The latest salvo in the long-running local discussion of the relationship between social workers and socialism comes from Richard Hill of Narragansett:
Schools of social work offer little to no education on how to run a business. Thus, some social workers have no concept of how to succeed without getting a check from the government. It would help the public if some of these social-work schools ended their profiling of 50 percent of the country, and taught some basic concepts of self-support to social workers.
Course number 205 could be titled “Accepting Your Capitalist Society.” (Come to think of it, I could use a few pointers on self-support, myself.)
[Open full post]Peggy Noonan has nailed an issue, again, as only she can do. Here are some excerpts from her latest editorial, in which she discusses Rathergate and the busting of the mainstream media monopoly in America:
The Rathergate Report is a watershed event in American journalism not because it changes things on its own but because it makes unavoidably clear a change that has already occurred. And that is that the mainstream media’s monopoly on information is over. That is, the monopoly enjoyed by three big networks, a half dozen big newspapers and a handful of weekly magazines from roughly 1950 to 2000 is done and gone, and something else is taking its place. That would be a media cacophony. But a cacophony in which the truth has a greater chance of making itself clearly heard…
The MSM [mainstream media] rose because it had a monopoly. And it fell because it lost that monopoly…
What broke [the monopoly]? We all know. Rush Limbaugh did, cable news did, the antimonolith journalists who rose with Reagan did, the internet did, technology did, talk radio did, Fox News did, the Washington Times did. When the people of America got options, they took them. Conservative arguments rose, and liberal hegemony fell.
All this has been said before but this can’t be said enough: The biggest improvement in the flow of information in America in our lifetimes is that no single group controls the news anymore…
Is there a difference between the bloggers and the MSM journalists? Yes. But it is not that they are untrained eccentrics home in their pajamas. (Half the writers for the Sunday New York Times are eccentrics home in their pajamas.) It is that they are independent and allowed to think their own thoughts. It is that they have autonomy and can assign themselves stories, and determine on their own the length and placement of stories. And it is that they are by and large as individuals more interesting than most MSM reporters…
Only 20 years ago, when you were enraged at what you felt was the unfairness of a story, or a bias on the part of the storyteller, you could do this about it: nothing. You could write a letter…
The most successful bloggers aren’t bringing bluster to the debate, they’re bringing facts–font sizes, full quotes, etc. They’re bringing facts and points of view on those facts that the MSM before this could ignore, and did ignore. They’re bringing a lot to the debate, and changing the debate by what they bring. They’re doing what excellent reporters would do…
The same change is even beginning to happen right here in Rhode Island. Information is power and information is now beginning to flow more freely. The facts about how high taxes in our state unnecessarily burden working families and retirees is now becoming more public. How those high taxes are driven by sweetheart deals where outrageous demands by public sector unions are agreed to by spineless politicians and bureaucrats – this, too, is becoming more public.
Isn’t freedom wonderfully liberating? People committed to empirical facts and doing right by all citizens have nothing to fear. People committed to sweetheart deals do have something to fear – because both facts and history are not on their side.
Change – irreversible change – is beginning to happen. Let the real competition for the best ideas get underway here in Rhode Island and all across America.
I was intrigued by an Op-Ed in today’s Providence Journal by Teresa Heinz (she dropped the Kerry!) and Jeffrey R. Lewis (“Extend Ohio drug plan across U.S“) that trumpeted the “success” of Ohio’s just-implemented BestRX plan. With a critical eye, one derived from a predisposition to mistrust our almost-First Lady, I searched for corroborating evidence to support the assertions put forward in the aforementioned piece. I was pleased to find that my predispostion to doubt one of an opposing ideological bent seemed to have been unfounded.
Heinz and Lewis accurately described the genesis and highlights of the Ohio plan.
Negotiations between the pharmaceutical industry (PhRMA) and a coalition of labor, church and consumer organizations (led by the Ohio AFL-CIO) resulted in “Ohio’s Best Rx,” a first-in-the-nation program that will slash drug prices for uninsured Ohio residents of any age who earn less than $22,450 per year, and uninsured Ohio families that bring home less than $44,000 per year.
Ohio’s Best Rx program, which begins this week, enables these Ohioans to buy drugs for the same average price paid by state employees and retirees, plus an additional $4 in fees ($3 to cover the pharmacy’s professional services and a $1 transaction fee, to cover the program’s administrative costs).
The potential benefit is enormous. Today, for example, a 30-day supply of the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor costs uninsured Ohioans up to $130. But if the state pays an average price of, say, $70, Ohio’s Best Rx participants would pay just $74 — a discount of more than 40 percent. A mail-order option will provide even greater saving.
