Progressive Priorities

For the entire Obama administration, poll after poll has shown that the nation's top priority is jobs. But, ask any Progressive what his top priority is and he will say "income inequality". To the rest of the country, this is a pretty low priority but the Progressives are fixated on this. This not only puts them out of step with the country as a whole, it puts them at odds with it.

Raising the minimum wage is the big Progressive cause right now. To hear them talk about it, this is easy because of some basic assumptions they made.

First, they point to studies that have shown that minor raises in the minimum wage were absorbed with little loss of jobs. Then they insist that their proposed incease of nearly 40% will also be absorbed. When the Congressional Budget Office projected that it was likely to cost a half million jobs, they rushed to discredit the CBO.

I suspect that the Progressives think that the additional money will come from top executives' salaries. Nothing else explains their insistence that raising the minimum wage will have any real effect on income inequality. This reflects the influence of Marxism on their thinking where the economy is a zero sum system. No one can make money without taking it from someone else. In many ways, Progressive thinking is stuck in the 19th century.

Another assumption is that people making more than the current minimum will be given a commensurate raise. This is even included in the CBO figures. I am doubtful because of personal experience. I was working on a payroll system back during the high-inflationary late 1970s (when companies wrote their payroll systems in-house). I was asked to write a program that would raise everyone to the new minimum wage. I asked about the people who were making more than the old minimum but less than the new. I was told that they were back to minimum.

That make sense. Companies will be squeezed by the increase. They will cut corners where they can which means that they will only raise people to the new minimum.

There will also be a squeeze on cost of living raises.

So that's what the progressives want to do to the economy. There is also what they have already done. Obamacare has a number of incentives built into it that discourage job creation. They even admitted this is the most recent executive order. Mid-range employers have to swear that they did not lay people off in order to qualify for the exemption.

All things considered, the Progressives' slogan should be "Fewer but better jobs". This isn't quite accurate but it's close and it represents how they actually think. This is born out by looking at heavily unionized states vs. right to work states. The unionized states have slightly higher wages and unemployment.

The UAW Vote in Chattanooga

A few days ago workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted against organizing as part of the UAW. This was unexpected since the plant was in favor of the union. So what happened?

The short answer is that unions have almost nothing to offer anymore. I have pro-union friends on Facebook who post lists of things that unions brought us. The big problem with that list is how old all of the accomplishments are.

Unions may have been needed a century ago but things have changed. The government now performs many of the functions that unions used to provide. A highly mobile workforce means that employers have to treat workers well or lose them. Automation has replaced some of the worst jobs.

At the same time, unions have become bloated. It can't have escaped the Volkswagen employees that two of the big three American car makers needed government bailouts because of union benefits.

While they seem to have cleaned themselves up, the term "corruption" often follows "union".

Unions have also become politically active and polarized. Republican workers have little incentive to vote for unions, knowing that some of their dues will be used to help Democrats.

Put it all together and there is little incentive for workers to unionize.

Privilege and the Progressives

On Downton Abby it is easy to tell who is privileged and who isn't. In the modern way of reckoning, though, everyone on the show is privileged. In fact, most of the population is now figured to be privileged by some reasoning. In fact, no matter how poor and powerless someone may be, he may still be the beneficiary of privilege. This article has a list of ways white benefit.

This list is rather strange. There are a lot of false assumptions such as the very first one: I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time. Is it really so impossible for minorities to spend time with other minorities? This is also rather perverse since a white who wants to spend time exclusively with white would be proof of racism.

Several other points assume pervasive racism. Other points are subjective. Number 6, I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented, does not apply to sports. This almost makes a case that black privilege exists. This same is true of number 12: I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented...

Note I am assuming from context that the author is black. An Asian would have more trouble with these points but would not be complaining about other points.

The point of identifying people as being privileged is to de-legitimize them. The self-identified underprivileged are easily offended. Katy Perry was roundly criticized becuase she wore a kimono at the America Music Awards even though her performance was low-key and respectful.

Wellesley College near Boston is another example of outrage over privilege. The campus recently installed an outdoor statue that is a realistic representation of a slightly pudgy, middle-age man sleepwalking in his underwear. One complaint about the sculptor was "Mr. Matelli comes from a place of great privilege which has apparently been used to place a sculpture of the white male body on campus. I find it weirdly invasive."

