Author: bill

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Is President Obama’s Immigration Plan Showing How Little The Administration Has Learned From Healthcare.gov Debacle?

I confess that last week I was trying to figure out how the Administration could salvage their immigration plan. I am personally skeptical about comprehensive immigration reform but I was curious how well this Presidential edict would fare on a complex political issue like comprehensive immigration reform.  Is this a step forward or just another stir of the witches brew in election year politics?

My focus was the complications arising from issuing of social security numbers to illegal immigrants and the first issue on the docket was the earned income tax credit. A few years back we legally hired a person from Mexico to work in our barn. He was a better, more reliable worker that was better than the two high school girls we were replacing. At that time our government was less stupid about guest workers so he had a H2B VISA and a social security number. He did not care about the taxes that were collected from us or him, he just wanted a job so he could send money back to his wife and two boys in Mexico. He was just another guy trying to provide for his family and really did not care about earned income tax credits. He was willing to make major compromises in his life so that his family could live a better life. This week the erstwhile friend of the Administration, Mr. Koskinen, said that one of the unintended consequences of the President’s plan is that the illegal immigrants will now be able to file tax returns for previous years and claim earned income tax returns. I am pretty sure that guest workers and illegal immigrants don’t care about Earned Income Tax but when you give out free money somebody will fill out the forms necessary to collect the handout. It looks like H&R Block and Intuit are the big winners here.

My initial thought of resolving this issue was to adopt a modern form of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for income tax filling issues with previously illegal immigrants.  Obviously many of the illegal immigrants told a few lies about their employment status and maybe were part of some crimes along the way. So now we are parsing crimes to figure out which crimes are okay and which crimes are a pretty good indicator that we want to get them on the next plane out of here. So we are a nation of laws except in the case of illegal immigrants. Although we continue to hope that we can resolve immigration without political debate, I think the Administration will find out that there is no easy solution. As an example I still do not understand how this immigration edict is good for those low skill, low education workers we are having the huge problem finding jobs for. Yeah, I doubt this immigration handout is playing well in poor black neighborhoods! The one thing the Administration should have learned from the Healthcare.gov debacle is that there are no shortcuts and it would be really nice if Congress would provide the Administration some cover. It is a sign of insanity to keep doing stupid stuff and expect good results. Is this the issue we ask the President to put his pen back in the desk, hang up the phone, and ask Congress to do its job? Maybe this time Congress will read the bill and fix the problems before they vote on it. I think the Administration has to recognize its limitations. If you did not accomplish comprehensive immigration reform in your first six years maybe it was never meant to be.

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Greta thinks that NBC should experiment with different formats for the next six months

therachelmaddowshow_sIn her post, Broadcast news — time is up? NBC has a chance to experiment (get out of 1950!), Greta thinks that NBC should experiment with different formats for the next six months. Since I advocated the same strategy yesterday, Greta and I agree on that part of the NBC strategy. Where we differ is that she thinks that Rachel Maddow would be a better choice because she could stir things and provoke a debate. This sounds like she is trying to turn the Nightly News into the O’Reilly Factor. If NBC is trying to adopt some of the successful parts of Fox News into their show, they should select someone more like Brett Baier. Most of the NBC guys and Savannah Guthrie meet this requirement so my first choice is Savannah. She changes things a little by breaking the male news anchor mold but is not as dramatic a change as Rachel. Hopefully Ms. Guthrie recognizes that she not only has to be different than Brian Williams but all the other news anchors, too. If the ratings do not work out then Rachel and the other guys deserve a tryout, too. Here is what Greta said:

So….my suggestion for a troubled news organization (yes, NBC) and I know this will rattle the old timers who have a fixated view about what journalism is..do something bold for 6 months and experiment.  Put one of your strong and determined debaters on to host the nightly broadcast news, the new format, the 2015 one.

And while you are at it, how about a woman? My suggestion: Rachel Maddow.  Whether you agree with her or not, she will stir things up and provoke a debate.  She is also the right price — she is already on the payroll!

