Both Sides should Vote Ziegler

Wisconsin will choose a new Supreme Court Justice on Tuesday. Supposedly, if we don’t like a Justice’s work, we can vote them out after 10 years. But in reality, that almost never happens. Supreme Court Justices might as well have lifetime tenure.

Which makes Tuesday’s election really important.

Which, in turn, has brought people and groups out in droves to support and/or oppose one candidate or the other. Which, in turn, has brought out the “watchdogs,” to complain about the money being spent on this incredibly important election.

I admit, watching the same old political groups playing the same old political games is a little discombobulating. Why in the world should this be a partisan affair?

That’s the way of the world now, maybe. Or maybe it’s simply because we like being on one side or the other, and since the sides are already drawn up for us, that’s how we tend to roll.

But you know, it isn’t really that partisan.

Clifford, a liberal Madison lawyer, does have one Republican – a very liberal Republican – on her endorsement list.

And Ziegler, a jurist with 10 years experience as a judge, has the endorsements of over half the sheriffs and district attorneys in the state – both Democrats and Republicans – plus a number of police and firefighter unions.

Given that Democrats and normally-Democrats are endorsing Ziegler, one wonders why liberal groups are working so hard to discredit and defeat her.

Notice that I didn’t say they’re working so hard to elect Clifford. Although that’s their end goal, they’re not trying to win based on Clifford’s credentials.

And with good reason. She hasn’t got any.

At least Ziegler has experience as a judge. Clifford doesn’t. Ziegler has been running a campaign to promote herself and draw distinctions between herself and her opponent. Clifford has been throwing mud exclusively.

More importantly, Ziegler has repeatedly said that “a Supreme Court Justice must not legislate from the bench.” A judge has to rule according to the law, "not the whim of the day or not my political or ideological preference.” That’s exactly what I want to hear.

But we’ve heard that before. We’ve been disappointed before. I think it was Eisenhower who, upon leaving the Presidency, was asked his three biggest mistakes. He replied: I don’t know what the third one was, but the first two are sitting on the Supreme Court.

Ziegler does have that conflict of interest thing. Yes, I know, it’s been explained. It’s all bunk, really, and besides, Clifford’s got her own conflicts of interest.

No matter. In politics, anything that can’t be explained with a diagram on a cocktail napkin is too complicated, and none of this – other than the epithet “Conflict of Interest!” – fits on a cocktail napkin. So that’s a wash.

None of this closes the deal for my vote. What does? Clifford herself, who said "I am willing to let the (state) constitution breathe and reflect what society needs in any given context."*

What have we come to, when a conservative judge is one who strictly observes the law, and a liberal judge is one willing to ignore the law?

That’s scary. It ought to be scary. It ought to be scary to all of us – liberals and Democrats included.

Because she doesn’t mean “what society needs.” She means what she thinks society needs. She, a liberal Madison lawyer, will decide what society needs, and will make unalterable rulings based on her decisions.

Whether her “decisions” were influenced by the law or not is a variable equal to her mood that day, whether she hit bad traffic on the way to work, and whether she’s had enough coffee.

Sure, the liberalest wing of Madison’s Democrats – the ones who call themselves Progressive Dane – are probably excited. But will liberal Madison lawyer-turned-Justice Clifford rule in such a way that Milwaukee union members will approve? How about the more conservative Democrats who live up Nort’? Or those mainstream Democrats who know they can’t hold power by doing what the liberal nutroots want them to do?

Ziegler may not be the perfect candidate. But Clifford’s perfectly wrong. No matter which side of the aisle you’re on.

* Hat tip to Rick Esenberg.

The Care and Feeding of Local Media

Any conservative will tell you. Any Republican will tell you. The media is biased against us.

Sometimes it’s overt, outright bias. Abandonment of journalistic integrity due to an active dislike of and disagreement with conservative principles. A desire to Save the World from greedy business interests and oppressive religious fanatics.

