The Cowtown Chronicles

A good friend of mine brought up an interesting point of view that I hadn’t considered in the Health Care debate.

He said that he opposes massive overhauls to the health care system because he likes the idea of companies and entrepreneurs being motivated by profit to conduct research and take risks, thereby advancing the quality of care in the US.

I didn’t think of it at the time (we had been drinking, of course), but this argument is kind of a false choice. I don’t think there’s any evidence that the amount or quality of health-related research would decline under any of the proposed reforms. As far as I can tell, none of the reforms would turn healthcare into a not-for-profit business.

Forgetting the profit motivation for a moment, I have to wonder about WHY people go into heath-related fields. I’m sure there’s a not insignificant number of folks who do it because they see an opportunity to make a lot of money.

I don’t think that’s the whole story, though. If people were only motivated by money, we wouldn’t have firefighters, a professional military, police officers, elementary or high-school teachers, and a whole bunch of other public-service folks who don’t make squat relative to the education required or risks they face. Humans are hard-wired to look out for each other. Some people manifest this urge more than others. I call it the “hyperactive public service gland.”

I think that if there was still a chance to make a decent living, we wouldn’t see any decline at all in the amount or quality of medical research in this country.

Let’s also look at the focus of this research and WHY the research needs to be done.

An excessive amount of research dollars are spent on diseases that are either preventable (diet-related things like diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, etc.) or could be greatly reduced through a healthier lifestyle and environmental fixes, like various cancers. Focus on preventing those problems (which would be REALLY, REALLY cheap to prevent compared to the ongoing costs of trying to fight the problems after they’ve developed), and you’ve freed up all kinds of money that could be spent on research to solve the really hard things like HIV/AIDS and the like.

Once again, if you’re only focusing on the current outcomes when looking for places to reform, you’re missing the big picture and the easiest and cheapest reforms which would make a world of difference.

I don’t think I need to tell any of you what Joe Wilson did that launched him to national infamy (infancy?), or really describe the fall-out from his outburst. You’re all smart people who read a lot and are up on current events. (At least I imagine you are. I hope like crazy that you’re not like the nutjobs that comment on newspaper websites.)

Anyway, why am I, an avowed Liberal, thanking a back-bencher Congresscritter from South Carolina?

Wilson (unwittingly, I’m sure) opened the door to an honest assessment of just how unhinged from FACTS the ultra-right is in all of their dealings.

President Obama stated that the proposed reforms to Sick Care would not cover illegal immigrants, and that statement is a FACT.

Joe Wilson called the President (of the United States, in one of the most hallowed halls of representative government) a liar because the President has stated that he doesn’t support the onerous, nearly useless, and VERY expensive citizenship verification requirements that Republicans have tried to write into the bill. (Language that is very similar to the disenfranchising voter ID BS they’ve tried repeatedly to ram down our throats, despite NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER of actual voter fraud happening as a result of a lack of legislation.)

So, who’s the liar?

Not the President. The current House bill states clearly that illegal immigrants are not entitled to the coverages provided by the reforms. Because Joe Wilson doesn’t like that the President disfavors Joe’s pet anti-immigrant and anti-poor-person provision doesn’t make the President a liar or his statement a lie.

What ultimately comes out of this is clear evidence that ultra-cons really don’t care about TRUTH or FACTS or actually TALKING about sickcare in real terms. Instead, they’d rather demonize Democrats for actually trying to DO SOMETHING about our completely failed and unfair system. (A system from which a very few people get VERY rich, which — in case you haven’t guessed by now — is the only thing that ultra-cons give a shit about.)

So, thanks Joe, for exposing the truth of your party’s complete and utter rejection of reality and honest debate.

I had a great discussion with a good friend of mine tonight (and by “tonight” I mean at the bar just before it closed) about Obama’s healthcare plan and new Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, etc. My friend claims to be a conservative, but I don’t believe him — he’s got too kind of a heart to be what passes for a conservative these days.

Anyway, our discussion got me thinking –

Politics and questions about who’s going to pay for it aside, the question I keep asking about our “healthcare” system is this:

Are the literally life and death decisions that get made in the “healthcare” process the kind of decisions that we as a society want to leave up to a cog in the wheel of a for-profit company? Can anyone seriously say with a straight face that they trust the motives and intentions of a profit-motivated private corporation more than those of a government employee who doesn’t have to give a second thought to how much money he or she (or their company) is going to make or lose on a given case?

1959 TCU grad Bob Schieffer will be hosting his annual Symposium, titled: “Obama and the Press: Is the media doing its job?”

Panelists scheduled to attend:

David Brooks, of the New York Times

Gwen Ifill, author of “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama” (also moderator and managing editor of PBS’ Washington Week

Andrea Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News

Mark Shields, nationally syndicated columnist and commentator on PBS’ Newshour with Jim Lehrer

That’s a pretty bad-ass lineup of journalistic luminaries! I wonder if I can get them all into Scat Jazz Lounge after the Symposium? I’ll bet Andrea Mitchell could drink my buddy Steve under the table.

Fort Worth State Representative Mark Veasey filed a bill this session that would require Texas State Agencies to create all of their documents in an open, freely-available file format standard.

Fortunately for Microsoft, they’ve already succeeded at creating FUD about the bill, even though it’s only been in committee for a little while.

Here’s the skinny on what the bill does, and more importantly does NOT, require:

The bill requires that all documents created by a State agency (court, legislature, department, office, etc.) to be made available in an XML-based OPEN file format based on a recognized industry standard, and available without any intellectual property restrictions on the underlying file format.

