Maggie's Farm

Driving around today I heard this cut from Adele and had to crank up the sounds, almost to Rolling Stones decibels. It's a driving tempo, and if you remember "high" road trips it is driving music.

Replacing the YUPPIES, AOL hits the irony jackpot today, naming the 2010s young generation the DUMPIES, downward mobile, unemployed, poor.

Of course, relatively few of last decade's young were Yuppies, and relatively few of today's are Dumpies. But the Dumpies appelation does seem to fit well the Occupy Wall Streeters. Besides the most common fecal meanings of "dump" as displayed by the photo of a protester defecating on a police car, there's more definitions found at the Urban Dictionary that fit their OWS scene:

InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds, author of Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths, which "hails the emergence of a new entrepreneurial class resulting from the democratizing power of technology" according to Publishers Weekly, preceded the Occupy Wall Street protests. But, OWC is a different kind of protest. OWC is a big media promoted event, one that fits its liberal-left memes, organized by radical "community organizers", funded and added manpower from government-union thugs (just look at the size of the OWC bouncers). Struggling to find any allies, President Obama clings to the OWCers ranting at anyone "wealthy", who have avoided facing Obama's crony capitalism -- funding him and he funding them in return with taxpayer dollars 50% supplied by the wealthiest 1% -- that is the real core of our and their economic complaints.

As Glenn Reynolds comments about major media coverage of OWC protests, "When lefties want to make the Tea Party fit their preconceptions, they have to make things up. When righties want to exercise their preconceptions about the Occupy movement, on the other hand, they just have to take a picture."  Reynolds includes this quote from a columnist:

The mainstream media's cameras can't get enough of these pierced protesters, with their crudely written signs proclaiming their unfocused discontent and general anger at society's selfishness in failing to satisfy their every want and desire.

Of course, those cameras discreetly turn away when the placards demanding socialist revolution and blaming the Jews come out. The protesters' function is to demonstrate inchoate outrage simply by being there. When they start talking, they start alienating the normals.

These are Potemkin protesters, community organized by government worker unions to allow liberal Democrats a way to triangulate to the center next year. Only the rebel media outfits will actually stick a mic in the protesters' dirty faces and let them talk.

Armchair art lovers, you don't need Bird Dog's notes anymore to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) in New York. Plus, you'll save airfare, high hotel and meal costs, cab drivers who cuss at you in some tongue while smiling, stepping over winos, and other joys of visiting New York.

The Met's website is a free ticket to its entire collection of over 340,000 objects, including those in storage that onsite paid ticket buyers don't get to see. It's easy to navigate by various criteria, periods or locations, and each photo is accompanied by an interesting explanation of the piece, its history, context, and so forth. The search engine is also easy and will take you anywhere in the Met's vast collections, without having to get out of your jammies or put on shoes. Plus there are guided tours and videos of Met experts on diverse subjects and on their own artistic passions.

Let's take for example the unicorn from the Unicorn Tapestries at the Met's Cloisters, miles uptown in Fort Tryon -- a seedier part of town -- that Bird Dog posted about today. Here's the Met's website page for that. See for yourself what its about and compare to what you didn't learn from Bird Dog.

Have at it. Occupy The Met and throw off the yoke of the capitalist-running-Bird Dog. Non-Bird Dogs of the world, Unite!

If you haven't shopped for a replacement car lately, it has become -- pricewise -- crazier than ever. That's not because of the usual dealer tactics. In fact, with the Internet, the consumer has acquired added info with which to avoid being hornswaggled. It is because due to Cash-4-Clunkers removing so many used cars from the market and the recession reducing new car sales the past few years the price of used cars has increased by 25-50%, so a one or two year old used car -- even high mileage -- costs near as much as a new one. This has increased current new car sales, as why not?