What’s more, these deep discounts are achieved without a big new bureaucracy. The program won’t cost taxpayers a dime.
As to the last claim, the program will be initially funded by the Ohio taxpayers, but it is anticipated that the need for such support will disappear once the program is up and running. (Cue: Conservative skeptics, you may now raise your eyebrows). All and all, it would appear that Ohio’s BestRX is an attractive bi-partisan solution to reigning in increasing drug prices. In fact, I could find none who argued against the program. One potential opponent, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), as mentioned by Heinz and Lewis, was heavily involved in negotiating the plan. Kurt Malmgren of the PhRMA summarized his organization’s view of Ohio’s BestRX plan:
America’s pharmaceutical makers understand that for some the cost of prescription medicine can be a challenge . . . We believe Ohio’s Best Rx will provide a significant discount while preserving consumer choice, access and the ability of doctors and patients to determine the best treatments. Study after study show that patient health improves when they get the drugs they need. That is the mission and the goal of all pharmaceutical makers.
With the PhRMA endorsing the plan, it would seem that the road is clear for other states to negotiate similar deals with the pharmaceutical companies. As such, I would have to say that perhaps there is room within the drug company profit margins for them to offer a bit of relief to their consumers. However, will lower prices result in smaller profit margins, thus affecting their R&D budgets and their concomitant incentive to produce newer and better, as well as less profitable, yet much-needed, drugs? What if similar programs are instituted nationwide? Perhaps such fears should be held in check. According to Heinz and Lewis
We realize that drug companies are not charities. But by making Ohio’s Best Rx the model for a national plan, focused on the uninsured, the companies would not only generate goodwill; they might even eventually increase their profits. Whatever profits are initially sacrificed because of lower prices could well be made up or even exceeded through increased volume from millions of new customers suddenly able to afford needed medications.
Maybe so. The willingness of the PhRMA to agree to the plan indicates to me that they hold a similar hope that this “Ohio model” will provide for sufficient profits to fund R&D, etc. I just wonder if they can be expected to support this model on a nationwide basis. If Ohio’s plan proves successful, I suspect we will find out.
[Open full post]This posting builds on a string of other postings by all of us here at Anchor Rising.
Ed Achorn of the Providence Journal is back with yet another editorial about how Rhode Island House Speaker William Murphy appears committed to thwarting the will of the people, as expressed in our approval on November 2 of the separation of powers constitutional amendment.
Mr. Achorn writes:
Mr. Murphy holds the most powerful political post in Rhode Island. He managed to cling to that power last week after a bitter challenge by Republicans and dissident Democrats.
No one knows what promises Mr. Murphy had to make to secure the 45 votes he obtained in that fight, to his unimpressive challenger’s 30. But, during the fight, he did something shocking, even by the standards of Rhode Island politics. He signaled his intention to essentially nullify a constitutional reform known as separation of powers, which had been duly passed on Nov. 2, after years of debate and struggle, by more than 78 percent of the state’s voters.
These voters trusted in the power of the ballot to redress their grievances. Mr. Murphy betrayed that trust. He announced that the Rhode Island Constitution — no matter what the voters say — still gives the General Assembly the power to operate state-sanctioned gambling, through control of the Lottery Commission, and exert other executive functions.
Such a contention seems, to me, to stretch law, common sense, and the English language into unrecognizable shapes. The voters, after all, officially amended the state constitution to read: “No senator or representative shall, during the time for which he or she was elected, be appointed to any state office, board, commission or other state or quasi-public entity exercising executive power under the laws of this state. . . .” That would seem to offer no wiggle room for legislators to run the executive functions of the Lottery Commission or other boards. (In no other state is there even one legislator allowed to run the lottery that way.)
Our Declaration of Independence clearly and eloquently states that “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” We, the people of Rhode Island, gave our consent on November 2 to the separation of powers amendment. Any power that William Murphy has as House Speaker is also derived from our consent.
However, another posting contains a word of caution from Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute, who said:
In the end, however, no constitution can be self-enforcing. Government officials must respect their oaths to uphold the Constitution; and we the people must be vigilant in seeing that they do.
Speaker Murphy: We, the citizens of Rhode Island, have already spoken and we demand that you drop your proposed actions. Your actions violate the separation of powers amendment and they violate fundamental principles of American freedom dating back to our country’s founding.
Wake up, Speaker Murphy! The old days of corrupt Rhode Island politics are over. The old days of showing a callous disregard for the will of the people of Rhode Island are over. Show respect for your oath of office and for the rule of law.
