Travel Blogging VI

Dateline: Bernkasel, Germany. One more pretty little town along the Mosel River. Practically every hillside hereabouts is covered with grapevines; this is the home of the German white wines. The valley is probably 3-400 ft. deep, with the river running at the bottom. It is a bigtime vacation area, people come to enjoy the views, boat, play in the water, drink the wines, and generally have a good time. The towns reflect this emphasis on wine and tourism, and the river is navigable at least as far up as Trier, courtesy of some small dams and locks.

As noted before, river cruising in Europe is one of the more pleasant things to do. People do day cruises, overnighters, and long ones like the one we’re on. I’m noting a substantial number of RVs here too, mostly modest sized Class C rigs with a few not-too-big Class As. I’m not seeing many trailers, or what the Brits would call “caravans.” I wonder how many of these motorhomes are rentals? Rentals would make sense here as most Europeans don’t have somewhere to park an RV when they’re not using it.

People do recreation along the Rhine but you get the feeling that it is mostly a cargo route. The Mosel is mostly about recreation, cargo and freight are secondary uses. One thing that puzzles me, why are there so many bulk carriers loaded with gravel? In the States we don’t much transport gravel long distances. Does this mean that gravel isn’t widely available in Europe? That would seem to be the conclusion.

I’ve talked about the work and passenger boats on these rivers but there are private pleasure boats too, cabin cruisers and runabouts. My guess is that you’d have to be very well-off to have a boat on the rivers here, as they aren’t all that common. In a day’s cruising we’ll pass maybe half a dozen. I’m thinking one could see most of Europe by boat, living aboard and popping ashore with your bicycle or motorbike to poke about there. I have no idea what the lockage and dockage fees would be like. I see people catching a free mooring here and there, but there’d be no getting around locking fees.

Travel Blogging IV

Dateline: Speyer, Germany. This little river town is something of a resort for Germans, the river bank is lined with biergartens (e.g., beer gardens). Like all residents of cold places, Germans like to be outdoors when it is warm and that particularly includes drinking beer outdoors. Speyer is home to a rather grand Romanesque cathedral; it was the seat of the bishops of Speyer who were powers back in the day.

We are spending just over 24 hours here, doing a walking tour of the town followed by home visits with German families. Those who choose can visit a biergarten literally just across the jetty from the ship for their evening’s entertainment. Most will not do so, but it is certainly there. We set sail downriver just after 1 a.m. A lot of our sailing is done at night, perforce, but I sort of resent it as daytime cruising is so pleasant. We did several hours of daytime cruising yesterday, while many of our number were off in the buses seeing Baden Baden. We’d seen the spa before so gave that trip a pass and enjoyed the downriver cruising instead.

For me, just being on the river is what I enjoy. Yes, the towns we visit are interesting but being “on the river” is my goal. Unlike the ocean there is always scenery to look at on shore. I love watching the river traffic, barges of all sorts carrying petroleum products, gravel, grain, containers, you name it. Then there are the passenger boats, essentially floating hotels. All river craft are long and slender to fit in the locks.

Particularly interesting is a type of barge we don’t see in the U.S. This is the “barge as home & workplace.” Imagine a barge with its own engine – no pusher or tug required. The engine and pilothouse are in the rear, along with the family’s living quarters and, usually, their car. If they have hired help working the barge with them the help lives in a forecastle at the bow. Normally this barge operates alone, without other barges attached. They haul cargo all over Europe, literally from Amsterdam to the Black Sea if needed. Husband and wife operate the barge, live aboard with their small children and dog, and the windows often have lace curtains. When they are at a destination they will use a crane to lift their auto ashore, and drive around running errands. Historically, their children have gone to boarding schools ashore and come home to the barge during vacations. The captains of most of the passenger ships are grown-up “river kids” whose parents were barge operators. It is a family business, generation after generation on the rivers.

Travel Blogging III

Dateline: Strasbourg, France. I suspect a French person looks at a map of Europe and sees a large France surrounded by small peripheral states. If you limit your view to Western Europe - the part that stayed outside the Soviet orbit during the Cold War - there is some justice to this view. France is geographically central to Western Europe, and Western Europe started the EU and nurtured it through the early years.

Strasbourg is an interesting town, site of a monument to French selfishness. The main headquarters of the European Union are in Brussels, Belgium – a good choice as Belgium is a small bilingual country that nobody will mistake for the power center of the continent. However, in order to get France to join the European Union, it was necessary to create a second EU administrative/legislative power center on French soil and it is here in Strasbourg. Ironically, Strasbourg is the capital of the department of Alsace, territory that has been German almost as much as it has been French.

