Outright Lies?

Maybe “outright lies” is a little strong.

“Political gamesmanship,” maybe. “Strategery.”

Or maybe, instead: “sticking one’s head in the sand to avoid commenting on something you know isn’t true because doing so would force you to either tell an outright lie or undermine the position of people you’re counting on to vote for you on Election Day.”

But that’s a little wordy.

Outgoing (five days from now) Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager issued an opinion this week regarding Wisconsin’s recently-passed Marriage Amendment, and how it will affect benefits and legal protections that same-sex couples – and the rest of us – already receive.

Here’s how the Capital Times summarized her opinion:

In one of her last official acts, outgoing Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager has declared that Wisconsin's recently enacted constitutional ban on same-sex marriage does not prohibit public or private employers from providing domestic partner benefits.

Not only that, but:

Lautenschlager also told Madison City Attorney Michael May that the constitutional amendment does not strike down anti-discrimination protections for domestic partners.

Does not strike down protections. Does not prohibit benefits.

It’s a little bit funny that such a prominent officer of the court as Lautenschlager should choose to say so…now After the November 7 election. After voters passed the Marriage Amendment.

Where was she before?

Where was Peg Lautenschlager when “Fair Wisconsin” was running ads that claimed exactly the opposite? (Link leads to WisPolitics' AdsWatch page)

Like this one, featuring former Congressman Steve Gunderson, a Republican:

The proposed amendment is a troubling and far-reaching proposal. It’s about much more than gay marriage. It would jeopardize legal protections for all unmarried couples and such basic rights as visitation, and even financial protections for their loved one.

…this measure simply goes too far and affects too many people.

And this one, featuring a down-to-Earth farmer:

I think this ban on gay marriage goes too far, affects too many people, and it’s unfair. It denies them health care benefits, denies them pensions, it’s wrong.

These were lies – or at least grossly incompetent mistakes – and we knew it. Amendment supporters knew, and repeatedly argued, that these claims were false.

Apparently, Peg Lautenschlager knew it, too. So why didn’t she just say so?

The answer there is obvious. At least, it was until September 12 – the day of the primary election. Before that day, she was counting on the gay community’s support. She was counting on their votes.

If she got them, they didn’t help. She lost. Why she continued to keep up her side’s charade…well, that’s open to speculation.

Sure, it’s possible she thinks the Marriage Amendment is morally wrong, and is acting on that belief. But as Attorney General, she was uniquely responsible for upholding Wisconsin’s laws and Constitution. For her to ignore obviously flawed legal claims in an attempt to sway an election…that may not be full-fledged dereliction of duty, but it’s in that direction.

Regardless, Lautenschlager is now – finally – confirming what amendment supporters have said all along. The anti-amendment scare tactics were just that: scare tactics. They were wrong, plain and simple.

Anti-amendment activists could have found this out, simply by asking one of their own biggest allies – the sitting Attorney General.

Did they ask? Dunno. And in one way, it’s moot now. The amendment passed. It’s in the Constitution.

In another way, it’s not moot. Fair Wisconsin intends to stick around, and agitate on other issues. These are their chosen tactics. We should remember that.

There’s an irony here. The anti-amendment side went all Chicken Little during the campaign, wailing over the dramatic, frightening, jack-booted and tyrannical changes the amendment would force on us all, gay or straight.

Should it fail, well, nothing. “A no vote means nothing will change,” their commercials claimed.

Today, their story has changed. The vote was yes, and…nothing has changed.

I knew that before. Even if I hadn’t, I'd know it now. The Attorney General told me.

The Day After Christmas...

...and I know there's a floor around here somewhere, but for the life of me I can't figure out where.

No new column today. I'm far too busy:

• assembling Lego Batmobiles and plastic racetracks;
• trying to stay ahead of what appears to be a self-replicating pile of plastic, paper, and cardboard leavings in my living room;
• doing my best to ensure that no Christmas cookies survive to see the New Year;
• and playing with my new R2-D2 interactive (voice-responsive) Astromech droid.

If you're really interested, you can read this column I wrote last year, about Santa Claus and the spirit of Christmas.