That's what I found when searching over the past month for a replacement for my 2000 trusty Taurus, now having imminent engine and suspension problems that would cost me more than the car's value to repair. My wife's criteria was only that it be reasonably reliable and fit my 6-year old Gavin's bike or hold three or four large suitcases. After trying every old trick I knew, I was getting frustrated and furious. Then I found Truecar.com. It tells you the true dealer cost for a new car, thousands below MSRP and well below dealer invoice. It also tells you which dealer in your area is selling for close to dealer cost. So armed, I made my offer to several dealers, being rejected. Then, yesterday afternoon, a dealer agreed. I am now the owner of a new 2012 car.

I took 11-year old Jason with me as my tech advisor. Although I chose a bottom of the model, middle-class car, the new car has so many fancy, cool electronics for auto-diagnoses and warnings, communications, music, navigating, etc. (none of which I care about) that my eyes glazed over and my ears heard the seashore. But Jason took it all in immediately and promises to educate me. Almost as techy as Micky's new car. 

I’ve been a big shot in several giant corporations, several smaller ones, and a consultant on finance, business operations, HR and employee benefits to many more, aside from running my own business.

I’ve never seen a situation where excessive labor demands or behavior was not the fault of poor management. Once launched on grievance and then power seeking by labor, a downward spiral ensues. Sometimes management reforms, often not. Eventually, the business fails and all suffer.

When there are more effective competitors, that process is speeded.

Surviving US companies have met that competition by becoming more efficient in their processes or by sending manufacturing abroad for cheaper labor, or both devising better processes and sending it abroad to foreign factories or outsourcers.

US labor unions used to be very effective in developing free unions in poorer countries, as a bulwark against exploitive communist unions and to defend our prosperity in a freer world. Today, they are adamant against foreign outsourcing while refusing to become partners in US efficiencies, but have lost their position in all but government unions and similar where they can exert a monopoly granted by paid-off politicians. They do fight for fairer labor standards in free trade agreements, but mostly to impede outsourcing rather than to encourage free trade.

Free trade should not be an issue, as all benefit, us from cheaper products and focusing investments where we have a comparative advantage, foreign workers from getting a leg on the ladder to better living conditions than in rural drudgery and exploitation by local thugocrats.

We are not in the early 1900s, and shouldn’t blithely feel that eventually foreign workers will be in a better position. And we are Americans and do not believe in undue exploitation of others. We are in a faster, communicative world which does not wait decades and, further, the image of the US is more important when native populations and not just their elites are our audience and affect our own economic and national security interests.

Added: Child Labor and Chocolate

During last night’s Republican debate, all agreed on repealing ObamaCare. But only Romney mentioned that we need something to replace it and mentioned he has that plan.

So, I looked at Romney’s campaign website about healthcare.

To be quick out of the blocks, Romney promises to exempt all states from ObamaCare on his first day in the Oval Office, then ask Congress to repeal it.

To control federal costs, he would provide block grants to states to devise their own, closer to their publics, programs. Individuals would be able to deduct premiums from taxes, as businesses can. Preexisting conditions would not affect insurability if the individual had prior continuous coverage, a spur to taking more self-responsibility. HRAs, pretax savings accounts for healthcare, would be expanded to pay for premiums, making the cost of premiums less for taxpaying consumers, and cross-state purchases would be allowed to avoid costly state mandates. Non-medical malpractice tort awards would be capped.

These are all well and good………if one just wants band aids for a hemorrhage.

It is probably politic to avoid rousing the ire of independents via Democrat MediScare charges. But as I argued yesterday the core problem is not addressed: extensive government direction of medical care driving up costs to today’s unaffordable levels for the budget and for consumers, distorting markets, reducing individual choice and overriding individual circumstances. Thus far, only the Ryan plan addresses it.

Regardless of whom is elected president in 2012, it will be up to Congress to choose whether we continue on a government-lighter or ObamaCare model, or face up to the real drivers of healthcare costs in excessive government direction of healthcare.

Even if one forgives Romney for RomneyCare being a mistake of the past, he does not adequately learn from nor atone for it. For that matter, the other Republican presidential potentials have not even been as specific as he in what they’d do after being elected. Inadequate from all.

