Maggie's Farm

Can we avoid 70% of the cost of the huge Medicaid expansion within ObamaCare?.  Yes, says a careful analysis, from a very knowledgeable source with practical experience.

Between 2014-2019, the estimated additional cost of the Medicaid expansion within ObamaCare, that accounts for over half those with added coverage, is $436.4 billion.  That’s the figure analyzed by United Healthcare’s Center for Health Reform and Modernization.  That ranges from $12.2 billion for Alabama, to $32.4 billion for California, to $28.1 billion for Florida, to $19.5 billion for Georgia, to $12.6 billion each for Indiana and Illinois, to $10.7 billion for Michigan, to $2.8 billion for Nevada, to $16.6 billion for Ohio, to $27.4 billion for Pennsylvania, to $59.5 billion for Texas, to $13 billion for Virginia.

The magnitude of each state’s added cost varies with how liberal its qualifications are already. Another factor is who gets new coverage.

Let’s get to the bottom line: Those claiming that their industry is too big to fail are those who are failures, failing in their basic responsibilities to plan, manage and innovate, most often accompanied by rewarding themselves with high pay and perks.

In the 1980’s, many large corporations were acquired by vulture capitalists, broken up and otherwise disposed of. Yes, hundreds of billions of dollars were sometimes wasted on acquisitions that proved worthless, except to the wheelers-and-dealers’ fees, although in far more cases reorganized leaner and meaner competitors emerged.  American industries, and those who wanted to keep their jobs, were forced to adapt if they wanted to remain viable.  The American economy prospered anew. Many millions of employees were dislocated, struggled, but American unemployment was at new lows as new opportunities were created.

Those lessons, like most, need to be relearned anew with each generation.

Watch to the end, unless you have small children who are easily scared.

Editorial, Washington Examiner, 4-14:

Barely 15 percent of all construction-industry workers in the United States are union members, while the remaining 85 percent are nonunion, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. So why has President Obama signed Executive Order 13502 directing federal agencies taking bids for government construction projects to accept only those from contractors who agree in advance to a project labor agreement that requires a union work force? Obama's new order applies to all federal construction projects with price tags of $25 million or more, and it means all such contracts will only be awarded to companies with unionized work forces.

By eliminating the vast majority of potential bidders on federal construction projects, Obama guarantees two things. First, the projects will cost taxpayers more because union labor is always more expensive. And with mandated PLAs, the cost premium for union contractors will be even greater because fewer bidders always means less competition and higher prices. Second, by guaranteeing unions a bigger stream of federal contracts, Obama is making sure that Big Labor, already among the Democrats' biggest sources of campaign cash, will have even more money to hand out for the 2010 and 2012 elections. You scratch our back with taxpayers dollars gleaned through PLA-based federal construction jobs, and we'll scratch your back with campaign contributions. That's the way it works in Obama's business-as-usual Washington. It's also known in some quarters as "the Chicago Way."

"The Obama administration's policy is a slap in the face to the vast majority of construction workers who have chosen not to unionize," said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation."Qualified nonunion contractors whose workers have opted against unionization will be locked out from large-scale construction projects. The true purpose of so-called project labor agreements is simple: To impose unwanted union boss control on workers from the top down."

Another factor helps explain Obama's willingness to sign an executive order that will put millions more tax dollars in union coffers. Mix points out that unions under PLAs typically exact agreements that include requiring contractors to make payments to union pension funds. This is an increasingly urgent issue, as the Washington Examiner's Mark Hemingway has recently detailed in these pages. According to Labor Department filings, the average union pension has only enough money on hand to cover 62 percent of the benefits it has promised to union members. Pension plans with 80 percent funding are considered "endangered" by federal auditors, while those with less than 65 percent funding are put on the "critical" list. With this latest executive order, it's clear that Obama intends to give unions on the critical list a massive dose of federal tax dollars to cure what ails them.

The Texas Stadium demolition video:

The Texas Stadium deconstruction and transformation video is even more interesting:

If you like explosions, here's the Three Rivers Stadium implosion:

And, here's the Cinergy Stadium implosion, with good soundtrack:

The Kingdome implosion looks kinda like it was in a SciFi film:

More cool ones at YouTube, of course.

Ed Morrissey and Professor William Jacobson inform us about the tragic death in an airline crash of the brave Polish president and a large number of Poland’s leadership, on their way to a joint commemoration with Russia of the 1940 slaughter of 22,000 Polish officers by the Soviet Union.

For those of you who don’t recall Katyn, I wrote about it last August.

