Terrifying Children for No Reason with Fake Gunmen: Public Education Just Doing Its Job
...Administrators at Eastern Wayne Middle School later sent parents a letter explaining that they sent a masked gunman to various sixth-grade classrooms as an “enrichment lesson on exhibiting good citizenship and observing your surroundings.”
It’s unclear exactly what good-citizenship lesson the kids were supposed to learn — “sphincter control,” perhaps — but it’s a lucky thing none of the kids tried anything heroic, like disarming the gunman, because any student who did that would surely be kicked out of school....
...Last March, that’s exactly what happened to a Florida high school boy after hedisarmed a fellow student who was aiming a loaded weapon at a third classmate. School spokesmen justified the hero kid’s suspension because, “If there is a potentially dangerous situation, Florida law allows the principal to suspend a student immediately pending a hearing.”...
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Why climate change is good for the world
Climate change has done more good than harm so far and is likely to continue doing so for most of this century. This is not some barmy, right-wing fantasy; it is the consensus of expert opinion. Yet almost nobody seems to know this. Whenever I make the point in public, I am told by those who are paid to insult anybody who departs from climate alarm that I have got it embarrassingly wrong, don’t know what I am talking about, must be referring to Britain only, rather than the world as a whole, and so forth....
...To be precise, Prof Tol calculated that climate change would be beneficial up to 2.2˚C of warming from 2009 (when he wrote his paper). This means approximately 3˚C from pre-industrial levels, since about 0.8˚C of warming has happened in the last 150 years....
...Overall, Prof Tol finds that climate change in the past century improved human welfare. By how much? He calculates by 1.4 per cent of global economic output, rising to 1.5 per cent by 2025. For some people, this means the difference between survival and starvation.
It will still be 1.2 per cent around 2050 and will not turn negative until around 2080. In short, my children will be very old before global warming stops benefiting the world. Note that if the world continues to grow at 3 per cent a year, then the average person will be about nine times as rich in 2080 as she is today. So low-lying Bangladesh will be able to afford the same kind of flood defences that the Dutch have today.
The chief benefits of global warming include: fewer winter deaths; lower energy costs; better agricultural yields; probably fewer droughts; maybe richer biodiversity. It is a little-known fact that winter deaths exceed summer deaths — not just in countries like Britain but also those with very warm summers, including Greece. Both Britain and Greece see mortality rates rise by 18 per cent each winter. Especially cold winters cause a rise in heart failures far greater than the rise in deaths during heatwaves....
...The increase in average carbon dioxide levels over the past century, from 0.03 per cent to 0.04 per cent of the air, has had a measurable impact on plant growth rates. It is responsible for a startling change in the amount of greenery on the planet. As Dr Ranga Myneni of Boston University has documented, using three decades of satellite data, 31 per cent of the global vegetated area of the planet has become greener and just 3 per cent has become less green. This translates into a 14 per cent increase in productivity of ecosystems and has been observed in all vegetation types.
Dr Randall Donohue and colleagues of the CSIRO Land and Water department in Australia also analysed satellite data and found greening to be clearly attributable in part to the carbon dioxide fertilisation effect. Greening is especially pronounced in dry areas like the Sahel region of Africa, where satellites show a big increase in green vegetation since the 1970s....
Climate change has done more good than harm so far and is likely to continue doing so for most of this century. This is not some barmy, right-wing fantasy; it is the consensus of expert opinion. Yet almost nobody seems to know this. Whenever I make the point in public, I am told by those who are paid to insult anybody who departs from climate alarm that I have got it embarrassingly wrong, don’t know what I am talking about, must be referring to Britain only, rather than the world as a whole, and so forth....
...To be precise, Prof Tol calculated that climate change would be beneficial up to 2.2˚C of warming from 2009 (when he wrote his paper). This means approximately 3˚C from pre-industrial levels, since about 0.8˚C of warming has happened in the last 150 years....
...Overall, Prof Tol finds that climate change in the past century improved human welfare. By how much? He calculates by 1.4 per cent of global economic output, rising to 1.5 per cent by 2025. For some people, this means the difference between survival and starvation.
It will still be 1.2 per cent around 2050 and will not turn negative until around 2080. In short, my children will be very old before global warming stops benefiting the world. Note that if the world continues to grow at 3 per cent a year, then the average person will be about nine times as rich in 2080 as she is today. So low-lying Bangladesh will be able to afford the same kind of flood defences that the Dutch have today.
The chief benefits of global warming include: fewer winter deaths; lower energy costs; better agricultural yields; probably fewer droughts; maybe richer biodiversity. It is a little-known fact that winter deaths exceed summer deaths — not just in countries like Britain but also those with very warm summers, including Greece. Both Britain and Greece see mortality rates rise by 18 per cent each winter. Especially cold winters cause a rise in heart failures far greater than the rise in deaths during heatwaves....
...The increase in average carbon dioxide levels over the past century, from 0.03 per cent to 0.04 per cent of the air, has had a measurable impact on plant growth rates. It is responsible for a startling change in the amount of greenery on the planet. As Dr Ranga Myneni of Boston University has documented, using three decades of satellite data, 31 per cent of the global vegetated area of the planet has become greener and just 3 per cent has become less green. This translates into a 14 per cent increase in productivity of ecosystems and has been observed in all vegetation types.
Dr Randall Donohue and colleagues of the CSIRO Land and Water department in Australia also analysed satellite data and found greening to be clearly attributable in part to the carbon dioxide fertilisation effect. Greening is especially pronounced in dry areas like the Sahel region of Africa, where satellites show a big increase in green vegetation since the 1970s....
The Reality of America's Finances
...The chart is brutally bipartisan. Debt increased under Republican presidents and Democrat presidents. It increased under Democrat congresses and Republican congresses. In war and in peace, in boom times and in busts, after tax hikes and tax cuts, the Potomac filled with red ink.
Washington likes to talk about sustainability. Forget sustainable — how is this sane?
Yet when a conservative hesitates before raising the debt ceiling, he's portrayed as a madman. When Paul Ryan offers a thoughtful plan to reduce the debt over decades, he's pushing grannies into the Grand Canyon and pantsing park rangers on the way out.
Since posting this chart to Twitter, the reaction has been intense. Some on the right think I’m too tough on the GOP while those on the left say it doesn’t matter or it’s all a big lie. Others tell me that I should have weighted for this variable or added lines for that trend. They are free to create their own charts to better fit their narrative and I’m sure they will. But the numbers shown above can’t be spun by either side.
Math doesn’t care about fairness or good intentions. Spending vastly more than you have isn’t good when done by a Republican or a Democrat. Two plus two doesn’t equal 33.2317 after you factor in a secret "Social Justice" multiplier. And if our current president accumulates debt at the rate of his first four-plus years, the national debt will be $22 trillion by the time leaves office....
...The chart is brutally bipartisan. Debt increased under Republican presidents and Democrat presidents. It increased under Democrat congresses and Republican congresses. In war and in peace, in boom times and in busts, after tax hikes and tax cuts, the Potomac filled with red ink.
Washington likes to talk about sustainability. Forget sustainable — how is this sane?
Yet when a conservative hesitates before raising the debt ceiling, he's portrayed as a madman. When Paul Ryan offers a thoughtful plan to reduce the debt over decades, he's pushing grannies into the Grand Canyon and pantsing park rangers on the way out.
Since posting this chart to Twitter, the reaction has been intense. Some on the right think I’m too tough on the GOP while those on the left say it doesn’t matter or it’s all a big lie. Others tell me that I should have weighted for this variable or added lines for that trend. They are free to create their own charts to better fit their narrative and I’m sure they will. But the numbers shown above can’t be spun by either side.
Math doesn’t care about fairness or good intentions. Spending vastly more than you have isn’t good when done by a Republican or a Democrat. Two plus two doesn’t equal 33.2317 after you factor in a secret "Social Justice" multiplier. And if our current president accumulates debt at the rate of his first four-plus years, the national debt will be $22 trillion by the time leaves office....
Obama’s fingerprints all over IRS Tea Party scandal
...Consider President Obama’s aggressive public statements – made just as we now know senior IRS officials were intentionally and aggressively scrutinizing conservative groups’ applications for tax exemption.
On August 9, 2010 the president warned of “attack ads run by shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names” during his weekly radio address. The President said: We don’t know who’s behind these ads and we don’t know who’s paying for them . . . you don’t know if it’s a foreign controlled corporation. ... The only people who don’t want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide.”
On September 16, 2010, President Obama once again warned that some unidentified “foreign-controlled entity” could be providing “millions of dollars” for “attack ads.” Less than one week later, he complained that “nobody knows” the identities of the individuals who support conservative groups.
On September 22, 2010, President Obama warned of groups opposing his policies “pos[ing] as non-for-profit social and welfare trade groups” and he claimed such groups were “guided by seasoned Republican political operatives” and potentially supported by some unidentified “foreign controlled entity.”
On October 14, 2010, President Obama called organizations with “benign sounding” names “a problem for democracy”; the next week he complained about individuals who “hide behind those front groups,” called such groups a “threat to our democracy,” and claimed such groups were engaged in “unsupervised” spending.
Next, consider the IRS’s actions following those statements. Not only did the IRS continue its targeting, it issued broad questionnaires that made unconstitutionally-intrusive inquiries designed to get answers to exactly the questions President Obama posed....
...One grows weary of stating the obvious, but if President Bush had declared a specific category of citizen groups a “threat to democracy” potentially run by “political operatives” or “foreign-controlled,” and the IRS launched an unprecedented campaign of targeting and intrusive questioning, the mainstream media would have been relentless not only in its independent investigations but in its calls for accountability – at the highest levels....
...Consider President Obama’s aggressive public statements – made just as we now know senior IRS officials were intentionally and aggressively scrutinizing conservative groups’ applications for tax exemption.
On August 9, 2010 the president warned of “attack ads run by shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names” during his weekly radio address. The President said: We don’t know who’s behind these ads and we don’t know who’s paying for them . . . you don’t know if it’s a foreign controlled corporation. ... The only people who don’t want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide.”
On September 16, 2010, President Obama once again warned that some unidentified “foreign-controlled entity” could be providing “millions of dollars” for “attack ads.” Less than one week later, he complained that “nobody knows” the identities of the individuals who support conservative groups.
On September 22, 2010, President Obama warned of groups opposing his policies “pos[ing] as non-for-profit social and welfare trade groups” and he claimed such groups were “guided by seasoned Republican political operatives” and potentially supported by some unidentified “foreign controlled entity.”
On October 14, 2010, President Obama called organizations with “benign sounding” names “a problem for democracy”; the next week he complained about individuals who “hide behind those front groups,” called such groups a “threat to our democracy,” and claimed such groups were engaged in “unsupervised” spending.
Next, consider the IRS’s actions following those statements. Not only did the IRS continue its targeting, it issued broad questionnaires that made unconstitutionally-intrusive inquiries designed to get answers to exactly the questions President Obama posed....
...One grows weary of stating the obvious, but if President Bush had declared a specific category of citizen groups a “threat to democracy” potentially run by “political operatives” or “foreign-controlled,” and the IRS launched an unprecedented campaign of targeting and intrusive questioning, the mainstream media would have been relentless not only in its independent investigations but in its calls for accountability – at the highest levels....
The Blue Model Needs Wall Street to Survive
...The cycle of dependence on Wall Street usually follows a pattern. Public employee union leaders demand generous benefits as the price of their political support; politicians promise things like higher future pay and early retirement. Wary of public backlash, however, these officials don’t advocate cutting services or raising taxes to cover the shiny new pay packages they have established. The discrepancy between benefits promised and funds available becomes unbridgeable. Desperate to keep from falling too far behind, pension funds turn to the risky side of Wall Street, which gets rich off the panic. All too often, the Wall Street solution to blue model imperatives leaves taxpayers and pensioners stranded.
Fingers have been pointed at both sides. A piece in Rolling Stone last month argued that slimy “Gordon Gekko wanna-be[s]” have basically been stealing money in the dead of night from honest, hard-working pensioners. A piece from AEI this week shot back that pension funds are forced to approach Wall Street hat in hand by the self-serving politicians who make unaffordable promises in the first place....
...The cycle of dependence on Wall Street usually follows a pattern. Public employee union leaders demand generous benefits as the price of their political support; politicians promise things like higher future pay and early retirement. Wary of public backlash, however, these officials don’t advocate cutting services or raising taxes to cover the shiny new pay packages they have established. The discrepancy between benefits promised and funds available becomes unbridgeable. Desperate to keep from falling too far behind, pension funds turn to the risky side of Wall Street, which gets rich off the panic. All too often, the Wall Street solution to blue model imperatives leaves taxpayers and pensioners stranded.
Fingers have been pointed at both sides. A piece in Rolling Stone last month argued that slimy “Gordon Gekko wanna-be[s]” have basically been stealing money in the dead of night from honest, hard-working pensioners. A piece from AEI this week shot back that pension funds are forced to approach Wall Street hat in hand by the self-serving politicians who make unaffordable promises in the first place....
Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is executive at company that built Obamacare website
First Lady Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the contract to build the failed Obamacare website.
Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company....
The ACA’s Million Dollar Question: Will Enough People Sign Up?
...There’s another self-inflicted wound that could prove fatal. Since the ACA allows young people to stay on their parents’ health plans until they turn 26, the law dramatically shrinks the pool of healthy young customers whose overpayments on insurance are supposed to subsidize the middle aged beneficiaries of the law....
ACA Health Exchange Contractors Have History of Security Failures
..."Two of the contractors involved in developing online health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, which have been plagued by technical problems since launching this month, have had serious data security issues in the past. Quality Software Services developed the software for the Affordable Care Act's data services hub and oversaw development of tools to connect the hub to the databases of other federal agencies. Last June, an audit report by the Health and Human Services Inspector General found QSS failed to adhere to federal security standards (PDF) in delivering IT testing services for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Additionally, services firm Serco suffered a major security breach in 2012. Serco won a five-year $1.3 billion contract to process and verify paper applications for health insurance via the online exchanges. Serco's breach exposed sensitive data of more than 123,000 members of the Thrift Savings Plan, a $313 billion retirement plan run by the U.S. Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. The exposed data included full names, addresses, Social Security Numbers, financial account information, and bank routing information."...
If You Like Your Health Plan, You Probably Shouldn't Be Able To Keep It
...But here's the thing: One of the key reasons that America needed health care reform is that a lot of existing health plans were bad. There are a lot of health plans that Americans shouldn't be able to keep....
...If anything, the biggest problem with the ACA is that too many people are getting to keep their existing health plans. Our system of employer-based coverage distorts both the health care and labor markets, which is why health policy wonks left, right and center tend to want to move away from it....
..."If you like your health plan, you can keep it" was never a reasonable promise; health reform that addressed America's combination of high cost, middling outcomes and spotty coverage was necessarily going to have to change a lot of people's health plans. So yes, that statement is proving false — and it's a good thing.
HealthCare.gov pricing feature can be off the mark
...Industry analysts point to how the website lumps people only into two broad categories: "49 or under" and "50 or older."
Jonathan Wu is co-founder of Valuepenguin.com, a consumer finance website focusing on the impact of health care reform. His company has built a tool that provides quotes for plans on the federal exchange. He said it's "incredibly misleading for people that are trying to get a sense of what they're paying."
Prices for everyone in the 49-or-under group are based on what a 27-year-old would pay. In the 50-or-older group, prices are based on what a 50-year-old would pay.
CBS News ran the numbers for a 48-year-old in Charlotte, N.C., ineligible for subsidies. According to HealthCare.gov, she would pay $231 a month, but the actual plan on Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina's website costs $360, more than 50 percent higher. The difference: Blue Cross and Blue Shield requests your birthday before providing more accurate estimates.
The numbers for older Americans are even more striking. A 62-year-old in Charlotte looking for the same basic plan would get a price estimate on the government website of $394. The actual price is $634. ...
Dropped Coverage: One Cancer-Surviving Doctor’s Story in the Age of Obamacare
...Dr. Shaun Carpenter, 41, is a board certified emergency physician in the New Orleans area. He was part of a rescue team that helped evacuate critical patients during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Dr. Carpenter is a family man, father of three children with another on the way. He also owns his own business, a private medical practice, and has several patents pending for wound-healing products. Carpenter says that hospitals tend to treat ER physicians as independent contractors, so he was not allowed to join his hospital’s group health insurance policy. He and his family elected to obtain coverage through his wife’s employer. Shaun Carpenter is also a patient. A few years ago he was diagnosed with a serious blood disorder called hereditary hemochromatosis....
