We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
The bigger the Big Government, the smaller everything else: First, other pillars of civil society are crowded out of the public space; then, the individual gets crowded out, even in his most private, tooth-level space. President Obama, Commissar Sebelius and many others believe in one-size-fits all national government – uniformity, conformity, supremacy from Maine to Hawaii, for all but favored cronies. It is a doomed experiment – and on the morning after it will take a lot more than a morning-after pill to make it all go away.
No president has behaved in anything close to this manner since FDR in the mid-1930s.\
This president is not Bill Clinton, or even Jimmy Carter; he is not Lyndon Johnson or JFK. He and his administration have broken with America’s trademark political mindset of gradualism and respect – however grudging at times – for the people. So why is the narrative by which his administration’s actions are explained the same one the MSM has used for decades? Why is this administration being interpreted on the same terms as its predecessors, when its actions and perspectives, in both domestic and foreign policy, are so very different?
I’m not sure I have an answer for that. But the outcome is consistent. The longer we go in this presidency, the less relation MSM headlines have to reality. If you asked a random sample of journalists at WSJ what the practical effect of Obama’s “retreat” on the contraception mandate would be, I’m betting more than 50% of them would get it right. The Catholics are still stuck with paying for contraception services. But the misleading headlines march on of their own accord, even at WSJ.
If you are of the Muslim religion, you don't have to give all the new Obamacare healthcare reform regulations and penalties another thought. Because the concept of being compelled to participate in such a healthcare program offends Islamic sensibilities, Muslims are specifically exempt.
As a matter of fact if you are Amish, American Indian or a Christian Scientist you do not need to participate or pay the taxes associated with healthcare reform. That means not having to be forced to buy healthcare insurance, not paying the taxes or the penalties if you don't get it.
Groupon released their first earnings report, and to say the least, they underwhelmed. I had shared some of my thoughts about Groupon several months ago. But something new is afoot.
In the last week, we've seen Facebook file for an IPO. It's been talked about incessantly, and there are many interesting things within the filing which have caused people to begin sharing opinions about it. Since Facebook is in my industry, I find this discussion intriguing and certainly have my own point of view, particularly since I use Facebook.
Originally, I didn't want to join Facebook. Several friends emailed me invitations to join in 2007. I wouldn't accept. Finally, I joined just to stop the invitations. At first, what I found fascinated me. It's actually a terrific picture sharing facility. On the other hand, as Betty White famously said on Saturday Night Live about when she was younger, "We hadPHONEBOOK...seeing pictures of people's vacations was a punishment."
Clearest explanation I've seen about Obamacare:The Real Trouble With the Birth-Control Mandate -Critics are missing the main point. There are good reasons that your car-insurance company doesn't add $100 to your premium and then cover oil changes.
One quote:
Notice the doublespeak confusion of "access" and "cost." I have "access" to toothpaste because I have two bucks in my pocket and a competitive supplier. Anyone who can afford a cell phone can afford pills or condoms.
Poor women who can't afford birth control are a red herring in this debate. HHS isn't limiting this mandate to the poor anyway. We all have to pay. The very poor typically don't have employer-provided health insurance in the first place. "Allowing women to space their pregnancies"? Was there some sort of federal ban on birth control before this?
It's not about "access" and it's not about "insurance." It's because Americans, when paying even modest copayments, choose to spend their money on other things. They prefer a new iPod to a "wellness visit" to the doctor.
As the HHS unwittingly admits: "Often because of cost, Americans used preventive services at about half the recommended rate." Remember, we're supposed to be worrying about skyrocketing health-care expenses. Doubling the number of wellness visits and free pills sounds great, but who's going to pay for it? There is a liberal dream that by mandating coverage the government can make something free.
Sorry. Every increase in coverage means an increase in premiums.
That doublespeak about access and cost is what I have been writing about. If it's a plan to pay for every medical cost, it isn't insurance in any ordinary sense.