Romney may have strengthened his case for “inevitability” in last night’s debate by his smoothness and command of details. And something is better than nothing. However, that something is still nothing compared to the unresolved challenges we must face to retain healthcare quality and access at affordable costs, enhanced freedoms, and the resources needed to face the US other needs.

There is no perfect solution to what varying interest groups or segments of public opinion desire as reforms to US healthcare. Now that we’ve gone down the path of ObamaCare and RomneyCare, that is more evident. The question, then, is what course is more promising? The answer is less government intervention in healthcare than preceded ObamaCare or RomneyCare.

There are three core problems with either ObamaCare or RomneyCare. Each by itself raise conflicts with facts, law, and public desires. Together, they are a witches brew. Both ObamaCare and RomneyCare are based on wrong premises of government intervention and result in worsening the future of healthcare in the US.

ObamaCare and RomneyCare are premised on extending more medical care to the uninsured even beyond need or personal responsibility or affordability. They are premised on reducing or moderating our national costs of healthcare even though they fail to do so and in many ways increase costs. They are premised on the imposition of added government regulation and intervention into individual choice and circumstances even though neither science, management, competence, politics nor majority public support is up to the task nor expected to be.

But one has to go deeper than that to find the roots of the false premises of ObamaCare and RomneyCare. The roots are in government healthcare programs themselves like Medicare and Medicaid. Regardless of any good intentions or needs, they set the course of government being the solution.

Regardless of promises or embedment they have expanded beyond initial promises or need. Regardless of the good they do they have done more harm to healthcare by distorting its economics and its public perception. Regardless of cost they have increased costs to those outside these programs. Regardless of their public acceptance they have become unaffordable.

It is painful to abandon ObamaCare or RomneyCare. It is less painful to change course entirely.

From decades and certifications in health insurance I am highly critical of health insurers, and moreso as they have become more self-servingly enmeshed in government healthcare programs. That said, private insurers are more responsive to change, improvements, competition, and tailoring coverages to individual needs than any government program is capable. Further, individuals – including the poor or uneducated – are more able to discern their own needs than any government bureaucrat. Further, groups advocating types of health insurance coverage beyond the core would have to compete with more transparent facts and costs instead of canoodling with and paying off politicians.

Congressman Paul Ryan has proposed the reform of Medicare that would reverberate throughout US healthcare. It is estimated by the CBO to “totally reverse the course of recent fiscal history by lowering federal health care spending from 8% of GDP today to just 5% by 2050. If we remain on the current course, the spending would jump to 14% in that time frame.”

For a good summary, see here. As Fortune says,

In effect, Ryan is asking Americans to make a historic leap of faith…. Ryan's vision of bringing the market to Medicare is the best choice in a world of poor alternatives….

 

Americans will no longer get more than 70% of their Medicare costs paid by the government. [Instead there would be premium subsidies, declining with means, and co-pay subsidees for the poor. –ed.] Retirees are bound to pay a much bigger share of their own medical costs. More and more seniors will choose high deductible plans, and HMO or PPO-style programs that limit choices of doctors.

 

Still, the rise in costs for the elderly could prove far less than the giant annual increases we're experiencing today. We've simply never seen a competitive environment like the one in the Ryan blueprint. "The Obama plan is all about price controls," says Joseph Antos, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute. "Ryan's is all about unleashing the market."

 

The Ryan plan has another major strength: It will stop heaping a bigger and bigger Medicare burden onto younger taxpayers. Ryan is making a bold, wrenching choice that wins because it's less painful than all the others.

 

The Obama re-election administration has lambasted Ryan with Democrat MediScare (even though Ryan's program would reduce government subsidies for the wealthy!) Mitt Romney tries to explain that ObamaCare exceeds RomneyCare’s ailments instead of admitting original sin. The other major Republican candidates, in this as in other areas, have not put forth anything but slogans. Perhaps that’s about all we can expect from an election season.

