Tag: posts

We’ve been announcing a “Nanny of the Month” for years now as a
way of calling attention to the “busybodies who make it their
business to know your business.” Each month, we name a couple of
runners-up and then a champion (or, in the case of repeat offenders
such as New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, we offer a lifetime
achievement award).

How awful was the selection in November? Get this: A city that
has banned doorknobs didn’t get the top prize. Click above to watch
the 80-second vid now or
go here for the whole story.

We’ve been announcing a “Nanny of the Month” for years now as a
way of calling attention to the “busybodies who make it their
business to know your business.” Each month, we name a couple of
runners-up and then a champion (or, in the case of repeat offenders
such as New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, we offer a lifetime
achievement award).

How awful was the selection in November? Get this: A city that
has banned doorknobs didn’t get the top prize. Click above to watch
the 80-second vid now or
go here for the whole story.

Is Obamacare back in action? For the last two
months, Healthcare.gov, the federally run insurance portal at the
heart of the law, has experienced numerous technical troubles. The
administration vowed to fix those problems by the end of November,
and today, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
announced that it had met the goal of making sure that the site
“worked smoothly” for the “vast majority of users.”

In a conference call this morning, a spokesperson for HHS

said, “we believe we have met that goal.” A
six-page progress report released by the administration this
morning touts technical progress as well as managerial
improvements, declaring that the team making the improvements is
now “operating with private sector velocity and efficiency.”

Anyone else catch the irony there? Set up a vast,
government-managed tech operation, watch it fail—and then, as it
attempts to reboot itself, boast of private-sector quality
work?  (Also, let’s not forget that the original failed work
was in fact done by private contractors working under the
managerial bumbling of the federal health bureaucracy.)

So it’s all fixed, and Obamacare’s going to be great, right? Not
so fast. The White House’s
stated goal of improving the website so that 80 percent of
users can get all the way through the system still means that one
in five users won’t make it through the digital gauntlet. It also
claims that the site is stable and accessible 90 percent of the
time, a figure it only gets by excluding the hours of scheduled
maintenance it undergoes each day.

And that’s if the website even works as well as the
administration says it’s supposed to. Which is, at best, a very big
if.
According to The Washington Post, some progress has
been made, but the techies and bureaucrats attempting to patch
together the site have not fully met their own internal goals for
performance yet. That would certainly fit the pattern. All
throughout the development of the online insurance exchange system,
the administration has claimed that Obamacare’s tech is working, or
just about to work—but its promises have repeatedly been proven
wrong.

Given its history, the administration’s claims have to be taken
with a cargo ship full of salt—especially since there’s no good way
to independently confirm that the website is working as well as the
administration claims. You just have to
take their word for it.

Even if the website appears to be working on the user end,
there’s no guarantee that less visible functions are performing
adequately. Insurers have been reporting dropped or incorrectly
transmitted enrollment data since the exchanges launched. And

according to The New York Times, the repair team
prioritized front-end fixes for consumers over accurate
insurance-company connections. So the site might appear to be
working just fine, until you try to actually use the insurance that
you thought you purchased. 

These are just the known problems. There are plenty more
opportunities for technical troubles down the line, particularly
because when administration officials say the website is working
better, they mean the portion of the website that’s actually been
built. Yet by the reckoning of a senior Obamacare tech official,

some 30 to 40 percent of the exchange functionality has yet to
been constructed, including some of the crucial insurer payment
systems. (“It’s not built, let alone tested,” one insurance
industry official
told The Washington Post.”) So the best possible
scenario here is that the 70 percent of the site that’s been built
works for about 80 percent of the people who want to use
it. 

Is Obamacare back in action? For the last two
months, Healthcare.gov, the federally run insurance portal at the
heart of the law, has experienced numerous technical troubles. The
administration vowed to fix those problems by the end of November,
and today, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
announced that it had met the goal of making sure that the site
“worked smoothly” for the “vast majority of users.”

In a conference call this morning, a spokesperson for HHS

said, “we believe we have met that goal.” A
six-page progress report released by the administration this
morning touts technical progress as well as managerial
improvements, declaring that the team making the improvements is
now “operating with private sector velocity and efficiency.”

Anyone else catch the irony there? Set up a vast,
government-managed tech operation, watch it fail—and then, as it
attempts to reboot itself, boast of private-sector quality
work?  (Also, let’s not forget that the original failed work
was in fact done by private contractors working under the
managerial bumbling of the federal health bureaucracy.)

So it’s all fixed, and Obamacare’s going to be great, right? Not
so fast. The White House’s
stated goal of improving the website so that 80 percent of
users can get all the way through the system still means that one
in five users won’t make it through the digital gauntlet. It also
claims that the site is stable and accessible 90 percent of the
time, a figure it only gets by excluding the hours of scheduled
maintenance it undergoes each day.