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If I Had 30 Seconds With The NBC CEO I Would Recommend They Replace Brian Williams With …

"Savannah Guthrie 2012 Shankbone" by David Shankbone - Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Savannah_Guthrie_2012_Shankbone.JPG#mediaviewer/File:Savannah_Guthrie_2012_Shankbone.JPGIf I had 30 seconds with the NBC CEO I would recommend they replace Brian Williams with Savannah Guthrie-Feldman. Drudge Report says Ms. Guthie “has emerged as the top replacement option at NBC ‘NIGHTLY’ NEWS”. Like Megyn Kelly and Greta Van Susteren on Fox News she is an attorney who has 20 years of journalism experience, is a former White House correspondent, and most recently was named co-anchor of the Today Show. Although there are plenty of qualified, male candidates for the job I would not be surprised if NBC decides to borrow a page from Fox News’s playbook to restore viewer’s trust. As I said in a previous post the ratings success of Ms. Kelly and Ms. Van Susteren tells me that America is pretty comfortable with female journalists discussing the major issues of the day. This is the time for NBC to take a chance and go big. They should not only replace Brian with Ms. Guthrie but tweak the Nightly News format to beat Fox News at their own game. If you believe Mr. Groseclose’s analysis that mainstream media like NBC is to the left of America then this would be a great time for NBC Nightly News to try moving a little to the right on the political spectrum and see if they can get a few people back to their shows. What have you got to lose! If the ratings do not work out you can always blame it on Brian Williams and quietly go back to the guys.

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The Changing Face Of Journalism

h943kAt the end of last year I was reading a post over on Fabius Maximus, Fox News gives us what we want: journalism for a New America, when I realized that the article attempted to make the argument that Fox’s success could be attributed to “pretty women in tight outfits with short skirts and high heels on tall stools chatting about the news” (Ed. corrected) on Fox and Friends and Red Eye. Don’t get me wrong. The women are pretty but the last time I looked at the Fox and Friends ratings, they were in fierce battle for the 6 am slot with Nickelodeon and Red Eye was in a fierce battle with station test patterns in the 3 am slot.  Are you really trying to make the argument that the success of Fox News rested on these two shows and not the prime time shows? Okay, the article was never intended to be anything other than a rant but it did get me thinking. Why do some news channels thrive and prosper and others just suck?

Obviously if you want to graduate from MBA school than you should first look at who is dominating the prime time line up. These are the folks who are paying the bills. At 6 pm you have Special Report with Bret Baier, at 7 pm you have On The Record with Greta Van Sustern, at 8 pm you have The O’Reilly Factor, and at 9 pm you have The Kelly File. These four shows constitute the heart and soul of Fox News and all of these shows are winning the ratings war in their time slot. From this lineup we can say three things about Fox News, they are not afraid to put strong women in prime time, they respect these women enough to let them pursue stories they thought were important, and the viewers respect the judgment of these women. When you are number one in your time slot that tells me that America is pretty comfortable with female Fox News journalists discussing the major issues of the day. The more I looked at the female journalists in Fox News, the more amused I got. On several occasions I saw both the host and the experts were women and they were talking about defense issues. I could not find a subject that was off limits for women. This trend is not just at Fox News. One of my wife’s favorite morning shows is Opening Bell with Maria Bartiromo although she also watches Bloomberg’s In The Loop With Betty Liu. Her favorite investment show is Consuelo Mack’s Wealthtrack on PBS. At least in my household I think I can see why Fox News is thriving and the others suck. They hire good female journalists and get out of the way! That goes a long way to explaining why Maria Bartiromo and Sharyl Attkisson joined Fox News and Fox Business. It is less about politics than management style. Good stories still rule journalism and the ratings! So far the female journalists have not abused the opportunity Dan Rather and Brian Williams served up on a platter.

Speaking of Ms. Attkisson here is a nice lecture she gave at Hillsdale College recently. I get the distinct impression that she is one of those pure journalist who went to Fox News because she really wanted the freedom to pursue the best stories of the day. Maybe this is a lesson the other networks might start paying attention to before the lights go out.