Other times, it’s a more invidious, institutional bias, brought about by newsroom insularity, lack of real-world experience, lots and lots of j-school graduates whose liberal professors brought them up to revere the 1960s counterculture and Speaking Truth to Power.

We despise the media, us right-wing types. Get any group of Republicans talking about the media and the common themes emerge. The media is liberal. Biased. Reporters are lazy and uninformed. The cards are stacked against us.

Of course, that particular form of groupthink propagates itself. Creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Most newsrooms don’t have the same resources as the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, or Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Most of them – the ones most of us deal with directly – are relatively small, with a handful of reporters and editors who tend to be young, and relatively inexperienced compared to the breadth of subjects they have to cover.

These are potentially problematic, if and where they occur. But ask yourself this: if one of these young reporters is confronted by the kind of pre-existing hostility conservatives and Republicans harbor toward the media, what attitude will that young reporter form toward us?

Probably one that’s similar to ours.

No matter how much we more internet-prone may wish otherwise, the larger public still depends on the mainstream media. So if and when bias does exist, it behooves us to overcome it. The question is: how?

At the risk of losing membership in the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, I say: we get a grip. If we want to “do something” about media bias – if we want to change it for the better, we change our own attitudes first.

Yes, we change our attitudes. We, the conservative movement, who love to rant and wail and rend our clothing and gnash our teeth over the unfairness of it all. We, who have made adversarialism with the MSM a goal all its own.

We have to change our attitudes.

This isn’t to say that we should never complain. We certainly should. And, sometimes, getting angry will be the right way to go.

Bo Ryan isn’t whispering sweet nothings to those referees over by the bench, after all. Is he?

But better to head things off before it comes to confrontation. Grousing in our small groups isn’t going to do that.

Here’s a few questions I think we should all be asking ourselves:

Can I name any of the reporters at my local media outlets? Would I recognize them, if I saw them on the street?

When’s the last time I directly spoke with a reporter at my local paper? My local radio station?

When’s the last time I emailed with a compliment? Or with something friendly?

And what’s stopping me from actually stopping in with a press release or announcement, to talk it over with someone in the news room? Or just stopping in because I’ve never been there before?

I know: we love to be filled with righteous indignation. It feels great.

Sometimes, maybe, that’ll help. But supply and demand works. The more often we give in to righteous indignation, the less effective – the less valuable – it will be. And on this subject, we’re always full of righteous indignation.

And yes, I know: reporters are supposed to be professionals. We shouldn’t have to worry about whether or not they will be objective.

And...let’s leave the crybaby stuff for the other side. We have a problem: we want better media coverage. Let’s figure out how to get it.

Get to know your local media. Let them know you want to be helpful. You want to be a resource. If we want their cooperation, let’s make sure they know they have ours.

Because if we insist on treating them like enemies, then that’s what they’ll be.

YouTube: the End of Campaign Finance Reform

Surely, if you’re reading this, you’ve seen the YouTube video that caused such a recent sensation.

You know TouTube – the website where anyone can share whatever digital videos they have with the entire world. You can find all kinds of funny, interesting, peculiar stuff there.

Or so I’ve heard.

A little less than three weeks ago, someone going by the name ParkRidge47 posted a professional-looking spoof video featuring Hillary Clinton as an Orwellian dictator. As of today, that video has been viewed nearly 2.5 million times.

We’ve since discovered that ParkRidge47 is someone marginally connected to the Barack Obama campaign. Maybe. There seems to be some doubt.

But that’s all beside the point. The point is: this is the future of political campaigning in a computer-driven America. It’s also the end of campaign finance reform. Or it should be.

When the annals of the 2008 presidential election are written, this video will be a minor footnote. But it won’t be the last of its kind. Not even close. And the next one will be much more effective both in message, and in timing.

Because it isn’t that hard. A lot of people can do it. A lot of professionals, and a lot of amateurs, too. The technology exists – one can buy the software right now, and with a little training and practice, could soon be producing very professional-looking videos.

