I had intended to grumble about the electricity being off for 8 days. But I'm so happy that it's back on in time for Christmas that I want to thank the people who fixed it.

The folks who were running this interesting machine across the road were able to operate it continuously for the entire time.

Indeed, every day for the last 6 weeks.

Go private sector.

This construction was approved by the local city council, who are following through on their planning strategy entitled "Sardines for Kenmore".

Go public sector.

Mike.

I was fortunate this year to spend most of the summer in Canada. While there, I reflected on the differences between Canadians and Americans. I concluded that there are two.

First, Canadians spend time reflecting on the differences between Canadians and Americans.

The general storyline in Canada is a celebration of the essential selflessness of the people reflected in a government running an objective portfolio of compassionate domestic and foreign policies. There’s some truth to this, although it’s not clear what came first, the liberal government or the liberal people. Over the last 40 years the liberal establishment in Canada has used vast sums of taxpayer dollars to weave the liberal agenda seamlessly into Canadian patriotism. The true genius of this has been to create a climate of contempt toward patriotism in America while promoting it domestically.

Americans do not spend time reflecting on the differences between Canadians and Americans. For Canadians, this is further evidence that Americans are indeed unsophisticated and selfish. Americans, on the other hand, view this as…

Americans do not spend time reflecting on the differences between Canadians and Americans.

The second difference is that Canadians, on the whole, feel more guilt than Americans.

Reflect on that irony for a moment.

Among other things, Canadians feel guilty about throwing away plastic, buying gasoline, being healthy and not being poor. They have a large government apparatus to replace guilt with high taxes and lots of rules. It’s not clear which came first, the guilt or the large government apparatus. Actually, I don’t know if they really feel guilt, only that the government uses guilt to advance their agenda (to have a large government apparatus, primarily), and that it works.

When I first came to America, I expected to encounter a large, chronic underclass of hopeless, helpless poor. I had been taught that this was always the inevitable consequence of not having a large government apparatus to correct poverty. What I actually found was that while the idle poor were better off in Canada, where they would receive money and houses for free, the working poor were both more affluent and curiously optimistic about the future. It took me a while to figure out that a large and healthy economy, free from excessive taxes and regulation had the side effect of creating jobs, opportunity, and making a very large number of increasingly higher quality good and services available at increasingly lower prices. And that these things were good for the poor.

As any reader of this blog knows, people wanting to restrict freedom generally don’t use the language of creating a large government apparatus to further restrict freedom. The general storyline is one of America’s unique failures to protect a group of the oppressed or unfortunate against some other presumably privileged group. You can generally take it as a given that when guilt and negative comparisons to other countries are combined, some freedom is in the balance.

I just finished reading an article in the Seattle paper entitled Motherhood Movement Picking up Momentum. The basic plot is one of America’s unique failure to protect a group of oppressed or unfortunate against some other privileged group. It includes a reference to a study from Harvard (!) that concludes that that the United States is one of only four countries among 168 studied by Harvard researchers that doesn't have paid leave for new mothers and that mothers fare far better in other industrial nations.

Who could be against motherhood? Or apple pie for that matter.

But this isn’t really about motherhood. Like public child care, it’s about restricting choice. It works like this: a large government apparatus collects taxes. It then spends those taxes on your behalf. In the context of child care, higher taxes compel more parents into the work force, where they are unable to provide direct care. Fortunately care can be provided by a large government apparatus, which they are financially compelled to use.

While I wouldn’t argue with the facts of the Harvard (!) study, I find the notion that America is not close to the top in terms of a great place to be a mother, father or a child just doesn’t pass the common sense test. By global standards it’s safe, clean, modern, rich and free. That’s certainly been my experience and I’m grateful.

Mike.

Perhaps such a thing exists: a Global Warming Hype-O-Meter. I envision this as a graph of the key indicators of disaster, plotted over time. Interesting indicators might be the predicted rate of temperature rise, glacier melt and ocean rise, the year when the irreversible knee in the curve will occur and the magnitude of predicted climate and species impact.

I haven’t looked at the data, but it feels to me like we’re in about year four of a bidding war for the most extreme predications.

