Can I offer the contrarian opinion? ;-)

Certainly bad earmarks should be stopped. Bad earmarks increase spending, are pork, or are stupid. Examples range from Alaska’s bridge to nowhere to a recent $98,440 appropriation to Granbury Historic Opera House Theater by Chet Edwards. (Why does that Democrat represent the heart of Texas???)

But there are good earmarks. “Carve out” earmarks tell agencies how to spend already-allocated funds. They give Congress a check against the same unaccountable Washington bureaucrats Rick Perry is running against. With no earmarks, a 2011-2013 Republican Congress (!!!!!?) would be hamstrung in fighting Obama administration retaliation–where Obama’s minions would likely starve the reddest districts of their fair share of federal funds.

I prefer more nuance, which is why I oppose the 2008 RPT platform’s Earmarks plank (see http://betterplatform.org/plank/earmarks). The earmark debate is among several examples of the 2008 RPT platform’s ineffectiveness. In this case, the platform micromanages details, distracting from the root problem: runaway spending. Additionally, this is among several places where the platform ignores the capitalistic concept of return on investment (ROI), wasting scarce political capital on changes that have little benefit or may make things worse.

Total earmark bans have a bad ROI. In addition to throwing out the baby with the bathwater–i.e., throwing out the good earmarks with the bad ones–they are impermanent: House rule changes just take a simple majority to overturn. So mark my words, any bans will melt within 12 months at most, and in the meantime there will be many ways to get around it.

We must focus on the real problem: out of control spending. Earmark abuse is just a symptom of the problem. If we could get the federal government in austerity (reducing spending and paying more debt), that would eliminate funds for the bad earmarks.

Something that distinguishes conservatives is willingness to roll up our sleeves and attack root problems. Liberals just attack the symptoms. The health care debate is a good example: liberals want to ram through a “quick fix”, statist approach, but conservatives advocate more permanent, longer-term, market-based solutions that are healthier but won’t have the “quick fix” immediacy.

This dichotomy is easy to understand–attacking the root problem is tough. It doesn’t produce quick results. But it has intellectual integrity, and it will produce a better solution. On the other hand, attacking the symptoms–the liberal method–assures continued political relevance because the symptoms will keep manifesting over and over and over.

So to summarize: With you, I celebrate attention to abuses. But I am concerned that this measure is political candy that goes too far and doesn’t meaningfully advance the conservative agenda. I want Republicans instead to focus on runaway spending. With meaningful fiscal reform and austerity, earmarks will take care of themselves.

Guess where some of his email came from? Compare snippets:

Imitation is sincerest form of flattery?

Both the emails are below in full. You’ll notice my email clearly inspired the highlighted part of his email.

1. Took 3 days to deliver the overnight package.
2. Demanded a signature even though my mother marked the “WAIVER OF SIGNATURE” box and signed appropriately.
3. Claimed to have left a notice (that I needed to pick up the package personally), but in fact declined to do so.
4. Never re-notified me that the package was waiting. I finally found out because my mother asked me about it. I was able to call the local post office 2 hours before they would have returned it as undeliverable.

Go to http://usps.gov and check on package EH45 2451 528U S if you want to see this incompetence for yourself.

I say privatize and de-unionize the USPS and let it sink under its own massive debt. And deregulate first class mail delivery. Of course, Democrats will oppose this because government largesse and union intransigence are their job security.

In case you think I’m being vindictive, de-unionization would be the biggest gift we could give the USPS as it would create a competitive advantage over heavily unionized UPS and FedEx.

The host is interviewing Richard Horton, the editor of The Lancet, a British medical journal recently made (in)famous for feeding the vaccine/autism hoax.

The editor says The Lancet must be more careful in the future.

Translation: more of The Lancet’s future articles will support the status quo. This will reduce hoaxes, but it crowds out legitimate alternative theories.

Are academic journals even relevant? Whatever relevancy they have is mainly because the research community is clinging to an outdated model. And let’s don’t forget these wickedly expensive journals have their own fiscal incentive to perpetuate themselves.

Research is living and constantly evolving. Why then rely on a content delivery method that can only create frozen, dead documents? Where corrections require new, frozen documents? This is silly.

Some say if we don’t have journals, we effectively lose the peer review process because respected academics aren’t the gatekeepers. Hardly. Wikipedia’s not perfect, but it shows that a completely open model, that even allows anonymous editing, can produce highly reliable information. Services like the Educause-sponsored academia.edu show it shouldn’t be hard to limit involvement just to the research community–not to the “select few” researchers but the entire community. This increases veracity by at least an order of magnitude.

Richard Horton said that Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the originator of the fraudulent research, was respected politically and academically for years, and his words were taken as “gospel truth.”

Doesn’t this sound familiar? Doesn’t this sound like James Hansen, Al Gore, IPCC, etc.? All of whom deliver polemic research so political, agenda-driven, and error-full that people are stating to question the scientific basis of global warming?

He claims that a Republican senator asked for his health reform proposal. Too bad it’s remarkably ignorant.

Here’s my off-the-cuff analysis I shared with some Republican activists:

This is a colossally ignorant proposal.

“There are an estimated 10 to 20 qualified applicants for every vacancy available in U.S. medical schools.” Hogwash! Having known several applicants to medical schools, there are plenty of spots for qualified applicants. Even if many don’t get in, the simple answer is there isn’t enough capacity, so of course med schools are going to choose the best and brightest. I want to see more evidence of some conspiracy before I buy into this. Otherwise you’re diluting the quality of doctors.

I know some people at a major 4 year university who would love a med school partly because of the tidal wave of research dollars. But setting up a med school, especially when your university has no attached hospital, is so incredibly difficult as to possibly derail the rest of the university’s agenda.

