From Neoflux:NCPA policy paper on Texas health care insurance.
[October 21, 2000]
Right now, I'm watching football. Ok, not right now. But the game is on, and I've got it paused, thanks to my new TiVo. The box arrived Thusday (finally!) and turned out to be one of the 30-hour units. (yay!) Football fans know that much of the three-hour plus time of a game is empty space - timeouts, commericals, and other fluff. Not with this baby. Now you can use those spare cycles. Take a phone call, clean the kitchen, walk the dog, find a new way to express your love for one another on the living room floor - and not miss a single play. I've never watched that much TV, but I think I'm going to be hooked on this product, since it lets me watch I want to when I want to. I might even use some of those spare cycles to call my broker. W
I'd be curious to see John's decision process for choosing between Nader and Browne. W
Mickey Kaus on why a Democratic Congress would be a dark cloud with no silver lining:
If the Democrats win the House, most of the important committee chairmanships would go to unreconstructed liberals with seniority, not to Clintonesque New Democrats. Charles Rangel would chair the Ways & Means committee; John Conyers would chair Judiciary; John Dingell would chair Commerce and Pete Stark would get the Joint Economic Committee. Welfare reform would be the first to go.
If you think Republican leadership was extreme, wait until you see the big-government, pro-special-interest group of clowns the Democrites have waiting in the wings. W
From Neoflux:NCPA policy paper on Texas health care insurance.
The primary reason so many Texans lack insurance is that government policies encourage people to be uninsured. Although both state and federal policies contribute to the problem, the federal government probably bears the bulk of the blame.
It would have been nice to see some of this information in the health care debate. W
I'm honestly a little surprised at Bush's strength in CNN's latest tracking poll (Oct. 20): He's got a ten point lead, and has hit, if not cracked, the 50% barrier. W
Soory about the lack of updates lately. I've been kinda slammed between a new work assignment out in Chantilly (about an hour away) and everyone on the planet coming into town this week. Argh.
In other news, I got an email from Jason's friend Yael, who I met last Sunday. She objected to my using a pseudonym - "A." - which I did because I generally don't like to drag other people into my messy web world. She apparently doesn't mind being dragged. She also notes that:
...julia butterfly sold out!
So my apologies for any inaccuracies in my recount of the afternoon. W
[October 18, 2000]
I was impressed tonight when Gore pointed out that during his terms as Vice-President, the federal government has decreased in size by 300,000 employees -- that's down from whatever it was at the end of the last GOP administration. In contrast, Gore claimed, the size of the state government in Texas has actually increased under Bush's time in office there. So, my question to Mike is, if past performance predicts future behavior, how do you reconcile your statement and (what Gore claims are) the facts?
Funny you should mention that. I happened to be reading the Washington Post editorial page, which called Gore out on that statement:
The vice president denied it, said that under his plan federal spending would likely decline as a share of the total economy and that in the last eight years federal civilian employment has declined by more than 300,000, for which he took a share of credit. There has in fact been such a decline, but about three-fourths of it has been in the Defense Department.
In other words, the federal bureaucracy has gone virtually unscathed, while a single department has borne the brunt of the downsizing Gore claims credit for. Incidentally, I believe but do not know for a fact that the Defense Department was not included in Gore’s “reinvention” initiative.
But number of employees is not the only measure of the size of government. According to the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, total federal spending in 1992 was $1.382 trillion, but rose to $1.704 trillion in 1999. By contrast, defense spending fell from $302.6 billion in 1992 to $274.2 billion in 1999. When you exclude defense spending from the federal budget, total figures on spending were $1.079 trillion in 1992 and $1.429 trillion in 1999.
So, let’s recap: under the Clinton-Gore administration, total federal spending has increased 23% between 1992 and 1999. During the same time period, defense spending has dropped 9%. Total federal spending, excluding defense spending, has gone up a startling 32% in a mere seven years. When exactly did the era of big government end?
But don’t just look to Gore’s dismal past performance. Look to his promises. Gore’s promises, assuming he intends to keep them, will require a larger and more expensive government in almost every arena. His convoluted tax scheme will require a legion of new IRS agents to interpret and enforce. His Social Security non-reform is in fact a sweeping new entitlement program that will cost unpredictable billions. His Universal Health Care… well, he hasn’t quite told us what the numbers would be on that.