The reason such a meter is important is that it definitely appears that greenhouse gases are increasing and the earth is warming. The industrial trajectory of China and India over the next 10 years likely means the rate of rise of these gas will increase. There might be a serious environmental problem brewing.

The problem is that  without the meter to tell you when the hype is on the decline, the information you can get about global warming just isn’t serious. The current collection of anti-capitalists, big government intellectuals and back to nature types have a really bad track record for correctly predicting the next human induced environmental catastrophe (see: “mass starvation”, “ice age”, “energy crisis”). The only thing they consistently agree on is that some freedoms need to be sacrificed, now, to save the planet at some point in the future.

During a conversation I had with my daughter about the differences between a monarchy, communism and democracy, she piped up and told me that she understood communism. She described an experience during the first day of school in grade 4. Apparently the teacher asked that all the students bring all of their pencils up to a central location in the classroom. Throughout the year, as people needed a new pencil, they should go to the jar and take one. We talked a little bit about why the teacher might do this, and about fairness to individuals Vs. fairness to a group and about the teacher’s power to command such a thing.

Then we talked about how she felt about this. She told me a story about how she and mommy had gone shopping for those pencils, and how much she liked them, and how she felt sad to give them up to the jar. Then she grumbled a little bit about some of the students’ level of pencil responsibly throughout the year and how she watched lots of pencils be destroyed or disappear.

I have no way to know the degree to which the pencil plan was simply a pragmatic approach to making sure there was no time lost in the teaching day due to forgetfulness as opposed to conscious or unconscious indoctrination.

I hope it was successful at the former, because I’m sure it failed at the latter.

Mike.

It’s not that often that you get a good clear look at the freedom destroying effects of the nanny state. There are two reasons for this. Freedom is destroyed slowly, via the continuous creation of rules, licenses, training, certifications, inspections, taxes and bureaucracies. But more importantly, this process is expert in selling itself in the language of fairness, compassion, protection, cooperation and problem solving.

Who could be against that?

In Canada, it’s generally pointless to comment on government waste. By the time the 10 year old federal gun registry was scrapped, the cost had ballooned from a budgeted  2 million to well over a billion ($1,000,000,000) dollars. A gun registry is a list of guns and owners. There are about 30 million people in Canada. If your agenda was to create a program with the explicit goal of spending lots of money for absolutely no results, it would be hard to top this.

Massive waste, even though it is broadly visible, doesn’t generate an outcry. Canada is funded by exporting natural resources. A curious quality of these industries is that they tend to create a few individuals and organizations with a continuous and massive inflow of wealth. It might be argued in this environment that high tax rates and the resultant government bureaucracies are responsible for the creation of a modern, peaceful and open state with a thriving middle class as opposed to say, a Saudi Arabia style monarchy. The net effect of this is that for the majority, government really does seem free. Clearly wasting other people money, especially the rich, is broadly supported.

I’m less convinced that there is broad support for the freedom destroying machine that is a side effect of government problem solving. Canada is one of 3 countries in the world, including North Korea and Cuba, where it is against the law to charge money for heath care. This program was in its infancy when I was a boy, and my first awareness of it was watching my grandfather, Dr. Paul Webster, lose his practice and his livelihood. The ophthalmologists were more politically savvy, and had successfully excluded optometrists from the new universal government funding for eye care. This of course, was described in the language of quality and equality, as opposed to simple greed.

Like most Canadians, for the next 20 years, I remained a huge supporter of nationalized health care. It struck me as barbaric that a country with as much wealth as Canada would allow anyone the indignity  and suffering of disease without heath care.

I still feel this way.

When the programs were put in place, I suspect the older generation didn’t have especially high expectations that death could be denied with science, and the bulk of the population was young and healthy. It wasn’t until I moved to America that a 6 week wait to see a doctor seemed in any way out of the ordinary.

You don’t hear much about problem solving from the heath care system in Canada these days. The folks in charge are primarily focused on the problem of keeping their high paying jobs and pensions while running a system that is basically doomed. They’re in a tough spot. The overall level of personal wealth in Canada has risen substantially as has the gap between the rich and the poor. Medical science has advanced and become more expensive. And the population has become older and sicker. Since trying to provide care at the level affordable to the rich would bankrupt the system, the government is in the business of rationing care to the entire population.  