Katyn: In 1962, one of my later mentors published the first definitive book proving that the Soviets committed the massacre of Poland’s military elite at Katyn.  This is a very important key to understanding the Captive Nations outcome of WWII and the Cold War.  I just rented the film, Katyn, directed by Poland’s most famous director.  Anne Applebaum, steeped in Soviet history, has an interesting review of the film, “A Movie That Matters.” An excerpt:

"Certainly its Polish viewers know how it will end, long before they enter the cinema. Katyn, as its title suggests, tells the story of the near-simultaneous Soviet and German invasions of Poland in September 1939, and the Red Army's subsequent capture, imprisonment, and murder of some 20,000 Polish officers in the forests near the Russian village of Katyn and elsewhere, among them Wajda's father. The justification for the murder was straightforward. These were Poland's best-educated and most patriotic soldiers. Many were reservists who as civilians worked as doctors, lawyers, university lecturers, and merchants. They were the intellectual elite who could obstruct the Soviet Union's plans to absorb and "Sovietize" Poland's eastern territories. On the advice of his secret police chief, Lavrenty Beria, Stalin ordered them executed.

"But the film is about more than the mass murder itself. For decades after it took place, the Katyn massacre was an absolutely forbidden topic in Poland, and therefore the source of a profound, enduring mistrust between the Poles and their Soviet conquerors. Officially, the Soviet Union blamed the murder on the Germans, who discovered one of the mass graves (there were at least three) following the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941. Soviet prosecutors even repeated this blatant falsehood during the Nuremberg trials and it was echoed by, among others, the British government.

"Unofficially, the mass execution was widely assumed to have been committed by the Soviet Union. In Poland, the very word "Katyn" thus evokes not just the murder but the many Soviet falsehoods surrounding the history of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. Katyn wasn't a single wartime event, but a series of lies and distortions, told over decades, designed to disguise the reality of the Soviet postwar occupation and Poland's loss of sovereignty."

Obama snubbing Poland for 70^th anniversary of WWII? Poland was the most screwed over country going into, during, and after WWII.  Those of its soldiers who escaped the Nazis and Soviets were among the bravest fighters with the Allies. Poland and Poles deserve more respect.

Wonder what hollow words President Obama will utter now?

Today’s loss is devastating to Poland, to the United States, and to the world. President Kaczynski was a distinguished statesman who played a key role in the Solidarity movement, and he was widely admired in the United States as a leader dedicated to advancing freedom and human dignity. With him were many of Poland’s most distinguished civilian and military leaders who have helped to shape Poland’s inspiring democratic transformation. We join all the people of Poland in mourning their passing.

As usual from Obama, contradicted by his undercutting of Poland volunteering to host anti-missile defense and his disdain for Polish President Lech Kaczynski when alive. Israel surely gets the point.

The New York Times asks: "For Poland, the losses raise the question of how a country of 38 million can replace a whole political class."  It had to before and will again, because Poles and their leaders have clearsighted historical memory and courage.

“I’m tired of hearing about the Holocaust.”  Be close enough to most people for them to be honest, even Jews, and you’ll often hear that said. What they most usually mean is they are tired of hearing hypocrisy.

Sunday is Holocaust Day, Yom Ha-Shoah, Day of Remembering the Catastrophe, sadly commemorated in many nations so we don’t forget.  The actual full title is Yom Ha-Shoah Ve-Hagevurah, Day of Remembering the Catastrophe and the Heroism.

Yes, there was heroism.  Among the parents and strangers who kept spirits alive ‘til death. Among the relative handfuls who risked all to shelter or aid escape. Among those who escaped to fight.  Among those who tried to alert the Allies and get their help, failing but persevering.

The epicenter was about 100 miles east of San Diego, in a lightly populated area south of Mexicali.  Few news reports from there; power outage, cell phone outage.

Meanwhile, in San Diego, it was a brief vibration. Something like this.

D-

ObamaCare’s regulation of medical loss ratios is crafted to come within a hair-width of the CBO considering  the health insurance industry as formally nationalized.  Actually, it is nationalized, at huge costs, hidden by the false cuts to providers, to the states' bearing mandated budget costs, and by those covered paying significantly higher premiums, all while the government dictates who and what is covered, how, and by whom.

One of the ways in which the insurance industry is nationalized is via an imposed medical loss ratio, at the expense of choice and quality of care.

In December, the Congressional Budget Office, tasked with costing the federal budget impact of  ObamaCare, said that imposing a medical loss ratio of 90% on insurance companies would,

Taken together with the significant increase in the federal government’s role in the insurance market under the PPACA, such a substantial loss in flexibility would lead CBO to conclude that the affected segments of the health insurance market should be considered part of the federal budget….CBO has determined that setting minimum MLRs under the PPACA at 80 percent or lower for the individual and small-group markets or at 85 percent or lower for the large-group market would not cause CBO to consider transactions in those markets as part of the federal budget.

The medical loss ratio is the percentage of premiums paid out for medical care benefits.

The 90% was the suggestion of Senator Rockefeller (D-WV).  So, the final version of ObamaCare imposed a 5% lower medical loss ratio on each plan offered by insurers, and the Democrats slimly avoided including the nationalization of the health insurance industry in the CBO costing of ObamaCare.

The federal budget cost of nationalization is not revealed by the CBO, which said it has estimates, but the costs to choice and benefits is more apparent. ObamaCare supporters simplistically assert that the portion of premiums not spent directly on benefits, administrative costs, is either wasteful or undue profits.  The profit margin of the health insurance industry, about 3%, is well below that of other industries.  Let’s, then, look at whether they are wasteful.

