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July 2007 Stats for The Big Picture.
Now that American Airlines is getting its jets flying again, this is a good time to have a look at what grounded them in the first place. It turns out to have been, in large part, a typical bureaucratic foul-up. From the LA Times:
As the airline struggled to get its planes flying again, new details emerged on the events that led to the massive flight cancellations and the Federal Aviation Administration's newly aggressive role in policing the nation's airlines.
While nervous airline executives refused to publicly criticize the FAA, they privately grumbled that the agency had been taking a harder line with airlines on complying with airworthiness directives. They said the extraordinary number of flight cancellations might not have been necessary if the FAA hadn't gotten "unreasonably" tougher in recent weeks.
"I'm not sure I would characterize it that way," a more cautious Gerard Arpey, chief executive of American Airlines, said. He stopped short of criticizing the agency for its role in one of the nation's worst air travel debacles but added, "It would be fair to say that the FAA is stepping up surveillance."
To recap: the FAA decided to change its procedures for clearing jets for flight. So far so good. The FAA tightened its requirements, in a laudable effort to make our skies safer. However, then a typical bureaucratic snafu occurred. The FAA forgot to give the airlines advance warning. They sprung the changes on the airlines, and not surprisingly, this resulted in grounding 300 jets belonging to the world's largest airline. The cost to the airline is estimated in the tens of millions; additionally:
The financial pain suffered by the airline could be just the tip of the iceberg, experts say, when you take into account lost productivity for more than 300,000 displaced passengers, hotel costs, missed meetings and lost sales.
And that's just for the travelers themselves. There's also the time spent by travel agents, colleagues, family and friends trying to help all those travelers get home, or filling in for them while they can't.
And here's the kicker: this is the kind of bureaucracy that Hillary and Snob-ama want running the nation's health care. What a nightmare that would be.
(By the way - I'm seriously jonesing to get back to more frequent blogging. I'm working mega-hours on a business project. In the meantime, this is too good to miss.)
Technology writer Robert X. Cringely has a column this week on the use of credit reporting data to get a fix on the number of illegal aliens in the U.S.:
While politicians and the U.S. Census Bureau may disagree on how many illegal aliens are living in the United States, the big credit reporting agencies have a pretty solid handle on the number and it is 17 million. That's 17 million adults of unproved nationality who have ongoing financial relationships with businesses or - believe it or not - governments. It's likely that there is some duplication in this total number, that is an illegal alien who is counted twice because he has, for example, a different relationship with his electric utility than he does with his phone company. But since the 17 million figure doesn't include children, the two are likely to wash out and 17 million is probably pretty darned close to the real number.
...A lot of this sleuthing comes down to a surprising artifact, the Social Security number. One would think that surprising for an economic class of people best known for not having Social Security numbers. Ah, but they do have Social Security numbers, just not their own. You need a Social Security number to sign up for utility services, for example. No Social Security number, no electricity, gas, phone, or satellite TV. So what's a poor alien to do? They go down to some local hangout and BUY a Social Security number to give to the utility. This has to be a legitimate number or it won't fly with utility computer systems, but does it have to be the customer's own number? Good question.
Here's where we have an interesting business ethics issue. Say you are the electric company and someone tries to set up service using a Social Security number that already exists in your database and is clearly borrowed, bought, stolen, or simply made up. What do you do? Most utilities go ahead and set up the account, because to them what counts is whether the new customer will actually pay that bill and it turns out that people operating on such borrowed numbers are more reliable bill payers than the rest of us. They can't afford to get in trouble with the electric company because that would draw attention to them. So there is a tacit agreement between the parties that a Social Security number must be provided because that's the rule, but if it happens to be someone else's Social Security number, well that's okay.
The funny thing about this is the impact it has to have on the person who was originally assigned that Social Security number by the U.S. government. Rather than hurt their credit it actually helps because there is so much evidence that they are good at paying their bills.
Of course the credit bureau notices something and that's why they are so able to estimate numbers in the first place. They know what Social Security numbers are being overused and can probably even trace the genealogy of that number as it makes its way across the country. Here's an amazing fact: some individual Social Security numbers are in use right now by UP TO 3,000 PEOPLE and it isn't at all unusual for a borrowed number to be used by 200-1,000 people at the same time. Remember that most of these folks AREN'T illegal aliens.
Meanwhile we have an AP report today that plague - the freaking plague disease, that for U.S. citizens has been a thing consigned to the dark ages of history - is making a resurgence:
Health officials in Arizona warned in September that the plague appeared to be on the rise and that more cases were likely after an Apache County woman was infected with the disease.
That case, the first human infection reported in Arizona since 2000, followed the discovery of an outbreak of the disease in prairie dogs in Flagstaff in August.
Arizona health officials have been wary about a plague outbreak because of greater activity in New Mexico and other nearby states in the past year.
