Michael Williams – Master of None

Matthew Yglesias says that America has become ungovernable.

The smarter elements in Washington DC are starting to pick up on the fact that it’s not tactical errors on the part of the president that make it hard to get things done, it’s the fact that the country has become ungovernable.

But I'm not aware of any Constitutional Amendments that have been ratified since President Obama took office, or since the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006. I remember President Bush passing a lot more bills than Obama has, even when Bush had far fewer votes at his disposal in Congress (setting aside the question of whether or not those bills were good).

The smarter voters are starting to realize that America is not ungovernable, America is ungovernable by Democrats.

More from Ed Morrissey and Glenn Reynolds.)

California is quietly shifting funds away from failed embryonic stem cell research and into adult stem cell research. Despite the state's passion for killing unborn babies, it's hard to justify it on an industrial scale without any hope of turning a profit.

California's Institute for Regenerative Medicine came into being five years ago, fueled by a conviction that the Bush administration's restriction on embryo-destructive research in the National Institutes of Health was stifling the progress of science.

But after years of fruitless work, the Institute has now quietly diverted funds from embryonic stem cell research (ESCr) to adult stem cell research - which has already produced dozens of treatments and all-out cures for maladies ranging from spinal cord injury, to Alzheimer's, to type I diabetes.

The California government - which is again teetering on the brink of bankruptcy - in 2004 passed the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, or Proposition 71. The initiative pumped $3 billion into research seeking some medical use for stem cells harvested from human embryos, which are killed in the process.

But an editorial in the Los Angeles-based Investor's Business Daily magazine January 12 pointed out the abysmal failure of the state's massive investment in research that has procured no effective treatments to date.

"Five years after a budget-busting $3 billion was allocated to embryonic stem cell research, there have been no cures, no therapies and little progress," notes the IBD editors.

"ESCR has failed to deliver and backers of Prop 71 are admitting failure."

Too bad for all those dead babies, but at least the researchers made a boatload of money.

(HT: Adam.)

The inevitable collapse of Social Security has always been a problem for "the future" that "someone else" could deal with, but apparently the future of Social Security is now.

No one has officially announced that Social Security will be cash-negative this year. But you can figure it out for yourself, as I did, by comparing two numbers in the recent federal budget update that the nonpartisan CBO issued last week.

The first number is $120 billion, the interest that Social Security will earn on its trust fund in fiscal 2010 (see page 74 of the CBO report). The second is $92 billion, the overall Social Security surplus for fiscal 2010 (see page 116).

This means that without the interest income, Social Security will be $28 billion in the hole this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

Why disregard the interest? Because as people like me have said repeatedly over the years, the interest, which consists of Treasury IOUs that the Social Security trust fund gets on its holdings of government securities, doesn't provide Social Security with any cash that it can use to pay its bills. The interest is merely an accounting entry with no economic significance.

To elaborate on the last sentence, the Social Security fund has been earning huge amounts of interest for decades, but that interest hasn't been put back into the fund, it has been spent by Congress to pay for other things. Instead of that cash being put into the fund, Congress has put IOUs into the fund, and when Social Security goes cash-negative those IOUs will have to be repaid out of current taxes.

The net effect of this is that not only is my generation paying the payroll tax to fund Social Security for current retirees, we're also paying BACK the interest those retirees spent on themselves decades ago. It's a double-whammy of generational theft, and the retiree generation should be ashamed by the debt they're imposing on their children and grandchildren.

Here's a disturbing story: now that China is growing reluctant to lend America money, the federal government wants to "borrow" your retirement savings by force.

The Department of Labor and the Department of the Treasury (the "Agencies") are currently reviewing the rules under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and the plan qualification rules under the Internal Revenue Code (Code) to determine whether, and, if so, how, the Agencies could or should enhance, by regulation or otherwise, the retirement security of participants in employer-sponsored retirement plans and in individual retirement arrangements (IRAs) by facilitating access to, and use of, lifetime income or other arrangements designed to provide a lifetime stream of income after retirement. The purpose of this request for information is to solicit views, suggestions and comments from plan participants, employers and other plan sponsors, plan service providers, and members of the financial community, as well as the general public, on this important issue.