...Obamacare, aka the Affordable Care Act, came packaged with lofty promises. President Obama said his law was supposed to make denials of insurance based on pre-existing conditions a thing of the past. President Obama specifically promised that Americans would no longer be denied coverage based on pre-existing conditions, along with promising that if we like our doctors and current health care plans, we can keep them.
So imagine Dr. Carpenter’s shock when he received the news that he and his family were losing their health insurance at the end of this year.
“I was at my mother-in-law’s birthday party last week when she asked me, ‘What are you gonna do about health insurance?’” She told him that his wife’s employer is sending out letters informing its staff that it is dropping their Blue Cross Blue Shield health plans.
Carpenter liked the Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance plan that he and his family were on. It was stable and provided excellent care for many years through several illnesses.
His wife’s employer has dropped these plans due to Obamacare. “Yes, absolutely,” Carpenter says....
First Lady Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the contract to build the failed Obamacare website.
Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company....
The ACA’s Million Dollar Question: Will Enough People Sign Up?
...There’s another self-inflicted wound that could prove fatal. Since the ACA allows young people to stay on their parents’ health plans until they turn 26, the law dramatically shrinks the pool of healthy young customers whose overpayments on insurance are supposed to subsidize the middle aged beneficiaries of the law....
ACA Health Exchange Contractors Have History of Security Failures
..."Two of the contractors involved in developing online health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, which have been plagued by technical problems since launching this month, have had serious data security issues in the past. Quality Software Services developed the software for the Affordable Care Act's data services hub and oversaw development of tools to connect the hub to the databases of other federal agencies. Last June, an audit report by the Health and Human Services Inspector General found QSS failed to adhere to federal security standards (PDF) in delivering IT testing services for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Additionally, services firm Serco suffered a major security breach in 2012. Serco won a five-year $1.3 billion contract to process and verify paper applications for health insurance via the online exchanges. Serco's breach exposed sensitive data of more than 123,000 members of the Thrift Savings Plan, a $313 billion retirement plan run by the U.S. Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. The exposed data included full names, addresses, Social Security Numbers, financial account information, and bank routing information."...
If You Like Your Health Plan, You Probably Shouldn't Be Able To Keep It
...But here's the thing: One of the key reasons that America needed health care reform is that a lot of existing health plans were bad. There are a lot of health plans that Americans shouldn't be able to keep....
...If anything, the biggest problem with the ACA is that too many people are getting to keep their existing health plans. Our system of employer-based coverage distorts both the health care and labor markets, which is why health policy wonks left, right and center tend to want to move away from it....
..."If you like your health plan, you can keep it" was never a reasonable promise; health reform that addressed America's combination of high cost, middling outcomes and spotty coverage was necessarily going to have to change a lot of people's health plans. So yes, that statement is proving false — and it's a good thing.
HealthCare.gov pricing feature can be off the mark
...Industry analysts point to how the website lumps people only into two broad categories: "49 or under" and "50 or older."
Jonathan Wu is co-founder of Valuepenguin.com, a consumer finance website focusing on the impact of health care reform. His company has built a tool that provides quotes for plans on the federal exchange. He said it's "incredibly misleading for people that are trying to get a sense of what they're paying."
Prices for everyone in the 49-or-under group are based on what a 27-year-old would pay. In the 50-or-older group, prices are based on what a 50-year-old would pay.
CBS News ran the numbers for a 48-year-old in Charlotte, N.C., ineligible for subsidies. According to HealthCare.gov, she would pay $231 a month, but the actual plan on Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina's website costs $360, more than 50 percent higher. The difference: Blue Cross and Blue Shield requests your birthday before providing more accurate estimates.
The numbers for older Americans are even more striking. A 62-year-old in Charlotte looking for the same basic plan would get a price estimate on the government website of $394. The actual price is $634. ...
Dropped Coverage: One Cancer-Surviving Doctor’s Story in the Age of Obamacare
...Dr. Shaun Carpenter, 41, is a board certified emergency physician in the New Orleans area. He was part of a rescue team that helped evacuate critical patients during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Dr. Carpenter is a family man, father of three children with another on the way. He also owns his own business, a private medical practice, and has several patents pending for wound-healing products. Carpenter says that hospitals tend to treat ER physicians as independent contractors, so he was not allowed to join his hospital’s group health insurance policy. He and his family elected to obtain coverage through his wife’s employer. Shaun Carpenter is also a patient. A few years ago he was diagnosed with a serious blood disorder called hereditary hemochromatosis....
...Obamacare, aka the Affordable Care Act, came packaged with lofty promises. President Obama said his law was supposed to make denials of insurance based on pre-existing conditions a thing of the past. President Obama specifically promised that Americans would no longer be denied coverage based on pre-existing conditions, along with promising that if we like our doctors and current health care plans, we can keep them.
So imagine Dr. Carpenter’s shock when he received the news that he and his family were losing their health insurance at the end of this year.
“I was at my mother-in-law’s birthday party last week when she asked me, ‘What are you gonna do about health insurance?’” She told him that his wife’s employer is sending out letters informing its staff that it is dropping their Blue Cross Blue Shield health plans.
Carpenter liked the Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance plan that he and his family were on. It was stable and provided excellent care for many years through several illnesses.
His wife’s employer has dropped these plans due to Obamacare. “Yes, absolutely,” Carpenter says....
Philadelphia city council wants socialism taught in schools
Philadelphia city council members have approved a resolution that calls for socialist historian Howard Zinn’s book “A People’s History of the United States” to be taught in public high schools.
The resolution was backed by council members Jim Kenny and Jannie Blackwell, who believe that Zinn’s far-left socialist vision of American history is currently missing from high school textbooks....
...Zinn was an apologist for communist dictators like Fidel Castro, who has brutalized and oppressed the people of Cuba for decades.
Like Zinn, Councilwoman Blackwell defended the Castro regime.
“Castro did not do everything wrong, or he would not have lasted so long,” she said in a statement to CBS....
Tucson school district just can’t quit racist curriculum
The Tucson Independent School District just can’t quit teaching racism.
In 2010, the state of Arizona passed a law aimed squarely against coursework endorsing the overthrow of the United States government and stoking resentment toward races or classes of people. In a lawsuit concerning that law, at least two federal judges specifically ruled that Tucson school district’s Mexican-American studies program promoted “racial resentment against ‘Whites.’”
Now, Tucson’s school board has voted to bring back the very books that teachers used in the judicially smacked-down Mexican-American studies program, reports the Arizona Daily Star....
Philadelphia city council members have approved a resolution that calls for socialist historian Howard Zinn’s book “A People’s History of the United States” to be taught in public high schools.
The resolution was backed by council members Jim Kenny and Jannie Blackwell, who believe that Zinn’s far-left socialist vision of American history is currently missing from high school textbooks....
...Zinn was an apologist for communist dictators like Fidel Castro, who has brutalized and oppressed the people of Cuba for decades.
Like Zinn, Councilwoman Blackwell defended the Castro regime.
“Castro did not do everything wrong, or he would not have lasted so long,” she said in a statement to CBS....
Tucson school district just can’t quit racist curriculum
The Tucson Independent School District just can’t quit teaching racism.
In 2010, the state of Arizona passed a law aimed squarely against coursework endorsing the overthrow of the United States government and stoking resentment toward races or classes of people. In a lawsuit concerning that law, at least two federal judges specifically ruled that Tucson school district’s Mexican-American studies program promoted “racial resentment against ‘Whites.’”
Now, Tucson’s school board has voted to bring back the very books that teachers used in the judicially smacked-down Mexican-American studies program, reports the Arizona Daily Star....
Obamacare's Medicaid Problem
...As the Obamacare website struggles, the administration is emphasizing state-level success. President Obama said Monday, "There's great demand at the state level as well. Because there are a bunch of states running their own marketplaces."...
...But left unsaid in the president's remarks: the newly insured in some of those states are overwhelmingly low-income people signing up for Medicaid at no cost to them.
Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, said, "We're seeing a huge spike in terms of Medicaid enrollments."
He says the numbers have surprised him and state officials.
CBS News has confirmed that in Washington, of the more than 35,000 people newly enrolled, 87 percent signed up for Medicaid. In Kentucky, out of 26,000 new enrollments, 82 percent are in Medicaid. And in New York, of 37,000 enrollments, Medicaid accounts for 64 percent. And there are similar stories across the country in nearly half of the states that run their own exchanges....
Now She Tells Us: Sebelius Says Obamacare's Exchange Website Needed Six Years of Development, Instead Of Two
...For people who have been following the story closely, it’s been clear for months that Obamacare’s exchanges were not ready to go live on October 1, and that their implementation needed to be delayed. The Obama administration insisted otherwise, claiming that everything was hunky-dory, and that reports to the contrary were simply the work of partisan saboteurs. But earlier this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted the truth. “We didn’t have enough testing…for a very complicated project,” she conceded to the Wall Street Journal. The exchanges needed five years of construction and one year of testing, and instead had only “two years [of construction] and almost no testing.” That leaves us with an obvious question: Why, then, did Sebelius insist on rolling out the exchanges four years ahead of time?...
...The answer may be that she was under direct instructions from the White House. According to a letter sent to White House officials by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, CGI Federal—one of the key contractors involved in the project—said that officials with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the government agency tasked with running the exchanges, “constantly mentioned the ‘White House’ when discussing matters with CGI. For example, CGI officials told Committee staff that the ability to shop for health insurance without registering for an account—a central design feature of the health insurance exchange—was removed ‘in late August or early September.’”
Back in January, CGI representatives told the committee that they didn’t think that “the website would be operational before the October 1, 2013 deadline” because there was a “lack of coordination and an abundance of confusion between stakeholders involved in setting up the website,” and felt that they needed “more direction on ‘budgetary and project governance.’”...
...Incredibly, by September 26—five days before the website was set to launch—there had not been a single test as to whether or not an individual could “complete the [enrollment] process from beginning to end: create an account, determine eligibility for federal subsidies and sign up for a health insurance plan, according to two sources familiar with the project.”
They finally did test the website after September 26. “It crashed after a simulation in which just a few hundred people tried to log on simultaneously.” This is a website, remember, that is supposed to eventually serve more than 15 million people....
...As the Obamacare website struggles, the administration is emphasizing state-level success. President Obama said Monday, "There's great demand at the state level as well. Because there are a bunch of states running their own marketplaces."...
...But left unsaid in the president's remarks: the newly insured in some of those states are overwhelmingly low-income people signing up for Medicaid at no cost to them.
Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, said, "We're seeing a huge spike in terms of Medicaid enrollments."
He says the numbers have surprised him and state officials.
CBS News has confirmed that in Washington, of the more than 35,000 people newly enrolled, 87 percent signed up for Medicaid. In Kentucky, out of 26,000 new enrollments, 82 percent are in Medicaid. And in New York, of 37,000 enrollments, Medicaid accounts for 64 percent. And there are similar stories across the country in nearly half of the states that run their own exchanges....
Now She Tells Us: Sebelius Says Obamacare's Exchange Website Needed Six Years of Development, Instead Of Two
...For people who have been following the story closely, it’s been clear for months that Obamacare’s exchanges were not ready to go live on October 1, and that their implementation needed to be delayed. The Obama administration insisted otherwise, claiming that everything was hunky-dory, and that reports to the contrary were simply the work of partisan saboteurs. But earlier this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted the truth. “We didn’t have enough testing…for a very complicated project,” she conceded to the Wall Street Journal. The exchanges needed five years of construction and one year of testing, and instead had only “two years [of construction] and almost no testing.” That leaves us with an obvious question: Why, then, did Sebelius insist on rolling out the exchanges four years ahead of time?...
...The answer may be that she was under direct instructions from the White House. According to a letter sent to White House officials by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, CGI Federal—one of the key contractors involved in the project—said that officials with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the government agency tasked with running the exchanges, “constantly mentioned the ‘White House’ when discussing matters with CGI. For example, CGI officials told Committee staff that the ability to shop for health insurance without registering for an account—a central design feature of the health insurance exchange—was removed ‘in late August or early September.’”
Back in January, CGI representatives told the committee that they didn’t think that “the website would be operational before the October 1, 2013 deadline” because there was a “lack of coordination and an abundance of confusion between stakeholders involved in setting up the website,” and felt that they needed “more direction on ‘budgetary and project governance.’”...
...Incredibly, by September 26—five days before the website was set to launch—there had not been a single test as to whether or not an individual could “complete the [enrollment] process from beginning to end: create an account, determine eligibility for federal subsidies and sign up for a health insurance plan, according to two sources familiar with the project.”
They finally did test the website after September 26. “It crashed after a simulation in which just a few hundred people tried to log on simultaneously.” This is a website, remember, that is supposed to eventually serve more than 15 million people....
“Ecuador Judge Testifies He Was Bribed to Rule Against Chevron”
...“The judge, Alberto Guerra, took the stand … in Manhattan federal court during the trial in a racketeering suit in which Chevron alleged that the verdict in Ecuador was procured through fraud. Guerra has said in a declaration filed with the court that he was paid thousands of dollars by lawyers for the plaintiffs to steer the case in their favor.”...
...“The judge, Alberto Guerra, took the stand … in Manhattan federal court during the trial in a racketeering suit in which Chevron alleged that the verdict in Ecuador was procured through fraud. Guerra has said in a declaration filed with the court that he was paid thousands of dollars by lawyers for the plaintiffs to steer the case in their favor.”...
As Europe erupts over US spying, NSA chief says government must stop media
...First, note how leaders such as Chancellor Angela Merkel reacted with basic indifference when it was revealed months ago that the NSA was bulk-spying on all German citizens, but suddenly found her indignation only when it turned out that she personally was also targeted. That reaction gives potent insight into the true mindset of many western leaders....
...Speaking of an inability to maintain claims with a straight face, how are American and British officials, in light of their conduct in all of this, going to maintain the pretense that they are defenders of press freedoms and are in a position to lecture and condemn others for violations? In what might be the most explicit hostility to such freedoms yet – as well as the most unmistakable evidence of rampant panic – the NSA's director, General Keith Alexander, actually demanded Thursday that the reporting being done by newspapers around the world on this secret surveillance system be halted (Techdirt has the full video here):
The head of the embattled National Security Agency, Gen Keith Alexander, is accusing journalists of "selling" his agency's documents and is calling for an end to the steady stream of public disclosures of secrets snatched by former contractor Edward Snowden.
"I think it's wrong that that newspaper reporters have all these documents, the 50,000 – whatever they have and are selling them and giving them out as if these – you know it just doesn't make sense," Alexander said in an interview with the Defense Department's "Armed With Science" blog.
"We ought to come up with a way of stopping it. I don't know how to do that. That's more of the courts and the policy-makers but, from my perspective, it's wrong to allow this to go on," the NSA director declared....
...First, note how leaders such as Chancellor Angela Merkel reacted with basic indifference when it was revealed months ago that the NSA was bulk-spying on all German citizens, but suddenly found her indignation only when it turned out that she personally was also targeted. That reaction gives potent insight into the true mindset of many western leaders....
...Speaking of an inability to maintain claims with a straight face, how are American and British officials, in light of their conduct in all of this, going to maintain the pretense that they are defenders of press freedoms and are in a position to lecture and condemn others for violations? In what might be the most explicit hostility to such freedoms yet – as well as the most unmistakable evidence of rampant panic – the NSA's director, General Keith Alexander, actually demanded Thursday that the reporting being done by newspapers around the world on this secret surveillance system be halted (Techdirt has the full video here):
The head of the embattled National Security Agency, Gen Keith Alexander, is accusing journalists of "selling" his agency's documents and is calling for an end to the steady stream of public disclosures of secrets snatched by former contractor Edward Snowden.
"I think it's wrong that that newspaper reporters have all these documents, the 50,000 – whatever they have and are selling them and giving them out as if these – you know it just doesn't make sense," Alexander said in an interview with the Defense Department's "Armed With Science" blog.
"We ought to come up with a way of stopping it. I don't know how to do that. That's more of the courts and the policy-makers but, from my perspective, it's wrong to allow this to go on," the NSA director declared....
Mad As Hell About ObamaCare?
In 1989, angry seniors forced the repeal of a costly new Medicare benefit just a year after it passed. It's time for the millions now being savaged by ObamaCare to rise up and do the same.
When he was selling ObamaCare to the nation, President Obama said: "We will keep this promise to the American people. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away."
Across the country, millions of Americans are now discovering this was an expensive lie....
