Political Equinox

Ok. It’s re-he-he-eally early to discuss the presidential election of 2012. I’ve been one to bemoan those who rush into an election season too early, but I cannot help but applaud the politically shrewd move in Obama eliminating the only Republican that would have a shot at beating him. Moderate, youthful, Mandarin fluent Utah Governor John Huntsman will forego his foray onto the national political stage for at least another presidential election cycle. While this is at first glance a victory for Obama, this may actually help moderate Republicans in the long run. When Obama is no longer president, the still young Huntsman may be in the best position …

Nearly one hundred years ago in 1914, Congress created the Legislative Reference Service  to provide “nonpartisan, objective analysis and research on all legislative issues.”

In 2003, we taxpayers paid more than $86 million dollars to provide this service to our representatives and senators. If we’re going to pay that much for people to write summaries of legislation I think the public has a right for easy access to this information.

The Problem

A 2003 CRS internal memo states three areas of concern:

Impairment of Member Communication with Constituents – So instead of recieving a form letter from my congressman telling me in their biased opinion how they plan to vote on the issue I could read an unbiased summary? Sign me up! I wouldn’t contact my representative …

Please allow me to make this the unoffical Request for Proposal of the people of the United States in the area of a standardized format for heathcare information exchange.

The current landscape is a bunch of different electronic health record providers storing data in propritary formats, which don’t allow for potability of data at all.

A Massive Database

The most effective and efficient way of doing things would be a massive, centralized helthcare information database compliging healthcare data on every patient in the United States. However, this masive database brings several concerns in the playing field.

Privacy – All of this highly confidential data stored in one location could be a breeding ground for trouble if someone received unauthorized access to the system.
Control – We’d …

Yesterday, the new Secretary of Education announced plans to push for longer school years in the United States as a method of making our country more competitive with nations around the world.

This reform seems like a pushover. Instead of really taking a look at how we are educating our children and devising new educational strategies; the plan seems to be let’s simply give ourselves more time to teach these children, cheating them out of much-needed breaks in the academic calendar.

While there is no doubt that more time in the classroom gives us more time to teach and therefore may increase learning, we must not look at it from an absolute numbers perspective. What is the marginal benefit to increasing …