It doesn’t even cost that much – a thousand dollars for a good computer and the appropriate software is more than enough. And posting to YouTube – that’s free.

Then all you gotta do is create a buzz, and viola!

So. How long until the campaign finance reform nags latch onto this?

Consider: this one video been seen nearly two and a half million times, and that’s just in its original posting. Other internet users have re-posted it themselves. That’s even more viewings.

How much would that many TV commercials cost? Radio commercials? Printed lit pieces?

A lot. This particular video may not have been very effective in the grand scheme of things, but it could have been. It could have been released three weeks before the election. It could have been clips of a candidate saying rude, unlikable things, or doing embarrassing things. It could have been a hard-hitting repudiation of a candidate’s position on abortion, immigration, gun rights, the environment.

Or a pseudo-newscast, “reporting” that a candidate was once addicted to kiddie porn.

It’s the Wild, Wild West, and it’s only a few years away.

And there’s no way to stop it. Everything is so cheap, so easy, so anonymous on the internet.

But…if it is so cheap, why should campaign finance reformers care?

Because it still has value – value to the campaign it supports. It would be no problem for a savvy campaign operative to quietly “arrange for” a barrage of anonymous internet hits, subtle or vicious or both, favoring his guy while pounding the other guy.

In other words, it could be what CFR nags hate the most: an outside group using unreported assets to directly influence the outcome of a campaign.

Unless we outlaw any and all election-related speech not paid for directly by the campaigns themselves, anything we do to control campaign spending will always be a half-measure. Incomplete. Leaving loopholes that will be exploited. Loopholes that must be closed, for CFR to mean anything at all.

That’s hardly a new idea: it’s already been applied to blogs in theory, and applied to radio stations in fact.

Now, the internet is never going to replace other forms of mass media – the radio, the newspaper, the television. Sure, millions of people viewed that video, but they had to actively seek it out. Actively click on the picture. Campaign media plans are designed to reach you whether you want to be reached or not, and that costs money.

But the internet is a rapidly growing cog in the vast, chaotic election dynamic. Another variable that can sometimes be controlled, but must always be considered.

Campaign finance reformers can either insist that it be reined in, and reined in hard, or they can admit that their perfect world will never exist.

Four years and one day

It seems obvious to say this, but I’ll say it anyway: in March of 2003, none of us really expected our troops would still be fighting in Iraq four years and a day later.

That’s only half of the story, of course. How many of us – supporters and opponents both – gave much thought back in 2003 to how long we did expect our troops to be fighting?

Not too many of us, I think. I didn’t, and I should have.

Today, I find myself surprised, a little dismayed – not that we’re still in Iraq, but because our involvement is still so intense.

As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down, but when’s that going to be?

Lucky for us, the Democrats seem to know:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced a plan yesterday to withdraw all troops from Iraq by the end of 2008, and quite possibly sooner...

“The end of 2008.” Quick quiz: what else happens at the end of 2008? That’s right, a presidential election!

Democrats want to win the White House. Democrats believe Iraq will be the flying porcupine to Republicans’ electoral balloon next year. Thus, Democrats are positioning the issue in what they believe will most benefit their cause.

Politics!

Cynical of them, yes. I’ll engage in a little cynicism of my own. From the same story:

Criticism came swiftly from liberal Democrats who feel the withdrawal is too slow and cautious: Out of Iraq Caucus members started their news conference to criticize the plan while Pelosi was still presenting it…

“We want our troops home with their families by Christmas,” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.)

If only Democrats like Woolsey could find some way to prevail. Then, Iraq would NOT be a campaign issue 20 months from now…unless it’s Democrats being hurt by the fallout.

But then we’d be leaving Iraq – and the Middle East – sooner rather than later. And as the world’s leading exporter of both oil and terrorism, I’ve got to believe that’s a really bad idea. Even if it means winning elections in 2008.

