http://volokh.com/2009/12/07/steven-hayward-on-climategate/

http://volokh.com/?p=22824

Steven Hayward (of AEI) has an excellent article in the Weekly Standard on the CRU scandal (tip to Powerline and Adler below).

Hayward concludes:

The distinction between utterly politicized scientists such as Jones, Mann, and NASA’s James Hansen, and other more sober scientists has been lost on the media and climate campaigners for a long time now, and as a result, the CRUtape letters will cast a shadow on the entire field. There is no doubt plenty more of this kind of corruption in other hotbeds of climate science, but there are also a lot of unbiased scientists trying to do important and valuable work. Climate alarmists and their media cheerleaders are fond of warning about “tipping points” to disaster, but ironically this episode may represent a tipping point against the alarmists. The biggest hazard to serious climate science all along was not so much contrarian arguments from skeptics, but rather the damage that the hyperbole of the environmental community would inflict on their own cause.

Climate change is a genuine phenomenon, and there is a nontrivial risk of major consequences in the future. Yet the hysteria of the global warming campaigners and their monomaniacal advocacy of absurdly expensive curbs on fossil fuel use have led to a political dead end that will become more apparent with the imminent collapse of the Kyoto-Copenhagen process. I have long expected that 20 or so years from now we will look back on the turn-of-the-millennium climate hysteria in the same way we look back now on the population bomb hysteria of the late 1960s and early 1970s–as a phenomenon whose magnitude and effects were vastly overestimated, and whose proposed solutions were wrongheaded and often genuinely evil (such as the forced sterilizations of thousands of Indian men in the 1970s, much of it funded by the Ford Foundation). Today the climate campaigners want to forcibly sterilize the world’s energy supply, and until recently they looked to be within an ace of doing so. But even before Climategate, the campaign was beginning to resemble a Broadway musical that had run too long, with sagging box office and declining enthusiasm from a dwindling audience. Someone needs to break the bad news to the players that it’s closing time for the climate horror show.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,665568,00.html#ref=rss

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,665568,00.html

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzRmMjQzMWFmMWRiMGRhNzQxZjAwMmYyZjRiMzIyMzA=

As a full-time practicing surgeon, I unequivocally can say that the American health-care system is among the world’s finest. For elective and emergency care, American hospitals boast the most modern equipment, the best training facilities for physicians, and the most fertile ground for the development of new products and technologies.

However, this system has several flaws that harm physicians’ ability to treat patients effectively. The bills currently before Congress do nothing to address these issues -- and in fact place additional burdens on doctors.

One problem is that over the last two decades, decreased reimbursement has forced doctors to take on extra patients -- and thus spend less time managing each patient. For example, for a complex hemorrhoid removal, a general surgeon received $390 from Medicare in 2008, compared with $574 in 1997 -- and in general, Medicaid pays about one-third what Medicare does.

Growing overhead is another major issue for practicing physicians. Physician overhead consists of administrative taxes, office space, support staff, and malpractice insurance. Of these, the latter is the most onerous. When I started as a surgeon, I paid about $60,000 a year. I currently pay $130,000, even though I never have lost a lawsuit and generally am named in litigation only as a consultant. (By Medicare standards, I would have to take out 174 gall bladders just to pay my malpractice insurance; since most surgeons average between 200 and 300 operations a year, most barely would cover overhead if Medicare were their sole carrier.)

The price of defending against a suit is monumental, both financially and emotionally. The defendant must be prepared for multiple days away from his practice for briefings, depositions, chart reviews, and testimony. I probably lose tens of thousands of dollars in revenue defending each suit, even when I am involved only peripherally. Many physicians are devastated after being sued by patients whom they tried their best to treat. For some physicians, the damage to subsequent doctor-patient relationships and the pressure to practice defensive medicine are incalculable.

The health-care bills currently before Congress ignore these problems. At least 20 physician organizations, including the American College of Surgeons, have come out in opposition, largely due to reimbursement issues, lack of tort reform, and failure to correct Medicare’s perverse Sustainable Growth Rate formula.

One reform that has been the subject of much discussion, meanwhile, is the “public option.” But since only private carriers yield any profit for physicians, doctors feel that increased government intervention in health care will force them to be even more indentured to Medicaid and Medicare -- two bureaucratic, low-paying systems that perpetually appear to be on the verge of collapse.

I urge you to review the Athena Health report, which summarizes most of the major carriers’ payment patterns. Unsurprisingly, Medicaid fares the worst of any national carrier. My state’s Medicaid program takes the longest amount of time -- 160 days -- while denying 34 percent of all claims. I can attest that the reasons for New York State’s payment denials are largely bogus: I use similar codes and documentation for all my patients, yet continually see more reimbursement issues with governmental payers. As physicians become more frustrated with governmental payers and drop them, access for the poor will decrease.