The CBO looked at medical loss ratios in its Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health Insurance Proposals in December 2008.

But a loss ratio is not always indicative of a plan’s efficiency or value. For example, a health plan that devotes more resources to managing the use of health care services might have a rel­atively low loss ratio but also a lower overall premium. In contrast, a more lightly managed plan might have a high loss ratio but a correspondingly higher overall premium and might be covering more services that provide limited health benefits.

According to that CBO report, the portion of administrative costs devoted to benefit enhancement and more effective delivery of services is about a third, for customer service, care management, creating and monitoring performance of provider networks, claims processing, regulatory compliance, and information technology.  In addition, one should add a portion of management overhead.

The American Academy of Actuaries analyzed the issue of medical loss ratios in February, concluding:

Minimum loss ratios do not help contain health care spending growth, en­sure that health care services are appropriate and accurately billed, or address directly the quality and efficiency of health care services.

ObamaCare supporters are accusing insurers of gaming ObamaCare by their reclassifying some of these costs to increase their medical loss ratio. In fact, insurers are more properly classifying expenses of better delivering and managing medical benefits.  The CBO report says that increased economies of scale, as may be seen in ObamaCare’s exchanges, may reduce administrative costs by up to 3%.  On the other hand, the increased regulatory compliance may eat up some or much of that.  Other elements of administrative costs that improve care may be reduced by insurers required to post an artificial statistic imposed by ObamaCare.

Another portion of administrative costs is probable to impact choice, lowered commissions to and increased duties by insurance agents.  The CBO reports (page 65):

In particular, plans that are sold to individuals and small groups are more likely to incur fees for insur­ance agents and brokers to handle the responsibilities that larger firms generally delegate to their human resources departments—such as finding plans and negotiating pre­miums, providing information about the selected plans, and processing enrollees.

Large groups also depend upon extensively trained, knowledgeable agents and brokers.  As someone with extensive earned credentials and experience as an independent broker, I wrote about the value of such agents and brokers, including beyond that directly related to the medical plan.

This delivers wide-ranging values to my clients and of the interactions of their health insurance with their broader business, regulatory and financial affairs.Does anyone expect the staff hired or created by the [government] to have this independence, experience or training? If so, get real!

Some assert that the increased number of formerly uninsured will offset lower commissions.  But most of those now to be covered will be in state Medicaid programs or other government programs.  And, lowered commissions, already low, and higher operating costs will not be offset by higher volume for most of the several hundred thousand independent agents and brokers. I’m near retirement, but many thousands of others will be forced out of their livelihood.

As the CBO said in December 2009, it’s a very slim margin in it considering health insurance nationalized.  At minimum, experts now consider the health insurance industry transformed into a public, government-run utility.  In reality, together with all the other intrusions and controls in ObamaCare, the health insurance industry is nationalized.  Some may be net beneficiaries due to, most prominently, taxpayer subsidies, those responsible having to pay for others who wait to obtain coverage until they are ill or injured, or increased government bureaucracy jobs. 

Everyone else suffers at the hands of ObamaCare.

In the rush to enact ObamaCare, the uproar from Democrats should not be surprising over the few announcements so far by major corporations of billions of dollars of charges for the elimination of part of the Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage subsidy to employers.

Indeed, the Senate Republicans had not featured this explosion in employer costs before the corporations began announcing the charges, nor had the corporations (except Caterpillar).

The Democrats’ motivation to be quiet is evident.  The Republicans had a hard enough time exposing the many real direct federal budget impacts. Major corporations are not, despite liberal assertions, conservative nor brave, probably avoiding the pillorying of them that is now happening from Democrats, heads in the sand when it may have helped avoid the ill consequences to them and their retirees by ObamaCare.

Now, corporations, already under severe pressure from retiree medical plan costs, have to face the music and have further justification and impetus to reduce or abandon their retiree Rx programs. They are imploring Congress to repeal this portion of ObamaCare, but receiving back Obama administration opposition to repeal.

Prescription benefits to employer plan retirees is broader than from Part D. The Part D subsidy to corporations is to encourage corporations to continue their benefits, at a savings to the federal budget and to retirees.

The subsidy will continue.  However, after 2012 corporations will no longer be able to deduct against income that portion of their Rx plans that are subsidized. The Congressional Joint Committee On Taxation’s (JCT) March 20 calculation (page 2) estimates that $4.5 billion higher federal taxes will be paid by corporations between 2013-2019, rising from $400 million to $1 billion a year over that period.

Let’s look deeper into the numbers.

According to the 2009 Medicare Trustees Report, about 19% of those covered by Part D are in the plans of former private employers (excludes TRICARE, VA and FEHB for military and former federal employees), or 6.3 million out of 33.2 million beneficiaries. (page 160)  The employer subsidy amounts to an average $594.54 per enrollee. (page 163)  The subsidy is about 28% of employer retiree plan drug expenses.  So, the total 2009 employer retiree Rx cost in 2009 is about $2123.36 per covered retiree, or $13.4 billion.