Otherwise, Merry Christmas, and I'll be back on Friday!

Missing the Forest for a Tree

We should raise taxes, but can’t! At least, not without a fight.

That’s what the Journal Sentinel thinks about cigarette taxes, and the recent proposal to hike them a buck a pack. Wisconsin’s “current anti-tax climate” makes such a thing difficult, if not impossible.

They call it unfortunate. Others disagree.

I’m a bit amazed that the JS is still talking about the “anti-tax culture” at all. Voters overwhelmingly chose Democrats – the party voted Most Likely to Raise Taxes – in November. The JS should be crowing, reveling in this victory of government largesse at taxpayer expense, counting the higher tax revenues that Wisconsin voters have so obviously endorsed with their choices.

They’re not. Are they admitting that they’re out of the mainstream on taxes? Or just lazily waxing into a well-established theme?

There are other problems with their analysis. First, none of us are really anti-tax. We all want roads, and police, and a certain level of regulation, and we’re all willing to pay taxes – taxes efficiently spent – to have those things.

What we are is anti-high taxes. Anti-overspending. Anti-watching government spending grow faster than our income every single year while government agencies continue to kvetch about just barely holding on by their fingernails and Society Will Fall if they don’t get even more to spend next year.

Second, the Journal Sentinel is looking at a tree, and ignoring the forest.

Let me explain. If we’re going to tax something, cigarettes do seem like the thing. They’re disgusting, unhealthy, constitute a diminishment of disposable income (money wasted on cigarettes is money not spent on home improvements), and increase costs for the rest of us.

Raising the price of cigarettes isn’t inflationary, like the gas tax. Or politically explosive, like the property tax.

Plus cigarettes are addictive, which makes them inelastic: a higher price won’t affect consumption of cigarettes as it would of, say, movie tickets. In a perfect, conservative-run world, that would mean we could reduce taxes elsewhere.

We are so far from a perfect world.

The tobacco industry isn’t all that important to Wisconsin’s economy, so that’s not a concern. And of course, the taxed-higher price is supposed to keep kids from starting the habit in the first place.

Oh, sure, there’s all that stuff about making your own decisions. Personal responsibility. If the government can make us stop smoking, why can’t they make us stop eating junk food?

I concede (and agree with) those arguments. But as you see, even a rabidly warmongering throw-Grandma-out-of-the-nursing-home conservative like me can make arguments favoring a higher cigarette tax.

So why not raise it? Because it’s only one tree. There’s a whole forest of tax-increase proposals out there (hat tip to Peter DiGaudio):

• A higher sales tax for public transportation in Southeastern Wisconsin;
• A 43% increase in car registration fees (on top of a 43% increase in registration and license fees the last four years);
• Elimination of state sales tax exemptions;
• A higher sales tax in Racine County for parks and a museum;
• The proposed $1 a pack increase in the tax on cigarettes.

Add to those that the Property Tax Freeze will expire in January, and President Bush’s tax cuts will expire in 2010, and all Democrats have to do is nothing. They can raise taxes simply by sitting on their hands.

Individually, any one increase might easily win public approval. There might be wonderfully persuasive arguments for the spending those new taxes will support.

The people who support the increases can’t understand why anybody would oppose them. They can’t figure out why Wisconsin is so “unfortunately” “anti-tax” when their proposal is so reasonable, so small, so negligible, and so needed.

I’ll explain again. Our problem is not that people want to raise this tax, or that tax. It’s that individual increases don’t exist in a vacuum. One proposal isn’t just one proposal: it’s one of many. And next year, there will be even more.

We don’t get to pick and choose which ones we pay – we have to pay them all. They add up. They empty our wallets. They drag down our economy.

We need serious – not piecemeal – consideration of the issue. A good thing, then, that the JS isn’t in charge of that.

I want my NFL, too!

I’ve missed football games before. Important games. I missed the Wisconsin-Iowa game earlier this year, because of a conference. And Green Bay at Minnesota, because I was getting ready for hunting season.

Two good wins. Important wins. And I missed them.

I know. My priorities were a little screwy that weekend.

