Filed under news of the ridiculous: The City of Austin will train you in chicken-keeping and subsidize your coop. Why? Since this comes under the purview of Austin Resource Recovery (aka recycling), this may be a substitute for the much-hated proposal to require Austin residents to compost food scraps, a stinky solution to a non-problem.
I admit to being curious as to whether any new positions were created in the city bureaucracy to start and expand the chicken programs. I await clarification from the head of Austin Resource Recovery's Department of Chicken-Keeping, or perhaps the head of city chicken advocacy. Will the program expand into goat-keeping as well?
Austin has been run by a plague of liberal do-gooders for ages, normally just working out 'better' ways to grab and spend citizens' money. Often this is just ironically pathetic -- for instance the more than $700 million bond package for mobility which actually reduces the number of lanes available in major streets. This time, though, the city has gone completely into self-mockery mode.
You really can't make this stuff up.
Saturday, April 15, 2017
Saturday, August 13, 2016
Obamacare! Unexpectedly!
Obamacare is becoming the poster child for leftist solutions: Those wise, smarter-than-thou central planners came up with what they believed was a logical, obviously brilliant and wonderful solution to the "health care crisis," better in all ways than our then-current fractured system.
In nearly all ways, it has failed and met the expectations of its harshest critics.
The Obama administration claimed a "vibrant" marketplace would emerge with increased competition. Instead, we got mass mergers with decreased competition: Healthcare insurers merged to stem losses. Pharmaceutical companies are merging and acquiring each other. Doctors are banding together, joining hospital group practices, or retiring. Hospitals are merging. We are left with fewer, larger organizations, less choice, less competition. Premiums in 2016 were up over 10% in almost half the states; twelve states had premium increases over 20%. United Healthcare is exiting most of the state Obamacare exchanges. In 2017, things are no better: the average increase will be around 9%. But things are much worse in certain spots: Blue Cross Blue Shield is proposing to hammer Alabama with a 40% increase and Texas with 60%!
In a nutshell: Young people are taking the penalty rather than signing up. The ill and/or poor are signing up in greater numbers than expected (but, many that sign up don't follow through and pay, even with subsidized costs). Very few participating insurers are making a profit. The 'risk corridors' don't work. Very little in this works, and none of it is sustainable.
Unexpectedly! (Unless you listened to any of the people arguing against this.)
The president continues to represent the Affordable Care Act as "working". Are Democrats merely disingenuous, or just flat lying liars? Whichever, this is a continuing theme with leftist solutions: Seriously wrong answers to the big problems, which are never admitted to be failures. Start with the "obviously correct" answer, sell it as if it were Gospel Truth, and attack any disagreement as being from troglodyte idiots. (Unless the troglodyte lobby has been donating to the Clinton Foundation.)
Obama's signature legislation is failing. It seems, so far, that 46% of Obamacare co-ops have failed. According to at least one survey, most people think Obamacare has been a failure, and 45% say they are paying more for health insurance, as opposed to seeing the promised $2500 per year reduction. And keep in mind that Obamacare still hasn't been fully implemented, since the Democrats pushed implementation of many of the more objectionable portions into the future.
Remember: This is what liberals do, on their road to turn the USA into Venezuela. The health care market is now a war zone where prices can only rise and innovation will be squelched, and the answer is always more taxation and bigger government. This too will fail.
In nearly all ways, it has failed and met the expectations of its harshest critics.
The Obama administration claimed a "vibrant" marketplace would emerge with increased competition. Instead, we got mass mergers with decreased competition: Healthcare insurers merged to stem losses. Pharmaceutical companies are merging and acquiring each other. Doctors are banding together, joining hospital group practices, or retiring. Hospitals are merging. We are left with fewer, larger organizations, less choice, less competition. Premiums in 2016 were up over 10% in almost half the states; twelve states had premium increases over 20%. United Healthcare is exiting most of the state Obamacare exchanges. In 2017, things are no better: the average increase will be around 9%. But things are much worse in certain spots: Blue Cross Blue Shield is proposing to hammer Alabama with a 40% increase and Texas with 60%!
In a nutshell: Young people are taking the penalty rather than signing up. The ill and/or poor are signing up in greater numbers than expected (but, many that sign up don't follow through and pay, even with subsidized costs). Very few participating insurers are making a profit. The 'risk corridors' don't work. Very little in this works, and none of it is sustainable.
Unexpectedly! (Unless you listened to any of the people arguing against this.)