To avoid facing the battle during the elections, I suppose that Ryan will not be the V-P nominee. (Even though "70% Favor Individual Choice Over Government Standards for Health Insurance," there doesn't appear sufficient courage or faith in the voters for leading candidates to take the risk.) However, after 2012, we must either turn to Paul Ryan or continue our present muddle that resolves little and increases faults. I don’t know whether Ryan would be most effective in Congressional leadership or as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Whichever will depend on the size of the Republican majority and the intelligence and guts of the next president and Congress.

But, none got the well-paying job (I didn't say high-paying, you'll see), as they lacked the confidence Maggie demands to reach out for what they want.

See video of the interviews below the fold...

Mitt Romney’s speech today (text) on foreign policy stands in stark contrast to President Obama’s muddling, kowtowing to despots, undermining allies, and hollowing of our military readiness, and in contrast to the isolationism of Ron Paul and the sentiments but lack of meat from Perry and Bachmann.  A reaction:

Romney’s unapologetic statement of American exceptionalism and devotion to the promotion of freedom as well as his understanding of the threats facing the country from Islamism, Iran, as well as China and Russia, provides encouragement for conservatives who have been waiting to hear whether he is up to the task of being commander-in-chief…. some of the most interesting points concerned Romney’s commitment to reversing Obama’s cuts in defense spending….Romney’s speech, like the roster of foreign policy advisers his campaign released yesterday, should quiet worries he isn’t prepared to meet the dangers a feckless Obama will leave for his successor.

Another:

As he did on his jobs plan, Romney’s foreign policy rollout is detailed, organized, professional and aided by very smart people. The logistics of assembling a big team of top advisors, crafting a short but bold speech and coming up with a detailed written document are daunting and impressive. The level of detail is unlike anything any other candidate has attempted, and far exceeds what we usually get in campaigns. This is Romney the executive, Romney the smart guy and Romney the polished professional. His message is clear: I’m prepared and I know what I am doing.

But what is surprising about his foreign policy effort is that unlike his economic plans and what has come top be seen as a character defect (e.g. lack of strong convictions) his foreign policy statements are bold, unqualified, and not couched for political advantage.

A skeptic can say it’s just campaign talk. A cynic can say that we can’t afford to be leader of the free world and the free world of the world. An opponent can say it’s rewarmed George Bush or neoconservative.

This Republican must say this is real leadership. There are many reasons for many Republicans to be shy of Romney as less conservative than they would like. True. And, if this is the best that can be gotten, it exceeds any realistic alternative, by a long shot.

The extremism of R2P’s leading proponent is exhibited in Anne-Marie Slaughter’s op-ed in today’s New York Times. Slaughter likens the Wall Street protesters to those demonstrating against oppressive regimes in the Middle East and recommends removal of the US system of checks and balances that protect minority views and avoid poorly developed political stampedes. (Slaughter doesn’t mention or give credence to the more numerous, mature citizenry participating in or supporting the Tea Parties more peaceful protests for more limited government intrusions into Americans’ private lives and earnings.)

R2P’s leading proponent, Anne-Marie Slaughter of Harvard, believes that US foreign policies and military interventions should prioritize the Right To Protect severely repressed peoples through US obeisance to liberal internationalist elites’ sentiments in favor of some they like regardless of the US Constitution or laws or national or security interests.

In today’s New York Times, Slaughter takes her R2P home to the US, advocating that majorities rule regardless of the formal and informal checks and balances of our political system and overriding the rights of political minorities. Again, it is the majorities that liberals like who should be given more powers.

Without any sense of proportionality or of core differences between the US and Middle East satrapies, Slaughter says, “Indeed, the twin drivers of America’s nascent protest movement against the financial sector are injustice and invisibility, the very grievances that drove the Arab Spring.” Slaughter then concludes, “The only effective response is a political response, of a nature and magnitude that convinces protesters on the streets that they can in fact secure the change they seek within, rather than outside, the system.”