...The Democrats' response is: Tough luck. Nothing can be done since ObamaCare is "the law of the land." Or they try to argue that these people should all be grateful, since they're getting "more robust" coverage....
Of course Healthcare.gov calls the liberal project into question
...Central planning fails, and spontaneous order arises, because central planners never have enough knowledge, never have enough insight. Meanwhile, because humans are limited in their use and transmission of information, those humans who are closest to the thing they’re doing will have a much better understanding and be able to use these resources much more effectively. And, again, because humans are dumb, we find that decentralized means of aggregating information (whether commodity markets or Wikipedia) actually work much much better than centralized means, and are very precious. ...
...But it’s worth it for just a minute to take off our cultural blinders and note how shocking to intuition and common sense evolution by natural selection really is. When a Creationist says “How could something as intricate and complex as an eye have evolved?” our first instinct is to get angry because we might be educated monkeys but we’re still monkeys, but we really should appreciate how, on its face, it really seems absurd that you could postulate the evolution of an eye through a totally unguided, bottom-up process. How much more intuitive, how in fact extremely compelling is the idea that something as complex, as awe-inspiring, as intricate, as glorious as an eye, or a tree, or a flower, or a hummingbird just has to be the direct product of an intelligence....
...As Feynman said, “science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”, and yet most people today believe that science is the belief in the knowledge of experts. ...
...The point isn’t that a well-run DMV is a physical impossibility. The point is that if you assume a well-run DMV as a crucial part of your plan, then you are basically rowing against the laws of history and human nature. You are raising a middle finger to God in an Old Testament story where God routinely smites people who tell him to f off. But hey, you might get lucky! But “This extremely unlikely thing that basically only ever happens intermittently and in very specific circumstances just needs to happen for this extremely ambitious and far-reaching initiative to work” is a very very poor rationale for public policy. And yet it’s the rationale we always employ! We don’t put it that way of course, least of all to ourselves. ...
...As Yuval Levin pointed out, Healthcare.gov is not a bad website selling a good product, Healthcare.gov is the product. There is now a non-trivial chance, acknowledged even by liberals now, that Healthcare.gov’s malfunctions could put the entire American individual insurance market on a death spiral. Whoops. If Healthcare.gov doesn’t work, all of Obamacare could implode, and with it the US healthcare system. Whoops. The overwhelming record of history shows that websites such as these are extremely extremely hard to pull off (and if you think that’s hindsight talking, talk to anyone involved in large-scale IT projects, they could’ve told you). The point isn’t that it’s impossible for any government to make a website that works. The point is that the kind of people who are so confident in their ability to make a good website that it’s a crucial part of their plan against all good judgement should not be trusted with the levers of public policy, because they are dangerously delusional. And we have a word for that kind of people, and that word is “liberal.” A prerequisite of being a liberal is having a faith in the possibility of planning that, when put together with the evidence of monkeyness, is exposed as a delusion. A highly understandable, a highly natural, delusion, precisely because our monkeyness makes us delusional. But a delusion nonetheless....
...The Manhattan Project and the Apollo Project exhibited those traits. First, the definition of success was abundantly clear. Make a bomb make a really big boom. Put a man on the Moon and return him safely. (Compare with, say, education and healthcare, where it is quite literally impossible to define success adequately.) Second of all, the possibility of experimentation was there. Really really smart people were taken and written blank checks. (Note, again, how unlike the normal operation of government this is.) Finally, there was enough political will that failure was taken in strides. When some of the Apollo rockets blew up, Congress didn’t all of a sudden decide that NASA would be run by lawyers, because everyone was scared shitless by the Soviets’ early lead in space. Again, contrast this with the mess that NASA is today....
More Americans In 3 States Have Had Their Insurance Canceled Under ObamaCare Than Have Filed An Exchange Account In All 50
This week the reality of the ObamaCare roll-out appeared in a set of news stories that serve as an ironic juxtaposition. Over 500,000 individuals have seen their insurance policies cancelled in just 3 states. In all 50 states, only 476,000 applications have been “filed” in an exchange. (Even though we are still learning the true definition of “filed.”)...
In 1989, angry seniors forced the repeal of a costly new Medicare benefit just a year after it passed. It's time for the millions now being savaged by ObamaCare to rise up and do the same.
When he was selling ObamaCare to the nation, President Obama said: "We will keep this promise to the American people. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away."
Across the country, millions of Americans are now discovering this was an expensive lie....
...The Democrats' response is: Tough luck. Nothing can be done since ObamaCare is "the law of the land." Or they try to argue that these people should all be grateful, since they're getting "more robust" coverage....
Of course Healthcare.gov calls the liberal project into question
...Central planning fails, and spontaneous order arises, because central planners never have enough knowledge, never have enough insight. Meanwhile, because humans are limited in their use and transmission of information, those humans who are closest to the thing they’re doing will have a much better understanding and be able to use these resources much more effectively. And, again, because humans are dumb, we find that decentralized means of aggregating information (whether commodity markets or Wikipedia) actually work much much better than centralized means, and are very precious. ...
...But it’s worth it for just a minute to take off our cultural blinders and note how shocking to intuition and common sense evolution by natural selection really is. When a Creationist says “How could something as intricate and complex as an eye have evolved?” our first instinct is to get angry because we might be educated monkeys but we’re still monkeys, but we really should appreciate how, on its face, it really seems absurd that you could postulate the evolution of an eye through a totally unguided, bottom-up process. How much more intuitive, how in fact extremely compelling is the idea that something as complex, as awe-inspiring, as intricate, as glorious as an eye, or a tree, or a flower, or a hummingbird just has to be the direct product of an intelligence....
...As Feynman said, “science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”, and yet most people today believe that science is the belief in the knowledge of experts. ...
...The point isn’t that a well-run DMV is a physical impossibility. The point is that if you assume a well-run DMV as a crucial part of your plan, then you are basically rowing against the laws of history and human nature. You are raising a middle finger to God in an Old Testament story where God routinely smites people who tell him to f off. But hey, you might get lucky! But “This extremely unlikely thing that basically only ever happens intermittently and in very specific circumstances just needs to happen for this extremely ambitious and far-reaching initiative to work” is a very very poor rationale for public policy. And yet it’s the rationale we always employ! We don’t put it that way of course, least of all to ourselves. ...
...As Yuval Levin pointed out, Healthcare.gov is not a bad website selling a good product, Healthcare.gov is the product. There is now a non-trivial chance, acknowledged even by liberals now, that Healthcare.gov’s malfunctions could put the entire American individual insurance market on a death spiral. Whoops. If Healthcare.gov doesn’t work, all of Obamacare could implode, and with it the US healthcare system. Whoops. The overwhelming record of history shows that websites such as these are extremely extremely hard to pull off (and if you think that’s hindsight talking, talk to anyone involved in large-scale IT projects, they could’ve told you). The point isn’t that it’s impossible for any government to make a website that works. The point is that the kind of people who are so confident in their ability to make a good website that it’s a crucial part of their plan against all good judgement should not be trusted with the levers of public policy, because they are dangerously delusional. And we have a word for that kind of people, and that word is “liberal.” A prerequisite of being a liberal is having a faith in the possibility of planning that, when put together with the evidence of monkeyness, is exposed as a delusion. A highly understandable, a highly natural, delusion, precisely because our monkeyness makes us delusional. But a delusion nonetheless....
...The Manhattan Project and the Apollo Project exhibited those traits. First, the definition of success was abundantly clear. Make a bomb make a really big boom. Put a man on the Moon and return him safely. (Compare with, say, education and healthcare, where it is quite literally impossible to define success adequately.) Second of all, the possibility of experimentation was there. Really really smart people were taken and written blank checks. (Note, again, how unlike the normal operation of government this is.) Finally, there was enough political will that failure was taken in strides. When some of the Apollo rockets blew up, Congress didn’t all of a sudden decide that NASA would be run by lawyers, because everyone was scared shitless by the Soviets’ early lead in space. Again, contrast this with the mess that NASA is today....
More Americans In 3 States Have Had Their Insurance Canceled Under ObamaCare Than Have Filed An Exchange Account In All 50
This week the reality of the ObamaCare roll-out appeared in a set of news stories that serve as an ironic juxtaposition. Over 500,000 individuals have seen their insurance policies cancelled in just 3 states. In all 50 states, only 476,000 applications have been “filed” in an exchange. (Even though we are still learning the true definition of “filed.”)...
The free market is not a creed or an ideology that political conservatives, libertarians, and Ayn Rand acolytes want Americans to take on faith. The free market is simply a measurement. The free market tells us what people are willing to pay for a given thing at a given moment. That's all the free market does. The free market is a bathroom scale. We may not like what we see when we step on the bathroom scale, but we can't pass a law making ourselves weigh 165. Liberals and leftists think we can.
-—P. J. O'Rourke
Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
-- Bastiat
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.
-- Margaret Thatcher
Actually, it is not strange that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the human race was regarded as inert matter, ready to receive everything — form, face, energy, movement, life — from a great prince or a great legislator or a great genius. These centuries were nourished on the study of antiquity. And antiquity presents everywhere — in Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome — the spectacle of a few men molding mankind according to their whims, thanks to the prestige of force and of fraud.
--Bastiat
-—P. J. O'Rourke
Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
-- Bastiat
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.
-- Margaret Thatcher
Actually, it is not strange that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the human race was regarded as inert matter, ready to receive everything — form, face, energy, movement, life — from a great prince or a great legislator or a great genius. These centuries were nourished on the study of antiquity. And antiquity presents everywhere — in Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome — the spectacle of a few men molding mankind according to their whims, thanks to the prestige of force and of fraud.
--Bastiat
NYT: Obamacare Disproportionately Hurts Poor, Rural Americans
...As technical failures bedevil the rollout of President Obama’s health care law, evidence is emerging that one of the program’s loftiest goals — to encourage competition among insurers in an effort to keep costs low — is falling short for many rural Americans.
While competition is intense in many populous regions, rural areas and small towns have far fewer carriers offering plans in the law’s online exchanges. Those places, many of them poor, are being asked to choose from some of the highest-priced plans in the 34 states where the federal government is running the health insurance marketplaces, a review by The New York Times has found.
Of the roughly 2,500 counties served by the federal exchanges, more than half, or 58 percent, have plans offered by just one or two insurance carriers, according to an analysis by The Times of county-level data provided by the Department of Health and Human Services. In about 530 counties, only a single insurer is participating....
...As technical failures bedevil the rollout of President Obama’s health care law, evidence is emerging that one of the program’s loftiest goals — to encourage competition among insurers in an effort to keep costs low — is falling short for many rural Americans.
While competition is intense in many populous regions, rural areas and small towns have far fewer carriers offering plans in the law’s online exchanges. Those places, many of them poor, are being asked to choose from some of the highest-priced plans in the 34 states where the federal government is running the health insurance marketplaces, a review by The New York Times has found.
Of the roughly 2,500 counties served by the federal exchanges, more than half, or 58 percent, have plans offered by just one or two insurance carriers, according to an analysis by The Times of county-level data provided by the Department of Health and Human Services. In about 530 counties, only a single insurer is participating....
Obamacare's Next Bout: More Legal Challenges
...On October 31, another federal district court in Richmond, Virginia, is scheduled to consider a similar motion in a case brought by four individual plaintiffs residing in that state. They claim that the IRS rule reduces their out-of-pocket cost of health coverage and effectively subjects them to the ACA’s individual mandate either to purchase more costly and comprehensive insurance than they would otherwise want, or to pay a penalty. The tax subsidies authorized by the IRS rule make such coverage through federal exchanges “affordable” and thereby subject to the individual mandate.
A related case in federal district court in Oklahoma first raised the IRS rule and federal exchange tax credits issue back in September 2012. On August 12, 2013, Judge Ronald White ruled that the state of Oklahoma’s legal challenge could move forward (after dismissing two of the five counts in the state’s amended complaint). Upcoming motions for summary judgment by either the state plaintiff or the federal government defendants have not yet been scheduled for a hearing, but most likely it will be before the end of this year....
Unions turn on Obamacare, but don't call them hypocrites
...In July, the presidents of the Teamsters, UFCWU and UNITE-HERE (combined membership: 2.9 million) wrote a letter to congressional Democrats saying that Obamacare will “destroy the very health and well-being of our members along with millions of other working Americans.”
“We have a problem,” they concluded. “You need to fix it.”...
...To which Terry O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers International Union, said he wanted the law “fixed, fixed, fixed” and, if not, “then I believe it needs to be repealed.”...
Obamacare's next shoe to drop: People buying coverage on the exchanges may owe more money than they're being told
...Problems with the way both categories of subsidies are being calculated will saddle consumers with unexpected costs.
On that first category of subsidies — “tax credits” meant to offset the premiums — it’s now clear that a lot of the current IT problems stem directly from the failure of Healthcare.gov to reliably calculate these payments.
Figuring out how much premium subsidy an individual or family is entitled to requires that the Healthcare.gov “hub” communicate across servers housed at state Medicaid agencies, the Internal Revenue Service, Health and Human Services, and the Department of Homeland Security (among other federal agencies). That necessary data sharing has proven too much for the site’s architecture to handle.
This is what’s causing so many applications to get kicked out — but what about those applications that make it all the way through? At least half a dozen states have already said publicly that their systems are coming up with the wrong calculations.
It’s a sure bet that some consumers who make it through the website’s maze, and enroll, will also have their subsidies calculated incorrectly....
Update: Judge Refuses to Dismiss Affordable Care Act Lawsuit
... Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, in which Competitive Enterprise Institute attorneys are assisting in coordinating, include a group of individuals and small business owners in six states who have sued over an IRS regulation imposed under the auspices of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that will subject them to a series of penalties and force them to cut back employees’ hours, even though they are located in states that have refused to set up their own insurance exchanges. The complaint and preliminary injunction filings can be viewed at cei.org/halbig-v-sebelius.
The ACA authorizes health insurance subsidies to qualifying individuals in states that created their own healthcare exchanges. These subsidies trigger the employer mandate – a $2,000-per-employee penalty – and expose more people to the individual mandate. But without authorization from Congress, the IRS vastly expanded those subsidies to cover the 34 “refusenik” states that have decided not to set up such exchanges. The ACA plainly says businesses in these nonparticipating states should be free of the employer mandate, and the scope of the individual mandate should be reduced as well. The IRS rule expands both mandates and deprives states of the power given to them by Congress to exempt their residents and businesses from these requirements.
“The Obamacare statute is vast enough as it is,” said Sam Kazman, general counsel for CEI. “The IRS has no right to expand that statute even more to encompass states that have chosen to opt out of the insurance exchange program.”...
...On October 31, another federal district court in Richmond, Virginia, is scheduled to consider a similar motion in a case brought by four individual plaintiffs residing in that state. They claim that the IRS rule reduces their out-of-pocket cost of health coverage and effectively subjects them to the ACA’s individual mandate either to purchase more costly and comprehensive insurance than they would otherwise want, or to pay a penalty. The tax subsidies authorized by the IRS rule make such coverage through federal exchanges “affordable” and thereby subject to the individual mandate.
A related case in federal district court in Oklahoma first raised the IRS rule and federal exchange tax credits issue back in September 2012. On August 12, 2013, Judge Ronald White ruled that the state of Oklahoma’s legal challenge could move forward (after dismissing two of the five counts in the state’s amended complaint). Upcoming motions for summary judgment by either the state plaintiff or the federal government defendants have not yet been scheduled for a hearing, but most likely it will be before the end of this year....
Unions turn on Obamacare, but don't call them hypocrites
...In July, the presidents of the Teamsters, UFCWU and UNITE-HERE (combined membership: 2.9 million) wrote a letter to congressional Democrats saying that Obamacare will “destroy the very health and well-being of our members along with millions of other working Americans.”
“We have a problem,” they concluded. “You need to fix it.”...
...To which Terry O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers International Union, said he wanted the law “fixed, fixed, fixed” and, if not, “then I believe it needs to be repealed.”...
Obamacare's next shoe to drop: People buying coverage on the exchanges may owe more money than they're being told
...Problems with the way both categories of subsidies are being calculated will saddle consumers with unexpected costs.
On that first category of subsidies — “tax credits” meant to offset the premiums — it’s now clear that a lot of the current IT problems stem directly from the failure of Healthcare.gov to reliably calculate these payments.
Figuring out how much premium subsidy an individual or family is entitled to requires that the Healthcare.gov “hub” communicate across servers housed at state Medicaid agencies, the Internal Revenue Service, Health and Human Services, and the Department of Homeland Security (among other federal agencies). That necessary data sharing has proven too much for the site’s architecture to handle.