The president continues to represent the Affordable Care Act as "working". Are Democrats merely disingenuous, or just flat lying liars? Whichever, this is a continuing theme with leftist solutions: Seriously wrong answers to the big problems, which are never admitted to be failures. Start with the "obviously correct" answer, sell it as if it were Gospel Truth, and attack any disagreement as being from troglodyte idiots. (Unless the troglodyte lobby has been donating to the Clinton Foundation.)
Obama's signature legislation is failing. It seems, so far, that 46% of Obamacare co-ops have failed. According to at least one survey, most people think Obamacare has been a failure, and 45% say they are paying more for health insurance, as opposed to seeing the promised $2500 per year reduction. And keep in mind that Obamacare still hasn't been fully implemented, since the Democrats pushed implementation of many of the more objectionable portions into the future.
Remember: This is what liberals do, on their road to turn the USA into Venezuela. The health care market is now a war zone where prices can only rise and innovation will be squelched, and the answer is always more taxation and bigger government. This too will fail.
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Blue city blues
I had been collecting information in preparation for writing a post about the destruction of large American cities by way of the election of Democrat officials.
I stopped. Couldn't pick it up again. Too damned depressing. (And I never use the word 'damned', but here it seems quite appropriate.) Too many destroyed cities, too many hopeless people...
Today I saw this, which thankfully saves me from continuing to research the topic. Please take a look, and keep in mind, as the video mentions, that this pattern seems to be repeating itself in every large American city.
There is something fundamentally wrong here: the combination of Democrat politics, public sector unions, and corruption. They go together. California, going bankrupt. Puerto Rico, bankrupt. Detroit, bankrupt. Chicago, not yet bankrupt, but working on it. Washington D.C. All with bad schools, high murder rates, corrupt officials.
If you live in a majority-Democrat large city and are not employed by a public union, you know in your bones what is going on. Just please remember when you vote.
__________________________
Mentioned in the video is a pamphlet, The New Shame of the Cities. If you're interested in the sordid details for many majority-Democrat cities, it seems Front Page magazine published the text.
I stopped. Couldn't pick it up again. Too damned depressing. (And I never use the word 'damned', but here it seems quite appropriate.) Too many destroyed cities, too many hopeless people...
Today I saw this, which thankfully saves me from continuing to research the topic. Please take a look, and keep in mind, as the video mentions, that this pattern seems to be repeating itself in every large American city.
There is something fundamentally wrong here: the combination of Democrat politics, public sector unions, and corruption. They go together. California, going bankrupt. Puerto Rico, bankrupt. Detroit, bankrupt. Chicago, not yet bankrupt, but working on it. Washington D.C. All with bad schools, high murder rates, corrupt officials.
If you live in a majority-Democrat large city and are not employed by a public union, you know in your bones what is going on. Just please remember when you vote.
__________________________
Mentioned in the video is a pamphlet, The New Shame of the Cities. If you're interested in the sordid details for many majority-Democrat cities, it seems Front Page magazine published the text.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Republican deathmatch
I prefer to pick on the Democrat candidates: Bernie is just hilarious. Hillary, on the other hand, is possibly the most unlikeable, baggage-laden candidate ever. Sooo easy to take substantive pot shots at these folks.
On the Republican side are some of the best candidates in decades, and one clown. Carson is a great man, but having a hard time convincing people that he can be president, and that's a shame. Rubio has been anointed by the Republican establishment as "their guy" after Jeb crashed and burned, so I'm not all that enamored of him. Being that I'm a naturalized Texan, I find Cruz the most compelling of the group. I like the fact he's got enemies in all the right places. He's principled, very bright, and sticks to his guns (in multiple senses), all of which I like.
Then there's the gold-plated dumpster fire, Trump. He has both the most loyal core, apparently, at about 30%, but also the strongest unfavorables, as in 60% of Republicans are in the "never Trump" category.
So the Republican side has some good candidates plus one raging dumpster fire. Unfortunately, all the decent candidates are splitting the level-headed vote, and if some of those candidates don't stand down, NOW, the clown will be the nominee.
And for those who believe they like Trump: He is not the person he seems.
The Donald is a deal maker, co-author of The Art of the Deal. He is now in "deal maker" mode, trying to seal the deal with Republican voters. He will do and say whatever is necessary to make the deal work. What we're seeing now is the most Republican, most conservative, most Christian-ish that The Donald will ever be. Because once the deal is done, he no longer needs the conservatives, the Christians, the 2nd Amendment folks, etc., that he's now sucking up to. The "make America great" and "send all the illegals home" rhetoric is just what he thinks it takes to make the deal. Historically, Trump seems to be a mildly-right-of-center Democrat, willing to donate to anyone who can give him an edge.