Slaughter’s system, however, would reduce the ability of permanent or transitory political minorities to protect their interests. They would, also, further factionalize the US and make compromises more difficult as the power of centrists is reduced.

Slaughter would eliminate the filibuster that ensures that a temporary electoral minority in the US Senate cannot be ridden over roughshod by the majority of the day (which, in the latest 1-vote US Senate Democrat majority vote has – as Politico headlines – put the “Senate in chaos”).  Slaughter would install proportional representation, which often result in more unstable governance and unsavory alliances that revolve around access to the public purse and less accountability to any but each faction's die-hards. Slaughter would bar private funding in elections, by which the smaller number of wealthy can counterbalance the votes of the poorer who blithely may support expropriatory programs. (Note: The US Supreme Court has ruled such laws unconstitutional.) In effect, Slaughter supports transitory mob rule, politely of course.

Slaughter ends by commenting, “I am beginning to suspect that people abroad with long experience of disenfranchisement and trampling of their dignity may in fact understand the fissures in our society better than we do ourselves.”

Instead, Slaughter exhibits her liberal elitist view of the US, and demonstrates that she is as extremist in domestic policy as in foreign policy.

What makes me suspect Slaughter and her ilk would be more hesitant to endorse simple majority rule after the 2012 elections?

I think that most sane people have spent the past three years of the Obama administration exerting their tolerance because, after all, he is the President. That tolerance has been extended as it would to a toddler trying to figure out how to use a screwdriver, or a teenager who thinks Liquid Wrench is a joke. But President Obama is an adult. He just can't be such a screw-up as he appears. He just can't be such a leftist extremist. By now, believing their eyes, most (as polls attest) are through with shredded tolerance. He's an ossified 60s radical who never grew up or learned anything.

The Politics of Economic Ignorance is the header on Jennifer Rubin's column in the Washington Post about President Obama's economics.

For a time I thought all such talk was cynical politics, offered up to bond with the “rubes” in America who might be convinced that only the liberal pols have their interests at heart. Now I think that in moments of high stress (imagine how one feels as the presidency and historic legacy melt away), the president’s unvarnished beliefs come through. It’s a crude sort of populism fueled by conspiracy theories, the kind you expect on college campuses — or on the streets of lower Manhattan of late.

This is a pol who tells us we should increase the public sector, dictate to the private sector and then excoriate business for trying to maximize profits. (It’s almost like they think that’s their primary obligation, or something.) At one level it is embarrassing that the president of the United States has economic views that approximate those of a dim college freshman. But actually it’s petrifying. For nearly three years this has been the mentality behind an economic vision that has failed miserably. It’s remarkable the economy isn’t in worse shape.

And he wants four more years. One can hardly imagine what he’d do if he got them.

From the Foreign Policy Research Institute-Temple University Consortium on Grand Strategy, Dr. Stuart Kaufman: Too Cheap To Rule: Political And Fiscal Sources Of The Coming American Retrenchment

In praising the source of ancient Athens’s greatness, Pericles most of all lauded Athenians’ “sense of duty”. The weakness of this sense of duty is what characterizes the contemporary American political debate. The left sees a duty to care for the sick and needy, but fails to temper that with attention to the affordability of that care. The right praises those who take up the duty of national defense, but rejects the notion that paying for soldiers’ salaries and weapons through taxes is also a patriotic duty. Instead, the “me generation” rules, demanding that the conservatives give “me” a tax cut, that the liberals give “me” government benefits, and if something must be sacrificed, let it be duty to future generations.