I’ll be missing another game this week: the Minnesota-Green Bay rematch. I loathe the Vikings, so I love this game. And I’m going to miss it. Not because I’m busy, but because it’s on NFL Network. My cable company doesn’t carry that channel.

Well, wait a minute. I’m not going to “miss” it. I’ll listen to the radio broadcast. I’ll keep tabs on the internet. I just won’t be able to see it on TV. Not quite the same as “missing” it.

But still.

This is the culmination of a disagreement between the NFL Network and two major cable companies, including mine. NFL Network is broadcasting eight NFL games this year. Without NFL Network, most of us won’t get to see those games. The NFL is counting on that, to pressure cable companies into carrying NFL Network.

Both sides are trying to blame each other. Time Warner says the NFL Network wants $137 million for the channel, which will force cable prices higher. The NFL Network doesn’t want higher rates – they want cable companies to provide the channel for no additional cost.

There’s something unsavory about that. One can’t begrudge the NFL wanting to make money off their product, can one? So why should the NFL begrudge Time Warner the same thing?

On the other hand, as Seth Zlotocha* puts it:

I’m about as hooked on politics as anyone; however, I can hardly stand more than 2 to 3 minutes of most programming that comes on C-Span. Who can? Yet, there it is in the standard line-up, and every cable customer is paying for it to be there.

Indeed. My basic cable package includes not one, but two C-SPAN channels, the Spanish channel, a shopping channel, and a golf channel.

You can’t tell me that the NFL Network wouldn’t please more customers than those.

It’s not hard to see what the NFL is doing: trying to expand on their product by withholding said product, in order to spur greater demand for said product.

It’s an old trick. Just look at the long lines of people still forming in front of stores in the freezing wee hours, hoping for the chance to shell out $600 for a Sony Playstation, or Nintendo Wii.

Last year it was the Xbox 360. Before that, there was Tickle Me Elmo. Cabbage Patch Kids. Power Rangers action figures.

I remember the Power Ranger craze in particular. You just couldn’t find the damn things. Anywhere. Everybody wanted them, nobody could get them.

At the time, I wondered: why don’t they just make more of them? Open another factory, raise the price a buck? Meet the demand!

Oh, but they didn’t see the demand coming. Or they’re having “production problems.”

Sure. The real story: by not keeping up with demand, they create even more demand. Feed the media with lots and lots of perfectly-framed stories about people waiting all night in hopes of being one of “the lucky ones.”

That’s free advertising, and it conveys the sense that this product is THE product. The thing everybody’s gotta have.

That sense of urgency the NFL is trying to convey – indeed, the sense they believe is already there.

That’s a dangerous game. Over the years, the NFL has skyrocketed in popularity, partly because they’ve avoided the problems other major sports have had: labor problems in baseball and hockey; steroid scandals; thuggery in the NBA. With the NFL, it’s all been about giving the fans more.

This is a departure from that successful strategy. They’re purposely withholding something their fan base has come to expect: their favorite teams on TV, especially when playing hated rivals.

It’s one thing to purposely restrict supply when the product is brand new. It’s something else entirely when the product is an old, beloved favorite.

I want my NFL, and I want the NFL Network (they re-broadcast whole games in under an hour!). But their current tactics stink. Here’s hoping next season, they try something else.

* whose name is still, inexplicably, not included on the Miss Pronouncer website.

Christians and Gays: an inconclusive ramble

Do Christians hate homosexuals?

Undoubtedly, there are some who do. In any group that big, there’s bound to be all kinds. Just as there’s bound to be those who hate Christians because they believe all Christians do hate homosexuals.

For the record, I think both of those groups are small subsets. But because of the marriage amendment, and the ongoing nation- and worldwide debate on same-sex marriage, those subsets get a lot more attention than they deserve.

Both groups are guilty of misunderstanding.

Christians are supposed to oppose things that God opposes. Divorce, for example. That doesn’t mean we “hate” divorcees, or ban them from our churches. Adultery, theft, promiscuity, greed – these all go against the Christian ethic, but opposing them is not the same as hating the people who are guilty of them.