So: stay the course, and maybe risk the voters’ wrath. Or go along with the Democrats, and admit to the world that we can’t stomach a fight with a lifespan longer than the average sitcom’s.

Of course, if the first option really leads to Democrat victories in ‘08, there may be very little difference between the two. But maybe actually having power will force the Dems to grow up.

Maybe.

Which still leaves us with the question: how much longer will we be fighting in Iraq? Not much, I’d wager – not at today’s level. But then, I never figured it would last this long.

Four years and a day after our troops crossed the Iraqi border, I’m wondering why I didn’t at least consider that we’d still be fighting today – at least, that we’d still be fighting in Iraq.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, me considering it means next to nothing. The real question is: did the Bush administration consider it?

Surely, someone looked ahead, saw that a long stay in a violent Iraq was possible.

Surely, someone considered the long-term problems a long-term fight presented. A media inclined more toward the bad than the good; an opposition party with no qualms about pointing covetously at the greener grass over there; the enormity of bureaucracy and logistics; the simple fact that Americans were going to grow weary.

Experienced, professional politicians recognize these obstacles up front. The Bush administration may have had some strategies for dealing with them, but no strategy is foolproof.

They must have realized that, sooner or later, Iraq was going to become a political burden. If they didn’t in 2003, they surely do now – maybe enough of one to give Democrats complete control of the government next year.

But they went ahead. They stayed the course, anyway. And they still are.

They didn’t have to. They don’t have to. President Bush could begin setting the stage for withdrawal right now. He’s not. In the face of electoral catastrophe, he’s forging ahead.

Because, consequences be damned, politics be damned, and my own case of civilian war fatigue be damned, it’s the right thing to do.

How's Your Bracket Doing?

How was work this week? Get a lot done?

According to the guy on the radio, your productivity was supposed to plummet as of Thursday. That’s when the NCAA basketball tournament – the third-biggest (sometimes fourth-biggest)* event in the sporting world got started.

How naïve. If anything, productivity rose a little on Thursday. Or, rather, Thursday afternoon. At least, in relation to the rest of the week.

Because, sure, the games started on Thursday. But the pools started on Monday – the day after we found out which teams were in, who got seeded how high, who was playing whom.

That’s when everybody started filling out their brackets. Started trying to predict which underdogs will win, which teams will make the Sweet 16, and which teams will still be playing in April.

Compared to that, following all the games Thursday and Friday is no timewaster at all.

The field of 64 will play 63 games. It’s not easy to predict them all, even for the “experts.” At least, that’s how it seems.

So how do you fill out your bracket?

The seedings are no help. Every year, lower-seeded teams pull off huge upsets. Sometimes more than once. Just last year, 11th seeded George Mason University made it all the way to the Final Four.

How many people made that pick? Outside of Fairfax, VA...nobody. But that’s the rallying question this time around. Who’ll be this year’s George Mason?

Let’s not be hasty. Consider:

14 of the past 16 champions have been either a 1- or 2-seed.

So it’s tempting just to stick with the higher seeds, but:

Since 1979, at least one No. 3 or higher seed has made it to the Final Four.

So you shouldn’t just stick with the highest seeds. Not to mention:

Since 1997, 12 No. 10 seeds have made it to the Sweet Sixteen.

So you have to pick at least one 12-seed to move past the first round, and maybe past the second round.

Then there’s this:

Only three times since 1985 have three No. 1 seeds made it to the Final four.

So if you’ve got more than two #1s in your Final Four, you’re 86.4% sure to be fooling yourself, and never mind all the hype piled on the #1 seeds, which might make picking all four of them seem like the only logical thing to do.

And yet:

87 percent of Final Four teams come from the top four seeds

There are sixteen teams in the “top four seeds.” Picking randomly (and let’s be honest, we’re all picking randomly), your chances of picking all four are 1 in 256.

So don’t be married to the seedings, but don’t go nuts, either.

But at least they’re a place to start. Then you have to consider the records. Who’ve they beaten? Who’s beaten them? And who’s beaten the teams that beat them?