Keep in mind that students enrolled in Wellesley are privileged by most standards. This is an exclusive college.

A much more virulent example comes from the Huffington Post. In a piece entitled "The Blindness of Privilege in a Time of Oppression", Writer James Peron, takes issue with a (lesbian) member of the Austrian Olympic team who said that Russian oppression is blown out of proportion. Peron's argument includes this assertion, "Iraschko-Stolz speaks from a unique position of privilege, one denied to actual victims -- namely LGBT citizens of Russia." Peron's assert, "No one suggested gay athletes would be harmed by the laws -- on the contrary, the Russian government would make sure privileged athletes are protected from anti-gay vigilantes. Given that Iraschko-Stolz is unwilling to challenge those laws -- medals are more important to her -- it is unlikely she will be bothered in any way." This is inaccurate. There were very real fears that gay athletes would be discriminated against and despite numerous assurances by the Russian government, there was still some apprehension. Peron seems to be upset that an athlete who is gay and who has fought for years to have her sport (women's high jump) included would be more concerned with competing than crusading for gay rights.

Later in the same piece, Peron takes on Rachel Maddow. Maddow, who is gay, says she sees no need to get married. Like the athlete, Maddow is apparently expected to do what is best for gays instead of herself. Peron continues:

A lot of the problems created by the second-class status of gays can be mitigated if you are wealthy enough. Maddow is, and then foolishly acted as if all LGBT people were in her position. Maddow's special financial situation means she can protect herself in ways that other people cannot. She looked at things from a position of privilege and falsely assumed everyone else had the same status.

Iraschko-Stolz is doing precisely the same thing. While "privilege" is often used to describe the position of straight, white men, that is not entirely accurate. Many people -- even lesbian athletes -- can have privileges that others do not, some by circumstance, some as the result of government policy.

This whole thing of defining people by privilege is destructive in a democracy where all people are supposed to have an equal voice.

What the CBO Really Said About Obamacare and Jobs

The Republicans seized on the summary - the equivalent of 2.5 million people will exit the workforce over the next ten years due to Obamacare. The Democrats, lead by the White House, are insisting that this is a good thing since it allows people the choice of spending more time with their kids.

I listened to the director of the CBO's testimony. What he said is that the way Obamacare is structured, it acts as an indirect tax on employment. If you do not work then you receive government subsidies for healthcare. If you get a job these subsidies are reduced or eliminated. If you get a job that does not offer health insurance then you will have to make up the difference out of your own pocket, reducing your net income.

The expectation is that many people (2.5 million) will prefer to stay home and accept government subsidies than work.

The left has been arguing this point in reverse for years in justifying an increase in the minimum wage. The theory says that if you raise the minimum wage then more people will want to work because they will receive greater benefits.

Arguing that enticing millions of more people to accept government subsidies instead of working is a strange point of view.

Ironically, an administration that worries over income inequality has created a program that will hurt the lower-end of the wage-earners more than the upper-end.

Global Warming and a Cold Winter

One cold January in the US does not prove anything one way or the other about Global Warming. It does have a lot of people wondering about the more extreme predictions. Al Gore had predicted that well before now the world would have warmed so much that Washington DC would never see another snowfall. This was demonstrably wrong.

One flaw in the warming theory is the 15 year pause in warming. Eugene Robinson recently published an answer for that. If you just discount 1998 as an outlier then everything is fine (except a closer reading of the paper in question calls for ignoring three years out of 15 instead of just one). Who is actually cherry-picking that data when you have to throw out yeas of actual weather to prove a model?

A side-note: I doubt that any true believer in 1998 said, "This year is an outlier. You can't use it to prove Global Warming."

Then there is this which explains away the cold winter. According to the embedded cartoon, winters used to be really cold then they warmed up because of Global Warming. What used to be normal now feels cold to us.

It's a very glib explanation but there are some major problems. The graph of cold days only goes back to to 1970. Even with that it is clear that the late 1970s and early 1980s were anomalous. Winters got a lot colder then they warmed up again. I remember the 1960s and days below zero were rare. A chart showing a longer period would show that there are naturally occurring warm and cold period. I'm also old enough to remember that the reason for those cold winters in the 1980s was the same reason that this winter was cold - Canadian air got deflected further south than usual.

