More support for a single payer system

Here's an article from the Houston Chronicle, written by the inimitable Helen Thomas, exhorting President Obama and the Congress to extend Medicare coverage to all as the most effective way to reform health care in America.

Ireland rejects electronic voting

Clearing out old news articles: Ireland decides to end their electronic voting and counting project for financial and political reasons. Quote:

The Minister noted that “the public in broad terms appear to be satisfied with the present paper-based system and we must recognise this in deciding on the future steps to be taken with the electronic voting system.” The Minister also acknowledged that “the assurance of public confidence in the democratic system is of paramount importance and it is vital to bring clarity to the present situation”.

Maybe they've noticed our own declining confidence in electronic voting machines.

Intelligent Design

Today I attended a lunch time talk on Intelligent Design. It was billed as a discussion between two speakers, so I was looking forward to a debate. Instead, it was like the opposite of a hockey game; I went expecting a fight and a nuanced agreement broke out.

The first speaker described the theory of Intelligent Design (ID) in simple terms: it's like looking at phenomena (like Mt. Rushmore) and declaring "that was obviously designed". Because, of course, first impressions are important and determinative, like seeing the face of the Madonna on a cheese sandwich.

He then argued that ID was not science, and should not be described as an alternate to evolution; ID theory is a discussion about origins of biological complexity, which could be changed and optimized by natural selection over time. In fact, ID could be billed as an alternative to atheism, so it could be brought into school in a philosophy class.

For some reason, both speakers compared ID proponents (Discovery Institute) to Galileo - a bearer of revolutionary new ideas who is being prematurely vilified. Perhaps we should give ID its opportunity to mature, at which point it will be accepted as new scientific theory?

The problem with this comparison is that Galileo was proposing a new theory which better explained how the universe worked; ID can't provide any guidance on how to study new phenomena or move the state of engineering or production forward. You can't take the concept of intelligent design and use it as an axiom for any new hypotheses or theories. In addition, Galileo wasn't trying to use state power to sell his new theory to school children; he (and all the other scientific revolutionaries they like to compare to) had to convince adults of the correctness and utility of his ideas.

Finally, the first speaker suggested ID be brought into schools as an exercise to teach children how to think critically. If children are presented with ID and with evolution, perhaps they'll do research, discuss the relative strengths of the ideas, and make up their own minds. Except that anyone who's taught or even been around at least K-8 students realizes that they're just not equipped yet with the background and knowledge (never mind the desire or readiness) to think critically about science or math. They're in foundation-laying mode, where they need to learn tenets and facts which are commonly accepted and from which they can make more sophisticated conclusions. ID gives them no tools for that, and at that developmental stage, it's inappropriate.

This argument is also hardly convincing for bringing ID into high schools either. There are so many other classes (social studies, English, etc) in which critical thinking can be taught, using so many other interesting topics, historical or from current events. Students don't need the false controversy of ID vs Evolution to develop critical thinking skills.

The second speaker asserted that it's wrong to dismiss the idea of an intelligent designer because science, by its nature, is never complete; it has room for new theories. The rebuttal to that assertion is that the concept of an intelligent designer by its nature precludes further scientific inquiry (except, perhaps, into the nature and/or existence of the designer). If you decide there is an intelligent designer who is responsible for any "irreducible" complexity, you complete all your theoretical systems with the God closure.

Random thought: can you imagine ID applied to math? Let's see, that concept is irreducibly complex, so I guess an intelligent designer just gave it to us. Move along!

The second speaker also made a reference to the possibility that keeping ID out of school curricula is potentially censorship. That doesn't seem like a reasonable assertion; I don't think anyone is attempting to stop ID personnel from promulgating their ideas in public debate, or in private schools, or even as a topic of current events. What ID antagonists object to is making ID instruction mandatory in publicly funded schools, especially in the science classroom.

In all, I found no compelling argument for mandating ID instruction in public schools. The theory of "intelligent design" is not science; it's the opposite of science, and as such does not belong in that curriculum. And if it's just a debate topic or a current event, it doesn't need to be part of any state-sanctioned curriculum.

Thinking on my feet

Last night I was called on by one of my professors to explain a case which was assigned for that class. I'd read and analyzed the case and felt prepared for almost any question. I was poorly prepared for his first one: "So, was this a hard case?"

I'm embarrassed by my flat-footed answer: "Sort of". Clearly I need to get better at thinking on my feet. Luckily this wasn't an important point, and he moved on and got to the substance of what we were trying to learn from this reading. I was not sure I could articulate clearly nor defend the wishy washy answer - but I'd like to attempt that here.

I have had the experience of reading case law in two different modes. You can read a case as a law student and a future lawyer; from this perspective, it's my opinion you're trying to get the meaning of the case and how it modifies or adds to interpretations and doctrines. You're performing a forensic function, keeping some very important bits (those which were later codified or which influenced later cases), some pretty important bits (convincing reasoning which may show up in different contexts later), and the rest. It's sometimes hard to determine exactly what's important but (especially with guidance) it's ultimately pretty straightforward.

