A Rant You've Heard Before

Over on Accelerating Future, Michael Anissimov (whose surname I once again "insist" is almost conspiratorially close to Asimov) gave us all the pleasure of pointing out the 'joys' of one Annalee Newitz's comments about Extropianism.

Now, let me start off by saying that she got her terminology wrong; extropians are a group as a whole focused on augmenting intelligence; on creating or finding greater intelligence either in humans or in machines. Her comments were with regards to Immortalists and transhumanists in general; but poorly aimed at extropians. Honestly, even a cursory examination of the title would reveal this: extropy is defined as the 'force' that causes organization within a group of things. This is inverse to entropy, which is the increasing disorder of things over time.

It's really an extremely subtle point, but one worth making. Now, as to the nuts and bolts of Annalee's comments; near the end of the article Michael references, she makes the following "end statement" by way of justifying her entire opinion:

And let there be no doubt about it: the extropian agenda is creepy. Who wants to live forever in a world where only the richest people in developed countries will become immortal? It's not as if there's going to be a special cryogenics fund for everybody in Kenya and Chile. In order for people to live forever in the transhumanist future, some people will still have to live like trash. Sounds sort of like entropy to me.

There it is: the continued, pervasive belief that only the richest people will enjoy these technologies, so they ought not be developed or possessed at all, by anyone, ever.

And frankly, this is a lot like saying, "Ebola will kill everyone in the city. We could develop a cure, but only the richest people in the city could afford it. So we're just going to let everyone die, because that would be unfair to the poor." Nevermind the fact that once the once the cure exists -- much like every other cure that has been developed -- if given long enough the cost could be brought down to the point where everyone could enjoy it. At the end of the day, that's a simple truth; over a long enough timeline, the cost for any new technology will be reduced to the point where a sufficiently great number of people can enjoy it. It may take five hundred years, or five thousand, but that is simply not an excuse to forbid it to anyone. Should I live to be a thousand, I will never understand the objection that "only the rich and powerful will enjoy this!"

It doesn't matter what you want to look at: Originally, good food and the luxury of a warm bed every night was something only the richest of the rich could be guaranteed. Today, it takes only a moderate income -- the American poverty level -- to ensure that. And as to Kenya and the rest of Africa? The problems there are less economic than they are political. You can hardly call something the failure of the capitalist system when the capitalist system has never been applied there. But I digress.

I'll use a more modern example to once again disprove the "fixed pie" myth: rapid prototyping technology, also referred to "home manufacturing" equipment, has always been exorbitantly expensive. But thanks to the folks at RepRap and Fab@Home, that will not remain true in the very near future. All that will remain exclusive is the knowledge to use them. An exclusivity which, much like the Linux operating systems for computers, or the Wikipedia 'free' encyclopedia, is fastly vanishing: both RepRap and Fab@Home are "open source" projects: their hardware & software designs are free to the public for any purpose, licensed under multi-national GNU. More and more colleges are offering free to the public college courses on a variety of topics -- online courses, of course. But if your goal is simple self-erudition, you can achieve it for between 5 and 40 bucks a month, depending on how much your internet connection costs. (Hell, go to a public library in the US and you don't even have to pay that.)

While Corporatist-style commercialism continues to run roughshod over the promotion of human decency and liberty, there is little to no question that advances in technology will very realistically play a major part in the solution to that problem. Youtube and the Peer-to-Peer networks have already cut a chink in the armor of the "Entertainment industry"; (the adult industry faces similar 'peril' from such glamourous sites as YouPorn, and XTube) and as to reaching these outer communities, the poorest portions of the world...

India and China have both presented to the world the Will to Industry. This despite the difficulty in achieving that state. With projects like RepRap and Fab@Home being developed by a very dedicated, if minor, community there is simply no question: while the disparity between haves and have nots may not close for decades or even centuries to come, any advancement in one area will have ancillary benefits that will affect everyone.

In the end, it seems utterly selfish to complain that only the "rich" or the "powerful" will acquire access to technologies providing extended life or increased genius; for all such complaints detract from how soon they will come around at all. And if any historical analysis of technological advancement is to be our guide at all, there is one simple truth:

Once something is invented, sooner or later anybody who wants it can have it.