Another major problem with this explanation is the summers. The same years that we had bone-chilling winters, we had record hot summers. A chart of days over 100 would resemble the one of days below 0. There would be a few leading up to some really hot summers in the early 1980s then a cooling. For the last couple of decades, we have not exceeded 100 in most summers.

Bottom line - the defenders of Global Warming are still on weak ground.

Immigration Reform

For those who complain that immigration reform proposals amount to amnesty, there are some points to consider.

The most important is that the current policy amounts to de facto amnesty. They are here in the millions and they are not leaving. The longer immigration reform is held up the more intrenched they will become.

The flow of immigrants coming in from Mexico has slowed to a trickle. There are several reasons for this including increased border security and the relative strength of the Mexican economy to the American one. Regardless, stopping the flow of illegals is not as urgent as it was.

There are to many here to deport. Estimates put the illegal population in the US as between 20 and 30 million. The high end is close to 10% of the population. There is no way that they can be rounded up and deported. Any attempt would be politically impossible because it evokes images of Nazi Germany.

There are societal costs to the current system (non-system?). Some illegal immigrants pay their taxes (possibly using someone else's SSN) but not all do. Many are unlicensed and uninsured drivers. Their illegal status makes them reluctant to call the police which makes them victims of crime.

Something must be done about all of this and it has to include a way for the people already here to stay legally. This is not optional nor is it partisan. There is no alternative. So some compromise has to be worked out.

Deal with it.

The NSA

In a sign of how damaging the NSA revelations, President Obama spent Martin Luther King Day on the Tonight Show doing damage control with Jay Leno. According to Obama, the whole thing is President Bush's fault (of course) and Obama reviewed what was being collected and made needed reforms. Not mentioned was that Obama waited 5 years before making any reforms or an acknowledgement that this would never have happened had it not been for the Snowden leaks.

Obama also said that the safety of America is the last thing he thinks about when he goes to bed and the first thing he things about when he gets up. That's comforting to those of us who believes that his thoughts were "How can I screw the Republicans?"

Despite the reforms, the government is still keeping records of every phone call, email, and text message that it can get it's hands on. The justification is that it "keeps us safe". When pressed, the actual desire is to try to identify other terrorists once one has been identified.

There are problems with this approach. One is that it is reactive. It doesn't really keep us safe. Another is that it is too wide a net. Anyone who was ever on the phone (or exchanged emails, etc.) with a suspected terrorist becomes a suspect and possibly anyone who was ever on the phone with that person. The NSA refuses to say why people are added to no-fly lists. What if people are added because they called someone who called someone who is suspected of being a terrorist?

Given the massive amount of data collected, false positives are too likely. A recent report says that 140,000,000 text messages are collected daily.

There are other issues. The data is subject to misuse. Executive orders can be rescinded in private. The government has a spotty record on this. The IRS went after the President's political enemies under Obama and Nixon. Raw FBI files were given to Clinton political advisers. The FBI violated Martin Luther King's rights multiple ways.

The data is not particularly secure. Snowden was just a contractor but was able to access state secrets. The new proposals call for the phone companies to house this data which will make it as safe as credit cards were with Target.

All of this makes the spying hard to justify, even if it was effective. Outside audits say that it has a negligible effect. That makes it impossible to justify.

Candidate Obama promised transparency into programs like this. President Obama needs to follow up on that promise. The NSA needs to quit collecting data on the citizens of the US and of the world unless there is an actual need that has been reviewed by an accountable judiciary.

The Problems with PolitiFact

Last year the fact-checking site PolitiFact drew conservative criticism after they declared that the "Lie of the year" was "[Mitt Romney] Says Barack Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China" at the cost of American jobs." As it turned out, Chrysler is building a plant in China which is due to open this year. Even granting that the plant will be making Jeeps for the Chinese, it still means that Romney's statement was true.Politifact never went back and reevaluated their assessment.

This year the Lie of the Year was President Obama's statement, "If you like your insurance you can keep it period." This hasn't made conservatives any happier since PolitiFact evaluated this statement several times over the last 5 years and never found it to be false. In their summary they dropped the original evaluation from 2008 which was rated 100% true.

Despite claiming to be neutral, PolitiFact does have left-leaning biases. These break down into three categories.

