One More Example of How Screwed Up Obamacare Is

My brother and his wife both just had their policies dropped, policies with which they were perfectly happy. When they asked why and were informed that the policies were now "non-conforming." The new policy, which will be significantly more expensive, will be required to have things like "pediatric dental care."

They have no young children.

This hell-born law was written by a legion of congressional staffers and lobbyists, who all stuck in goodies they wanted. I doubt more than a small handful of people ever read its 2000 pages. Certainly none of the Democrats who voted for it did (remember "We have to pass the bill to find out what's in it?"), and certainly not Obama. The details didn't matter. It was a huge muscle flex, a message that Democrats could do something "big," and not the least, a major f*** you to the Republicans. We are now bearing witness to the fact that it's impossible for any good to come out of a process like that. This just may be the worst piece of legislation in U.S. history.

One wonders when the rioting will start.

You Peons Don't Know What's Good For You

Just for laughs, I just tried to log onto the Obamacare site. I got as far as putting in my name and email, but when I tried to check if my chosen password was available, the page just hung. That little spinning wheel started going round and round. That was three hours ago. It's still spinning.

I'm not going to write yet another piece on how the website sucks. Everyone knows that. I'm not even going to write a piece about what a disaster the whole thing is, generally, and how America was sold a series of blatant lies. (As one person said, "In a couple of months, we will be nostalgic for the faulty website.") Everyone understands that at this point, too, although Democrats will never admit it.

What I want to point out is today's spin out of the DNC, etc. In a nutshell, it's this:

Sure, you might lose your healthcare plan that you liked, but you probably weren't aware that you don't really have a great plan at all. You only think you like it, but did you know it didn't cover all sorts of super things like mental health and contraception? Our plans do! You will like it much more, we promise, and you'll be happy to pay the higher premium.

Translation: we know what's best for you better than you do, so just sit back and let us take over.

This attitude is a consistent one with liberal elites. What's interesting is that you rarely hear them come out and say it. 

Out loud.

The Decline of Our Culture

The other night I took my daughter to the movies in my nice, little, suburban town. About two minutes into the show, I notice that the guy behind me has put his feet up through the seat next to me. Normally, this wouldn't bother me out too much; I ocaissionally do the same, although never when there's someone right in front of me.

But here's the thing: he had no shoes on. Or socks. Just...feet.

I told him that I could deal with the feet being up but that he had to put on shoes. He responded by pulling his feet back, but two minutes later, there they are again. This time I'm a bit more assertive, to which he says, "Go fuck yourself."

Bear in mind, this wasn't some teenager. It was a middle age guy sitting with his wife. I fetched the manager who told him to stop. He put his feet down, but I don't think he ever put on his socks. (I doubt the floor was sticky or anything.)

The point of the story is that this person's actions don't even seem that remarkable anymore, and there's a remarkable lack of judgement going on. Behavior is expression. Civil society is becoming less civil every day.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

 

A friend of mine sent me a shot of this poster, which he found hanging on the wall of an exclusive Connecticut private school. I have a suspicion that it can be found in lots of classrooms across the country. Seldom has progessivism been so neatly captured.

Oh, c'mon. It's nice that the short boy can now watch the ballgame. What problem could anyone have with that? 

Well, let's imagine this was a real situation, and the boys, hoping for a better view of the game, scamper around and find three boxes. The tallest boy, realizing that his short friend still won't be able to see, gives him his box. Anything wrong here? Absolutely not. It's civil society in action, where people help others of their own volition. 

The problem is that that's not what the creators of this poster meant, not at all. The words don't read, "It's nice to help your friends." Rather, they speak of "justice," clearly meant as an imperative. You see, liberalism never trusts people to do the right thing, so the force of law is deployed to guarantee a desired outcome. Coercion is always the first and last answer, in this case spoiling the opportunity for the tall boy to do something nice for the short boy - not because he had to, but because he wanted to. The civil society is undermined.