On the other hand, you could approach the case as a (future) judge. This to me is much harder, especially for the subtle cases where the court is trying to preserve a precedent while setting some new rule or tests. Why did the court think this was important? Why was the (then current) situation untenable, generally or for this case? Could you have made a convincing argument for a different outcome? Would you have come up with these reasons for this outcome?

To me, HANNA v PLUMER could have gone either way; clearly the court felt a particular outcome was warranted, and decided the case accordingly. With hindsight, the holding make sense, and feels right. Had I been presented with the same set of facts, would I have come to the same conclusion, or would I have reacted as the lower courts did and decided differently (this case overturned a lower court decision)? That's a much harder problem.

So was this a hard case? Sort of. Depends on whether you're looking at it as a future lawyer or a future judge. Should have come up with that last night.

Keep your eye on the ball

the public option is only a means to that end...

In his speech before a joint session of Congress, President Obama dismissively described the so-called "public option" of the proposed health care reforms as a "means to an end". I get that. It's hard to argue with such broad goals as "... provid[ing] more security and stability to those who have health insurance. ... provid[ing] insurance for those who don't. And ... slow[ing] the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses and our government. ..." In a way, it's like saying "we're in Chicago right now, we want to get to Washington, DC, and there are more than one way to get there from here."

But as anyone who looks at a map can tell, some paths will get you there more quickly than others. A single payer plan such as HR 676 would be the fastest way; it clearly would provide stability and security to the insured, provide coverage to those who don't currently have it, and would control the growth of health care costs and decouple them from employment, reducing their burden on employers. A "public option" could work as well, if all health care providers are require to accept its payments (preserving your ability to choose a doctor) and if the plan has open enrollment (allowing everyone to access its benefits). The tepid "reform" proposals included in the President's speech, with no public low-cost competition for private carriers, are like walking from Chicago to California, then hoping you can hitchhike from there to DC. The byzantine regime of proposed regulations may be effective in controlling costs and keeping people healthy if they are coupled with aggressive enforcement and penalties for breach. Of course, this will inevitably add to the amount our country spends on "health care", without actually using that amount for providing care.

Let's also not lose focus on the main item insurance companies want to get from the current proposals: a mandate that everyone be required to purchase coverage in a "health plan". The insurance companies will benefit greatly by having 47 million new premiums paid (many or most subsidized by our tax dollars), and they will fight hard to make sure they can capture that revenue without onerous regulation or meaningful competition from each other or a public entity. If all we end up with is a "mandate" without a public plan to compete with private insurers, we will end up with a situation worse, not better, than what we have now.

Thank You

I have started classes at the University of Houston Law Center as a part-time/evening student. It will be a long haul, but 6 class days in I'm having a great time and am so far keeping my head above water. I'm really looking forward to each day.

I've tried my best so far to keep a balance between family, school, work, and rest. It's possible, but it's a schedule with very little slack during the week. I can juggle all the pins and keep them in the air, but if one wobbles - I need help.

When I pass the bar in a few years, it will be the result of a lot of hard work. But more importantly, it will not be possible without the moral and material support from my family and my friends. I can already see and feel everyone pitching in to make this happen, and I appreciate it greatly.

Thank you.

Keepin' it real at the Fed

As a follow up to my article about HR 1207, I offer a brief reference to a related bill, HR 3232, the PROFIT Act of 2009. A little background, perhaps, is in order.

The Great Big Bank Bailout Bill of 2008 (HR 1424 of the 110th Congress), passed with votes from Barack Obama and John McCain, was sold to the public as a necessary evil (to "stabilize the economy", right before the election) with a potential upside. Publicly, the Treasury would provide funding to banks in return for stock (in the case of at least AIG, a controlling interest), a requirement to pay what was effectively interest, and warrants, options to buy bank stock at a later time at the current (lower) price. This last provision was sold as an "upside" - the Government would enter the global casino with the hope that when the economy recovered, there would be additional money to be made to the profit of taxpayers, and we could hold our breath, cross our fingers, and hope to maybe even make a profit from all this investment. Never mind the fact that by tying the program's success to the requirement that these institutions have a future as independent entities made it much more difficult to consolidate or close them down as part of the solution.

Of course, the TARP has operated much differently from how it was sold. Because the Federal Reserve is now providing financing to banks and "banking institutions" (outside Congressional oversight; see HR 1207), funding recipients are now repaying the money they received under the public TARP. And, shockingly, the Treasury are redeeming the warrants at a fraction of their value, according to a report by the Congressional Oversight Panel. In other words, effectively providing the banks another subsidy. And this is public funding to institutions like these (from the Bloomberg article above):

[TARP special inspector general Neil] Barofsky said the TARP inspector general’s office has 35 ongoing criminal and civil investigations that include suspected accounting, securities and mortgage fraud; insider trading; and tax investigations related to the abuse of TARP programs.

We need to collectively admit the obvious: the people in charge of "fixing" or "managing" this financial crisis were either responsible for it in the first place, or were negligent in their oversight of those responsible. Starting with Reserve Chairman Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Geithner (and his predecessor Paulson) on down, these public servants need public supervision and guidance, without which they seem to pretty much be doing whatever they please with our money as long as it keeps some favored institutions in business (and profitable), and perhaps even forces competitors to fail.