The first is the rating system they use. Politicians seldom make statement that are totally true or false. They cherry-pick facts or rely on one study when conflicting ones exist. Typically, PolitiFact does a fairly good job of sorting through this. Then the column is given to a panel of editors to rate. This is where things get subjective and biases creep in. It is not uncommon for a liberal who relies on one of many studies to get a rating of "mainly true" while a conservative will get "mainly false". Often the editors seize on some minor point to justify their rating, leaving people who read the entire column scratching their head.

Example: A rating of the claim that ObamaCare does not mandate a background check of "navigators" is examined. They admit that this is true. There is nothing in the law or the related regulations to keep someone convicted of identity theft from getting a job as a navigator. So how do they rate the claim? They give it a Half-True because individual states can mandate background checks.

The second problem is when they already know the answer. They don't even try to search out competing experts. They as experts that will support their conclusion. This is known as confirmation bias. This happens anytime they evaluate statements on Global Warming or the Social Security Trust Fund.

I was going to give a recent example of this where the statement being evaluated was that warming has stopped for the last 15 years but I can't find it on their site. As I remember it, they talked to experts who said that the warming might be going elsewhere than the atmosphere and insisted that 15 years is not significant. They went on to give the claim a Pants On Fire rating. This is strnage given that the statement is true.

The final problem is selection bias. This means choosing statements from conservatives that are more likely to be false an ones from liberals that are more likely to be true. They spent a lot of time fact-checking Michele Bachmann, almost always finding her wrong but they failed to evaluate everything she said. One example was her widely-ridiculed statement that our fore-bearers fought against slavery, giving John Quincy Adams as an example. Pundits insisted that she Fore-bearers meant Founding Fathers and that she had confused J. Q. Adams with his father. In fact, "fore-bearers" simply means people who came before us and J. Q. Adams was a life-long opponent of slavery (among other things, he represented the captives of the Armistad). Given how often Bachmann's statement was quoted, it deserved to be rated.

Obama's Bad Year

There is no question that President Obama had a bad year. Nearly every president has problems in his second term. But Obama's management style made this a particularly bad year.

President Obama is not really interested in every aspect of being president. He loves some parts. When he says "I'm really good at killing people" he really means that he likes going through lists of potential drone targets deciding who will live and who will die. It's the parts that he is not interested in that cause him problems.

Obama does not care much for foreign policy. His original goal was to reverse everything that Bush did. He alienated long-standing allies like Great Britain and India and courted Russia. Since then he has let foreign affairs drift with a reactive policy rather than a pro-active one. He supports whoever is in power until it is obvious that they are about to be removed then he says they should go. The rest of the world no longer trusts him or the US and the Muslim world is outraged by his increasing use of drones.

Domestically he prefers short-term political wins over long-term solutions. These often backfire on him. He was regarded as winning the fiscal cliff showdown at the beginning of the year but that led to the sequester which was supposed to be so harmful that the Republicans would do anything to prevent it. The Republicans decided that a bad set of budget cuts was better than any deal they could get from the White House and Obama was embarrassed when the world failed to end.

Obama hates to hear bad news and the White House is set up to shield him from any. That means that he is constantly surprised by scandals. The failure of the Obamacare web site, the IRS targeting of conservative groups and the constant leak about the scope of NSA spying all caught him be surprise. In each case he excused himself from responsibility claiming that he was as surprised as anyone when he found out about these from the newspapers.

It is difficult to govern properly without full knowledge of events. If Obama had been told about the numerous problems with Obamacare he could have acted differently during the shutdown. He could have agreed to a one-year postponement and spent 2014 excoriating the Republicans. Instead he stood firm until the Republicans surrendered. This gave him a short term advantage in that the Republicans approval rating dropped more than his did but this was drowned out by the failure of Obamacare.

There has always been a great deal of arrogance in the Obama administration. They were sure that they ould remake the world and that lead to overreach. One high-level progressive who deals with the White House complains that "they think their shit doesn't stink". This reenforces Obama's tendency to seek political wins rather than compromise. This also causes him to bypass Congress completely and use executive authority to implement his preferred policies.

There is no sign of any major changes in the White House. No one has been fired. Instead a new spin-artist has been brought in. Inevitably, Obama will have more disasters breakout and will continue to flail about in a reactive mode.

Culture Wars & Santa Penguin

Around a week ago Slate Columnist Aisha Harris wrote a column proclaiming that Santa Claus should no longer be represented as an old white man. In stead he should be a penguin. That inspired Fox News' Megyn Kelly to say that Santa is white as is Jesus. The controversy has spiraled since then.