A.P. tries to spin this as if plague comes from animals:
Plague is transmitted primarily by fleas and direct contact with infected animals. When the disease causes pneumonia, it can be transmitted from an infected person to a non-infected person by airborne cough droplets.
But if that's the case, why is it coming back now, after being considered a thing of the past within the living memory of today's citizens?
The answer may be in illegal immigrants who avoid health checks as they enter the country. Chris Burgard reports in his excellent film, "Border," that illegal immigrants are entering the country with diseases such as tuberculosis and leprosy.
The film is available on DVD. You can read my review of it here.
The election of Sarkozy in France, who has declared France to be a friend of America, has made one of Dems' chief criticisms of GWB - that he's alienated U.S. allies - almost unusable at this time. Reports from places like Time magazine show that the surge may be working in Iraq. The Dems' bill to pull the rug out from under our troops in Iraq and prevent them from pursuing their goal of a stable, free democracy there, has been defeated.
Dems have got to be worried that all their strategy of running against GWB, rather than for anything, will be nullified by events before the 2008 election. This may explain why today we are seeing what looks like a new strategy, as both Hillary and Obama put forth something they're in favor of accomplishing, rather than merely criticizing GWB. This is a good thing, and their proposals need to be considered on their merits.
Why is it that the only new policy goals the Dems can come up with, attempt to move the U.S. away from capitalism and toward a socialist, centrally-controlled economy, in the style of the failed communist soviet union? Nothing less than this seems to be Hillary's goal:
Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it's time to replace an "on your own" society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity.
First of all, why does she want to "replace" our society with something else? We have the greatest society, the greatest freedom, the greatest economy, the world has ever seen. Why does she want to throw it out and replace it with something she dreamed up herself?
"There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets. But markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed," she said. "Fairness doesn't just happen. It requires the right government policies."
Per her own words, she wants restrictions on free markets that will make it impossible for people to pursue their goals and ambitions 'on their own.'
Hillary titled a book, "It Takes a Village, " i.e. to raise a child. I think what she also has in mind is, that it takes a village to hold a free man down.
Obama proposed universal health care, and proposed massive tax increases to do it:
IOWA CITY, Iowa - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) on Tuesday offered a sweeping health care plan that would provide every citizen a means for coverage and calls on government, businesses and consumers to share the costs of the program.
Obama said his plan could save the average consumer $2,500 a year and bring health care to all. Campaign aides estimated the cost of the program at $50 billion to $65 billion a year, financed largely by eliminating tax cuts for the wealthy that are scheduled to expire. President Bush wants to make those cuts permanent.
It's not going to save the average consumer $2,500 a year when the average consumer is going to be paying more in higher taxes, both directly to the government, and indirectly in higher prices on everything, in order to get this supposedly "free" health care. And of course, universal health care really means that the average American, who has a job, and takes care of making sure he or she has health care, will have to pay more to buy health care for people who don't.
From the LA Times:
Democrats prescribe bigger health levy
SACRAMENTO - Escalating the already tense fight about what financial burden businesses should bear, the Democrats who control the Legislature proposed Tuesday that most California employers be required to spend the equivalent of at least 7.5% of their payrolls on healthcare - nearly twice the amount Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed.
The mandate on employers would raise more than $5 billion and - along with federal taxpayer money and worker contributions - allow California to extend insurance to about 69% of the 4.9 million people who lack it at any given moment. Among states, only Hawaii has a significant employer mandate. But the Democratic proposals in California would go further by including dependent coverage and more part-time workers.
That's the government seeking to grab 7.5% of each company's payroll - a huge amount of money - and force those companies to spend it on healthcare for people who haven't taken responsibility for their own healthcare. That's socialism, and the massive error of it is that it puts decision-making in in the hands of state bureaucracies:
Like the governor's plan, the two Democratic proposals require businesses to spend a set amount of their payroll on healthcare or pay into a state-run fund that would negotiate insurance for workers.
The state is not a skilled negotiator of lower prices. The state is inept at using negotiating power to achieve better service, and generally achieves worse service. If they want to run an optional program, fine, but to seize, by force of law, 7.5% of every business' payroll, is socialistic.
When the government uses the taxation power of the state to target specific kinds of tax-payers to seize money for specific purposes -- purposes which are opposed by those very taxpayers -- that is confiscatory, violent, and socialistic.
We fought a revolution on the principal of "no taxation without representation." If the businesses being taxed oppose the tax, in what sense are they being represented by the government that is seeking to tax them?
Jot Condie, president of the California Restaurant Assn., called the Democrats' mandate "devastating"...
This current socialized medicine proposal is happening because Schwarzennegger started the ball rolling on it:
The Democratic proposals further heightened opposition from much of the state's business lobby, which already has come out against Schwarzenegger's proposal for employers to spend at least 4% of their payroll on healthcare.
