Obama Phones?

A youtube video of a woman saying she was going to vote for Obama because he "gave" her a phone has recently gone viral on the web.

The truth is that there is a federal program that gives people with specific needs access to subsidized cell phones.

The second truth is that the program is ripe with fraud, and there is a bipartisan effort to get rid of the fraud.

http://mccaskill.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=1428

Unfortunately, with all the mudslinging, the phone seems to be a black or white issue - keep it or get rid of it. The truth is somewhere in the middle: but how to get rid of the fraud. Both parties need to focus on the real issue: how to help our most vulnerable citizens, and get rid of the freeloaders.

I just discovered this blog: finally, an easy to understand argument about why low capital gains taxes are not a bad thing, and actually help the economy.

http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/the-wall-street-journals-primer-on-capital-gains-taxation/

VDH on BHO

I love Victor Davis Hanson's writing.

From his column this week, a trenchant observation:

You can scream at, tax, regulate, and berate an employer, but you cannot force him, not yet anyway, to go out and hire and buy new equipment. Obama tried all that and almost single-handedly has ensured that a weak recovery of June 2009 would become a permanent weaker recovery. All the one-percent rhetoric — fat cat, pay your fair share, corporate jet owners, now is not the time to profit, spread the wealth, redistribution, you didn’t build that —  did was to terrify the private sector, flush with savings, into paralysis. 

The false accusation that it is the 1 percent that is holding the country back does nothing to advance us (or even to help those who are literally starving for work. When a government forces employers to do things, the result is famine (Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba.)


What gets left on the edit room floor? Here are some clips from recent 60min interviews w/ both Romney and Obama. http://www.cbsnews.com/8334-504803_162-57518524-10391709/unaired-excerpts-from-the-obama-romney-interviews

education

Next month, the movie Won't Back Down will be released. The movie is loosely based on the story of parent-activists in Oakland CA who pushed reform on their failing school. When the trailer was shown at the DNC convention this summer, it was applauded. No-one likes failing schools, everyone likes activists. The problem, according to Richard Fernandez, is that the ending to the real story was not happy: there has been no change - the concessions are locked up in court proceedures.

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/09/23/happy-endings/#more-24581

So it is with Chicago. With so many dismal failures, so many children/adolescents that quit school unable to read/compute sums beyond a third grade level, how can it be that the unions have many of their financial "needs" recognized?

I am so glad that I am homeschooling.

Ouch.

French manufacturing hits lows. So what happened? http://www.markiteconomics.com/MarkitFiles/Pages/ViewPressRelease.aspx?ID=10071

supply and demand

From Coyote blog:

http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2012/09/how-government-interventions-affect-health-care-supply-and-demand.html

The discussion in the comment section about physician supply (med school admissions, foreign trained md usage) is particularly interesting. My question: where is innovation in the pharmaceutical world actually happening?

Ie: what combination of US/Canada/EU? Is there a way to suss out the numbers?

Paul Rahe discusses the superbug that has hit 6 percent of hospitals in the US, and mentions that there are no antibiotics in the pipeline. Is this due to limited demand? I think of the abandon of the Lyme vaccine in the late 90s... if this is indeed the trend, without free market incentives, I shudder to think about the consequences for those small minorities that have unusual and difficult to treat illnesses, both acquired and genetic.

It is impossible to mandate creativity and innovation. The countries that tried ended up killing millions of their own people (China, Soviet Union,)  Is this the slippery slope that we want to continue to follow?

3d printers

3d printing just got added to my I want (but don't need list.)

So cool,

What kinds of apps? (custom legos??)

http://www.wired.com/design/2012/09/how-makerbots-replicator2-will-launch-era-of-desktop-manufacturing/all/?pid=911