I'll save Harris's column for last and start with the controversy. The Left has been jumping all over Kelly for her assertions that Jesus and Santa were white. Nonsense, they say. Jesus was Jewish and Santa was Turkish (Harris claimed that he was Greek). This is a subject that most on the Left normally would never touch with a ten foot pole. Normally it's only racists who start saying that Jews and people from the Middle-East in general aren't white. Bill O'Reilly suggested that this is a false controversy stirred up to demonize Fox News. It's hard to argue with that.

The actual Jesus was, of course, Israeli and probably had black hair and brown eyes. Saint Nicholas was from Asia Minor (now Turkey) and also probably had dark hair and brown eyes. Neither would have had brown skin and neither was a sub-Sahara African. Santa Clause came to us through the Dutch who changed his name and celebrated him as the patron saint of children (also mariners and pawn brokers). He was really introduced to Americans around 200 years ago in the classic poem A Visit From St. Nick. The description was of a white man with rosy cheeks. That image was set by the end of the 19th century and refined with some 20th century Coke ads.

So, what brought on Harris's original column? Sometime in the last 20 years or so, black families started putting up representations of Santa with dark skin. When Harris asked her father about this, she was old that Santa is all colors. She internalized this and became offended that the "default representation" of Santa is white. To some extent her original column is a complaint that Santa is supposed to be represented as many colors. Since whites don't do this then the image needs to be taken away from them.

All of this is news to most whites who seldom see the Black Santa and never heard Harris's father explain that Santa is all colors.

Harris is part of a growing minority movement that says, "It hurts my feelings when you remind me that I'm in the minority." This includes complaints about teaching history as "dead white guys".

People need to step back and take a breath. Kelly did not say anything particularly outrageous and the faux-outrage is mainly an attempt to discredit Fox News.

Minorities do need better representation in the media but making over major symbols such as Santa Claus is highly divisive and leads to worsening racial relations.

Is Obamacare Here to Stay?

A few days ago columnist Dana Milbank proclaimed:

But fixing the Web site after its embarrassing launch means that opponents of the Affordable Care Act have lost what may have been their last chance to do away with the law. And supporters can rule out the worst-case scenario: Obamacare isn't going away.

Is this true?

First, the site is working much better than at launch but it still fails 20% of the time. Any private company that rejected 1 out of 5 characters would be out of business fast. It shows how bad the site was at launch that this can be considered fixed.

There is also the issue of the back-end. The information going to insurance companies is often wrong or incomplete. No information has been released about the error rate but the rumor is that up to a third of the applications processed to date have been bad. Again, and private company that screwed up to one third of it's orders could not stay in business.

Obamacare is a lesson in the limits of government. The site was badly implemented by people who had no idea what they were doing. The people at the top had no idea that the site was not working, they discouraged the people below them from giving them bad news. None of this inspires confidence in the government's ability to implement Obamacare.

These are technical issues and can be solved. There are bigger problems coming up. The exchanges have not been attracting the right mix of applicants which will affect future premiums. People will find that they are losing their doctor as well as the policies they like.

There is also the issue of people who lost their coverage. The site will have to sign up nearly a quarter million people daily all month just to break even. If the immediate result of Obamacare is that more people lost their coverage than gain it then popularity for it will drop even more.

So, there will be continuing pressure to repeal Obamacare. President Obama has made it clear that he will fight any attempt to change or repeal it. That makes it harder but it is still possible. A lot depends on how much public sentiment goes. If things keep going bad with the implementation then Congress will end up running from it. Several Democrats are from states with Republican governors. They last ran in 2008 with a Democratic wave and Obama on the top of the ticket. They will have neither of those in 2014. Will any decide to turn their backs on Obamacare and join with the Republicans? It takes 66 votes to override a Presidential veto but that could be reachable.

It will be even more possible if the Republicans regain the Senate and increase their seats in the House. Continuing problems with Obamacare could easily cause this.

Assuming that Obama blocks all efforts at repeal, there is a very good chance that he will be succeeded by a Republican. The next president might even run on a platform of repealing Obamacare.

All of this assumes that the whole thing will be a failure. It is possible that the problems will resolve themselves quickly and that people will forgive Obama for his "if you like your policy you can keep it" lie. It all depends on how much faith you have in big government.