What kind of team are they? Got a seven-footer inside? Can the other team’s outside shooting make up for that? How far do they have to travel? Because that could affect their fan base.

Any injuries? Illnesses? Did anybody miss significant time this season?

And are there connections between the coaches? Bad blood? Good blood? If the one coach’s former star player is now an assistant on the team that coach has to play, you’re gonna want to know that, because that could affect the outcome!

What’s the altitude? What’s the weather? What did my horoscope say this morning? I need all the information! All the factors accounted for!

I used to do all that. Used to pore over every stat, every rumor, every juicy little bit of gossip that came along and tried to calculate the effects on the outcomes of every game.

The experts still do that. For all the good it does them. My preparations this year consisted solely of listening to a few radio sports shows, and reading a few online columns. If I’d followed every prediction I heard, I’d have picked three out of four 10- 11- and 12-seeds, and a couple of 13-seeds as well.

Instead, I picked and chose among them. Randomly, almost. In other words, I guessed.

As of Thursday, I wasn’t doing too bad. Friday’s been a different story, but, feh. Who talked me into picking Albany?

At least my productivity didn’t plummet.**

* After the NFL and college football seasons, and every other year, the Olympics.

** As if my productivity could be any lower (beat you to it, Steve).

Lessons of Baron Munchausen

It was “one of the most famous fiascos in film history.”

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen – a movie, directed by Monty Pythonist Terry Gilliam and released in 1988. Imagine Time Bandits, but with fewer midgets. I saw it once, years ago, and again just last month. It wasn’t quite what I remembered, but I think I appreciated it more.

The movie begins on scenes of human suffering – poverty, disaster, civilians being shelled during wartime. Not funny, but making other things funnier. It makes the things the characters do seem vastly more ridiculous by comparison.

And ridiculous they are. A quasi-19th century city is under siege by a large Turkish army, but the first characters we meet are actors, afraid they’ll be sent out of the city if a city official – The Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson – doesn’t like their play.

Their play is titled: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

They never actually finish their act, for two reasons. First: the enemy begins shelling again, causing Jackson to exclaim in irritation: “What is the Sultan playing at? Today is Wednesday!”

They don’t usually shell on Wednesdays, you see. That’s the established schedule (pronounced with a soft “sh”) and they’re not sticking to it.

The second reason they don’t finish: the “real” (or so he says) but elderly Baron Munchausen appears, and forces his way onto the stage. They’re telling the story wrong, and he intends to set the record straight.

Partly at the urging of a little girl, the Baron sets off in search of his four super-powered servants so they can help him end the siege. Thus begins their odd adventure which does, in fact, result in their finding the servants, defeating the Turkish army, lifting the siege, and riding triumphant into the city as heroes.

That, despite the Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson’s scoffing, and outright resistance.

And then – flash! – it never really happened. It was just the old man, telling his story. But wait! The elderly Baron leads the people out of the theater, across the town square, straight to the gates where, once the gates are thrown open, it’s clear the Turk has left, and the city is saved.

Saved, to the consternation of Horatio Jackson. He’s the Every-bureaucrat. The Pharisee, living hidebound by rules and regulations and The Way Things Are Done, and insisting that everyone else do the same. It’s simply the way we do it! None of this dangerous new-ness, upsetting the old order!

Sure, things are awful right now, but at least they’re familiar. This is no time for heroics: we must negotiate, using fundamental scientific principles. Stick to the script, because that’s what we know!

And why? Because the status quo gave him his authority. The Way Things Are created the bureaucrat.

A couple of quotes:

Horatio Jackson: “Escaping! We can't start escaping now! What would future generations think of us?”

...

Baron Munchausen: Gentlemen! Don't you think it'd be a good idea to silence those enemy cannons?

Gunner: No, sir...

Baron Munchausen: No?

Gunner: It's Wednesday...

The official powers-that-be, immobilized by bureaucracy, while the entrepreneurial individual – old, decrepit, and possibly delusional – simply gets up on his own two feet and makes things happen.

