Yes, I meant “stupid.”

Background: the TCEQ must improve air quality in parts of Texas that don’t comply with Clean Air Act standards. In 2001 and 2002, in 17 Texas counties around Houston and Dallas/Ft. Worth, all 70 and 65 mph speed limits were reduced by 5 mph. The TCEQ surmised this would cause a 5.5 mph speed reduction (they assumed average speeds are 10% over the limit) and a modest emissions reduction.

In fact, ESLs don’t clean the air. Arbitrary speed limit changes have little, if any, effect on actual speeds. Further, the TCEQ wildly overestimated ESLs’ emissions benefit. Compared to total emissions reduction needs, ESLs’ true contribution is somewhere between imaginary (i.e., nonexistent) and a rounding error.

Here’s what arbitrarily low limits really do: turn safe motorists into lawbreakers, undermine respect for the law and police, and make roads less safe due to more speed variance.

The cost/benefit ratio is out of whack!

If that’s not bad enough, the vast majority of theoretical ESL benefits come from heavy trucks, not passenger cars! This means the vast majority of hassled motorists are barely even contributing to this imaginary emissions benefit.

The Texas Legislature saw the stupidity of ESLs and prospectively banned them as of September 1, 2003. “Prospective” here means already-enacted ESLs can remain but new ones cannot be imposed. They had to do this because repealing then-existing ESLs would cause Texas to lose federal highway dollars.

Now the TCEQ is the relaxing ESL rules for DFW: ESLs are now a “transportation control measure.” This means that, instead of explicitly requiring ESLs, DFW’s Clean Air Act implementation plan will only require their (imaginary) emissions reduction. Therefore, ESLs can be eliminated if their (imaginary) emissions reduction is made up by some new emissions reduction. Without this change, any ESL changes also require a thorough analysis and an EPA rubber stamp if Texas is to retain federal highway dollars.

What prompted this? Recently, the North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA) raised many of its speed limits. A portion of its roadways were subject to ESLs–the Dallas North Tollway between Frankford Rd. and TX-121 and the parts of the George Bush Turnpike that were open before 9-1-2003. The NTTA justified disregarding ESLs because their (imaginary) emissions reductions were offset by the ongoing conversion to all-electronic tolling (elimination of toll booths).

Now what does this mean for other roads? Probably little. If the TCEQ and EPA wanted to practice intellectual integrity, they would have ditched ESLs long ago and done something else. But in the fantasy world of their bureaucrats, ESLs have a slight contribution towards required emissions reductions, so they cannot be dropped outright without jeopardizing highway funds.

The only way I see additional DFW highway speed limits increasing is one of these scenarios:

1. Some road improvement causes an emissions reduction and this improvement is A. is not already part of the DFW Clean Air Act implementation plan and B. affects a road that existed as of 2000, when the emissions plan went into effect.
2. Overall DFW emissions reduction needs are lowered, which I think is unlikely given that we’re looking down the barrel of even more stringent standards.
3. ESLs are technically defined as a 5 mph speed limit reduction from a 70 or 65 mph limit. Roads that have a 60 mph limit today, but used to have a 65 limit before 2001 (when the ESLs went into effect), could be rezoned for 70 mph and then have an 65 mph ESL.
4. Roads never subjected to ESLs in the first place could get increases. These include any roads with a 60 mph or lower limit before 2001 or any road that didn’t exist before 2003.

And, no, the [Social Security Trust Fund] could not have been invested elsewhere. First, it would have overwhelmed the private investment markets. (Scott Burns, The “Truth” about Social Security)

What he’s talking about: The Social Security Trust Fund was a hoax even when Alan Greenspan started it. It represents money the government “borrowed” from itself and then spent.

It’s like spending from my retirement account and then putting IOUs in my wallet. Those IOUs are worthless; they are not an asset. The Social Security Trust Fund is the same thing; it has no value.

But you say, “The government could have saved the money…” Um, yeah, holding $2,300,000,000,000 ($2.3 trillion) means deflation. Then spending it down would be inflationary.

Or it could have invested $2,300,000,000,000–meaning the government owns $2,300,000,000,000 of the “private” economy. That’s called a state-controlled economy, run by the same geniuses who brought us drivers’ license offices.

Even a 50%/50% compromise is terrible: $1,150,000,000,000 in withheld cash and $1,150,000,000,000 of government-owned economy.

Social Security is, by necessity, a “pay as you go” system. There is no way to save for the future. If Social Security costs too much, then we’ve over-promised.

Belief in the Social Security Trust Fund hoax isn’t left vs. right, regressive vs. progressive, Republican vs. Democrat. This is truth vs. lying.

Up close:

The Celtics and Bruins are for-profit commercial firms owned by Wycliffe Grousbeck and Jeremy Jacobs. For-profit as in the same kind of corporate entity as Exxon, Microsoft, and Citibank.

I’d love someone to do an open records request and see how much Wycliffe and Jeremy paid Massachusetts for this. I’ll bet nothing!

This appears sleazy. But what else should I expect from the state of the Kennedy dynasty and John Kerry?

Above is my interview with Dallas’s WFAA channel 8, broadcast on March 23, 2010, which was about my Texas’s Worst Speed Traps article.

WFAA also talked to Keller Police Chief Mark Hafner. He disputed that Westlake is a speed trap. (Westlake contracts policing to Keller PD.) He says, “When we took over policing in 2002, Highway 114 had 3-4 fatals a year. In the last 2 years, we have not had a fatal accident on highway 114.”

I pulled all Westlake auto fatalities from 1996-2008 on a graph. Remember that Keller took over policing in 2002. Here’s the graph:

(Important note:1996-1998 really did have 0 fatalities, but no ticket data was available from the state.)

Sorry, I see no correlation. Do you? Except maybe a lack of a correlation between fatal wrecks and tickets–although I admit that you can’t draw much of a conclusion from this limited data. Plus TX-114 was recently rebuilt in the area, but I can’t find answers yet on how this affected Westlake’s portion. (EDIT 3/26/10: According to State disputes Westlake speed limit (Fort Worth Star-Telegram),TX-114 reconstruction through Westlake was completed in late 2002.)

But wait, there’s more!

Let’s narrow down Westlake fatalities just to TX 114:

1 fatality on occasional years on Westlake’s TX-114, a far cry from “3-4 fatals a year.”

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!