What Matters in Kansas – The evolution of creationism. By William Saletan
Let’s go back to the basics. The K-12 educational system should be teaching students the building blocks of learning what is taught in the state Universities. Do they teach Creationism or Intelligent Design in your State University? If so, fine, then teach it in K-12. If not, don’t.
Health-Care Costs Expected to Soar Over Next Decade
This article discusses some of the pending healthcare cost rises. From an est. $1.9 Trillion in 2005 to $3.6 Trillion in 2014.
I want to look at the per person costs for healthcare. For 2005, I will figure on a Population of 290 Million. For 2014, I will use 310 Million.
Using the numbers above, our health care costs average $6,552 per person in 2005, rising to $11,613 in 2014.
If we consider insurance as a shared risk pool, it would seem to me that for a $6552 a year everyone should should get into a health insurance plan. I will even give up $552 a year for as a deductible and say $6000 a year. For Elaine and myself, a mere $12,000 a year will cover us for healthcare; rising to $22000 a year in 2014. (I am going to a $613 deductible in 2014) .
Of course, this insurance pool needs to include EVERYONE, from newborn babe to deathbed pensioner. If we allow opt-in/opt-out options, then many sub-30 people will opt-out because “We are in the Pink of Health!” And a family with 8 kids and 2 parents will face an annual insurance bill of $60,000 with a $5520 deductible. Somehow, I don’t think that will be economically viable from the family’s point of view.
My numbers are a bit higher than the article’s. I think I am assuming a lower population number, but our costs per person are close. The upshot would appear to be that while a wage-earning individual faces a reasonable average payment, the gross family payments account equal or exceed the poverty level for a family of 3, or greater. (The single Poverty rate is greater than the $6,552 for a single healthcare share. The family of 2 Poverty rate is just just less than the $13,104 healthcare rate for two.) Something seems askew when the poverty rate doesn’t include health insurance costs.
I see that there are a lot of comments going on about a National ID card. Evidently, some in the Congress are trying to mandate that state driver’s licenses should contain a common set of information, that that information will be shared across a common database system between all 50 states and that a driver needs to prove their citizenship to get a license.
I don’t have any problem with Congress mandating that state’s DLs have common information. It makes sense that IDs should include a name, picture and DOB. And I think that some states don’t include all that information on a DL.
What I strenuously object to is the idea of sharing information between states. I am a citizen/resident of Colorado. I don’t need for any Californian browsing through my record, whether with good intentions, no intentions or bad intentions. It is not anyone’s business, outside of Colorado, what my DL says.
As a secondary objection, the idea of mandating that states verify US citizenship before issuing a license is stupid. The Feds aren’t going to put any money into the time and effort to handle validation. What I would suggest is that the Feds define what constitutes proof of citizenship and then ask the state to note on the driver’s license that “Proof of US Citizenship Presented” or something like that if the citizen presents proof. If someone wants a license but doesn’t want to gather the necessary documents then the field can be left blank or filled in with “No Proof of Citizenship Presented”. If someone comes in for a license and presents proof of Japanese citizenship then that can be noted on the license. I don’t see any reason to stop someone from getting a Driver License just because they aren’t a citizen. As long as they are residing in the state, I think it would behoove us to know that they know the rules of the road.
One of the on-going problems with the whole Driver License National ID is that there are a number of people who don’t drive. I know of a few non-drivers. I expect in 20-30 years I will be a non-driver. Some states, maybe all, offer a non-driver license ID so non-drivers can have the checking cashing ID form so many stores require. This could be included with the ‘National ID’ card as well.
I know some tellers get freaked out when you show them your US Passport as an ID.
PS > No Social Security Number on your Driver License. < The odds of someone hacking the DL database and getting critical ID information are pretty high. They only need to do it once. And if the state Databases are networked, then everyone loses their Identity.
Saw a couple of stickers on the rear window of a car I drove by. The first was a Bush-Cheney ’04 sticker. Lots of them in this neighborhood. And next to it was a “Partnership for an Idiot Free America”
That one really boggled the mind.