As president, Bernie would be a sincere disaster. Hillary would be a Clinton. 'Nuff said. And Trump would be out to continue to promote Trump, which would also be a disaster.
Ah, but Cruz would be a dangerous disaster as well, right? Yes! But my kind of a disaster! As Robert Reich points out in the best unintentional campaign ad for Cruz EVAH!
Wonderful endorsement, Mr. Reich.
On the Republican side are some of the best candidates in decades, and one clown. Carson is a great man, but having a hard time convincing people that he can be president, and that's a shame. Rubio has been anointed by the Republican establishment as "their guy" after Jeb crashed and burned, so I'm not all that enamored of him. Being that I'm a naturalized Texan, I find Cruz the most compelling of the group. I like the fact he's got enemies in all the right places. He's principled, very bright, and sticks to his guns (in multiple senses), all of which I like.
Then there's the gold-plated dumpster fire, Trump. He has both the most loyal core, apparently, at about 30%, but also the strongest unfavorables, as in 60% of Republicans are in the "never Trump" category.
So the Republican side has some good candidates plus one raging dumpster fire. Unfortunately, all the decent candidates are splitting the level-headed vote, and if some of those candidates don't stand down, NOW, the clown will be the nominee.
And for those who believe they like Trump: He is not the person he seems.
The Donald is a deal maker, co-author of The Art of the Deal. He is now in "deal maker" mode, trying to seal the deal with Republican voters. He will do and say whatever is necessary to make the deal work. What we're seeing now is the most Republican, most conservative, most Christian-ish that The Donald will ever be. Because once the deal is done, he no longer needs the conservatives, the Christians, the 2nd Amendment folks, etc., that he's now sucking up to. The "make America great" and "send all the illegals home" rhetoric is just what he thinks it takes to make the deal. Historically, Trump seems to be a mildly-right-of-center Democrat, willing to donate to anyone who can give him an edge.
As president, Bernie would be a sincere disaster. Hillary would be a Clinton. 'Nuff said. And Trump would be out to continue to promote Trump, which would also be a disaster.
Ah, but Cruz would be a dangerous disaster as well, right? Yes! But my kind of a disaster! As Robert Reich points out in the best unintentional campaign ad for Cruz EVAH!
Wonderful endorsement, Mr. Reich.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
The End of Civilization, or the Earth, or Whatever
Paul Erhlich wrote The Population Bomb in 1968. I read it then as an impressionable kid. It was totally wrong then and moreso now. He predicted mass starvation by the 1970s. The world's population was 3.5 billion in 1968. The world's population is now about 7.4 billion, and the fraction of undernourished people has dropped by half, from 33% to 16%, since 1968. For the math-challenged, that works out to about the same number of malnourished people then as now, but the total population of the planet has doubled. You should be impressed. I am.
From Wikipedia's article on the book:
But what started this massive increase in the ability to feed people? Agri-tech. Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution, plant improvement programs which allowed people to more easily feed themselves with disease resistant, higher yielding plants.
Ehrlich has left the land of Soylent Green and is writing eco-catastrophe books, which I'm sure are every bit as accurate as The Population Bomb.
A very similar story can be told about "peak oil" and dire predictions of millions freezing in the dark, versus our current situation with inexpensive oil and natural gas, with huge and increasing proven reserves. Petroleum engineering produced effective hydraulic fracturing technology seemingly at the best chosen of times. Why?
When someone believes money can be made by producing something more efficiently, more abundantly, more inexpensively, they start looking for solutions. Some start looking because of altruism, and good on them. But altruism won't put together the millions of dollars of investments needed to find huge amounts of new oil, or provide massive amounts of fertilizer and machinery needed to produce good and inexpensive food.
What about... scarce metals? scarce rare earth elements? scarce water? I'm worried more about scarce brains, but I can guarantee there are people now thinking about how to make a buck supplying more or better replacements of every scarce item you and I can think of. For instance, scarce water becomes a non-issue if someone develops a sufficiently low-cost and efficient desalination method. (The solution may be close.) Good grief: the planet is covered in water!
Which brings me back to the humanitarian, Bono: "Capitalism takes more people out of poverty than aid." Not just poverty, brother, but thirst, and hunger...