Many Republicans are falling into a false dichotomy, between social and other issues, instead of focusing on the common thread that unites these issues, the gross overstepping and inadequacies of the Obama administration.
Astute commentators are pointing out that President Obama is strategically steering the national conversation toward social issues – inequality or contraception, as examples -- in order to neutralize his weaknesses in other areas. Republicans, it is said, are either playing into Obama’s re-election playbook or allowing themselves to be neutralized in stressing Obama’s failed economic and foreign policies, which are part and parcel with his social policies in undermining American and global freedoms.
The serial rallying of many conservatives to the non-Romney contender of the month is central to proving this point. Deep anger at the Obama administration fuels the desire for a more “red meat” candidate. This is largely unfair to Romney and fails to stress the commonality among Republicans on the core issues. Instead, it falls into the Obama trap of a false dichotomy between social and other issues.
Romney's campaign had tried to calmly sound the theme of competence in facing the common thread of the Obama administration’s failures: incompetence and ideology. Romney tried to remain the gentleman he is but, defensively, instead has had to fiercely attack his opponents who fiercely attack him. This has consumed resources and credibility, and detracted from the attractiveness of the core Republican issues: the gross overstepping of the Obama administration into personal lives, crony mismanagement of the economy, and alienation of allies left adrift by Obama fecklessness in facing anti-Western foes. The social policies of the Obama administration should not be faced in isolation, allowing Democrats to draw in social liberals, but be placed in their proper context of more indicators of class warfare that undermines the freedoms of all to succeed or to have private moralities untrammeled by Washington.
Democrats are smiling, as well they should. The Republican primaries are shielding them from the main thrust of the Republican message while Republican contenders for the nomination savage each other, weakening unity, and fall into the Obama traps on stressing social issues.
Newt Gingritch was a false vessel for conservative hopes. Rick Santorum, a more consistent and saner conservative, lacks the attractiveness to a wider audience of those on the cusp. Mitt Romney, however, while not a red-meat orator has the unique ability to present the Republican theme in a manner, with conviction and deep understanding of the intricacies, that doesn’t antagonize moderates. Romney is not charismatic but he is competent, and has the abilities to deracinate Obama’s pretensions and unify a majority around stopping the Obama administrations’ transgressions that weaken us in all ways. Romney may not be red-meat but he is meaty. It’s about electability, and that with adequate confidence that together with a Republican Congress a new administration in Washington will accomplish more Republican and American priorities.
Moreso than his opponents, Romney is what Republicans need to win, and what America needs to unseat Obama. I’ll vote for whoever gets the Republican nomination. But, I’m not happy at being part of many of my compatriots playing out a self-destructive temper tantrum that could lose the election.
Get over it: there is no Reagan available, nor was Reagan all that fond memories say he was.
The issue is not whether birth control and abortion are available. They are. The issue is whether the government should have the power to force your neighbor to pay for these things, and/or to require all insurance policies to cover them. Also, neither of these things are particularly expensive.
The insidious premise of the discussion is this: If it isn't covered, it's not available. But don't people buy their own Nyquil, Tylenol, heat pads, Viagra, divorce counseling, cosmetic surgery, toe fungus medicine, toothpaste, Botox, morning-after pills and Dr. Scholl's foot products?
Have people become so trained to expect somebody else to buy what they want that the premise has become distorted? I am a happy product of an unexpected pregnancy, and refuse to regard pregnancy as a disease. Pregnancy is health. If an unexpected pregnancy is a disease, then I am a disease. A tumor, or something.
In fact, I cannot understand why some medical insurances cover pregnancy at all, much less abortions. In my view, we all ought to be free to buy, or not buy, medical insurance of any sort with any sorts of coverage, depending on what makes sense for us. We ought to be able to bring a check list of what we want to the table, and see some nation-wide competition for our business. Get bids, like anything else.
Here at Maggie's, we tend to prefer high-deductible Major Medical coverages with our own choices of docs. Cheap protection from financial catastrophe.
