Shaking Hands with Bill Proxmire

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My one fleeting contact with Bill Proxmire occured many, many years ago (I was perhaps 10 years old). I recall walking around the Dodge County Fair (Beaver Dam) and my hand suddenly swung away. I looked up and a tall lanky guy shook it and said “Hi, I’m Bill Proxmire”. He was on the campaign trail, one handshake at a time.
We could use his “Golden Fleece Awards” today.
Richard Severo:

Another Golden Fleece Award went to the National Institute for Mental Health, which spent $97,000 to study, among other things, what went on in a Peruvian brothel. The researchers said they made repeated visits in the interests of accuracy.
The Federal Aviation Administration also felt Mr. Proxmire’s wrath, for spending $57,800 on a study of the physical measurements of 432 airline stewardesses, paying special attention to the “length of the buttocks” and how their knees were arranged when they were seated. Other Fleece recipients were the Justice Department, for spending $27,000 to determine why prisoners wanted to get out of jail, and the Pentagon, for a $3,000 study to determine if people in the military should carry umbrellas in the rain.
He returned to Harvard, earned a second master’s degree – this one in public administration – and moved to Wisconsin to be a reporter for The Capital Times in Madison.
“They fired me after I’d been there seven months, for labor activities and impertinence,” he once said, conceding that his dismissal was merited.

The Worst Cars – 2005

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Dan Lienert:

Author J. Bryan III once wrote, “My Uncle Jonathan’s first car, circa 1910, was an E.M.F. The initials represented the manufacturers, Everitt, Metzger and Flanders of Detroit. But a long series of breakdowns led to their being translated as ‘Every Mechanical Fault'” (or “Every Morning Fixit,” as Nick Georgano states in the 2000 edition of The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile).
Fortunately, no car today could merit such nicknames, right? Wrong.

Designing a $6000 Car

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Patricia O’Connell:

Designer Kenneth Melville explains how just how tough it is to build a $6,000 car, including some swallowing of pride
Cars prices have accelerated steadily for the last decade, thanks to an increasing reliance on technology and ever-more luxurious interiors. Even a compact car can easily cost more than $20,000. Shifting into reverse, French auto maker Renault decided in 1998 to design a modern car with state-of-the-art safety features costing only 5,000 euros ($6,000). Renault’s strategy was to create a car for people in emerging markets who have never owned an automobile — some 80% of the world’s population.

City of Madison Comprehensive Plan

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Kristian Knutsen:

A couple of hours before the council meeting in the same room, they attended a presentation about the City of Madison Comprehensive Plan. This plan, mandated by state law, and a work in progress over the last couple of years, will serve as a long-term roadmap for the city’s infrastructural future. It is also up for a vote on Tuesday, Dec. 13 by the full council, though it is likely to be referred to a subsequent meeting in early January.

Ag Subsidies Revealed

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Daniel Drezner:

For now, however, these subsidies are here — but who, exactly, gets them?

For that answer, I encourage you to check out the Environmental Working Group’s Farm Subsidy Database. Through many, many FOIA requests, they have produced. an interactive website chock full of interesting facts. For example:

  • Half of all subsidies go to only 5% of Congressional districts.

  • Four commodities —corn, wheat, rice and cotton— account for 78 percent of all ag subsidies.

    • EWG also has an interesting proposal to reallocate the ag money away from subsidies but towards rural areas where farmers actually generate high value-added goods already.

    Tommy Thompson Delays Getting ID Chip Implanted

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    Channel3000:

    Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson seems to be in no rush to be implanted with an ID chip, as he told interviewers he would in July.
    A TV network recently interviewed Thompson, a former U.S. secretary of health and human services, after he was named to the board of directors of VeriChip, which sells a radio-frequency ID chip that can be implanted under the skin. The chips alarms privacy advocates who worry whether government and corporations will abuse the technology.

    What employees think about consumer-directed health plans

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    Vishal Agrawal, Paul D. Mango, and Kimberly O. Packard:

    Eager to curb the rising cost of health care, many US insurers and employers are considering consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs), which are designed to lower costs by giving consumers more responsibility for managing their own health care spending.1 Indeed, a survey indicates that this interest is more than justified. We found that the plans encourage value-conscious behavior, increase the consumers’ level of engagement with their well-being, and may even promote behavior that leads to better long-term health.

    In March 2005 we surveyed 2,500 consumers, 1,000 of whom had been enrolled in a CDHP for at least one year.2 We also conducted extensive interviews with 25 of these CDHP consumers and with seven benefits managers who administer the plans.3 Our goal was to learn how consumers’ behavior changes when they become responsible for a greater share of their health care costs.