I.e., the government is considering nationalizing your IRA, Roth, and 401(k) and replacing the money there with some new form of Treasury bill that will pay a "guaranteed" "lifetime stream of income".

Homework questions:

1. Isn't this what Social Security is already supposed to be doing?

2. China doesn't think t-bills are a good investment anymore... do you?

The fact that the message of this billboard is obvious to all viewers, despite lacking an explicit subject, certainly means something.

OK, this sign on Interstate 29 is over the top. For the record, I don't think President Obama is a Marxist. But what's funny is that it's instantly clear to whom the sign refers, which makes it, literally, a sign of the times.

After annihilating Harry Reid's re-election chances by mocking Las Vegas President Obama issued a "you misunderstood me" non-apology. First, the offending comments:

During the president's town hall meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire, he discussed the need to curb spending during tough economic times. "When times are tough, you tighten your belts," the president said. "You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college."

Despite President Bush's media-constructed reputation for ineloquence, I can't recall the former president sticking his foot in his mouth as many times in eight years as President Obama has in one. Naturally everyone in Nevada was offended by the off-hand insult of their premier city.

His statement Tuesday drew sharp criticism from Nevada lawmakers. "The President needs to lay off Las Vegas and stop making it the poster child for where people shouldn't be spending their money," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat. "Las Vegas is suffering through one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, and we cannot afford for the President to bring us down any further," added Republican Senator John Ensign. "Nevada has one of the most distressed economies in the country, and the President has done little to focus on job creation over the past year. Discouraging people from coming to our state to make a political point adds insult to injury," said Republican Congressman Dean Heller.

So let's take a look at the non-apology letter he sent to Harry Reid (but not to the citizens of Nevada).

Dear Harry:

I hope you know that during my Town Hall today, I wasn't saying anything negative about Las Vegas. I was making the simple point that families use vacation dollars, not college tuition money, to have fun. There is no better place to have fun than Vegas, one of our country's great destinations. I have always enjoyed my visits, look forward to visiting in a few weeks, and hope folks will visit in record numbers this year.

The needless proliferation of commas is a topic for another day... let's focus on the utter lack of an actual apology. The words "sorry" and "apologize" don't appear anywhere in the letter -- instead, the President uses extremely condescending language to defend his statement as-said and to belittle the offense taken by anyone who understood his plain language to mean anything different than this post hoc explanation.

The primary points of condescension are the phrases "I hope you know" and "simple point". "I hope you know" is crafted to appear to be expressing the sincere hope that you were not misunderstood, but what it really means is "I will be surprised by your stupidity if you don't believe". "Simple point" doubles down (ha! a Vegas pun!) on the implication that your preferred interpretation of the earlier statement is so obvious, clear, and easy to understand that only a fool would read it any differently. You aren't a fool, are you? Of course not! So "I'm sorry" and "I apologize" are not needed!

I don't expect this "apology" to soothe many hurt feelings, and I don't expect the President to receive a warm welcome if he actually goes to Nevada to campaign for Harry Reid's re-election. My bet is that the trip is canceled.

Uh... this sounds too good to be true, but apparently "spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything".

Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products. ...

The liquid glass coating is breathable, which means it can be used on plants and seeds. Trials in vineyards have found spraying vines increases their resistance to fungal diseases, while other tests have shown sprayed seeds germinate and grow faster than untreated seeds, and coated wood is not attacked by termites. Other vineyard applications include coating corks with liquid glass to prevent “corking” and contamination of wine. The spray cannot be seen by the naked eye, which means it could also be used to treat clothing and other materials to make them stain-resistant. McClelland said you can “pour a bottle of wine over an expensive silk shirt and it will come right off”.