Let's imagine further. HUD issues a federal regulation that boxes must be provided for short boys at all sporting events. Further, the boxes must meet various federal safety codes, lest a boy fall from one that was sub-standard. Come the inevitable box shortage, it happens that at some ballparks there aren't enough boxes to go around. Protests ensue, with angry demands for "fairness." Realizing they may have a federal lawsuit on their hands, but unable to procure enough compliant boxes, the ballpark owners consult their lawyers and decide to raise the fences high enough such that no one can see over them, tall or not. Problem solved.

And there is progressivism, in a nutshell. Equality created through coercion by dragging those at the top down. It never works out like the poster, where all are raised to the highest level, and it isn't supposed to. In real life it is so much easier to bring people down than raise them up. Just ask Bill de Blasio, New York's radical mayor-in-waiting.

The poster also suggests that justice and equal results are the same thing. This is a dangerous concept that has justified more tyranny, mostly of the Marxist variety, than just about anything over the last century. Looking again, the tall boy definitely has an advantage when faced with a tall fence, but what of other contexts? Perhaps the short boy is a brilliant student. What measures will be suggested then to even that score? 

Don't laugh. At a school one of my children (briefly) attended, parents were told not let their kids study anything above and beyond the curriculum, lest they get ahead and damage the self-esteem of the other, less motivated kids. Can't make this up.

Despite decades of evidence as to its disastrous effects, the intellectual left has never abandoned its Marxist longings. They won't call it by its name, of course, but the primal urge is still there, and the agenda still being pushed. Sometimes even in cute posters for our kids.

Detroit: Product of Liberalism or Just Bad People?

There is a front page story in the New York Times about how it is now coming out that one of the reasons Detroit is bankrupt is because the pension trustees just decided to give money away. For years they would just hand out extra money from the pension fund, above and beyond what contracts called for, to both retirees and active workers. When they started running out of money, they borrowed, which worked for a little while, until it...drum roll...didn't.

You can read it here.

What's really interesting is the comment section. Obviously, lots of liberals read the NYT, and since there hasn't been a Republican seen near Detroit for about half a century, it's fascinating to see their contorted rationalizations. The main one seems to be, "This isn't a story about the failure of liberalism, it's simply about some corrupt people, and corrupt people come in all political flavors."

The second part I'll agree with. My own state senator here in New York, a Republican, was sent to prison for taking bribes. But having said that, the rationale fails to acknowledge that corruption happens when it has certain preconditions, and it is liberals who are the relentless cheerleaders for these preconditions.

It is statism, in a nutshell. Big, unwieldy, states are like a petri dish for corruption. The bigger the government, the bigger the corruption. This is primarily the result of the growth of the "administrative state," which has become government's fourth branch. Its workers are almost completely unaccountable, and they have ever-growing power that can be monetized. For many, the temptation is too great, and worse, it becomes part of the accepted culture.

Look at Lois Lerner, the undeniably corrupt IRS honcho. She got a long, paid, vacation, and now a lucrative retirement (although she was corrupt for ideological reasons, not monetary).

Oftentimes, corruption happens because it feeds the state. Look at the railroad workers in New York, who for years would routinely claim disability just before retirement to enhance a lifetime of benefits. The union, the regulators, and the politicians all looked the other way because the donations were flowing.

People are people, and a certain percentage are of flawed character. Such bad actors seek out situations that can be exploited for their benefit, and what better than a growing government with ever more authority over its own people? Checks and balances are vanishing.

It's even worse in places with one-party rule, like Detroit, Chicago, and New Orleans. In such places, politicians are easily corrupted as well as bureaucrats. Normally, politicians can be held accountable by voters, but when they're not, their position becomes a sinecure, and the inevitable follows.

You can see the phenomenon elsewhere in the world, too. Places like the Philippines and Greece are highly corrupt because their governments are very large. Cuba is 100% corrupt because the state controls everything. There's hardly any corruption in Singapore or Hong Kong, though. Simply not a lot of opportunity.

Large states and corruption go hand in hand. Between liberals and conservatives, I know of only one ideology that embraces an ever-growing public sector.

Remember the Kurds?

The largest chemical attack in history on a civilian population was not in Syria, but in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein slaughtered thousands of ethnic Kurds for not being supportive of the regime. Thousands more died later of complications, disease, and birth defects.

