Program Notes

I'm out of the country on business; blogging will be light for a few days.

Euro QsOTD

The March 6th Washington Post editorializes on Europe's financial crisis:

The fundamental problem here is that, in the decade since it joined the euro area, Athens has consistently run massive budget deficits, in violation of European Union rules, and then disguised them with less-than-honest bookkeeping. The responsible E.U. and member state officials essentially did nothing about it. . .

No doubt politicians from Berlin to Athens would have preferred to keep pretending that 16 countries could employ a single currency without an enforceable common fiscal policy. But the hedge funds called this massive bluff. Before retaliating, government authorities should factor in the possibility that the hedgies merely precipitated a crisis that Europe was going to have to face sooner or later.

The March 6th New York Times:

Germany has the most fiscal flexibility among European Union members to help Greece, but public opposition to any assistance has been vehement. The debate has crystallized broader German misgivings about the European project into a public outcry. "It’s like a mosaic and the Greece crisis is the last stone," said Wolfgang Nowak, a former senior adviser to Mrs. Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, and head of Deutsche Bank’s International Forum. "More and more there is the feeling that French farmers, Polish farmers, Spanish infrastructure, that Europe is not a community but something held together by a German paycheck."

As Arnold Kling says:

The first phase of financial crisis gave capitalism a bad name. This phase may give European social democracy a bad name.

See MaxedOutMama for background.

"Oceana Was Always At War With Eurasia" of the Day

From the February 22nd Washington Times:

President Obama, who pledged to establish the most open and transparent administration in history, on Monday surpasses his predecessor's record for avoiding a full-fledged question-and-answer session with White House reporters in a formal press conference.

President George W. Bush's longest stretch between prime-time, nationally televised press conferences was 214 days, from April 4 to Nov. 4, 2004. Mr. Obama tops that record on Monday, going 215 days - stretching back to July 22, according to records kept by CBS Radio's veteran reporter Mark Knoller.

(via Berman Post)

Presidential QOTD & Quiz 2

Question 1 -- who said this?:

• My understanding of the Senate is, is that you need 60 votes to get something significant to happen, which means that Democrats and Republicans have to ask the question: Do we have the will to move an American agenda forward, not a Democratic or Republican agenda forward?



• The bottom line is that our health-care plans are similar. The question, once again, is: Who can get it done? Who can build a movement for change? This is an area where we're going to have to have a 60% majority in the Senate and the House in order to actually get a bill to my desk. We're going to have to have a majority, to get the bill to my desk, that is not just a 50-plus-1 majority.



• You've got to break out of what I call the sort of 50-plus-1 pattern of presidential politics. Maybe you eke out a victory of 50 plus 1, but you can't govern. You know, you get Air Force One--I mean, there are a lot of nice perks, but you can't deliver on health care. We're not going to pass universal health care with a 50-plus-1 strategy.



• You know, one of the arguments that sometimes I get with my fellow progressives--and some of these have flashed up in the blog communities on occasion--is this notion that we should function sort of like Karl Rove, where we identify our core base, we throw them red meat, we get a 50-plus-1 victory. But see, Karl Rove doesn't need a broad consensus, because he doesn't believe in government. If we want to transform the country, though, that requires a sizable majority.

Answer 1: Senator Barack Obama.

Question 2 -- who said this?:

• [Healthcare reform] deserves the same kind of up or down vote that was cast on welfare reform, that was cast on the Children's Health Insurance Program, that was used for COBRA health coverage for the unemployed, and, by the way, for both Bush tax cuts --- all of which had to pass Congress with nothing more than a simple majority.

Answer 2: President Barack Obama.

(via Best of the Web's James Taranto, who says "Observers will disagree over what combination of ideological radicalism, egomania and sheer cynicism is motivating him, but what is clear is that President Obama is quite different from what Candidate Obama advertised.")

Climate Alarmists Getting Colder

Climategate confirmed that the surface temperature records have been manipulated to "prove" global warming -- as much as 85 percent of the increase appears via adjustments.

Doubtful? Look to the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA, along with NASA, claims the world and nation are warmer:


source: NOAA's National Climate Data Center


Yet, NOAA's chart demonstrates the U.S. is no warmer today than in 1950 or 1930, exactly parallel to what Phil Jones admitted for global temps. And even that's dubious, given NOAA's conceded data changes:


source: NOAA's National Climate Data Center


Further confirmation comes from retired NASA scientist and physics Ph.D. Edward Long, in a new paper titled "Contiguous U. S. Temperature Trends Using NCDC Raw and Adjusted Data for One-Per-State Rural/Urban." Long began by agreeing that siting issues have rendered data from urban measurement stations utterly unreliable. That reflects a localized "urban heat-island effect" driven by increased population and pavement, not carbon-caused global warming. So Long wondered whether claims the U.S. had warmed stem from data adjustments that "forced the rural value to look more like that of the urban."

