July 2, 2009 • 4:04 pm 0
The folks over at Football Outsiders have come up with a pretty good playoff proposal for Div I FBS College Football. It incorporates all the conference champs, 5 at-large teams, and allows for the continuation of the current bowl system. The only things that are dealbreakers are probably the elimination of the conference championship games, and the removal of the 12th game of the regular season.
But overall, I think it’s a very workable proposal.
Filed under: Sports
June 15, 2009 • 4:17 pm 0
A nice opinion piece from the Denver Post debunking the standard right-wing myths about the Canadian Health Care System.
Filed under: Miscellaneous
May 28, 2009 • 5:43 pm 0
Two things caught my eye today, both related to our broken health care system. The first is a absolutely FANTASTIC piece by Atul Gawande in the New Yorker about one of the biggest problems with our health care system that very few people talk about: that our current system rewards quantity without any control for quality. That is, that doctors make more money for piling on tests and procedures, when there is evidence that shows that not only does that not help the patients get better, but can actually do more harm than good. He examines a case of a small town in Texas that charges Medicare almost twice the national average per subscriber, and investigates why. He makes the very valid point that for all the talk of insurance companies, and single-payer, and the public option, this contradiction at the heart of our current health care reimbursement system needs to be addressed for a real breakthrough in controlling costs. Just a great piece, and one that needs to be read by everyone.
And now the second thing that caught my eye. Over at Think Progress, Matthew Yglesias has a great post about how our current health care system limits the amount of innovation and entrepreneurship in our current economy. He writes:
The thinking is that our current system unduly punishes risk-taking. There are a lot of different aspects of this, but basically the American health care system both produces labor market rigidities (”job lock”) and makes jobs at small firms relatively unattractive.
He goes on to quote a study which codifies the negative impact that this system of employer-tied health care has on entrepreneurship. Speaking personally, I know that my fear of being without health care has really dimmed any thoughts I might have had about changing fields or changing jobs, and it is even more of an issue now, when any of us might lose our jobs in an instant due to the current economic crisis (thanks, W.!).
Filed under: Health Care
April 24, 2009 • 8:50 am 0
Joe Posnanski, one of the great sportswriters of this generation, writes an article about Cal alum Tony Gonzalez, who was traded from the Kansas City Chiefs to the Atlanta Falcons yesterday.
A great read.
Filed under: Cal Sports
April 23, 2009 • 3:23 pm 0
Matthew Yglesias has a great post at his blog which describes a McKinsey report that analyzes the economic cost of having a poor education system. From his blog:
…having a high-performing school system is extremely valuable. This is important to keep in mind when talking about spending money on schools or other social services aimed at children and their parents. There’s much more to improving educational outcomes than spending money at random, but insofar as you identify a use for the money that’s genuinely useful it’s worth spending extremely freely.
Among the statistics he sites:
If the United States had in recent years closed the gap between its educational achievement levels and those of better-performing nations such as Finland and Korea, GDP in 2008 could have been $1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion higher. This represents 9 to 16 percent of GDP. (emphasis his)
Follow the link to see the rest of the stats. It truly does make it clear how important education is, and further illustrates the sheer lunacy of wannabe Republican presidential candidates like South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, who are actively reject stimulus money from the federal government. Money that could be spent on… hmm… education.
Filed under: Education, Government, Government Incompetence
April 15, 2009 • 3:44 pm 0
For all the teabaggers out there, here are some FACTS about the taxes Americans pay. We should all remember that taxes are the price we pay for the privilege of being part of a society.
Filed under: Government
February 9, 2009 • 5:36 pm 0
I’m clearly a supporter of our new president, and I supported Barack Obama in the last general election (although I was an Edwards guy during the primary season), and he is definitely not the same as the old president. However, today the Department of Justice continued the Bush administration practice of asserting the “state secrets” privilege in the case of 5 people who were subjected to the Bush-admin policy of “extraoardinary rendition,” in which they were snatched up by the CIA (in foreign countries), and sent to other foreign countries with no qualms about torture (i.e. Egypt, in one case) for the express purpose of being tortured. Glenn Greenwald has a devastating post on why this is an epic fail by the Obama administration. Here’s hoping that Obama’s DOJ reverses course on this ASAP.
