For you regular visitors to this blog, I want to acknowledge that I have been so busy with the council campaign that I have been terribly slack in posting here. Soon. Soon.

But here’s a great Olbermann segment on health care:

At the tender age of 57 I was forced into politics. I feel the pain.

Human Rights Group Campaigns To End Use Of Child Politicians In Africa

The push is on for health care reform and the push-back has been launched by insurance companies and the profiteers that run most of America’s health care system. We need to contact our congressional reps and DEMAND a better plan. And we need to spread the word that all those “socialist” countries out there with single payer plans are getting better care, for less money, with better outcomes for more people. Here’s one article.

Debunking Canadian health care myths

By Rhonda Hackett

As a Canadian living in the United States for the past 17 years, I am frequently asked by Americans and Canadians alike to declare one health care system as the better one.

Often I’ll avoid answering, regardless of the questioner’s nationality. To choose one or the other system usually translates into a heated discussion of each one’s merits, pitfalls, and an intense recitation of commonly cited statistical comparisons of the two systems.

Because if the only way we compared the two systems was with statistics, there is a clear victor. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to dispute the fact that Canada spends less money on health care to get better outcomes.

To read more click here.

Well, well. An online journal which dubs itself the American Thinker has published a piece which purportedly proves that the stimulus package has caused unemployment to be worse than it would have been without the stimulus. This, the author claims, establishes the “fact” that we are experiencing the “Obama recession.”

To accomplish this piece of legerdemain, they published a graph which illustrates the unemployment figures Obama’s team projected if there were no stimulus bill, and the figures they projected if the plan went forward. (One has to accept on faith that the two graphs are, in fact, those of the administration.) Then the author(s) plot the actual unemployment stats for recent months and argue that since the jobless rate is higher than Obama’s team predicted, he must have caused it.

Uh-huh.

There are so many problems with this logic that it’s hard to know where to start, but the most glaring bit of nuttiness is that the graph shows that the steep rise in unemployment started long before Obama became the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. Therefore we must conclude that it was his candidacy which caused unemployment to climb.

My own conclusion, based on the evidence in this article, the rantings of Rush, the vile self-justification of Cheney, and all the rest, is that Obama is having a very negative effect on the mental health of right wing ideologues. He’s driving them nuts. They all clearly need medication (well, not Rush, it didn’t work out very well last time).

And the tragedy of this is that we are supposed to believe that we can have a civil debate about issues in this country, with two (or more) sides offering reasonable arguments that lead to the best outcome for all. Instead, one wing of the American experiment has gone utterly looney-tunes.

Just finished reading James Workman’s latest, Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought, and it has fed into my thinking about Asheville’s water rates.

Heretofore I have advocated that we encourage conservation by determining average per capita use (which for bookkeeping reasons probably means average per-bedroom use), then reducing rates below the average and raising rates above the average. This would enable rate payers to limit their bills more significantly through conservation efforts.

Workman’s careful analysis of water use and water problems around the globe has led me to consider a new formulation: The first 50 or 100 gallons per person per day should be free, with sharply steeper rates above that. (The number of free gallons is subject to analysis and debate – but is based on the idea that everyone has right to some quantity of potable water.) At the same time we create a water credit system. You would accumulate credits by using less than your free allotment, and the credits could be traded. The value of a credit would be established in the marketplace and would presumably be lower than the established rate. Therefore, those who conserve could sell credits to big users. Overall the price for “big” use would still be higher than it is today, so everyone would be encouraged to conserve, but the tradable credits would help big users to offset some of the price increase. This kind of system is no more difficult to operate than cell phone minutes or frequent flier miles, both of which are quite familiar to modern citizens.

Because the system would apply to all on the Asheville water system it would meet the requirements of the Sullivan Acts that we offer the same rates inside and outside the city limits, but because there are more large users outside the city limits it would presumably shift more of the burden to county customers.