Simply put, the answer is yes. Here's adjusted U.S. temperature data from a sample of rural and urban stations:


source: Long, page 12

By comparison, here's the raw data from those same stations:


source: Long, page 10

As Long concludes:

The raw data provides 0.13 and 0.79 ^oC/century temperature increase for the rural and urban environments. The adjusted data provides 0.64 and 0.77 ^oC/century respectively. The rates for the raw data appear to correspond to the historical change of rural and urban U.S. populations and indicate warming is due to urban warming. Comparison of the adjusted data for the rural set to that of the raw data shows a systematic treatment that causes the rural adjusted set’s temperature rate of increase to be 5-fold more than that of the raw data. The adjusted urban data set’s and raw urban data set’s rates of temperature increase are the same. This suggests the consequence of the NCDC’s protocol for adjusting the data is to cause historical data to take on the time-line characteristics of urban data. The consequence intended or not, is to report a false rate of temperature increase for the Contiguous U.S.

Long's results are consistent with the well-known gap between adjusted surface station records and satellite measurements, the latter less susceptible to urbanization upward temperature bias:


source: Joseph D'Aleo & Anthony Watts, Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception?, at 8 (2010)

This is especially significant, as surface stations are becoming extinct, casting doubt on historical data homogeneity.

Conclusion: Carbon-forced climate change is dubious science, over-hyped, and under investigation. Surface station records must be rebuilt from scratch. And warming itself may be minuscule -- I agree with Luboš Motl:

[T]he adjusted data are made in such a way that the urban-rural difference largely disappears. But what's shocking is that the adjusted NCDC data are actually made to (approximately) agree with the urban, not rural raw station data! It means that the the urban effects were not eliminated. On the contrary, this urban warming has been added to the rural stations, too!

The "clean", purely natural rural figures have been contaminated by the bogus warming desired by the urban AGW believers.

[If accurate, Long's paper is] a potential bombshell. If he's right, the correct natural warming in the U.S. was around 0.1 °C per century, instead of 0.6 °C.

In other words, warming isn't a crisis: carbon cuts are unnecessary, as more expensive than ameiloration and adaptation. Sorry that won't support the sought-after socialism.

(via Watts Up With That?)

QOTD

President Obama's proposed health insurance reform doesn't impress economist Arnold Kling:

For health care and health insurance, what we need isn't central planning but more market innovation. Indeed, a truly radical idea for reform would be a free market in health care. That would mean undoing federal and state rules and regulations that are the cause of many problems we face today. Among them:

Ban on interstate sale of insurance: The inability of consumers to purchase health insurance from a state other than their state of residence creates a Balkanized health insurance system. Allowing interstate commerce to take place regarding health insurance would help unleash the forces of competition.

Distorting tax subsidies: Rather than subsidizing employer-provided health insurance, our tax code ought to be neutral with respect to where people obtain their health insurance. Decoupling insurance from employment would make the costs of health insurance more transparent and would spur competition and innovation.

Subsidies and mandates: Our current system of subsidies for employer-provided comprehensive coverage and state mandates for individual insurance have suppressed the development of innovative policies that provide true health insurance. In a free market, we would see a variety of insurance products emerge, including long-term protection against the cost of a major illness.

There are good reasons to question how our health care system works today in terms of the incentives given to doctors and the way health care is fragmented. But no central planner knows how to deliver high-quality health care at the lowest cost.

Agreed.

Speak Softly and Skip the Stick

Last time Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed to "wipe Israel off the map," progressives (wrongly) insisted he'd been mistranslated. Despite the fact that he spoke similarly several times.

Ahmadinejad certainly is constant, according to the Washington Post:

The presidents of Iran and Syria on Thursday ridiculed U.S. policy in the region and pledged to create a Middle East "without Zionists," combining a slap at recent U.S. overtures and a threat to Israel with an endorsement of one of the region's defining alliances. . .

Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier, spoke of Israel's eventual "demise and annihilation" and said the countries of the region could create a future "without Zionists and without colonialists."

So, given an inflexible Iran, the Administration hoped to change -- by backing down. Only recently, Obama advocated tougher sanctions in 2010 if diplomacy stalled, seconded by Secretary of State Clinton's threatened "crippling sanctions." Yet, the same day Ahmadinejad mocked America and threatened Israel, the State Department downgraded to sanctions-lite.

Which shows that Ahmadinejad understands Obama better than fawning progressives.

