I hope you watched ALL of that video. I know it’s 9 minutes long but it’s well worth it. It’s the end of an occupation of an NYU cafeteria by a student organization named Take Back NYU. They planned to seize the cafeteria and I guess start a chain reaction that would topple NYU’s administration and lead to a state for the Palestinians I think. One of the big problems was their scatterbrained agenda. Here are there 13 demands. I copied that from their website.

1. Full legal and disciplinary amnesty for all parties involved in the occupation.
2. Full compensation for all employees whose jobs were disrupted during the course of the occupation.
3. Public release of NYU’s annual operating budget, including a full list of university expenditures, salaries for all employees compensated on a semester or annual basis, funds allocated for staff wages, contracts to non-university organizations for university construction and services, financial aid data for each college, and money allocated to each college, department, and administrative unit of the university. Furthermore, this should include a full disclosure of the amount and sources of the university’s funding.
4. Disclosure of NYU’s endowment holdings, investment strategy, projected endowment growth, and persons, corporations and firms involved in the investment of the university’s endowment funds. Additionally, we demand an endowment oversight body of students, faculty and staff who exercise shareholder proxy voting power for the university’s investments.
5. That the NYU Administration agrees to resume negotiations with GSOC/UAW Local 2110 – the union for NYU graduate assistants, teaching assistants, and research assistants. That NYU publicly affirm its commitment to respect all its workers, including student employees, by recognizing their right to form unions and to bargain collectively. That NYU publicly affirm that it will recognize workers’ unions through majority card verification.
6. That NYU signs a contract guaranteeing fair labor practices for all NYU employees at home and abroad. This contract will extend to subcontracted workers, including bus drivers, food service employees and anyone involved in the construction, operation and maintenance at any of NYU’s non-U.S. sites.
7. The establishment of a student elected Socially Responsible Finance Committee. This Committee will have full power to vote on proxies, draft shareholder resolutions, screen all university investments, establish new programs that encourage social and environmental responsibility and override all financial decisions the committee deems socially irresponsible, including investment decisions. The committee will be composed of two subcommittees: one to assess the operating budget and one to assess the endowment holdings. Each committee will be composed of ten students democratically elected from the graduate and under-graduate student bodies. All committee decisions will be made a strict majority vote, and will be upheld by the university. All members of the Socially Responsible Finance Committee will sit on the board of trustees, and will have equal voting rights. All Socially Responsible Finance Committee and Trustee meetings shall be open to the public, and their minutes made accessible electronically through NYU’s website. Elections will be held the second Tuesday of every March beginning March 10^th 2009, and meetings will be held biweekly beginning the week of March 30^th 2009.
8. That the first two orders of business of the Socially Responsible Finance committee will be:
   a) An in depth investigation of all investments in war and genocide profiteers, as well as companies profiting from the occupation of Palestinian territories.
   b) A reassessment of the recently lifted of the ban on Coca Cola products.
9. That annual scholarships be provided for thirteen Palestinian students, starting with the 2009/2010 academic year. These scholarships will include funding for books, housing, meals and travel expenses.
10. That the university donate all excess supplies and materials in an effort to rebuild the University of Gaza.
11. Tuition stabilization for all students, beginning with the class of 2012. All students will pay their initial tuition rate throughout the course of their education at New York University.  Tuition rates for each successive year will not exceed the rate of inflation, nor shall they exceed one percent. The university shall meet 100% of government-calculated student financial need.
12. That student groups have priority when reserving space in the buildings owned or leased by New York University, including, and especially, the Kimmel Center.
13. That the general public have access to Bobst Library.

I think this video shows their other problems: cluelessness, lack of planning, repetition of meaningless buzzwords. I can only assume they thought NYU would cave in immediately. Why else would you go through with a pointless exercise like this?

I actually feel some sympathy for the cameraman. It’s pretty clear he knows he’s lost control of the situation but has no idea how to proceed. Somehow he never got around to planning for this moment. Really, the most pathetic scene was him taking inventory. NYU won’t negotiate. His protesting comrades won’t listen to his cries of “consensus”. Yet he needs to find something to do in that hard-fought consensus zone.