Congressionally mandated accounting rules require employers to take current charges for the future actuarial costs of their retirement programs. Depending on the employer’s present and forecast tax bracket, each employer offering a retiree Rx program must add up to 35% or more to their tax liability for the program for the future years.  Hence the charge that employers must now take and fund is cumulatively many multiples of the $4.5 billion initial eight year increased taxes that proponents of passing ObamaCare depended  upon.  The exact amount will not emerge until all companies finish their calculations, but the $1 billion charge to AT&T alone gives us some idea of the cumulative effect.

Now, let’s look at the impact on the federal budget if all the corporations now offering retiree Rx coverage abandon their program. They should be expected to be looking at that, even more favorably now than before ObamaCare.

According to the 2009 Medicare Trustees Report, total benefit payments, including the employer subsidy, was $50 billion in 2008 (expected to increase to $140 billion in 2018).  Subtracting the entire $3.7 billion subsidy, that leaves $46.3 billion. Divide that by the 26.9 million Part D beneficiaries not covered by a subsidized employer retiree Rx plan, and you get $1721.19 budget cost per enrollee.  Let’s subtract 10% from that as a guesstimate that retirees from employers may be healthier than the other average Part D beneficiaries, and that Medicare Part D benefits are lower (though increased by ObamaCare in future years to nearer parity), and you get $1549.07.  That is $954.53 higher than the subsidy, or would have meant $6 billion increased federal budget expense in 2008, an increase of 12% if private employers had abandoned their retiree Rx programs in 2008.

Multiply that $6 billion and increase it for an average annual 7% increase in prescription costs, 7% being the Medicare estimate, and you have literally hundreds of billions of dollars of increased federal expenses, further deepening the already intolerable projected budget deficits.

The CBO estimate of ObamaCare depended upon the JCT estimate for the initial costs of ObamaCare, and did not take into account employers consequently being motivated to cease their retiree Rx programs.

Corporate, Medicare and other actuaries will be working and reworking the actual figures as this debacle unfolds.  Actual impacts may well be less than the above worst case, but the dimensions are clear.

As we can see with regards to Part D as well as most other portions of ObamaCare, to believe in the incomplete CBO forecasts or the Democrats’ thinly veiled promises deserves a big Part D for Dummy.

P.S.: Democrats charge a "CEO Conspiracy". Actually, it's the Democrats' conspiracy to keep you poor and stupid.  Doesn't seem to be working.

P.P.S.: The New York Times editorializes that the eliminated Part D tax break is "double dipping."  The NYTs conveniently, totally ignores that it saves the federal budget many tens of billions of dollars, while helping to continue better retiree Rx benefits.  The NYTs asserts that, after all, " If some retirees do lose their company drug benefits, they can buy government-subsidized coverage in Medicare..." and the added cost to taxpayers is irrelevant to the NYTs.

Joshua and Caleb are the only Jews from the original exodus from Egypt 40-years earlier who are specifically permitted to enter the promised land of Israel. Even Moses wasn’t.  When others wavered, Joshua and Caleb never did, from faith and courageous optimism and actions.  Others in the exodus wavered and needed to have their children educated in their purpose before they could enter Israel.

At the Passover Seder tonight traditional prayers and foods remind us of the trials and purpose of the exodus.  The centrality of Jerusalem to Jews across the millennium is seen at the conclusion of the Seder when we all say “Next Year In Jerusalem,” as in every removal of the Torah from the ark we sing, “For from Zion [Israel] shall come forth Torah and the Word of Hashem [G-d] from Jerusalem.”

The manner in which the Seder is conducted is intended to educate the children, a wise one, a wicked one, a simple one, and one who doesn’t know to ask, as are all adults whether Jewish or other. Hence, we begin the narrative of Exodus (Haggadah) with the Four Sons.

The Four Sons

The Torah refers to four sons: One wise, one wicked, one simple and one who does not know how to ask a question. What does the wise son say? "What are the testimonials, statutes and laws Hashem our G-d commanded you?" You should tell him about the laws of Pesach, that one may eat no dessert after eating the Pesach offering.

What does the wicked son say? "What does this drudgery mean to you?" To you and not to him. Since he excludes himself from the community, he has denied a basic principle of Judaism. You should blunt his teeth by saying to him: "It is for the sake of this that Hashem did for me when I left Egypt. For me and not for him. If he was there he would not have been redeemed."

What does the simple son say? "What's this?" You should say to him "With a strong hand Hashem took me out of Egypt, from the house of servitude."

And the one who does not know how to ask, you start for him, as the Torah says: "And you should tell your son on that day, saying 'It is for the sake of this that Hashem did for me when I left Egypt.'"

The passage of the four sons raises many questions:

The major media has neglected to examine one of the major sections of ObamaCare, its long term care program CLASS, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act.