And which is hailed as the hero at the end? Not the paper pusher.

The metaphor isn’t exactly hiding from us, here.

Yeah, I know. I read way too much into these things. Star Wars, Serenity, E.T., Blazing Saddles. Life lessons, all.

Gilliam would, I’m sure, treat me like the overzealous graduate student who finds multiple layers of metaphor in a goat which was, the author insists, only a goat. Gilliam likes to stretch his imagination, and this movie (along with trilogy mates Time Bandits and Brazil) are themed around the power of imagination in kids, adults, and old folks as well.

Or so I read.

But then, that really makes my point. The bold against the hide-bound. The entrepreneurial over the bureaucratic. The risk-takers over those who yell “but that’s how we’ve always done it!”

Those who imagine what could be, and then try to make that happen. Those are the people we remember.

Reform Nags: Outlaw Human Nature!

The Doyle administration, embroiled in a campaign cash scandal?

I’m shocked. Shocked!

And so is everybody else. Mockingly, most of us. The rest are trying to pretend.

In case you missed it, a big political donor has been named in an FBI investigation. Dennis Troha, a Kenosha businessman who has spent literally oodles of money trying to build a casino is suspected of illegally funneling money to Governor Doyle’s campaign. Doyle’s administration may have reciprocated with some very suspicious-looking favors.

One could guess the punditocracy’s reaction: if only we had real campaign finance reform!

The Journal Sentinel opines:

Fact is, as long as high-octane fund raising is the rule in political campaigning, such conflicts are inevitable.

That’s a true statement. As long as we spend money on politics, and as long as that money has to come from somewhere, and as long as our politicians have power, there are going to be conflicts. Maybe not as blatantly obvious as this Troha thing, but conflicts nonetheless.

The JS should have stopped there. Instead, they go on:

The solution is to remove - or at least lessen - the scourge of big money from Wisconsin politics.

This is where they fall apart. First, is “big money” in fact a “scourge”? George Will:

About $2.6 billion was spent on the 468 House and Senate races. (Scandalized? Don't be. Americans spend that much on chocolate every two months.)

And:

This year we are told to be horrified by the fact that by November 2008 the presidential contest will have cost $1 billion. Which means that the two-year process will cost half as much as Americans spend every year on Easter candy.

The “scourge,” if there is one, is human nature. We’re temptable – sometimes contemptible, and more likely to become so anytime money and/or power are at stake.

That means the JS’s “solution” is no solution at all.

It’s the word “lessen” that does them in. We’ve done that already. And done it. And done it. And done it. Reducing money’s influence is a cottage industry in this country, complete with media-darling celebrities who make a lot of money themselves by complaining about money in politics.

We’ve passed laws. We’ve limited contributions, expanded reporting requirements, cut back on the people who can give anything of value to a political candidate.

None of this has “lessened” the influence of money. It’s simply forced said money to find different paths.

Money finds a way. Placing more and stricter limits on campaign money doesn’t “clean up” politics. It only ensures that the people most willing to circumvent the rules are also the people most likely to win elections.

That’s not to say there isn’t any way. If the JS hadn’t waffled, if they’d simply said “The solution is to remove the scourge of big money from Wisconsin politics,” then they’d have had something.

Something bad, but something.

The only way to get what the Journal Sentinel wants is to entirely outlaw any campaign contributions. Outlaw all private spending on campaigns or related issues.

Fund campaigns entirely with tax money. No exceptions. No loopholes. No private spending at all, because if you allow any, clever politicos will find a way to deal under the table.

Make everybody equal, money wise. That way, WMC and WEAC and the Potawatomi and all those Christofascist woman-haters can’t “buy” any more elections.

Of course, it also means I couldn’t spend $100 to send letters, or buy a newspaper ad. Neither could you.

No more hemp-wearing college students running off flyers at the local Kinko’s. No more “election guides” sent to internal union and church memberships.