Dystopian: Pretend to Be a Time Traveler

The following is, apparently, a video that is meant to be an ad for Dennis Kucinich -- though you don't discover that until the end. I find it quite entertaining, however, whom the only politician actually mentioned was. You industrial fans out there -- be prepared to be amused.

HMO's Spent $227 Million in Support of SCHIP

From the examiner.com article of Oct 5, 2007: "Timothy P. Carney: Does SCHIP insure kids or subsidize savvy HMOs?"

Supporters reject the argument that SCHIP is a Trojan horse for socialized medicine, pointing out that the program is usually administered by private insurers. In short, states put “poor” children on private HMOs and let the taxpayers pick up the tab.

For the HMOs, what could be better than a customer who is spending someone else’s money? If Congress spends more money on SCHIP and states are scrambling to enroll more families, then HMOs get even more of these customers.

And so while Democrats are dragging children to the White House for photo ops, as if the children are the primary constituency of this bill, federal lobbying records tell a different tale.

Lobbying records from the first half of 2007 show that the health care industry spent more than $227 million lobbying Washington. Congressional Quarterly Healthbeat News reported last month: “What’s behind health care lobbyists’ spending frenzy? Most signs point to ... SCHIP.”

Sure enough, the biggest lobbyists in the industry all support the Democratic bill. America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the trade association for HMOs, supports the bill, as do its biggest members, such as Blue Cross Blue Shield.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing Association (PhRMA), one of Washington’s most powerful lobbyists, is also behind the bill. So is the American Medical Association.

So, here's one point that needs going back over:Supporters reject the argument that SCHIP is a Trojan horse for socialized medicine, pointing out that the program is usually administered by private insurers.

Technically this is true. Private companies being paid by the government is, in fact, a characteristic of Corporatism -- a term which is synonymous with "Fascism". Either way, however, the end result is the furthered corrosion of the purchaser/consumer bond -- already painfully tenuous in this nation -- between the person who buys the healthcare and the person who benefits from it.

It is almost tautological: when you separate the consumption from the cost, the cost skyrockets.

Scientific Literacy: More Necessary Today Than Ever

It is all to easy to complain, these days, about any number of things. And it seems that where politics are concerned, all anyone is based on is what they complain about the most. Pessimism is chíc these days; optimism is considered naíve. So what, then, do we make of something that is both optimistic and pessimistic?

First; the pessimism. Much ado has been made about the fact that the Northwest Passage has been freed "for the first time ever". This video is proof of it:

Now, nobody is suggesting that this isn't going to have implications on global warming & global climate change in general. But this is used, once again, as evidence of man's fault: when NASA itself says this isn't so. Their culprit? Shifting wind patterns.

And this gets let go, by the public -- because the general comprehension of the media's representation is that "well, they did the research, so I don't have to." And that, more than anything, is the greatest threat facing society. Why? Because it means that whoever does do that research, controls society's opinions on everything under the sun. Are you comfortable with this? I certainly am not.

So where does this come from?

From the National Education Association:

A historic turnover is taking place in the teaching profession. While student enrollments are rising rapidly, more than a million veteran teachers are nearing retirement. Experts predict that overall we will need more than 2 million new teachers in the next decade.

This teacher recruitment problem, which has reached crisis proportions in some areas, is most acute in urban and rural schools; for high-need subject areas such as special education, math and science, and for teachers of color.

[...]

The statistics for turnover among new teachers are startling. Some 20 percent of all new hires leave the classroom within three years. In urban districts, the numbers are worse—close to 50 percent of newcomers flee the profession during their first five years of teaching.

Why do new teachers leave? They say they feel overwhelmed by the expectations and scope of the job. Many say they feel isolated and unsupported in their classrooms, or that expectations are unclear.

Nothing is particularly new about this. In fact, it is used as the most powerful argument for increasing teacher pay, for increasing funding to the Department of Education, and in general all sorts of interesting/curious events. But let us take a somewhat deeper examination of this plight -- one that won't exactly raise us up from this pessimism, but perhaps allow us to understand it a step or two further:

It is not in the best interests of the education lobby for education to actually improve.