Hate is also against the Christian ethic, as the other side will quickly, happily, gleefully point out. We’re supposed to love each other, no matter what.

That doesn’t mean letting each other get away with anything and everything. If a Christian man’s best friend is cheating on his wife, that Christian man should call his friend out. Risk the friendship over telling the friend to get his act together.

There’s another misunderstanding – whether or not Christians should be concerned, really, with what the government does or does not allow.

Our government is a creation of men. A worldly thing. We’re supposed to be more concerned about non-worldly matters. Jesus didn’t seem to care, much, what the government did. Ditto the apostle Paul. Give unto Ceasar, and all that. A modern-day bumper sticker paraphrases: “Don’t like abortion? Don’t have one.”

But that’s not enough. Jesus’ contemporaries didn’t live in representative democracies with universal suffrage. We do. We, collectively, are the government. We can’t, therefore, just wash our hands of what our government does, any more than we can wash our hands of what we ourselves do.

Christians are supposed to live their faith. It’s not just what you do on Sunday morning between the corn flakes and the football games – Christianity is 24/7. Work, home, out with the guys. Sports, politics, everything. Belief doesn’t stop at the ballot box.

Which leads me to the bigger question: what is a Christian supposed to believe?

There are whole churches that don’t just welcome homosexuals (as all churches should), but ordain them. Marry them. Preach that homosexual behavior is fine, normal, not at all sinful.

And even in churches that don’t go quite so far – the Episcopal church, for example – there’s stark disagreement, even among bishops. Is it sinful, or not? And if it is, what’s our proper response?

When veteran, learned, intelligent, ranking and respected members of the Church who all read the same Bible passages can still find themselves on opposite sides of the same basic question, what’s a comparatively ignorant newcomer supposed to do?

How can you possibly know what’s right? The short answer is: maybe we can’t. Not really.

At the risk of being simplistic, I wish we could let it all go. Decide that bringing people to Jesus is more important than winning an argument. Recite the Confession: “in your compassion forgive us our sins, both known and unknown, things done and left undone.” Let God sort the rest of it out.

Maybe we can’t. Because we do live in a representative democracy, because even our churches are democratic in nature, and because these questions aren’t going away. We’ll continue to struggle with them, whether we want to or not.

But now and then, we can remember: we all sin, one way or another. Some of us more than others, maybe – and maybe God cares about the number, or the frequency, or the magnitude of sins.

And maybe He doesn’t.

We can remember that there are more important things. Bigger things. Things that transcend us, our petty little wants, our disagreements.

And we can remember the one very big thing – the one very big person – we have in common. At least one day a week, we can remember that bringing people to Jesus is more important than winning the argument.

It won’t settle our arguments for us, but it’ll help.

The Democrat Agenda: Squeeze Business

It begins.

We Republicans have our favorite whipping boys. So do Democrats. Now that the Dems are holding sway in American politics – more sway than before, anyway – their whipping boys are starting to feel a bit more of the lash.

Unfortunately, their favorites are what Winston Churchill once called “the strong horse that pulls the whole cart.”

For example, some major parts of the Democrat wish list include:

Forcing business to pay higher wages, whether the market supports it or not.

Mandating that businesses provide their employees with health insurance.

Expanding the sales tax to include new products and services, which weren’t taxed before.

Increasing corporate taxes, and eliminating exemptions and credits, because most Wisconsin companies – 2/3 of them, to be exact – aren’t paying any income taxes!

Man, I wish that were so. What a great selling point for Wisconsin – bring your business here! Almost no corporate taxes!

Is the Doyle administration using that slogan? No? Hm. Wonder why.

The whole Dem agenda boils down to this: business should pay more. More salary, more benefits, more taxes. Squeeze business at both ends. That’s the Democrat plan for American success.

First of all, anyone who believes their taxes will go down because someone else is paying more is already voting Democrat, so there’s really no political harm done, here.

But second, it won’t be true. We’ll still pay more.

One could make the argument (and many have) that companies pay all the taxes already: theirs and ours. If it weren’t for private-sector companies, after all, there wouldn’t be private-sector jobs. And if there weren’t private-sector jobs, there wouldn’t be public-sector jobs.