This is what’s causing so many applications to get kicked out — but what about those applications that make it all the way through? At least half a dozen states have already said publicly that their systems are coming up with the wrong calculations.
It’s a sure bet that some consumers who make it through the website’s maze, and enroll, will also have their subsidies calculated incorrectly....
Update: Judge Refuses to Dismiss Affordable Care Act Lawsuit
... Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, in which Competitive Enterprise Institute attorneys are assisting in coordinating, include a group of individuals and small business owners in six states who have sued over an IRS regulation imposed under the auspices of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that will subject them to a series of penalties and force them to cut back employees’ hours, even though they are located in states that have refused to set up their own insurance exchanges. The complaint and preliminary injunction filings can be viewed at cei.org/halbig-v-sebelius.
The ACA authorizes health insurance subsidies to qualifying individuals in states that created their own healthcare exchanges. These subsidies trigger the employer mandate – a $2,000-per-employee penalty – and expose more people to the individual mandate. But without authorization from Congress, the IRS vastly expanded those subsidies to cover the 34 “refusenik” states that have decided not to set up such exchanges. The ACA plainly says businesses in these nonparticipating states should be free of the employer mandate, and the scope of the individual mandate should be reduced as well. The IRS rule expands both mandates and deprives states of the power given to them by Congress to exempt their residents and businesses from these requirements.
“The Obamacare statute is vast enough as it is,” said Sam Kazman, general counsel for CEI. “The IRS has no right to expand that statute even more to encompass states that have chosen to opt out of the insurance exchange program.”...
Much Bigger Than The Shutdown: Niall Ferguson's Public Flogging Of Paul Krugman
...Paul Krugman is a primary perp in the popular distillation of frenzy in our era of political economic discourse. Shame now is on him, and on his editors, for debauching contemporary journalistic standards with so much unfit to print.
Now Niall Ferguson has court-martialed Paul Krugman for intellectual high crimes and misdemeanors, administering a long overdue public flogging. Ferguson also, conveniently, has disposed of “Krugman’s plovers” … who henceforth deserve to be known by that fine diminutive, befitting their very diminutive stature....
...Paul Krugman is a primary perp in the popular distillation of frenzy in our era of political economic discourse. Shame now is on him, and on his editors, for debauching contemporary journalistic standards with so much unfit to print.
Now Niall Ferguson has court-martialed Paul Krugman for intellectual high crimes and misdemeanors, administering a long overdue public flogging. Ferguson also, conveniently, has disposed of “Krugman’s plovers” … who henceforth deserve to be known by that fine diminutive, befitting their very diminutive stature....
The Morgan Shakedown
...The bulk of the settlement is related to mortgage-backed securities issued before the 2008 financial panic. But those securities weren't simply a Morgan product. They were largely issued by Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, both of which the federal government asked J.P. Morgan to take over to help ease the crisis.
So first the feds asked the bank to do the country a favor without giving it a chance for proper due diligence. The Treasury needed quick decisions, and Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon made them in good faith. But five years later the feds are punishing the bank for having done them the favor. As Richard Parsons notes nearby, this is not going to make another CEO eager to help the Treasury in the next crisis. But more pointedly, where is the justice in such ex post facto punishment?...
...The bulk of the settlement is related to mortgage-backed securities issued before the 2008 financial panic. But those securities weren't simply a Morgan product. They were largely issued by Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, both of which the federal government asked J.P. Morgan to take over to help ease the crisis.
So first the feds asked the bank to do the country a favor without giving it a chance for proper due diligence. The Treasury needed quick decisions, and Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon made them in good faith. But five years later the feds are punishing the bank for having done them the favor. As Richard Parsons notes nearby, this is not going to make another CEO eager to help the Treasury in the next crisis. But more pointedly, where is the justice in such ex post facto punishment?...
Another Journalist Joins the Obama Administration
Former Washington Post writer Laura Blumenfeld on Monday became the latest in a long list of journalists who have joined the Obama administration when she took up an appointment in the State Department’s Middle East office....
...With her move, Blumenfeld becomes at least the 16th journalist to join the Obama administration, following shortly after Richard Stengel left his post as managing editor of Time Magazine to become the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy.
Other prominent journalists who have joined Team Obama include White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, formerly of Time, Kerry senior advisor Glen Johnson, who came from the Boston Globe, the State Department’s new assistant secretary for legislative affairs Douglas Frantz, who used to be a national security editor for The Washington Post, and Shailagh Murray, the former Post and Wall Street Journal scribe who is now the communications director for Vice President Joe Biden.
Former Washington Post writer Laura Blumenfeld on Monday became the latest in a long list of journalists who have joined the Obama administration when she took up an appointment in the State Department’s Middle East office....
...With her move, Blumenfeld becomes at least the 16th journalist to join the Obama administration, following shortly after Richard Stengel left his post as managing editor of Time Magazine to become the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy.
Other prominent journalists who have joined Team Obama include White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, formerly of Time, Kerry senior advisor Glen Johnson, who came from the Boston Globe, the State Department’s new assistant secretary for legislative affairs Douglas Frantz, who used to be a national security editor for The Washington Post, and Shailagh Murray, the former Post and Wall Street Journal scribe who is now the communications director for Vice President Joe Biden.
99% of Obamacare applications hit a wall
...Experts said that if Healthcare.gov's success rate doesn't improve within the next month or so, federal officials could face a situation in January in which relatively large numbers of people believe they have coverage starting that month, but whose enrollment applications are have not been processed.
"It could be public relations nightmare," said Nijhawan. Insurers have told his company that just "1 in 100" enrollment applicants being sent from the federal marketplace have provided sufficient, verified information....
Contractors See Weeks of Work on Health Site
...Insurers have found that the system provides them with incorrect information about some enrollees, repeatedly enrolls and cancels the enrollments of others, and simply loses the enrollments of still others. ...
Date for cataract surgery set, then cancelled
...“There’s even more demand and they’re cutting back,” he said, adding he doesn’t blame the hospital or the surgeon, opthalmologist Dr. Barry Emara. But he believes people who’ve paid taxes to the Ontario government all their lives should get prompt access to health care now they need it. “It’s like a car insurance company saying ‘We’ve had two many accidents this year, we’re cutting everyone off.’”
The problem, according to hospital CEO David Musyj, is that the number of procedures – when it comes to cataracts, hips replacements and knee replacements – is capped by the Health Ministry. And hospital officials (up until October, cataracts were done by Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital, which has since transferred cataracts to Windsor Regional) were scheduling surgeries based on the previous year’s cap of 5, 022. Then in September, they learned the cap for the fiscal year that started April 1 would be 4,849. In 2010, there were 5,412 procedures, he said. In a guest column published in today’s Windsor Star, Musyj said the cuts are due to the continuing rise in health care costs and governments looking for ways to cope with them....
Canada Has Death Panels
Last week Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that doctors could not unilaterally ignore a Toronto family’s decision to keep their near-dead husband and father on life support. In the same breath, however, the court also confirmed that, under the laws of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, a group of government-appointed adjudicators could yet overrule the family’s choice. That tribunal, not the family or the doctors, has the ultimate power to pull the plug.
In other words: Canada has death panels....
...Experts said that if Healthcare.gov's success rate doesn't improve within the next month or so, federal officials could face a situation in January in which relatively large numbers of people believe they have coverage starting that month, but whose enrollment applications are have not been processed.
"It could be public relations nightmare," said Nijhawan. Insurers have told his company that just "1 in 100" enrollment applicants being sent from the federal marketplace have provided sufficient, verified information....
Contractors See Weeks of Work on Health Site
...Insurers have found that the system provides them with incorrect information about some enrollees, repeatedly enrolls and cancels the enrollments of others, and simply loses the enrollments of still others. ...
Date for cataract surgery set, then cancelled
...“There’s even more demand and they’re cutting back,” he said, adding he doesn’t blame the hospital or the surgeon, opthalmologist Dr. Barry Emara. But he believes people who’ve paid taxes to the Ontario government all their lives should get prompt access to health care now they need it. “It’s like a car insurance company saying ‘We’ve had two many accidents this year, we’re cutting everyone off.’”
The problem, according to hospital CEO David Musyj, is that the number of procedures – when it comes to cataracts, hips replacements and knee replacements – is capped by the Health Ministry. And hospital officials (up until October, cataracts were done by Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital, which has since transferred cataracts to Windsor Regional) were scheduling surgeries based on the previous year’s cap of 5, 022. Then in September, they learned the cap for the fiscal year that started April 1 would be 4,849. In 2010, there were 5,412 procedures, he said. In a guest column published in today’s Windsor Star, Musyj said the cuts are due to the continuing rise in health care costs and governments looking for ways to cope with them....
Canada Has Death Panels
Last week Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that doctors could not unilaterally ignore a Toronto family’s decision to keep their near-dead husband and father on life support. In the same breath, however, the court also confirmed that, under the laws of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, a group of government-appointed adjudicators could yet overrule the family’s choice. That tribunal, not the family or the doctors, has the ultimate power to pull the plug.
In other words: Canada has death panels....
Some Historical Perspective
...I’m looking at the temperature record as read from this central Greenland ice core. It gives us about as close as we can come to a direct, experimental measurement of temperature at that one spot for the past 50,000 years. As far as I know, the data are not adjusted according to any fancy computer climate model or anything else like that....
...Well, no — over the period of recorded history, the average temperature was about equal to the height of the MWP. Rises not only as high, but as rapid, as the current hockey stick blade have been the rule, not the exception.
In fact for the entire Holocene — the period over which, by some odd coincidence, humanity developed agriculture and civilization — the temperature has been higher than now, and the trend over the past 4000 years is a marked decline. From this perspective, it’s the LIA that was unusual, and the current warming trend simply represents a return to the mean. If it lasts....
Chevron takes shakedown lawyers to court in RICO trial
...A former expert for the plaintiffs, David Russell, testified yesterday that he provided a $6.114 billion damages estimate based “largely on assumptions Donziger told me to use.”
“Within a year of working for Donziger, I came to learn that my cost estimate was wildly inaccurate and had no scientific data to back it up,” he said in written testimony submitted to the judge.
After drawing up his observations in the Hotel Lago, he arrived at a cost-estimate of more than $6 billion. He called the figure Wednesday a S.W.A.G., or a “Scientific Wild Ass Guess.” Two years after his falling out with Steven Donziger, who was then the lead attorney on the lawsuit representing residents of the Ecuadorean rainforest, Russell quit the case and publicly disavowed the estimate.
“While I was working on the estimate in the Hotel Lago, Donziger told me that he wanted a ‘really big number,’ and he needed a ‘really big number’ for purposes of ‘putting pressure’ on Chevron to settle the litigation,” the deposition states. “In response, I told him that I would try to come up with the biggest possible cost estimate I could.”...
...I’m looking at the temperature record as read from this central Greenland ice core. It gives us about as close as we can come to a direct, experimental measurement of temperature at that one spot for the past 50,000 years. As far as I know, the data are not adjusted according to any fancy computer climate model or anything else like that....
...Well, no — over the period of recorded history, the average temperature was about equal to the height of the MWP. Rises not only as high, but as rapid, as the current hockey stick blade have been the rule, not the exception.
In fact for the entire Holocene — the period over which, by some odd coincidence, humanity developed agriculture and civilization — the temperature has been higher than now, and the trend over the past 4000 years is a marked decline. From this perspective, it’s the LIA that was unusual, and the current warming trend simply represents a return to the mean. If it lasts....
Chevron takes shakedown lawyers to court in RICO trial
...A former expert for the plaintiffs, David Russell, testified yesterday that he provided a $6.114 billion damages estimate based “largely on assumptions Donziger told me to use.”
“Within a year of working for Donziger, I came to learn that my cost estimate was wildly inaccurate and had no scientific data to back it up,” he said in written testimony submitted to the judge.
After drawing up his observations in the Hotel Lago, he arrived at a cost-estimate of more than $6 billion. He called the figure Wednesday a S.W.A.G., or a “Scientific Wild Ass Guess.” Two years after his falling out with Steven Donziger, who was then the lead attorney on the lawsuit representing residents of the Ecuadorean rainforest, Russell quit the case and publicly disavowed the estimate.
“While I was working on the estimate in the Hotel Lago, Donziger told me that he wanted a ‘really big number,’ and he needed a ‘really big number’ for purposes of ‘putting pressure’ on Chevron to settle the litigation,” the deposition states. “In response, I told him that I would try to come up with the biggest possible cost estimate I could.”...
Bombshell: Federal judge suddenly green-lights lawsuit that could stop Obamacare in its tracks
A federal judge on Tuesday refused to dismiss a case that could fatally cripple the Obamacare health insurance law.
The Affordable Care Act forbids the federal government from enforcing the law in any state that opted out of setting up its own health care exchange, according to a group of small businesses whose lawsuit got a key hearing Monday in federal court.
The Obama administration, according to their lawsuit, has ignored that language in the law, enforcing all of its provisions even in states where the federal government is operating the insurance marketplaces on the error-plagued Healthcare.gov website.
Thirty-six states chose not to set up their exchanges, a move that effectively froze Washington, D.C. out of the authority to pay subsidies and other pot-sweeteners to convince citizens in those states to buy medical insurance.
But the IRS overstepped its authority by paying subsidies in those states anyway, say the businesses and their lawyers....
CBS: Healthcare.gov “dramatically underestimates costs” in new estimate feature
...Industry analysts, such as Jonathan Wu, point to how the website lumps people only into two broad categories: “49 or under” and “50 or older.”
Wu said it’s “incredibly misleading for people that are trying to get a sense of what they’re paying.”
Prices for everyone in the 49-or-under group are based on what a 27-year-old would pay. In the 50-or-older group, prices are based on what a 50-year-old would pay.
CBS News ran the numbers for a 48-year-old in Charlotte, N.C., ineligible for subsidies. According to HealthCare.gov, she would pay $231 a month, but the actual plan on BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina’s website costs $360, more than a 50 percent increase. The difference: BlueCross BlueShield requests your birthday before providing more accurate estimates.
The numbers for older Americans are even more striking. A 62-year-old in Charlotte looking for the same basic plan would get a price estimate on the government website of $394. The actual price is $634....
Revealed: How GPs are paid £50 bonus to put elderly on 'death lists'
GPs have been paid bonuses to put elderly patients on controversial ‘death lists’ in an attempt to save the NHS money by cutting the number of people who die in hospital.
They have been given £50 a time to draw up ‘end-of-life advanced care plans’ for patients they predict will pass away within a year.
The payments are designed to encourage doctors to start talking about death with elderly and seriously ill patients and to keep a record of where, ideally, they would like to die. ...
Thousands Of Consumers Get Insurance Cancellation Notices Due To Health Law Changes
...Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent....
'The Site Was Very Easy to Use'
..."The site was very easy to use," declares Deborah Lielasus, a self-employed quinquagenarian New Hampshire woman, who, according to the YouTube blurb, "will save hundreds of dollars each month" and "has better coverage, lower deductibles, and lower co-pays."
Did she really find the site "very easy to use"? We suppose this is subjective, and maybe she has preternatural patience or is some kind of computer savant. But National Review's Sterling Beard managed to track her down, and she "said it actually took her three days to enroll." The ad would be deceptive if it weren't so unbelievable to begin with.
There's another problem here: Lielasus is purportedly getting a free lunch: better coverage with lower premiums, deductibles and copayments than someone with her risk profile would be able to negotiate absent price controls. But people can get a free lunch only if other people pick up the tab. The technical term for those other people is "suckers." In the case of ObamaCare the suckers are young and healthy people who normally would be cheaper to insure. ...
...According to NR's Beard, however, McNaughton is not a typical 22-year-old. He has served as "the webmaster of his local Democratic party," as "the chairman of the Young Democrats of Lee County and as a delegate to the 2012 Democratic National Convention." In other words, he has a political motivation to participate in ObamaCare. If he's a sucker, he's like the sucker who joins a religious cult and gives it all his money.
But it turns out he isn't a sucker after all, for his lunch is, if not free, at least highly discounted. He says in the ad: "Getting coverage this good at this price, I'm thrilled." Beard reports McNaughton is receiving a $200-a-month subsidy from taxpayers on a $270 insurance plan. His premium may be enough to balance out some older person's price-controlled one, but it's paid for in part with money borrowed from the Chinese....