It's a statement that we don't often think about, but bear with me and I will explain my logic -- or at least what passes for it. It's actually fairly simple. We'll use Washington, DC as the example for this. From the Cato@Liberty blog:

Is the problem insufficient funding? As it happens, DCPS’s total gross budget for the last school year was upwards of one billion dollars according to its own website, and its enrollment was about 52,000 students. That means DCPS had total per pupil spending of nearly $20,000 last year, or half a million dollars per class of 25 students. You’d think that would cover books.

In a previous article on this blog, "It's For The Children! ... And Other Lies My Government Told Me", I documented the fact that the national average annual cost per student for public schools was $8,701; whereas the cost per student for private schools was $3,116/yr. Almost a third the cost. So, going back to Washington, DC. How could this be so bloated over both the national average for both public and private schools? Well, the answer to that question can also be found in the public record: From The Examiner, circa August 24, 2007: "D.C. Public Schools will pay nearly $5.4 million in full-time salaries to 68 teachers and staff who won’t work full-time jobs this year, schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee told The Examiner on Thursday."

From all of the above, we have learned thus far three things:

Scholastic Acheivement is sliding continuously

This isn't much of a shocker, really: search anywhere and you'll see that there are, annually, fewer and fewer American engineering & physics graduates every year. There really isn't anybody whom is impressed with NCLB -- and that's not even if you include the people who actually study the topic.

Public schools cost more per student than private

There's not much equivocating there: $8.7k for public as compared to $3.1k for private? And let us not forget here that private schools -- even the 'average' ones -- have their impression of prestige for a reason: traditionally, private schools achieve greater scholastic results than public schools.

Washington DC schools spend millions of dollars on faculty that, literally, does nothing.

That incident reported was by no means a singular incident. It has happened before, and in larger numbers. Even so, these were actual teachers being discussed: lets not forget that schools also have administrative staffing; there have been entire studies to compare the number of non-teaching faculty members to the numbers of pupils... which says that this is a problem as well; less, one can only assume, for private schools than for public ones.

Even so; is simply privatizing all the schools the solution to this problem? (If our military security is any lesson, the answer to that question is an emphatic "NO!") Still, creating competition between schools simply couldn't hurt. Perhaps, if schools themselves were held accountable for the allocation of their resources on their students, we might see some streamlining of costs and some improvement of scholastic acheivement. And time and time again, the records have shown: the only effective mechanism for accountability is to put the fiscal survival of an institution on the line. That's called "market competition." However, there's no sign that given today's political and social climates, that honest markets can be restored to so ubiquitous and socialized -- which is what our educational system is. Should things actually turn around, however, it is effectively already too late. The day of the Renaissance man has been dead and buried for centuries.

So where do we go from here? Well, our nation's resident mad military scientist organization -- DARPA -- has already begun to aid in this:

Famous for funding futuristic technology, DARPA is spending $24 million to launch the Brain-Machine Interface Program (BMI), with the five-year research monies divided among six laboratories. High on its development wish list are mind-controlled battle robots, as well as airplanes flown and weapons or equipment operated with nothing more than thought – even from a distance – all through wireless neural interfaces.

And mind you, DARPA is not alone on this. Should true data-in BMI be developed, the problem of education and scientific literacy in particular could be resolved absolutely. Howso? Because the possibility of having a microchip -- or ten -- implanted in your head, and thus allowing you a replete factual education -- with said procedure to cost in the same ballpark as a breast augmentation does today -- between $4,000 to $10,000, USD -- would allow for wholly 'humanities'-esque education; focusing on reasoning skills and the like.

Without such a development, we are likely to face a scenario where the amount of information necessary to make an informed opinion on any given subject continues to fall further and further from the grasp of even our communities of "experts" -- but thankfully, if DARPA, Cyberkinetics, and other such organizations/companies have anything to say, we won't have too much to worry about there: the money is being spent, the effort is being made. While a complicated task, so long as the funding doesn't dry up it's essentially inevitable. (I suppose that statement makes me a functionalist -- but gee, isn't that a shocker to anyone whom has read the title of this blog?)

(Yes, for you AGI enthusiasts; the same gains can be made by AGI as can be made by BMI -- if and only if we hand over control of society to our AGI's. Which, if they are "Seed" AGIs, is entirely likely. But that is too "post-singularity" a subject for this author to be fully comfortable attempting to discuss.)