Another problem with the public option is that as government-run insurance expands and unfairly “competes” with market-rate insurance plans, it will drive down reimbursements for all plans.

While forcing doctors to rely more on government insurance, the new health bills would cut Medicare payments by $500 billion over the next ten years to fund increased spending. Some physicians will drop Medicare as a result, denying seniors access to health care. I honestly am shocked that seniors are not up in arms that the AARP supports Obamacare. Seniors certainly will be outraged if this legislation passes, and they cannot find doctors in their communities.

As for longer-term consequences, the best and the brightest no longer will choose medicine as a career, and more and more doctors will leave the field. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the average educational debt of indebted graduates of the class of 2008 is $154,607, and the average debt of graduating medical students increased in 2008 by 11 percent over the previous year. About four-fifths of graduates have debt of at least $100,000 before they undergo three to nine years of specialty training at wages in the $45,000-per-year range -- while in their early thirties working 80 hours per week. Reports estimate that up to 20 percent of physicians in practice are contemplating leaving medicine.

These trends already have started. Take, for example, my field, general surgery, a specialty that provides a great deal of the trauma and emergency surgery that communities need: There were 7.1 general surgeons per 100,000 people in 1994. Today there are 5.0 per 100,000, and the differences are even more exaggerated in rural areas.

In summary, the health bills being considered by Congress would expand government intervention in health care and create an even more monopolistic system of price fixing, while ignoring quality improvement and tort reform. As a society, we have to make choices. Do we want our doctors to be well-qualified practitioners using their experience and judgment to help as many patients as they can? Or do we want detached, disenfranchised doctors looking to their next career while practicing medicine with the mentality of postal workers?

-- Soumi Eachempati, M.D., is an associate professor of surgery and public health at Manhattan’s Weill Cornell Medical College. This piece is adapted from his remarks to a meeting of the Republican Governors Association in Austin, Texas.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MGE0OGZlYzM5OTVmNTU2NjE5N2JjYWEyZmUxMGQ3NGM=

Following President Obama’s Afghanistan speech at West Point on Tuesday, my organization -- Vets for Freedom -- issued a statement of support for the president’s troop increase, but I waited on a personal statement. The speech seemed mediocre and generally uninspiring, but I wanted to give the underlying plan time to sink in. Since then, I’ve grown increasingly comfortable with that plan: 30,000 additional troops, plus NATO inputs, is close to General Stanley McChrystal’s request, and follow-up testimony by Secretary Gates revealed that the July 2011 “date certain for withdrawal” is not so certain after all.

I am hesitant about President Obama’s core commitment to the mission, but he showed true political courage in almost tripling the U.S. presence in Afghanistan since January. And most important, Gens. McChrystal and David Petraeus -- who conducted the successful Iraq surge and will lead our renewed fight in Afghanistan -- enthusiastically support the plan and believe they can achieve significant progress with the new resources. Generals have not always been right, but these two men are our most experienced warriors and helped the U.S. win a similar war against a similar enemy.

Some say we don’t know what a “win” would look like in Afghanistan, but we do: It will look like Iraq. Afghanistan and Iraq are very different places, with very different dynamics -- but the foundations for success in each place are the same. Iraq is still in physical disrepair, but it has become an increasingly stable state in which indigenous security forces control the ground and America’s enemies are denied haven. Nobody knows more about what it will take to succeed in Afghanistan than the men behind the Iraq victory.

So why do those men support the new plan? I believe it’s because on balance, the president listened to them, and not to political advisers such as Vice President Biden and Rahm Emanuel. Yes, the president delayed his decision, but he’s now rushing troops to the front. Yes, the president set a tentative timeline, but he is allowing Secretary Gates and General McChrystal to reassure our allies and the Afghan people that it’s tentative. And yes, the president continues to bad-mouth the legacy of Iraq (which infuriates Iraq veterans), but his decision is evidence that he’s actually learned the right lessons from that war’s surge.

On Friday, NRO’s Andy McCarthy challenged the plan. According to McCarthy, counterinsurgency is nothing more than glorified nation-building, and under General McChrystal, our troops will not be given the full opportunity to execute their core competency -- because McChrystal’s approach is “not focused on seizing terrain or destroying insurgent forces.”

McCarthy’s argument confuses focus with results. It’s true that counterinsurgency doesn’t “focus” on terrain capture and insurgent kills, but it reaps significant results in those areas. Our experience in Iraq illustrates this point.

Before the surge, U.S. strategy in Iraq could be summarized as “a focus on seizing terrain and destroying insurgency forces.” I spent my 2005-2006 tour in Iraq trying to do just that, to little lasting effect. We killed pockets of bad guys without actually holding the ground, and then fought the regenerated insurgency over and over again. Our approach lacked the coherence, coordination, and sustainability necessary to translate local successes into strategic victory.