Confirming my thoughts from an earlier post, Jennifer Marshall and Kirk Johnson have put up a piece over at National Review Online that explains how to interpret the often conflicting Charter School data that has recently been released. In my original post, I compared the data and found that the research (PDF) of Caroline Hoxby, as opposed to that of the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), seemed more robust. According to Marshall and Johnson, Peggy Carr, the NCES Associate Commissioner for Assessment, agreed, stating that “the methodology Hoxby used, ‘is a more superior design.'”
[Open full post]Noel Sheppard at Tech Central Station has provided a roundup of good economic news. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (the Establishment Survey)
. . . the preliminary data . . . show a gain of 157,000 non-farm workers for the month, bringing the total increase for 2004 to 2.2 million. This is the largest number of jobs created in one year since 1999, even greater than in the year 2000 as the tech stock bubble was hitting its zenith. Unfortunately, this still represents a 175,000 decrease since Mr. Bush took office. . .
An even more positive assessment of job growth . . . is reflected in the Household Survey . . . performed each month by the Census Bureau . . . shows an increase of 2.5 million jobs since Mr. Bush took office, and a 4.5 million rise from the January 2002 recession low. . . [note: read the piece for why the discrepency between the two surveys].
Another highly publicized campaign fallacy was that Americans are making less money today than before Bush was inaugurated. . .when Bush took office, the average weekly pay for production or non-supervisory employees was $485. In December, it was $536 — a 10.52% gain. This increase in wages — also contrary to politically oriented assertions — is greater than the 9.77% rise in inflation during this four-year period as measured by the Consumer Price Index (through November 2004). . .
during the Bush “depression,” [consumer net worth] rose to a new all-time high of $45 trillion by the end of 2003 — yes, even greater than at the stock bubble peak in March 2000. Without the final data for 2004, it is safe to assume that this net worth is significantly higher today given last year’s 9% increase in stocks (S&P 500), and a likely similar gain in residential real estate values. . .
When Bush took office, 66.2% of Americans owned their own homes. By the end of 2003, this number had jumped to 68.6%, and will certainly be higher when 2004’s final numbers are in. This is a 2.4% increase in Bush’s first three years in office. To put this in perspective, such ownership only rose by 0.8% during the “boom” of President Clinton’s second term. In fact, this percentage only increased by 1.8% during Clinton’s two terms. . .
under President Bush, the GDP has increased every year from 2000’s $9.7 trillion. Even in the midst of the recession of 2001, our GDP still rose to $10 trillion. In fact, if we hit analysts’ estimates, 2004’s number will be $11.5 trillion — a full 18% higher than when Mr. Bush to office.
Add to this the fact that there seems to have been a $1 billion surplus in December. This is the worst economy in 50 years?
[Open full post]To continue building on previous posts (here, here, here and my post yesterday), it seems that progress is being made on one front in the battle for academic freedom. As I have previously mentioned, some Columbia students were outraged when confronted by blatantly anti-Israel rhetoric in the classroom. Thanks to the David Project and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (F.I.R.E.), pressure is being put on Columbia University President Lee Bollinger to take action. (F.I.R.E’s latest press release is here, and here is their guide to Academic Freedom.) Bollinger drafted a promising letter and formed a committee to investigate the students’ charges. He has subsequently come under pressure from faculty groups. F.I.R.E. is keeping up the heat though, and others have joined in. So, in answer to the question that titles this post…there is moral outrage, it just takes some digging to find it. (nod to Instapundit)
[Open full post]Questions of schadenfreude’s sinfulness aside, I have to thank Northeast Dilemma for pointing on New England Republican to an uplifting column by Katha Pollitt. I daresay that, with this paragraph, Pollitt opens wide the thickets that hide the secret path to a sunnier political perspective:
Sometimes I think America is becoming another place, unrecognizable. David Harvey, the great geographer, tells the story of a friend who returned to the United States last spring after seven years away and could not believe the transformation. “It was as if everyone had been sprinkled with idiot dust!” Some kind of mysterious national dumb-down would explain the ease with which the Republicans have managed to get so many people agitated about the nonexistent Social Security crisis — at 82 percent ranked way above poverty and homelessness (71 percent) and racial justice (47 percent) in a list of urgent issues in a recent poll — or about gay marriage, whose threat to heterosexual unions nobody so far has been able to articulate. Mass mental deterioration would explain, too, how so many Americans still believe the discredited premises of the Iraq War — Saddam Hussein had WMD, was Osama’s best friend, was behind 9/11. But even as a joke it doesn’t explain the way we have come to accept as normal, or at least plausible, things that would have shocked us to our core only a little while ago. Michelle Malkin, a far-right absurdity, writes a book defending the internment of the Japanese in World War II, and before you know it Daniel Pipes, Middle East scholar and frequent op-ed commentator, is citing Malkin to support his proposals for racial profiling of Muslims. And he’s got lots of company — in a recent poll almost half of respondents agreed that the civil liberties of Muslims should be curtailed. Pipes’s proposals in turn seem mild compared with the plans being floated by the Pentagon and the CIA for lifetime detention of terrorist suspects — without charges, without lawyers, in a network of secret prisons around the globe. Kafkaesque doesn’t begin to describe it — at least Joseph K. had an attorney and the prisoner of “In the Penal Colony” got a sentence.