Liberals are the aggressors in the culture war (and not always for the worse, as the civil-rights movement demonstrates). What they object to isn’t so much the government imposing its values on people — heck, they love that. They see nothing wrong with imposing their views about diet, exercise, sex, race, and the environment on Americans. What outrages them is resistance or even non-compliance with their agenda. “Why are you making such a scene?” progressives complain. “Just do what we want, and there will be no fuss.”
In the past week, we have had links about government (and doctors) advocating against salt and sugar. I don't mind my doctor giving me advice (I pay him for it), but when docs try to get governments to control what to do, I get annoyed. As I understand it, it is the job of doctors to offer advice, not to provide control.
From the same sort of academic busybodies who gave us the ever-popular global warming panic comes a new prediction of catastrophe. This newest ginned up rationale for enabling Liberal-Progressive-Democrats (L-P-Ds) to have more control over the behavior of ordinary citizens hasn't been given catchy name yet, so rather than wait for the mainstream media to compare notes on JournoList, let's all agree to call it...global sweetening!
Yes, my friends, President Obama's fellow travelers within the progressive movement have decided that they have to find a new excuse for imposing government controls since climate change (née global warming) failed to achieve their overarching goal of controlling the car you drive; the fuel you're allowed to use; the type of light bulb you are allowed to use; and, after they get the "smart grid" in place, how warm you'll be allowed to keep your home.
Mayor Bloomberg, of course, is the poster child for obnoxious Nannyism. Here's the ultimate governmental rationale for these sorts of controls: Ideology, not science. A quote from Dr. Keane's piece (from Australia):
It is extremely frustrating when reports of harm are used to justify forcibly overriding autonomy, completely ignoring the other side to the equation. In this regard, ‘promoting healthy lifestyles' is no longer enough; they are now being enforced whether you like it or not.
Internationally, the public health debate is somewhat more balanced than in Australia, as represented by Eli Feiring, an academic from the University of Oslo, Norway: ‘Given that respect for the autonomous choices of patients runs deep in modern healthcare, there are strong reasons to value the claim that competent and well-informed individuals are the best interpreters of their own interest and that they should be free to make choices others would regard as non-beneficial to them.'
Many academics demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the importance of autonomy.
Indeed. Experts tend towards arrogance, not towards autonomy (freedom). And, in the long run, academic experts usually turn out to have been wrong anyway.
Obama helped train NPA's leaders in Alinsky's bank shakedown tactics. Now, outrageously, he and the thugs he coached are demanding massive reparations for the damages that resulted from the lower underwriting standards that they demanded. Banks had better build up more reserves. This gang is not finished.
Six square miles of this crap in the Mohave Desert, and not a sound from the Greenies. A landfill would be a more practical use, if you assume that desert is not a worthy ecosystem.
One in five Americans — or slightly more than 67 million — now relies on federal assistance, at a cost of $2.5 billion annually. That’s the highest in the country’s history, the authors wrote. The index also found that Americans who depend on federal assistance receive an average of $32,748 in benefits, about $300 more than the nation’s average disposable personal income.
According to our hypotheses, the tax code is equally open to all. Does the average citizen have the time and expertise to plow through 70,000 pages of tax codes? Clearly, the answer is no, so it's simply not true that the tax code is equally available to all.
Let's imagine a different set of values and governance. Let's suppose the tax law stated that the entire tax code must meet two requirements: it must be able to be read and understood by the overwhelming majority of citizens with a high school education in one hour or less.
The national labs (or equivalent impartial bodies) would be tasked with conducting a randomized sampling of 100,000 citizens to test each year's tax code. If 80% of the adult citizenry with a high school education (or GED) were unable to put the tax code into practice after an hour of study, then the code would be rejected and sent back to Congress for revision until it passed this simple, transparent standard for equality before the law.