SCHIP: The Voice Of the Other Side

Like it or not, those of us whom are against the SCHIP expansion have been 'corralled', somehow, into being "Bushies". I, for one, am definitely in the "not" category on this one. That being said, while our media sources, the DNP leadership, and talking heads like Bill Maher busily demonize anyone and everyone who is against SCHIP's expansion -- i.e.; in support of Bush's Veto -- get to have their way with the American public; what exactly is the thinking in the mind of the man who would defy, we are told, the nation? Well, here it is -- and in his own words:

I would pay extremely close attention to the very end -- where he calls for "negotiation, to get the money to the kids who need it". And while you're doing that, please consider: Bush wanted SCHIP to continue. What he did not want, however, was an SCHIP bill that would push kids already insured privately onto the public dole, while simultaneously those funds being used to insure childless adults. What he did not want was an SCHIP bill that has one of the most horribly regressive funding sources ever suggested in recent history.

Sometimes I wish that I were a 'regular' person who could just have an opinion about people and things and not have to worry about facts and details.

Of Laffer, Deficits, and Poverty

Every once in a while, you see something that just plain makes your haunches bunch up in disgust. Apparently, this happens more to conservatives than it does to liberal, but I digress. Today, I should like to go over something that makes this happen to me every time I encounter it.

While looking into this little declaration from The Nation's Idiot, one area I thought I would start out with an examination into the continuation of Laffer-curve thinking. Whilst digging around on that, I found a piece apparently written by Laffer himself, from January of 2004. It is unfortunate, but expected, that this should appear on The Heritage Foundation's website -- unfortunate because The Heritage Foundation is as conservative a think-tank as MoveOn.org is liberal. This particular excerpt got me to thinking:

In 1913, the federal progressive income tax was put into place with a top marginal rate of 7 percent. Thanks in part to World War I, this tax rate was quickly increased significantly and peaked at 77 percent in 1918. Then, through a series of tax-rate reductions, the Harding-Coolidge tax cuts dropped the top personal marginal income tax rate to 25 percent in 1925.

That's right -- when the income tax was instituted, it's highest percentage was 7%. And within five years, it went to 77%.

This becomes all the more disturbing when we consider that not too long ago, someone took the time and effort to calculate the effective "flat tax" rate for America. And they found that this rate was ~40%:

The average marginal tax rate on incomes between $20,000 and $500,000 is 40.3%, the median tax rate is 41.8%, and the standard deviation of all of those rates is 5.3 percentage points. Basically, most of us pay about 40%, plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.

That's not a big range, particularly when you notice that it covers an income rise of 2,500%.

So I have a modest proposal: Ask your senators or representative if they have a clue about this. If they don’t, regardless of party, they shouldn't be in office. Vote accordingly.

So yes, while we discuss the FedGov deficit, what we fail to discuss is the impact on the expenditures and incomes of the average citizen; most especially the poor.

We have allowed ourselves to fall in to the fallacy of thinking that, merely because their incomes are untaxed, our lowest earners are themselves untaxed. And this simply is not so. Sadly, the practices of our government's "Glorious Leaders" seems to be equally economically inept: take, for example, the overwhelmingly under-reported fact that the most recent SCHIP expansion is based on a demonstrably regressive tax. And it is with this that this article comes full circle: While the national income tax's position on the Laffer curve is debatable, our sin-taxes are demonstrably and definitively on the right-hand side of the Laffer curve. And so, two things will result:

• The nation's poor will be unfairly taxed as compared to the rich, if Bush's veto is overridden.
• There will still have to be another source of revenue to cover the failure of this new, regressive, tax to generate $35 Billion.

And remember, folks -- I'm a proud, card-carrying member of the "He-Man President Bush Hater's Club". While it is arguable that this lack of economic understanding is itself understandable in the everyday man -- it's called "rational ignorance" for a reason -- the problem with making allowances for such when it comes to our leaders is that it leads, demonstrably and as evidenced above, in horribly frequent "unintended consequences".

So, then -- for those of you still paying attention, please consider the following: Rather than leaving the welfare of our nation's poor -- you can't really call them destitute; we don't have people starving to death here like still happens in other first-world nations like Japan -- wouldn't we be better off if we, you know, reduced that 40% flat tax rate to something more sane?