The thought-lite handling of the first few issues that she names may frustrate with their expected irksomeness and pretension, but by the end of the ramble, a light-hearted conservative will surely smile in appreciation of how dramatically liberals’ world must seem to be falling apart. How crazy America must seem to those who’ve built an entire worldview on the denial of key organizing principles.
It’s alright to be wrong, of course, but it’s critically telling that Pollitt doesn’t pause even for a moment — between blaming first Americans’ stupidity and then their fear — to wonder whether she’s the one who’s missing something. Having not read her work more than incidentally, I won’t speculate as to her intelligence, but there’s a yellow powdery substance scattered between the lines of this particular column, and I think she gives it the proper name: “fear dust.”
ADDENDUM:
For the sheer irony of it, I think somebody ought to submit the above paragraph from Pollitt to Andrew Sullivan for his Malkin Award.
Just in case you still haven’t made it to the magazine store for the latest issue of National Review, Marriage Debate Blog has posted another excerpt of my piece therein.
[Open full post]The Providence Journal editorial page gets curiouser and curiouser:
Of course, there will never be perfect separation of powers, all human institutions having varying levels of permeability between them. Still, the separation of powers between Rhode Island’s judiciary and the two other government branches has worked pretty well. … most politicians, and judges, are well-meaning and honest. They seek the esteem of the public that comes from honorable service. Indeed, the desire for public approval is a major reason why many get into the relentless privacy-robbing of politics and government in the first place.
Corruption, personal problems and political pressures sometimes come into play — humans aren’t robots — but all in all, the system works well for the citizenry of Rhode Island. And it promises to continue to do so, regardless of procedural changes involving budgets, and the occasional foibles of politicians and judges.
I haven’t yet become sufficiently familiar with the Projo’s writers to be able to identify the authors of specific editorials, but there are certainly significant differences of opinion and style. I wouldn’t presume (honestly!) that the paper feels the need to respond to Anchor Rising (i.e., that this editorial is in part a response to a previous post of mine). Still, I have to wonder:
The news media obtain and publicize more information about wrongdoing; the Internet acts as both a lively transmitter of government information and a venue for vivid commentary; and squads of good-government groups keep politicians, other government officials, and the rest of us on our toes.
On the substance, the editorial could easily be a response to thoughts expressed here — and, I’ve no doubt, expressed by many people throughout the state. In the interest of continuing the exchange of vivid commentary, the following line of thought begs further reply:
Back to the subject of judiciaries: They must be as independent as possible. In our system of separation of powers, you don’t want judges captive of either the executive or the legislative branch, lest the rendering of justice be perverted. …
Most important in this discussion, however, is that legislatures — at both the state and the federal level — are the constitutionally designated source of appropriations, for the judiciary and all other parts of government. … Indeed, the majority of states keep the governor’s office completely out of the annual process that creates judicial budgets.
Thus, that the Rhode Island General Assembly last year tacked on to the state budget a proviso to prevent the governor from amending the judiciary’s annual budget request seems more an embrace of separation of powers than a rejection of it.
As true as such points may be in general theory, adding the Rhode Island context to the picture raises two problems. The first, more direct, problem is that — unless I’ve dramatically misunderstood the background — it doesn’t convey the appropriate impression to say that the tacked-on proviso “prevented” the governor’s taking such action. It’s a power Rhode Island governors have had; “prevent” makes it sound as if the potential to amend represented a new, aggressive strategy on the part of the executive that the legislature moved to preempt.
That shift in emphasis leads to the second, broader, problem: odd as it may seem, Rhode Island’s governmental difficulty lies largely with its legislature. Under normal circumstances, I’m inclined to err on the side of granting that branch more power than the others, considering that it is a deliberative body of elected representatives. However, in our political landscape, which is so skewed as to leave legislators without challengers for multiple decades and which is dominated by special interest groups (especially unions), that benefit has proven of limited value.
To step back toward general theory, when the government-reform movement involves elevating the powers of the executive to counter a corrupt legislature, the legislature’s move to take a budgetary component of balance of power from the executive and its interest in leveraging legalism to maintain imbalance hardly seem to indicate an embrace of that reform.
