I am a Republican. I have been a district chairman and gone to state conventions. I know Republicans - and am proud to be one. And I know Republican politicians - and I am curious to know the answer to this question:
How can they run for positions in the U.S. Government again and again, and still claim to be a Republican?
I mean, Republicans don't like Big Government - caps intended - right? I agree it is ironic that the party that squashed the states right movement called the Civil War should now be the proponent of local government, but that is the current position. To a modern Republican, Washington is a dirty word.
Yet there are still Republicans who pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their family honor to win elections so they can go and "serve" in that den of bureaucracies. What are they thinking? Any one who truly hated big government would have to be prodded with a stick to go and then would be so eager to leave that they would trample down doors to get out of there.
Yet there are Republicans lining up for the opportunity to sacrifice themselves in the service of big government, and once there, never leave - willingly.
At first, I thought there was some type of infectious cultural disease to be had by those who run for and participate in big government. In my organizational behavior class (OK - it was not on my undergraduate engineering curriculum, but I was curious) we played several games to prove the point that those in power will do whatever it takes to remain in power. But hey, those were games. Ideals would triumph in reality, right?
Unh uh. OK, that explains why once they are in, they want to stay in. They all give the same excuses - "I am doing so much good here. Seniority is rewarded with more powerful positions. If I left office, the Republicans might lose the seat." etc. Hmmm. Those in power want to remain in power. Yep, that nails it.
But what about those aspirants who are toiling to obtain the chance to serve? What was their motivation?
My conclusion was (past tense) that they were naive, liars, or crazy. I had a good friend run for a House seat. He was naive. He really was a good guy. He ran his own plumbing business. He kept two sets of tools just so that he could loan one set to you. And he was fed up with Washington and he was going to go change it. He didn't even get to the primaries. Naivety is not conducive to survival in politics.
So maybe they were liars. You know people who secretly liked Big Government (yes, the caps are intended) and just used the Republican Party as a convenient path to their ambition. And from the behaviors of Republican politicians, I thought this might be true. But when I would meet with the candidates, my sense was that they were sincere. They believed what they were saying about the evils of Big Government, and they were going back there to change it.
So I almost thought they were stupid. However, that is like naive, and stupid and naive people do not get anywhere in politics. I know that a lot of people may argue using the most recent President Bush as an example of how far someone who was stupid and naive could go, but I would suggest that he was neither, and neither were his people. Think that one through a little longer.
So if they weren't naive or liars, that had to leave crazy. As in, able to deny reality when it is staring them in the face. And for the longest time, that concept was the one that appealed the most to me. If you have dabbled in politics at all, then you must have run into people who hold on to beliefs so strongly that fanatical would be a mild description of their behavior. Insanely focused might be better. But those people don't get past the primaries either. So I rationalized to myself that those who actually won were a more sophisticated type of crazy, a kind of schizophrenia that allowed them to believe in competing world views at the same time, as in Big Government is bad, but I can use Big Government for good. You see what I mean? It almost sounds like what they say once they are in office! I thought I had something there!
But darn it. They were just to flexible in their beliefs and practices. Crazy people, by definition, do not cope with all aspects of reality. But Republican Politicians appear to cope fairly well.
Which led me to my current thinking. I wondered why it took so long because it is obvious from their job description - Republican Politicians are politicians who use the Republican Party as their career path. Think about it. Somehow, in my naivety, I still thought that politicians came from all walks of life, from all careers, who as citizens, chose to run for their country and serve their fellow men. You know, the "Minute Man" theory of American Government. But rationality prevailed. These people running for public office did so as a career choice - they had chosen to become politicians. And there were only two employers - Republicans and Democrats. So they chose the one that they thought would best advance their career.
Do they believe the platforms of the parties? I am sure they mostly do. Just like I believe in the business plan of my corporation. And once I compare it to that, you know what I have done. I have changed their beliefs from big B to small b. Just like lawyers can argue either side of a case - but usually tend to be prosecutors or defenders as career choices - so politicians can be on either side of the aisle - but tend to pick one or the other as befitting their style and their career. They don't believe in the platforms the same way that the party faithful and fanatics do. Rather, they believe in them the same way a professional does - they can make them or remake them.