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Asthma Justification for EPA Regulations Gutted by the Latest Science

fightingforairI am not surprised that the latest science blames asthma problems on indoor rather than outdoor pollution. I complained of the questionable asthma science behind the American Lung Association ad, Red Carriage Advertisement III, in 2011. According to Cato,  Asthma Justification for EPA Regulations Gutted by the Latest Science, a recent scientific paper in the Journal of Asthma and Clinical Immunology says somewhat cryptically:

Taking the United States as a whole, living in an urban neighborhood is not associated with increased asthma prevalence.

Cato then defers to Dr. Joseph Perrone, chief science officer at the Center for Accountability in Science, to explain why this research is important to the Clean Air Standards in this article on The Hill:

It’s a radical finding. The study upends more than half a century of research that assumed outdoor air pollution in cities was to blame for higher asthma rates—a hypothesis repeatedly used by EPA regulators to justify the agency’s regulations.

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For years, environmentalists and regulators have cited childhood asthma as an excuse for ever-stricter pollution rules. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for instance, uses asthma as a pretext for nearly every “clean air” regulation issued since the 1970s.

But what if the assumed link between air pollution and childhood asthma doesn’t actually exist?

New research questions the long-held wisdom on asthma and air pollution, casting doubt over the scientific basis for EPA’s expansive regulatory agenda….

The study still points to air pollution as a cause for asthma, only it’s indoor air pollution—think second hand smoke, rodents, mold, etc.—that may be the main culprit.

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Is President Obama’s Idea Of “Existential Threat” More Like Chamberlain or Churchill?

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When President Obama said that terrorism was not an existential threat it had me confused. Then someone remarked that World War II was an example of an existential threat and I immediately thought of Neville Chamberlain’s famous remark in his speech concerning the Munich Agreement, ”Peace for our time”. Mr. Chamberlain probably thought he had successfully minimized Hitler’s “existential threat” for the relatively small political price of conceding the German-populated Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany. In less than a year after the agreement, Europe was plunged into World War II and less than eight months later Chamberlain had resigned.  It is obvious that both Churchill and Roosevelt thought Hitler represented a clear and present danger to their countries but I doubt they thought of him as existential threat. How could they imagine the terror the Germans would bring by indiscriminately bombing London or the Japanese would bring by launching a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. It was an incremental war that got ratcheted up with each act of aggression. Roosevelt correctly foresaw the risk Hitler posed and bent over backwards to support Britain in their fight with Germany well before we had a formal Declaration of War. The Lend-Lease policy supported England but it also was an act that threatened the plans of both Germany and their ally, Japan. Germany who was not an existential threat to Chamberlain in 1938 quickly became an existential threat to Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor. The die was cast. So who does President Obama’s remarks remind you of, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, or Franklin Roosevelt? Where are we on the existential threat timeline? Was the bungled Iraq withdrawal the President’s Sudetenland moment?

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What Is The Chance Of A Measles Outbreak At Disneyland?

The Instapundit and I are puzzled by the measles outbreak. If Jane The Actuary’s immunization rates are correct then it looks like measles should be pretty difficult to spread. Yet we have this statement in the Yahoo article, Disneyland Measles Outbreak Isn’t Largest In Recent Memory — This Is, that 100 measles cases have been linked to Disneyland.

More than 100 measles cases in half a dozen states have been linked to people who visited or worked at Disneyland in December or exposure to infected people who went there. California health officials on Wednesday reported 99 measles cases including six new infections with a Disneyland connection.

So I understand how measles outbreak in an Amish community would be the largest in recent memory. You probably have a lot of people who were not immunized due to religious reasons. When I think of Disneyland customers, this is wrong demographic to not be immunized for measles for religious or financial reasons. Disneyland customers should be the demographic that exceeds the reported immunization rates. Is there something unique about Disneyland that causes it to attract a crowd with much lower than average immunization rates? I doubt the Amish or other groups with religious objections to vaccinations were Disneyland customers that day. Are our immunization rates suspect? I wonder what the measles immunization rate of Disneyland employees is? The reporting on this outbreak sounds more like demagoguery rather than asking the serious scientific questions of how did measles get to Disneyland and why did so many people get infected.