Enough geopolitics, let us observe this corner of France and its people. You’ve heard the French love their dogs? This is no exaggeration, they take them everywhere. I don’t think I’ve seen a single cat, but hundreds of dogs – all sizes and shapes and all looking well-cared for and sleek. These are for the most part city dogs, apartment dwellers which take their masters for walks in the park or alongside the canal. Inevitably some places smell of dog, too, although it would appear most owners are picking up after Fifi.

Yesterday I was going to write that Europeans are a race of apartment dwellers, today I must modify that view. Today we drove through the wine country of Alsace and in the small villages most folks live in individual homes with steeply pitched roofs, stucco walls, and amazing flowers hanging from every window box. In the States farmers tend to live on their farms, in much of Europe they live in farming villages and commute out to their farms. This makes the farms look tidier but I wonder where the farmers stow their equipment when it is not in use?

This is pretty country, growing the grapes that make the famous white wines: Gewurtztraminer, Riesling, and the white Pinots. When you get out into the flatter land, the region grows thousands of acres of maize, what Americans call “corn.” Europeans tend to view maize as animal feed, but most corn grown in the States is fed to non-humans, too.

Travel Blogging II

Dateline: cruising the Rhine River. As I write this we are some miles/kilometers downstream from Basel, no longer in Switzerland and in territory that has been disputed between France and Germany for centuries – Alsace. Tomorrow morning we tie up in Strasbourg, adjacent to a barracks of the French Foreign Legion, or la Legion Etrangere, literally the “legion of strangers.” I’d read that the Foreign Legion was always garrisoned outside France but I know this barracks has been here for at least 6 years. It was here last time we were on this river cruise in 2003.

France gets a lot of mileage out of their Foreign Legion. When, for diplomatic reasons, they need to send troops to a dangerous and difficult place, they send the Legion. The body bags don’t go home to grieving families in France. There is a famous quote from a Legion commander to the effect that “It is your duty to die for France and my duty to send you where you can do that.”

Basel is one of those European towns that experienced a lot of grief as a result of the Reformation. The cathedral had most of the Roman Catholic decoration stripped out by the dour Protestants, leaving it relatively austere. On the other hand the town hall is highly decorated. It appears to be a city in which trolleys , motorcycles and bicycles are the main forms of transportation.

I rode the streetcars today and was impressed with their cleanliness, quiet, smoothness, and carrying capacity. The streets are narrow and winding, so the streetcars are narrow and multi-sectioned so they can twist and turn accordingly. Each train is made up of several short cars linked together and operated by a single driver. They climb hills, snake around corners, pass each other with inches to spare and cross the Rhine on bridges. Still, if you had to walk several blocks in the alpine winter to reach the line and then wait several minutes for it to arrive, the streetcars’ charm might be lessened.

Travel Blogging V

Dateline: Boppard, Germany. If there are typos, blame them on the German keyboard which has the y and z keys transposed, and the : is in the wrong place too. Oh, the joys of overseas travel. We cruised the Rhine this morning, past the Lorelei rock and statue, and past a whole bunch of castles including one on an islet in the middle of the Rhine. Very picturesque places.

Yesterday we were docked in Speyer, a cathedral town upstream from here. The Romanesque dom or cathedral there is very impressive, although not so stunning as the Gothic cathedrals from later periods.

Cruising the river is much like driving on an Interstate highway. It is a main thoroughfare for moving cargo and, to a lesser extent, passengers. Cargo is serious business on the Rhine, lots of river tankers, bulk carriers, container ships, as well as specialized ships dealing with particular cargoes like gases. All of the above are long and slender so they'll fit through the locks. All are shallow draft as the river isn't always very deep, maybe only a couple of meters.

Passenger travel on the river is mostly touring rather than serious point-to-point travel. That latter is handled by high speed trains which run freqently. Many firms run hotel boats on the Rhine, Viking is a big one, KD for Koln-Dusseldorf is another, and our firm - Grand Circle - is no slouch either, although it limits its passengers to Americans and a few Canadians. GC runs maybe half a dozen or eight ships on the Rhine and Danube.

Note: Travel blog posts II thru IV are already written but will be posted later when I get access to a place to plug in a thumb drive.

Health Care Craziness

This Wall Street Journal article drags out into the open one of the real sleeper issues in the whole health care debate - what to do about health care for illegal immigrants. As the article points out, half of the 12 million illegal immigrants have no health insurance. So, when they get sick they go to hospital emergency rooms where, the article says, a 1986 law requires they be treated whether or not they can pay. And, get this:

A provision in the House's health-care-overhaul bill rules out federal funding for illegal immigrants.

So...emergency rooms are required by law to treat six million uninsured illegal immigrants, but the government won't reimburse them for doing so. Can you say "Catch-22?" Is it any wonder that health care costs are spiraling upward? To whom do you think the hospitals are passing along the costs of this required care? Maybe to us, ya think?

Travel Blogging I

Dateline: Denver. The drive up the Snake River canyon today was beautiful, as always. It is only mid-August but the green of the trees is getting that tired look that presages autumn. The local mountains got snow last night, although the valleys didn't.

