September 2003

Stupid Article of the Day at the Leader

ArchPundit September 24, 2003 1 Comment

Jill Stanek makes the mistake of basing her argument on a document that directly contradicts her claim.

The article she links to is here

Stanek:

This was followed by a detailed report released last month that is quite shocking in its description of just how severe the world underpopulation crisis really is, particularly after we?ve been told the opposite for so long. I suspect the situation is worse than the report indicates, since the study was conducted by the very organization that was duped into causing this calamity in the first place.

Got that? An underpopulation crisis now.

But what does the UN say?:

The 2002 Revision confirms key conclusions from previous revisions. Despite the lower fertility levels projected and the increased mortality risks to which some populations will be subject, the population of the world is expected to increase by 2.6 billion during the next 47 years, from 6.3 billion today to 8.9 billion in 2050. However, the realization of these projections is contingent on ensuring that couples have access to family planning and that efforts to arrest the current spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic are successful in reducing its growth momentum. The potential for considerable population increase remains high. According to the results of the 2002 Revision, if fertility were to remain constant in all countries at current levels, the total population of the globe could more than double by 2050, reaching 12.8 billion. Even a somewhat slower reduction of fertility than that projected in the medium variant would result in additional billions of people. Thus, if women were to have, on average, about half a child more than according to the medium variant, world population might rise to 10.6 billion in 2050 as projected in the high variant.

The other factor is that AIDs is having more of an impact than expected.

Whether Stanek is stupid or dishonest is left to the reader.

UP DATE: To make clear, I don’t buy catastrophic projections of population growth, but I do think the additional pressures from population are detrimental both environmentally and in terms of world stability. Addressing population growth in developing nations is important to maintain peace and avoid pressures due to overpopulation. She demonstrates no understanding of this and seems to believe the world population would be decreasing significantly. She only devotes on sentence to policy problems in the developed world.

That said, Stanek’s article is even worse when you read further down,

But there?s still more. Due to medical advances, and despite the AIDS epidemic, the world population is living longer. This is great, except elder care programs such as Social Security will be unsustainable because there won?t be enough of the younger generation to pay for them.

But never fear. The U.N. proposes the same solution for ?overpopulation? at the end of life as at the beginning, saying, "The proposal is that, if projected life expectancy at the country level turns out to consistently surpass 100 years for both sexes combined, a limit of 100 years will be imposed artificially? (page 35, #96).

For a glimpse of that future, rent the supposedly ?science fiction? 1973 movie classic, Soylent Green, this weekend.

One problem, she is quoting a passage from a section on how to calculate long range projections of mortality. It isn’t a policy prescription, it is a methodological note.

Cattle Call Comment Period

ArchPundit September 24, 2003 No Comments

Dems–who is up who is down? Why? Any leads out there?

Cattle call will be up Friday–and other posts will be later tonight.

Cattle Call Comment Period

ArchPundit September 24, 2003 No Comments

Republicans–who is up who is down? Why?

What Happened to the Dead Animal on Rauschenberger’s Face?

ArchPundit September 24, 2003 No Comments

The Illinois Leader covers Steve Rauschenberger’s entry into the Senate Race. Steve shaved. He looks good, if a bit uncomfortable with the new look.

I know, deep analysis.

Hynes, Hynes, Hynes

ArchPundit September 23, 2003 No Comments

So I’ve had two different liasons from the Hynes contact me in about 12 hours. One used the better tactic of ignoring anything mildly negative I have said about Hynes, the other tried to spin a little. Both were very gracious though and I appreciate it. Perhaps I should start slagging on other candidates for attention. Hynes announcement speech is uploaded here (MS Word).

His site along with everyone else is listed over at the Senate page which Eric Zorn kindly linked.

I’m not currently taking sides in the Democratic Primary, thus allowing me to be a bit snarky (but not eating my own) to all. I’m leaning towards Obama, but really, any Democrat this side of Vic Roberts who could win the general election is fine with me.