NBC turns on Obama

NBC News featured two stories last night that show that their love affair with President Obama is over.

The first was a detailed look at the deal with Iran. They made it clear that both sides walked away thinking that it had won because of the use of ambiguous language about the enrichment of uranium. While this is supposed to be clarified within 6 months, it was the major sticking point during previous negotiations and is not likely to be easily resolved. This report undercut the Obama claim that the treaty is a win.

The second was more serious. It was on the effect of the Obamacare tax on "Cadillac" health plans on real people. They showcased a couple whose employer-provided coverage was considered too good and cut back. Their deductible was raised from zero to $10,000 and hip surgery that one of them had would have cost a great deal more if she had it next year. This report was a terrible blow to the official line that the only people affected are self-insured with sub-standard policies. It adds a new footnote to Obama's repeated promise that you can keep your policy: as long as it does not exceed an arbitrary maximum.

Put together, these stories sound more like Fox than NBC. Keep in mind that NBC News' sister operations is MSNBC which bills itself as the liberal alternative to Fox and you can see what a significant change this is.

Power Grabs

Remember back when President Bush was a threat to the Constitutional fabric of our government because of the number of signing statements he made? Consider our current administration.

The President has expanded the powers of the office in many significant ways. In some case he has ordered agencies to assume additional power as the EPA has by bypassing Congress and ordering new mileage standards. More worrisome, he has simply used executive orders to bypass laws he finds inconvenient. The most significant of these were his order implementing the Dream Act and his postponing enforcement of elements of Obamacare. Bizarrely, he threatened to veto any legislation that actually gave him the authority for these actions.

Last week the Senate joined the President in grabbing power. They exercised the "nuclear option" and eliminated the filibuster for certain offices.

Obama's power grabs are easy to understand. He has little respect for the Constitution and hates working with Congress so he simply goes around it. He will not have to live with the consequences since he will be out of office before anyone else can follow his precedent.

The Senate is different. There is a good chance that the Democrats will lose control of Congress in a year and the White House in 3 years. There will be lots of opportunities for them to regret setting this precedent. So why did they?

My best guess is that they expect to lose the Senate in 2014 so they see this as their last chance to stock the courts with ideologically left judges.    

Conspiracy Theories

When something big happens there is a tendency to want answers. The most immediate quesition is "how could this happen?" Among those who believe in big government, mainly Progressives and big-government Republicans, the question becomes, "How could the government have let this happen?" This gives rise to conspiracy theories.

On the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's assasination, the many conspiracy theories are being resurected. There is little to any of these. Most of them assume the coperation of the Vice-President, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and leaders from both parties in Congress. The reasons given for assasination are even murkier. They mainly rest on the hope that Kennedy would have reversed himself on Viet Nam and withdrew troops instead of escallating and that vested interests were willing to kill him for this. This isn't even a stretch, it is preposterous.

The need to find meaning through government involvement can be seen in other tragedies. The 911 Truth movement was the same - people could not believe that something that big coud happen without the government allowing or even staging it.

Going back further we find debates about Franklin Roosevelt knowing about Pearl Harbor and allowing it to happen.

The sad truth is that terrible things happen and the government can't stop it.

Obamacare and the Progressives

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Ronald Reagan

That quote bothers President Obama to no end but the rollout of Obamacare proved it and gives a lot of insight into the flaws of the Progressives and their desire for expanding government. There are three main traits that cause major problems.

Overreach

I've complained for years that the Progressives think that they are the smartest people who ever lived. They are like college students who sit around and say "If we were only in power then we would fix everything." Most students outgrow this phase but it is central to the Progressives. They have no idea of their own limits. In the case of President Obama, he doesn't even recognize limits. During the transition following is election in 2008 he complained about how difficult it was for him to hire a cabinet since he could do everyone's job better than anyone else.

With Obamacare, they underestimated how difficult it would be to set up the insurance exchanges. They trusted people who had never managed a major software project to take on one of immense scope.

When the flaws in the web site became undeniable, the first impulse of the left was to complain that the real problem was that they hadn't seized enough control. If they had only implemented Single Payer or made Medicare universal, everything would be perfect.

At the same time, they deny the problems with Single Payer and Medicare. Both are massive programs so they must be perfect.