The poor would be able to purchase more, or have more left over -- so the actual loss in tax revenue there would, you know, go to a good cause, like upwards mobility amongst the poor. And as to the rich... well, it is still arguable that decreases in their tax rate will still generate higher revenues.

Can A Transhuman Future Survive Without Libertarian Ideals?

As a transhumanist, I am all too keenly aware of the good and the ill that can come of technology. One technology, however, that seems to have only ills springing from it these days is that of surveillance technology. Consider, for example the perhaps not so infamous as it ought to be 'dragonfly spy':

The little robot you see on the fingertip is a prototype created by the Harvard Microrobotics Lab. While it does not carry any optical equipment -- there are optics of sufficiently small size to fit. More on this particular topic can be found at the Sydney Morning Herald's article, "Washington abuzz with talk of dragonfly spies". There are many obstacles to the development of such machines -- and, to be frank, they offer a multitude of uses beyond mere surveillance. For the moment, however, we'll discuss 'merely' surveillance.

There is another, perhaps more insidious, approach which has been suggested which entails literally growing insects around MEMS devices. What possible benefit to the would-be super-spy is there in this, you ask? Well, the answer to that question becomes more prevalent when one considers that researchers have already -- if crudely -- decoded the neural activity of a cat's brain into visual information.



So you see -- we may come to a point where it will literally be possible -- from a sensory point of view -- to be a "fly on a wall." This becomes all the more troublesome when we consider that -- regardless of Ray Kurzweils's 'law' of accelarating returns -- technological development is outstripping society's ability to regulate our machines. There's nothing really new about that idea -- but still; it is strongly worth paying attention to when we consider the advocates of regulation for new, 'existentially risky' technologies -- such as molecular manufacturing, or synthetic biology, or viral engineering, or... well, by now the point is clear. Surveillance, however, is the name of today's game. More and more, we are told that the new cameras being installed are for our own protection; that they are to prevent crime and the like. Now, numerous studies have shown that they really can't be said to do any such thing:

According to the information, London police solve only 21 percent of all crimes, and the rate of success does not appear to have any correlation to the number of CCTV cameras installed in each borough.

The numbers led a spokesperson for the group to say, "Some of this money might have been better spent on police officers. Although CCTV has its place, it is not the only solution in preventing or detecting crime and too often still, calls for CCTV cameras come as a knee-jerk reaction. It is time we engaged in an open debate about the role of CCTV cameras in London today."

So what, then would the impact -- let alone impetus -- of such advanced technologies as 'bug-cameras' be on society? Given the FBI's now infamous abuse of "national security letters" to bypass the 4^th Amendment (that'd be the one that protects "a bloke" from "unreasonable search and seizure"), is there any doubt that, left in the hands of government agencies, these devices would find their way into uses we could not now either imagine nor approve? But, of course -- as I already hinted at -- such devices almost never stay solely in the hands of our governments -- trustworthy or otherwise. And as technology itself becomes more and more readily manufactured by the private citizen, the question facing us is this:

How, exactly, will we adapt to the fact that legislation will be completely inadequate to the task of protecting us from our own ingenuity?

And that's a very, very serious question -- however, it doesn't seem to be one that even my fellow transhumanists recognize, which I personally find troublesome. Consider this another political screed, then: it is abundantly clear that our technologies will never be sanitized, never be made safe by bureaucracies nor by legislation. The 'kiddy porn' epidemic is only another example of this -- things that are legal and perfectly fine, such as a fourteen year old engaging in sexual acts on film, in some former Soviet Bloc countries; these things are profoundly illegal (let alone immoral) here in the 'States. This, 'once upon a time', wouldn't have been an issue -- but communications technology has changed that, as it seems everyone is now aware. As it is, it remains abundantly clear that our government is either incapable or else simply lacks the desire to react to new technologies and techniques. Much like the constant white-hat/ black-hat divide -- or the ongoing 'hacking the iPhone' saga -- bureaucratic organizations; such as religious institutions and yes, the ubiquitously mentioned yet nebulously referenced, "Government", are simply incapable of doing anything more than react to the machinations of "Progress." It's the nature of the beast. This leaves us with a simple question:

What possible solution is there to even mitigate the risks to society that new technologies and techniques present?