Obamacare seeks to segregate patients, doctors by race
...Obamacare’s spectacular flop of a rollout distracts from its crude calculus that encourages the allocation of healthcare resources along racial lines and a doctor-patient system splintered into ethnicities.
While the 2010 Patient Protecion and Affordable Care Act’s language on diversity sounds innocuous, a review of the frankly separatist thinking of the law’s ardent supporters indicates Obamacare is aiming for a health care system that puts political correctness above the struggle against illness and death....
A federal judge on Tuesday refused to dismiss a case that could fatally cripple the Obamacare health insurance law.
The Affordable Care Act forbids the federal government from enforcing the law in any state that opted out of setting up its own health care exchange, according to a group of small businesses whose lawsuit got a key hearing Monday in federal court.
The Obama administration, according to their lawsuit, has ignored that language in the law, enforcing all of its provisions even in states where the federal government is operating the insurance marketplaces on the error-plagued Healthcare.gov website.
Thirty-six states chose not to set up their exchanges, a move that effectively froze Washington, D.C. out of the authority to pay subsidies and other pot-sweeteners to convince citizens in those states to buy medical insurance.
But the IRS overstepped its authority by paying subsidies in those states anyway, say the businesses and their lawyers....
CBS: Healthcare.gov “dramatically underestimates costs” in new estimate feature
...Industry analysts, such as Jonathan Wu, point to how the website lumps people only into two broad categories: “49 or under” and “50 or older.”
Wu said it’s “incredibly misleading for people that are trying to get a sense of what they’re paying.”
Prices for everyone in the 49-or-under group are based on what a 27-year-old would pay. In the 50-or-older group, prices are based on what a 50-year-old would pay.
CBS News ran the numbers for a 48-year-old in Charlotte, N.C., ineligible for subsidies. According to HealthCare.gov, she would pay $231 a month, but the actual plan on BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina’s website costs $360, more than a 50 percent increase. The difference: BlueCross BlueShield requests your birthday before providing more accurate estimates.
The numbers for older Americans are even more striking. A 62-year-old in Charlotte looking for the same basic plan would get a price estimate on the government website of $394. The actual price is $634....
Revealed: How GPs are paid £50 bonus to put elderly on 'death lists'
GPs have been paid bonuses to put elderly patients on controversial ‘death lists’ in an attempt to save the NHS money by cutting the number of people who die in hospital.
They have been given £50 a time to draw up ‘end-of-life advanced care plans’ for patients they predict will pass away within a year.
The payments are designed to encourage doctors to start talking about death with elderly and seriously ill patients and to keep a record of where, ideally, they would like to die. ...
Thousands Of Consumers Get Insurance Cancellation Notices Due To Health Law Changes
...Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent....
'The Site Was Very Easy to Use'
..."The site was very easy to use," declares Deborah Lielasus, a self-employed quinquagenarian New Hampshire woman, who, according to the YouTube blurb, "will save hundreds of dollars each month" and "has better coverage, lower deductibles, and lower co-pays."
Did she really find the site "very easy to use"? We suppose this is subjective, and maybe she has preternatural patience or is some kind of computer savant. But National Review's Sterling Beard managed to track her down, and she "said it actually took her three days to enroll." The ad would be deceptive if it weren't so unbelievable to begin with.
There's another problem here: Lielasus is purportedly getting a free lunch: better coverage with lower premiums, deductibles and copayments than someone with her risk profile would be able to negotiate absent price controls. But people can get a free lunch only if other people pick up the tab. The technical term for those other people is "suckers." In the case of ObamaCare the suckers are young and healthy people who normally would be cheaper to insure. ...
...According to NR's Beard, however, McNaughton is not a typical 22-year-old. He has served as "the webmaster of his local Democratic party," as "the chairman of the Young Democrats of Lee County and as a delegate to the 2012 Democratic National Convention." In other words, he has a political motivation to participate in ObamaCare. If he's a sucker, he's like the sucker who joins a religious cult and gives it all his money.
But it turns out he isn't a sucker after all, for his lunch is, if not free, at least highly discounted. He says in the ad: "Getting coverage this good at this price, I'm thrilled." Beard reports McNaughton is receiving a $200-a-month subsidy from taxpayers on a $270 insurance plan. His premium may be enough to balance out some older person's price-controlled one, but it's paid for in part with money borrowed from the Chinese....
Obamacare seeks to segregate patients, doctors by race
...Obamacare’s spectacular flop of a rollout distracts from its crude calculus that encourages the allocation of healthcare resources along racial lines and a doctor-patient system splintered into ethnicities.
While the 2010 Patient Protecion and Affordable Care Act’s language on diversity sounds innocuous, a review of the frankly separatist thinking of the law’s ardent supporters indicates Obamacare is aiming for a health care system that puts political correctness above the struggle against illness and death....
Documents: Obama administration VA oversaw preventable veteran deaths
The Obama administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) oversaw three preventable veteran deaths due to errors and negligence at a VA hospital in Memphis, according to a new VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) report and other documents obtained by The Daily Caller.
The damning OIG report comes just weeks after VA admitted that six veteran deaths were linked to delayed cancer screenings at a VA facility in South Carolina and a report that appointment delays led to veterans being harmed in Augusta, Ga. VA, which spent more than $3.5 million on furniture on the last day of fiscal year 2013, also awarded a five-figure bonus to the executive who oversaw the Memphis facility, even as it acknowledged that problems were cropping up....
The Obama administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) oversaw three preventable veteran deaths due to errors and negligence at a VA hospital in Memphis, according to a new VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) report and other documents obtained by The Daily Caller.
The damning OIG report comes just weeks after VA admitted that six veteran deaths were linked to delayed cancer screenings at a VA facility in South Carolina and a report that appointment delays led to veterans being harmed in Augusta, Ga. VA, which spent more than $3.5 million on furniture on the last day of fiscal year 2013, also awarded a five-figure bonus to the executive who oversaw the Memphis facility, even as it acknowledged that problems were cropping up....
Exclusive: Feds confiscate investigative reporter’s confidential files during raid
A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed.
In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter.
A search warrant obtained by TheDC indicates that the August raid allowed law enforcement to search for firearms inside her home.
The document notes that her husband, Paul Flanagan, pleaded guilty in 1986 to resisting arrest in Prince George’s County. The warrant called for police to search the residence they share and seize all weapons and ammunition because he is prohibited under the law from possessing firearms....
A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed.
In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter.
A search warrant obtained by TheDC indicates that the August raid allowed law enforcement to search for firearms inside her home.
The document notes that her husband, Paul Flanagan, pleaded guilty in 1986 to resisting arrest in Prince George’s County. The warrant called for police to search the residence they share and seize all weapons and ammunition because he is prohibited under the law from possessing firearms....
No One Sabotaged Obamacare
...I should make it clear that I have precisely no intention whatsoever of ceasing to “root for failure.” I am actively hoping for the abject and embarrassing deterioration of Obamacare and I am not remotely ashamed to admit it. I loathe the law as a piece of public policy, as a means by which federal involvement in health care and society is being expanded rather than reduced, and as an unlovely example of the arrogance that presidents in the modern era have come to exhibit. Like Ed Rogers, “I would like to see the project’s collapse deter those who think a bigger, more domineering U.S. government is the answer to our problems.” And, like David Harsanyi, I want the project to fail “so hard that any residual perception among voters that any part of it was prudent policy is completely eliminated.”
In this regard, the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent is absolutely correct when he complains that aristarchs such as myself “don’t envision the federal government playing an ambitious oversight role in regulating the health system — or spending the money necessary — in service of the goal of expanding coverage to tens of millions of uninsured.” I don’t....
...I should make it clear that I have precisely no intention whatsoever of ceasing to “root for failure.” I am actively hoping for the abject and embarrassing deterioration of Obamacare and I am not remotely ashamed to admit it. I loathe the law as a piece of public policy, as a means by which federal involvement in health care and society is being expanded rather than reduced, and as an unlovely example of the arrogance that presidents in the modern era have come to exhibit. Like Ed Rogers, “I would like to see the project’s collapse deter those who think a bigger, more domineering U.S. government is the answer to our problems.” And, like David Harsanyi, I want the project to fail “so hard that any residual perception among voters that any part of it was prudent policy is completely eliminated.”
In this regard, the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent is absolutely correct when he complains that aristarchs such as myself “don’t envision the federal government playing an ambitious oversight role in regulating the health system — or spending the money necessary — in service of the goal of expanding coverage to tens of millions of uninsured.” I don’t....
I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that
were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. ... He knows how
perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he
knows that he has the ability -- the extraordinary, uncanny ability --
to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense
out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged
intellectually. ... So what I sensed in him was not just a restless
spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be
really taxed in order for him to be happy. ... He's been bored to death
his whole life. He's just too talented to do what ordinary people do.
-- Valerie Jarrett
-- Valerie Jarrett
What happened to all of Obama’s technology czars?
...In 2009, Obama named then 34-year-old “whiz kid” Vivek Kundra to the post overseeing $80 billion in government IT spending. At 21, Kundra was convicted of misdemeanor theft. He stole a handful of men’s shirts from a J.C. Penney’s department store and ran from police in a failed attempt to evade arrest. Whitewashing the petty thief’s crimes, Obama instead effused about his technology czar’s “depth of experience in the technology arena.”
Just as he was preparing to take the federal job, an FBI search warrant was issued at Kundra’s workplace. He was serving as the chief technology officer of the District of Columbia. Two of Kundra’s underlings, Yusuf Acar and Sushil Bansal, were charged in an alleged scheme of bribery, kickbacks, ghost employees and forged timesheets. Kundra went on leave for five days and was then reinstated after the feds informed him that he was neither a subject nor a target of the investigation....
...Then came Farzad Mostashari, who was “at the forefront of the administration’s health IT efforts and is a resource to the entire health system to support the adoption of health information technology and the promotion of nationwide health information exchange to improve health care.” In August 2013, Mostashari announced his resignation, and earlier this month, he became a “visiting fellow” at the Brookings Institution’s Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform....
Noonan: ObamaCare Is Taking On Water
...The president put the meaning of his presidency into the program—it informally carries his name, it is his brand. It was unveiled with great fanfare, and it didn’t work. For almost anybody. Crashed systems, frozen screens, phone registration that prompted you back to the site that sent you to the 800 number, like a high-tech Möbius strip.
All this from the world’s greatest, most technologically sophisticated nation, the one that invented the computer and the Internet. And from a government that is able to demand and channel a great deal of the people’s wealth.
So you’d think it would sort of work. And it didn’t. Which is a disaster. . . . It was Bill Daley — accomplished political player, former commerce secretary and, most killingly, former chief of staff of President Obama — who Thursday, on “CBS This Morning,” admitted the scale of the problem. Asked whether Kathleen Sebelius should be fired, he said: “To me that’s kind of like firing Captain Smith on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg.”
The Titanic. Some will see his comments as disloyal. Actually they were candid and realistic. Although in fairness, the Titanic at least had three good days, and Edward Smith chose to go down with the ship....
Obamacare’s Magical Thinkers
...Somewhere between the idealism and the curling slice of last night’s pepperoni, Macon Phillips, the administration’s director of new media, happened to come across a tweet by Edward Mullen of Jersey City in which he twitpiced his design for what a health-insurance exchange could look like. So Phillips printed it out to show his fellow administration officials: “Look, this is the sort of creativity that is out there,” he said. “One thing led to another and he left Jersey City to come to D.C. and helped push us through an information architectural process.”...
...The witness who coughed up the intriguing tidbit about Obamacare’s exemption from privacy protections was one Cheryl Campbell of something called CGI. This rang a vague bell with me. CGI is not a creative free spirit from Jersey City with an impressive mastery of Twitter, but a Canadian corporate behemoth. Indeed, CGI is so Canadian their name is French: Conseillers en Gestion et Informatique. Their most famous government project was for the Canadian Firearms Registry. The registry was estimated to cost in total $119 million, which would be offset by $117 million in fees. That’s a net cost of $2 million. Instead, by 2004 the CBC (Canada’s PBS) was reporting costs of some $2 billion — or a thousand times more expensive.
Yeah, yeah, I know, we’ve all had bathroom remodelers like that. But in this case the database had to register some 7 million long guns belonging to some two-and-a-half to three million Canadians. That works out to almost $300 per gun — or somewhat higher than the original estimate for processing a firearm registration of $4.60. Of those $300 gun registrations, Canada’s auditor general reported to parliament that much of the information was either duplicated or wrong in respect to basic information such as names and addresses....
...But it proved impossible to “improve” CFIS (the Canadian Firearms Information System). So CGI was hired to create an entirely new CFIS II, which would operate alongside CFIS I until the old system could be scrapped. CFIS II was supposed to go operational on January 9, 2003, but the January date got postponed to June, and 2003 to 2004, and $81 million was thrown at it before a new Conservative government scrapped the fiasco in 2007. Last year, the government of Ontario canceled another CGI registry that never saw the light of day — just for one disease, diabetes, and costing a mere $46 million.
But there’s always America! “We continue to view U.S. federal government as a significant growth opportunity,” declared CGI’s chief exec, in what would also make a fine epitaph for the republic....
Healthcare.gov processed an application I did not submit
...Furthermore, the decision letter I received says that I have 10 days to appeal any decisions or I will be ineligible for coverage in the future. Now, they've put me in a position that I have to get Healthcare.gov and a state agency to collaborate to withdraw the application I never submitted....
...In 2009, Obama named then 34-year-old “whiz kid” Vivek Kundra to the post overseeing $80 billion in government IT spending. At 21, Kundra was convicted of misdemeanor theft. He stole a handful of men’s shirts from a J.C. Penney’s department store and ran from police in a failed attempt to evade arrest. Whitewashing the petty thief’s crimes, Obama instead effused about his technology czar’s “depth of experience in the technology arena.”
Just as he was preparing to take the federal job, an FBI search warrant was issued at Kundra’s workplace. He was serving as the chief technology officer of the District of Columbia. Two of Kundra’s underlings, Yusuf Acar and Sushil Bansal, were charged in an alleged scheme of bribery, kickbacks, ghost employees and forged timesheets. Kundra went on leave for five days and was then reinstated after the feds informed him that he was neither a subject nor a target of the investigation....
...Then came Farzad Mostashari, who was “at the forefront of the administration’s health IT efforts and is a resource to the entire health system to support the adoption of health information technology and the promotion of nationwide health information exchange to improve health care.” In August 2013, Mostashari announced his resignation, and earlier this month, he became a “visiting fellow” at the Brookings Institution’s Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform....
Noonan: ObamaCare Is Taking On Water
...The president put the meaning of his presidency into the program—it informally carries his name, it is his brand. It was unveiled with great fanfare, and it didn’t work. For almost anybody. Crashed systems, frozen screens, phone registration that prompted you back to the site that sent you to the 800 number, like a high-tech Möbius strip.
All this from the world’s greatest, most technologically sophisticated nation, the one that invented the computer and the Internet. And from a government that is able to demand and channel a great deal of the people’s wealth.
So you’d think it would sort of work. And it didn’t. Which is a disaster. . . . It was Bill Daley — accomplished political player, former commerce secretary and, most killingly, former chief of staff of President Obama — who Thursday, on “CBS This Morning,” admitted the scale of the problem. Asked whether Kathleen Sebelius should be fired, he said: “To me that’s kind of like firing Captain Smith on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg.”
The Titanic. Some will see his comments as disloyal. Actually they were candid and realistic. Although in fairness, the Titanic at least had three good days, and Edward Smith chose to go down with the ship....
Obamacare’s Magical Thinkers
...Somewhere between the idealism and the curling slice of last night’s pepperoni, Macon Phillips, the administration’s director of new media, happened to come across a tweet by Edward Mullen of Jersey City in which he twitpiced his design for what a health-insurance exchange could look like. So Phillips printed it out to show his fellow administration officials: “Look, this is the sort of creativity that is out there,” he said. “One thing led to another and he left Jersey City to come to D.C. and helped push us through an information architectural process.”...
...The witness who coughed up the intriguing tidbit about Obamacare’s exemption from privacy protections was one Cheryl Campbell of something called CGI. This rang a vague bell with me. CGI is not a creative free spirit from Jersey City with an impressive mastery of Twitter, but a Canadian corporate behemoth. Indeed, CGI is so Canadian their name is French: Conseillers en Gestion et Informatique. Their most famous government project was for the Canadian Firearms Registry. The registry was estimated to cost in total $119 million, which would be offset by $117 million in fees. That’s a net cost of $2 million. Instead, by 2004 the CBC (Canada’s PBS) was reporting costs of some $2 billion — or a thousand times more expensive.