That’s because private-sector salaries come from private-sector profits. Public-sector salaries come from private-sector taxes. One way or another, it all goes back to those companies, which provide the jobs in the first place.

One could also make the argument that we – the rank and file taxpayers, wage-earners, consumers – pay all the companies’ taxes. Their income comes from us, after all. They sell us stuff, we pay them money, and that money pays their heating bills, their rent, their payroll, and their taxes.

So: if business costs go up – costs that include taxes – so do prices. By forcing greater costs onto businesses – whether it’s fair or unfair that we do so – we make business more expensive to conduct. Thus, life will become more expensive for us.

That, or there will be less business conducted, which means fewer jobs, smaller payrolls, a slower and weaker economy, and eventually lower tax revenues.

This is, I believe, ironic.

And it’s not universally true.

If the minimum wage goes up on two competing businesses equally, and taxes are raised on them equally, and fringe costs are forced up on them equally, then their marginal costs rise equally. They can both raise their prices equally, and protect their profits. Neither gains a competitive advantage over the other.

Of course, the real world in all its complex glory doesn’t work as simply as that. Some businesses are more vulnerable to economic changes than others. Some industries are more competitive than others. Some small, independent businesses are competing against huge, corporately-owned ones.

Some businesses will be hurt more than others, if their costs are increased.

Are corporations greedy? Undoubtedly, some of them are. In this, the liberal end of our political system sees a populist opportunity, with which they mean to expand the role and power of government.

That goal is counterproductive, though. The end result of the Democrat agenda is: we pay more, one way or another. It will only hurt our economy, and slow the very horse that pulls the government cart.

Getting Out of Iraq...Or Not

With a couple days gone since the Iraq Study Group’s report was released, reaction has been oddly unmixed. Almost nobody liked it, Left or Right.

Me, I don’t care. By 2008, when “all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq” (“subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground”), the ISG will be a distant memory. Two, maybe three commissions ago. That’s what commissions are for: we pay a short, dramatic, explosive amount of attention, and a year later nobody can remember exactly what it was they said.

A brief recap: invading Iraq was the right thing to do. Since then, things have gone wrong. The ISG reports:

If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences could be severe. A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq's government and a humanitarian catastrophe. Neighboring countries could intervene. Sunni-Shia clashes could spread. Al Qaeda could win a propaganda victory and expand its base of operations. The global standing of the United States could be diminished.

We could have predicted today’s state of events, simply by reading “The Savage Wars of Peace,” by Max Boot: a history of U.S. involvement in small, low intensity conflicts.

But we didn’t. Or, rather, it doesn’t appear that we did.

With hindsight, maybe the best thing would have been to leave post-invasion Iraq to Iraqis back in 2003. Get in, kick some terrorist-supporting tail, and on to the next war!

Hell, we knew Syria was a problem even then. So invade away, knock that regime down. Then on to Iran, and bounce them, too. And then, fine, leave some token group of advisors, spend some money on infrastructure, buy everybody lunch and a new pair of shoes, but pull the rest of the troops back to Kuwait, or Saudi, or the newly-created nation of Kurdistan, or maybe a pair of carrier groups in the Persian Gulf.

Sure, we’d be leaving things a mess, but they’re a mess now anyway. Sure, the regimes that pop up after we leave might be worse…or maybe not. At least we’d have some precedent to wag our fingers and say: “Don’t forget what we did to the last guys. We’ll do that again.”

No quagmire. No steady drumbeat of casualties. And the full support of liberal America.

Right.

The preceding was, of course, suggested with full hindsight, a bare minimum of actual military knowledge, and a large helping of wishful thinking.

I’m not the only one doing that these days though, am I?

It’s too late to go back and do things over. We invaded, and then we stayed put. Figured on rebuilding, creating an ally (or at least a non-ally to terrorphiles), and letting the new Middle East dynamic take its toll.

And it hasn’t turned out that way. And yes, something has to change, but that something will not be – can not be – a U.S. withdrawal.

