God, I love technology…

Alwin Hawkins, over at ViewFromTheHeart (note: no permalinks) responded with a description of the German health insurance system (his disclaimers: it was from an old class, he’s not a health care economist, bla bla bla)…it’s a clear explanation of what sounds like a damn sensible system.
I’ll dig in a bit as time allows and try (for once) and comment sensibly.

The process begins…here’s L.A. County’s reaction to the health care fiscal crisisin today’s L.A. Times (obtrusive registration required, or just sign in as “laexaminer”/”laexaminer”).

Los Angeles County supervisors will ask voters to approve a $175-million parcel tax to shore up the county’s fraying network of emergency rooms and trauma centers, officials said Wednesday.

Take a look at Steven David’s commentary in today’s L.A. Times (obtrusive registration required, or just sign in as “laexaminer”/”laexaminer”).
Short version:

As long as the Palestinian Authority is unwilling or unable to curb those who deliberately seek to kill innocent Israelis and bring these attackers to justice, it is up to Israel to do so. Targeted killing does this, and at a cost that is far less harmful to the Palestinians than its alternatives.
Targeted killing will not bring peace to the Middle East. Only a political solution that calls for an independent Palestinian state can do that.
A policy of targeted killing also must carry with it adequate safeguards, including civilian oversight. Targeted killing must focus only on combatants. Political leaders, no matter how odious, must be spared. And targeted killing cannot be carried out forever. It is a policy that makes sense only during war or armed conflict. Once a peace settlement is reached, it must end.
For a region going through a horrendous time, targeted killing is the worst possible policy–except for all the others.

I haven’t blogged about yesterday’s Israeli attack that killed Hamas military leader Salah Shehada (I’ll assume everyone knows the basic facts, if not, click here), partly because there’s not much new to say, and partly because I’ve been trying to figure out how I feel about it.
Short version: Israeli intel showed a major terrorist leader’s location, and they sent an F-16 to take him out with what is variously described as a bomb or missile. Whatever it was, it got the bad guy and leveled his apartment building, killing 14 others, including women and children.
I’ve turned my head when Israel has assassinated Palestinian terrorists; it’s a dirty war as all wars are. And there is a part of me that genuinely roots for the Israelis to simply wipe out the bastards who are sending Palestinian youth to blow themselves and innocents up in Israel.
But I’ve always been uncomfortable with it.
I’ve talked in the past with friends who argue for war by assassination…make the political leaders backing the war as vulnerable as the scared kids they send to the front lines, they say. And there’s something to that.
And in the Israeli’s defense, their enemies don’t exactly live on bases, surrounded by uniformed military, and drive vehicles with distinguishing markings, as contemplated by the Geneva Convention.
And now…to blow up a building to get the one guy inside it…seems like a dangerous thing for the Israelis to do.
Let’s be clear. It would take Israel two, maybe three hours to demolish every structure in the West Bank and Gaza. The limit would be how fast they could rearm and turn around the aircraft. They could do it with conventional munitions and would easily have enough left over to defeat the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan and mount a credible threat to the Iranians.
They haven’t. Why? Because they have to live with themselves, and because they are smart enough to realize that they ultimately have to live with their neighbors. The fact that they would mightily piss off the United States might factor into that as well.
So how do I feel about this? Confused, unhappy. The Israelis have the high moral ground exactly because everyone knows they could flatten Palestinian-administered territories and haven’t.
That moral capital is worth something, even in the face of all the anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli sentiment abroad in the world.
So how do I feel?? Confused, concerned. Glad they got him, and sad they didn’t get him in another way. Sad that they have to get him at all.
For some other views, check out Protein Wisdom in support and Jeff Cooper not.

Via Yourish:
Calif. governor calls for crackdown
on anti-Semitism at state universities.