Yeah, yeah, I know, we’ve all had bathroom remodelers like that. But in this case the database had to register some 7 million long guns belonging to some two-and-a-half to three million Canadians. That works out to almost $300 per gun — or somewhat higher than the original estimate for processing a firearm registration of $4.60. Of those $300 gun registrations, Canada’s auditor general reported to parliament that much of the information was either duplicated or wrong in respect to basic information such as names and addresses....
...But it proved impossible to “improve” CFIS (the Canadian Firearms Information System). So CGI was hired to create an entirely new CFIS II, which would operate alongside CFIS I until the old system could be scrapped. CFIS II was supposed to go operational on January 9, 2003, but the January date got postponed to June, and 2003 to 2004, and $81 million was thrown at it before a new Conservative government scrapped the fiasco in 2007. Last year, the government of Ontario canceled another CGI registry that never saw the light of day — just for one disease, diabetes, and costing a mere $46 million.
But there’s always America! “We continue to view U.S. federal government as a significant growth opportunity,” declared CGI’s chief exec, in what would also make a fine epitaph for the republic....
Healthcare.gov processed an application I did not submit
...Furthermore, the decision letter I received says that I have 10 days to appeal any decisions or I will be ineligible for coverage in the future. Now, they've put me in a position that I have to get Healthcare.gov and a state agency to collaborate to withdraw the application I never submitted....
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Obamacare, Failing Ahead of Schedule
...When The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn, the most rigorous defender of the entire reform project, wrote up his “five Obamacare anxieties” in May, the first one was structural: The system’s sustainability depends on getting enough healthy people to sign up, he pointed out, and if they don’t then insurers “will have to raise everyone’s premiums,” which “could create what actuaries call a ‘death spiral’: Rising premiums prompt people to drop out, causing premiums to increase even more.” ...
... But if the fix-it effort moves too slowly, it’s possible to envision a worst-case scenario unfolding. If the Web site doesn’t work soon, even liberals concede that the mandate would have to be delayed, because you can’t very well fine people for failing to buy a product they can’t access. And that combination — a hard-to-navigate online portal and no penalty for staying uninsured — could effectively discourage all but the most desperate customers from shopping, which in turn would create an unsustainably expensive insurance pool, driving prices up and driving people away, and potentially wrecking the entire individual insurance market in short order....
...When The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn, the most rigorous defender of the entire reform project, wrote up his “five Obamacare anxieties” in May, the first one was structural: The system’s sustainability depends on getting enough healthy people to sign up, he pointed out, and if they don’t then insurers “will have to raise everyone’s premiums,” which “could create what actuaries call a ‘death spiral’: Rising premiums prompt people to drop out, causing premiums to increase even more.” ...
... But if the fix-it effort moves too slowly, it’s possible to envision a worst-case scenario unfolding. If the Web site doesn’t work soon, even liberals concede that the mandate would have to be delayed, because you can’t very well fine people for failing to buy a product they can’t access. And that combination — a hard-to-navigate online portal and no penalty for staying uninsured — could effectively discourage all but the most desperate customers from shopping, which in turn would create an unsustainably expensive insurance pool, driving prices up and driving people away, and potentially wrecking the entire individual insurance market in short order....
Well-Heeled in the Windy City
Rahm Emanuel inherited a tough challenge when he became mayor of Chicago in 2011: the city faced hundreds of millions of dollars in budget shortfalls and crippling unfunded pension liabilities. Yet Barack Obama’s former chief of staff managed to make things worse by pursuing a policy of elite-oriented urbanism, or what Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel have dubbed “gentry liberalism”: increased spending on amenities and subsidies targeted at the elite, accompanied by painful cuts in basic public services for the poor and middle class. In 2012, for instance, Chicago slashed its library budget by $8 million—nearly 10 percent—forcing reductions in hours and staffing levels. The city also closed half of its mental health clinics.
These cuts could perhaps be justified for budgetary reasons if the pain were spread evenly. But Emanuel—relying heavily on tax-increment financing (TIF) subsidies greatly expanded under his predecessor, Richard M. Daley—has doled out a nearly limitless stream of money for upper-tier benefits. Hoping to lure talented young professionals, Emanuel has brought protected bike lanes and a bike-share program to Chicago. The city is spending $100 million on a lavish, six-block “riverwalk” along the Chicago River and $54 million on Chicago’s answer to New York’s High Line—the Bloomingdale Trail, a project first conceived under Daley’s administration. Chicago gave $30 million in TIF subsidies to the developers of a new office tower, one of many special breaks offered to downtown businesses and developers. Perhaps most infamously, the city extended another $50 million in TIF funds to DePaul University for a dubious arena project that actually takes commercial property off the tax rolls....
Stanley Druckenmiller: How Washington Really Redistributes Income
Stan Druckenmiller makes an unlikely class warrior. He's a member of the 1%—make that the 0.001%—one of the most successful money managers of all time, and 60 years old to boot. But lately he has been touring college campuses promoting a message of income redistribution you don't hear out of Washington. It's how federal entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are letting Mr. Druckenmiller's generation rip off all those doting Barack Obama voters in Generation X, Y and Z.
"I have been shocked at the reception. I had planned to only visit Bowdoin, " his alma mater in Maine, he says. But he has since been invited to multiple campuses, and even the kids at Stanford and Berkeley have welcomed his theme of generational theft. Harlem Children's Zone President Geoffrey Canada and former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh have joined him at stops along the tour....
...Which brings him back to his thieving generation. For three decades until 2010, Mr. Druckenmiller ran the hedge fund he founded, Duquesne Capital. Now retired from managing other people's money, he looks after his own assets, which Forbes magazine recently estimated at $2.9 billion. And he wonders why in five years the massively indebted U.S. government will begin sending him a Social Security check for $3,500 each month. Because he earned it?...
...While many seniors believe they are simply drawing out the "savings" they were forced to deposit into Social Security and Medicare, they are actually drawing out much more, especially relative to later generations. That's because politicians have voted to award the seniors ever more generous benefits. As a result, while today's 65-year-olds will receive on average net lifetime benefits of $327,400, children born now will suffer net lifetime losses of $420,600 as they struggle to pay the bills of aging Americans.
One of the great ironies of the Obama presidency is that it has been a disaster for the young people who form the core of his political coalition. High unemployment is paired with exploding debt that they will have to finance whenever they eventually find jobs....
...As an added bonus, wiping out the corporate tax eliminates myriad opportunities for crony capitalism and corporate welfare. "How do the lobbying groups and the special interests work in Washington? Through the tax code. There's no more building plants in Puerto Rico or Ireland and double-leasebacks and all this stuff. If you take corporate tax rates to zero, that's gone. But in terms of the fairness argument, you are taxing the shareholder. So you eliminate double taxation. To me it could be very, very good for growth, which is a huge part of the solution to the debt problem long-term. You can't do it without growth."...
Rahm Emanuel inherited a tough challenge when he became mayor of Chicago in 2011: the city faced hundreds of millions of dollars in budget shortfalls and crippling unfunded pension liabilities. Yet Barack Obama’s former chief of staff managed to make things worse by pursuing a policy of elite-oriented urbanism, or what Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel have dubbed “gentry liberalism”: increased spending on amenities and subsidies targeted at the elite, accompanied by painful cuts in basic public services for the poor and middle class. In 2012, for instance, Chicago slashed its library budget by $8 million—nearly 10 percent—forcing reductions in hours and staffing levels. The city also closed half of its mental health clinics.
These cuts could perhaps be justified for budgetary reasons if the pain were spread evenly. But Emanuel—relying heavily on tax-increment financing (TIF) subsidies greatly expanded under his predecessor, Richard M. Daley—has doled out a nearly limitless stream of money for upper-tier benefits. Hoping to lure talented young professionals, Emanuel has brought protected bike lanes and a bike-share program to Chicago. The city is spending $100 million on a lavish, six-block “riverwalk” along the Chicago River and $54 million on Chicago’s answer to New York’s High Line—the Bloomingdale Trail, a project first conceived under Daley’s administration. Chicago gave $30 million in TIF subsidies to the developers of a new office tower, one of many special breaks offered to downtown businesses and developers. Perhaps most infamously, the city extended another $50 million in TIF funds to DePaul University for a dubious arena project that actually takes commercial property off the tax rolls....
Stanley Druckenmiller: How Washington Really Redistributes Income
Stan Druckenmiller makes an unlikely class warrior. He's a member of the 1%—make that the 0.001%—one of the most successful money managers of all time, and 60 years old to boot. But lately he has been touring college campuses promoting a message of income redistribution you don't hear out of Washington. It's how federal entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are letting Mr. Druckenmiller's generation rip off all those doting Barack Obama voters in Generation X, Y and Z.
"I have been shocked at the reception. I had planned to only visit Bowdoin, " his alma mater in Maine, he says. But he has since been invited to multiple campuses, and even the kids at Stanford and Berkeley have welcomed his theme of generational theft. Harlem Children's Zone President Geoffrey Canada and former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh have joined him at stops along the tour....
...Which brings him back to his thieving generation. For three decades until 2010, Mr. Druckenmiller ran the hedge fund he founded, Duquesne Capital. Now retired from managing other people's money, he looks after his own assets, which Forbes magazine recently estimated at $2.9 billion. And he wonders why in five years the massively indebted U.S. government will begin sending him a Social Security check for $3,500 each month. Because he earned it?...
...While many seniors believe they are simply drawing out the "savings" they were forced to deposit into Social Security and Medicare, they are actually drawing out much more, especially relative to later generations. That's because politicians have voted to award the seniors ever more generous benefits. As a result, while today's 65-year-olds will receive on average net lifetime benefits of $327,400, children born now will suffer net lifetime losses of $420,600 as they struggle to pay the bills of aging Americans.
One of the great ironies of the Obama presidency is that it has been a disaster for the young people who form the core of his political coalition. High unemployment is paired with exploding debt that they will have to finance whenever they eventually find jobs....
...As an added bonus, wiping out the corporate tax eliminates myriad opportunities for crony capitalism and corporate welfare. "How do the lobbying groups and the special interests work in Washington? Through the tax code. There's no more building plants in Puerto Rico or Ireland and double-leasebacks and all this stuff. If you take corporate tax rates to zero, that's gone. But in terms of the fairness argument, you are taxing the shareholder. So you eliminate double taxation. To me it could be very, very good for growth, which is a huge part of the solution to the debt problem long-term. You can't do it without growth."...
British NHS May Soon No Longer Offer Free Care
"Coinciding with challenges in the rollout of the U.S. Affordable Care Act are challenges for NHS. The Independent reports, 'A National Health Service free at the point of use will soon be "unsustainable," if the political parties do not come forward with radical plans for change before the 2015 election, top health officials have warned. Stagnant health spending combined with ever rising costs and demand mean the NHS is facing "the most challenging period in its 65-year existence," the NHS Confederation said ... In a frank assessment of the dangers faced by the health service, senior officials at the confederation say that the two years following the next general election will be pivotal in deciding whether the NHS can continue to provide free health care for all patients. "Treasury funding for the service will be at best level in real terms," they write. "Given that demand continues to rise, drugs cost more, and NHS inflation is higher than general inflation, the NHS is facing a funding gap estimated at up to £30bn by 2020."' From The Guardian: 'Our rose-tinted view of the NHS has to change.' ...
The Abysmal, Pathetic Obamacare Rollout
...After the program becomes fully operational, then the real troubles will begin. Who in their right mind is going to feel comfortable giving income and other personal information to a site that inspires less sense of security than a Russian mail-order bride website? The government’s super-spy outfit—the National Security Agency—allowed a short-term contract employee to walk out with a bazillion incriminating PowerPoint slides. And you’re asking us to believe that HHS is going to keep things confidential?...
"Coinciding with challenges in the rollout of the U.S. Affordable Care Act are challenges for NHS. The Independent reports, 'A National Health Service free at the point of use will soon be "unsustainable," if the political parties do not come forward with radical plans for change before the 2015 election, top health officials have warned. Stagnant health spending combined with ever rising costs and demand mean the NHS is facing "the most challenging period in its 65-year existence," the NHS Confederation said ... In a frank assessment of the dangers faced by the health service, senior officials at the confederation say that the two years following the next general election will be pivotal in deciding whether the NHS can continue to provide free health care for all patients. "Treasury funding for the service will be at best level in real terms," they write. "Given that demand continues to rise, drugs cost more, and NHS inflation is higher than general inflation, the NHS is facing a funding gap estimated at up to £30bn by 2020."' From The Guardian: 'Our rose-tinted view of the NHS has to change.' ...
The Abysmal, Pathetic Obamacare Rollout
...After the program becomes fully operational, then the real troubles will begin. Who in their right mind is going to feel comfortable giving income and other personal information to a site that inspires less sense of security than a Russian mail-order bride website? The government’s super-spy outfit—the National Security Agency—allowed a short-term contract employee to walk out with a bazillion incriminating PowerPoint slides. And you’re asking us to believe that HHS is going to keep things confidential?...
School Suspends Student Indefinitely For A Drawing Of A Cartoon Bomb He Made At Home
...Parham said her son, Rhett, had made the hand-drawn picture of the bomb during the weekend at home. Parham said her son is a fan of the video game Bomber Man and drew the cartoon-ish like explosive.
Parham said her son took the picture to Hillcrest Middle School, and that's where problems arose.
Parham said she was told that her son showed the picture to some older children, who reported him to school administration. She said her son was suspended indefinitely by the school....
...Parham said her son, Rhett, had made the hand-drawn picture of the bomb during the weekend at home. Parham said her son is a fan of the video game Bomber Man and drew the cartoon-ish like explosive.
Parham said her son took the picture to Hillcrest Middle School, and that's where problems arose.
Parham said she was told that her son showed the picture to some older children, who reported him to school administration. She said her son was suspended indefinitely by the school....
Obama Administration Didn't Know When Obamacare's Mandate Penalty Deadline Was Until a Tax Prep Firm Told Them
...In general, Americans have until the end of March to enroll in a 2014 Obamacare plan, but to avoid a tax penalty, they’ll have to sign up by mid-February. This quirk, unearthed by industry observers, appears to have gone previously unnoticed by the administration.
“The IRS didn’t know that,” said Jackson Hewitt Vice President Brian Haile, who recently brought the issue to the administration’s attention.
The AP's Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar actually first reported this story about a week ago. His story makes it pretty clear that the administration was surprised to learn about the earlier date, and was only made aware of it when an outside tax prep firm informed them.
So it took a private tax firm to realize—after three years of administration work on the law's implementation—what the applicable tax law really is....
...In general, Americans have until the end of March to enroll in a 2014 Obamacare plan, but to avoid a tax penalty, they’ll have to sign up by mid-February. This quirk, unearthed by industry observers, appears to have gone previously unnoticed by the administration.
“The IRS didn’t know that,” said Jackson Hewitt Vice President Brian Haile, who recently brought the issue to the administration’s attention.
The AP's Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar actually first reported this story about a week ago. His story makes it pretty clear that the administration was surprised to learn about the earlier date, and was only made aware of it when an outside tax prep firm informed them.
So it took a private tax firm to realize—after three years of administration work on the law's implementation—what the applicable tax law really is....
Obamacare Needs a Drop-Dead Date
...This is stunning. It’s far worse than I imagined, and I am pretty cynical. The law’s supporters are engaged in some high-speed blamestorming: It’s the Republicans' fault for not giving the law more money, or it’s the fault of Republican governors who didn’t build their exchanges, or maybe it’s one of the vendors -- CGI, the firm with the largest contract, is the most favored target, but at various times, the administration has clearly been teeing up to blame Experian or Oracle. Or perhaps the fault lies in federal procurement rules, which prevented the government from getting the right kind of staff and service. A lot of that shows up in the article; there’s a long prelude about the political barriers that the administration faced. But ultimately, the litany of mistakes that the administration made overwhelms these complaints....
...The administration estimates that it needs 2.7 million young healthy people on the exchange, out of the 7 million total expected to apply in the first year. If the pool is too skewed -- if it’s mostly old and sick people on the exchanges -- then insurers will lose money, and next year, they’ll sharply increase premiums. The healthiest people will drop out, because insurance is no longer such a good deal for them. Rinse and repeat and you have effectively destroyed the market for individual insurance policies. It’s called the “death spiral,” and the exchanges, like the mandate, were designed to keep it from happening.