Then came the Iraq surge and General Petraeus’s properly resourced, population-centric counterinsurgency strategy. The result was that in 2007 and 2008, General Odierno and General Petraeus conducted more offensive operations, and killed more insurgents, than we had in years previous. The surge approach -- what McCarthy calls a “nation-building, soft-power strategy” -- actually included more kinetic operations than ever before. As our troops hit the ground and interacted with locals, intelligence flowed, and the U.S. started killing more bad guys. This progression is well documented in Kim Kagan’s book The Surge: A Military History.

The same can, and likely will, happen in Afghanistan. We will kill more Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents than ever before, and we will turn those kills into population sympathies -- because we’ll be fighting amongst and defending local Afghans. All the while, we’ll be training our replacements and enabling the beginnings of basic governance.

So, while I respect McCarthy’s unparalleled legal insights, I think he’s wrong on McChrystal’s plan. I understand that McCarthy -- like many NRO readers -- mistrusts Obama, and I share much of that mistrust; save this decision, he isn’t the strong commander-in-chief we’d all like to see. But it’s not inconceivable (and I would argue, not unlikely) that McChrystal and Petraeus could change the game in Afghanistan over the next 18 months and beyond -- so that we can bring our guys home and focus on other threats. They could win, in spite of President Obama.

America has a long and fundamental tradition of civilian oversight of the military, and I don’t suggest we change that. But on these wars -- and with this strategy -- we should to a large degree defer to our top warfighters. President Obama’s plan has the support of those warfighters, and thus it deserves full-throated support, not just half-hearted pleasantries. The president will make mistakes and say things we don’t like, but that doesn’t absolve us of our responsibility to show apolitical resolve towards his underlying mission. Our best generals have been given their orders and some reinforcements; now it’s time to let them win.

-- Capt. Pete Hegseth, who served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division from 2005 to 2006, is chairman of Vets for Freedom.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BpsResearchDigest/~3/Gt05bkU5ujU/psychology-x-factor.html

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreeMarketMojo/~3/jzITX6qVbJI/

http://freemarketmojo.wordpress.com/?p=5298

According to a report in Der Spiegel, Copenhagen Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard “sent postcards to city hotels warning summit guests not to patronize Danish sex workers during the upcoming conference. Now, the prostitutes have struck back, offering free sex to anyone who produces one of the warnings.”

According to the report, the move has been organized by the Sex Workers Interest Group (SIO).

“This is sheer discrimination. Ritt Bjerregaard is abusing her position as Lord Mayor in using her power to prevent us carrying out our perfectly legal job. I don’t understand how she can be allowed to contact people in this way,” SIO Spokeswoman Susanne Møller tells avisen.dk.

Møller adds that it is reprehensible and unfair that Copenhagen politicians have chosen to use the UN Climate Summit as a platform for a hetz against sex workers.

“But they’ve done it and we have to defend ourselves,” Møller says.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreeMarketMojo/~3/ldwucKA0Gcs/

http://freemarketmojo.wordpress.com/?p=5280

Research suggests that economists are less generous than other professionals and economics students are less generous than students of other majors. In their new paper, Elaina Rose and Yoram Bauman investigate the issue.

Our data set allows us to track student donations and economics training over time in order to distinguish selection effects from indoctrination effects. We find that economics majors are less likely to donate than other students and that there is an indoctrination effect for non-majors but not for majors. Women majors and non-majors are less likely to contribute than comparable men.

The two figures below show the percentage of economics majors and other A&S (Arts and Science) majors who donated to two charities, WashPIRG and ATN during quarters in which they had no prior exporsuer to microeconomics (group 1), during quarters in which they had prior exposure to introductory microeconomics but not intermediate microeconomics (group 2), and during quarters in which they had prior exposure to both introductory and intermediate microeconomics (group 3).

The figures show that economics majors are less generous than other Arts and Sciences majors. They also show that while exposure to microeconomics has a significant effect on generosity for other Arts and Sciences majors, it has little effect on generosity for economics majors.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreeMarketMojo/~3/wdjU-pifcbo/

http://freemarketmojo.wordpress.com/?p=5278

Here is a sad report from the Associated Press:

The Internal Revenue Service on Thursday auctioned off a large swath of land owned by an impoverished Indian tribe to help pay off more than $3 million in back taxes, penalties and interest — a sale the tribe says is illegal under federal laws protecting Indian land.