On the down side for me is Hynes is pushing for drug reimportation and is protectionist in his campaign material. But those are traditional Democratic issues on which I often stray from the party line. Overall, I like Dan Hynes and he has been one of the stronger voices for fiscal sanity in Illinois government.

Powers of Discernment, When Did She Ever Have That?

ArchPundit September 23, 2003 No Comments

Eric Zorn joins the pile on of Carol Moseley Braun which I gladly contributed to when she was thinking of getting in the Illinois Senate Race, he writes

"When (Carol Moseley) Braun announced her exploratory campaign in February, she said she wanted to learn whether there was widespread support for her stand as a `peace dove and budget hawk,’" writes Dan Mihalopolous in the Trib today.

If she read any of the many polls –where she’s never shown more than single-digit support — she’d have learned that she’s never placed higher than 5th in the crowded field (and that was before Gen. Wesley Clark was a factor).

And if she read her campaign finance statements, as Mihalopolous reported, she’d have seen she’d raised only $217,000, "less than all other candidates except activist Al Sharpton."

Widespread support? Voter enthusiasm for CMB is nearly undetectable. Yet she has swung into actual-campaign mode. So much for her powers of discernment.

I’m pretty sure it was clearly established she had no power of discernment when in reference to the brutal Nigerian dictator Abacha, she said he was a "longtime fighter for human rights." Maybe I’m just picky though.

Dan Johnson Weinberger’s Blog

ArchPundit September 23, 2003 No Comments

Dan works for the Midwest Democracy Center, runs this blog, and has a page of good info. He could probably use a bit of design though.

In comments, Dan points out the advantages of cumulative voting or of Irish style instant run-off voting. While I generally agree that such changes are better than a simple first-past the post system in which the plurality wins one seat, I think there are some serious issues to consider that involve both the form of government and the manner in which the electoral system directs institutional preferences.

Cumulative voting is generally a positive thing, though it tends to ignore third party candidates still, but does allow minority voters the ability to elect candidates to gain some representation. The problem being that in strongly partisan areas, all three seats could be picked up with an independent running for the third seat. That is a minor issue in one sense because the minority with even 1/3 of the population would pick up one of three seats in a three seat district as Illinois had. At the time, only a couple independents ran as pseudo-Democrats in Chicago African-American Districts. Depending on the number of members to a district, this may not decentralize the system.

One challenge to any system that would decentralize parties is that it makes a working majority very difficult to cobble together. This is often cited in discussing the problems of stability in Latin American governments. They often utilize a proportional representation system in conjunction with a Presidential system meaning the executive is elected in some variation of first past the post and thus is represents a different group than the legislative body. This can create paralysis.

My argument then would be to utilize a parliamentary system of government where the executive is chosen from the legislature to ensure that the executive has a working coalition under which to cobble a majority together. I believe pushing instant runoff voting in a PR system would be a significant problem under the current organization of every state, even the unicameral in Nebraska. If one wants to spur more parties the manner in which to do it is a limited PR system that I would prefer to look like Germany’s, and an executive that is a part of the legislative branch.

At all costs, a fragmented system such as Israel should be avoided. In fact, I think Israel provides an interesting case study. Israel decentralized the party system when it made the Prime Minister separately elected from the legislature. Instead of pushing towards the median voter, large blocks had to look to relatively fringe parties to make a majority and were beholden to their wishes. To make matters worse, Israel has one legislative district meaning that a party gets representation with about 1% of the vote.

Maintaining a center orientation has several advantages. First it keeps from broad swings in policy in short spans of time. Second, it focuses the debate at the center marginalizing extremists such as communists or fascists. Third, if one believes that the median voter occurs around the top of a Bell Curve, it centers government towards the average point in the electorate.

Too much center focus deprives significant, but minority views from representation–that is what we have now. Too little gives extremists too much influence.

I’ll be adding Dan to the blog roll soon along with

The Return of Ungodly Politics

The DNC’s Kicking Ass
The Windy Pundit
and Greasy Skillet

Bucky Bush?