The New York Times’ chosen "New Old Age" guru, wrote on March 24 that,

I’ve read so little about the Class Act in recent weeks that when President Obama signed the health care bill yesterday, surrounded by a gaggle of happy Democrats, I had to call the National Council on Aging to reassure myself that yes, this often overlooked but potentially transformational program remained part of the package.

Of course, the Wall Street Journal did manage an op-ed, last December, “Congress’s Long Term Care Bomb,” written by a professor of health-care management and insurance and risk management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

But CBO and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have identified parts of the program that will subject it to considerable financial risk.

First, those who enroll would likely be more apt to need care and will be more expensive to cover than those who buy private insurance. To cover its costs, the program would have to charge more than private insurers.

The best objective and factual summary and analysis of CLASS I’ve found is that by one of the preeminent global consulting firms on benefits, Towers Perrin.

The Senate version is projected to bring in $72 billion, with an average monthly premium of $123. The initial positive cash flows come, of course, from the five-year period before participants vest, when premiums are paid but benefits are not. Tens of billions are foreseen to flow into the trust fund during those five years. In later decades, however, the flows would turn negative and increase the federal deficit.

(Note that $72-billion is over half of the highly doubtful supposed first 10-year federal budget deficit reduction of ObamaCare, which itself ignores the tens of $billions of mandates in Medicaid imposed on the states from the majority of ObamaCare’s increased coverage of the uninsured and the tens of $billions of extra costs imposed on private firms that continue retiree prescription benefits.)

Let’s look closer at that estimated 2011 average premium of $123 per month, or $1476 per year.

I checked the standard risk premiums charged in most states by one of the largest top-rated long term care insurers for an individual to have a lifetime benefit period, as in CLASS.

Insurers cover working and non-working applicants. CLASS will only enroll working participants, who are more likely to be of reasonable health if working.  As the CBO points out, non-working spouses are more likely to have impaired health and are more likely to enroll than are workers, which increases the actuarially required premiums. Insurers will cover seriously impaired risks at about a 50% higher premium than standard risks, and only for a 6-year benefit period versus the lifetime benefit period in CLASS (average benefits actually needed by all insurer claimants is about 3-years), while insurers reject some applicants with severely impaired health. The CBO did not reveal the details of its analysis, but one may expect that these factors and others were considered.

To get at an apples-to apples comparison of a $50 dollar a day benefit, I further adjusted the insurer rates downward by 30%, as would be charged for a joint policy with spouse from that insurer, to estimate efficiencies of marketing and administration to a larger pool mostly garnered via the workplace in CLASS. Further, CLASS will not be paying commissions to agents as does insurers, so I subtract another 5% from the adjusted insurer premiums below, for a total reduction of 35%. The elimination period, or time to have the qualifying inabilities to manage activities of daily living, by the insurer is 30-days. In parentheses I include the insurer’s annual premium for a preferred risk. CLASS has substantially more liberal reinstatement provisions for non-payment of premiums than this or any insurer, for example, along with other provisions which increase the cost of the program. CLASS subsidizes those of low income, but claws back part of their benefit if qualified for Medicaid, which private insurers don’t.

CBO estimate of average premium for CLASS in the Senate version enacted: $1476

Adjusted Insurer Premium: Age 25 $373.93 ($317.84); Age 40 $483.91 ($411.33); Age 60 $978.82 ($832.00).

Unadjusted Insurer Premium: Age 25 $575.28 ($488.99); Age 40 $744.48 (632.81); Age 60 $1505.88 ($1280)

An $80/day benefit insurer premium is higher, but still below the CLASS initial estimated premium, which includes a $75/day benefit for nursing home care which is much less preferred or used by claimants than the $50/day for home health care.

The House version of CLASS included non-working spouses, according to the CBO more likely to have impaired health and more likely to enroll than are workers, at the following estimated annual premiums: Age 18-39 $1632, Age 40-49 $1728, Age 50-59 $1824, Age 60-69 $2772. The actuaries estimate anticipates that those older are much more likely to enroll than those younger.  One may expect political pressure in coming years to open CLASS to non-working spouses.

So, first of all, it does seem that CBO and actuaries did a reasonable job of estimating initial CLASS premiums, though the Medicare chief actuary did warn that, as the WSJ op-ed indicates,

[P]remiums would be set so high they would discourage healthier people from buying in. As the healthy stayed on the sidelines, the program would have to charge more to those who did enroll. This in turn would price more people out of the program, risking what the memo called an "insurance death spiral."

An insurance death-spiral occurs as due to adverse selection, when the healthier don’t join or leave the program, and the costs of the remaining less healthy escalate future premiums, leading even more of the healthier to leave or find other alternatives. The death-spiral leads to the program’s costs rising to bankruptcy, otherwise.  Although CLASS says they won’t have to, one may expect a future Congress to bail it out with taxpayer funds rather than abandon this new entitlement.

