Another Obamacare "gotcha"

Buried in the massive 1000+ page health bill are all sorts of hidden "gatchas" that are just beginning to emerge. Here is a new one - small businesses now have to report to the IRS ANY purchase over $600, whether or not it has anything at all to do with health care. This of course generates massive amount of new paperwork for small businesses, and for the IRS. And it has nothing to do with health care. Indeed, I can't see that it serves any purpose at all - just more bureaucracy.

I wonder how many in Congress knew that requirement was in there when they voted for the bill? The level of incompetence in this Congress (Democratic and Republican alike) is absolutely astounding!

Some thoughts on Obama's programs

In murder mysteries, the detective always gets around to asking the obvious motive question - who benefited from this murder? Amidst all the pre-midterm political hype from both parties, it occurs to me to ask of this administration's first two years in office - who benefited?

The administration claims to have "saved" the nation from a major depression by bailing out the banks when they were in trouble. But who seems to have really benefited? Well, the people in the banks who caused the problem in the first place all got to keep their jobs, and most got to keep their outrageous bonuses as well. But those banks still aren't lending to small businesses much, so the rest of us haven't seen much gain from this action.

The administration claims to have "saved" the big auto companies with the bailout of GM and Chrysler. But who, in the end, really got to keep their jobs ? The UAW union members, not incidentally big supporters of Democratic politicians.

The administration claims to have "saved" the jobs of lots of teachers and policemen and fireman across the country. Translation - they saved the jobs of lots of politically powerful public sector union members.

The administration is trying its best to claim that the health care bill is good for all of us. That may or may not end up being true, but it certainly was good for the insurance companies, now that all of us HAVE to buy insurance, with the government paying the bills for those who can't afford it. And it certainly was good for the bureaucracy in Washington, who get to add a huge number of new jobs and agencies. Go here to see an amazing flowchart of the new agencies added by the bill.

The rhetoric is nice, but when I look at who really seems to have been helped thus far, it seems to be mostly Washington bureaucrats and key members of the Democratic base, which may be why the rest of the country is still suffering massive unemployment and home foreclosures.

Recommended: The Genteel Nation

David Brooks has written another of his thought-provoking Ed pieces in the Sept 9, 2010 New York Times. It is entitled The Genteel Nation, and makes the point that I have made in past posts about how the nation's best and brightest are increasingly moving into more lucrative but essentially "non-productive" service fields like law and finance. One result is that increasingly the science and engineering skills in the nation come from immigrants, and increasingly manufacturing is moving outside the country, so increasingly we as a nation just push paper (or electrons) and don't really make anything. Brooks points out that the British Empire went through a similar shift, immediately before it began its decline as a major world power, and he wonders if the effect will be the same in this nation.

Human insignificance

The constant swirl of world news and world crises gives the impression that human events are significant, are important, are crucial. We have just spent ten days in Glacier National Park, surrounded by 10,000 foot peaks that have been created by the entire earth buckling and moving a block of mountains 60 miles East, and then shaping them with mile-thick glaciers. The forces involved are so immense that everything that humans have done since our species emerged from the trees is dwarfed by comparison. The time scale involved is so immense (the oldest rocks exposed are at least 1.6 BILLION years old) that all of human history is just a small footnote to a minor marginal note in the story of the world's history.

It is useful now and then to have these experiences, and recall again how minor, how insignificant human affairs are in the entire galactic scheme of things. It puts the yammering of tinpot politicians in Washington and Tehran and Moscow in proper perspective.