NYU showed a good balance of strength and patience. They gave the students a chance to leave on their own accord. When they refused, the guards marched in. Simple and stern. You could really see where the bearded guy’s patience wore thin though. I guess he heard “consensus” one too many times. He stopped bothering with the cameraman and moved on to giving the guards orders. Pretty damn funny. They all showed much more restraint than I would have. Frankly, I would have given them one warning that they would have to leave on their own or they would be seized by the guards. Once they refused and I had the guards enter, I would have instructed them to immediately restrain these protesters; just put them in shackles and drag them out. It’s a good thing I don’t have to suffer these fools.

Just for giggles, read the comments at NYU Local.

I’ve lived in California for about eight years now and I can tell you this state has problems. After an epic budget showdown, this week a state budget was signed. So what do we get for all this trouble?

• A 1% increase in the state sales tax: from 7.25% to 8.25%.
• A near doubling of the vehicle license fee: from 0.65% to 1.15% of the vehicle’s value.
• A tax hike of 0.25% to all income tax brackets.

Marvelous. This is supposed to be a “fair” compromise budget that leaves everyone unhappy. I won’t disagree with the unhappy part, but I question the fairness of it. Scratch that. Fairness is subjective. I question whether this is good for the future of the state. There are spending cuts, which I am partially happy about, but we’re still borrowing billions and increasing the tax burden. Maybe you want to shrug your shoulders at that, because after all governments are always borrowing and raising taxes, but really we’re in an unsustainable spending mode. We’ve just created the 2009-2010 budget, so lets compare it with the 1999-2000 budget.

First though I should explain some of the budget categories. The General Fund is the generalized budget and its what the state legislature gets to argue about. Special Funds are monies allocated for specific purposes and the legislature has no say in it. These special funds are usually the result of some ballot initiative. The Bond Funds are the costs of servicing the state’s outstanding bonds.

California actually plans to spend $196 Billion over the next year when you add up the General Fund, Special Fund, Bond Fund and money from the Federal Government. Back in 1999-2000, California only planned to spend $122 billion. Over that decade spending rose $74 billion. That’s a 60% increase. What has that extra $74 Billion gotten us? I can’t explain it. Maybe we can dig deeper for an answer. California is nice enough to provide a handy Excel pivot table that shows budget expenditures over time. This only shows allocations from the General Fund so it’s not a complete guide to spending, but it is illuminating.

The table can be a little difficult to read. I know there are lots of zeros and blank spaces there. This is a historical table so it has to label government entities that have merged or been renamed. For instance you see the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) comes out of nowhere in 2005 with a $7+ billion budget, and several other programs below it are zeroed out that year. I believe that means they were merged to create DCR in 2005.

What is clear are the department totals. What wins the prize for fattest increase? Health spending! That’s up 103% since 1999-2000. Yes in one decade California has more than doubled its spending on health care. I wasn’t here in 1999 so would an oldtimer please educate me on why that budget needed to double. Did an outbreak of plague start sweeping the state and we needed to throw money at fighting it off? Were there people dropping dead in the streets because they couldn’t get to a doctor? I know health care costs rise fast, but I don’t believe they’ve more than doubled in a decade. I think this budget is larded with giveaways to constituents.

The second runner up is Criminal Justice. That has seen a 73% spending increase over these years. Why? As best as I can tell from this pivot table most of this increase is going into the prison system. It’s hardly surprising. The prison guards have a hugely powerful union. Dealing with them requires the same sort of tough tactics you need with any union. Unfortunately I can’t think of any government, let alone California’s, who can stand up to a union.

Besides the union, incarceration is becoming more expensive. We need more prison space, but the costs per prisoner are also rising. A long term solution requires us to evaluate how we treat prisoners. For instance, how much health care does a prisoner have a right to? Should California pay for every treatment? If we have a prisoner sentenced to life in prison, and they develop cancer, should the state pay for those expensive cancer treatments? It seems like a waste of money to keep someone alive, just for the sake of keeping them in prison. However does the state have a right to deprive someone from health care? That’s a necessary discussion, but I’m afraid in California it would become a shrill shouting match. In that scenario I would say the prisoner’s family should have the burden of those cancer treatment costs. If this person wasn’t a prisoner, it would be the family’s responsibility anyway. Actually I think I would apply this to all prisoner health care. If these people didn’t commit a crime, they would be free and responsible for their own health care costs. Why should being a prisoner entitle you to be given health care? Your health is your responsibility. It is not a right unlike what some people want you to believe.