Caduceus vs Staff of Asclepius You can learn something new every day. I had always thought the Medical symbol was the Caduceus (with two snakes) but it appears to be the Staff of Asclepius (with one snake)
Very Interesting.
I heard the the House has passed a bill that will do away with the Estate Tax in 2010, so it doesn’t come back as currently allowed.
What I don’t understand is why the Republicans think that the estate tax is ‘unfair’. The person who earned the estate, built it up penny by penny, is dead. They don’t need it anymore. Once you leave the playing table, your chips revert to the bank.
All right, so they want to pass their ill-gotten gains onto others. How is this fair? One measure of success in our society is your net worth. So these inheritors are suddenly swimming in money without lifting a finger. How is that fair?
Not having an Estate Tax is inherently unfair. It promotes the growth of an aristocracy that claims great material wealth based on the activities of their ancestors. I think the British have already demonstrated the usefulness of these twits.
Another argument made about the Estae Tax is that it causes family businesses to break up because they have to sell the business assets to pay the tax.
My solution is simple. Property that is inherited is not taxed at the time of inheritence. It is only taxed when it is sold. If someone passes on the family farm, worth 10’s of millions of dollars, to three children, along with 10 million dollars, the Estate Tax would be figured on the dollars and not the farm (unless the children want to sell it). When one or all of the children decide to sell part or whole of the farm, then they pay the Estate Tax on it. The same can be done for paintings, artwork, jewelry, family heirlooms. No tax until they are sold. Stocks, bonds, money instruments, basically anything the SEC might oversee, are taxed when inherited, if the total value of the Estate at time of death exceeds some set value. (We don’t count property appreciation after death.)
What would be a good set value to start Estate Taxes? How about 10 times the anual salary of the President of the United States? or 5 times? That allows the value to change with the times and not squeeze everyone once inflation pushes the poverty level up to $1,000,000.
Come and join the Unitarian Jihad
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Machine Gun of Courteous Debate.
(I picked this up at Patrick Nielsen Hayden‘s blog)
If you want to clear the non-internet junk and spam from your life…
From Mark Atwood on the Rec.arts.sf.fandom list:
On my way into Amarillo from Tucumcari last week I saw a couple of interesting things.
The first looked like a short woodhenge, from a distance. But, as I came up to it, I saw that it was a very strange cattle loading pen. Normally, the loading pens are made of panel fencing; this was made out of poles driven into the ground, quite close to each other.
The second was a Stuckey’s billboard advertising “Mandellas and Dream Catchers for sale” up ahead. I wonder if Nelson gets any royalties from this? (A dream catcher is an Indian stick and string mandala, for catching dreams)
I decided to drive on down to Dallas for the annual Fantasy Baseball Draft. The draft was on Saturday so I decided to take Friday off, leave Thursday night from work, proceed down I-25 to Raton NM, catch US 87 East, stop in Amarillo to sleep, continue on to Dallas Friday, stay with a friend Friday night, draft Saturday morning/afternoon, head back to Amarillo Saturday evening, spend the night and then head on home via Raton Sunday.
It almost worked.
Thursday, a snow storm blew through the area but it cleared up by afternoon and I figured that Raton Pass would be cleared by the time I got there. And it was. It took a while getting through the pass since I was right behind the plow that was clearing it, but I reached Raton by 9 PM. From Raton, I would catch US 87 straight through to Amarillo. Except that the nice Police Officer said that US 87 was closed and wouldn’t be cleared until mid-morning (it is very windy in that part of NM and snow drifts tend to get very deep) and there were a lot of 18-wheelers parking by the side of the road, waiting for it to open. It was not going to be a good drive in the morning.