Using some formula.

Developed by experts.

With life and death in the balance.

The current crisis is that, in defiance of the law, private care is simply setting up shop and betting that the government won’t want to be seen as being in the freedom destroying business by shutting them down. The government of British Colombia scored a recent victory against an illegal private clinic by agreeing to allow them to submit a bill to the province in exchange for not collecting money from patents. The government is not interested in taking some of the pressure off the public system by allowing private care because they know the importance of having everyone believe that 6 months for an MRI and 2 years for a new hip is normal.

Ironically, this freedom destroying action this is being described in terms of “choice”.  

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061201/bc_clinic_061201/20061202?hub=Health

Mike.

Last night my commute increased from the usual 1 hour to 5 1/2 hours. I consider myself lucky, as lots of people didn't make it home.

This unfortunate incident was caused by the freak occurrence of two events: a correctly forecast winter storm that dropped 2 inches of snow and a game between the Seahawks and the Packers.

Nowhere to be found was any evidence of government in the form of plows, sand trucks, signs or traffic control.

Thanks to the web, I didn't have to just wonder what, exactly, the state government was doing with my money. They have a web site. It was easy to find, easy to navigate, snappy, consistent and visually clean.

There I learned that Christine Greoire was busy making sure that students who couldn't pass the math part of the standardized state test would graduate anyway. The teachers union was supportive.

I learned of a program to encourage children to describe, in poetry and prose, how much better they are now that they are being raised by someone other than their parents. This program is a collaborative effort by Washington State Relatives as Parents Program (RAPP), several Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) administrations, Casey Family Programs and the Twin County Credit Union.

I discovered a web page of the state's most wanted men and 1 woman, including photos and details of how much they are in arrears on child support (http://www.mostwanted.dshs.wa.gov).

I learned of a disturbing new social issue, marital rape. Apparently, because of personal and societal barriers to reporting marital rape, its prevalence is probably higher than we are aware.

I discovered that the state issues many licenses, including Animal Massage, Kick Boxers and Taxidermy (http://www.dol.wa.gov/listoflicenses.html).

I found a helpful list of signs of people who suffer from self neglect and a handy way to report them to Adult Protective Services

Sex offenders have a an impressive array of programs devoted to them.

The Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA) Program helps refugees by providing cash and medical assistance. In 14 languages.

There was a handy Q&A that explained the differences between garnishing the wages of deadbeat fathers who are or are not employed by a Tribal enterprise or an Indian-owned business located on a reservation or trust land.

Apparently the Washington Education Association, the State Affiliate of the National Education Association, is boycotting Wal-Mart.

One of strangest programs was the Omlstead Plan. I never really figured out what this was, but it consists of a committee including Aging and Disability Services Administration, Aging and Adult Services and Developmental Disabilities Division of Access and Equal Opportunity, Children's Administration Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse, Economic Services Administration Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services, Medical Assistance Office of Indian Policy, Support Services Mental Health Division, Budget and the Finance Office of Research and Data Analysis. This group consults with the Disability Initiative Advisory Committee, Department of Transportation Agency Council on Coordinated Transportation Community and the Trade and Economic Development Department of Veterans Affairs.

Their stated agenda was:

• Seeking and responding to input from stakeholders
• Expediting and coordinating existing processes and programs
• Proposing modifications or new processes, programs, or tools to expedite the appropriate placement of institutionalized persons in the community
•  Proposing tools and methods to better evaluate placement options 
•  Coordinating across agency lines to improve access to services and supports necessary for designated individuals to live successfully in the community

I didn't make that up.

Mike.

A colleague at work, after having read my blog,  dropped into my office and expressed surprise that I was “a conservative”. He just assumed, me “being from Canada and all”…

There are two reactions that folks in progressive western Washington commonly express upon discovering that one is, indeed, “a conservative”. The first is a slightly guilty relief that there are others, “like me”, out there. The more common is confusion, as people try to reconcile the standard model of a conservative as a dull, intolerant, selfish, violent, retrograde knuckle dragger with what they (hopefully) know you to be. More confusion is better. The result of such a dialog out is often a mutual ratcheting up of understanding and respect, although the occasional excommunication or group intervention also occurs.