Now there is the true source of craziness. Republicans, who detest Big Government, are voting in people whose career choice is to participate in Big Government. No wonder the government has grown under modern Republican Presidents, from Eisenhower to Bush, in a fashion similar to but with different emphases than the growth under Democratic Presidents. Republican politicians are politicians - people seeking public office as a career.
Amateurs need not apply.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Monday, August 3, 2009
Rationed Health Care
Thoughts in progress.
I find it interesting that in the current debate, the reporters and congress are carefully using the term "Health Care" while most American's think "Health Insurance".
There is an enormous difference between the two.
"Health Care" can be compared to "Car Care" or "Home Care": all the things an individual or an owner does to keep up their car or home. And everyone does it differently. My cars tend to be older - I haven't paid more than $5,000 for a car in 20years - but we keep them running, somehow. I use my knowledge and it saves me money.
I try to do the same with "Health Care": I chose the Health Savings Account at work and a "Health Insurance" policy with a high deductible. The total bill is much less than I would pay for traditional insurance - and we have more freedom. The high deductible covers us for any real health care crisis: colds, flu, broken bones are easily handled by the health savings account.
In the discussion going in the halls of congress, I'm afraid that we might be getting managed health care rather than my personal version of health choice. Managed health care is where someone else chooses what procedures are available and what doctors are on the list and how much the doctors will be paid for what procedure. Instead of me making a choice and paying for it, someone else is doing so.
That is rationing. Just because this is the "full health coverage" offered by big business, demanded by unions, and granted to government workers, doesn't change the basic fact that it is rationed health care. Some just have a fatter ration book than others.
A basic economic observation about anything that is rationed is... (you can fill in most the blanks and I bet they are not positive) people will try to maximize their use of the rationed goods. Thus creating shortages, black markets, etc., etc.
Think about it.
I find it interesting that in the current debate, the reporters and congress are carefully using the term "Health Care" while most American's think "Health Insurance".
There is an enormous difference between the two.
"Health Care" can be compared to "Car Care" or "Home Care": all the things an individual or an owner does to keep up their car or home. And everyone does it differently. My cars tend to be older - I haven't paid more than $5,000 for a car in 20years - but we keep them running, somehow. I use my knowledge and it saves me money.
I try to do the same with "Health Care": I chose the Health Savings Account at work and a "Health Insurance" policy with a high deductible. The total bill is much less than I would pay for traditional insurance - and we have more freedom. The high deductible covers us for any real health care crisis: colds, flu, broken bones are easily handled by the health savings account.
In the discussion going in the halls of congress, I'm afraid that we might be getting managed health care rather than my personal version of health choice. Managed health care is where someone else chooses what procedures are available and what doctors are on the list and how much the doctors will be paid for what procedure. Instead of me making a choice and paying for it, someone else is doing so.
That is rationing. Just because this is the "full health coverage" offered by big business, demanded by unions, and granted to government workers, doesn't change the basic fact that it is rationed health care. Some just have a fatter ration book than others.
A basic economic observation about anything that is rationed is... (you can fill in most the blanks and I bet they are not positive) people will try to maximize their use of the rationed goods. Thus creating shortages, black markets, etc., etc.
Think about it.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
So You're Fat - Face It!
Warning - preaching ahead!
This is advice from a skinny guy who has never been overweight - since I was about 3 years old that is... All of us have to watch our weight - some of us have just been more successful than others. My step-dad told me that the most important exercise I could learn was push-ups - from the table.
So what is the novel insight? Nothing new or revolutionary here. This should be common knowledge.
First, be honest. Americans are overweight and lying about it. I have a friend who went for a health screening and was told he was obese. He explained to me that the charts don't apply to someone his height. He's lying to himself. Most of us are lying to ourselves. I bought a cheap fat percentage measurement device that told me I was 10 percent more fat than I thought I was. I didn't think the device worked. But it was right. I took ten seconds to figure out that I have gained 20 pounds since my 180 pound in-shape days - and the extra weight doesn't appear to be muscle.
Second, measure. Honesty requires it. It is easy to mislead ourselves without a standard. What to use? A pair of pants or a favorite dress. When they don't fit, it's not because they shrank! The easy answer is to buy a new dress or a new pair of pants and rationalize about changing shape, or stress, or busy lives. Trust the measurements - they are better than memories.