Schwarzennegger's 2005 ballot initiatives were brilliant. But four of them were too much for the public to absorb at one time. If he'd just put forward one or two of them, they might have passed. But when none of them passed, Schwarzennegger appears to have decided that he'd rather attempt to be a successful Liberal than risk being a failed Conservative. He appears to have abandoned his principals.
The Republicans in the California congress are doing the right thing:
Republicans have shown no sign of supporting changes of the scope Schwarzenegger and the Democrats want. If anything, their public rhetoric has become less amenable: Dick Ackerman of Irvine, the Senate GOP leader, issued a statement last week that called the proposals a "dangerous experiment with the healthcare system for more than 30 million Californians and the state's competitive and job-creating economy."
This example of the state trying to coercively seize money from businesses is an example of how redistricting thwarts democracy. From a Jill Stewart article quoted in this previous post from 2005:
Most voters think that when they vote, they do so within a community of interest, based largely on geography, known as a voting district. How quaint. That was true once. But now, the California legislature uses computer programs to painstakingly divide voters, block by block. They no longer divide us based on communities of interest, but based on party registration.
Republicans and Democrats are carefully separated from one another and stuck in bizarrely shaped voting districts controlled by just one party. During the spring primary, the party that controls the rigged district carefully spoon-feeds its corralled voters a pre-selected candidate awash in campaign funds. Usually this well-funded party hack beats any normal person who hoped to represent that party come November.Then, in the November election, because the fake and often strangely shaped voting district is stacked, the party hack who won the spring primary can't lose. Voters are spoon-fed a hack, and with rare exception, it's mathematically impossible for the hack to lose.
Think of The Matrix. You are being spoon-fed in order to support a creepy apparatus that wants to control your world. You don't even know it.
The result? Safe seats, that never change from one party to another:
Safe seats stole away our democracy in California while we slept. Safe seats, are why none of California's 53 Congressional seats changed party hands last Nov. 2, and why none of 100 legislative seats changed party hands. Safe seats are why these freeze-frame outcomes were predicted months before the actual elections.
This literal dividing of Americans by party has no doubt contributed to today's current politically divisive culture.
Now available: hypoallergenic cats. They won’t make anyone sneeze, except in the most acute cases of cat allergy. (via GeekPress).
It looks like the cure for cancer may be found within the next several decades: Study uses nanoparticles to kill cancer cells.
DENTISTRY, 7000 BC. (We are so lucky to be living today.)
"ADVICE TO WOMEN EXPECTING TO BECOME PREGNANT to take folic acid to cut the chance of their babies being born with neural tube defects..."
The Dems are becoming so predictable, that even some jokes about them are coming true. Roger L. Simon anticipated:
According to a new report from his doctors, Bush's fitness has been judged 'superior' for a man his age. Does this mean we are going to have to endure another column from Jonathan Chait? Heaven help us!
Chait had criticized Bush for working out. Now, sure enough, the DNC has issued a statement that attempts to use his good health to criticise him.
I think many people will read that DNC statement and roll their eyes in disbelief at how insular the DNC has become. It's not a crime to be in good physical health. It's absurd for the Dems to slam the President with regard to his being in good health. The Dems are talking to themselves. And the more they do this sort of thing, the more apparent it is that you never hear them cheering for America. In the statement, the DNC attacks GWB by referring to things like childhood obesity and phys-ed programs, but when was the last time the Dems made a very public reference to these things outside of a slam on GWB? Have the Dems made a big public push to actually improve these things? Is there any indication at all the Dems care about these things enough to try to improve them? On the contrary, there is little indication that the Dems have an interest in improving these things.
Slamming GWB for not improving something that they themselves have shown little interest in improving, makes the Dems appear insincere.
The Dems need to lead, follow, or get out of the way.
HOSPITAL SUPERBUGS. You really do have to be careful when you go to a hospital.
WHOA: COMMON VIRUS KILLS CANCER, STUDY FINDS.
SECOND OPINION: TERRI WAS AWARE, SAYS BRAIN DOC.
Quick action may head off global epidemic:
BANGKOK — After poring over old medical records, studying census data and cranking out mathematical models, scientists and health officials are beginning to believe they have a chance to stop a bird flu pandemic before it kills millions of people worldwide.
The key: detecting an outbreak early and rushing powerful antiviral drugs to the source to throttle a pandemic at birth before it can bust out of Southeast Asia, carrying sickness and death around the globe. “It is the first time in the history of mankind that anyone has thought about keeping a worldwide pandemic at bay,” says William Aldis, the top World Health Organization (WHO) official in Thailand.
And earlier today I posted about an anti-ebola vaccine that’s showing promise. We don’t always notice, but there are a lot of good things happening.
VACCINES SHOW PROMISE FOR MARBURG, EBOLA VIRUSES.
Given that ebola is one of the deadliest viruses known to man, this is significant news.