If for no other reason, the ISG report states:

Al Qaeda will portray any failure by the United States in Iraq as a significant victory that will be featured prominently as they recruit for their cause in the region and around the world.

And:

Al Qaeda would depict our (premature) withdrawal as a historic victory. If we leave and Iraq descends into chaos, the long-range consequences could eventually require the United States to return.

So. We can’t keep doing what we’re doing, but we sure can’t quit.

Most of all, I think, we need a renewed sense of purpose – a renewed sense that we have a goal, and some indication that we’re achieving that goal.

Or maybe we need to realize: the nature of war has changed. It’s no longer fight until one side gives up, sign a treaty and go home. That idea has earned its place in the pages of junior-high history books.

There won’t be a final victory: at best, we can hope to bring most of our troops home while leaving a small core of advisors and support. At best, I’ll bet, we can turn Iraq into a client nation – a Cold War-style proxy.

Either way, we’re in Iraq for the long haul. “Staying the course” is no longer an option, unless it means, simply, staying directly involved – hands-on involved – in the Middle East.

More Football!

Let’s start with a truism: football is good.

If football is good, then more football is better. Moderation? Feh. Oh, all right – work and family have to fit someplace, too. Even take precedence, sometimes. Maybe.

Still. Anything that puts more football on my TV screen is a good thing. I’m for it. Absolutely, and without reservation, and why haven’t there been Congressional hearings on this issue yet?

Where do the 2008 Presidential candidates stand? America needs to know!

Why can’t college football have a playoff system, instead of the Bowl Championship Series?

The BCS began in 1998, allegedly to match the top two college football teams for a National Championship, thus eliminating frequent controversy over who the real national champ should be.

In reality, the BCS is a complicated and imperfect system that sometimes makes things clearer, sometimes doesn’t, and takes a big bite out of college football tradition.

And does so with a purpose.

Remember when the Rose Bowl was always Big-10 versus PAC-10? I loved that. That’s what I wanted – the Badgers in the Rose Bowl, making some sissy West Coast team wet their pants and cry.

National championship? Didn’t care. Pasadena. That was the prize.

Then the BCS rolled out. Today, getting that Big-10/PAC-10 matchup is luck, pure and simple. Most years, it doesn’t happen. The mystique is gone.

Is the BCS all bad? No. A good case in its favor can be made.

But I don’t believe its creators intended it as an end result – only a first step in a larger plan. A nefarious plan, meant to wean us from bowl-season attachments, and bring about a Division I-A playoff.

And why not? The other three divisions all have playoffs: Division 1-AA and Division II have 16-team playoffs. Division III has a 32-team playoff.

Even high school ball has playoffs.

Coaches are calling for it:

"It's an imperfect system," (Florida coach Urban) Meyer said. "If you want a true national championship, the only way to do it is on the field."

(Michigan coach Lloyd) Carr's take: "I don't think there is any question that there are flaws in the system. I hope one day we have a system where all the issues are decided on the field."

It would remove most – not all, because somebody will still get left out – of the controversy: controversy the BCS was supposed to – but didn’t – remove on its own.

Plus, an early loss shouldn’t disqualify a team from competing for the championship. A football team in December is not the same team they were in September. They’ve changed. Grown. Yet when Texas lost to Ohio St. on September 9, the Longhorns were de-facto eliminated, even with ten weeks left in the season.

Bonus: this would encourage teams to play more evenly-matched non-conference games, because winning their conference – not amassing lopsided victories – will be the defining factor.

More good football!

And need I even mention – we get to keep the best teams in the nation playing for several more weeks. Preferably in prime time, on a 42-inch plasma TV with surround-sound and an easy chair with built-in self-replenishing snack bar.

Come on, when else do we get to see Florida playing Ohio St.? LSU playing Notre Dame? Now, how about seeing those winners play each other?

Yes. Put that on my Christmas list.

There are eleven Division I-A conferences, so let’s start here: a twelve-team playoff. Conference champs plus one at-large bid (Notre Dame, probably, but not necessarily). The top four teams get byes. That’s four weeks of football.

Oh, fine, start with eight. Or six. Or four. Just get the ball rolling – you know it’ll grow later on.