We should also reconsider how we run prisons. Our current system isn’t working. Prison bureaucrats turn a blind eye to gangs because they know they’re unable to defeat them. Today’s prisons allow too much opportunity for prisoners to meet and conspire. That makes policing these places more expensive and indirectly gives the prison guard union more clout. What if we “reinvented” the prison and put more restrictions on how prisoners can interact? We have to build new prisons anyway just to deal with the overcrowding. I would like to see an experimental prison that puts harsh restrictions on what prisoners can do. I imagine a place where prisoners never leave their cells except when under guard for classes (I have to give a sop to the rehabilitationists after all). Each cell will be designed for one prisoner. It will be a narrow space where the prisoner will eat, sleep and shower. There doesn’t even need to be a bed. They can be issued a bedroll and told to sleep on the floor. At the far end will be a combination shower and toilet built into the cell’s wall. Keeping the cell clean will be the prisoner’s responsibility. There will be no cafeteria. All food will be delivered by guards on duty and eaten by hand, so we won’t have to worry about utensils being turned into weapons. I think a prison built along these lines will save the state money, and we should discuss these options. Again though I’m almost certain that discussion would decend into a shrill shouting match.

And that’s why I am so disappointed with this budget. Here I mentioned two departments but they are not the only offenders. Yes I believe more cuts could have been made because state money is not being spent efficiently. However we will never make these cuts until we have a crisis. If California was forced to declare bankruptcy, it would then be possible. The situation would be so dire that massive cuts could be forced through against the wishes of corporate & union lobbyists,  and community organizers. The budget could be fundamentally changed so we wouldn’t have these massive deficits every few years when the accounting chicanery catches up with us. Instead we have another quick fix that raises taxes again, raises fees again and borrows yet more money. This budget fight has taught me this state needs to  collapse before it can be rebuilt.

America is losing friends. Granted this is the fake sort of friendship that nations have between each other, but hey that’s the world we live in and we have to play by those rules. Kyrgyzstan is kicking us out of the Manas Airport. This matters because it was one of the few routes we had into Afghanistan that didn’t involve kowtowing to Russia.

Sadly I’m not privy to White House decisions, so I can only guess at what happened. I can see two possibilities for this strategic failure: hubris or incompetence. Perhaps our new president’s advisors assumed Kyrgyzstan would bend over backwards for the US. After all with Obama as president the world must love us! On the other hand maybe our miracle working president was too busy nominating tax cheats to the Cabinet or issuing exemptions so lobbyists could get White House jobs to bother negotiating with Kyrgyzstan. Am I being too harsh? I don’t think so because Kyrgyzstan was pretty clear about their position.

“Our government has the full right, without explaining anything, to terminate this agreement,” said Alisher Sabirov, a deputy with the president’s party. “Our friends are not those who are stronger, but those who help us.”

Russia is the friend that helps them. The Russians are giving Kyrgyzstan over $2 billion in loans. As if we couldn’t out bid that? After only a month in office the Obama Administration has proven they aren’t cheapskates. Did they not have the time to offer $3 billion? Now we look flatfooted as we try to convince the Kyrgyzstani president to reverse the order.

Actually, I think I left something out before. Besides being full of themselves or incompetent, our new administration might have intended this to happen. These are the same people who wanted us to be less confrontational with Russia. For all we know they worked out a secret deal to let Russia look like heroes and we lose our base to build goodwill with the Russians, or some other such nonsense. In just one month we have seen world-class boobery from the new presidential administration on the domestic front and now on the international front. It’s going to be a rocky couple of years.

Barack Obama held his first news conference as president on Monday night and made sure to hammer home the need for his Stimulus Bill. Without it, apparently, the world will end.

I’m not actually here to bother discussing the merits and flaws of a fiscal stimulus, or even this specific bill. There are lots of blogs out there who have done far better than I could. I’m writing here because of some chilling news I read on Bloomberg. The stimulus that’s supposed to save us from a future of selling 5-cent apples on the street actually has some health care provisions slipped in. Up until now I thought those health care provisions were just cash to get hospitals and doctors to digitize patient records. The truth is far more disturbing.

I strongly recommend you read the commentary from Bloomberg, but here I’ll summarize the scariest bits. The switch to electronic medical record-keeping is the only part that’s widely known, and the common idea is that these records will be so convenient medical practitioners will switch willingly. However that’s wrong. All hospitals and doctors must become “meaningful users” of the new electronic medical record system. Any that are not will be penalized. So it’s not that these records will be so much better that anyone would want to use them. They must be coerced into using them.