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Did The Affordable Care Act Improve Health Care Outcomes Or Are We Just Spending More For The Same Health Care Outcomes?

A recent Fox News piece on uncompensated care got me thinking about health care efficiency again. If we really had a $5.7 billion drop in hospitals’ uncompensated care costs because of the Affordable Care Act, where did the money go? Since my health insurance premium went from $407 in 2014 to $479 in 2015, I definitely am not seeing any of this love coming my way! Did we just a get a much larger version of the Oregon Medicaid experiment in which the drop in uncompensated care is replaced with an even larger increase in Medicaid spending and no discernable change in health care outcomes? The reported drop in uncompensated care is sounding like another shell game and the middle class is still stuck with Affordable Care Act supporters who really do not care about health care reforms that matter to the middle class. This is pretty simple. If you are reforming health care in a responsible and sustainable manner then we should be seeing the results in lower health insurance premiums and better health care outcomes. If we do see improvements in both areas then reforming health care has become a façade for increased cronyism and gross incompetence.

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My Take On Ohio’s Energy Efficiency Fiasco

DUKE001Robert Michaels wrote an interesting post on Mercatus called Ohio’s Energy Efficiency Fiasco. Since I complained about rising electrical rates in 2012 and 2013 I was fascinated that a Northern Virginia college would publish a paper by a professor of economics at California State University about Ohio electrical rates. Talk about strange bedfellows! In 2012 I was ready to complain to state officials about the electric rate increase when I realized that my problems were pretty minor compared to problems faced by several public school districts whose budgets were blown out of the water with the rate increase. Despite all of the fervor I can say that not much has changed. My bill is much higher and Duke is inordinately interested in getting me to buy light bulbs from them. Here is the junk mail I got from Duke last week. So what could have gotten Mr. Michaels and Mercatus all upset?

It seems that Mr. Michaels is concerned about free riders. Here is an example.

Free riders are subsidized by higher bills for other consumers. Despite hopes that the EERS would encourage efficiency innovation that would produce “green jobs,” since the EERS became law there has been very little such innovation. Instead, utilities have relied heavily on lighting-related discounts for compliance. For some utilities in some years these discounts have accounted for more than 80 percent of EERS expenditures.

RateChange1The problem for these utilities is that I still have plenty of CFLs I bought three years ago so I do not need anymore. He also complains about “riders” added to the distribution portion of the electrical bill to satisfy the whims of certain advocacy groups. My latest Duke electric bill shows that the combination of the delivery and generation riders is now 42% of my delivery charge. It really irks me that my electric bill keeps going up despite lower fossil fuel costs and improvements I made in energy efficiency. The problem is with distribution rate increases. Here is a graph of my annual electrical rate increases. It looks like the stupidity has subsided so why is Mercatus still interested?

I think Mercatus is interested in the legislative fight to alter the renewable and energy efficiency mandates in Senate Bill 221 enacted by legislators in 2008. Many states have similar mandates but Ohio seems to be particularly foolish in writing S.B. 221. The supporters of S.B. 221 say these subsidies have created a renewable energy industry and the bill was about creating jobs. State Senator Bill Seitz begs to differ and told members of the Senate Public Utilities Committee, “Simply put, the economic projections upon which (S.B. 221) was based have turned out to be wrong.” I think the quickest way to get up to speed on the economic predictions upon which S.B. 221 was based is to read Jonathan Lesser’s study, Ohio’s Electricity Usage Reduction Mandate: The “Free Lunch” Paid for by Ohio Consumers. In that article Mr. Lesser says that since S.B. 221 mandates reduced electrical usage, it expects that electrical generation rates will go down. The economic logic used to justify S.B. 221 is that since the retail customer is saving money on these presumed generation rate decreases they can easily afford to subsidize renewable energy and energy efficiency projects paid for by the riders included in the distribution rates. The problem is that delivery rate increases far exceeded any savings I got from generation rate decreases. If the only renewable energy job created is to send me junk mail about CFLs, I think we can safely say that it has failed and it is time to work with businesses to change the renewable and energy efficiency mandates. The good people of Ohio can only go so far with bad legislation.