Yes, yes -- I know: I'm being about as subtle as a lead ingot dropped on your head from the top of the Empire State Building (how's that for a visual?) And of course the answer -- or at least the one I propose -- is equally as 'subtle'... and equally as simple.

Entrust the protection of society to... social expectations. It is my proposition that the only societies which will survive the raw power that futuristic developments represent will be ones that, much as with the advent of nuclear weapons, are possessed of powerfully strong social mores against their improper use (power plants = okay, global thermonuclear warfare = bad). And here's the catch: So long as we expect our bureaucratic institutions -- and those institutions alone -- to provide for our security and provender, we are essentially doomed to the abuse of new devices -- such as our friendly dragonfly spy cams. And that, ladies and gentlemen of my audience, is exactly the reason behind the "libertarian" argument: socializing the idea of personal responsibility, of the idea that being irresponsible is perhaps the single most immoral, or reprehensible, behavior one can engage in. To get there, we libertarians realize, will require a great deal of change in our ways of doing business and in what we believe government is "good for." It's a simplistic screed -- but it's a vitally important one, if we expect to have the best of all possible outcomes.

How Many "Breakthroughs" Away Are We From The Sex 'Droids?

Perhaps there are more tasteful ways to put that point. But when you combine the American invention -- the "RealDoll" -- with this latest development from (where else) Japan, of a robot that performs facial massages, yet another advent of science-fiction seems ever more the likely.

What development is that, you ask? Why, this one:

It's a minor step -- but the idea of objects (inanimate or otherwise) performing and being used for human luxuries seems to be more and more... common nowadays. One can only imagine that it won't be too long now until some entrepeneurial spirit figures out he can rig up a -- by then -- simple machine to something like the RealDoll, and then rent 'her' (or 'his') time to johnny-on-the-street.

What makes this interesting is: will the moral crusaders see fit to try and ban such an activity, should it develop? And -- if they don't -- what, then, is the justification for telling a real flesh-and-bone woman that she can't do the same with her own body?

A Hazard of Blind Technophilia

Many transhumanists are activists for what is called "mind uploading"; the idea that we can have our 'meat-brains' uploaded into computers, to live out our lives in electronic wonderlands a la today's videogames. And to be fair, with things like "Heavenly Sword" for the PS3, that's no surprise -- imagine where things will be in twenty years. It's pretty hard to imagine that, given the choice between an 'eternal' virtual playground where even the laws of physics are up for grabs, and this grubby ol' world of ours, that even the majority of people would choose the physical.

But there's just one tiny problem with this sort of thinking: electronics are vastly inferior, in terms of survivability, to biological neurons. No computer yet built has operated at full load for a year continuously; yet our bodies do this for decades. By way of example of what I mean, please consider the following video:

To be fair, this is really nothing more than a technological problem -- and technological problems tend to get solved over sufficient time -- but a bit of realism would go a long way towards assuaging the fears and doubts of those who question the realities we transhumanists propose.

Corrupting Free Society, One Child At A Time

For every sequence of events, there is always more than one perspective which can be had. Another way of putting that is to say that the truth has three 'sides': your side, his side, and fact. Today, I hope to take you on a little journey through the mind of someone who hates President Bush, but loves his vetoing of the SCHIP renewal bill.

I know, I know -- it's hard to understand. How could someone want to make the children suffer, like that? How could I be such a heartless bastard? Am I truly so selfish that I'd rather have a few extra dollars than see the nation's poverty-stricken children have quality healthcare?

In a single word: No. No, I'm not that heartless -- no I'm not that greedy, and no, I don't want to see the poor suffer. And yet, I still stand against the new SCHIP bill. I understand that for the majority of you reading this, this must seem somewhat confusing, if true -- so either I'm a liar or I'm mislead. Right? It occurs to me that I'm getting somewhat ahead of myself here, so perhaps I ought to do a little bit of explanation as to what this whole SCHIP thing is really about. Take, for example, this piece from Sunday, Oct. 7^th, 2007, found in the New York Times:

Democrats believe they have Republicans — short on campaign cash, contending with a spurt of retirements and quarreling — on the run over the legislation, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Party leaders say the willingness of so many House Republicans to stick with Mr. Bush in the face of bipartisan backing for a $35 billion expansion of the program to provide insurance for poor children will prove costly as Election Day looms a year from now.