Next, eat normally. What I mean is, eat the kind of normal, boring diet taught by grade school teachers, departments of health, grandmothers, and common sense. Skip the fancy diets, the pills, the special sections of the grocery store. Not that there is anything wrong with those special foodstuffs, they are just another lie: There is no magic method to lose weight.
Expect hunger. Everyone experiences it, fat or skinny. Live with it. Ignore it. Realize that not being completely full at the end of a meal should be normal rather than unusual. Hunger is not bad. As my wise but blunt step-dad would say - it won't kill you.
Finally, tiredness and sweat are good. Very good. Quality-of-life critically good. Be active. Exercise and more. Our bodies were designed for motion, yet we fill our lives with immobility. Walk, run, bend, sway, jump, play. Use it or lose it. The germ of this rant came as I walked up and down O'Hare, while nearly every one else minimized the distance from the airplane seat to the airport seat.
Our bodies - the wonderfully complex and adaptive system that they are - will optimize to the lifestyle we choose. If we choose to sit - we will have comfortably fat rear ends. I play basketball regularly, and still painfully re-discover muscles whenever I try another sport. Don't let your body optimize for something less than the optimum you want.
You know what you want your body to look like. And I believe you know what you have to do to get it to look that way.
You will sweat and you will be hungry - but you will be happier and healthier.
And no, not every single one of you has a special health condition that prevents you from removing those pounds.
Good luck!
This is advice from a skinny guy who has never been overweight - since I was about 3 years old that is... All of us have to watch our weight - some of us have just been more successful than others. My step-dad told me that the most important exercise I could learn was push-ups - from the table.
So what is the novel insight? Nothing new or revolutionary here. This should be common knowledge.
First, be honest. Americans are overweight and lying about it. I have a friend who went for a health screening and was told he was obese. He explained to me that the charts don't apply to someone his height. He's lying to himself. Most of us are lying to ourselves. I bought a cheap fat percentage measurement device that told me I was 10 percent more fat than I thought I was. I didn't think the device worked. But it was right. I took ten seconds to figure out that I have gained 20 pounds since my 180 pound in-shape days - and the extra weight doesn't appear to be muscle.
Second, measure. Honesty requires it. It is easy to mislead ourselves without a standard. What to use? A pair of pants or a favorite dress. When they don't fit, it's not because they shrank! The easy answer is to buy a new dress or a new pair of pants and rationalize about changing shape, or stress, or busy lives. Trust the measurements - they are better than memories.
Next, eat normally. What I mean is, eat the kind of normal, boring diet taught by grade school teachers, departments of health, grandmothers, and common sense. Skip the fancy diets, the pills, the special sections of the grocery store. Not that there is anything wrong with those special foodstuffs, they are just another lie: There is no magic method to lose weight.
Expect hunger. Everyone experiences it, fat or skinny. Live with it. Ignore it. Realize that not being completely full at the end of a meal should be normal rather than unusual. Hunger is not bad. As my wise but blunt step-dad would say - it won't kill you.
Finally, tiredness and sweat are good. Very good. Quality-of-life critically good. Be active. Exercise and more. Our bodies were designed for motion, yet we fill our lives with immobility. Walk, run, bend, sway, jump, play. Use it or lose it. The germ of this rant came as I walked up and down O'Hare, while nearly every one else minimized the distance from the airplane seat to the airport seat.
Our bodies - the wonderfully complex and adaptive system that they are - will optimize to the lifestyle we choose. If we choose to sit - we will have comfortably fat rear ends. I play basketball regularly, and still painfully re-discover muscles whenever I try another sport. Don't let your body optimize for something less than the optimum you want.
You know what you want your body to look like. And I believe you know what you have to do to get it to look that way.
You will sweat and you will be hungry - but you will be happier and healthier.
And no, not every single one of you has a special health condition that prevents you from removing those pounds.
Good luck!
Bases of Estimates
Some things are more apparent from a different perspective.
I open this blog with disclaimers, which are not necessarily gripping literature, but are needed to start a discussion. In engineering, I was taught to call disclaimers 'bases of estimates' as in the plural of basis. These are the known facts and assumptions needed to complete a given problem.