What does that mean? Does it mean we’ll all have to switch to OpenOffice if we want to read government documents on our computers? Does it mean that the lady down at the DPS will have to learn Linux and OpenOffice? No.

To really understand the thrust of the bill, you have to understand a bit about how “standards” in the computing world work. Bear with me for a minute, I’m about to get technical…

Essentially there are two kinds of standards: widely recognized and adopted standards created by standards bodies like the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) or Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), referred to in our world as “industry standards,” and de-facto standards which are created because “everyone” uses a particular application or file format, like Microsoft Word. The two are related, but they are most definitely NOT the same.

Industry standards are the foundation upon which Information Technologies are built. Ultimately all de-facto standards are based at some point on an industry standard. A good example of this is Wi-Fi. The correct name for Wi-Fi is IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n, depending on what kind of device is in your computer. Obviously the general public doesn’t want to have to know anything about the IEEE standards that Wi-Fi is based on, so the group charged with promoting its use came up with the nonsensical name “Wi-Fi,” which doesn’t have anything to do with the technology except that it is wireless. The ethernet cable you have plugged in to your desktop computer works because of IEEE 802.3 (which is older than me, by the way), and your bluetooth headset works thanks to IEEE 802.15. The CSS that generates the page you’re reading right now is thanks to IETF RFC 2318. (Yes, I COULD go on all day.) While there are competing technologies for wireless data transfer among computers, Wi-Fi is both the Industry Standard AND the de-facto standard by which we all interconnect.

The point: It doesn’t matter what company manufactures what you have, so long as they adhere to the defined and open industry standard. Usually these standards are free for anyone to use, or at the very least available for a minimal fee with no restrictions on how they can be used, and no royalty or licensing fees.

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The Star-Telegram writes a slobbering love note to coal. (BTW, There’s no such thing as “clean” coal. There’s just not. It’s like being “a little” pregnant — you get environmental catastrophe with all of it, the only difference is on which end you get it.)

“Smokey” Joe Barton is #4 on the list of house members in terms of coal contributions to his campaign — $122,050 worth. (I wonder who gave the $50?)

Well, really I think it’s more than a bit full of itself, but I do appreciate and respect its position as a(the?) premier world city.

I also LOVE the NY Times. I read it as often as I can. Lately that’s been pretty often due to the student readership program at TCU — which puts stacks of The Gray Lady in bins all over campus, free for the taking.

Imagine my surprise today when “all the news that’s fit to print” included an op-ed on Judge Sharon Keller, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals judge who refused to keep her clerk’s office open an extra 20 minutes to allow a death row inmate’s legal team to file new motions based on a pending Supreme Court review of lethal injection.

Okay, so what? The good, Christian, peaceful, other-cheek-turning people of Texas ritualistically kill retards and foreigners on the taxpayer’s dime all the time — why is this worthy of an opinion piece by the Editorial Board of the NY Times?

It’s news because Fort Worth State Representative Lon Burnam has filed a resolution to impeach Judge Keller for “…gross neglect of duty and conducting her official duties with willful disregard for human life.”

Good on ya, Lon, for calling for an investigation into this Judge’s actions. As the opinion piece in the Times says, if the facts of the matter are as the condemned man’s lawyers have said, then Judge Keller should be removed from office, relieved of her state retirement benefits and disbarred. (Maybe even tried for negligent homicide? I’m sure there are legal indemnifications for judges acting in their official capacity, even if they’re acting improperly.)

If the allegations are false and the attorneys just didn’t get their paperwork done in time without talking to anyone at the court, then no harm, no foul, and Judge Keller keeps her job, etc., and we can let the voters decide in 2012 if she gets to come back.

Oddly enough, I also read the S-T today. I usually stay off the opinion page, because the letters to the editor are usually so stereotypically “White Bible-Belt ‘Conservative’ Texan” as to be embarrassing for the rest of y’all. One of the letters, predictably, calls for Rep. Burnam to “…go do the job he was elected to do and let the judges run the courts.” Well, Mr. Walter Degner of Arlington, perhaps you should go back and read that trivial slip of paper called The Constitution. Each branch of government exercises some degree of oversight and control of the other — Mr. Burnam is doing EXACTLY the job he was elected to do, and should be applauded for that.

I’ve been informed that I’m a jackass, and that my complaints about the child tax credits I don’t receive doesn’t take into account just how damn expensive it is to raise a kid these days.

I seem to have also missed the point that a healthy and well-educated citizenry (even a young one) benefits all of society, and that I should be glad to be paying for these kids who will eventually be paying for my Social Security.

So, I take it back. Now my least favorite tax is the tax on the interest earned by my savings and investments. It’s a sad day when there are more tax advantages to debt (mortgages and student loan interest) than savings and self-sufficiency.

If there was ever any doubt about Obama being the “change” president, this should erase all of it.

Rick Warren To Give Invocation At The Inauguration; John Williams, Aretha, Yo-Yo MA, I. Perlman, Too – Marc Ambinder.

Check out Allen over at The Whited Sepulchre. I haven’t had the time to spend debating him (actually, he and I agree on more than we disagree on, methinks, but he draws some CRAZY-ass commenters) in the comments, but I do still read it when I have time.

Gotta read all angles, even if Allen is bitter and distrustful of our political leadership. (I kid!)

Congrats on your appearance in the paper, Allen!