In the comments on my post on Rall, below, Demosthenes takes exception to my position:
AL: I think you’re glossing over Andy’s valid point, and missing the fact that this is neither the Harding administration, and historical comparisons are limited by other, differing factors. At this point, we’ve got a combination of factors that hasn’t really happened in history: we’ve got a tightly integrated worldwide system of capital flows, a lot of “rank and file” investors, the presence of an abundance of other ways of capitalizing companies, and proof that corporate bosses were playing around with the numbers in an attempt to make themselves look good. Some of these have been present before (Harding administration, for some, 1929 for others) but I believe the combination is unique, as are all the other social, political, etc. forces involved nowadays. (Hell, this is happening in the middle of a war… isn’t that new?)
Well, one could argue that every historic moment is different from every other moment; there’s truth in that. I’m suggesting that the current situation has more in common with similar situations in the past than not; that’s partly my philosophical approach to life…I learned early on that the exceptionalist argument made by my generation didn’t hold much water. I think we’re in for an interesting time of it on a lot of fronts, but don’t believe that the current round of market scandals nor the (to me inevitible, if only I’d had the nerve and cash to back it up…) decline in the markets represents The End Of Things As We Know Them (or as my gun nut friends are fond of discussing TEOTWAWKI – The End Of The World As We Know It). I’m actually more interested in why it is that so many people seem to long for the Catastrophe, and wonder if that’s somehow unique or related to the philosophical crises I’ve tried to discuss before.
As for that silly bit against Rall… I realize you don’t like the guy, but dislike doesn’t mean dismissable. I think Rall had a valid point in that this could mean a significantly lowered role for stock markets for a long time to come, and it plays into the hands of those young protestor critics of global capitalism awfully well. I think the only reason they haven’t had a bigger presence is because of the WoT, but if that changes, they’ve got ready-made examples for their charges.
I don’t dislike the guy, I’ve never met him. I think that he tends to write stupid things, and since he nominally plays on my team (liberals) that annoys me. I think that markets will play a lower role in corporate capital formation than before, but that’s a good thing, because five clowns and a Yugo can no longer go public at an immense market cap. There’s a reason old-fashioned investment and lending strategies tend to survive: they work pretty well.

Kevin Raybauld asks (in the comments below):
I guess I am just not sure why information qualifies as a different category. Like I said, to me, it seems to fit the category of a natural resource, at least in behavior. How is information different than say, steel? In the 19th century, one could have argued that control and manipulation of steel was just as important to economic success as information is today.
Kevin, steel is information – the information on how to make steel, plus the natural resources (iron ore, coal) plus the labor needed. It’s all one unified process, distinguished only by the way we try and analyze it (candle flame: chemical process or physics problem?).
I argued below that Marx screwed up because he divided everything into two categories: labor and capital (land and frozen labor). I’ll argue there is a third category, information, and that the history of modernity is in part the trumph of the information-wranglers (think clerks, bankers, engineers and scientists) over the landowners and the laborers.
Of course the wranglers are themselves laborers…so the analysis gets kinda complex.
But to quote Dante (the clerk, not the poet) “I’m not even suppsed to be here today…”
Back to looking for projects…

In a world beset by terror and violence, it’s good to know that a simple pun can still make you queasy. A ‘tip’ of the hat to the Wall Street Journal‘s ‘Best Of The Web Today’

Military Operations
Turkish troops leading the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Afghanistan won friends among hundreds of Afghan families Tuesday after army doctors carried out a mass circumcision of boys who had missed the important Muslim ceremony for one reason or another,” Reuters reports from Kabul:
“It takes about five to eight minutes to do each person,” an army doctor told Reuters. “If you want, I would be happy to do you and your colleagues.”
The dispatch doesn’t say if the wire service took the doc up on his offer. Nor does it say if the doctors received payment for their work, though we suspect they only took tips.

I’m speechless. Laughing really hard, but speechless. This is almost a Feghoot (let’s see who remembers those)…
.

In Brad DeLong’s Semi-Daily Journal: George Bush Predicts P/E Ratios Will Rise. Megan McArdle Disagrees.
Two more fans of regression to the mean.