And that’s if the website even works as well as the
administration says it’s supposed to. Which is, at best, a very big
if.
According to The Washington Post, some progress has
been made, but the techies and bureaucrats attempting to patch
together the site have not fully met their own internal goals for
performance yet. That would certainly fit the pattern. All
throughout the development of the online insurance exchange system,
the administration has claimed that Obamacare’s tech is working, or
just about to work—but its promises have repeatedly been proven
wrong.

Given its history, the administration’s claims have to be taken
with a cargo ship full of salt—especially since there’s no good way
to independently confirm that the website is working as well as the
administration claims. You just have to
take their word for it.

Even if the website appears to be working on the user end,
there’s no guarantee that less visible functions are performing
adequately. Insurers have been reporting dropped or incorrectly
transmitted enrollment data since the exchanges launched. And

according to The New York Times, the repair team
prioritized front-end fixes for consumers over accurate
insurance-company connections. So the site might appear to be
working just fine, until you try to actually use the insurance that
you thought you purchased. 

These are just the known problems. There are plenty more
opportunities for technical troubles down the line, particularly
because when administration officials say the website is working
better, they mean the portion of the website that’s actually been
built. Yet by the reckoning of a senior Obamacare tech official,

some 30 to 40 percent of the exchange functionality has yet to
been constructed, including some of the crucial insurer payment
systems. (“It’s not built, let alone tested,” one insurance
industry official
told The Washington Post.”) So the best possible
scenario here is that the 70 percent of the site that’s been built
works for about 80 percent of the people who want to use
it. 

If you put a bunch of people who identify
as feminists into a room with a bunch of people who identify as
free market capitalists, they would likely have some strained
conversations. At best. They just don’t roll with the same crowds.
This is a shame, argues Zenon Evans, because feminists are actually
quite savvy at operating within the voluntary mechanisms of the
free market system.

View this article.

Sunday morning yak shows got you down? Then check
out this November 14 episode of John Stossel’s eponymous Fox
Business show. Titled “The Rise of Libertarians?” Stossel talks
with, among others, Ron Paul, Penn Jillette, Matt Welch, and me to
figure out whether believers in social tolerance and fiscal
responsibility really are taking over the country. Stossel also
talks to folks from the fast-growing Students for Liberty group and
gets a negative take on “Free Minds and Free Markets” from The
Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes.

The YouTube vid of the show clips the commercials. Matt Welch
and I show up around the 2.30 minute mark, in the show’s first
segment.

Take a look – I’m pretty certain this will be far more
interesting than anything currently showing up on this morning’s
broadcast and cable chin-stroke-athons.

For more on Stossel’s show, go
here.

Sunday morning yak shows got you down? Then check
out this November 14 episode of John Stossel’s eponymous Fox
Business show. Titled “The Rise of Libertarians?” Stossel talks
with, among others, Ron Paul, Penn Jillette, Matt Welch, and me to
figure out whether believers in social tolerance and fiscal
responsibility really are taking over the country. Stossel also
talks to folks from the fast-growing Students for Liberty group and
gets a negative take on “Free Minds and Free Markets” from The
Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes.

The YouTube vid of the show clips the commercials. Matt Welch
and I show up around the 2.30 minute mark, in the show’s first
segment.

Take a look – I’m pretty certain this will be far more
interesting than anything currently showing up on this morning’s
broadcast and cable chin-stroke-athons.

For more on Stossel’s show, go
here.

For $99, the company 23andMe
can run a quick, rudimentary test on your spit and give you a
readout of who you are on a molecular level and crunch some numbers
on predispositions to various sorts of ailments and conditions.

“In its infinite wisdom,” writes Nick Gillespie,

the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has forbidden the
personal genetic testing
service 23andMe from soliciting
new customers, claiming the company hasn’t
proven the validity of its
product. The real reason? Because when it comes
to learning about your own goddamn genes, the FDA doesn’t
think you can handle the truth. That means the FDA is now
officially worse than Oedipus’s parents, Dr. Zaius, and the god of
Genesis combined, telling us that there are things that us mere
mortals just shouldn’t be allowed to know.

View this article.

Despite what you might have learned
from old government-sponsored black-and-white educational films or
hippie-era exploitation flicks, psychedelic drugs do not drive you
inexorably insane, writes Brian Doherty. A new, peer-reviewed study
examined survey results from over 130,000 U.S. adults, more than
21,000 of whom had used psychedelics, and found there are “no
significant associations between lifetime use of any psychedelics,
lifetime use of specific psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin, mescaline,
peyote), or past year use of LSD and increased rate of any of the
mental health outcomes” they examined.

View this article.

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