Just a friendly reminder:

The Wall Street Journal has a piece on David Walker. Previously worked in the Government Accountability Office but now has become advocate of reducing the federal government.

Mr. Walker’s own speeches are vivid and clear. “We have four deficits: a budget deficit, a savings deficit, a value-of-the-dollar deficit and a leadership deficit,” he tells one group. “We are treating the symptoms of those deficits, but not the disease.”

Mr. Walker identifies the disease as having a basic cause: “Washington is totally out of touch and out of control,” he sighs. “There is political courage there, but there is far more political careerism and people dodging real solutions.” He identifies entrenched incumbency as a real obstacle to change. “Members of Congress ensure they have gerrymandered seats where they pick the voters rather than the voters picking them and then they pass out money to special interests who then make sure they have so much money that no one can easily challenge them,” he laments. He believes gerrymandering should be curbed and term limits imposed if for no other reason than to inject some new blood into the system. On campaign finance, he supports a narrow constitutional amendment that would bar congressional candidates from accepting contributions from people who can’t vote for them: “If people can’t vote in a district not their own, should we allow them to spend unlimited money on behalf of someone across the country?”

Perhaps one thing this invigoration of political activism can translate into is term limits. I think such a small rule change would have a dramatic impact on preventing federal government expansion. I also like the idea that only the constituency of the political candidate be allowed to make donations. This would go along way to reduce corruption in the federal government and would not need to focus on the ridiculous rhetoric that evil corporate lobbyists control Washington DC. A refrain so tired and untrue that I want to vomit every time i hear it.

A post over at Pop Sci asks a great question:

Is It Ethical To Engineer Delicious Cows That Feel No Pain?

According to this WJS article, democrats took alot of effort in making sure that lobbyist that would oppose universal healthcare would not interfere with its passage.

A look back suggests the president and his allies may have “overlearned” the lessons of President Bill Clinton’s 1993-1994 health-care defeat. They expended great effort to line up the support of health-care insurers, pharmaceutical makers and care providers, believing that by keeping them around the table, they could win over Republicans and stop the kind of industry-led attacks that helped sink the Clinton plan. But this strategy left out the wooing of public opinion, which was being affected by broader events, including the economic crisis and anger over bank bailouts.

As we know now it seems likely that universal health care will not be enacted even though democrats were successful in placate many of these lobbyists. I point it out because its a common refrain, particularly on the left, that lobbyists are able to mandate legislation even when the majority of Americans oppose such laws. I think this illustrate nicely how no matter how powerful the lobbyists, if enough of the citizenry does not want legislation passed, and they are vocal in that wish, that legislation will not pass.

Lobbyists are portrayed as problematic because they can influence representatives to vote against their constituency. I think universal health care failure does a nice job of showing that is not necessarily the case.

Lobbyists are more effective at getting the legislation they want when the citizenry is largely ambivalent on that issue. For those that wish to demonize lobbyists, this analysis is problematic because it shows lobbyists are powerless to force their will over the citizenry by corrupting legislators. At the end of the day, legislators are more beholden to their constituency than lobbyists.

Apparently Pfiizer is being fined 2.3 billion dollars:

Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug maker, will pay a record $2.3 billion civil and criminal penalty over unlawful prescription drug promotions.

Announcing the settlement Wednesday, the Justice Department said that it included the largest criminal fine in U.S. history – $1.2 billion. The agreement also included a criminal forfeiture of $105 million.

And the Obama Administration complains about heath care prices increasing through the roof.

But thats not the part that made me laugh. The part that I found hilarious was the way AP characterized the informants who alerted the federal government of Pfizer wrong doing as whistle blowers. In my mind a whistle blower is the kind of person that is willing to sacrifice their lucrative position in a company on principled moral grounds to report wrong doing by the corporation. For them, their principled position can not tolerate the malfeasance of the corporation and they bravely take a stand against the wrong doing even if it results in losing their job and have to suffer financially as a result. The whistle blowers moral principles trumps their need for material wealth.

With this in mind when I read this sentence from the article and busted out laughing:

Six corporate whisteblowers who first brought the misconduct to light will share $102 million of the settlement money.

These whistle blowers are neither brave nor morally principled. They are just as greedy as the Pfizer executives that violated law to to influence physicians. The only difference is the executives tried to accumulate wealth against state coercion while the so called ‘whistle blowers’ took full advantage of state coercion to acquire 17 million. I don’t know a single person that wouldn’t find the moral fortitude to stand up to law breakers for 17 million. Do you?

President Obama is going to make a speech to all school children in about a week.

During the interview, Obama said, “On September 8, when young people around the country are … will have just started or are about to go back to school, I’m going to be making a big speech to young people all across the country…”

The story continues:

The education department’s suggestions include building background knowledge for students about Obama, and then asking, “What do you think he’ll say to you?”

During the speech, students should be instructed to “think about the following: What is the president trying to tell me? What is the president asking me to do?”

Another exercise would be to have students write letters to themselves about “what they can do to help the president.”

Can you imagine the outrage the MSM would of covered had George Bush’s administration suggested this:

“These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals,” the recommendations suggest.

When this engineer was asked why build quantum computers he responds:

I’m probably wrong but after he said that my first thought was this guys has been living off state grant money for his entire life. Anyway he seems like a nice guy and it’s nice that he is excited by his work.

Clearly people who must operate in the real world will have to translate his findings into something useful since he’s just doing it for fun.