Barack Obama was a consistent opponent of the war in Iraq, but now he wants war with Syria. What's the difference, exactly? Is it because Bush was president, so he reflexively had to oppose everything he did? Or is it because Democrats, peaceniks when out of power, are disturbingly comfortable with projecting military power when they're in charge? The operating principle just seems to be that we have no national interest, and therefore we must be acting out of the goodness of our hearts.

Republicans and the Environment

Know anyone who hates the environment? I don't. We all love pristine beaches, wooded trails, and soaring mountains. We take joy in sharing these places with our children.

And yes, even Republicans appreciate lakes and trees. And yet they are widely perceived as "anti-environment." Why is that?

It's because they are obliged to check the relentless environmental agenda of the left, which they rightly believe goes too far. This puts them in a position of always saying "no" to policies that seem just fine to our minimally informed electorate.

What could possibly be wrong, for example, with a bill called, say, the "Clean Water for Our Children Act”?  Likely plenty, if you read the details. But to the casual observer it seems as if Republicans just want slightly dirtier water.

"We are pro-environment, too, just less so," is not a coherent philosophy.  But as long as Republicans keep merely reacting to the overreach of the left, that's how it’s going to look.

What Republicans need is a positive message, a way to champion the environment, one that is understandable and consistent with conservatism, and clearly delineated from the destructive approach of the left. 

The good news is that such a philosophy already exists: it's called conservationism. Even better, it is an approach with deep roots in the Republican Party: Teddy Roosevelt, founder of our national parks system, was its first political champion.

Decades before eco- became a mischievous prefix, there was conservationism. It is a pragmatic philosophy.  It takes the view that we all benefit from nature and therefore act as its careful stewards. It acknowledges that humans and the environment are inextricably linked. A conservationist preserves a forest, but also judiciously hunts and logs. 

A conservationist says, "We have been given this tremendous gift, and it's up to us to manage it wisely."

Environmentalism, however, is a sterner affair and qualifies as an ideology, one that views man as outside nature and its mortal enemy. Progressives get certain memes in their heads—population bomb, climate change, sustainable—and turn them into religious manias. Rational thought is discarded. They talk about high-sounding goals, but never weigh the concrete results of their policies.

Yes, it would be wonderful if all our energy came from hydropower or solar, but conservatives point out the disastrous economic effects of pursuing such pristine goals in a precipitous manner. To the environmentalist, this is irrelevant.

Conservationists take a judicious "cost/benefit" view of nature, while environmentalists do not. Conservationists husband resources for both use and aesthetic pleasure, while environmentalists believe that nature has innate “rights” that supersede our own.

Nature is a blessing. It is to be respected and preserved, but for our own benefit. The cost of everything must be weighed against the benefits. One hundred years ago, Republicans had this right, and it is time to look back in order to move forward.

A Market Opportunity for a College with Vision

This piece presupposes you read my last post on Why Colleges Are Doomed. If you don't have time, in it I outline why the typical liberal arts college has a business model that's about to get disrupted upside the head, and few, if any, see what's coming.

The case I made was one that projects less demand and far more supply, but I also suggested that most colleges just aren't getting the job done anymore. Come, drink beer, get a diploma. But worse, universities generally have adopted poisonous philosophies of political correctness. This hasn't caught up to them because of all multi-decade forces that have supported the higher ed model in general (again, see last post). But it will.

Let's be blunt. Universities, particularly in the Northeast, have lost their collective minds. They have allowed their curricula to be polluted with useless, angry, ideological majors such as Women's Studies, Afro-American Studies...pretty much any major that ends in the word "studies." At formerly great institutions like Bowdoin you can study important matters such as "Queer Gardens." Thirty-two  courses like that and they hand you a diploma.

And then...what? Since there's no place in the private sector anymore for people with useless majors, many "studies" grads get recycled right back into academia and become professors, teaching their bile to another generation who, just in case they didn't know they were supposed to be angry with "the system," will be now. Anger on anger, with none of the participants adding anything to society or the economy.

A great deal for 60k a year, no?

Then there's the pitiful record colleges have on free speech, which is to say they're all for it unless it's speech they don't approve of, which is to say anything conservative. Conservatives getting shouted down during campus appearances is a near weekly occurrence. University administrators routinely do nothing, further encouraging campus Maoists.