Do you spend any money maintaining your blog? Sorry. You can’t use that blog to influence voters.

It’s the only way. If we want – if we really want – to “get the money out of politics,” then the only way is to outlaw all money from politics.

You might notice: we know what Troha and Doyle (allegedly) did. The law in this case is being enforced. But the reform nags don’t want laws that can be enforced, they want laws that can’t be broken.

And as a wise man once said: that’s like signing Randy Moss to upgrade your receiver corps. You’re just exchanging one set of problems for another.

Single-Payer: Is There Anything It Can't Do?

Americans are a litigious people. We love to sue each other. We’re so eager to take our neighbors to court that, sometimes, we’ll file suit even when we don’t have a case.

Doctors and hospitals are prime targets of the lawsuit industry. Hey, they cut people open on purpose at hospitals. It’s their job. Mistakes – real and imagined – can happen.

Some of us think this is driving up the cost of health care. Every lawsuit against a doctor or hospital means cost – legal fees, time lost, etc. A lost case or a settlement means the defendant has to pay the damages, or, more likely, the defendant’s insurance has to pay. Both defendant and insurance have to make a profit. Thus, the cost of lawsuits is reflected in the cost of health care.

So. Tort reform. Lawsuit reform. Bringing some sanity to the legal system. Making it harder to pursue frivolous cases. Putting limits on punitive damages. Given the unrelenting wailing and gnashing of teeth over the state of American health care today, these are all legitimate ideas.

But the Tomah Journal takes it even farther. Instead of just reforming the legal system, they opine, let’s remove it from the equation entirely:

There’s a better approach: Join the rest of the industrialized world and establish single-payer universal health care. Billions of dollars worth of lawsuits would suddenly evaporate if lawyers could no longer haggle over million-dollar medical bills.

That’s an interesting suggestion. Or, at least, an original one. They’re right: make it a single-payer system, and suddenly there’s nobody to sue. Your insurance company doesn’t have to pick up the tab for somebody else’s mistake.

Sure, there’d still be pain and suffering. Lost wages. That sort of thing. I’m sure the government would take steps to protect itself from lawsuits. Heck, they already do. When it’s the government being sued, suddenly limits on damage awards are in the public interest.

I’ll do the Journal one better: let’s nationalize all industry in the country. Because if government owns industry, “billions of dollars” of product liability lawsuits would “suddenly evaporate,” too.

Anyone who’s been following the story of Walter Reed Army Medical Center – the veterans’ hospital that is treating its patients worse than the Marines at Gitmo treat their prisoners – knows just how well the government handles big things like health care.

If that’s not enough, consider Great Britain’s National Health Service – an actual example of nationalized health care. Childbirth mortality has grown by 21% over the past three years.

Record numbers of women are being harmed or dying as a direct result of childbirth in what doctors are labelling a "crisis" in maternity care.

…

The UK now has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in Europe, with 13 deaths per 100,000. Britain ranks below countries including Poland and Hungary, and is above Bulgaria, Bosnia, Belarus, Romania, Armenia and Albania.

And the Tomah Journal may want to read this part (emphasis added):

The scale of the maltreatment has led to soaring medical negligence claims from mothers. The bill to the NHS has hit £1bn for the past five years. Two-thirds of the 100 largest payouts by NHS trusts for medical negligence are now to women who have suffered traumatic childbirth experiences…

Yep, sounds like socialized, nationalized, single-payer health care is just the answer we need.

Nobody claims our system of delivering health care is perfect. It’s not.

But expecting government to make the imperfect perfect is like expecting Randy Moss to make the Packers a playoff team. You’re just exchanging one set of problems for another.

Over time, our government will expand on the services covered by a nationalized health care plan. Little by little by little, every time another tragic tale of an uncovered illness or injury emerged, the program will get that much bigger.

And as more and more people realize they can go to the doctor as much as they want for free, they’ll start doing just that. Which means more bills piling up for the single payer – government – us - to pay. Which leads to government trying to contain costs. Which leads to…well, read that story in The Independent again.

