Bob Hayes Online

No, no, no, no, a thousand times, NO.

If my fellow citizens want to burden themselves with some horrific tax-and-spend nightmare of socialized medicine, they may. I’ll oppose it, but there’s a right to make stupid choices.

But I will not be coerced into buying an insurance product, whether public or private, to satisfy some bureaucrat’s desire that my spending choices reflect the ones s/he thinks I should make.

Hell, no.

If this atrocity becomes law, I will stand on the steps of the US Capitol and demand to be arrested for my crime of refusing to pay. We are not children subject to the whims of a babysitter, however benevolent. We are free Americans. I will choose the course of my own life, and I do not yield that power to any man or any state.

They can have my taxes but they cannot have my conscience or my choices. Those are mine, now and forever.

End of discussion.

SyFy, the abominable new name for what used to be the Sci-Fi channel, has a show out called “Warehouse 13“, about secret agents who work to discover strange artifacts and weird magic.

SJ Games, several years ago, put out a GURPS sourcebook called “Warehouse 23“, about secret agents who work to discover strange…hmmm.

Even the titles have a similar graphic design.

There’s homage, and then there’s ripoff. If SJ Games isn’t licensing SyFy this intellectual property, I smell another happy funtastic lawsuit for the boys in Austin.

…and the skies are grey. I missed it when it came out, but Reason put out a survey of California’s budgetary figures for the last twenty years or so and the results are not encouraging for the “if only we’d tax more” crowd.

High points:

Since 1990, California’s spending has grown at a staggering 5.91 percent a year – a 180.9% increase. They’re almost tripling the government every twenty years. Population growth and inflation combined come to only 4.38 percent per year – meaning that spending growth has outpaced the population and cost increases. Even subtracting the population and inflation figures, there’s been an absolute growth of 35% – meaning that the government is a third bigger than it was less than a generation ago. Sometimes government has to grow (WWII) – but even liberal statists must recognize that a government that doubles in absolute size every lifespan isn’t sustainable.

Since 1990, general fund expenditures have gone from under $1500 per capita to more than $2500 per capita.

Oh, and by the way? If California had kept spending at 1990 levels plus proportional increments for inflation and population growth, they would have a $15 billion surplus this year.

And education spending has shared the upward trend. Since 1990, general fund K-12 spending has increased 191.5% – a 6.11% annual increase, outpacing both inflation + population growth AND the general fund  expenditure growth rate. (Higher ed spending trailed those figures, “only” doubling and growing at 4.18 percent a year.)

California’s problem is that they decided to grow the government more than  anybody was willing to pay for – not that greedy taxpayers aren’t willing to come across. The greedy taxpayers are coming across in huge numbers and with great big fat checks and with a strong upward growth trend (outside the current recession).

It’s just that the wishlist has grown even faster than their revenues.

This is a strange one. A Philadelphia day camp contracted with a private pool to let their kids swim their once a week, paying $1900 for the privilege. About 60 kids showed up the first week to swim…and now the day camp is being told not to come back. There seems to have been a negative racial reaction from existing pool clients, but what’s really odd is the (honest?) response of the pool administration, saying that they didn’t want to change the “complexion” of the pool’s customers. WTF?

I can see two scenarios here. One is, 60 black kids showed up, the pool didn’t realize it was a largely black day camp, they freaked out because they’re a bunch of racists. The other is, 60 black kids showed up, their behavior was terrible or they had no supervision or something, the pool people freaked out because of the bad behavior. The article doesn’t address the question; I think the second scenario is possible but the first scenario is more likely.

UPDATE: The pool club claims it was the size of the group, saying they “underestimated [sic]” their facility. This claim seems somewhat bogus to me; what it sounds like, from the comments of pool club members, is that the members raised a stink and the management caved. I’d be willing to bet the stink was 50% “I don’t want a bunch of black kids here” and 50% “I don’t want 60 kids swimming while I’m trying to do a few laps”. I can empathize with the latter; our local pool is reasonably big but 60 kids would be a melee. Still, it’s the kids who got a(nother) taste of racism. Sorry, kids.

Michelle Obama attended the UC Mercer commencement ceremony this year – and this very strange story details how the visit ended up costing the school more than a million dollars, ten times the original cost estimate for the commencement ceremony. What’s odd isn’t the story itself – the President or the First Lady go to these kinds of things all the time, and I’m sure the bill is reasonable – but that the story is so disjointed and logically incoherent. For example,

Private contributions and interest on a private endowment fund have helped cover the cost. UC spokeswoman Patti Waid Istas said that nonstate dollars and other contributions will be used to cover the remaining balance of around $362,338.

So private contributions covered the bulk of the cost – but not to worry, nonstate dollars and more contributions will meet the balance. This makes no sense at all. Why the odd “nonstate dollars” formulation? One suspects that some of the money is coming from a pool of money that did come from the taxpayers but is technically “nonstate” for some reason.

Another weird thing is the justification given for the expense – they had budgeted $100,000, but the event ended up topping $1,000,000. The reason? Because 12,000 people showed up for commencement – the implication being, Ms. Obama’s celebrity attracted a larger crowd. No doubt it did, to some extent – but people tend to go to commencement or not regardless of the speaker. Some additional interest I can see, but I really doubt that they had originally planned for 1,200 attendees and were surprised by a tenfold jump.

Finally, there’s this weird description of the extra costs:

The address attracted about 12,000 visitors, requiring additional transportation, audiovisual and multimedia needs and other items. Obama was neither paid for her appearance nor compensated for travel and security.

Additional audiovisual and multimedia needs – presumably to highlight their star guest – I can see, but a million bucks worth? And if OBama paid her own transportation (well, if we taxpayers paid for it in general) then where’s the “additional transportation” coming from?

I suspect that the expenses were actually used to put on a lavish reception for Ms. O, and that she and her retinue were feted. Nothing wrong with that, but they shouldn’t pretend that suddenly it costs a million dollars to host the First Lady, when she pays her own way and brings her own security team.

Greg Mankiw has the scoop. Bottom line: Medicare’s administrative costs are $509 per patient. Private plan administrative costs are $453 per patient.

If true – I’d be wary of such a strong claim simply because it is so strong, and I’d like to see the opinions of other economists – then it’s a huge blow to an underlying premise of Obama’s health care reform ideas: that the state can do it better, and thus more efficiently. That flies in the face of conventional wisdom, as well as decades of living experience. If the state-paid clinic can’t provide health care at better prices to the American people than the private sector…why switch?

Although for some reason, Bruce never did seem to learn to echolocate.

But you can learn.

I knew some of these, but others are new to me. Great stuff.

I disagree about the BASIC one, though.