Graduation speakers? Conservatives need not apply.

I could go on (and on), but I won't, because any informed person reading this already knows about the overwhelming bias in academia. If not, spend five minutes with Google.

So, given the impending apocalypse of the higher education model, it might be time for one or two enlightened colleges to do something radical to ensure their survival, no?

To wit, I have a modest proposal: brand yourself as "conservative." Toss out every half-assed, ideologically-based major. Gladly accept the resignations of the scores of outraged professors. Establish a core curriculum with an emphasis on the Western canon. Require a course on constitutional history. Embrace the study of all cultures but not the notion that all are equally wonderful. Some of them suck.

Don't let anyone graduate without some grounding in math, hard sciences, and at least one foreign language.

Require econ majors to learn Von Hayek and Friedman. Ban Keynes and Krugman? No, that's not what this is about. This is about balance, about understanding both sides of an argument, and then learning how to reason them through on your own. That's what conservatives do. Colleges today are more about indoctrination.

Protect free speech for all, but only for those who express it with civility. Students can embrace the tenets of "Occupy," whatever those are, but they can't occupy the damn quad if it's against the rules.

Ironically, I'm describing how virtually every college in America used to be, circa anytime before around 1968, so one might brand this as "traditional," rather than conservative. But I'm not sure it describes any well-known colleges today.

So, back to the opportunity. Americans very consistently, over time, describe themselves as conservative. The percentage has remained about 40% for a very long time. This doubles the number who describe themselves as "liberal," and this is also very consistent.

Now, of the population of parents who actually foot the tuition bills, how do you suppose those percentages fall out? I'd say it was a safe assumption that north of 50% are conservative.

What if they had just one brand name option that pursued the course I described above? What if just a single college, say a Trinity or a Middlebury, embraced this very different path?

Well, here's what I think would happen. Applications would skyrocket, as would alumni giving. Their national profile would be raised. Maybe, just maybe, it will be enough to thrive through what's to come.

Oh, there would be a very brief and difficult transition, and the New York Times would weigh in disapprovingly, but it would work. You have to think of this in business terms. College is a market, driven by supply and demand. Right now, there is plenty of liberal supply and zero conservative supply, and yet we know there are more conservatives out there than liberals. Real life businesses rarely find market imbalances that are so cut and dry.

Will anyone try this? It would require an incredibly ballsy president, not to mention an iron-willed and board, one that could withstanding the collective howl of the liberal establishment. So, no, in other words.

They will go down with the ship.

Why Colleges Are Doomed

Know what a run-of-the-mill liberal arts college charges these days? About $60,000 a year. This number has been rising faster than just about anything else over the last couple of decades. Why? Basically, growing demand and fixed supply. Fixed supply is understandable; universities don't just pop into existence to meet growing demand, but this is about to change. Demand growth is also about to change, but first let's see what's been driving it until now:

• Demographics - the echo boom has been applying to college in droves.
• Internationalization - applicants from newly wealthy countries like Korea.
• Availability of cheap student loans.

On top of this abundance, university endowments had a great, multi-decade run through 2008. It's been a very good time to be a university president. The wind has been at their backs for a long time. When this happens in the business world, though, it invariably breeds a lot of lazy and inefficient practices that get exposed when the weather changes, and it is about to change drastically indeed for the higher ed business model. Many won't survive.

Growing endowments? Gone. Demographics? Now on a declining curve. Cheap student loans? With a federal government that's essentially broke, this game won't last either (I'm not even mentioning all the government grants here). And unless our colleges want to fill their dorms entirely with the children of Russian oligarchs and Chinese billionaires, the internationalization game has largely been played out.

But it's worse than that, because the supply part of the equation is about to change too. Ever hear of Kahn Academy? Coursera? How about iTunes U? These are all free, online options that offer best practices education, many taught by some of our finest educators. In other words, you don't have to go to college to learn anymore. Knowledge has been liberated from ivy tower oligopoly.

The undergraduate model, in particular, is highly threatened because, frankly, most schools just don't do a very good job anymore. They are four year summer camps for kids who got trophies for showing up. Now, they get degrees for showing up. Gone are most course requirements and core curricula, in their place, useless exercises in things like race and gender studies. Studies show that the amount of homework the average college kid does has been cut in half over the last couple of decades.