Start them in December, to avoid conflict with the NFL. The four BCS bowls can still host the big games. Other bowls can get in on the action, and the rest of the bowl system can stay right in place. Northern fans can still have their December and January vacations.

Everybody will still make a ton of money. More – probably a lot more – than they’re making now. Controversy will continue, and grow: now we’ll have seedings, as well as snubbings, to gnash over. So the punditocracy will be fed. And there will be no doubt (barring officiating mishap) as to who the champions are.

Plus, we get more football.

Like we need another reason.

AIDS and Accountability

A little self-discipline. A little self-reliance. It’s amazing what they can do.

West Virginia thinks they can help provide affordable health care. Their Medicaid program will soon begin rewarding people who take action to improve their own health.

Under a reorganized schedule of aid, the state, hoping for savings over time, plans to reward “responsible” patients with significant extra benefits or — as critics describe it — punish those who do not join weight-loss or antismoking programs, or who miss too many appointments, by denying important services.

The incentive effort, the first of its kind, received quick approval last summer from the Bush administration, which is encouraging states to experiment with “personal responsibility” as a chief principle of their Medicaid programs. Idaho and Kentucky are also planning reward programs, though more modest ones, for healthful behavior.

This is a good idea.

Government services are a pain in the rump. There’s paperwork, rules, bureaucracies peopled by bureaucrats who don’t always understand those rules, or who interpret them differently from the bureaucrat you dealt with last week.

Plus they’re expensive. Always more expensive than they were supposed to be, and getting moreso all the time. But we can’t cut them back. That would be mean.

Plus, government services are at the mercy of…government. There’s never any guarantee that the service you’re using this year will be available again next year.

That goes for more than health. Saving a little bit of money each week is a far better plan than relying on Social Security, which is slowly going bankrupt, doesn’t pay much, can be changed at any time, and which the current majority party in Congress has no interest in fixing.

Self-reliance solves all kinds of problems.

Which brings us to today. World AIDS Day.

If current trends continue, AIDS will become the world’s 3rd leading cause of death within the next 25 years.

The World Health Organizaion reports that nearly 40 million people worldwide have the AIDS virus – a 10% increase over 2004. Nearly 25 million of those live in sub-Saharan Africa, where new cases grew over 20% since 2004 – only a few percentage points faster than in North America.

I can’t help asking: what the hell?

It’s not like we don’t know what causes AIDS. We do. And we know how to stop its spread – or at least severely limit it.

UN General Secretary Kofi Annan knows how (emphasis added):

"The challenge now is to deliver on all the promises that governments have made. Leaders must hold themselves accountable — and be held accountable by all of us. Accountability — the theme of [this year's] World AIDS Day...requires every president and prime minister, every parliamentarian and politician, to decide and declare that AIDS stops with me."

So the politicians will be safe. If they take Kofi’s advice.

On the same subject, Bill Clinton said “This is not rocket science. We know what to do.”

I’m taking that out of context. Clinton was actually talking about providing HIV-positive children with medicines. But if he were talking about prevention, he’d still be right. It’s not rocket science. We know what to do.

Want to stay HIV-free? Easy. Keep your pants on. Either abstain from sex, or be monogamous. A monogamous relationship is a closed circuit – nothing gets in, nothing gets out. No viruses. No diseases.

Less divorce, too, but that’s another subject.

I don’t pretend to be some great moral authority on this. Far from it. I’m just stating facts: your health will improve, the fewer cigarettes you smoke; your weight will improve, the fewer Twinkies you eat; your future will improve, the more money you save; your risk of contracting AIDS declines – in fact, disappears entirely – the less promiscuous you are.

In fact, if everyone in the world went pure monogamous right now, AIDS would disappear completely in a generation, or (because of children being born with HIV) perhaps two.

That’s simplistic, of course, and quite cold-hearted, if you interpret it to mean we should just wait for all of today’s AIDS victims to die. Just ignore them, they’ll go away!

We can’t do that, and we won’t. But this is clearly another problem we can solve – or reduce – ourselves, if we simply exercised more accountability on our own.