[...]

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is taking on eight Republicans in competitive districts with a series of automated calls and radio advertisements that remind listeners that their lawmaker gets taxpayer-paid health care while opposing the expansion of the program administered by each state.

Beginning Monday, a coalition of liberal and labor groups will start a $1 million advertising effort, with a national advertisement to run on cable channels and local advertisements aimed at specific lawmakers. The national commercial shows a series of children beginning with a baby girl and states, “George Bush just vetoed Abby.” It says Mr. Bush puts excessive war spending over health care at home.

“The president’s ‘yes men’ in Congress need to stand up to Bush and stand up for families who work hard but simply can’t afford insurance,” said Brad Woodhouse, president of Americans United for Change, one group leading the effort.

There's so much here that there's really no way to account for it all, up front. But let's begin with a few tiny points:

1: "The national commercial shows a series of children beginning with a baby girl and states, “George Bush just vetoed Abby.”"

Am I, honestly, the only person left in the world whom is disgusted by the continued exploitation of those who can't possibly understand what they're being used for, simply for cheap promotionals like this? Look, we get it: You kissed the baby; you're a good, caring guy. You can stop now.

2: "radio advertisements that remind listeners that their lawmaker gets taxpayer-paid health care while opposing the expansion of the program administered by each state."

Talk about talking out the side of your face. So, we are to believe, because our government employees are receiving healthcare from their employer (the government), they are bad people for denying public assistance to non government employees?

3: "Party leaders say the willingness of so many House Republicans to stick with Mr. Bush in the face of bipartisan backing for a $35 billion expansion of the program to provide insurance for poor children will prove costly"

Once again, we are told that SCHIP only benefits the poor children of the nation. And yes, primarily, this is true. But the existence of SCHIP isn't what's up for debate here: Bush himself wants SCHIP renewed.The White House is stressing that Bush wants the CHIP program renewed and wants to increase its current level by $5 billion over five years, but Bush wants it to target poor children. The compromise includes some children in levels above the poverty line.

By way of explanation of what possible madness could be going through the nation's Idiot-in-Chief's head, that he could demand that SCHIP "target poor children", please consider: SCHIP in its current form provides insurance for those who have an income of up to 200% the federal poverty line. The expanded/renewed form will take that number to 400%; for the 'prototypical' family of 4 (2 parents, 2 children), that's an income of ~$82,600 -- For a single-parent single-child household, that number is ~$54,760. (All from the same, most recently linked, source. See Table 2.) All this number-crunching, however, is meaningless without something to compare it against. The best number to do so, the most revealing, is the median average income of the United States. That number, as of 2004, was $44,334 -- as reported by the US Census.

Now, ask yourself, people: Is the average home in America poor and in need of government handouts in order to get "quality care"? As a corollary, if it is, is a simple handout going to fix that problem? As a secondary corollary: If things are that bad, can we afford for the government to be the agency we rely upon?

By way of insight, I provide this reference to a previous article, "The Tyranny of Compassion":

Foreign aid was first put into practice almost sixty years ago, under the Truman Administration, in 1948. What has been the result of essentially six decades of attempted monetary aid in Africa? Practically the entire continent remains in squalor. Why, precisely, is this? How is it even possible? The general sentiment on this issue falls into two lines:

• One: We just haven't spent enough; if only we rich Westerners would be willing to sacrifice a little more in the name of compassion, we could turn that continent around tomorrow!
• Two: We are suppressing the entrepeneurial spirit and creating reliance, thus destroying prosperity and hope for a better future.

Which of these is correct? Well, six decades have taught us that there is no amount which will be the magic bullet to cure Africa's economic woes.

Now, all of this has been somewhat heavy-handed. And I can understand if you haven't followed through to the end here, but for those of you whom have, I have just one last query/insight/thought: It is said that the measure of what power we ought allow into the hands of government is to consider what the worst person possible would do with it. To those of you whom think things like SCHIP are so necessary that a little over-spending or universal healthcare under the radar concerns are simply silly, I profer this: the "Christian Right" is poising itself to exploit government compassion efforts as a tool for its takeover of American society. Considering that private agencies -- such as charities like the Christian Children's Fund -- could be established to provide for the nation's children,