Paternalism

A base premise of Obamacare is that individuals can't be trusted to make the right choices about their insurance. You might be tempted to buy the wrong coverage or, worse, go without. When people first began complaining about cancelled policies, they were told that the policies they had were junk and that they should be glad to go to the (non-working) exchanges and buy new policies with proper coverage.

This leads right into the third trait:

Politics

For decades, the NOW as complained that women's health insurance costs more than men's (while staying quiet about men's auto insurance costing more than women's). The reason or this is simple - women use more services. That is unacceptable so Obamacare decrees that everyone has to include maternity coverage. Other interest groups are included for the same reason - to reduce the costs for the people who are most likely to use the coverage.

This was a purely political decision and this sort of thing happens every time the government gets involved. Interest groups start asking for special favors.

Put it all together and you have a system that is more likely to make things worst than to make them better.

Obamacare and the Real World

The roll-out of Obamcare and the insurance exchanges offer a look into how government works. By comparing this with how private business handles major projects, we can see why the government is unsuited for handling projects on this scale.

This was a huge project. It should have had a three-year implementation. Instead it was created in less than a year. This was because of politics. Major decisions were postponed until after the election.

Other major decisions such as forcing people to create an account before being able to compare rates were made late in the process forcing a redesign of the web site.

When it was close to the implement date, the company doing the work warned the government officials that there were likely to be major issues but it was decided that a delay in implementation was unacceptable. In fact, the site was not fully operational at launch with important parts such as the security questions waiting for values and problems interfacing between the dozens of agencies involved have not been solved. This was another political decision.

Finally, warnings that the site was going to fail were kept from the President.

As a result of all of this, we had the President of the United States stood before the American people and claimed said that the site would be as easy to use as a travel site. Three weeks later he said that he had found out the problems from the news reports and that they were a combination of glitches and demand.

How would all of this play out in the real world?

First, a product launch date is determined by an estimate of how long the project will take. No one starts with an implementation date and works backwards.

Once a release date is set, other dates are set. Major design changes are frozen far enough ahead to prevent them from interfering with the release date. As the date grows closer, smaller decisions are frozen. As the date approaches, all changes are frozen except for bug fixes.

The features should be frozen by the testing phase. A few feature can restart the testing phase from scratch. The system should also go through a load test to see what will happen under the expected load.

Projects do inevitably fall behind. When that happens, either the release date is moved or features are cut or both.

Upper management is given a realistic appraisal of the status.

Finally, if a bad product does make it out, the person at the top apologizes and people are fired. When Apple implemented a bad maps replacement, their chairman apologized. When Microsoft had a bad roll-out with Windows 8 and the Surface tablets, several top managers lost their jobs and the top man, co-founder Steve Balmer, was forced to accept early retirement.

With Obamacare, major decisions were made based on politics and no one has been held accountable. And this is just a web site.

The Hidden Facts about Obamacare

For the past two weeks, the government shutdown drowned out the coverage of the Obamacare roll-out. It was a disaster but even if that had been covered, there are a host of deeper problems. In increasing importance they are:

The exchanges are a mess. Outside reviews say that the exchanges were written with 1990s technology. They are slow partly because they are exchanging data with dozens of other sites.

The Affordable Care Act isn't. The policies offered are much more expensive that prior coverage. The subsidies help some for people who qualify but even so, many people who managed to get through the software are experiencing sticker shock. The assumption was that healthy people would cover those with pre-existing conditions. It appears that the healthy people still need to pay an unhealthy surcharge to cover the pre-existing people. There was a reason that insurance companies refused to cover pre-existing conditions. It was not that they were heartless or greedy, it was that they couldn't do it and stay in business.

The biggest problem is that Obamacare is going to crash and burn. Between the difficulties in signing up, the poor rates, and the modest penalties for not buying coverage, Obamacare is not going to get enough people signed up. The only people who are motivated to sign up are the ones with pre-existing conditions. Without a large proportion of healthy people subsidizing them, the exchanges will come up short and the rates will rise astronomically. Fixing the software will not fix the problem with the rates. That's baked into the system.

All of this will become self-evident in the next few months. Opponents of Obamacare have until then to think of a workable solution to the problem of the uninsured with pre-existing conditions.

Why Did They Do It?

For weeks, possibly months, leading up to the government shutdown the White House and the Left openly wished for a shutdown. They learned the lessons of the shutdowns under President Clinton - that no matter what really happens, the President can use his bully pulpit to blame his opponents and will come out of it politically strengthened.

