It's A Great Day

John Kerry finally decided that he should after all accept his party's nomination at the Democratic convention in Boston. Thank goodness our founders were much more decisive. Could you imagine what would have happened in they acted like the presumptive presidential candidate? There might have been forks in the freedom trail.

PermaLink | 8:45 PM | |

The controversy over his remarks one week ago on the anniversary of Brown vs. The Board of Education is not dying down (see my own posts on the subject under "breakfast for the Mind". Now, as the Washington Post reports, some black leaders are admitting that Cosby's comments may have some truth to them, especially the part about the failure of many minorities to take responsibility for their actions. If black liberals, such as NAACP Executive Director Kweisi Mfume, begin to recognize the validity of what was said and then influence others to change their behavior, then I cannot think of a better way to celebrate this Supreme Court decision.

PermaLink | 6:03 AM | |

News is that John Kerry is going to postpone accepting his party's nomination so that he is not restricted by federal campaign spending rules. Wasn't it the democrats who decried all the money in politics? Never mind. This is, of course, all about doing anything that will result in gaining power over others so please excuse the hypocrisy.

Washington Post Editors don't like this course of events either but their solution is to re-write the regulations. My view is different. We need to take all controls off spending and raising money in federal elections in exchange for full disclosure by candidates concerning who gave them how much cash. They would never go for my suggestion, however, because that would make it easier for 3rd party candidates to get noticed once they were backed by individuals with significant resources. This is why I hate politicians.

PermaLink | 9:40 AM | |

According to the Washington Post the public is not at all worried about privacy in using google's new free email service. They just want an account.

PermaLink | 6:38 AM | |

Wow! Brown vs. The Board of Education, Gay Marriage, the state of black families, all in one editorial. I agree with every sentence but I think I would have pointed out how ironic it is that the message was delivered by Bill Cosby, who is known to have been unfaithful to his wife.

Here is the New York Times coverage of the controversy.

PermaLink | 6:09 AM | |

The proper use of a weblog is to share information that people would not ordinarily notice or appreciate. This commentary by David Broder about the McCain-Feingold Bill definitely does not fit this category. Guess what? Some have already figured out that this reform legislation did not reform anything.

PermaLink | 6:26 AM | |

My friend David Salisbury writes an interesting commentary on differences in the integration of races in public schools compared to private schools.

As important as the Brown decision was to the civil rights movement in the 1950's and 60's, that's how central school choice is to the civil rights movement of today. How else are the kids we care so much about going to escape dangerous and disfunctional government institutions of "learning?"

PermaLink | 7:28 PM | |

Its easy to belittle the Supreme Court decision whose 50th anniversary we acknowledge today. After all, in inner cities across America blacks and whites still attend separate and unequal schools. And the court's boldness in striking down legal racial discrimination gave it the legitimacy to exert itself into areas which exceeded its authority. I've included a link to a Thomas Sowell article that makes this point.

But the reason that Brown is so important, and the reason that today we should all happily celebrate this ruling, is that it brought us judicial recognition of the framers assertion in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal."

PermaLink | 5:28 AM | |

In case you haven't noticed there is a growing controversy over Google's offering of a new free email service. Google is promoting its new feature as a means of storing your emails forever since it comes with a gigabyte of space on their servers. The catch? Well, there are actually two of them. First, when you review your messages you will see advertisements that are selected based upon key words that are present in the emails. The idea that a computer is scanning individual communications has a lot of people worried about privacy. But keep in mind that no information is being sent out to the companies placing the ads.

The second issue is that Google is keeping a record of emails even after they have been deleted. The fear here is that the government or hackers will go after this data to gather information on people. Here are a couple of commentaries on Gmail, one by the Washington Post's Leslie Walker and another by CATO's (now CEI's) Wayne Crews.

PermaLink | 5:06 AM | |

Do see the cubist painting by Diego Rivera at the National Gallery of Art.

Don't bother with the same museum's exhibition of newly acquired paintings from the collection of John Wilmerding (nothing impressive here except for a couple of good works by Thomas Eakins).

The Wall Street Journal On-line has an interesting article today about the Museum of Modern Art's practice of deaccessioning paintings. Its an aspect of the art world that I bet most of us know very little about and even more of us don't understand.

PermaLink | 4:32 AM | |

I'm making good progress on a new article regarding the relationship between being a good manager and an appreciation for the visual arts. It's based upon my lecture on my essay Total Quality Management in the New millennium," which makes the case that Edward Hopper's paintings can help us understand what Robert Pirsig was saying in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." If this all seems totally far fetched I hope to make it clear as day when I'm finished. I'll of course post it here for your comments.

