Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

Ted Kennedy became an American hero by working an air-conditioned desk job that millions of others would have been delighted to do. His votes in the Senate were always ones that could be expected to help him get reelected by Massachusetts Democrats (taking an anti-war position would be a risk for a senator representing Texas, but not for one from Massachusetts). He spent a lot of time with attractive young women.

A friend’s Samoyed recently asked himself how he could serve his country. Inspired by Ted Kennedy, this hero dog decided that he would not work directly with the poor, who can be both smelly and unsightly. Nor would he give more than one percent of his Milk Bones to charity (source). He tried to get his paws on some other folks’ money and then spend it to help the poor, but lacking the power to tax (or opposable thumbs), he was unable to get the $$. Sammy also decided against serving in the U.S. military in a war zone. Finding both Senatorships in Massachusetts occupied by unassailable incumbents (despite the terrible hardship of the job, some American heroes are willing to serve multiple terms in the U.S. Senate), Sammy the Samoyed had only one remaining option in order to become like his hero Ted Kennedy. With a little help from the New England Patriots cheerleaders, this photo shows Sammy enduring the kind of hardships that made Ted Kennedy Barack Obama’s hero.

[Note: this is the same dog that drove up from Norfolk, VA with me back in 2005 (old posting).]

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A Senator from Massachusetts has left office in the only manner possible for an incumbent Democrat, i.e., in a coffin. The New York Times leads off their story on Ted Kennedy’s death with “his sometimes-stormy personal life.” When I think of Ted Kennedy, though, my first thought is always sadness at the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a promising young woman killed by Kennedy, who waited more than eight hours before seeking help for her rescue. One expects politicians to impoverish constituents with reckless spending; one does not expect them to kill constituents. Some photos of Mary Jo’s hotel room and Chappaquiddick are available in the middle of my Cape Cod photo essay.

[Some friends asked today how I would have summarized Ted Kennedy’s biography, if not the way the New York Times did. I observed that he had spent his entire life either as the child of a wealthy family or as a government employee. Never having held a job in the private sector and never having been exposed to the risk of losing a job or a paycheck (either as a child or an adult), he created many new laws and regulations on private businesses (most of the laws that apply to private employers do not apply to Senators themselves in their relations with staff). In his personal life, rather than donating to charity (source) or working directly with the unfortunate, he enjoyed drinking and partying. He drove a car off a bridge, trapping a young woman inside, managed to save his own skin, left her to die, and did not attempt to summon help that could have saved her.]

Update: I just noticed that Barack Obama gave a televised speech from Martha’s Vineyard in praise of Ted Kennedy. Though he was speaking just a few miles from where Mary Jo Kopechne died, President Obama did not mention her. Barack Obama did note that there was nobody in the Senate who had earned more “respect” and that he was one of “the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy.” I guess if all of our government workers were similarly accomplished we would no longer have to worry about overpopulation.

Update 2: A friend sent this article from a newspaper in the UK, with some more details on Mary Jo Kopechne.

Update 3: Another English newspaper, this time carrying a piece by Joyce Carol Oates, the American novelist.

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From today’s New York Times, a couple of interesting health care articles:

• on how the current activities in Washington aren’t doing anything to create a real market for health insurance
• on Japan and how they’ve avoided bankrupting themselves the way we are bankrupting ourselves with health care costs

Health care “reform” in Washington has become almost a caricature. Thanks to the miracle of lobbyists anyone who is currently making money from health care has to be guaranteed to make at least as much or more after “reform”. Given that kind of constraint there is no way to effect significant change.

[And in fact today’s Times has evidence of the fact that Congress and the Obama administration realize the insignificance of any potential savings from their health care bloviating. The health care costs that economists have been predicting since the 1980s will sink us are in fact going to sink us to the tune of $9 trillion (story).]

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Aviation in this economy is generally associated with layoffs and pay cuts. Things are a bit different for U.S. government workers. The FAA just signed a new contract with its air traffic controllers providing for $670 million in increased pay over the next three years (source). The ATC union has 14,000 members so that’s about $43,000 per controller (whose current annual median earnings are $117,240 (plus benefits) according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics).