But, I remembered from the last time I fled Texas, back in 1992, that there was a way to get to I-40 from Raton without having to backtrack all the way to Albuquerque. So I headed on down to Springer, found a gas station that was still open, checked out their map and indeed found the route that backtracked my flight when I missed the US 87 turnoff in Amarillo in ’92 and ended up on I-40 heading to Albuquerque. (I realized, as I approached the New Mexico border, that I was on the wrong track and found the back road route to Raton on the map and got off at San Jon) This time, I was going in reverse. And rather than drive all night (like I did last time) I was going to find a place to sleep before I got to Amarillo. So, after zipping through the New Mexican night, I ended up in Tucumcari and got a room at a motel on Route 66. Awakening bright and late Friday morning I got on I-40 and headed east to Amarillo (about 2 hours away) where I once again almost found the right road to Dallas. I got off on US 87 South towards Lubbock, nagged by the thought that something wasn’t right. And before going too far I realized that I needed US 287 South to get to Dallas. So, I turned around, got back to I-40 and followed the signs to US 287 South and continued on for another 6 hours to Dallas, hitting the Metroplex just at rush-hour. I was immediately reminded why I fled Texas 13 years before.
I found my friend’s place, even though he had flown off to India several hours earlier, got on line to check the baseball web-pages and got to sleep early and slept soundly. The next morning I headed over to the draft, selected my team and then went to diner with some fellow owners. (Mr. Wok’s in Plano, very tasty Chinese) After dinner, I headed back to Amarillo. Got to Amarillo about 12:30, found a comfortable motel room for the night and slept as long as I wanted. About this time, time was springing forward, but that isn’t relevant to this tale. Sunday morning, I refueled, body and car, and carefully followed the US 87 and US 287 North signs out of town and started home. The drive home was rather uneventful. Texas has this annoying habit of having divided highways with 70MPH speed limits running into little towns every 30 miles where the speed limit through town is 35 MPH. And you know that these towns probably get most of their revenue from the suckers who don’t slow down.
So I was toodling along, minding the towns when they showed up and then suddenly noticed I was in Oklahoma (the roads were better). OK was not on my itinerary. I figured I would continue on to the next town, Boise City, and find out what happened. From previous trips I had this vague idea that Boise City was in New Mexico, maybe I was just going to take the long way around. I stopped at a station in Boise City, told the clerk I had taken a wrong turn somewhere and was apparently lost. She asked where was I supposed to be? Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, or Texas? because otherwise I was stuck in OK. I told her I was heading to Colorado and she suggested I stay on US 287 to Lamar, Colorado and then head over to Pueblo and I-25, or I could take this other highway over to Clayton, NM and catch US 87 there to Raton, NM and I-25. It was about the same distance either way. (Evidently, I missed the split of US 87 and US2 287 in Dumas or Dalhart many miles down the road and kept blindly following the US 287 signs. I couldn’t believe I had completely missed New Mexicio. Do you know how big that state is?
I decided to try the Lamar way so I wouldn’t have to learn a new route sign from the one I had been following for the past 500 miles. Colorado wasn’t far beyond Boise City and I settled in for a long drive. Denver was 288 miles away, Lamar about 80. I haven’t been in that part of Colorado before, the Southeastern plains. There are actually towns below 4000 feet in that part of the state. (In Colorado, the town limit signs announce the town name and the elevation of the town, not the population as found in many other states. People in Colorado can get pretty prickly about their elevation. I live at 7200 feet, and I’m not in the mountains.)
I drove though a wind farm just south of Lamar. It was rather impressive seeing just the blades turning over the horizon of the ridge. As you proceeded, the tower and turbine slowly came into view. But, initially, just a couple of very large blades circled through the air above the ridge.
I got to Lamar and caught US 50 west to Pueblo, found NPR and listened to the Thomas Jefferson Hour to pass the time. I had thought briefly about staying on US 287 up to Limon and then catching US 24 back to the Springs, but I had been that way before and US 50 was new, so I toodled on. It was pretty anticlimatic after that. I-25 was I-25. Been there, done that. Got home about 3:30 MDT and started to catch up on all I missed while I was gone.
Next year, someone else can drive.