As we wander into the political chaos season, please keep in mind the elements that foster abundance for the world: freedom, democracy, capitalism.
From Wikipedia's article on the book:
Famine has not been eliminated, but its root cause has been political instability, not global food shortage.[19] The Indian economist and Nobel Prize winner, Amartya Sen, has argued that nations with democracy and a free press have virtually never suffered from extended famines.[20]In other words, if you want to complete the war on starvation you need African governments to get out of the way of democracy and freedoms. It wouldn't hurt if we had more of that here, too.
But what started this massive increase in the ability to feed people? Agri-tech. Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution, plant improvement programs which allowed people to more easily feed themselves with disease resistant, higher yielding plants.
Ehrlich has left the land of Soylent Green and is writing eco-catastrophe books, which I'm sure are every bit as accurate as The Population Bomb.
A very similar story can be told about "peak oil" and dire predictions of millions freezing in the dark, versus our current situation with inexpensive oil and natural gas, with huge and increasing proven reserves. Petroleum engineering produced effective hydraulic fracturing technology seemingly at the best chosen of times. Why?
When someone believes money can be made by producing something more efficiently, more abundantly, more inexpensively, they start looking for solutions. Some start looking because of altruism, and good on them. But altruism won't put together the millions of dollars of investments needed to find huge amounts of new oil, or provide massive amounts of fertilizer and machinery needed to produce good and inexpensive food.
What about... scarce metals? scarce rare earth elements? scarce water? I'm worried more about scarce brains, but I can guarantee there are people now thinking about how to make a buck supplying more or better replacements of every scarce item you and I can think of. For instance, scarce water becomes a non-issue if someone develops a sufficiently low-cost and efficient desalination method. (The solution may be close.) Good grief: the planet is covered in water!
Which brings me back to the humanitarian, Bono: "Capitalism takes more people out of poverty than aid." Not just poverty, brother, but thirst, and hunger...
As we wander into the political chaos season, please keep in mind the elements that foster abundance for the world: freedom, democracy, capitalism.
Saturday, February 20, 2016
The sad tale of Death Wish Coffee: a review
Death Wish Coffee is a thing now. A science fiction author whose books I've read has declared herself addicted. Apparently the company won 30 seconds of advertising time during the Super Bowl (which I didn't watch). It's got my curiosity up.
What is Death Wish Coffee, you ask? It's marketed as "world's strongest coffee" and supposedly contains twice the caffeine of "normal" coffee, while never being bitter and having wonderful tones of chocolate and cherry. According to Caffeine Informer (and other places), Death Wish gets its caffeine content by using mostly robusta beans, which have not quite twice the caffeine of arabica beans. Death Wish also recommends using more than the normal amount of ground coffee per cup.
This is sort of a caffeine-driven programmer's challenge, and I work among caffeine-driven programmers. So a couple of guys at my office decided to split a pound of Death Wish (~$20) to taste for themselves. Then one of them passed on enough beans for me to make a pot.
So, some information about coffee, from a serious coffee geek:
I roast my own coffee at home. A home-roaster. I really like good coffee and I really dislike bad coffee. (I find Starbucks offensive on many levels.) I like my coffee to be roasted so as to bring out the best aspects of the beans. My favorites are probably Guatemalan beans from Antigua or Huehuetenango, roasted just to second crack, which often brings out cocoa flavors.
There are two commercial coffee genera, robusta and arabica. (Strictly speaking, robusta isn't a genus, but it's often used as such.) The best coffees are arabica. Robusta is used as a filler in some blends when they want to cost-reduce for mass markets. It should be used very carefully because it TASTES BAD. One coffee site refers to the taste as "burnt tires." Robusta, carefully roasted and judiciously blended, probably makes mass-market coffee only a little more awful than it would be otherwise. All "specialty coffee," which is what I drink, is arabica. If you care about coffee, you try to get good arabica beans.
The place I buy my green beans from sells arabica specialty coffees, but they also may sell robusta, irregularly. Sometimes these beans are for blending; sometimes they're for test-roasting and then tossing in the waste bin.
There are espresso blends that heavily use robusta and roast really dark. If you don't want to taste the bean, you roast very dark. (Starbucks apparently makes heavy use of this.) Dark roasting increases bitterness and cooks out the volatiles that might remind you that the bean came from a plant.