In the home, spray-on glass would eliminate the need for scrubbing and make most cleaning products obsolete. Since it is available in both water-based and alcohol-based solutions, it can be used in the oven, in bathrooms, tiles, sinks, and almost every other surface in the home, and one spray is said to last a year.

Liquid glass spray is perhaps the most important nanotechnology product to emerge to date. It will be available in DIY stores in Britain soon, with prices starting at around £5 ($8 US). Other outlets, such as many supermarkets, may be unwilling to stock the products because they make enormous profits from cleaning products that need to be replaced regularly, and liquid glass would make virtually all of them obsolete.

If this is real, I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more about it.

(HT: Instapundit.)

Penelope Trunk points to an article in the Harvard Business Review that describes why time is more important than talent for aspiring experts.

Back in 1985, Benjamin Bloom, a professor of education at the University of Chicago, published a landmark book, Developing Talent in Young People, which examined the critical factors that contribute to talent. He took a deep retrospective look at the childhoods of 120 elite performers who had won international competitions or awards in fields ranging from music and the arts to mathematics and neurology. Surprisingly, Bloom’s work found no early indicators that could have predicted the virtuosos’ success. Subsequent research indicating that there is no correlation between IQ and expert performance in fields such as chess, music, sports, and medicine has borne out his findings. The only innate differences that turn out to be significant—and they matter primarily in sports—are height and body size.

So what does correlate with success? One thing emerges very clearly from Bloom’s work: All the superb performers he investigated had practiced intensively, had studied with devoted teachers, and had been supported enthusiastically by their families throughout their developing years. Later research building on Bloom’s pioneering study revealed that the amount and quality of practice were key factors in the level of expertise people achieved. Consistently and overwhelmingly, the evidence showed that experts are always made, not born. These conclusions are based on rigorous research that looked at exceptional performance using scientific methods that are verifiable and reproducible. Most of these studies were compiled in The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, published last year by Cambridge University Press and edited by K. Anders Ericsson, one of the authors of this article. The 900-page-plus handbook includes contributions from more than 100 leading scientists who have studied expertise and top performance in a wide variety of domains: surgery, acting, chess, writing, computer programming, ballet, music, aviation, firefighting, and many others.

So let's look at the three things required for mastery of a domain.

1. Intense practice. Frequent, focused practice in the domain you are mastering. In "Outliers", Malcolm Gladwell proposed a "10,000-hour rule" and claimed that the key to proficiency in any field is to spend 10,000 hours practicing it. Additional hours of practice no doubt lead to diminishing returns, but if you want to be a world-class expert you'll need every bit of incremental improvement.

2. Devoted teachers. Finding someone better than you who is willing to coach you can be difficult, but is critical for success. Research and and practice are great, but a coach can provide immediate constructive feedback that will multiply the value of your R&P. In addition to finding a good coach, you must cultivate yourself as a good student and be open to honest criticism. A good coach can tell you when you just don't have what it takes to make forward progress and that you should adjust your focus.

3. Enthusiastic support from family. If your family doesn't support you, then you need to choose between them and your quest for mastery. It's as simple as that. Intense practice takes time and energy, and if your family is not supportive then no one will be happy, and you will not be effective. No matter how supportive your family is, you will sometimes need to make a trade-off between your family and your quest -- and every time you choose your family you will fall one step behind the people who didn't. It's harsh but true. For myself, I'm fine with sacrificing incremental mastery for my family, but my eyes are open and I recognize the cost.

What I crave most are teachers and mentors... not just one, but as many as I can get my hands on. Most of the people who can teach me are on their own quest for mastery, so I have to position myself as a student who can be taught without distracting them from their own ambitions.

Do these keys to mastery ring true in your life? Have you found the perfect teacher for your domain? How do you balance your quest and your family?

(HT: LM.)

U.S. President Barack Obama bows to Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio at MacDill Air Force Base on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010 in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Edmund Fountain, Pool)

Just a reflex now or what?

Senator John Cornyn says no, but Larry Kudlow is more optimistic.