[For reference, regional airlines are able to attract highly qualified pilots to start at $19,000 per year, with a top annual salary for the most senior captains of $60-80,000 per year. This is to fly jets with up to 130 seats (the best ones being made in Brazil by workers who earn a lot less than a U.S. government worker!).]

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A Muslim man can shed an unwanted wife by saying “I divorce thee” three times. Is there an equivalent for non-Muslim Americans? I think that I heard one at Costco yesterday…

A man was pushing a shopping cart containing a small child. His wife was walking ahead through the office products aisle. She said “I think we should get some packing tape.” He replied “Are you moving out?”

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Anti-war protests in all 50 states and in front of the hated King Bush II”s Texas ranch were a fixture in American life and newspapers from 2003 through mid-2008. The protests seem to have disappeared yet the ills of war remain. Let’s look at what is bad about our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

• Americans are being killed
• American taxpayers are being improverished
• limited American resources are diverted to unproductive activities (bombing an opium factory in Afghanistan is not likely to lead to long-term growth the way that building a factory in North Carolina would)

All three of these things were bad in 2004 when the U.S. was rich and getting richer. They are even worse now. We have had a decline in birth rate and population growth due to the economic collapse. This makes the death of an American soldier if anything more costly becuase there are fewer children growing up to replace him or her. We have less money now, so whatever it is that we’re spending on our adventures amongst the Jihadis is less affordable (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933935.html shows that spending is higher than ever and continuing to grow).

Given that the cost of the wars in American life and taxpayer funds is less bearable now than before, how come the antiwar protesters seem to have melted away?

[Update: Tim Hsia, in the New York Times, writes about the same issue.]

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As far as I can tell the government’s proposed “health care reform” can be summarized as “put more money into the existing U.S. system”. I’m wondering why we as a society would want to do this.

Let’s look at how our current system is doing, starting with this table of life expectancy for different countries worldwide. Mexico seems like the best comparison. Mexicans share our continent, our love for soda and corn syrup, and our tendency towards chubbiness (source). We spend approximately $8500 per year per American on health care and live to the age of 78. A Mexican can expect to live to age 76. How much do Mexicans spend on health care? Their per-person GDP is only about $13,000 per year, and they supposedly spend about 6 percent of GDP on health care (source) so $800 per person is a good estimate.

Another way to look at these numbers is that an American will spend $600,000 in order to add two years to the end of his life. Those two years may very well be spent in an intensive care unit or a nursing home and certainly are not likely to be spent on the tennis court or visiting the Venice Biennale.

For $600,000, an American could have the following:

• a house, free and clear of all mortgages (median price for a single family house sold nationwide in May 2009 was $170,000)
• a lifetime supply of automobiles, assuming $20,000 per car, a 10-year life per car, and 50 years of driving ($100,000)
• 50 vacations for a family of four (average cost $1600; total of $80,000)
• a college education ($25,000 of tuition for four years at a public university, roughly the average cost)
• two children, reared to the age of 17 ($125,000 per kid, average cost for a basic family (source); note that a pair of Americans could have four children, all of whose costs would be completely paid for out of this $600,000)
• $75,000 in walking-around money

If we had unlimited money it certainly would be nice to have the kind of health care that we have. But the Collapse of 2008 highlighted the fact that we don’t have unlimited money and resources. Wouldn’t most Americans rather have their house, car, vacations, college, and children paid for than get extra MRIs, helicopter medevacs, and death-after-weeks-in-the-ICU that the insurance companies and government (Medicare/Medicaid) are buying on our behalf?