So, my colleague at work passed on a few spare ounces of Death Wish beans. The beans were obviously quite dark with the oil on the surface. The fragrance coming from the beans was unpleasant. Possibly the oils had turned. I made a pot. I drank half a cup, trying to keep an open mind. It was bad, but not screamingly bad. Sort of a more acidic Starbucks. Tones of charcoal, and a faint hint of toasted rubber. Sorry, but I didn't really like it.
Curiosity satisfied. Another triumph of marketing over reality. Don't bother.
__________________
See also: How to brew great coffee
What is Death Wish Coffee, you ask? It's marketed as "world's strongest coffee" and supposedly contains twice the caffeine of "normal" coffee, while never being bitter and having wonderful tones of chocolate and cherry. According to Caffeine Informer (and other places), Death Wish gets its caffeine content by using mostly robusta beans, which have not quite twice the caffeine of arabica beans. Death Wish also recommends using more than the normal amount of ground coffee per cup.
This is sort of a caffeine-driven programmer's challenge, and I work among caffeine-driven programmers. So a couple of guys at my office decided to split a pound of Death Wish (~$20) to taste for themselves. Then one of them passed on enough beans for me to make a pot.
So, some information about coffee, from a serious coffee geek:
I roast my own coffee at home. A home-roaster. I really like good coffee and I really dislike bad coffee. (I find Starbucks offensive on many levels.) I like my coffee to be roasted so as to bring out the best aspects of the beans. My favorites are probably Guatemalan beans from Antigua or Huehuetenango, roasted just to second crack, which often brings out cocoa flavors.
The place I buy my green beans from sells arabica specialty coffees, but they also may sell robusta, irregularly. Sometimes these beans are for blending; sometimes they're for test-roasting and then tossing in the waste bin.
There are espresso blends that heavily use robusta and roast really dark. If you don't want to taste the bean, you roast very dark. (Starbucks apparently makes heavy use of this.) Dark roasting increases bitterness and cooks out the volatiles that might remind you that the bean came from a plant.
So, my colleague at work passed on a few spare ounces of Death Wish beans. The beans were obviously quite dark with the oil on the surface. The fragrance coming from the beans was unpleasant. Possibly the oils had turned. I made a pot. I drank half a cup, trying to keep an open mind. It was bad, but not screamingly bad. Sort of a more acidic Starbucks. Tones of charcoal, and a faint hint of toasted rubber. Sorry, but I didn't really like it.
Curiosity satisfied. Another triumph of marketing over reality. Don't bother.
__________________
See also: How to brew great coffee
Strange days
Yes, I've got the old Doors Strange Days song playing in the back of my head.
The two presumptive candidates for president are now an old unrepentant socialist, and a billionaire whose claims to fame include being on reality TV, a series of news-making bankruptcies, and a series of trade-in wives.
The runner-up (at the moment) for the Democrat nomination is a former Secretary of State and Senator who doesn't seem to be able to name her accomplishments, possibly because they all seem to have seriously negative connotations. Hillary-care. Benghazi. "Smart diplomacy." Security leaks. If this woman weren't so well connected...
One Twitter pundit characterized the primaries as 'pending indictment' (Clinton) vs 'Venezuela' (Sanders) on the Democrat side, and 'gold plated dumpster fire' (Trump) vs 'most punchable face' (Cruz) on the Republican side. It would be funnier if it weren't so close to true.
One amusement is seeing the Democrat candidates trying to out-Leftist each other, then reading the estimates of how many trillions their give-aways will cost. The Republicans are mostly trying to out-conservative each other, which isn't nearly as amusing.
Strange days, indeed.
The two presumptive candidates for president are now an old unrepentant socialist, and a billionaire whose claims to fame include being on reality TV, a series of news-making bankruptcies, and a series of trade-in wives.
The runner-up (at the moment) for the Democrat nomination is a former Secretary of State and Senator who doesn't seem to be able to name her accomplishments, possibly because they all seem to have seriously negative connotations. Hillary-care. Benghazi. "Smart diplomacy." Security leaks. If this woman weren't so well connected...
One Twitter pundit characterized the primaries as 'pending indictment' (Clinton) vs 'Venezuela' (Sanders) on the Democrat side, and 'gold plated dumpster fire' (Trump) vs 'most punchable face' (Cruz) on the Republican side. It would be funnier if it weren't so close to true.
One amusement is seeing the Democrat candidates trying to out-Leftist each other, then reading the estimates of how many trillions their give-aways will cost. The Republicans are mostly trying to out-conservative each other, which isn't nearly as amusing.
Strange days, indeed.
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