There are 18 Democratic senators up for grabs. Right now, the GOP is in excellent shape to take Illinois (President Obama’s seat), Delaware (Vice President Biden’s seat), Nevada (Harry Reid’s seat), and North Dakota (Byron Dorgan’s seat). So that’s four. It would give them 45 seats. So they need six additional seats out of 14.

If Scott Brown can do it, riding the tidal wave of conservative, populist, low-tax-and-spend, free-market revolt, including tough stands on terrorism and national security, then the GOP should be proclaiming a tidal wave that could carry them to Senate victory this fall.

On top of all that, it’s not out of the question that independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut could switch parties. Nor is it out of the question that beleaguered Ben Nelson of Nebraska could switch parties. So I was very disappointed in my friend John Cornyn for making this statement.

I'm optimistic about the House, but I've been skeptical about a Republican takeover of the Senate (despite my prescient wife's optimism).

In December, Karl Rove thought that a Republican Senate takeover was unlikely despite stellar recruits, but his article didn't mention Scott Brown or Massachusetts even once, so his views may have changed.

Predictably, Wikipedia has a good laydown of the facts surrounding the 2010 Senate elections.

The Senate is currently composed of 57 Democrats, 41 Republicans, and two independents who caucus with the Democrats. Of the seats currently up for election in 2010, 18 are held by Democrats and 18 are held by Republicans.

So Republicans would need to keep all 18 seats they already control and then win 10 of the 18 seats currently controlled by Democrats. Six of these seats look to be pretty safe: Hawaii, Maryland, Schumer in New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. If that's true, then Republicans need to win 10 of the following 12 seats:

• Arkansas
• California
• Colorado
• Connecticut
• Delaware
• Illinois
• Indiana
• Nevada
• New York (Gillibrand)
• North Dakota
• Pennsylvania
• Wisconsin

North Dakota, Nevada, Delaware, and Arkansas all seem to be within easy reach for the Republicans. I can imagine New York splitting their seats and giving the seat currently held by Kirsten Gillibrand to a Repblican. Arlen Specter is growing increasingly unpopular in Pennsylvania. That's six.

The rest are more of a stretch, in my inexpert opinion. Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts had completely overturned my expectations, and at this point I won't be surprised by anything. It will be a very exciting year!

It sounds like President Obama is neglecting a strategy for his administration and Congress that the majority of the American people could get behind:

"They didn't send us to Washington to fight each other in some sort of political steel-cage match to see who comes out alive. ... They sent us to Washington to work together, to get things done, and to solve the problems that they're grappling with every single day."

Actually, I'd rather have the steel-cage match. I bet CSPAN would enjoy the ratings boost.

Despite what logic may suggest, switching from regular to diet soda doesn't appear to lead to weight loss -- so proposed "soda taxes" that are intended to socially engineer weight loss are unlikely to have any beneficial effect. Discussion and evidence here.

A 2007 British study used government data on household diets and food expenditures to predict the effect of extending the country's 17.5% sales tax to various foods. When items high in saturated fat were slapped with the tax, the model estimated that deaths would rise by 1,800 to 4,000 a year because consumers would be prompted to switch to foods with more salt.

To fix that problem, the scientists ran a model in which the tax applied to all kinds of unhealthful foods. This time, deaths fell by as many as 2,500 a year, but cholesterol levels rose as people switched from salty foods to fatty dairy items.

And unfortunately, consumers in both scenarios did the last thing any anti-obesity crusader would want: Facing higher grocery bills, they bought fewer fruits and vegetables.

Social engineering on the grand scale rarely works as desired and generally has many unanticipated consequences.

(HT: DP.)

(HT: BT.)

Focus on the Family is going airing a pro-life ad during the Super Bowl and some pro-abortion groups aren't happy about it. Well, they can pay for their own counter-ad if they want, so I don't see a problem. What's most interesting to me is Reuters' concluding characterization of the political climate surrounding abortion.

Abortion is one of the most divisive issues in America and a spate of recent opinion polls have suggested growing opposition to women's right to terminate pregnancy.