Clearly, the tax code is both legal and completely skewed to the very wealthy and politically powerful. $100,000 is still a fairly significant contribution in politics, and if that contribution ends up yielding a tax break that gains the donor $1 million in lower taxes, then that donation earned a 10-fold "return on investment."
Only the wealthy can afford to hire Panzer divisions of tax attorneys to pore over the 70,00 pages and game the system to pay less than self-employed citizens pay in Social Security and Medicare tax, never mind income tax.
The first hypothesis is still vaild--the tax code is legal--but the second--that fundamental opportunities are open to all--is demonstrably false. Equal opportunity is revealed as a social control myth promoted by those benefitting from opportunities that are not available to the citizenry at large.
This is the definition of an oligarchy.
All that the regular person can do is to declare all of their income (unless you are somebody like Tim Geithner or Charlie Rangel - hey, nobody is perfect). After that, it's a crap shoot.
Some have compared the impact on agents of ObamaCare’s medical loss ratio (MLR) to the impact of online technology on travel agents.
Yesterday, I spent hours studying many web sites to decide on a hotel to take my family during spring break. Although the web sites were very informative, most offering standard categories as to number and type of beds, whether there is a pool, etc., the information was not complete or didn’t cover all my requirements. I still had important questions to meet my family’s particular needs. I, also, noted many Commenters at these sites who’d had bad experiences due to lack of adequate information. I phoned several sites and directly to several hotels’ reservation lines, but those who answered had no more information than at their sites. Finally, I reached an agent who spent a half-hour giving me complete answers to my questions, and I made the reservation.
MLR requires medical plans to commit 80% of premiums of small group and individual plans to claims, and 85% for large plans. Agent commissions, though a pass-through charge from buyers, are treated in ObamaCare as administrative costs, thus making it harder for insurers to meet the 15% or 20% allowance for non-claim costs. The argument goes that as the Internet makes it easier to make reservations directly, the need for travel agents has declined. So, too, will the need for insurance agents decline as medical plan purchasers can buy directly from insurers or government-directed exchanges. Lastly, standardized medical plans dictated by ObamaCare are supposed to make choices easier. Therefore, we needn’t be concerned that to meet MLR restrictions that agents’ commissions have been as much as halved, leading many to reduce services to buyers or to leave the field.
This leaves medical plan buyers – as it does travel buyers -- largely at the mercy of 1-800 ignorance or inadequacy, as well as self-interest or lack of independence in not providing useful comparative information. Further, a buyer is not given additional information important to the decision, say about nearby facilities or services involved in the trip, or the efficiency of claims-processing or how certain treatments might be actually covered by the medical plan. Then, unlike the range of accommodations available at hotels at varying prices, standardized medical plan buyers will be forced under ObamaCare to buy services they either don’t need or, even, religiously or ethically object to, and pay the cost of these services, in effect, for those who want them. Premiums have already increased to cover provisions mandated by ObamaCare, and will increase further.
There’s another aspect to the MLR regulations that will further reduce the choices available and increase the costs to many medical plan buyers. If an insurer does not meet the MLR percentage limitations, beginning by August 1, 2012 the insurer will have to pay rebates to buyers. Insurers are each setting aside tens of millions of dollars for these rebates, costs that will be recovered through higher premiums. According to healthcare consultancy The Segal Co., “Until now, insurers have been able to subsidize less-profitable product lines and types of groups (usually small ones), and do it across state lines, with the profits of the more-lucrative ones. Now, with insurers under the threat of paying out rebates on the latter, they may give small-group policyholders fewer subsidies and charge higher premiums.”
There’s bipartisan legislation pending in the House and Senate to relieve this impact on agents but, even if it might pass, it is unlikely to be signed by President Obama, or regardless of the President may not muster 60-votes in a future Senate if blocked by ObamaCare supporters there.