It interesting that in Canada, the model of practical progressive implementation, the probability of exile is much higher. But the real taboo in Canada is breaking the rules of civility. The federal Liberals in Canada have done an amazing job of weaving together a culture of cooperation , civility and compassion with patriotism and socialism in an almost invisible way. I suspect the consensus thought there is more fragile. The governments actions around “hate speech” and control of the broadcast content seem to indicate that open mindedness remains universally dangerous to any orthodoxy.

There are fundamentally two sources of this confusion. First is the assumption that conservatives are drones of either a Christian church and/or the Republican central planners. This is silly and doesn’t deserve additional comment beyond my observation that even the Christian conservatives I know are not drones, nor are they close minded or intolerant.

The second is confusion between means and ends. It’s too commonly believed that liberals are motivated by selfless compassion and conservatives by selfish individualism. The reality is there’s a diversity of values and motivations across the board. The only central disagreement is how to achieve results effectively and fairly.  And the core issue is around the nature of organizations.

Conservatives believe that organizations progress through predicable phases, and at different phases can exhibit behavior that is in sync or wildly out of sync with their charter at creation and even the values of their members. They also believe that organizations exhibit the same drive as living individuals and groups to survive and prosper. They tend to resist change and require significant external stimulus to change direction. And finally, organizations grow old and tired and become less efficient.

I’ve observed no correlation between altruism and evil and the public or private sector. The only real difference between these organizations is the mechanism of charter assignment, resource allocation and response to change. The private sector has the asset that people make very granular and frequent buying decisions that serve as validation that a charter is “correct” from the perspective of filling a need or want. The profit/loss and competition mechanisms ensure that needs and wants are supplied as economically as possible. The potential for significant personal financial upside provides the needed motivation for the  risk taking and experimentation that fuels innovation. And finally, bankruptcy serves as a mechanism to end or substantially alter an organization that is so far out of sync with reality and really would be better off gone.

Individuals provide input on public sector charter once every few years. The degree of feedback is not granular. Conceptually the mechanism is not unlike hiring a personal consultant and surrendering control over half of your family savings, income and and purchases for a contract period of say, 2 years. Additionally, there is no real equivalent of bankruptcy in the public sector, except in the disastrous case of bankrupting the entire country. These forces, over time, tend to produce an ever growing bureaucracy whose charter devolves into self preservation.

The forces at work here are powerful and tend to overshadow  “intentions”, good or bad. National health care in Canada has made this point for me a personal level. While I believe deeply that any compassionate and rich nation ought to aspire to and be able to afford to offer health care to everyone, I now realize that an unintended consequence of a purely public sector approach may be universally unavailable poor care. And this is not a result of lazy or uncaring doctors, nurses, administrators or bureaucrats. The system simply can’t respond to change and allocate resources according to the market’s wants and needs in a timely manner. The irony is that a system designed to provide universal access is now providing universal rationing.

The only really effective tools that are available to prevent the creeping growth of governments are a commitment to individual liberty, and limiting funding via tax rates.

 Mike.

Last night I watched a TV promo for big government a special on lung cancer. During the section on smoking, I learned that tobacco is a powerful drug that is harder to quit than heroin, and takes on average (or “up to”, later in the show), 8 attempts to be successful. The first time I heard this message of powerlessness was in the 70s, in Canada, in the context of heroin being impossible to quit and government supplied methadone being the only hope for any poor soul so afflicted. At that time, the message of the progressive government and social scientists, that nobody, really, could be at fault for anything was music to my bored and restless teenage ears.

The show included a section where our local state representative for big government, explained in a comforting but firm, motherly voice that the money she spent to promote anti-smoking was  insignificant compared to the vast fortune being spent by powerful tobacco companies to promote smoking. Then she took credit for money she spent to promote anti-smoking and the money she spent harassing evil tobacco companies as being responsible for the state’s sharp drop in people hopelessly addicted to smoking.

