the General Electric Political Action Committee

From the Washington Examiner:
Leaked e-mail shows how GE puts the government to work for GE
by Timothy P. Carney

The intersection between GE's interests and government action is clearer than ever," General Electric Vice Chairman John G. Rice wrote in an Aug. 19 e-mail to colleagues.

Rice was calling on his co-workers to join the General Electric Political Action Committee. "GEPAC is an important tool that enables GE employees to collectively help support candidates who share the values and goals of GE."

The full letter suggests that "share the values and goals of GE" really means "support policies that profit the company."

Read it all here.

Eugenics? Yes or No?

A Wall Street Journal article (27 August) reviewed the President’s health adviser (commonly called czars) Emanuel’s recent publication in the Lancet on health care needs. A graph showed where the relative amount of health care by age should be allocated. It started very low at age 0 rising steeply to maturity, decreasing slowly until the early 50's, then steeply declining until 60, then continuing slowly down past age 70. It may roughly be a maturity/menopause model.

As a biologist this seemed peculiar to me and it was pointed out that this was the serfdom/slavery model, where you are more concerned with your serfs/slaves through their most productive years, throwing them away in old age. Reproductive age individuals are especially important to produce more young and product. Ethical considerations aside, if it has a scientific basis, as claimed, that is one thing, but if not, it is thrown into the social/political realm.

First, old age. Of course, diminishing abilities produce less physically, but in general, animals and plants are quite variable in what could be called natural survival. We have very old trees, occasional old fish, but in general there are many less older individuals, partly due to the fact that any age group can only decrease in numbers, if only by accident. Why keep the old? They are less productive, cannot reproduce, and consume things that younger individuals could use. Without getting into what an old tree might do, mammals generally use elders in a very complicated way. Is the wisdom of accumulated experience and care available to the family more valuable than the costs of keeping the old alive and, at least mentally, contributing? Emanuel’s curve values a 65 year old about the same (in terms of their right to medical care) as a four year old and a 75 year old about the same as a two year old. Peculiar.

Second, youth. Trees and fish produce lots of acorns and larvae. Very few can survive, otherwise filling the earth. Parental care is rare and when it occurs the number of young produced is small. In mammals, parental care is the rule, making each juvenile tremendously more valuable numerically than single acorns or larvae. In humans the juvenile stage is greatly extended, and some would say, now much beyond sexual maturity. Emanuel’s graph does not acknowledge the necessity of protecting this long maturing process. Peculiar.

Modern Eugenics is often thought to have begun with Charles Darwin’s cousin, Sir Francis Galton, who, if he had a political agenda, it is not apparent. Neither did Darwin’s ideas, however later used. Apparently conscripted by later geneticists and activists, eugenics is sometimes identified as a contributor to the development of the social democratic movement, part of it leading to the holocaust. After WWII it seems to have retreated into more statistical demographic treatments, except for the modern environmental movement, which actively still promotes birth and population control.

It seems fair to identify a scientific eugenics, merely a genetical/demographic analysis, and an advocacy/activist portion using at least some of the data for social/political purposes. Which is the Emanuel curve? First it is very simplistic and second it seems directly contradictory to human biology, which places especial value on birth and adolescence. Put in evolutionary biology terms, what is termed the probability that a newborn will survive to a given age, often reproductive, is used by actuaries to determine the expectation of further life. This also can be used to determine what evolutionists call the “Net Reproductive Rate” and “Reproductive Value,” which is what determines the potential for replacement of the population. Reproduction does not occur until maturity, so these values, a somewhat complicated formula, depends heavily on the survival of these non-reproductive individuals. In most animals, including humans, these are relatively high mortality years, especially early. Parental care is highest here, again especially early. The Emanuel curve is the opposite.

Therefore, it is difficult to see the biological basis of the Emanuel curve, especially for the young, perhaps less so for the old. Although other factors (medical, economic) could be involved, the evidence seems to force the conclusion that the curve has little scientific basis, again ethics aside. A maturity/menopause model could be argued as biological, but only in the strict individual physiological sense, ignoring all surrounding factors. The surrounding factors are what the model claims is important as a basis for the ration of medical care, as is also the potential survival of the individual. Therefore, this curve must lie outside the strict eugenics scientific basis, although some argue that control of populations are ecologically necessary.

That is another question.

On Kennedy, From the National Review Online

Champagne Socialism

Senator Edward Kennedy was, and will remain, an outstanding example of a champagne socialist. Sociologically speaking, the type has been well recognized for quite some time. Indeed, in Turgenev's great novel, Fathers and Sons, the hero Bazarov asks at one point if you can't drink champagne just because you call yourself a socialist. The French similarly talk about those who vote on the Left but dine on the Right. Such people are exploiting their privileged position in society to curry favor with those less privileged, and so find the way to continue being privileged while also being applauded for it. Clever, or what?

The obituaries for Edward Kennedy have been more or less unmitigated eulogies. The general inference is that he was an outstanding and constructive politician with vast achievements to his credit. At most, there is an apologetic little insertion somewhere of the word “flawed” as though that excused and explained his failure to become president. In simple fact, he owed everything in his career, especially his position in the Senate, to the fact that he had been born who he was, too well-connected and too rich ever to have to work his passage on his own. If this isn't privilege, what is? The years of good living and self-indulgence showed in his face, as once handsome features turned coarse and bloated. Physically, he could only waddle. As for morals, Chappaquiddick is only one incident among others when his behaviour proves him to have been a man of bad character....

He has enjoyed the sort of lifelong allowance that once would have been made for a corrupt eighteenth-century English duke. It is hard to believe that he was ever sincere in the populist causes he took up, declaiming about righting wrongs only to go home and commit plenty more wrongs of his own without having to account for them. That's champagne socialism for you, and it seems a taste everybody and anybody can get drunk on.

There is a little more at the Corner of the National Review, this is the gist of it.