Without the exchanges, the death spiral seems almost assured. The amount of work required to find a policy, figure out your subsidy, buy coverage and file the paperwork will be very high. And it’s unlikely that folks who can’t even be bothered to go to ehealthinsurance.com right now will do it. The Affordable Care Act made the task of signing up young healthy people on the exchanges even harder with its much-loved requirement that companies allow kids to stay on their parents’ policies until they’re 26, which took millions of potential buyers out of the pool. The ones who are left are going to be disproportionately poorer and less well educated than the middle-class offspring who can get cheap insurance through mom and dad. There’s a reason that virtually every person you’ve seen written up in an article as they tried to get insurance at a community center or clinic is some combination of over 55, retired or afflicted with a serious chronic condition.
Once the death spiral happens, it’s very difficult to recover from. That’s why if the exchanges don’t work soon, we need to hit the reset button and try again next year. ...
...This is stunning. It’s far worse than I imagined, and I am pretty cynical. The law’s supporters are engaged in some high-speed blamestorming: It’s the Republicans' fault for not giving the law more money, or it’s the fault of Republican governors who didn’t build their exchanges, or maybe it’s one of the vendors -- CGI, the firm with the largest contract, is the most favored target, but at various times, the administration has clearly been teeing up to blame Experian or Oracle. Or perhaps the fault lies in federal procurement rules, which prevented the government from getting the right kind of staff and service. A lot of that shows up in the article; there’s a long prelude about the political barriers that the administration faced. But ultimately, the litany of mistakes that the administration made overwhelms these complaints....
...The administration estimates that it needs 2.7 million young healthy people on the exchange, out of the 7 million total expected to apply in the first year. If the pool is too skewed -- if it’s mostly old and sick people on the exchanges -- then insurers will lose money, and next year, they’ll sharply increase premiums. The healthiest people will drop out, because insurance is no longer such a good deal for them. Rinse and repeat and you have effectively destroyed the market for individual insurance policies. It’s called the “death spiral,” and the exchanges, like the mandate, were designed to keep it from happening.
Without the exchanges, the death spiral seems almost assured. The amount of work required to find a policy, figure out your subsidy, buy coverage and file the paperwork will be very high. And it’s unlikely that folks who can’t even be bothered to go to ehealthinsurance.com right now will do it. The Affordable Care Act made the task of signing up young healthy people on the exchanges even harder with its much-loved requirement that companies allow kids to stay on their parents’ policies until they’re 26, which took millions of potential buyers out of the pool. The ones who are left are going to be disproportionately poorer and less well educated than the middle-class offspring who can get cheap insurance through mom and dad. There’s a reason that virtually every person you’ve seen written up in an article as they tried to get insurance at a community center or clinic is some combination of over 55, retired or afflicted with a serious chronic condition.
Once the death spiral happens, it’s very difficult to recover from. That’s why if the exchanges don’t work soon, we need to hit the reset button and try again next year. ...
Most powerful White House Obamacare official at center of IRS scandal
The White House official who exchanged confidential taxpayer information with the IRS is a longtime Obama advisor and progressive activist who is currently the most powerful official on Obamacare implementation within the White House.
Jeanne Lambrew, deputy assistant to the president for health policy, entered Obama-world in 2008 as a health-policy adviser to then-Senator Obama’s presidential campaign. She was subsequently named deputy director and then director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) now-defunct Office of Health Reform, where she reported directly to Kathleen Sebelius.
Lambrew’s current “deputy assistant to the president” position, while modest-sounding, gives her extensive and centralized power over the White House’s efforts to implement Obamacare....
IRS enforcement of ObamaCare law under fire
IRS ENFORCEMENT OF HEALTHCARE LAW UNDER FIRE AMID NEW DETAILS IN TARGETING SCANDAL
JOHN LAYFIELD: Does this surprise anybody that the IRS is being used as a political weapon by the Obama Administration. The IRS has been used as political weapon since J Edgar Hoover. Look what they have done, the targeting of certain conservative groups and sharing confidential information. This is only what we are finding out. Putting them in charge of ObamaCare is a horrible idea. Get rid of all these people and get them out of ObamaCare.
SASCHA BURNS: The information that Ingram provided to the White House did not go to political staff, it went to people who are overseeing the implementation of ObamaCare. Part of which, is the exemption for religious organizations for the contraception mandate. The information being shared is whether or not the organization is religiously affiliated or an actual organization. She did not provide any confidential information.
GARY B. SMITH: The problem is the way this Administration is enforcing ObamaCare. We have already seen the tone and vindictiveness with what we with closing National Parks. It was horrible and vindictive in order to get their way. The IRS is a scary organization whether that is all bluster or that is reality, people are scared of the IRS. I think it is going to be scary and vindictive for a lot of people so this Administration makes sure that are "right."...
Is the NSA Blackmailing Officials Into Supporting Snooping?
...Of course it’s natural, when people disagree with you, to at least briefly think, “they couldn’t possibly really believe that, there must be some outside power forcing them to take that position.” Mostly I do not believe that anything like that is now going on.
But I cannot be 100% sure, and therein lies the problem. The breadth of the NSA’s newly revealed capabilities makes the emergence of such suspicions in our society inevitable. Especially given that we are far, far away from having the kinds of oversight mechanisms in place that would provide ironclad assurance that these vast powers won’t be abused. And that highlights the highly corrosive nature of allowing the NSA such powers. Everyone has dark suspicions about their political opponents from time to time, and Americans are highly distrustful of government in general. When there is any opening at all for members of the public to suspect that officials from the legislative and judicial branches could be vulnerable to leverage from secretive agencies within the executive branch—and when those officials can even suspect they might be subject to leverage—that is a serious problem for our democracy....
NSA Whistleblower: NSA Spying On – and Blackmailing – Top Government Officials and Military Officers
...Okay. They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people. They went after antiwar groups. They went after U.S. international–U.S. companies that that do international business, you know, business around the world. They went after U.S. banking firms and financial firms that do international business. They went after NGOs that–like the Red Cross, people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few antiwar civil rights groups. So, you know, don’t tell me that there’s no abuse, because I’ve had this stuff in my hand and looked at it. And in some cases, I literally was involved in the technology that was going after this stuff. And you know, when I said to [former MSNBC show host Keith] Olbermann, I said, my particular thing is high tech and you know, what’s going on is the other thing, which is the dragnet. The dragnet is what Mark Klein is talking about, the terrestrial dragnet. Well my specialty is outer space. I deal with satellites, and everything that goes in and out of space. I did my spying via space. So that’s how I found out about this....
...FBI officers held a gun to Binney’s head as he stepped naked from the shower. He watched with his wife and youngest son as the FBI ransacked their home. Later Binney was separated from the rest of his family, and FBI officials pressured him to implicate one of the other complainants in criminal activity. During the raid, Binney attempted to report to FBI officials the crimes he had witnessed at NSA, in particular the NSA’s violation of the constitutional rights of all Americans. However, the FBI wasn’t interested in these disclosures. Instead, FBI officials seized Binney’s private computer, which to this day has not been returned despite the fact that he has not been charged with a crime....
The White House official who exchanged confidential taxpayer information with the IRS is a longtime Obama advisor and progressive activist who is currently the most powerful official on Obamacare implementation within the White House.
Jeanne Lambrew, deputy assistant to the president for health policy, entered Obama-world in 2008 as a health-policy adviser to then-Senator Obama’s presidential campaign. She was subsequently named deputy director and then director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) now-defunct Office of Health Reform, where she reported directly to Kathleen Sebelius.
Lambrew’s current “deputy assistant to the president” position, while modest-sounding, gives her extensive and centralized power over the White House’s efforts to implement Obamacare....
IRS enforcement of ObamaCare law under fire
IRS ENFORCEMENT OF HEALTHCARE LAW UNDER FIRE AMID NEW DETAILS IN TARGETING SCANDAL
JOHN LAYFIELD: Does this surprise anybody that the IRS is being used as a political weapon by the Obama Administration. The IRS has been used as political weapon since J Edgar Hoover. Look what they have done, the targeting of certain conservative groups and sharing confidential information. This is only what we are finding out. Putting them in charge of ObamaCare is a horrible idea. Get rid of all these people and get them out of ObamaCare.
SASCHA BURNS: The information that Ingram provided to the White House did not go to political staff, it went to people who are overseeing the implementation of ObamaCare. Part of which, is the exemption for religious organizations for the contraception mandate. The information being shared is whether or not the organization is religiously affiliated or an actual organization. She did not provide any confidential information.
GARY B. SMITH: The problem is the way this Administration is enforcing ObamaCare. We have already seen the tone and vindictiveness with what we with closing National Parks. It was horrible and vindictive in order to get their way. The IRS is a scary organization whether that is all bluster or that is reality, people are scared of the IRS. I think it is going to be scary and vindictive for a lot of people so this Administration makes sure that are "right."...
Is the NSA Blackmailing Officials Into Supporting Snooping?
...Of course it’s natural, when people disagree with you, to at least briefly think, “they couldn’t possibly really believe that, there must be some outside power forcing them to take that position.” Mostly I do not believe that anything like that is now going on.
But I cannot be 100% sure, and therein lies the problem. The breadth of the NSA’s newly revealed capabilities makes the emergence of such suspicions in our society inevitable. Especially given that we are far, far away from having the kinds of oversight mechanisms in place that would provide ironclad assurance that these vast powers won’t be abused. And that highlights the highly corrosive nature of allowing the NSA such powers. Everyone has dark suspicions about their political opponents from time to time, and Americans are highly distrustful of government in general. When there is any opening at all for members of the public to suspect that officials from the legislative and judicial branches could be vulnerable to leverage from secretive agencies within the executive branch—and when those officials can even suspect they might be subject to leverage—that is a serious problem for our democracy....
NSA Whistleblower: NSA Spying On – and Blackmailing – Top Government Officials and Military Officers
...Okay. They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people. They went after antiwar groups. They went after U.S. international–U.S. companies that that do international business, you know, business around the world. They went after U.S. banking firms and financial firms that do international business. They went after NGOs that–like the Red Cross, people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few antiwar civil rights groups. So, you know, don’t tell me that there’s no abuse, because I’ve had this stuff in my hand and looked at it. And in some cases, I literally was involved in the technology that was going after this stuff. And you know, when I said to [former MSNBC show host Keith] Olbermann, I said, my particular thing is high tech and you know, what’s going on is the other thing, which is the dragnet. The dragnet is what Mark Klein is talking about, the terrestrial dragnet. Well my specialty is outer space. I deal with satellites, and everything that goes in and out of space. I did my spying via space. So that’s how I found out about this....
...FBI officers held a gun to Binney’s head as he stepped naked from the shower. He watched with his wife and youngest son as the FBI ransacked their home. Later Binney was separated from the rest of his family, and FBI officials pressured him to implicate one of the other complainants in criminal activity. During the raid, Binney attempted to report to FBI officials the crimes he had witnessed at NSA, in particular the NSA’s violation of the constitutional rights of all Americans. However, the FBI wasn’t interested in these disclosures. Instead, FBI officials seized Binney’s private computer, which to this day has not been returned despite the fact that he has not been charged with a crime....
Anglosphere: Celebrating wrong Italian?
...Now, of course, Columbus Day is under attack as a holiday in the United States by the forces of political correctness. This is primarily an effect of the Calvinist Puritan roots of American progressivism. Just as Calvinists believed in the centrality of the depravity of man, with the exception of a miniscule contingent of the Elect of God, their secularized descendants believe in the depravity and cursedness of Western civilization, with their own enlightened selves in the role of the Elect....
...Now, of course, Columbus Day is under attack as a holiday in the United States by the forces of political correctness. This is primarily an effect of the Calvinist Puritan roots of American progressivism. Just as Calvinists believed in the centrality of the depravity of man, with the exception of a miniscule contingent of the Elect of God, their secularized descendants believe in the depravity and cursedness of Western civilization, with their own enlightened selves in the role of the Elect....
Chevron’s landmark lawsuit exposes ‘greenmail’
...In a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday, one of the highest-profile environmental campaigns of recent decades is about to be exposed as nothing more than a fraud and extortion racket — “greenmail.”
Chevron is suing lawyer Steven Donziger and a number of activist environmental groups in a civil-racketeering suit, claiming that his landmark $19 billion award against the oil company in an Ecuadorean court was the product of a criminal conspiracy.
Ironically, much of the company’s evidence comes from footage shot for “Crude,” an award-winning pro-Donziger documentary that premiered with much publicity at the Sundance Film Festival....
...They show Donziger full of contempt for the country he says he cares about, openly boasting about how corrupt Ecuador’s judicial system is and planning to intimidate the judge because “the only language . . . this judge is going to understand is one of pressure, intimidation and humiliation.”
The filmmaker even recorded the lawyers lamenting that no pollution had spread from the original drilling sites and “right now all the reports are saying . . . nothing has spread anywhere at all” and how this lack of pollution was a serious problem.
But the footage also shows Donziger figuring he can brazen it out: “If we take our existing evidence on groundwater contamination, extrapolate based on nothing other than our . . . theory . . . then we can do it. And we can get money for it.”
There’s more.
Chevron will produce evidence that Donziger forged the signature of American experts on reports claiming widespread pollution — when these same experts had actually filed reports finding no such thing....
...In a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday, one of the highest-profile environmental campaigns of recent decades is about to be exposed as nothing more than a fraud and extortion racket — “greenmail.”
Chevron is suing lawyer Steven Donziger and a number of activist environmental groups in a civil-racketeering suit, claiming that his landmark $19 billion award against the oil company in an Ecuadorean court was the product of a criminal conspiracy.
Ironically, much of the company’s evidence comes from footage shot for “Crude,” an award-winning pro-Donziger documentary that premiered with much publicity at the Sundance Film Festival....
...They show Donziger full of contempt for the country he says he cares about, openly boasting about how corrupt Ecuador’s judicial system is and planning to intimidate the judge because “the only language . . . this judge is going to understand is one of pressure, intimidation and humiliation.”
The filmmaker even recorded the lawyers lamenting that no pollution had spread from the original drilling sites and “right now all the reports are saying . . . nothing has spread anywhere at all” and how this lack of pollution was a serious problem.
But the footage also shows Donziger figuring he can brazen it out: “If we take our existing evidence on groundwater contamination, extrapolate based on nothing other than our . . . theory . . . then we can do it. And we can get money for it.”
There’s more.
Chevron will produce evidence that Donziger forged the signature of American experts on reports claiming widespread pollution — when these same experts had actually filed reports finding no such thing....
ObamaCare ‘propaganda’ on our favorite shows?
...Here I’ll just pause to remind the entertainment industry that it has about half the approval rating of the NRA. (In January, at the peak of NRA attacks, the gun-rights group had a 44% favorability score as against 24% for the entertainment industry, an NBC News/WSJ poll found).
Nor is pushing politics a winning business model: In the last frenzy of Hollywood propaganda, during the mid-2000s peak of Bush Derangement Syndrome, we were treated to such dismal and didactic Iraq War dramas as “Lions for Lambs” (final gross: $15 million), “In the Valley of Elah” ($6.8 million) and “Grace Is Gone” ($51,000 — that’s right, thousand, as in “less than the cost of the Evian they drank on the set”).
At least those films weren’t planted by the White House, though. This time it’s different. An industry that loves to trumpet its fierce devotion to the First Amendment is putting itself at risk when it willingly becomes another tool of the DC power elite.
Once you’re taking dictation from Washington, it becomes harder to say no when the politicians start telling you what not to say.
...Here I’ll just pause to remind the entertainment industry that it has about half the approval rating of the NRA. (In January, at the peak of NRA attacks, the gun-rights group had a 44% favorability score as against 24% for the entertainment industry, an NBC News/WSJ poll found).
Nor is pushing politics a winning business model: In the last frenzy of Hollywood propaganda, during the mid-2000s peak of Bush Derangement Syndrome, we were treated to such dismal and didactic Iraq War dramas as “Lions for Lambs” (final gross: $15 million), “In the Valley of Elah” ($6.8 million) and “Grace Is Gone” ($51,000 — that’s right, thousand, as in “less than the cost of the Evian they drank on the set”).
At least those films weren’t planted by the White House, though. This time it’s different. An industry that loves to trumpet its fierce devotion to the First Amendment is putting itself at risk when it willingly becomes another tool of the DC power elite.
Once you’re taking dictation from Washington, it becomes harder to say no when the politicians start telling you what not to say.