That sentence betrays an obvious bias in favor of legalized abortion on the part of the news agency. If Reuters had written "... and a spate of recent opinion polls have suggested growing support for the right of babies to not be murdered by their mothers in utero" the reverse bias would have been equally obvious.

The question over whether or not abortion is a "right" is the heart of the division over abortion, and a large majority of Americans disagree with Reuters' editorial position on the matter. Reuters would be wise to stick to hard news rather than injecting their opinions into their reporting.

New polling data shows that Fox is now the most trusted name is news.

A Public Policy Polling nationwide survey of 1,151 registered voters Jan. 18-19 found that 49 percent of Americans trusted Fox News, 10 percentage points more than any other network.

Thirty-seven percent said they didn’t trust Fox, also the lowest level of distrust that any of the networks recorded.

I guess CNN will need to change their slogan.

Also interesting is the spin that PPP puts on the results of their own poll.

“A generation ago you would have expected Americans to place their trust in the most neutral and unbiased conveyors of news,” said PPP President Dean Debnam in his analysis of the poll. “But the media landscape has really changed, and now they’re turning more toward the outlets that tell them what they want to hear.”

Maybe they asked such a question, but if so it wasn't reported in this story. It sounds to me that Debnam is projecting his own biases onto his poll data and inferring accordingly.

The highest South Korean court has ruled that "virtual" money can be exchanged for "real" money (as long as the "virtual" money isn't the result of gambling).

(I use quotes because the distinction between "virtual" and "real" money is a psychological artifact and has no substantial meaning. Isk issued by Eve Online developer CCP are no different in character from gift certificates issued by Wal-Mart or dollar bills issued by the Federal Reserve.)

As reported in the Korea Times, the ruling came when the court acquitted two gamers who had been indicted for selling 234 million Won (around US$206000) worth of “Aden”, the cyber money used in the online game Lineage. Aden can be used to buy in-game accessories, weapons, and so on to enhance a player’s character in the game. The newspaper reports that the two gamers traded the money at an exchange rate of about 1 million Aden for 8000 Won. ...

The ruling only applies in South Korea, but its effects may be felt well beyond that country’s borders. Industry observers are expecting the decision to stimulate the online gaming market – as well as the associated markets that surround the gaming market. And cyber money is big business. The Korea Game Development and Promotion Institute says that more than 830 billion Won (US$732 million) worth of cyber money was exchanged online in South Korea in 2006, and that amount might have exceeded 1 trillion Won (US$882 million)in 2008. With so much currency flying around, it is no wonder that South Korean courts have also ruled that the proceeds from trading cyber money are subject to a 10 percent value added tax (VAT).

I see no reason why virtual earnings shouldn't be taxed at some point, and I'd rather that point be when/if it is exchanged for "real" money than when it is earned or spent in-game.

(HT: RB.)

Web Seer lets you compare Google auto-complete results like this, but easier! Great, now I won't get any work done today.

(HT: Lifehacker.)

This feels apocryphal but may be historically based... I've got no idea. In any event, here is a pointed story about Davy Crockett explaining why Congress cannot spend taxpayer money on charity, no matter how worthy. Obviously we're far past this point now in America.

One day in the House of Representatives a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose:

"Mr. Speaker--I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member on this floor knows it.

We have the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I ever heard that the government was in arrears to him.

"Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week's pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks."

It seems to me that forcibly collecting funds from taxpayers to distribute as charity to favored groups is now the primary occupation of our government.

(HT: RB.)

President Obama thinks that Scott Brown rode his coattails to victory.

"The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office," said Obama. "People are angry, and they're frustrated, not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years but what's happened over the last eight years."

Got it. People are so angry and frustrated at George W. Bush that they're voting for Republicans. In Massachusetts. Boy, I can't wait for that 159th interview.

Presumably, the president isn't stupid enough actually to believe what he said. But it's dispiriting to discover he's stupid enough to think we're stupid enough to believe it.

I think I'm going to have to side with Mark Steyn on this one.