Private long term care insurers have not opposed CLASS.  Of course, they expect that the added consciousness of the need for long term care insurance prompted by CLASS marketing at workplaces will, together with insurers’ lower premiums, increase their own sales.  Similarly, life and annuity insurers may expect increased sales of their products that contain a long term care component.

That just leaves taxpayers on the future financial hook for CLASS, and disappointed ObamaCare supporters on the hook for letdown.

As Ed Morrissey points out from the latest Washington Post poll on ObamaCare, opposition continues to mount.  Relatively few are aware of the details of the CLASS failure, so more should be expected to become disappointed in the non-classy failure of Democrats to be responsible.

Why believe in a conspiracy when stupidity is explanation enough?  With that at the front of my mind as a major caveat to my and others’ conjecture, aside from not knowing what is going on in the privacy of White House meetings, there may actually be a secret purposeful plan behind President Obama’s public undermining of Israel.

Stupidity isn’t enough of an explanation:

First off, there’s every reason to believe Obama’s pledge to be a “transformative” president.  Nearly every policy, law and appointment from him and his allies have been distinctly left of those from previous Democrat and Republican administrations.

Second, there’s every reason to believe that Obama and his counsels are aware, how can they not be, of the past refusals by Palestinian leaders to accept offerings, to obstruct negotiations, to foment violence, to foster corruption, to be divided between the violently hostile and the very violently hostile, and that repeated and continuous Israeli concessions and withdrawals have encouraged more of the same from the Palestinians.

Third, there’s every reason to believe that Obama and his advisors are aware of Iran’s impending nuclear status (even the IAEA has finally publicly woken up) and that other MidEast nations are accommodating themselves to Iran, they seeing little likelihood that the US will push for severe enough sanctions in the face of Russian and Chinese opposition and European profits or the US striking Iran’s nuclear installations.

Fourth, there’s every reason to believe that the US has more influence upon Israel, given that Israel has heavily depended upon the US as a bulwark of support, than upon the Palestinians, MidEast nations, Russia, China or even Europe.

Fifth, there’s every reason to believe that President Obama and advisors, some of whom are Jewish, depend upon the Democrat’s base supporters, some of whom are Jewish, to at worst weakly react to the Obama administration undermining Israel. (See this post.)

Sixth, there’s a big difference between occasional ignorance or mistakes and a consistent pattern of such, particularly when the facts and errors are so well known.

Secret Plan:

Yesterday, I had a brief conversation with a very liberal, very smart friend who visits Israel several times a year to study.  I shared my conjecture in an email to another very knowledgeable MSM friend:

My theory is that the O master plan, if there is one, is to force Israel to bomb Iran, then disavow Israel and further isolate it, and maybe even let it be overwhelmed.

It very well may not be true, but it does explain a lot.

This morning, Glenn Reynolds similarly conjectured:

WHY HAS BARACK OBAMA TREATED NETANYAHU SO RUDELY? “Obama would never treat the president of Equatorial Guinea that way.”

Possibly Obama just hates Israel and hates Jews. That’s plausible — certainly nothing in his actions suggests otherwise, really.

But it’s also possible — I’d say likely — that there’s something else going on. I think Obama expects Israel to strike Iran, and wants to put distance between the United States and Israel in advance of that happening. (Perhaps he even thinks that treating Israel rudely will provoke such a response, saving him the trouble of doing anything about Iran himself, and avoiding the risk that things might go wrong if he does). On the most optimistic level, maybe this whole thing is a sham, and the U.S. is really helping Israel strike Iran, with this as distraction. The question for readers is which of these — not necessarily mutually exclusive — explanations is most plausible.

The Jewish holiday of Passover begins this year next Monday night with the first Seder. (Translation = Order or sequence and content of the prayers, symbolic foods, and retelling of the Exodus, with emphasis on educating the children.)  Many Christians also celebrate the Passover Seder, which was their Last Supper.

Less known is that the Exodus was central to the minds of the new United States' Founding Fathers.  The first committee of the Continental Congress assigned to design our Great Seal, the symbol of our sovereignty, was comprised of three of the five men who drafted the Declaration of Independence: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. Franklin chose a design of "Moses standing on the Shore, and extending his Hand over the Sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharaoh who is sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his Head and a Sword in his Hand. Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Clouds reaching to Moses, to express that he acts by Command of the Deity." The motto: "Rebellion To Tyrants Is Obedience To God," which was later adopted by Jefferson as his personal motto.

The above is drawn from this website about the US' Great Seal. Click around the site.  It is fascinating.

Here's a relevant quote:

"All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reaches us, it must spring up amongst us. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher." – Abraham Lincoln

The subject is Real Estate in the New York Times, and the treatment of it in this article is architecture.  This short filmette from the article is well done, but (more below)

that was my high school, the largest in the country. The NYT misses the more important backstory.