For disclosure, I’ve been a health plan consultant and broker for 25-years. I’m at the age and resources where I’m nearing retirement. That decision is speeded by Obamacare. It’s not worth it to provide the services I did, so I reject most of those who now approach me for help. Tens of thousands of other agents are making the same choice, even if not able to retire. Tens of millions of medical plan buyers are being left adrift, at higher costs and less needed information, not able or allowed to buy a medical plan that best and most affordably fits their individual needs.
Who’s Afraid of Dirty Harry? Well, this didn’t take long. Clint Eastwood is going to regret doing that “halftime” ad after all the parodists get done with it. (link fixed)
As Gingrich attacks Romney for being successful, and Romney proves too slow on his feet to talk about his admirable business career without apologizing or making gaffes, the Republicans cede the narrative to Obama.
If you want to see a kickass World War II movie, then Red Tails is your ticket. Saturday morning, after dropping Jason off at Little League Umpiring School, candy bar in hand I slipped into a seat at the local Bijou and was transported back to the exciting WWII movies I enjoyed as a kid, and which haven’t been made since.
It’s the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, enduring racism on the ground and fighting Germans in the air. After I got home I scanned the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes. The negative reviews were mostly by relative youngsters who found it over the top or the characters too wooden, or some who not bothering about other films’ literal transgressions searched for them in this one. The more favorable reviews, however, got it. The film is unabashedly about heroism and patriotism. And, the dogfights have you at the edge of your seat, hands sweaty. Well worth the price of admission into when Hollywood made these movies regularly. This isn't about so many of today's so-called youth "heroes" who revel in lewdity and are rewarded with lewd sums of money that they flaunt. This is about real men who risked and gave all for what they believed, with little recompence except self-respect, and did it with dignity and discipline.
During the movie I wished I’d brought 11-year old Jason with me. It seems the movie was actually made for him.
George Lucas, unable to get film companies’ funding, made the movie out of his own pocket, $58-million invested in uplifting youth. As Lucas tells it, "For those of us in my group of filmmakers, like Steven (Spielberg) or Ron (Howard) or Marty (Scorsese), we want to make movies that enthralled us when we were little….It's corny. It's über-patriotic. And it's a really exciting action-adventure movie." But, more than that, “"I have only one agenda, and that's for a lot of young people to see this movie…" The report continues: “The good-vs.-evil, duels-in-the-skies aspect is what makes the movie especially timely, Lucas says. For many young people today, heroes — be they athletes, entertainers or presidents — aren't defined by skin color.”
Go see Red Tails, and take your son, daughter, grandchildren.
By now, you've all heard the good news. It's been on the news everywhere, and the market jumped dramatically. This morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that job growth exceeded everyone's wildest expectations. 243,000 jobs were added, far more than the expectation of 140,000. More importantly, 257,000 private sector jobs were added, while 14,000 government jobs were lost. Unemployment dipped from 8.5% to 8.3%. All of this is very good news. Even those who oppose the president and his methods of handling the economy will not serve themselves to disparage this growth. I certainly won't. What I will say is that the general media is great at reporting headlines, but not digging into the numbers or providing historical context.
The media won't dig in, but others have in order to see what the numbers behind the numbers say, particularly since the CBO's report earlier this week was so lackluster.
The first bit of perspective comes from the Democrats, who spent most of the early 2000's disparaging the job growth of the Bush years as "McJobs". I notice none of them are speaking right now. Which is odd, because while we added about 90,000 very good paying jobs, over 113,000 of the jobs added were clearly "McJobs", or low wage labor. Any job growth is good, so I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I just want to know why "McJobs" were bad 9 years ago, but good now? If any Democrats would like to comment on this, they are more than welcome.
Another bit of news that went overlooked was the surge in part-time and temp work. Again, any job growth is good. I have nothing but good feeling for people who have been out of work but have managed to wrangle a paycheck. But if Obama's goal is "An Economy That Works", I'm sure he didn't mean "Works Temporarily and Part-Time"
A third, though somewhat justified question, is why the BLS has actually increased job growth estimates by a very large amount over the course of 2011. It's possible preliminary numbers were low, but by 23%? Revisions are always needed - by why so many positive adjustments? Usually it's "seasonal fluctuations". Which means...?