So, what are colleges left with to justify their existence? Two things, as best I can tell. First, they remain desirable "brands," at least some. Google and Goldman Sachs still buy the brands, not the self-taught. But this will change, and probably sooner than we think. How? A Google or an Apple will discover that they can find good employees who have excelled at, say, Coursera, where one is graded. It will get a lot of publicity, and this will cause parents to start questioning why they are mortgaging their houses to pay for tuition when they can get it done for free.

Second, there is socialization. You make friends in college, and these friends are a lifelong asset, in both an emotional and practical sense. This advantage may be the last one on to which colleges hang. I suspect, though, society will find a solution for this. Perhaps some college somewhere will toss all its expensive, tenured, professors and throw its doors open for students to pursue collaborative learning experiences. There will be ways to meet people and make friends that don't cost 60k a year.

All this is going to go down very hard. Any institution that has thrived under a successful model for generations doesn't just sit down and reinvent itself overnight, particularly if the new model requires destroying the old one. Well, actually, some businesses do. IBM, Amazon, and Netflix come to mind, but these are extraordinary companies with courage and vision. There are far more Eastman Kodaks and Blockbuster Videos out there.

And, let's face it, universities are not run like businesses. In fact, they think it's beneath them. Does anyone think that there are frank discussions going on at the board level about any of this? The small, expensive, liberal arts colleges will get hit first and hardest. I would not want to be in charge of Bates or Ohio Wesleyan right now.

On top of all this, there is the crazy ideological direction that most schools have pursued, making them even less tenable. But in this, there is an opportunity. I will address that in my next post.

We All Be Wearing Google Glass in Five Years (or Sooner)

Google Glass is something you've probably heard of, but don't really know much about yet. Kind of like the internet in 1994. But they represent the Next Big Step. To what? To the more seamless integration of man and machine, a graying of the boundaries, of man made better by technology.

This is something I have written about here and here.

Think the idea is gimmicky? Think again, and understand what's coming. This is the internet (and then some) right in front of your eyes and in your ears. No need to fish your phone out of your pocket. Robert Scoble, a tech guru, has been trying out a pair for a few weeks, and he says he'll never again be without them. You can read about him here.

What do they do? Well, you can photograph or film anything you're looking at hands free. You can get turn by turn directions. You can ask them anything (voice recognition is built in). You can pull up the internet right in front of your eyes. It appears to hover a couple of feet in front of you, not in your direct line of sight. You can read or send emails and texts. But that's only the beginning.

For a fun video that highlights some of this, click here.

Remember, if you're old enough, back when the Apple II hit the market. It did absolutely nothing useful, but a lot of early adopters bought them anyway. Very quickly, software developers made them, and other PCs, highly useful. Suddenly, it wasn't a case of wanting something, but needing it. You were at a disadvantage without one.

Or how about in the late 90s, when cell phones started gaining popularity? Many resisted, particularly the middle aged and older, thinking it completely unnecessary - annoying, even - to always be "available." Now, there's a societal expectation that you have a phone, and that's because they have become indispensable. Of course, along the way they got "smart" and even more ingrained into everything we do. The App Store is now approaching its 50 millionth download and the iPhone hasn't even been around for six years. Apps were almost an afterthought.

All this will happen with Google Glass (and presumably an Apple competitor). The development community will flock to Glass like Michael Moore to a donut. Tens of thousands of new applications, ones we can't even dream of, will be introduced, and many of them will become integral to our daily lives. Many will do astounding things, like merge what you're seeing with virtual reality. You will be at a disadvantage going about your daily business without your Glass.

Yes, the early adopters will look like geeks, but that won't last long. If the product is priced in the $200-300 range, as is rumored, it will go viral quickly.

Portable, augmented intelligence, currently represented by the smartphone, is effectively becoming our sixth sense because it connects us directly to the entire world, wherever we are. As I've written before, history will someday be divided between the time before this and the time after. Google Glass is the Next Big Step.

P.S. This device will introduce us to a veritable tsunami of privacy issues, but that is a whole other post.