This climate will leave the U.S. with two grand strategic options. The first is to attempt to maintain existing commitments with declining resources at increasingly higher risk against rising challengers. This approach would be an exact parallel to recent fiscal policy, but when it was tried in the Pacific in the early 1940s, its costs were measured in blood and destruction as well as money. The alternative is to retrench from some overseas commitments, following blueprints like the Cato Institute’s plan for a strategy of “military restraint” that would be sustainable at 3 percent of GDP. Such a grand strategic retrenchment may seem attractive, and it is certainly better than overextension. While it may lead to political instability and even increased wars abroad, it saves money and does not cost American lives if the U.S. does not to intervene. On the other hand, retrenchment is foolhardy if the result is likely to be increased terrorism and piracy, wars in which the U.S. must intervene, or lost diplomatic leverage that yields closing commercial opportunities and defeat for American ideals.

It would be useful to have the debate on the tradeoffs before the retrenchment becomes reality, but if the consensus of left and right is on the absence of a national will to pay for primacy, the decision may already have been made.

The Wall Street protesters want to be biggees benefiting from being above the law of the US and the laws of economics.

The Wall Street protesters and the Tea Party protesters have something in common, a revolt against the biggees each see as taking unfair advantages. The primary difference is that the Tea Party is opposed to the extra-constitutionality of liberal politicians in league with crony capitalists profiting each other at the expense of taxpayers, while the Wall Street protesters base is for more extra-constitutionality to expropriate for themselves the advantages garnered by all those profiting from free enterprise.

Tea Partiers want to keep the products of their labor and earnings, while the Wall Street protesters want government to redirect the products of others’ labor and earnings to themselves and causes of their allies.

Demographically, the Tea Partiers come from the middle-class who have more practical experience of the world, while the Wall Street protesters come almost entirely from the privileged white young people with relatively little real world experience.

Musically, the Tea Partiers have popular anthems of patriotism to enliven the reach of their cultural message, while the Wall Street protesters lack popular music with political themes. (This is a distinct and telling difference from the 1960s.)

Politically, the Tea Partiers have protested peacefully and within the law, while the Wall Street protests break laws and inconvenience the public. This alienates rather than enlists support.

PRwise, the Tea Partiers had to overcome major media’s reluctance to provide them coverage and its trumpeting of false charges from the left, while the mostly liberal major media have almost instantly favorably  or neutrally headlined the Wall Street protesters.

The question is whether the tilt of the major media facing the alternative media will succeed in hiding these differences from most Americans. I doubt it. The liberal-tilting major media is itself seen as an out-of-touch and fading biggee. The support from public-employee unions with privileges above those in private business, the usual few extreme-leftist members of Congress, and from the usual rich far-left Hollywood celebrities just reinforces the perception of the usual leftist biggees wanting to lord it over taxpaying Americans. The Wall Street protesters and their leftist allies in media like to call themselves the 99%, kiddee columnist Ezra Klein sophistically asserting they want to see “the fundamental bargain of our economy – work hard, play by the rules, get ahead -- … restored.” Instead, they are the small minority who are or who want to be the 1%, exhibit little respect for the “rules” or virtues and rewards of free enterprise, demanding to “get ahead” with government-provided privileges.

P.S.: Donald Douglas adds some personal reality.

Today, the Washington Post doubles-down on despicable.

At Camp Ripley, Minnesota, there was a recent Welcome Home for Vietnam veterans. This video highlights the speeches given. Veterans Day is on November 11. It's worth listening to the speeches, the lasting legacy, and preparing yourself for what you will do on Veterans Day.

The Washington Post is usually a little more careful than the New York Times about blatant bias, but its racism hit-job on Governor Perry sinks to a low, at least so far for this election cycle. Perry is supposed to be responsible for the old slur on a rock at a hunting camp rented by his father, which Perry says his father painted over as soon as they rented the camp.

Porky Pig at his worst would call it “wacism.” That’s the words war crossed with racism, as the last refuge of scoundrels out to wage media war to save President Obama’s re-election.

It takes the Texas Tribune to set matters in perspective, doing the job the big city boys wouldn't:

Wallace Jefferson, the first black chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, said the hunting ranch name controversy is "much ado about nothing" and argued the implication that Rick Perry is insensitive to matters of race is flatly wrong…."To imply that the governor condoned either the use of that word or that sentiment, I find false," Jefferson said….

