Month: September 2009

From the BBC:

Mr Mousavi was forced to leave the rally for Quds Day after an attack on his car, official news agency Irna reported. In a separate incident ex-President Mohammad Khatami was knocked to the ground, a reformist website reported.

More astonishing scenes from Tehran: Another chant: “Not for Lebanon. Not for Gaza. Only for Iran!’ More video of the revolution that cannot be suppressed after the jump:

That’s the chant translated from here:

Do these people seem intimidated to you?

Today's Qods rally has been a huge blow to the regime. While Ahmadinejad delivers one of the most unhinged and despicable anti-Semitic rants he has ever uttered, trying to rally Iranians with the usual Jew-baiting, the crowds display contempt. Here is a video with a government bus chanting the slogan "Down with the USA!" The crowd chants: "Down with Russia!"

What's particularly encouraging is that the crowds are waving green again – despite strict warnings that such displays would be punished viciously. The regime is done. It has lost the people. But its death throes remain extremely dangerous.

Riffing off a post by Thoreau, Ezra Klein questions the motives of the medical innovation hawks:

For a long time, I took questions about stifling innovation very seriously. So did a lot of liberals. But then I realized that the people making those arguments wanted to do things like means-test Medicare, or increase cost-sharing across the system, and generally reduce costs in this or that way, which would cut innovation in exactly the same way that single-payer would hypothetically cut innovation: by reducing profits.

I also found that I couldn't get an answer to a very simple question: What level of spending on health care was optimal for innovation? Should we double spending? Triple it? Cut it by 10 percent? Simply give a larger portion of it to drug and device manufacturers? I'd be interested in a proposal meant to maximize medical innovation. I've not yet seen one.

Megan counters:

I like new pharmaceuticals in the context of a market where supply is matched to consumer demand through a price mechanism.  If people, in their role as consumers, decide that the new pharmaceuticals coming out aren't worth their price, and decline to buy them, I like that too.

What I don't like is the government stepping in and deciding what drugs are worth how much money.  The government does not do a good job at setting prices.  How do we know this?  Generations of attempts at wage and price controls.  Price controlled markets don't work well, whether the price controls are a ceiling or a floor.

Yglesias jumps in:

[If] what were happening was that right now health care spending was driven by market forces, and liberals were proposing to change that by involving the government, then I would see why the “but sky-high health sector spending is a good thing!” argument reflects a coherent free market position. In fact, however, about half of US medical spending is directly driven by the government. And the “private” spending is heavily shaped by a very substantial tax subsidy. So the argument that we shouldn’t try to restrain health cost growth because high levels of health care spending is good is basically an argument in favor of large government subsidies for health care.

DiA also counters Fred Kaplan's plan to bribe the Afghans into peace and reconciliation:

This is also exactly how the CIA pacified most of Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003: by handing out million-dollar bribes to warlords. And it is part of the reason why both Afghanistan and, as Mr Kaplan says, Mosul fell apart again shortly thereafter.

Bribing warlords does not create stability; it destroys it. Cash that flows in as tribute from foreign sources replaces the authentic source of governing authority and capacity: taxes. A regime's ability to collect taxes from its own people is one of the key indicators that it has legitimacy. A regime that depends on taxes to function and retain power will seek to assure that it retains legitimacy, by carrying out the necessary functions of governance. "Legitimacy" need not stem from democracy; a stable authoritarian regime, like China, can have one without the other. But it does require that the government govern, as Samuel Huntington used to put it.

New York officials want to ban smoking at public parks and beaches. Will Saletan thinks the anti-smoking zealots have gone too far:

[C]heck out [New York's health comissioner, Thomas Farley's] second argument: Kids shouldn't "have to be watching someone smoke." We're no longer talking about breathing even a particle of smoke. We're talking about banning bad habits to prevent cultural contamination.

Jesus, these busy-bodies need to get a life. Follow-up here.

Meet Nicole:

A reader writes:

I'm not sure what the point of your post quoting Tom Ricks was.  His arguments that literacy is not a necessary skill for soldiers are ludicrous.  He says "the average soldier in Afghanistan does not need to be literate" citing as authority Spartan soldiers at Thermopalye, who were apparently illiterate.  However, I doubt that the Spartan soldiers had to operate and repair trucks, tanks, canons and other mechanized equipment, or do any of the myriad tasks a modern functioning army is supposed to do.

  I suppose Ricks believes the Afghan army could do away with intelligence reports, uniform written protocol and procedures, or anything else of the sort.  Hell, get rid of maps, since the soldiers don't need to be able read them.  It's just ridiculous. I can't tell what basis he has for disputing the Maj. Gen.'s assessment that the literacy rate is an impediment to training the Afghan army other than some romanticized notion of the Spartan soldier, who needed nothing more than a stout heart and a sharp sword to defeat his enemy. 

I'm also not sure what Ricks is suggesting with respect to the "diversity training," but if that is his euphamism for training that is supposed to instil a respect for the rights of other ethnic groups and tribes, I don't think it should be dismissed as casually as Ricks does.

A new study shows the human toll:

A study published online estimates nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002… The Harvard-based researchers found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.

Lead author Dr. Andrew Wilper, who worked at Harvard Medical School when the study was done and who now teaches at the University of Washington Medical School, said, "The uninsured have a higher risk of death when compared to the privately insured, even after taking into account socioeconomics, health behaviors and baseline health. We doctors have many new ways to prevent deaths from hypertension, diabetes and heart disease — but only if patients can get into our offices and afford their medications."