I was amazed at how polite, friendly and generally unbureaucratic the TSA people at Jackson airport were. Props to the Feds for a good crew. They have an unpleasant job to do but have found a way to do it without being cranky.

Flying over the so-called Front Range was as nasty as ever, bumpy and shaky. The plane that flies from Denver to Colorado Springs is called "the Vomit Comet." The last time I flew it it had hard surfaced floors, I presume so they can mop up the sick. Locals, I'm told, don't fly along the Front Range. They fly into Denver, rent a car and drive to Colo. Springs - it is almost a quick and a whole lot smoother.

Next stop is Frankfurt, with a final destination of Basel, Switzerland. There we board a river cruiser and sail down the Rhine. More later....

Travel Blogging Alert

Starting tomorrow, the DrsC will be wandering the globe once again so for awhile most postings will be travel blogging. I hope to give you updates from Internet cafes along the Rhine and Mosel (in French, Moselle) rivers where we will be cruising.

The downside of this is that I won't be doing much with COTTonLINE's usual emphasis on domestic politics and world affairs for the next couple of weeks. Never fear, we will be back at our usual stand around September 1.

Quote of the Day II

Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota Governor and GOP presidential aspirant, speaking to the GOPAC conference in Chicago and alluding to the health care proposals. As cited in Politico:

It appears that President Obama is making great progress on climate change, he is changing the political climate in the country back to Republican.

One can hope.

Barone Nails It

This New York Post article by Michael Barone looks at the offsetting issues faced by the Democratic and Republican parties. Examining the data, his underlying finding is this:

There are more conservatives than Republicans and more Democrats than liberals.

In other words, there are conservative Democrats out there, and some relatively conservative independents too. His article explores the consequences of this imbalance for both parties.

He also finds that the Democrat leadership comes from very liberal districts, while the Republican leadership comes from moderately conservative districts. This explains why recent legislative action hasn't been popular with the public.

Read the article, nobody crunches numbers better than Barone.

Quote of the Day I

Doug Bandow, writing in The American Spectator, cracking wise about the health care reform proposals being considered in Congress:

It's a lot easier to campaign against the incompetent, big-spending, war-mongering Republicans than to convince the American people that they would be better off if the post office provided their health care.

I love that line: "convince the American people that they would be better off if the post office provided their health care." It reminds me of the satiric view of the post office taken in the film Men in Black II - as a place mostly staffed by space aliens.

Who Is Uninsured

Paul Mirengoff, one of the three authors of the Power Line blog, writes an interesting column answering the question "Who are the uninsured in America?" The President and his minions keep throwing around the number 46 million. Mirengoff shows this inflated number is far from realistic.

It turns out that the real number is about one third of that, or 15.5 million who are citizens or lawful residents, truly cannot afford to purchase health insurance, and cannot qualify for a government program like Medicaid.

Mirengoff reports in considerable detail on the various categories into which the balance of 30.5 million uninsured fall. Roughly 11 million are either covered by Medicaid or S-CHIP or are eligible to be covered but have never applied. Another 9.5 million are non-citizens. A third group of 10 million earns three times the poverty line income but chooses not to purchase insurance. Mirengoff explains why this may be a rational choice for young, healthy people.

That number of the true uninsured, 15.5 million, is still a lot of uninsured Americans, but it is only about 5% of our population, or one individual in twenty. We shouldn't need to completely revamp our health care system to insure the 1/20th of our population who need coverage.

Quote of the Day III

Mark Steyn, writing for the Orange County Register, about the perils of government health care:

The problem with government health systems is not that they pull the plug on Grandma. It's that Grandma has a hell of a time getting plugged in in the first place. The only way to "control costs" is to restrict access to treatment, and the easiest people to deny treatment to are the oldsters.

As a Canadian who now lives in New Hampshire, Steyn knows all about government health care. He has been there, done that, and doesn't want it to follow him to the States. The whole article is worth your time.

Quote of the Day II

Carl Bialik, writing his Numbers Guy column for The Wall Street Journal, talking about the difficulties in forecasting over the last year:

The spate of cloudy crystal balls highlighted an uncomfortable reality about telling the future: It is hardest when it is most important.

Another home truth is this: What you really want to be able to predict is the changes in direction. That is, when the economy turns a corner in either direction. It is easy to say that we'll get more of the same, a prediction that is often true but not very interesting or helpful.

Quote of the Day I

Peggy Noonan, columnist for The Wall Street Journal, writing about our President and his New Hampshire town hall on health care reform:

The president seemed like a man long celebrated as being very good at politics—the swift rise, the astute reading of a varied electorate—who is finding out day by day that he isn't actually all that good at it. In this sense he does seem reminiscent of Jimmy Carter, who was brilliant at becoming president but not being president.