 

Even some of Perry's fiercest Texas critics say they do not believe he is racist. They point to his record of appointments as evidence: He appointed the state’s first African-American state supreme court justice, Wallace Jefferson, and later made him chief justice. (Jefferson’s great grandfather was a slave, “sold like a horse,” Perry once said with disgust.) Perry’s former general counsel and former chief of staff, Brian Newby, is black; so is Albert Hawkins, the former Health and Human Services commissioner who Perry handpicked to lead the massive agency in 2002.

 

“He doesn’t have a racist bone in his body,” said former Democratic state Rep. Ron Wilson, who is black and served with Perry in his early years in the Legislature. “He didn’t then, and he doesn’t now.”

 

Added Dallas Democratic Sen. Royce West, who is also black: “I don’t agree with him on policy issues, but you can point to many things he has done that were sensitive to ethnic minorities.”

 

Those on the Left, as expected, trumpeted the WaPo’s Wacism hit-piece. Those on the Right who went along, to bolster their alternative candidate or out of laziness or to kiss a** in their NYC-DC cocoon, have not only hurt their own credibility but also Republican chances of recovering Washington. Way to go, weasily wascals.

California's elected Insurance commissioner is one of the most anti-insurer in the country. He was part of the Democrat slate chosen by state voters in 2010, from Governor on down, despite the Republican tide elsewhere throughout the country.

His latest, lauding the new law signed by the Governor, making it unlawful for health and disability insurers to be the determiner of whether the claimant on a policy is disabled. Now, according to the Insurance Commissioner's press release: "SB 621 protects consumers of life, health, and disability insurance from 'discretionary clauses' in their insurance policies which give the insurer the sole discretion to decide is a beneficiary has become disabled, even if the consumer has a doctor certify that they are disabled," said Commissioner Jones."

How's doctor certifications worked out in California?

According to the Los Angeles Times, 11% of California drivers used a doctor's note to get a disabled parking tag, so they can park for free in any spot and use those reserved for handicapped drivers. Some truly are handicapped. Most of us have witnessed most parking in those spots getting around fine. According to the deputy chief of investigations of the California DMV, "With the emphasis on fraudulent use ... when we go out, typically on average it's in the area of a 30 to 40 percent violation rate." This is just those using someone else's handicap parking tag. There is no verification of those who obtained a tag with a doctor's note.

Yeah, doctor's notes to obtain health insurance or disability insurance payouts. That's the ticket..........to further destroy insurers and leave us all to government-run, taxpayer-paid coverage.
 

“God is not God’s Name” but rather “I AM WHO I AM”, meaning everything that exists.

So, is it OK that so many bloggers and commenters use pseudonyms? Are their opinions godlike? Or, are they just afraid to reveal themselves completely?

Some have jobs or friendships that they feel may be endangered, others do not, and others just want to be rude or snarky or such without responsibility, accountability or consequence.

Do pseudonyms reduce their credibility? If someone has something worthwhile to say, they believe, I think they should stand behind it publicly, not hide behind a pseudonym.

Moses used his real name.

I jokingly refer to my sons as The Mother’s Curse. Did your mother, exasperated or angry, ever stand over you and say, “You should have children like you. Then you’ll know how I feel.”  Surely, my mother is rolling over in her grave laughing at me because they’re like me as I remember my childhood.

They get under my skin when they’re obstinate, selfish, nasty, use bad words, make excuses, talk back. And, I sometimes lose my temper.

Yeah, they are only 11 and 6, I know, and they’ve progressed and are supposed to know and act better and control themselves as they grow older and more experienced.

To become better it is necessary to correct and instruct them, and be willing to make it stick. When they continue to not listen, and even dig in to provoke me, I sometimes blow my stack. And they tremble then and cool it.