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Yesterday’s Washington Post carries an article on the medical helicopter industry: “The Deadly Cost of Swooping In to Save a Life”. A few interesting excerpts:

• a medevac helicopter pilot has a 113/100,000 chance of dying each year; the Post reporter compares this to 80 for an “airline pilot”. This is clearly a mistake given that scheduled airline crashes are infrequent. Probably the 80/100,000 figure refers to all commercial pilots (the Bureau of Transportation Statistics says that there are approximately 800,000 airline flights each month in the U.S. (source); to kill off 80 airline pilots per year you’d need to have 7 pilots die each month or 3.5 airliner crashes per month (two pilots per airplane); the NTSB shows that the actual number is more like 3 per year (source)).
• “With a population of 4.2 million, Kentucky has 26 medical helicopters — more than many nations. Canada, which is about nine times as large with a population of 33 million, has 20. It has never suffered a fatal crash.”
• Medicare pays $220 million per year for medevac flights

My personal theory about safety in this industry is that it could be significantly enhanced if pilots had the “Microsoft Flight Simulator” view on a big LCD screen in the instrument panel. When a helicopter goes into the clouds it is usually close to terrain and radio towers and the pilots weren’t expecting to fly on instruments. That is a completely different task than going airport-to-airport on a planned IFR flight in an airplane. The typical medevac helicopter, even if equipped for instrument flight, has basically the same instruments that an airplane from World War II had (plus a moving-map GPS, which does not help the pilot keep the helicopter under control). Thanks to the miracle of government regulation, the Microsoft Flight Simulator view costs a kid $28, the pilot of a Garmin G1000-equipped four-seat piston airplane about $10,000 and maybe $50,000 to install in the panel of most helicopters.

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This is to invite readers to join me in Porter Square on Wednesday at 11 am for a book reading (directions) from Max Said Yes! The Woodstock Story. This is a beautifully illustrated book for children by a couple of friends in Los Angeles. To celebrate the hippies of Woodstock and their rediscovery of Third World food, let’s have lunch afterwards at Anna’s Taqueria. Email philg@mit.edu if you’re likely to come!

[Update: I made a couple of videos of the readings with a FlipHD camera. Comments would be welcome. Video 1 has both authors reading; Video 2 is captured closer and has just one reader.]

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A couple of friends needed a ride to Martha’s Vineyard, so we left the house just before 1 pm and drove to the Cirrus hangar. About two hours later we had landed at the big airport on Martha’s Vineyard and said goodbye to our friends. My favorite copilot and I then were picked up by a couple of friends and taken to Oak Bluffs to look at the gingerbread cottages and religious camps. We bought some fudge at Murdick’s and walked around the marina before heading over towards West Chop, stopping to pick up a lobster roll and some fresh Haddock for dinner. Before dinner we went to the beach and swam in the Vineyard Sound. Then our hostess cooked the fish and some Verrill Farm corn that we’d brought from Concord, MA. She drove us back to the airport at 9 pm where I ran into a friend who flies a Medflight Citation Jet. The weather had been reported as 300 overcast but as we were taxiing out the sky was clear so we never activated our instrument flight plan. Nonetheless we departed Runway 24 over the dark ocean and there was no way to control the airplane except by reference to instruments (same problem that JFK, Jr. had). About 30 minutes later we were back at Hanscom Field.

It occurred to me that we had done an entire typical Martha’s Vineyard vacation in one afternoon: beach, lobster roll, fish dinner, tourist fudge, quaint cottages, friends.

[When government officials go to the Vineyard things are a little more cumbersome. The Attorney General was vacationing this week, apparently. A taxpayer-funded Gulfstream was waiting at KMVY to pick him up. Dozens of Secret Service SUVs with Virginia license plates swarmed around the airport. Young beefy guys with earpiece radios roamed about. We could have paid him $1 million to take a “staycation” instead and come out ahead. Barack Obama’s end-of-the-month visit to the Vineyard is going to be even more costly. Rumor has it that the U.S. Navy has diverted two submarines to the island and the Secret Service have been casing various locations for months. When King Obama I is on the island both airports will be closed to private citizens. A guy who has been running sightseeing rides in an old biplane is going to lose about 10 percent of his annual income. If we assume that 1500 private flights will be cancelled and each flight would have been an average of 2 hours long, that’s 3000 hours of flying that won’t happen. Good for the environment, perhaps, but it will take more than $1 million out of the economy (figuring the average cost per hour of $300, lumping in jets and piston). Pilots won’t get paid. Fuel won’t get sold. Charter companies and flight schools will lose revenue.]

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