Electric City Weblog

Send your senator some balls.

When even a left-leaning reporter like Helen Thomas chides the Whitehouse for staging press events, you know it must be pretty bad:

“What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”

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Government agencies and pressure groups campaigning for more taxpayer money can create a fictitious “history” almost overnight. First, they make some claim about how something has been recognized since (whenever), and before you know it, journalists are uncritically repeating it, and it is plastered all over the Internet.

Recently I’ve seen a burst of allegations that the U.S. government assumed a treaty obligation in 1787 to provide reservation Indians with free health care. If you Google “health care treaty Indian 1787,” you will find a long list of sources – including supposedly objective news stories – making that assertion.  Here’s a sample from Montana’s Lee newspapers: “A treaty dating to 1787 requires the government to provide tribal members living on reservations with free health care.”

Now when presented with such a claim, a journalist’s crap-o-meter should start sounding like a fire alarm, because the claim is so inherently improbable. First, the reservation system as we know it didn’t exist in 1787. Second, the cash-strapped Confederation Congress would not have had the resources to meet such a commitment. (Remember that shortage of funds was one reason Congress called the constitutional convention.) Third, a treaty is a bilateral document – even if the Confederation Congress had committed itself to provide health care to the Delaware tribe, for example, it wouldn’t follow that the government had committed itself to provide health care to all Indians for all time.

So I checked into the claim and found that — sure enough — it is flatly false. Here are some details: Read the rest of this entry »

I have finalized the schedule for our blogger meetup on July 18. Click on the banner to the left and scroll down for the most up to date information.

I wish to clarify one thing. This is not, I repeat, not just an event for bloggers. If you read blogs, comment on blogs, know a blogger, are interested in blogging, we want you to attend! Don’t be shy! Email me and I will get you the details. Please make the effort to attend this event!

There are still a few days left to catch “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” on Hulu.

Not only is it a pretty good Clint Eastwood flick, it was filmed in Great Falls when I was 11 years old. We watched most of the filming in our neighborhood, and I’ve even ridden in the white Cadillac convertible that shows up in the end of the show.

Check it out.

However he made it our business anyway:  Gov. Sanford apologizes.

Governor Mark Sanford (R), of South Carolina, has admitted engaging in sexual behavior; and media pundits’ speculation is that he will, or  should resign because of his admitted recent sexual behavior.  The type of  sexual behavior purported was heterosexual relations with a woman to whom he is not married.  Sanford is already married.  His actions are similar to those of President Clinton’s with an intern.  However, Sanford did not lie to a grand-jury while under oath. Read the rest of this entry »

Apropos Rob’s post about the economic efficacy of government inspired green jobs George Will penned an article that addresses exactly that in reaction to the president’s comments about Spain’s “success” where he said:

Spain generates almost 30 percent of its power by harnessing the wind, while we manage less than one percent.

Spain, a country with a steeply progressive marginal tax rate structure, universal health care, a housing bubble that is worse than the U.S. and 18% unemployment (yes, that’s all there simply to poke a regular socialist that frequents these pages), may be awakening to the consequences of such policies.  Will writes:

Calzada, 36, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, has produced a report that, if true, is inconvenient for the Obama administration’s green agenda, and for some budget assumptions that are dependent upon it.

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PERC, an internationally-known think tank based in Bozeman, has published an interesting pamphlet exposing the weaknesses in the claims that more environmental regulation will create more “green jobs.” The authors are Andy Morriss (a Univ. of Illinois law professor who is also a PhD economist), Roger Meiners (a Univ. of Texas economist with a law degree), and William Bogart (a York College economist who is also York’s Dean of Academic Affairs).

The problems with the green-jobs claims are many, but the biggest is that the claimants routinely commit the classic “smashed window” fallacy made famous by Henry Hazlett. In other words, they count jobs added, but they don’t count jobs lost or never created because of the cost of the program or because of the economic distortions it engenders.

It’s also the fallacy routinely committed by government “economic development” bureaucrats, who tell you how many jobs their program has “created” while ignoring jobs lost — due to, for example, the taxes that fund their programs. Several years ago, I wrote a series of articles for the Billings Outpost detailing how Montana had wasted about $20 million in public funds on state venture capital loans to “create jobs.”  Not only did most of the jobs not materialize, but much of the money ended up uncollectible as the companies that borrowed either went bankrupt or decided to “create jobs” in some other state.

Ok, I know I am an orangutan, but admit it, on some level, when you read this, don’t you just want to say, “Oh yeah? You want some ‘a this? Well come and get it…!”

(That was a joke.)

Wulfgar raises an interesting question in a comment about physician and, presumably, other health care fees. After pointing out that his friend who works for a tech firm doesn’t charge for services unless he solves the problem,Wulfgar asks why we don’t structure doctors’ pay on a contingent basis. In other words, if you don’t make me better, you don’t get paid.

It reminds me of a time years ago when I was representing a fellow on a custody case. He wanted me to guarantee to him that we would get his kids back.

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