UPDATE: Here’s more from Glenn. Further, John Cole at Balloon Juice has an opinion on why Obama might be asserting the state secrets privilege here:
The only justifiable decision here would be to revoke the Bush DoJ’s attempt to use State Secrets to block not only specific evidence but any hearing at all. However, doing so would almost certainly compel a wider investigation and likely criminal charges against former government officials. To avoid being seen as the President who put his last administration on trial Obama must resort to the exact same heinous abuses of power that made the Bush DoJ into a national disgrace.
I understand that point, but to me that spells out clearly why both Obama’s desire for “bipartisanship” and his repeated statements of not pursuing criminal action against the past administration are so wanting. If criminal acts were committed by the previous administration, they must be prosecuted… Above all, the rule of law must be elevated, and it must be made clear that no one is above the law. It must be apparent that law-breaking, by anyone, will be punished and will not be tolerated. If it is swept under the rug, there is no real deterrent to future law-breakers. The correct response (at least in my opinion) when Obama is confronted with the question of whether the previous administration will be prosecuted should be “Well, where there is evidence of wrongdoing, we will investigate the actions of the previous administration. If no laws were broken, no prosecutions will be undertaken. However, if laws were broken and violated, then those people responsible will be prosecuted, as is the case when any laws are broken. No one is above the law, PERIOD.”
October 21, 2008 • 3:27 pm 0
So it’s been a long time… and I need to get back in the swing of blogging. Since I’ve last blogged, I’ve seen (among other things):
I’ve left out many things, of course, but those were some of the first things I thought when i thought about what I would have blogged about. My impetus for blogging again today was a quote I saw from David Sedaris in the New Yorker (h/t Balloon Juice):
To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”
To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
I don’t know if anyone could have put it better (although I will admit that after reading the full article, I don’t know if it was intended with the same implications that I read into it)… However, I’ll just leave it at that and let you decide 
.
One final link…. A great post by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Filed under: Cal Sports, Congress, Democrats, Government Incompetence, News, Politics, President, Pro Football, Sports
September 11, 2007 • 10:47 pm 0
A year ago, I wrote a blog entry about the satyagraha movement, which also had 9/11 as its inception date. This year, I wanted to link to two blog entries written by the amazing MetroDad, a blogger who I stumbled across when he wrote a compelling letter to the students of Virginia Tech in the aftermath of the shooting tragedy there. I think I first took a liking to MetroDad because he went to Cal (as did I); unfortunately, he was a hostage in one of the tragedies that occurred while I was there (a gunman took patrons in a popular bar hostage for several hours), and that definitely shook me a little. I hate to admit it, but until I read MetroDad’s letter, that incident had totally slipped my mind. It was early in my undergrad career at Cal (I was just starting my sophomore year), and so it was more than 16 years ago. There were a few other terrible incidents that year (if I recall correctly, a student died when he fell off a balcony at a fraternity house, and a female student was abducted and killed), and I don’t know if I just blocked them all out, or they just faded with time. I know that they were all extremely disturbing to me and my friends at the time (in fact, I think 2 if not all 3 of the students who died in those tragedies all went to the same high school as a friend of mine, so it hit home even harder for him), so it surprised that I had to be reminded of the hostage situation by Metrodad’s letter.
In any case, the point of the above rambling is to say that while the Cal connection might have been the inital reason that I started reading MetroDad, I keep reading his blog because he is a fantastic/humorous/thoughtful writer with some amazing things to say and spectacular ways of putting them. I am even more able to relate to his writing because I too have a young daughter, and I often readily identify with his joys and frustrations. Which brings me to today. Nowhere is his gift for writing more clear than in his entry today, titled Dear Andy. I was so floored by it I went back and read his letter from last year as well. I am so sorry for your loss, MetroDad.
Filed under: 9/11, Blogs/Blogosphere
• 3:23 pm 0
So it’s almost been a full year since I posted to my blog. Unbelievable 
. I’d like to think that it was the growing demands of parenthood as well as work and other commitments, but I can’t say that. It’s probably just scandal fatigue, and the capitulation of the Democrats to a president with a sub-30% approval rating. Politics just makes me so depressed sometimes.
Having said that, I am going to try to resolve to post more often, and at least get all the things I’ve wanted to write about off my chest a bit more frequently.
Filed under: Miscellaneous