The 7,100 acres, or 11 square miles, of Crow Creek Sioux tribal land in central South Dakota ranch sold for almost $2.6 million, less than the $4.6 million it was appraised at, said IRS spokeswoman Carrie Resch. She did not say who bought the land.

http://volokh.com/2009/12/06/federations-in-science-fiction/

http://volokh.com/?p=22818

I am alternately amused and saddened that one of the most widely read articles about federalism is my tongue in cheek 2007 National Review piece on federalism in Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets, based on an earlier VC post. Many more people seem to be interested in the fine points of federalism in fictional states than in the federal systems that exist in the real world. Just compare the number and quality of VC comments on my Star Trek federalism post (many based on an incredibly detailed knowledge of the fine points of Federation history) with those on virtually any VC post about real world federalism issues.

Aficionados of science fiction federalism will be happy to know that there is now an entire anthology devoted to stories about SF federations. I hope that the publication of this book will increase interest in real-world federalism among SF fans, but I’m not exactly holding my breath.

For a somewhat more serious post about science fiction federalism than those linked above, see my very first foray into this subject, from back in 2006.

http://volokh.com/2009/12/06/stepping-down-as-the-board-chair-of-the-media-development-loan-fund/

http://volokh.com/?p=22817

I’ve been lite-blogging the past few days, as I’ve been attending the board meeting of the Media Development Loan Fund (MDLF), where I stepped down as board chair after fifteen years on the board, and the last twelve as board chair.  MDLF is a nonprofit private investment fund that provides low cost financing and business expertise to media businesses in places around the world with a history of media oppression.  Independent media that provide a reasonably large amount of straight news reporting.  It’s an extraordinary organization, and I am both incredibly proud to have been associated with it from its founding up until today, and very sad to be stepping down from the board after all these years.

But I am leaving it in the excellent hands of Bernard Poulet, my old friend and redacteur-en-chef of L’Expansion in Paris, as the new board chair.  And, thanks to the acumen of its staff, the organization is in stunningly good financial shape.  The sale of a couple of equity investments left the organization cash rich at exactly the right time — but more importantly, that cash cushion gave MDLF the ability and confidence to be able to reschedule many of its clients loans, helping them weather the financial storm.  Meanwhile, MDLF is backing a new newspaper in ... Zimbabwe!

(I’ll say more on the fascinating topics of international venture philanthropy, development finance, and nonprofit governance later on.  But MDLF held a lovely farewell dinner for me, and I was very touched.)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Scrivenernet/~3/AIyYG-rP9jQ/what-home-price-collapse-manhattan.html

Zaarath and Christopher Prokop -- and their two cats -- live in the smallest apartment in the city, a 175-square-foot "microstudio" in Morningside Heights the couple bought three months ago for $150,000.

At 14.9 feet long and 10 feet wide ... to the Prokops, it's a castle.



When you first see it, the first thing you say is, 'Holy crap, this place is small,' " said Zaarath, 37, an accountant for liquor company Remy Martin. "But when I saw it, all I could think of is, I can do something with this. This is perfect for us. We love it."

The co-op is on the 16th floor of a doorman building on 110th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. But it's only accessible by a staircase on the 15th floor...

"I'm amazed we can fit two people and two cats in there," Zaarath said. "But it's harmonious at this point ... It's a good thing we like each other"...

The couple wakes up every morning in their queen-size bed, which takes up one-third of the living space.

They then walk five feet toward the tiny kitchen, where they pull out their workout clothes, which are folded neatly in two cabinets above the sink ...

"We don't cook," Zaarath said, adding that their fridge never has any food in it. "So when you don't cook, you don't need plates or pots or pans. So we use that space for our clothes."

They then jog to their jobs in Midtown, picking up along the way their work clothes, which are "strategically stashed at various dry cleaners."

"It's a great strategy, you always have fresh things to wear." Just in case the cleaners are closed, both have emergency clothes at their offices...

They don't have a trash can. The second something needs to be thrown out, they walk to the chute in the hallway ... Their bathroom -- about 3 by 9 feet -- has a small pedestal sink with mirror, and a stand-alone shower.

Real-estate broker Steven Goldschmidt, senior vice president of Warburg Realty, showed the Prokops the apartment, which used to be one of about nine maid's quarters in the prewar building.

"We converted eight of them into four apartments," Goldschmidt said, with each apartment going for a little less than a half-million dollars.

"But we could not configure that one room within any of the floor plans we were looking at without spending oodles of money. So I came up with the idea to just make it the smallest apartment and see how it goes ... It was not on the market all that long," he said. "And the Prokops made us a great offer, and that's it."

The couple will pay off their mortgage in two years, when they plan to remodel some of the apartment, adding a Murphy bed and larger windows.

They will then be saddled only with their maintenance fee, which is just over $700 a month... [NY Post]

http://timhedges.blogspot.com/2009/12/thailand-samak-dies.html