to be pretty fucking stupid to believe this bill is ‘reform’.

Real reform would let us exercise choice, and let doctors, hospitals and the insurance industry provide us with the choices we’re willing to pay for. Competition reduces prices. It increases options. When more people can afford better health care, the cost of providing it to everyone else will drop! But that will only come from making the insurance companies and the health care providers work for our business, instead of mandating not only insurance for everyone, but every little detail of what that insurance must cover.

“Spend first, then haggle” is a philosophy of disaster. Like “vote first, then read the bill.”

Matt Welch describes how the Democrats get a CBO “budget surplus” out of the health takeover bill:

1. They put some costs into separate bills, and tell the CBO not to score those bills.
2. They promise massive service cuts that everyone knows will never happen, and tell the CBO to count those “savings”.
3. They game the CBO’s 10-year window by taxing immediately, but delaying spending until 2014.

Oh, and the claim that lobbyists are the reason it isn’t passing? Pro-takeover lobbyists have outspent anti-takeover lobbyists five to one. “There’s a three-letter word for blaming the defeat of his bill on health care lobbyists, and it rhymes with pie.”

Back when I listened to the radio, I would often switch from radio to cassette tape when a particularly obnoxious ad came on. Once I switched to cassette, I left it on cassette for the rest of the drive.

Back when I watched television, I rarely left the room as soon as the ads came on. I left the room when an uninteresting ad came on. Then I’d come back a couple of minutes later to finish watching the show.

Today, I very rarely block ad servers; I only do so when a particularly obnoxious ad appears on my browser window. I’m lazy and cheap. I don’t even own ad-blocking software, which is part of why I rarely block: I have to go into my router settings and add the domain to the list of disallowed hosts. I don’t like going there because I’m lazy; but for the same reason, once I add an adserver to that list, it stays in that list.

I didn’t turn off the radio because I wanted to turn off the radio, and I don’t block ad sites because I want to block ads. I’m blocking a particular ad. Don’t run that ad, and I won’t block your ads. I love ads. I used to buy magazines such as 73, 80-Micro, Dragon, Rainbow, and even Omni, as much for the ads as for the content. I even loved the weirdo ads in Sheet Music Magazine. Back in the late nineties, there was a web site devoted to cool ads which I visited regularly.¹ That’s where I first saw the tda advertising & design ad. I enjoyed it so much I still show it off whenever the opportunity arises.²

Colorado wants special treatment from Amazon. Amazon is giving them what they asked for. By chasing fantasy taxes (out-of-state sales tax), Colorado has given up real taxes (in-state income tax). I hope California doesn’t follow suit, but it would make my tax form easier.

As I wrote in Punishing low-tax states, the simplest way to handle out-of-state taxes is to tax based on the location of the seller, not the location of the buyer. The latter ensures a complex system that costs consumers a lot of money both because businesses will need to hire experts to manage it and because it will increase the difficulty of new competitors starting up.

If a state has a 5% sales tax, then every purchase from companies based in that state are charged 5%; that company sends a list of zip codes and purchase totals to their own state, which distributes it to the other 49 based on zip codes. If a state has no sales tax, then companies in that state don’t need to collect sales tax.

Easy to manage, even for startups. Preserves privacy. And doesn’t punish low-tax states.

“When you’re using tactics designed to confuse and disorient the people in the house you’re raiding, you can’t then turn around and blame them when, disoriented and confused, they mistake the police for invading criminals.”

“The utter tone-deafness of this line from Schweinsburg is appalling. How dare this mayor question the cops who nearly killed him.”

Alice in Wonderland budgeting. “All of you as mayors would never get away with it. Here in the statehouse, we get away with it.” Governor Christie argues that the solution is in front of them. “We just have to have the courage to go there.”

This is a must-watch video; I wish it were embeddable, and I hope that it doesn’t disappear when the next On The Record comes out.

ElectedNet! used to rely on Grace York’s data set at the University of Michigan; but that went away a little over a year ago. I’ve switched to taking the data directly from the House and Senate web sites¹. This means I lose email addresses, but there weren’t many addresses left in the last data set anyway.

In the last build I pulled from Grace’s file in 2008, out of 440 House members, only 26 entries included an email address. Out of 100 Senators, only five entires included an email address. I can’t blame them. Spam makes public addresses nearly worthless.

The Senate data now includes the Washington address and phone number for most members. It also includes when they are next up for re-election. House members are always up for re-election; the White House is up every four years. But Senators are up every six years, and to keep the Senate from having massive turnover every six years Senate seats are divided into three classes, and each class is up for election in a different year.

A bit of quick math lets me get the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of that year, and I display the actual election date for each seat.

This also lets me add a new feature: you can search on who is up for re-election in the next election, and, if it differs from the next election, the next Presidential election.