Winners of the most Westinghouse and National Merit Scholarships were from Erasmus Hall High School. (My favorite alumnus was Moe Howard.) With changing demographics and theories of education, the city has shut it down as unmanageable. The building on the corner was a Yeshiva in my time.  The grade school (P.S.6 for public school #6, in NYC parlance) sits on what was a parking lot in my time, for people who flocked to the then excellent shopping, now mostly gone and replaced with Carribbean shops, and three palace like movie theaters on Flatbush Avenue, now shuttered. What's now called the Flatbush Town Hall, built in 1875, was a police station, and we knew all the beat cops who looked out for us. Down the block on Church Avenue was Holy Cross, church and school, now closed. If you look in the upper right corner of the shot above you'll see the steeple of the Dutch Reform Church, built in 1654.

In my time, one out of every seven families in the US traced its family to Brooklyn, a major settling spot from the 1600s to 1900s for immigrants who went on to build America. The bones that made Flatbush, at the heart of Brooklyn, famous are still there.  The spirit and lifeblood isn't.

About half of those touted by the Democrats to gain more medical care coverage will be in Medicaid.

In California, per the Los Angeles Times, that's estimated to add $3-billion to its budget spending, already $20-billion in deficit.  Former Governor Moonbeam, now Attorney General, Jerry Brown, now running for an encore as governor, has not joined other states' attorney generals in challenging ObamaCare.

In South Carolina, it is estimated to add 10% to its budget spending, reports its capital's newspaper The State.

In my small California town, the PTA is urgently asking parents to kick in an extra $25-thousand to support non-core but valuable instruction slated for state funded cuts.  No mention of cutting teachers' rich benefits, or the staff protected by unions from being cut by being slotted into useless holding posts.  I wonder how long it'll be before my neighborhood's very involved Moms and Pops, and those elsewhere, will connect the dots.

Michael Yon's independent dispatches from the war fronts are invaluable, and worth hitting his tip jar to support.

His latest, for example, addresses the political economics of suicide bombing:

Suicide attackers come in different “grades.”  Some are illiterate, unsophisticated people, unsuited for complex targeting.  A plotter could not expect to select an illiterate village boy from the hinterlands of Zabul Province to move to Florida, obtain a place to live and begin flight training to crash airplanes into buildings.

Young boys and women come cheaper, used for tactical targets. The college-educated are reserved for the more strategic. Some are strapped into locked vests or their families held hostage, but most are part of a cult.

Dogs have been trained to carry bombs to attack enemies for decades.  The Soviets and others have used dogs as low-tech smart bombs.  Yet canine platoons likely would rebel if they caught scent they were being duped to die.

Today, more sophisticated people employ men (mostly) to deliver bombs in Afghanistan.  Gullible souls are selected, conditioned, trained and deployed.  Malleable minds are identified then loaded with psychic software that uses their minds to create a vision.  Evil persons of superior intellect identify the raw material—that raw material might be an engineer from a stable family—and trains them to fetch myths.

But, even cults have their limits of utility.  The Taliban are Jim Jonesing themselves.

The impact of their KoolAid on Americans backfired:

There was a time when Americans seemed to view suicide attacks as a sign of the complete conviction of the enemy, an immutable dedication to their cause that many people found terrifying and cause for soul-searching.  “What could we have done to provoke such anger?” Yet with time, American views of suicide attacks have matured and become more grounded....Overuse of suicide attackers does not appear to cause Americans to cower, but to evoke Americans to want to kill the perpetrator.

As it is did on Iraqis and now Afghans:

The Taliban’s efforts at repackaging themselves as kinder, gentler mass-murderers is failing.  Their suicide bombing campaign is backfiring.  The Taliban are losing their cool.  Something is in the air.  The enemy remains very deadly, yet the scent of their weakness is growing stronger while our people close in.

$3-trillion of actual public pension liabilities on top of $trillions of actual ObamaCare costs and $trillions of ObamaCare taxes.

All private and public pension funds took a shellacking over the past few years.  Tougher accounting rules are leading private pension funds to decrease risk, and thus the required contributions, by reducing their percentage of funds in stocks.  Public pension funds, by contrast, are increasing the risks they are taking, to reduce voting taxpayers’ sticker shock at the unsustainable promises made to government employees.

Greenwich Associates, one of the top investment research firms, calls it a “swing-for-the-fences” attempt to avoid fiscal realities.

Public funds appear to be banking on the fact that the investment strategies they are implementing will help shore up solvency ratios by generating returns that far outpace the market. Municipal pension funds last year said they expect their investment portfolios to beat relevant benchmarks by 160 basis points — up from a 132 bps expectation in 2008. Public funds with assets of $500 million or less increased their stated expected outperformance to a staggering 180 basis points in 2009 from an already aggressive 135 bps in 2008. "These are very aggressive expectations," says Greenwich Associates consultant Chris McNickle. "Most investment managers struggle to generate the levels of outperformance expected by institutional investors; it would be rarer still for an entire portfolio to achieve that level of outperformance for any number of years." [Note: bps = 1/100^th of 1%, so 180bps = 1.8%]

The American Enterprise Institute’s study says that, contrary to public pension funds’ official accounting that they are about $½-trillion in actuarial deficit, their actual deficit is closer to $3 trillion.