But, I wish, and if wishes were fishes we’d never go hungry, they would listen and learn more and I yell at them less (especially when I overreact).

I’ve read many books and tried to follow their guidance. Yet, I still have to yell at them. And, they keep pushing back, one of their more lovable characteristics that they don’t back down or off easily.

I’m cursed.

Or, is it just called parenting?  Love ya, boys.

Been out digging up a tree stump. Need a beer, this one. 

The current uproar about the CLASS longterm care portion of ObamaCare is instructive of both how we got into this mess and how difficult it will be to get out of it. For those who watch TVs Falling Skies, where spinal implant harnesses attached to humans by aliens even when removed leave irremovable control over humans, that could also be our fate under ObamaCare. The blogosphere needs to step up its game to avoid or reduce this implantation.

Major blogs are now writing about the meltdown of the ObamaCare CLASS longterm care program, now that some internal memos have been revealed. But, with facts and figures, readily available reporting (including pre-admissions of failure before Congress reported in the New York Times), and my decades experience and certifications in employee benefits, I wrote about the unsustainability of CLASS long before, to be ignored. ( See here, ObamaCare’s CLASS Failure, and here, The Fraud Admitted.) I saw this before regarding my columns over many years on healthcare issues. Why?

Healthcare and insurance are not sexy issues, and require some deeper understanding to speak about intelligently. Most bloggers are involved in quick-takes on the hot issues of the day. Then, the blogosphere is politicized. Unless that issue can be highlighted quickly to undermine the opposition, and doesn’t require much research, it is passed on. This is even so when the issue is reported in the major media. Bloggers also know that very few of their readers are willing to spend much time on the fine details of most issues.

It wasn’t until ObamaCare that most bloggers began to write about healthcare. Suddenly everyone wrote as an instant expert. And, as often as not, superficially or confusing important facts.

Focus was on ObamaCare’s costs, on government controls over individual choices, and on the mandate, all important. However, the details of ObamaCare make readers' eyes gloss over. The Obama administration counted on that to pass the bill and since to keep the details muted. Of course, some specialized blogs went deeper, but are rarely read.

The CLASS portion of ObamaCare was known to be unsustainable from the get-go, which is why the bill itself required it to be examined after passage before implementation. But, the estimated $75-billion revenues from its early years’ was key to falsely claiming that ObamaCare would not increase federal deficits, before CLASS itself went into huge deficits.

Meanwhile, ObamaCare has step-by-step been entrenching itself within healthcare and its organizations. Early victims are health insurance agents and those many who rely upon them. I’ve yet to find a major blog that has written about this. Their comp is being cut by up to 50%, with more cuts to come, and many are leaving the business and those who need them with lessened defense against ObamaCare or giant insurance companies most interested in profiting from ObamaCare. I wrote about this here, In Defense Of Health Insurance Agents, And You, and here, CBO: ObamaCare Within 5% Of Nationalizing Insurance Companies, and here, Are Health Insurance Agents Worth It: The Canaries In ObamaCare Mine.

There are many more examples I could easily point out. Assuming that after the 2012 elections there’ll be a Republican president and Congress, despite pledges to repeal ObamaCare, we’ll find much of it welded into our spines. The mandate issue is focused upon because it raises libertarian hackles and because it seems the only promising course in the courts. However, even judicially excising mandates may not uproot Obamacare, if found severable despite the ObamaCare bill not including a severability clause. Also, by then, if there is a then at the Supreme Court, many portions of ObamaCare will be so far along, and many aspects of current healthcare so changed,  as to be irremovable. Welcome to Falling Skies, the ObamaCare version. Falling Skies next season is next Summer, just in time for the 2012 election season. Will we survive the aliens? Will we survive ObamaCare? Can we reverse the alien harnesses? Will the blogosphere get ahead of instead of behind the ObamaCare issues? Stay tuned.

For good updates on CLASS, see Powerline and Hot Air. Politics analyst Charlie Cook discusses 2012 and ObamaCare.