The Health of Britain, Part VI

From the February 25th Times (London):

Stafford Hospital caused 'unimaginable suffering'

Patients were routinely neglected or left "sobbing and humiliated" by staff at an NHS trust where at least 400 deaths have been linked to appalling care.

An independent inquiry found that managers at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust stopped providing safe care because they were preoccupied with government targets and cutting costs.

The inquiry report, published yesterday by Robert Francis, QC, included proposals for tough new regulations that could lead to managers at failing NHS trusts being struck off.

Staff shortages at Stafford Hospital meant that patients went unwashed for weeks, were left without food or drink and were even unable to get to the lavatory. Some lay in soiled sheets that relatives had to take home to wash, others developed infections or had falls, occasionally fatal. Many staff did their best but the attitude of some nurses "left a lot to be desired".

The report, which follows reviews by the Care Quality Commission and the Department of Health, said that "unimaginable" suffering had been caused. Regulators said last year that between 400 and 1,200 more patients than expected may have died at the hospital from 2005 to 2008.

As a reminder, Mid Staffordshire is just the latest in a series of failures in U.K. socialized medicine.

(via Powerline)

Iraq War Spending Isn't the Issue

Many lefties claim that Iraq war spending caused current budget deficits -- and that the money should have gone to social programs. I've repeatedly tried to show that this is nonsense (many such claims consider only discretionary spending, a crazy comparison). Today, I try again.

Facts:

1. Iraq: Total costs of war since FY2001 -- About $709 billion, in nominal dollars, according to the leftist National Priorities Project. (Other figures here.)



2. Deficit: Total Federal budget shortfall since FY2001 -- About $4,974 trillion, in nominal dollars, according to the Office of Management and Budget (Table 1-1).



3. Social Security: Total Federal spending on SS since FY2001 -- About $5,493 trillion, in nominal dollars, according to OMB (Table 8-5).



4. Income security: Total Federal spending on unemployment, housing aid, welfare, food stamps, etc., since FY2001 -- About $3,410 trillion, in nominal dollars, according to OMB (Table 8-5).



5. Medicare: Total Federal spending on Medicare since FY2001 -- About $3,204 trillion, in nominal dollars, according to OMB (Table 8-5).



6. Medicaid: Total Federal spending on Medicaid since FY2001 -- About $1.895 trillion, in nominal dollars, according to OMB (Table 8-5).



7. Big four entitlements: Total Federal spending on the four largest mandatory entitlements, since FY2001 -- About $14,002 trillion, in nominal dollars, according to OMB (Table 8-5).

Math:

• Iraq as % of deficit: Ratio of total Iraq war costs to the total Federal deficit over the same period (#1/#2) -- 14%.



• Iraq as % of SS: Ratio of total Iraq war costs to total Social Security spending over same period (#1/#3) -- 13%.



• Iraq as % of top 4 entitlements: Ratio of total Iraq war costs to total spending for the largest for four entitlements over same period (#1/#7) -- 5%.

Chart: I've graphed the most relevant comparison of cumulative costs (as well as the cumulative deficits) from Federal FY2001 through FY2010:


source: NOfP chart via OMB and National Priority Project data

Even considering the Defense in total, that's less than 25% of all government entitlement spending:


source: GovernmentSpending.com

Conclusion: The Federal budget imbalance stems from ever-rising entitlements, not the Iraq war. Exiting Iraq wouldn't eliminate the deficit, as even the New York Times admits. Instead of pushing pacifism, progressives should prune social spending, especially Medicare.

Rhetoric vs Reality, Part 2

The President's new healthcare reform proposal is touted by the White House as worthy of the Obamessiah:

The proposal will make health care more affordable, make health insurers more accountable, expand health coverage to all Americans, and make the health system sustainable, stabilizing family budgets, the Federal budget, and the economy. . . The President’s Proposal builds off of the legislation that passed the Senate and improves on it by bridging key differences between the House and the Senate as well as by incorporating Republican provisions that strengthen the proposal.

In fact, Obama's plan is claimed to cost $950 billion, or $75 billion more than the Senate bill. This likely is an underestimate -- the proposal could cost $1.5 trillion or even as much as $2.5 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office has yet to speak.

And Obama appears to ignore small-government and free market Republican principles, says the Wall Street Journal:

The coercive flavor that animates this exercise is best captured in the section that purports to accept the Senate's "grandfather clause" allowing people who like their current health plan to keep it. Except that "The President's Proposal adds certain consumer protections to these 'grandfathered' plans. Within months of legislation being enacted, it requires plans . . . prohibits . . . mandates . . . requires . . . the President's Proposal adds new protections that prohibit . . . ban . . . and prohibit . . . The President's Proposal requires . . ." After all of these dictates, no "grandfathered" plan will exist.