Yet this goes a step farther than mere record-keeping. The National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, a brand new bureaucracy, will police your electronic medical record for treatments they deem inappropriate or financially wasteful. “According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and ‘learn to operate less like solo practitioners.’” The National Coordinator’s goal is to cut health care costs by turning your doctor into a scripted actor. It’s like when a telemarketer calls and they’re required to stay on script when they talk to you. If they deviate, they will be punished by their supervisor. I imagine in the future this means doctors will have to diagnose patients based on a government approved matrix. Patients will come in complaining of X, Y, Z symptoms. They’ll look them up in the matrix and get a list of allowed treatments. Any doctor deviating from the matrix, either by ordering unapproved tests or treatments, will be punished through fines. If the National Coordinator is given enough power, doctors may lose their licenses if they rack up multiple infractions.

As if the idea of the government monitoring my health isn’t alarming enough, the stimulus bill goes another step further. Another new bureaucracy, the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, will make decisions on what medications and technologies are permitted based on their cost. “The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept ‘hopeless diagnoses’ and ‘forgo experimental treatments,’ and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.”

So let’s say a pharmaceutical company invents a new drug that reduces stroke risk by 5% more than the old drug, but costs 25% more. The Federal Coordinating Council would ban that new drug from being used in the US because it isn’t cost effective. The people who would have been spared a stroke with that 5% improvement must die or live a crippled life so the government can point to lower health care costs on a ledger.

I’m pretty amazed that anyone considers it positive to accept a hopeless diagnosis. Do Europeans really do such things? Why wouldn’t you seek out an experimental drug or new treatment if you have no hope to live under conventional treatment? I just don’t understand that way of thinking. If you’re so willing to accept fate why bother to live? Why linger on for months or years? You would be wasting limited health care dollars. Can’t the National Coordinator prescribe a cup of hemlock?

I find this whole program disturbing. Why is it wrong to expect to be healed when you visit a doctor? Are we actually going to tell people, ‘There are treatments that have a chance of saving your life, but we don’t think your life is worth the expense of trying. So you’ll just need to die now and free up this hospital bed.’ This is health care reform? Every politician who supports this should be required to visit hospitals in their constituencies and tell families their loved one’s lives aren’t worth the cost of treating them. I want to see Tom Daschle sit down with a little boy and explain why it’s better for his grandfather to die than pay for a surgery or medication.

But of course Tom Daschle won’t have to actually worry about the expense of treatment. He, his family and naturally all of the Washington elite, from the President on down to lobbyists and journalists, will have access to the full panoply of medications and treatments. Their lives will be worth any expense. Today they bare the cost of that expansive medical care, except for Congress members who get health insurance through the Federal Government. In the future it will all be at taxpayer expense. Us plebs will get to make do with their scraps.

As I said, I find this direction for health care to be chilling and it’s because of a story that Bloomberg essayist told about British health care.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

Imagine all the people who went blind in those three years. Imagine one them were you and tell me how you would feel knowing there was a drug that could have saved your eyesight but the government refused to let you have it. Would you be content to know the loss of your eye helped government accountants balance their books? This is the most horrifying bureaucratic madness, and it’s where we’re headed. This is the product of universal health care. It all gets a start in the ‘too-important-to-question’ Stimulus Bill. I’ll see you on the six month waiting list to visit a doctor.

For three of my four years of college, I lived off of Burger King. That’s no exaggeration. I must have had it at least once a day, with few exceptions, for every day I was on campus. By the time I left college I gained about 80 pounds; Hardly a surprise. What actually did surprise me is how my appetite for Burger King had been completely burnt out. In the eight years since college I’ve eaten at Burger King only twice. This commercial persuaded me to go on my most recent visit.

I was excited. I love spicy hamburgers and was glad to see Burger King get in the game. Yet, when I finally bit into that Whopper I was let down. Tremendously let down! The first bite had no kick, but I tried to reassure myself that it was only the first bite and maybe the heat just needed to build. Second bite, nothing. Third bite, nothing. I ate that entire Whopper and felt nothing! No heat, no kick, no spice, no nothing! There was no anger in that Whopper and it will be years before I make my third trip to Burger King.