Al Gore can claim to be the small government candidate, but his past performance and his facile promises prove that claim as false as his dog story. Bush would be better, but there’s only one candidate for small government in this race, and he wasn’t on stage last night. W
The media asserts that Florida is a toss-up in the coming Presidential election. For what it's worth, my Florida sources - Democratic Florida sources - snort in disgust when they hear that. Two reasons Bush will do better than the pollsters expect in Florida, and neither is named Jeb:
First, some of Bush's biggest and most influential supporters are Floridians. They will carry some weight on Election Day.
Second, and more important, Gore's Florida campaign staff is so poorly organized that state Democrats don't know who is in charge from one week to the next. This runs deeper than just the Gore campaign - it is a damning indictment of Florida Dems in general. Still reeling from statewide losses in the last election, the Dems have been unable to reign in former House caucus leader Willie Logan. Logan, who believes he was ousted from the party leadership because he is black, urged African-Americans to boycott the Democratic Party in the last election and is currently running for the U.S. Senate as an independent. That can't help Gore three Tuesdays from now. W
[October 17, 2000]
The National Review wants to pose the questions in tonight's debate. Most of them are crap, but the best one is worth reading to the end.
And a bonus, Gore-only question:
Mr. Vice President, do you regret your vote confirming Antonin Scalia to the United States Supreme Court?
I really hope the Bush team has that one ready to go. W
Blogger's Blog of the Week: Lines & Splines. I didn't think it was possible to wax eloquent about fonts. It is. W
If you'd like to play with your own Electoral College scenarios, try this Electoral College Calculator! I've been playing with it, and even conceding California and New York, I still think Gore has a tough uphill battle. Pretty poor electoral performance given the state of the economy. W
Against the backdrop of the tragic death of Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan, the debate goes on. Bush sounds like he's ready - maybe a little overconfident - but there's no reason to suspect that he'll turn in a worse performance than he has the last two times. Al Gore, on the other hand... Al is getting sucked in to the debate about his style, which is really just a surrogate for his failure on substance. Both candidates have been pledging to reduce the size of the federal government, capped off today by this surreal statement from Joe Lieberman:
One of the first most irksome points that Governor Bush makes is that somehow we're for big government, they're for the people. The fact is that we're not about expanding government. We're about expanding opportunity and making sure that we do it in a way that reduces the size of government, which we're committed to.
If the Democrat ticket is pinning its hopes on the American public believing it's the party of small government, then the race is over. When George W. Bush pledges to do that, the public suspects that he just might do it, if it's not too inconvenient. When Al Gore says it, everyone knows he's lying. (I hope Bush calls him on it tonight.) Gore's shift to preaching "small government" means that he has lost not on personality, but on the issues, and all the pandering in the world can't change it.
One thing that crossed my mind this morning... the unfortunate death of Gov. Carnahan might just make the difference in this election. Both Bush and Gore have been fighting tooth and nail for this state and its 11 electoral votes. Turnout will be probably be the deciding factor – if the Democrites’ constituencies stay home, Bush will take the state. Since most of the polls indicate that a shift of just a few electoral votes could decide this race, a depressed Democratic turnout in Missouri could be exactly that shift. Without the popular Governor Carnhan drawing in voters for his Senate race, it’s almost a certainty that Democratic turnout will suffer. The only question is – how much? Enough to shift the state into the GOP column? Enough to shift the Electoral College? We’ll find out in three weeks. W
I have been very busy indeed the last few days. I devoted the weekend to the losing efforts of my Wildcats, traveling to Evanston and reuniting with old friends. Quite the blast. Except, of course, for the game. I was able to take a little time on Saturday to see Jason and his friend A. for lunch at Leona's (if you ever hit Chicago, you must go there.) Over eggs and lasagna from the brunch buffet, followed by rainbow jello, we discussed the inherent tension between anarchism, of which A. is a devotee, and deep environmentalism, of which A. is also a devotee - in the tree-sitting, Julia "Butterfly" Hill tradition. Jason spent most of the conversation looking amused.
Unexpectedly last night, Dineen and I got free tickets to go see 10,000 Maniacs in a tiny little venue in Annapolis. It's very interesting to see this band with new lead singer Mary Ramsey, who tries not to sound like Natalie Merchant, but can't help herself. Now that they're touring the more intimate venues, they're well worth the effort to find them. W