It's about bubbles - things with form but lacking in substance.
Most "homeowners" have mortgages, if not second mortgages, or at least lines of credit against their homes. If you have a mortgage, you are essentially a renter - but a renter with the capital risk and the maintenance costs and risks. The ownership is an illusion and, if the place is paid off, you lose your interest deduction and so what have you gained by that process of eliminating your leverage? Well, if you are retired with lower income, you have gained the ability to remain in the house if you can cover the property tax.
The American Dream of home ownership is and has been a foolish ideal. However, it was an ideal which expert salesmen sold us since the 1950s. A sentimentality sales job, like cars. Chances are, you ain't buying no family estate that your grandkids would want to own.
Expert salesmen, again both in government and out, also sold us the college degree bubble. Once a meaningful social marker, it has become so diluted that it no longer means anything at all, or, I should say, can mean a lot or can mean nothing, depending on what was learned. I know, because I interview people for jobs. I have seen college grads who don't know what it means to graph a f(x), don't know the difference between RNA and DNA, and have never read Chaucer. Oh, I see. They have a BS in Business Administration. Is that "college"? Oh, somebody wrote a term paper about Virginia Woolf? Wow. I guess they can write a sentence. What is meaningful is a rigorous High School degree. From that, you have the foundation to learn anything you want to.
Is a college degree job training, a few additional High School years, a social marker, an expensive prolonged adolescence, a merit badge, a haven for dedicated scholars, or what? Nobody knows anymore, but it is widely sold as a necessary qualification. Hence a piece like this in the NYT: Why go to college at all?
My theory used to be that a college education should prepare you to understand, in depth, every page of the Sunday New York Times. I don't buy their paper any more, which is their loss. Mine also, to some extent.
But Mitt, like Republicans in general, needs to reclaim the language of compassion for the poor. It’s not compassionate to leave the very poor tangled up in our social safety nets. It’s not compassionate to promote dependency. What is compassionate — what actually serves the interest of the very poor, as well as everyone else — is unleashing economic growth that brings greater opportunity, better values and better compensation for everyone. The very poor are not doing fine. They’re drowning in the unintended consequences of liberals’ good intentions — their families are falling apart, their spirits and creativity are languishing, and the economic virtues are withering from their communities because of the perverse mis-incentives of government largesse.
Mitt needs to learn how to be America’s foremost expositor and defender of the power of the free market. He’s not quite there yet.
Mitt is a bit out of touch. Obama was out of touch too. They are both bubble guys.
America's waning influence - Any honest diplomat will tell you that American power and global influence is waning, and if we shy away from acknowledging that fact, we'll only speed up the process.
In Arizona he said, "An economy built to last also means we've got to renew American values: fair play, shared responsibility." Wild applause. For those who think they have facts on their side, it will be maddening and enraging to watch other Obama audiences across the country cheer and applaud "An Economy Built to Last." Get used to it.
The GOP is appealing, as its candidates so often do, to the American brain. Barack Obama is happy to be left by himself, going for their hearts. If he wins, the Republican will wail at the unfairness, irrationality and illogic of what beat them.
Many Republicans are falling into a false dichotomy, between social and other issues, instead of focusing on the common thread that unites these issues, the gross overstepping and inadequacies of the Obama administration.
Book World: In ‘Bond Girl’ by Erin Duffy, a
Most "homeowners" have mortgages, if not second mortgages, or at least lines of credit against their homes. If you have a mortgage, you are essentially a renter - but a renter with the capital risk and the maintenance costs and risks. The ownership is an illusion and, if the place is paid off, you lose your interest deduction and so what have you gained by that process of eliminating your leverage? Well, if you are retired with lower income, you have gained the ability to remain in the house if you can cover the property tax. 
Isolated Peru tribe