Please contact your Congressional Representative and ask them to support HR 1207, HR 3232 (which requires the above-mentioned warrants to be sold in public at market prices, so we can realize those promised "profits"!), and related bills. This is the sort of oversight which should have been in the bailout to begin with; we should have kept up the pressure on our Representatives to block the bill until these safeguards were in place. Hopefully we'll do that next time.

Deeper in

I'm reading Karl Llewellyn's lectures collected in The Bramble Bush, the 2008 Oxford University Press edition, and thought I'd share another quote: this one is about assuming institutions are just so because that's the only way they could be arranged. This quote is preceded by a description of what courts and judges do, which I omit.

... I take time to say this because I deem it important that early, very early in this game you meet some counterweight against what I may call the unconscious snobbery of social institutions: against the touching faith that the current rationalizations of an institution, first, fit the facts, second, exhaust the subject, third, negate other, negate better possibilities. Nowhere more than in law do you need armor against that type of ethnocentric and chronocentric snobbery -- the smugness of your won tribe and your own time: We are the Greeks; all others are barbarians. ...

I offer the above quote to those who argue that a market based or private insurance solution to our health care crisis is important because the United States has a "tradition" of such things (a very recent one, to be sure). If that were not enough, Paul Krugman shares this report by Kenneth J. Arrow, excerpts of which are available from the World Health Organization web site; it's an economist's analysis of the factors which contribute to the observation that a market based approach does not provide optimal solutions to the pricing and provision of health care.

Question everything!

Entering the Bramble Bush

I've started reading Karl Llewellyn's lectures collected in The Bramble Bush, the 2008 Oxford University Press edition, and found these passages from Chapter 1. I may be republishing other interesting excerpts as I find them. Emphases are are in the original.

... We have discovered in our teaching of the law that general propositions are empty. We have discovered that students who come eager to learn the rules and who do lean them, and who learn nothing more, will take away the shell and not the substance. We have discovered that rules alone, mere forms of words, are worthless. We have learned that the concrete instance, the heaping up of concrete instances, the present vital memory of a multitude of concrete instances, is necessary in order to make any general proposition, be it rule of law or any other, mean anything at all. Without the concrete instance the general proposition is baggage, impedimenta, stuff about the feet. It not only does not help. It hinders. ...

... You may have missed in this discussion the common idea that the law is right, that rules of law are to be obeyed because they are right, that men have duties to uphold the law. Such ideas are not missing because they have been overlooked. They are left out because you may fairly be expected to be well aware of them already. They are left out, too, because they contain truth so partial, so faulty, as to cry out for revision in the light of some such analysis as I have been presenting. They are left out because at this stage of your approach to law your common sense is rather in the way than otherwise. Let me here say only this about rightness of the law. That if most people did not stand behind the officials, however passively, there would be little law to talk about. That if most people did not most of the time when they looked at a rule look to its purpose as well as to its exact and narrow form, and fit their conduct roughly to that purpose, then the officials would have been a burden on their hands they could not bear. And, finally, that if most people shaped their conduct really with reference to the law and to their legal rights, for any serious fraction of their time, rather than with reference to the patterns of action, the patterns of thought, the standards of judgment which they inhale as the social atmosphere they breathe, then life in our society would become unlivable. ...

I offer this in part as a response to those who look at the actions of those responsible for the current crisis in mortgage backed securities and who say "nevertheless, what they did was legal". This would also be applicable to those who excuse the actions of our government's agents toward those in its detention centers because of some technical justification by the Bush Administration's Office of Legal Counsel. Just because someone can twist the words of the law to justify reprehensible actions doesn't make those actions any less wrong.

Kudos to the Lanier Middle School Debate team

The Houston Chronicle has an article about the success of the debate team from Houston's Lanier Middle School, a public school in the Houston Independent School District. Because one of my children is on the team, I traveled with them to the 2009 National Junior Forensics League competition and was a volunteer judge for a number of events.

The experience was really enjoyable for a number of reasons. The competitors in all the different events were accomplished speakers; a number of schools stood out with impressive performances from their various team members, and it was a treat to observe them as a judge or in the audience. The Lanier group was of course one of the impressive groups, strong in both the speech/interp and debate tracks; this breadth of expertise served them well and ensured their 7th straight first-place national ranking, for although other schools were also very good in one or the other area, none were as good in both.

The other compelling reason to go again next year was the behavior of the team itself. They exhibited a welcome camaraderie with each other; for example, members would attend performances of their teammates when they were not competing themselves. As far as I saw, they were always respectful of the judges and other competitors and schools, thanking the judges after every round and congratulating the other competitors in the round when appropriate. When together, they played games or shared impressions and notes, and recognized the strengths of the other competitors. I think it was a good experience for my child to be part of such a large and supportive team.

As the team's coach Mr. Hill pointed out in the press conference, their success was due to their own hard work, but also in large part to the contributions of the alumni who returned to mentor and challenge the team, the parents who support the students, the school who value the team and treat them as champions (not just geeks!), and of course the coach, without whose guidance the students would not improve as much as they do over the years they're on the team.