And that is my first basis, i.e. I am an engineer, and because of that, I look at things and people differently. I admire things that work, and want to fix things that don't. I don't know how to emphasize that enough. I am conservative - in that I want to know why something works before trying to fix it. I am suspicious of opinions and theories - even and especially my own - until lots of data is collected and key experiments conducted.
But I am not a scientist. I hope my fellow practitioners of both broad disciplines will forgive me when I generalize: Scientists seek complete understanding; Engineers have to make something work with current, incomplete knowledge - and make money while doing so.
So that leads to a second basis: I will use correlations and analogies when data is lacking. Engineers have spent a lot of time, trouble and effort collecting and correlating data for many and varied situations. These are presented in handbooks, papers, memos, and owner's manuals. In absence of directly applicable data or correlations, engineers go and find something that might fit and provide the needed insight - all the while being skeptical of the tool they are using.
Which leads to a third basis: I try to always examine the overall balances. Maybe the details aren't known, or an approximation is being used, or a correlation from another field is being tried - so the engineer will check for overall reasonableness. That is, calculations are made on the larger scale, often called order-of-magnitude, or maybe the engineer checks the goes-intos and the goes-outofs, or perhaps high school Newton physics are revisited, just to make sure that whatever logic was followed to do the details, the big picture still makes sense.
Which leads to a fourth basis, which is really the first basis stated another way: I seek to understand the underlying structure. I need to satisfy my engineering intuition. Perhaps that statement needs further explanation. There is a Dilbert animated short film that implies that engineers are born. Which is largely true from my experience. Engineers like things, understand things, and study things. "Things": mechanisms, equations, objects, doo-hickeys, contrivances, systems, software, etc., are understandable to engineers as well as fun and enjoyable. These "things" resonate with an engineers soul, align with their training, match their experience, and are simply beautiful. I seek such moments of insight - of resonance - of beauty...
On the other hand, we sometimes have trouble with people. And thus my blog...
I open this blog with disclaimers, which are not necessarily gripping literature, but are needed to start a discussion. In engineering, I was taught to call disclaimers 'bases of estimates' as in the plural of basis. These are the known facts and assumptions needed to complete a given problem.
And that is my first basis, i.e. I am an engineer, and because of that, I look at things and people differently. I admire things that work, and want to fix things that don't. I don't know how to emphasize that enough. I am conservative - in that I want to know why something works before trying to fix it. I am suspicious of opinions and theories - even and especially my own - until lots of data is collected and key experiments conducted.
But I am not a scientist. I hope my fellow practitioners of both broad disciplines will forgive me when I generalize: Scientists seek complete understanding; Engineers have to make something work with current, incomplete knowledge - and make money while doing so.
So that leads to a second basis: I will use correlations and analogies when data is lacking. Engineers have spent a lot of time, trouble and effort collecting and correlating data for many and varied situations. These are presented in handbooks, papers, memos, and owner's manuals. In absence of directly applicable data or correlations, engineers go and find something that might fit and provide the needed insight - all the while being skeptical of the tool they are using.
Which leads to a third basis: I try to always examine the overall balances. Maybe the details aren't known, or an approximation is being used, or a correlation from another field is being tried - so the engineer will check for overall reasonableness. That is, calculations are made on the larger scale, often called order-of-magnitude, or maybe the engineer checks the goes-intos and the goes-outofs, or perhaps high school Newton physics are revisited, just to make sure that whatever logic was followed to do the details, the big picture still makes sense.
Which leads to a fourth basis, which is really the first basis stated another way: I seek to understand the underlying structure. I need to satisfy my engineering intuition. Perhaps that statement needs further explanation. There is a Dilbert animated short film that implies that engineers are born. Which is largely true from my experience. Engineers like things, understand things, and study things. "Things": mechanisms, equations, objects, doo-hickeys, contrivances, systems, software, etc., are understandable to engineers as well as fun and enjoyable. These "things" resonate with an engineers soul, align with their training, match their experience, and are simply beautiful. I seek such moments of insight - of resonance - of beauty...
On the other hand, we sometimes have trouble with people. And thus my blog...
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