Paul M. Jones

Byron York catches Barney Frank with his hand in the till. The issue is TARP: recall that the banks that received TARP money are supposed to repay it to the Treasury, along with dividend payments. President Obama has held out hope that the taxpayers may, in the end, make money on the TARP program. Recall, too, that TARP was billed as an extraordinary response to an unacceptable risk--that the nation's financial system might come crashing down. So the federal government bailed out the banks, but the banks were supposed to repay the money and the TARP statute provides that when the money is repaid, it "shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt." Which, of course, benefits the taxpayers who put up the money.

The greedy Congressman Frank apparently can't bear the idea of taxpayers getting their money back, so he has proposed to divert the money to a more politically appealing purpose.

via Power Line - Quick, Spend the Money Before the Taxpayers Find Out!.

The problem besetting newspapers is not that there are hordes of bloggers giving it away for free. Bloggers are, to be sure, great competition for the op-ed section. But the op-ed section is not a money maker, as the New York Times so painfully discovered with Times Select. As I wrote at the time, the Times confused what people were emailing each other with what they would be willing to pay for. If those things were the same, poems about Jesus and pictures of kittens wearing hats would have replaced gambling and porn as the internet's most profitable content.

via Old Media Blues - Megan McArdle.

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. Army and Marines found it useful to send a female soldier along on raids, as it was less disruptive to have a woman search the female civilians. There was no shortage of volunteers for this duty. The marines, as is their custom, saw more opportunities in this. Thus the marines began sending a team of women on such missions. ...

... So the marines in Iraq called these all-female teams (3-5 women) Lionesses. Again, no shortage of volunteers, as female marines, even more than their sisters in the army, were eager to get into the fight. But that's not what the lioness teams were created for. What the marines had also noticed was that the female marines tended to get useful information out of the women they searched. Iraqi women were surprised, and often awed, when they encountered these female soldiers and marines. The awe often turned into cooperation. ...

... Iraqi men were also intimidated by female soldiers and marines. In the macho Arab world, an assertive female with an assault rifle is sort of a man's worst nightmare. So many otherwise reticent Iraqi men, opened up to the female troops, and provided information. Women also had an easier time detecting a lie (something husbands often learn the hard way.)

The lioness teams proved capable in combat, as sometimes these peacekeeping missions ran into firefights or ambushes. But the main advantage of having a team of women along was the greater amount of intelligence collected. In addition, the female marines also made it easier to establish friendly relationships in neighborhoods and villages. This provided a more long term source of information.

via Intelligence: Girls With Guns Get It. Just read the whole thing; you gotta love the Marines, and Marine women in particular.

A public option, Shelby added, would "destroy the marketplace for health care."

But the notion that most American consumers enjoy anything like a competitive marketplace for health care is flatly false. And a study issued last month by a pro-reform group makes that strikingly clear.

The report, released by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), uses data compiled by the American Medical Association to show that 94 percent of the country's insurance markets are defined as "highly concentrated," according to Justice Department guidelines. Predictably, that's led to skyrocketing costs for patients, and monster profits for the big health insurers. Premiums have gone up over the past six years by more than 87 percent, on average, while profits at ten of the largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007.

Far from healthy market competition, HCAN describes the situation as "a market failure where a small number of large companies use their concentrated power to control premium levels, benefit packages, and provider payments in the markets they dominate."

So extreme is the level of consolidation, in fact, that one former top Federal Trade Commission official working with HCAN has sent a letter to the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, asking for an investigation into the health insurance marketplace.

via Health-Care Market Characterized By Consolidation, Not Competition | TPMMuckraker.

There is a powerful role both for the market and for philanthropy...Philanthropy alone lacks the feedback mechanism of markets, which are the best listening devices we have; and yet markets alone too easily leave the most vulnerable behind.

via Marginal Revolution: Aid Realism for the Idealist.

Here is a handy-dandy way to determine whether the failure to order some exam or treatment constitutes rationing: If the patient were the president, would he get it? If he'd get it and you wouldn't, it's rationing.

It may seem absurd to worry about whether wealthy or well-insured people get every last test and exotic or speculative treatment when millions of Americans have no health insurance and millions more have gaping holes in their coverage. But the well-insured happen to include virtually all the people making the key decisions about health-care reform -- members of Congress and their staffs, the White House staff, Washington journalists, and so on.

via Michael Kinsley - Rationing Health Care Is Our Choice - washingtonpost.com.

In championing health care reform, the President stresses the unsustainability of our current system, while insisting that nothing will change (you can keep your insurance, keep your doctor, etc.).

The pattern that I see is one of following the path of least political resistance, even if it means failing to make any significant contribution to solving the actual public policy problem. I cannot say that I am completely shocked by this. It is sort of Public Choice 101. But there are a lot of bright, highly-educated people in the Obama Administration who, if they were to step back and evaluate what is happening, would see the pattern for what it is. They believe that they inherited such bad policies that they could not possibly do worse. That belief is starting to look shaky.

via The Obama Pattern - The Atlantic Business Channel.

I love it when people who have never managed anything more than a government grant are convinced they can manage one sixth of the economy.

via Fixing the Health Care System, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty.

The unspoken truth about Mr Obama's ... effort to reach universal coverage is that you may not be able to keep your existing health plan--at least, not at the same price. That is because paying for expanding coverage must involve capping or eliminating the tax exclusion currently favouring employer-based health cover. That single distortion of the tax code costs some $250 billion a year--the biggest kitty of money lying around in Washington. But tapping some of that inevitably means some Americans will see de facto tax increases.

via Health-care reform's dirty little secret | Democracy in America | Economist.com.

The weekly [initial unemployment] claims number can't seem to fall below 600,000. ...

This is bad news for many reasons, not least of which is what is suggests about the structural problems in the economy that are likely to persist for years. But the real danger is the threat joblessness poses to an economy that, at least according to most macroeconomic variables, is stabilising. As unemployed individuals exhaust their available savings they'll find themselves curtailing spending and defaulting on obligations, both of which contribute negatively to economic output. Sustained high unemployment also places a strain on state budgets. Faced with growing demands on unemployment assistance, states are forced to cut spending elsewhere. But this is procyclical behaviour, which may act to increase unemployment further, forcing additional budget cuts, and so on.

via The jobless recovery | Free exchange | Economist.com.