ArchPundit September 23, 2003 2 Comments

You have got to be kidding me?

President Bush’s uncle will be heading his re-election effort in Missouri. State Republicans announced today that Bucky Bush of St. Louis will serve as campaign chairman for the Bush-Cheney re-election effort in the Show-Me State.

Texas Lege Blogburst

ArchPundit September 22, 2003 No Comments

Because I’ve been away from my computer, Charles Kuffner has organized a blogburst to offer advice to the Texas Dems about their next move.

G-Rod Invades Canada

ArchPundit September 22, 2003 No Comments

For cheap drugs and even picks up Chris Lauzen’s support.

The idea is to import cheap drugs from Canada and then resell them in Illinois saving consumers money. On the surface it seems like a no-brainer–after all why should a border make a bid difference in drug costs?

A couple objections have popped up. The first is that Canadians don’t have the same safety controls. This is pretty silly assuming the state used Canadian licensed pharmacies. Canadians have high standards and generally this shouldn’t be a problem. In those few cases where the rules are different, the state could identify those differences.

The second objection is that by importing drugs from Canada, the State of Illinois would be driving profits down and decreasing the incentive for drug companies to invest in new drugs.

This is a far more serious problem and one not to be ignored. Some of the pharmaceutical company complaints are over the top. For one, many drugs are developed under government subsidy already and many pharmaceutical companies primarily license the drugs and then manufacture them. In such cases, a move by Illinois would have little effect. Additionally, many of the most marketed drugs aren’t significant improvements over others. Many of the heavily marketed drugs are of little therapeutic value and so reducing their availability would have little impact. Worse, many of the newest drugs are ineffective. Newly created allergy control drugs often are effective for less than 50% of the population even though they are widely prescribed without that information being conveyed by the doctor. Minor pharmacological changes are made to retain patent rights, but little or no improvement in therapeutic value is made.

For all that, reimportation is a bad idea. The debate centers on the effects of consumers, but it fails to grasp that the problem isn’t one of price gouging, but of free trade. Eseentially, the United States prescription drug market is subsidizing research for the rest of the world because the rest of the world drives a hard bargain for low costs. Since the United States doesn’t have a centralized buying cooperative those in the market pay higher costs to recoup the costs of development.

To overcome this, the United States has a few options, none of them ideal. First, it could form a collective buying group as a government and then sell the drugs to citizens at the rate they get. The disadvantages are it would drive incentives to develop new drugs down by decreasing profits. That said, so do private drug benefit plans. This would force the costs of development to be spread more evenly across countries though as the pharmaceutical companies would have to raise prices to other countries. The disadvantage to patients is that the government would be designing the formulary. As a chronic allergy sufferer, having Clarinex as my preferred drug over Zyrtec would be a real problem. Clarinex doesn’t work for me as it doesn’t for over half of the population taking antihistamines. For others the opposite would be true. It would also turn the government formulary into a political list of favored companies–remember Toricelli and Ashcroft extending the patent of Claritin beyond the normal time limit despite no compelling reason?

A second strategy would be to seek WTO sanctions. I’m guessing this would fail, but it would argue that government buying plans are in effect a form of protectionism and thus a violation of free trade agreements. Given my lack of knowledge on how pharmaceuticals are regulated under WTO, I have no idea if this would be or could be effective. And it attacks other governments’ legitimate choices concerning the provision of health care.

A third strategy would be to subsidize drug benefits on a sliding scale for those of modest means. This would generally increase prices to everyone, but ensure that the most needy have help.

A fourth strategy, and probably the most likely, is to spur the development of private drug plans and potentially subsidize entry into those plans that exploit their buying power in a price competitive environment for the plans. In a nation of 300 million, it is entirely conceivable that the plans would have the same buying power as nations–in fact, Express-Scripts claims to offer service to 50 million members. Instead of subsidizing every drug purchase, subsidizing entry into such a plan based on income would go along way to closing the gap for those in need of relatively expensive pharmaceuticals.

So Lauzen and G-Rod come together for a bad idea.