Leading Economist Predicts a Bitcoin Backlash
Governments and established financial institutions are likely to launch a campaign to quash the decentralized digital currency Bitcoin, according to a leading economist and academic. Simon Johnson, a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, expects Bitcoin to face political pressure and aggressive lobbying from big banks because of its disruptive nature.
“There is going to be a big political backlash,” Johnson said on stage at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, last Thursday. “And the question is whether the people behind those currencies are ready for that and have their own political strategy.”...
...However, Johnson says that Bitcoin’s success will draw increased attention from governments and regulators, who are used to having tight control over currencies. He believes they will be egged on by established financial institutions, which will likely seek to quash the currency. Bitcoin enables very rapid, cheap transfers and payments that could compete with existing fee-based ways of moving money around. “Any bankers watching this should be very afraid,” said Johnson....
Governments and established financial institutions are likely to launch a campaign to quash the decentralized digital currency Bitcoin, according to a leading economist and academic. Simon Johnson, a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, expects Bitcoin to face political pressure and aggressive lobbying from big banks because of its disruptive nature.
“There is going to be a big political backlash,” Johnson said on stage at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, last Thursday. “And the question is whether the people behind those currencies are ready for that and have their own political strategy.”...
...However, Johnson says that Bitcoin’s success will draw increased attention from governments and regulators, who are used to having tight control over currencies. He believes they will be egged on by established financial institutions, which will likely seek to quash the currency. Bitcoin enables very rapid, cheap transfers and payments that could compete with existing fee-based ways of moving money around. “Any bankers watching this should be very afraid,” said Johnson....
The Best Defense Your Money Can't Buy
Although the federal government accuses Kerri and Brian Kaley of trafficking in stolen medical devices, it has been unable to identify any victims of this alleged criminal scheme. That has not stopped the Justice Department from freezing the assets they need to defend themselves.
Today the Supreme Court is considering whether the Kaleys have a constitutional right to challenge the order blocking access to their money before it's too late for them to mount an effective defense. A ruling in their favor would help limit the government's ability to deprive people of their liberty by depriving them of their property.
For people facing criminal charges, freedom not only is not free; it is dauntingly expensive. The Kaleys' lawyers estimate that a trial will cost $500,000 in legal fees and other expenses. The Kaleys had planned to cover the cost with money drawn from a home equity line of credit—until the government took it....
Although the federal government accuses Kerri and Brian Kaley of trafficking in stolen medical devices, it has been unable to identify any victims of this alleged criminal scheme. That has not stopped the Justice Department from freezing the assets they need to defend themselves.
Today the Supreme Court is considering whether the Kaleys have a constitutional right to challenge the order blocking access to their money before it's too late for them to mount an effective defense. A ruling in their favor would help limit the government's ability to deprive people of their liberty by depriving them of their property.
For people facing criminal charges, freedom not only is not free; it is dauntingly expensive. The Kaleys' lawyers estimate that a trial will cost $500,000 in legal fees and other expenses. The Kaleys had planned to cover the cost with money drawn from a home equity line of credit—until the government took it....
Private Insurer Profits? $13 Billion. Medicare Fraud? $48 Billion. Health Reform? Priceless.
...In fact, health insurance is one of the least profitable industries in America. 2010 profit margins for publicly-traded health insurers averaged a measly 4 percent. By comparison, cigarette manufacturers have margins of 20%; railroads 15%; long-distance carriers 14%; and soft drink manufacturers 13%. If health insurers are profit-hoarding devils, so is the rest of the private economy.
Jeffrey Anderson of The Weekly Standard points out that a recent government report estimates that Medicare fraud alone is at least $48 billion a year, almost four times the profits of the private insurance industry...
Rate Shock: In California, Obamacare To Increase Individual Health Insurance Premiums By 64-146%
...If you’re a 25 year old non-smoker, buying insurance for yourself, the cheapest plan on Obamacare’s exchanges is the catastrophic plan, which costs an average of $184 a month. (By “average,” I mean the median monthly premium across California’s 19 insurance rating regions.)
The next cheapest plan, the “bronze” comprehensive plan, costs $205 a month. But in 2013, on eHealthInsurance.com (NASDAQ:EHTH), the median cost of the five cheapest plans was only $92.
In other words, for the typical 25-year-old non-smoking Californian, Obamacare will drive premiums up by between 100 and 123 percent....
Report: Obamacare To Increase Health Premiums in 45 States
A comprehensive 50-state study has found that insurance premiums will increase under the first year of Obamacare in 45 of 50 states. This finding flies in the face of President Obama's promise that his health care overhaul would cause premiums "for the typical family" to fall by $2500....
...In fact, health insurance is one of the least profitable industries in America. 2010 profit margins for publicly-traded health insurers averaged a measly 4 percent. By comparison, cigarette manufacturers have margins of 20%; railroads 15%; long-distance carriers 14%; and soft drink manufacturers 13%. If health insurers are profit-hoarding devils, so is the rest of the private economy.
Jeffrey Anderson of The Weekly Standard points out that a recent government report estimates that Medicare fraud alone is at least $48 billion a year, almost four times the profits of the private insurance industry...
Rate Shock: In California, Obamacare To Increase Individual Health Insurance Premiums By 64-146%
...If you’re a 25 year old non-smoker, buying insurance for yourself, the cheapest plan on Obamacare’s exchanges is the catastrophic plan, which costs an average of $184 a month. (By “average,” I mean the median monthly premium across California’s 19 insurance rating regions.)
The next cheapest plan, the “bronze” comprehensive plan, costs $205 a month. But in 2013, on eHealthInsurance.com (NASDAQ:EHTH), the median cost of the five cheapest plans was only $92.
In other words, for the typical 25-year-old non-smoking Californian, Obamacare will drive premiums up by between 100 and 123 percent....
Report: Obamacare To Increase Health Premiums in 45 States
A comprehensive 50-state study has found that insurance premiums will increase under the first year of Obamacare in 45 of 50 states. This finding flies in the face of President Obama's promise that his health care overhaul would cause premiums "for the typical family" to fall by $2500....
She Raped Him, Using Guilt and Arguing
...How horrible — 7% of 14-to-21-year-old boys and young men had “attempted or completed rape.” Who would have thought the fraction would be so high?
But then one looks closely, and what does one see under “tactics used” (a question asked about the last “perpetration” of “attempted or completed rape”)? Of the 49 perpetrators, 10 reported that they used physical force or threat of physical force; 10 more reported that they used alcohol, 23 reported that they used “guilt,” and 21 reported that they used “arguing and pressuring victim” (since more than one answer was possible, the amounts add up to more than 49). So 80% of the reported “rape[s]” involved neither force nor the threat of force, and 59% involved only “guilt” or “arguing and pressuring victim,” with no use of force, threat of force, or even alcohol.
So actually only 1% of the respondents had used physical force or threat of physical force to get sex. Another 1% used alcohol; this might involve what the legal system would label rape (e.g., getting someone so drunk that they became unconscious and then having sex with them), but certainly need not (e.g., giving someone some alcohol to loosen their inhibitions). The remainder of the supposed rapists or attempted rapists aren’t really rapists at all....
...How horrible — 7% of 14-to-21-year-old boys and young men had “attempted or completed rape.” Who would have thought the fraction would be so high?
But then one looks closely, and what does one see under “tactics used” (a question asked about the last “perpetration” of “attempted or completed rape”)? Of the 49 perpetrators, 10 reported that they used physical force or threat of physical force; 10 more reported that they used alcohol, 23 reported that they used “guilt,” and 21 reported that they used “arguing and pressuring victim” (since more than one answer was possible, the amounts add up to more than 49). So 80% of the reported “rape[s]” involved neither force nor the threat of force, and 59% involved only “guilt” or “arguing and pressuring victim,” with no use of force, threat of force, or even alcohol.
So actually only 1% of the respondents had used physical force or threat of physical force to get sex. Another 1% used alcohol; this might involve what the legal system would label rape (e.g., getting someone so drunk that they became unconscious and then having sex with them), but certainly need not (e.g., giving someone some alcohol to loosen their inhibitions). The remainder of the supposed rapists or attempted rapists aren’t really rapists at all....
Assessing the Exchanges
...Meanwhile, the back-end communication between the exchanges and the insurers has been terrible, as is increasingly being reported. The extent of these problems has also been a surprise to CMS, and here too an increase in volume if the user interface issues are solved could lead to huge problems that would be very difficult to correct. CMS officials and the large insurers thought at first that the garbled data being automatically sent to insurers must be a function of some very simple problems of format incompatibility between the government and insurer systems, but that now seems not to be the case, and the problem appears to be deeper and harder to resolve. It is a very high priority problem, because the system will not be able to function if the insurers cannot have some confidence about the data they receive. At this point, insurers are trying to work through the data manually, because the volume of enrollments is very, very low. But again, if that changes, this could quickly become impossible.
In a couple of ways, then, the severe user-interface problems at the front end of the federal exchange has actually had some advantages from CMS’s point of view, because by keeping enrollment volume low it has kept some other huge problems from becoming instantly uncontrollable. ...
...One key worry is based on the fact that what they’re facing is not a situation where it is impossible to buy coverage but one where it is possible but very difficult to buy coverage. That’s much worse from their point of view, because it means that only highly motivated consumers are getting coverage. People who are highly motivated to get coverage in a community-rated insurance system are very likely to be in bad health. The healthy young man who sees an ad for his state exchange during a baseball game and loads up the site to get coverage—the dream consumer so essential to the design of the exchange system—will not keep trying 25 times over a week if the site is not working. The person with high health costs and no insurance will. The exchange system is designed to enable that sick person to get coverage, of course, but it can only do that if the healthy person does too. The insurers don’t yet have a clear overall sense of the risk profile of the people who are signing up, but the circumstantial evidence they have is very distressing to them. The danger of a rapid adverse selection spiral is much more serious than they believed possible this summer. They would love it if the administration could shut down the exchange system, at least the federal one, until the interface problems can be addressed. But they know this is impossible. ...
...An extension of the enrollment period for coverage, now set to end on March 31, seems to be almost taken for granted. A delay of the individual mandate penalty—which effectively begins in the middle of February—is not thought to be a crazy idea (though the people I spoke with said they have not seen internal preparations for such a move at this point).
The nightmare scenarios, the “unthinkable options,” involve larger moves than that—like putting enrollment on hold or re-starting the exchange system from scratch at some point. No one seems to know how this could work or what it would mean, but everyone involved is contending with a far worse set of circumstances than they were prepared for. This is a major disaster from their point of view, not a set of glitches, and they simply do not know how long it will take to fix. They dearly want to see progress day by day, but they are generally not seeing it. ...
...For me, and for other critics of Obamacare, the problem with the law was never about these technical matters. I didn’t think the system wouldn’t work because the government couldn’t build a website, but because the basic health economics involved is deeply misguided and would take the (badly inadequate) American health-financing system in the wrong direction. So these problems only seem like a prelude to other, larger problems. But Obamacare was also always going to be a test of the sheer capacity of the administrative state to actually do what it claims the authority and ability to do. At this point, it looks as though we may be witnessing a failure of the administrative state on a level unimagined even by its staunchest critics. We may be. But we’ll have to see.
Doctors prepare for Obamacare race to the bottom
...New York doctors are feeling queasy about ObamaCare — and many won’t participate in the new national insurance program because they fear they’ll go broke, The Post has learned.
“ObamaCare is going to send me more patients to see and then cut the payments to provide the care — that’s what’s going to happen,” predicted Donald Moore, a primary-care doctor in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. “I will not accept it.”
Moore claims that President Obama made a big mistake by requiring uninsured residents to obtain medical coverage from for-profit insurers through the ObamaCare health exchanges instead of through public health programs like Medicaid.
Under tremendous pressure to keep costs down and profits up, Moore said he’s concerned that commercial insurers will pay doctors less for patient visits and services than either Medicaid or Medicare....
...Meanwhile, the back-end communication between the exchanges and the insurers has been terrible, as is increasingly being reported. The extent of these problems has also been a surprise to CMS, and here too an increase in volume if the user interface issues are solved could lead to huge problems that would be very difficult to correct. CMS officials and the large insurers thought at first that the garbled data being automatically sent to insurers must be a function of some very simple problems of format incompatibility between the government and insurer systems, but that now seems not to be the case, and the problem appears to be deeper and harder to resolve. It is a very high priority problem, because the system will not be able to function if the insurers cannot have some confidence about the data they receive. At this point, insurers are trying to work through the data manually, because the volume of enrollments is very, very low. But again, if that changes, this could quickly become impossible.
In a couple of ways, then, the severe user-interface problems at the front end of the federal exchange has actually had some advantages from CMS’s point of view, because by keeping enrollment volume low it has kept some other huge problems from becoming instantly uncontrollable. ...
...One key worry is based on the fact that what they’re facing is not a situation where it is impossible to buy coverage but one where it is possible but very difficult to buy coverage. That’s much worse from their point of view, because it means that only highly motivated consumers are getting coverage. People who are highly motivated to get coverage in a community-rated insurance system are very likely to be in bad health. The healthy young man who sees an ad for his state exchange during a baseball game and loads up the site to get coverage—the dream consumer so essential to the design of the exchange system—will not keep trying 25 times over a week if the site is not working. The person with high health costs and no insurance will. The exchange system is designed to enable that sick person to get coverage, of course, but it can only do that if the healthy person does too. The insurers don’t yet have a clear overall sense of the risk profile of the people who are signing up, but the circumstantial evidence they have is very distressing to them. The danger of a rapid adverse selection spiral is much more serious than they believed possible this summer. They would love it if the administration could shut down the exchange system, at least the federal one, until the interface problems can be addressed. But they know this is impossible. ...
...An extension of the enrollment period for coverage, now set to end on March 31, seems to be almost taken for granted. A delay of the individual mandate penalty—which effectively begins in the middle of February—is not thought to be a crazy idea (though the people I spoke with said they have not seen internal preparations for such a move at this point).
The nightmare scenarios, the “unthinkable options,” involve larger moves than that—like putting enrollment on hold or re-starting the exchange system from scratch at some point. No one seems to know how this could work or what it would mean, but everyone involved is contending with a far worse set of circumstances than they were prepared for. This is a major disaster from their point of view, not a set of glitches, and they simply do not know how long it will take to fix. They dearly want to see progress day by day, but they are generally not seeing it. ...
...For me, and for other critics of Obamacare, the problem with the law was never about these technical matters. I didn’t think the system wouldn’t work because the government couldn’t build a website, but because the basic health economics involved is deeply misguided and would take the (badly inadequate) American health-financing system in the wrong direction. So these problems only seem like a prelude to other, larger problems. But Obamacare was also always going to be a test of the sheer capacity of the administrative state to actually do what it claims the authority and ability to do. At this point, it looks as though we may be witnessing a failure of the administrative state on a level unimagined even by its staunchest critics. We may be. But we’ll have to see.
Doctors prepare for Obamacare race to the bottom
...New York doctors are feeling queasy about ObamaCare — and many won’t participate in the new national insurance program because they fear they’ll go broke, The Post has learned.
“ObamaCare is going to send me more patients to see and then cut the payments to provide the care — that’s what’s going to happen,” predicted Donald Moore, a primary-care doctor in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. “I will not accept it.”
Moore claims that President Obama made a big mistake by requiring uninsured residents to obtain medical coverage from for-profit insurers through the ObamaCare health exchanges instead of through public health programs like Medicaid.
Under tremendous pressure to keep costs down and profits up, Moore said he’s concerned that commercial insurers will pay doctors less for patient visits and services than either Medicaid or Medicare....
NSA collects millions of e-mail address books globally
The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The collection program, which has not been disclosed before, intercepts e-mail address books and “buddy lists” from instant messaging services as they move across global data links. Online services often transmit those contacts when a user logs on, composes a message, or synchronizes a computer or mobile device with information stored on remote servers.
Rather than targeting individual users, the NSA is gathering contact lists in large numbers that amount to a sizable fraction of the world’s e-mail and instant messaging accounts. Analysis of that data enables the agency to search for hidden connections and to map relationships within a much smaller universe of foreign intelligence targets....
The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The collection program, which has not been disclosed before, intercepts e-mail address books and “buddy lists” from instant messaging services as they move across global data links. Online services often transmit those contacts when a user logs on, composes a message, or synchronizes a computer or mobile device with information stored on remote servers.
Rather than targeting individual users, the NSA is gathering contact lists in large numbers that amount to a sizable fraction of the world’s e-mail and instant messaging accounts. Analysis of that data enables the agency to search for hidden connections and to map relationships within a much smaller universe of foreign intelligence targets....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)