Notes on a cold, snowy Tuesday before Christmas...

I picked up a box of something called "Organic Zero" sweetener, which claims to have zero calories, zero glycemic index, and "zero artificial." The active sweetener is a sugar alcohol named erythretol, which the box carefully points out as being organic and lacking in "intense-sweetener" aftertaste.

That last point is true, but I might add that the product provides very nearly zero sweetening at all, to my taste. This, combined with its rather premium price (something like $7 for 35 packets), sort of eliminates it from my future shopping lists.

So much for food reviews.

It's been snowing since about 8 am, with very little wind. This ought to result in a fairly even accumulation of the white stuff on the property, as opposed to the wind-swept variable-depth snowfall earlier in the month. The critical path for moving stuff down south is still safe, however, and a couple of short translations are relieving what would have been a monotonous routine of cleaning up the place.

Cheers...

Language most dangerous ...

So many major laws have been voted on in blitz mode in recent years that it's no longer surprising that Congress makes decisions without actually having read the laws they are passing.

The Reid health "reform" bill (where "reform" is defined as nothing less than a huge windfall for Big Pharma and Big Insurance, who have been allied with the current Administration from the very beginning, puerile class warfare language notwithstanding) contains what I believe to be - health care "reform" aside - a very dangerous provision concerning the Independent Medicare Advisory Board.

Apropos of which, according to the text of the bill, the IMAB's job is to develop recommendations to "reduce the per capita rate of growth in Medicare spending" based on actuarial projections, and to do so without rationing health care, raising revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums, or reducing payment rates for services or to providers. With all these contradictory restrictions on what the IMAB can and cannot do to reduce Medicare spending growth, why do I suspect the solution lies with a non-obvious solution that the Senate would rather not name?

The dangerous language I alluded to earlier occurs several times in new section proposed for Title XXIII of the Social Security Act, to wit:

...it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change....”

This language applies to the requirements of several provisions of the law, including IMAB recommendations and the language of the subsection itself, unless 60 senators agree beforehand to consider such a bill, resolution, etc. What's so special that you need 60 votes to even think about changing the law?

Of course, the language in the bill falls short of barring Constitution amendments to repeal or change this language, but this is understandable, considering how lately, Congress appears to have forgotten there is such a document.

One wonders how much media coverage this clause will generate, if any.

Cheers...