On the same day (Tuesday, May 11) that I started this project the Wall Street Journal printed a column by Charles Murray which advocated using technology to make low cost high quality visual art reproductions available to the general public. (You must subscribe to the on-line version of the WSJ to view.) He was complaining that the only way to see truly great art was to go to a museum. Murray pointed out, which is true, that today's reproductions often don't really represent what a painting looks like in person. He goes on to comment that we do not know the societal implications of widely available visual art. My article will try and explain this phenomenon.

PermaLink | 4:10 AM | |

I would not have guessed in a million years that I would include a link to a William Safire article on my blog but it goes to show that you never do say never.

He has some very kind words to say about our Defense Secretary and I have to agree. Donald Rumsfeld should not resign. He won an extremely difficult war in Afghanistan. He led an equally impressive fight in Iraq (even if I was and still am against this military engagement.) He helped carry people away from the area where the plan crashed into the Pentagon on 09/11/01. He is an effective communicator for our country who helped expose the recent abuse of prisoners. He has accepted full responsibility for what happened and he will see to it that the individuals who are behind this travesty are held accountable for their actions.

PermaLink | 9:52 PM | |

Who was he? Take a look at this short biography by Virginia Postrel. About 50% of libertarians come to this political philosophy though reading him. The other half arrive after discovering Ayn Rand.

PermaLink | 5:09 AM | |

Nat Hentoff explains why the term should be removed from our lexicon.

PermaLink | 5:39 AM | |

51 new paintings on exhibit beginning Sunday!

PermaLink | 5:25 AM | |

The news out of Iraq only gets worse with pictures showing U.S. soldiers torturing prisoners under their control. Ann Applebaum makes the point today that our failure to enforce the rule of law when it comes to the war on terror is what led to these crimes. This is why even in extremely difficult times we must strictly adhere to international law and our own constitution. This is why we cannot simply lock-up Americans in ships and strip away their due process rights. It is easy for the government to protect our liberties when times are good. But it is for times of conflict and controversy that the first 10 amendments were adopted.

PermaLink | 4:46 AM | |

Yesterday the New York Times published an editorial co-authored by Newt Gingrich and Patrick Kennedy concerning the problems with the healthcare in this country. I have never read anything so misinformed. I guess this is what you get when you combine someone who thinks he is going to make his fortune as a consultant in the medical field with a liberal democrat. Their claim that 20 percent of medical tests are repeated due to lost results is laughable. I also seriously doubt that 98,000 people die each year in hospitals due to mistakes. And their recommendation to use technology to create electronic heath records accessible in regional networks scares me to death. Big brother, after all, is always looking over your shoulder.

Below is my letter to the editor regarding this wasted opportunity to have a frank discussion about how this country provides fantastic medical care if you can get access to it. I don't have much hope they will print it since its more than double the amount of words they want and it mentions the dreaded term medical savings accounts.

Dear Sir:

While I do agree with the diagnosis by Mr.Gingrich and Mr. Kennedy that our country provides the finest healthcare available anywhere in the world using processes best suited to third world countries, I believe that their recommended treatment may be worse than the disease. After working in the medical field for over 20 years and installing multiple complex information technology systems I can attest to the fact that computers will not fix our ailments. In fact, the safe use of these products is highly dependent on the skills of people who understand how they work, who can keep them running around the clock, who can train our workers, who can test to make sure programs are doing what we think they are doing, who can develop and implement manual procedures when they go down, and who understand how to improve and upgrade these investments in the future. The matter is extremely serious as I have seen patients loose their lives for no other reason except that staff relied on technology to make decisions for them.

The real problem in healthcare delivery is the divorce of the customer (patient) from the provider (physician) in terms of costs. Medical insurance in the U.S. does not operate truly as insurance against the unexpected; it is actually pre-payment for medical care. In such an arrangement patients have all the incentive to use as much as they can get and as a result insurance companies try and control expenditures by imposing restrictions on access (authorizations, referrals, exclusions for pre-existing conditions, etc.). This is why the concept of medical savings accounts is so important. Once individuals pay for their doctor visits themselves they become much more involved in charges and levels of service. After all, would we really need all those fancy expensive billing systems if patients were paying by check?

PermaLink | 5:03 AM | |

If you have never read a Colbert King column then today is the day to do so (free registration may be required). After you have had a chance to appreciate his point of view let me know your opinion on going to war in Iraq. But I'm afraid this time its not going to be that simple, because when you let me know what you think you also need to be specific about your personal sacrifice to the cause. I too want to add my congratulations to Charles Butler, Sr.

PermaLink | 9:06 PM | |