“Why is there no shortage of chiropractors?” Because very little of chiropractic is medically proven. I prefer spending money on things that work, and I’ll best most Americans are the same way. I support your right to purchase ineffective treatment, but I oppose proposals like this that would legitimize it.

“For an average stay in a hospital, fifty to seventy-five percent of the charges are due to administrative costs.” No freaking way. One of his few concrete examples is “big, expensive” computer systems that are disproportionately expensive for little firms. As an IT professional, I can say this is categorically false. True, larger firms could have lower per capita IT costs, but that’s how almost anything works with efficiencies of scale.

“Three: Eliminate State Mandates and Regulatory Barriers on Health Insurance” Supposedly conservatives believe in the 10th amendment. Now reversing this stance? Sorry, can’t have it both ways. If you don’t like the policies, fight it on the state level. Don’t propose a whole new federal program.

“Four: Give Health Care Providers A Tax Credit For Charity Work [people who don't/can't pay for medical services]” Huh? Since when can’t businesses deduct losses?

“Restore the 100% Deductibility of Health Care Expenses” We already have that for the most part. Premiums are not taxed, and FSAs and HSAs fill in most the rest of the gap. It’s not perfect, but it covers a lot of the expenses for smart planners. And any amount spent over 7.5% of your income is deductible.

“Six: Reduce Malpractice Insurance Costs” Wow, you’ve unearthed 1% of health care expenses! WAY TO GO! (Note: it is a legitimate issue, but it’s not going to do much.)

“Seven:  Repeal the Kefauver Amendment” Most stupidity. This will legitimize ineffective drugs and drive up health care expenses for everyone. Say “hello” to your insurance paying for Dr. Simpson’s Healing Tonic snake oil for everyone!

“Eight: End the FDA’s War on Nutritional Supplements” The war is against quackery, like Linus Pauling’s vitamin C megadose hogwash or harmful supplements like ephedra.

Research is increasingly questioning the benefit of vitamin supplements. Also, our bodies are programmed by millions of years of evolution. The vast majority of us run fine on a balanced diet. There is no supplement concoction that makes a night-and-day difference in quality of life for the vast majority of humans who eat a reasonable diet.

Furthermore, he is using a straw man argument. There is no FDA campaign against vitamins C and E and selenium, but yet he invokes exactly that concept in the next paragraph.

“Nine:  Remove Government Restrictions Regarding the Importation of Foreign Drugs.” Guess where much of their drugs come from? There’s a reason it’s called “RE-importation.” And there’s not an infinite supply. If we seriously pursue this strategy, all that will happen is countries will prohibit drug exports to the US to preserve their cost structures. We need to instead examine and address problems with US drug policy that allows a 2-tiered system where we pay far more for drugs than the rest of the first world.

So let me loop back: should we allow importation of safe, effective drugs? Yes. Should we say it’s the fix to our excessive prescription drug costs? Heck no. We have to address the problem at its root.

“Ten: Allow the Purchase of Non-Controlled Medications Without Prescriptions” OK, this is about the dumbest idea in the stack. A great example is everyone will then start taking antibiotics without cause, and we’ll end up with a sicker population and more multidrug resistant bacterial infections. Oh, and health care costs will go up.

This is remarkably ignorant from a guy who claims to have a PhD.

This is colossal.

This is the bluest of blue states. This is Dukakis’s state. This is Kerry’s state. This is Taxachusetts. This is blue blood New England. This is the entrenched “Liberal Lion” Kennedy seat. This is the fourth most Democratic state in 2008. It’s a linchpin, the 60th Senate vote for Pelosi’s health care deformation.

So what did Massachusetts do? Voted for a Republican senator. Stopped the Democrat movement in its tracks.

Massachusetts said Obama’s, Pelosi’s, and Reid’s socialist agenda is an abomination.

Thanks you, Massachusetts!

Look at the bottom of the bright green sign:

revcom.us is “Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA”. Check out their Wikipedia page; they’re borderline treasonous.

Thanks, CNN!

But some conservatives also object to TARP salary caps. They are clinging to positions without considering context.

TARP is welfare for terribly-run firms. (I still maintain that chapter 7-style liquidations would have been better in the long run.) These firms got to the precipice of disaster because of incompetent leadership.

What will bad leaders do with cheap taxpayer cash? Line their pockets! What should bad leaders really get? Drastic pay cuts.

So what’s wrong with this salary cap? Nothing. If you got TARP funds, you have to live by reasonable restrictions. If you don’t like these restrictions, then raise capital and pay back the funds.

I am a conservative. I don’t like TARP, but I support its salary caps.

The content of the Texas Republican Platform is a telling reflection of how divided the party is and how potentially destructive the most extreme factions are. Yet consideration of political realities renders much of what’s in the platform essentially irrelevant. Most of these extreme positions absolutely cannot make it to the national platform, and local politicians who want to get elected are going to have to ignore many of these resolutions, no matter what provisions are in the platform to try to force them to comply with it. For most Republicans with any political involvement at all, this platform is going to get stuffed in a drawer while they pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s ridiculously indulgent of counterproductive extremism and an embarrassment to a party which wants to have any kind of meaningful political future.

He’s right. Review Better Platform for specific examples of the flawed platform.

The 2008 platform is a farce. After removing problem planks, the platform shrinks 70%. That’s a lot of cruft!

Some of the worst planks:

1. Theories of Origin, which calls for replacing science with religious theory.
2. Support of Our Armed Forces, an unfocused grab bag of miscellaneous requests.
3. Emergency War Powers, which alleges the United States is in some overarching state of emergency.
4. Elimination of Executive Orders, which have been used since George Washington to conduct business.
5. Illegal Immigration, which starts with gibberish and prescribes little than punishment and deportation.

I don’t yet know where this movement will go, but it’s started!