COTTonLINE has maintained for some time now that the best historical model for understanding the Obama administration is its resemblance to the Carter administration. This is an omen of a one-term presidency, perhaps Noonan agrees.

Who Pays Taxes

Charles Murray, writing in The Wall Street Journal, cites some very interesting statistics. Lets look at a few of his gleanings from IRS data:

Let's start with the rich, whom I define as families in the top 1% of income among those who filed tax returns. In 2007, the year with the most recent tax data, they had family incomes of $410,000 or more. They paid 40% of all the personal income taxes collected.

The families in the rest of the top 5% had family incomes of $160,000 to $410,000. They paid another 20% of total personal income taxes. Now we're up to three out of every five dollars in personal taxes paid by just five out of every 100 American families.

Murray continues:

Turn to the bottom three-quarters of the families who filed income tax returns in 2007—not just low-income families, but everybody with family incomes below $66,500. That 75% of families paid just 13% of all personal income taxes.

Sounds to me like we are already socking it to the rich, what do you think?

Funny Truth or Truthful Fun?

I don't expect something this hip to be in the Charlotte Observer, which just shows that I don't know everything. Check out this funny column by Tommy Tomlinson, one of their regulars. He draws some very droll, and relatively accurate, parallels between the conservative movement of today and the hippie movement of the 1960s. For example:

Right-wingers are the new hippies.
They're Rippies.
These days Rippies are the ones disrupting town-hall meetings and shouting down authority. They're the ones chanting for a revolution. They turn on (Fox News), tune in (to Rush) and drop out (of the taxpaying public).

Read the whole article, there is lots more fun stuff there.

The Truth Hurts

Do yourself a favor and read this article by British journalist Stephen Glover in the online version of the UK Daily Mail. The article's title will give you the general flavor of his view of the National Health Service, their government health care:

I deeply resent the Americans sneering at our health service - but perhaps that's because the truth hurts.

Glover elaborates:

I'd say that under the present system which President Obama is hoping to improve, most middle-class Americans are liable to receive better health treatment than their British counterparts.

He says ask any American who has had an encounter with Britain's NHS, you'll hear:

They cannot believe what has happened to them - the squalor, and looming threat of MRSA; the long waiting lists, and especially the official target that patients in 'accident and emergency' should be expected to wait for no more than four - four! - hours.

Doesn't government health care sound wonderful? Read the whole article, the above is just a sampler.

Overall Approval at New Low

Scott Rasmussen, who runs the Rasmussen Reports polling outfit, finds the President's approval continues to fall, today he reports:

Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. That’s the lowest level of total approval yet recorded. The President’s ratings first fell below 50% just a few weeks ago on July 25. Fifty-two percent (52%) now disapprove.

For comparison, note that Rasmussen's "somewhat approve" percentage for George W. Bush was 35% when he left office. This is a difference of only 12%, not a long way to fall in the next 3+ years.

One of the downsides of living a long time is remembering that all of this has happened before. LBJ didn't run for reelection, Nixon resigned because of Watergate, and neither Ford nor Carter could be reelected. The pundit class speculated on "the decline of the Presidency." Then Reagan restored the luster of the office.

Now we have a new down cycle: Bush 41 wasn't reelected, Clinton was impeached and seemingly lied under oath, unpopular Bush 43 left office as a recession set in, and now Obama's popularity ratings are predictably nosediving.

Who will restore the power of the presidency this time? Will we elect that person in 2012 or have to wait until 2016 or beyond? Stay tuned.

Government Involvement in Medicine

It would appear that, on health care reform, President Obama waded out into a political swamp and discovered alligators chewing on his tender parts. The popularity of his plan keeps going down, as people realize what government will have to do to keep the costs of health care down.

Very simply, the main thing government can do to make the cost of health care go down is to ration its availability, particularly to the old and terminally ill. Most developed countries have done exactly this, and their affluent elderly come here for pain-easing surgeries. Where will we (and they) go when our system becomes like theirs?

Another step government can take is to cut back spending on medical research, thus condemning some of us to deaths or disabilities we could otherwise avoid or postpone for years or decades. As they do on defense, much of the world relies on the U.S. for medical/pharmaceutical research - we do the spending and they reap the benefits, along with us. Who will do it when we don't, or will we all do without?

The one useful thing government could do to restrain medical costs is to replace the tort lawsuit system of constraining bad doctors with a system that examines alleged medical malpractice, punishes it, and awards only actual costs to those injured. This would avoid sending billions of dollars to lawyers, more billions to malpractice insurance firms, and even more billions on unnecessary tests and procedures done to protect doctors against lawsuit. Presumably this could reduce medical costs in this country by 10-15% - worthwhile but not dramatic.

The main reason we spend a lot on health is that we want to feel good, and we are willing to spend the money to do so.