Meanwhile, the new White House plan further vitiates the remnants of cost-control that remained in the House and Senate bills. Now the highly vaunted excise tax on high-cost insurance plans won't kick in until 2018, whereas it would have started in 2013 in the Senate bill, and this tax will only apply to coverage that costs more than $27,500.

Very few plans ever reach that threshold, and sure enough, this is the same $60 billion deal the White House cut in December with union leaders who have negotiated very costly benefits. Now it is extended to all to avoid the taint of political favoritism.

While the White House claims to eliminate the "Cornhusker Kickback," the Medicaid bribe that bought Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson's vote, political appearances are deceiving. As with the union payoff, what the White House really does is broaden the same to all states, with all new Medicaid spending through 2017 and 90% after 2020 transferred to the federal balance sheet. Governors will love this ruse, but national taxpayers will pay more.

And more again, because the White House has adopted the House's firehose insurance subsidies. People earning up to 400% of the poverty line--or about $96,000 for a family of four in 2016--will qualify for government help, and, naturally, this new entitlement is designed to expand over time.

Obama's plan for private health insurers is particularly radical. I have detailed the current system of state insurance regulation, lack of interstate competition, absurd state insurance mandates; such over-regulation drives up insurance premiums. This might logically suggest shifting insurance regulation from the state to Federal sphere.

But that's not the President's plan. Instead, Obama would add a new layer of regulation called the Health Insurance Rate authority on top of the states. This doubtlessly is intended to thwart supposedly price-gouging insurers -- except health insurers aren't unusually profitable. More regulation won't necessarily reduce healthcare costs; indeed, it's closer to covert rationing.

In fact, Obama's insurance ideas aren't cost control, but rather central planning and price controls, which won't work:

Insurance premiums are rising too fast; therefore, premium increases should be illegal. Q.E.D. The result of this rate-setting board will be less competition in the individual market, as insurers flee expensive states or regions, or even a cascade of bankruptcies if premiums are frozen and the cost of the care they are expected to cover continues to rise.

That's what happened to AIG and to California's electric utilities a decade ago. Obama's plan could cause additional collapse among insurers, potentially provoking even bigger bail-outs.

Conclusion: President Obama didn't move to the center--he's confirmed his leftist course. And, apart from empty words, he's abandoned his earlier cost containment commitments. As Reason magazine's Peter Suderman says:

So is it any better? If by "better" you mean "includes more spending and more taxes than the Senate bill," then the answer is yes!

Maybe that's intentional--Obama's healthcare proposal is so bad it makes the "public option" more plausible.

(via Roger Kimball, Fausta's blog)

Rhetoric vs Reality

The claim -- Vice President Joe Biden at the February 25th healthcare summit with Republicans:

I’m always reluctant after being here 37 years to tell people what the American people think. I think it requires a little bit of humility to be able to know what the American people think.

The truth -- see current polls, the vanishing confidence in the Administration's healthcare policies, elections in Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey, the rush to blame Republicans, the consensus for starting over, etc.

(via Power Line)

QOTD

Andrew Ferguson in the March 1st Weekly Standard, on Evan Bayh's announced retirement:

When Bayh made his exit this month, with his wife and hapless sons arranged behind him as if posing for a hostage video, he made sure to sound the same timeless theme of a broken government, gummed up by partisanship and manned by pols too self-interested or gutless to muck out the works. After the deep drafts of self-flattery that have become common in political rhetoric--"I have often been a lonely voice for balancing the budget .  .  . I have fought .  .  . I have continued to fight .  .  . I have championed"--​he announced that "Congress is not operating as it should." There was "partisanship" rather than "progress," "slogans" in place of "solutions," "alliteration" instead of "action." (I made up the last one.)

Climate Change Changes?

As reported in the Times (London):

The two most influential advisory bodies on climate change are planning independent reviews of their research in an attempt to regain public trust after revelations about errors and the suppression of data.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is to appoint an independent team to examine its procedures after admitting having made errors that exaggerated the severity of the impact of global warming.

The Met Office, which supplies the global temperature trends used by the IPCC, has proposed that an international group of scientists re-examine 160 years of temperature data. The Met Office proposal is a tacit admission that its previous reports on such trends have been marred by their reliance on analysis by the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit.

Two separate inquiries are being held into allegations that the unit tried to hide raw data from critics and exaggerated the extent of global warming.

In a document entitled Proposal for a New International Analysis of Land Surface Air Temperature Data, the Met Office says: "We feel it is timely to propose an international effort to re-analyse surface temperature data in collaboration with the World Meteorological Organisation."

The new analysis would test the conclusion reached by the IPCC that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal".

So much for the science being settled. No wonder Democrats are backing-away from the IPCC, albeit comically.