2-1-14 Hodgepodge

Good Riddance

California Congressman Henry Waxman will soon be laying down arms in his largely successful war against American freedom, which he usually disguised as aid for the less fortunate:

... Mr. Waxman will leave behind a legacy of entrenched accomplishments, including the Children's Health Insurance Program, which extends coverage to millions of low-income children; anti-tobacco, food safety and food-labeling laws; and the Ryan White Care Act, which allocates billions of dollars in federal money for the treatment of H.I.V. and AIDS.

He is also credited [sic] with laying the foundation for many of the executive actions that Mr. Obama, during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, pledged to pursue.

One involves the Clean Air Act, which Mr. Waxman helped write and which gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority it is now exercising to regulate power plant emissions of greenhouse gases. Mr. Waxman saw to it that the bill would allow the president, on his own, to order improvements in automobile fuel efficiency and other energy saving efforts.

And this is all in addition to his being "instrumental in writing" the Affordable Care Act (See Paul Hsieh's article under "Weekend Reading" below for just one of the problems his signature act of destruction will cause.)

One wonders how much of this might have been prevented had conservatives spent half as much effort opposing Waxman's ugly, collectivist agenda as they did making fun of his nose.

Weekend Reading

"We'll examine some common physician conflicts of interest before and after ObamaCare, and discuss how patients can best protect themselves." -- Paul Hsieh, in "How ObamaCare Creates Ethical Conflicts for Physicians and How Patients Can Protect Themselves" at Forbes

"Find a therapist who speaks in plain English, not in overly technical terms he or she is unwilling to explain." -- Michael Hurd, in "Finding the Therapist of Your Dreams" at The Delaware Wave

"Successful people take failure in stride, using it as data to figure out what's actually right." -- Michael Hurd, in "Success is Damn Hard" at The Delaware Coast Press

"The question we need to ask, however, is not whether the government should do more or less, but what should it do." -- Don Watkins and Yaron Brook, in "Government Tries to Do Too Much: Opposing View" at USA Today

My Two Cents

If there is one advantage to today's political debate being as off-base as it is, Watkins and Brook have found it: Within only half the space of a normal editorial, they had the good sense to draw attention to the fact the American public needs to examine its premises when thinking about the role of government.

Free Enterprise, Free Computers

An Internet-based job-hunting site is offering some of its customers a free computer ... in order to save itself money:

We are offering to buy a new computer with a modern browser for any of our customers who are stuck with IE7. We determined that it would cost us more to support a browser from 2006 in 2014 and beyond than it would to help our clients upgrade their legacy hardware. [emphasis in original]

This is an interesting and amusing counterexample to the notion that there can be no selfish reason to give something away. The cost-benefit analysis makes it clear that this is no sacrifice on the part of the company. (But do note the limitations of cost-benefit analyses when used by the government or about some proposed governmental measure.)

--CAV