It all leads to that.

Doctors: Following (or avoiding) The Money

It’s so simple. Just follow the money.

Except, sometimes, it isn’t. Take, for example, Governor Doyle’s smoking ban. No more smoking, anywhere in public, anywhere in Wisconsin. Except, maybe, taverns.

One might expect doctors to agree with that idea. Doctors, who make their living looking after our health, curing our illnesses, repairing the damage we frequently do to ourselves. Who see, first hand, the damage smoking does.

Except - that doesn’t follow the money. In fact, because smokers do require more health care, that would seem to run briskly away from the money.

No matter. The Wisconsin Medical Society opined this week:

Smoke-free workplaces provide a safer environment for workers who don’t smoke, and reduce the amount other employees smoke. Cutting down smokers’ consumption can reduce illness and help smokers break their nicotine addiction.

The Wisconsin Academy of Family Physicians followed suit, with a better-argued release:

What about personal choice? Well, if smoking could only be done inside a self-contained helmet, and if smokers agreed to pay for all the future costs of their smoking, they might have an argument. But we’ve proven the dangers of secondhand smoke, and we know that all of us pay for others’ health care.

Doctors would never support smoking, of course, but it sure must be tempting. If not to oppose Doyle’s plan outright, then at least to keep quiet about it.

Why? The money. WAFP estimates $32 million that taxpayers will save from “fewer smoking-affected pregnancies & births,” and “fewer smoking-caused heart attacks & strokes.”

WMS says smoking costs the state “approximately $3 billion annually in health care expenses and lost productivity.”

That’s a lot of money. A lot, that would otherwise go into doctors’ pockets. But these two doctor’s groups are saying: no. We don’t want it.

Imagine Hostess telling us to stop eating Twinkies because they’re bad for you.

That’s good citizenship. That’s people who care more about others than about making a profit.

Or…could it be something else? Something other than altruism? Could the old adage still apply?

Remember that study, some years ago, that suggested smoking might actually save money? Because smokers die sooner, and thus avoid the other ailments that come with age?

According to the Center for Disease Control, in an average year from 1997 to 2001, an estimated 438,000 Americans died prematurely due to smoking… In fact, 1 in 5 U.S. deaths is smoking-related. Between all these premature deaths in an average year, Americans lost 5.5 million years of expected life...

That’s a lot of lost patients. Appointments. Hospital bills. A lot of plaid-wearing senior citizens not coming in bi-weekly to complain about their rheumatism, or liver spots, or digestion.

Could be there’s more money in non-smokers, than in smokers.

And then there’s this 2002 study, which “strongly suggests that the upward trend in obesity is at least partly attributable to the anti-smoking campaign.” As we know, obesity is another massive cause of poor health, and adverse medical needs.

Stop smoking, get fat! Because that’s the path to better health!

Right? Wrong. That’s some spare golf money, is what that is.

Okay, so the study didn’t find “a direct correlation between restrictions on smoking and weight gain,” and a later study found no relationship at all.

Still. By supporting the smoking ban, are doctors subtly encouraging us to get old and fat?

To answer your question: yes. I’m being entirely unserious. Doctors will tell you to quit smoking, lose weight, get some exercise, and eat healthy, too, because they’re professionals, who are serious and genuine about what they do.

Especially the doctor who’s going to do my triple-bypass twenty years from now. That doctor is beyond reproach.

Sure, they’re leaving some unanswered questions, just like the rest of the Ban Smoking! side. Why not just ban cigarettes altogether?

Maybe because that’s not smart. The smart way to do it – the subtle way to do it – is little by little. Bit by bit. Making good use of the slippery slope.

That’s the strategy the smoking zealots – indeed, the whole health-nanny industry – is following. And slowly but surely, because it’s the smart way to do it, it’s working.

Whether they fully support that broader agenda or not, doctors are helping it along.