I became considerably more optimistic for the incurable heroin addicts after me and many of my friends, in my early 20s, successfully quit smoking by using the technique of choosing not to smoke any more. According to the world health association, “40%  or more” of the people in the US who “used to smoke” have quit.  http://www.who.int/tobacco/en/atlas34.pdf

Over time,  I’ve become considerably less open to the idea that nobody, really, can be at fault for anything. This may be due to the fact that my bored and restless teenage days are far behind me. It may also be related to my observation that when the progressives release you from responsibility for everything, the government follows along and releases you from a fair bit of your cash. Then they use your money to create giant bureaucracies who do lots of studies and then create lots of rules. This process ends only when all suffering and unhappiness has been systemically eliminated. Assuming, or course, that the process itself doesn't create suffering and unhappiness, in which case it ends when all the cash is gone. I presume.

Always in your best interest, of course.

There’s a subtle but important relationship between freedom, responsibility, and risk.

Mike.

Last night I paid $375 plus Ticketmaster, er, charges, to take the family to see Roger and co. I was expecting screaming guitars, powerful vocal melody and harmony, fire, smoke, lights and maybe a little hearing damage.  I was not disappointed.

Thanks for a great show.

I was somewhat surprised to discover, about half way through the show, that Pink wasn’t there. I presume he was back at the hotel. And they sent along the Dixie Chicks as surrogate band.

On a more personal note, I must admit that I had been longing for the brief period of time between the "end" of the former Soviet Union and Sept 11 when the world, or at least the part of it I could see on the news, seemed a sensible and civilized place. For the last few years I’ve had a great deal of trouble distinguishing the good from the evil.

Roger cleared everything up for me.

In a way that only a multi-millionaire artist can.

I do have some minor lingering confusion about how a country and system that empowers Roger to hurl insults bordering on hate at a large portion of his paying audience at hearing damage levels not only without fear of any repercussions, but while making a few additional millions can be the exclusive root of all evil in the world.

I probably just missed something subtle and profound.

Anyway Roger, next time through I’d appreciate a song or two providing some black and white clarity on global warming. I remain a bit confused about that.

Rock on.

Mike.

I have in front of me a form that I can sign and return that would exempt my daughter from filling out the “Healthy Youth Survey 2006”. I understand this data is being collected to guide social programs for children run by the State of WA.

Let me share my thoughts.

First, I am grateful to have the opportunity to opt out. From my perspective, these are the pros and cons of this decision:

In favor of allowing the survey to taken:

1. It’s the easy choice. I don’t have to do anything.  
2. It’s free. The survey is paid for by smokers in the form of fines levied on tobacco companies, who then transfer this cost back to their customers. Since I don’t smoke, I don’t care. I may even be doing smokers a favor by creating an incentive for them to quit. In any event, the television and newspapers have explained to me that smokers are really attacking me; I should expect some compensation. I have some minor moral and practical concerns about the conflict of interest that is created when new government programs are funded on an on-going basis by a regressive tax on smokers, but this too far away from my day to day life to matter too much. I’m relatively sure that my industry will never become the next source of government program funding by virtue of being collectively deemed a social evil. Hopeful, at least.
3. I won’t create an uncomfortable social situation for my daughter by having her be escorted out of the classroom with what I expect is a tiny number of other students because their parents hold extreme views.  
4. I won’t create any forbidden fruit that will have the undesired side effect of making my daughter far more interested in whatever the survey covers that has the adults so wigged out.  
5. The survey will produce lots of questions from my daughter, and these will serve as a good launching pad for rich dialog.

 In favor of disallowing the survey: 

1. I don’t want my lack of action to be interpreted by anyone as implicit support for the ever expanding WA Nanny State, or the social engineering + education package deal that seems to be creeping into the public school system. Indeed I’m writing this email to express my sincere objection to the idea that parents are less capable, willing and responsible to raise their children in a healthy manner than committees of government experts. I left my country of birth in part to escape such thinking and I don’t welcome it following me. 
2. I would have the satisfaction of doing something, indeed anything at all, to shelter my daughter from the maturation timeline that committees of government experts have decided everyone will track to, as opposed to one that is natural for each individual and family. Then again, point 4 above would likely render this a useless gesture, so strike this entire line of reasoning.

Points 3-5 above sway me. Please proceed.

Thanks.

Mike