The problem is fundamental: According to accounting rules adopted by the states, a public sector pension plan may call itself "fully funded" even if there is a better-than-even chance it will be unable to meet its obligations….

Public pension plans are hiding behind unrealistically low deficit figures. This allows policy makers to dodge difficult choices today at the cost of a much heavier burden on taxpayers in the future.

Today’s California Field Poll cooperates in the sham. In the face of a projected $20-billion shortfall, expected to continue in future years, Californians are more likely to support budget cuts than two-years ago, but still only two areas gain even marginal majority support for cuts, prisons and parks. Notably lacking from the poll questions of areas to cut is public employee pensions.

Some states and localities are trying to make adjustments to future pension liabilities to their employees, but the adjustments are relatively minor in comparison to the burden on and cuts to other government services.

Top that off with the new huge budget burdens upon the states mandated by ObamaCare’s expansion of Medicaid eligibility. Fourteen states are already suing to block ObamaCare’s effects on the states. For example, the Christian Science Monitor reports:

The suit says that, under the new law, Medicaid rolls in Florida are expected to increase dramatically. The corresponding soaring costs [already 26 percent of Florida’s annual budget] will fall increasingly on the Florida treasury, but state officials will have less authority to set priorities….

The lawsuit says this amounts to an unconstitutional exercise of federal power that violates principles of federalism protected in the 10th Amendment. It says the healthcare reform bill commandeers the states and their employees as agents of the federal government’s regulatory scheme, and that it does so at the state’s own cost.

Actually, at the cost of schools, roads, policing, and other high-priority government services.  The number of government employees, however, keeps increasing while the number of taxpaying workers decreases and their taxes increase.

Wake up and smell the tea.

Your Pennies at Work: UNICEF Funds Hate TV for Palestinian Kids:

"So the next time anyone — even someone short and cute — asks you for pennies for UNICEF, tell them about PYALARA and Palestinian hate TV for kids, and ask them to donate their allowances to another worthier children’s charity."

The best-named blog in the blogosphere is gone: "The Conspiracy To Keep You Poor And Stupid" by my friend Don Luskin.

Don got me started in blogging in October 2004, when he posted a long, documented  piece by me about the Swiftboat hypocrisy of the New York Times and its then ombudsman (also erroneously called its public editor).

I just received the following two emails from Don:

#1: Bruce, after 8 years at it, I’ve made the decision to stop blogging. It was great at the beginning when blogging was new and I had a lot of time on my hands. But since then my business has expanded dramatically, and I now have media platforms with the WSJ, NRO, SmartMoney and CNBC. Also, Google has announced various technology changes to the software that would require a lot of work to adapt to, so I just decided to let it go.

#2: [Reply to what happens to the blog name]: I guess if someone made me an offer I couldn’t refuse then I wouldn’t refuse, but…

Don Luskin (bio) knows a thing or three about making money.

The bidding is open.  Or, will Don contribute the proceeds to a cause that works to end the Conspiracy?  Or, will Don designate a heir?

There’s no replacing Don Luskin’s blog.  But, there is carrying on to end the Conspiracy To Keep You Poor And Stupid. The conservative and libertarian sides of the blogosphere have come a long way forward over the past years, so I can see Don’s logic, always sound.  But while losing Don, his contributions have been seminal.  Thank you Don.

So much for President Obama’s virtual colonoscopy, not approved as cost-effective for ordinary folks’ coverage.  But, then Obama would have had to been out during a routine colonoscopy and VP Biden would have been President for an hour or two.  Imagine how much worse that would have been!  Senator Grassley tries to set matters right.

Grassley said, “It’s only fair and logical that top administration officials, who fought so hard for passage of this overhaul of America’s health care system, experience it themselves.  If it’s as good as promised, they’ll know it first-hand.  If there are problems, they’ll be able to really understand them, as they should.”

Grassley said the motivation for his amendments is simple:  public officials who make the laws or lead efforts to have laws changed should live under those laws.

“This is the same principle that motivated me to pursue legislation over 20 years ago to apply civil rights, labor and employment laws to Congress,” Grassley said.  Before President Clinton signed into law Grassley’s long-sought Congressional Accountability Act of 1995, Congress had routinely exempted itself.

The senior Congressional Committee and leadership staff who wrote the ObamaCare bills are also exempt from it.

I never learned how to play a musical instrument (though I did sing background bass in streetcorner doo-wop in Brooklyn and got good enough at hambone to be -- even with my NY accent -- part of a very local group of good ol' boys beer drinking buddies when I lived in the South in the '70s).  The instrument I would play, if I had any talent and patience to learn, would be country fiddle. When I lived in the S.F. Bay Area, I'd go to fiddle and folk festivals in Gold Country, where in the early '80s one of my favorites --John Hartford -- taught me how to build an acoustic floorboard. (See the second video below.)

Here's a recent addition to fiddle music that I came across in a review.  Warning: Don't fiddle around on this lady.

Now, John Hartford fiddlin' and foot music.