At the same time the far right made a hysterical appeal to defund Obamacare. They insisted that President Obama would abandon the program that he sees as his legacy. This played well with fund-raisers and raised the visibility of some Tea Party favorites but is counter-productive.

The result of all this is that the Republican brand has been diminished. Republicans are polling at their lowest numbers in years.

Worse, they helped Obamacare. Last night, NBC's top story was on the shutdown and it's effect on the Republicans. It was not until 8 minutes in that they spent time covering what a total failure the exchanges are. Without the Tea Party, the top story would be how unprepared the programs are. If the Republicans had stayed out of the way then public pressure to delay and replace Obamacare would have grown on its own.

That was a squandered opportunity.

It's time for this vocal group to admit a few realities. They are not the only ones in this fight and other strategies are more likely to succeed. They need to stop attacking compromise and learn from President Reagan who never attacked a fellow Republican in public, no mater what.

Obamacare needs to fail on its own. It is not instantly addictive. Lots of people have been hurt by it. The exchanges are not ready and the rates are too high. Instead of distracting people from these problems, the right needs to be highlighting them.

They also need an alternative. Obamacare passed because of a real problem - the fear of being being uninsured with an expensive illness. The Republicans need a solution to this that they can sell.

Shutting down the government will only hurt Republicans in the 2014 and 2016 elections. The only hope of replacing Obamacare lies in taking the Senate and the White House.

What's Wrong With the Exchanges?

When the insurance exchanges went live last week, people all over the country tried to access the system. Almost none of them got in? Almost none of them got in. The official explanation was that the opening day crowd overloaded the system.

The few who did get in discovered that they had to create an account before they could browse insurance rates. Creating an account includes answering some personal questions based on information from credit agencies. This would be similar to Amazon requiring you to enter your credit card and shipping information before it shows you the top seller list.

Several things are going on. The first is that the system just wasn't ready. Three years is a short amount of time to create a system like this from scratch. The system has not been properly load tested and there are numerous bugs left in the system. It is an alpha release rolled out as a finished product.

The Obama Administration should have admitted that the exchanges weren't ready and delayed implementation. They did not for political reasons.

The requirement to create an account before you see rates is different. It turns web sites on their head but it makes sense if you remember the Obama Administration's history of being to clever by half.

I suspect that the designers had two thoughts in mind. The first was that everyone has to sign up for insurance so they might as well force them to create an account at the beginning.

The second consideration is that the policies in the exchanges aren't that good. If you allowed someone to just browse, they might see this and give up, especially when presented with a complicated enrollment process. By putting the enrollment up front, it means that people have already invested time in the process. Even if they don't like the policies offered, they are more likely to choose one to justify the time and effort they have already put into the exchanges.

Shutdown Follies

Various thoughts on the government shutdown:

The most important one is "What was the Tea Party thinking?" Did thye really think that President Obama would give up what he sees as his legacy? Yes, Obama is willing to cut deals with murderous dictators and rogue theocracies but his heart isn't in those fights. His only interest in foreign affairs was getting out of Bush's wars.

The shutdown was a disaster for the movement to repeal and replace Obamacare. It enforced the belief that, once in place it can't be removed. The headlines should have been about the breakdown of the exchanges and how few of the people who actually get through are signing up for coverage. Instead the top stories are about people hurt by the shutdown with a subtext about heartless Republicans.

What is not getting covered is that it takes two sides to have an impasse. Obama and the Democrats are refusing to negotiate, period. They need to throw the Republicans a bone for the good of the country. Instead they are too busy looking at the harm the shutdown is doing to the Republican brand and counting on that for winning the 2014 elections.

The Democrats are being ingenuous about the dispute. Obama and others emphasize that it is over just one law without acknowledging the massive scope of that one law.

I've also seen the argument that representative government requires that the Republicans accept the law. There is some truth to that. Obamacare was not a major issue in the last election and the Republicans have only managed to take one house of Congress. The flip side to that is that Obamacare was passed with the slimmest of margins, only by using legislative tricks and opinion polls showed that it never had a majority behind it.

The worst thing about the showdown is that Obamacare is not ready but it was implemented anyway. If not for Obama's reluctance to deal with the enemy (Republicans) it would have been delayed for at least a year.