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.
At the request of the Ohio Department of Insurance, benefit consultants Milliman, Inc. prepared an estimate of the impact on coverage and rates of ObamaCare when major provisions take effect in 2014.
660,000 are forecast to lose their group coverage from employers. A 735,000 increase in individual coverage is forecast. The percentage of all covered with some type of government coverage is forecast to increase to 31% from 20% in 2010.
Although the percentage of residents with coverage could rise by about 7.9%, the price of individual health insurance coverage might rise about 55% to 85%, excluding the impact of medical inflation, the Milliman consultants predict.
“This is primarily driven by the estimated health status of the new individual health insurance market and the expansion of covered benefits,” the consultants say.
The new tax credits are supposed to help individuals earning less than 400% of the federal poverty level pay for coverage, but U.S. residents with incomes over 400% of the federal poverty level who are in the individual market would have to pay for the coverage out of their own pockets.
Then add in the additional taxes within and caused by ObamaCare. High price to pay, huh. Hope there's any Change left in pockets.
H/T: Hot Air: "the Senate Budget GOP today releases this video to unmask a budget gimmick popularly employed by Democrats as they call for more spending on investment in “education, innovation, clean energy and infrastructure.”
KC Johnson, history professor at my alma mater, describes the lack of intelligent consideration by the faculty there:
...groupthink has the effect of producing more extreme versions of the common assumption. It stands to reason, therefore, that campuses with unusually one-sided faculties will feature more frequent episodes of extremist assertions. Such certainly seems to be the case at my own institution, Brooklyn College...
Read it all. If there's a terrorist incident on campus, call a faculty member, not the NYPD.
That is excellent advice from someone over 30. Social isolation breeds all sorts of strange and unreasonable habits of mind, while social interaction helps us define ourselves, learn about ourselves, and, especially, to learn what our limits are. Isolation nurtures delusions of grandeur or delusions of inferiority, and prevents acceptance of reality.
I attended a faculty cocktail party last night, and, for some reason, the advice I had received many years ago came into my head as a shy person during boarding school: "When you enter a gathering, make sure you say hello to, or introduce yourself to, a dozen people. Then you can leave if you want to. Never act like a shmoozing politician, but it's your job to let people know that you exist. They might want to know you, or they might not. Either way, it's learning. Learning sometimes hurts."
At my age, with genteel breeding and with my life experience, it's a little silly for me to still need that reminder. People tend to enjoy and seek my company.
James Pethokoukis explains it. Wealth-creation is not in their lexicon. They view government as the font of The Good. I definitely do not. If government does not protect my liberties and my property, I oppose it.
Government protects itself, grows itself. It is subject to all of the flaws of human nature, but has unique and potentially dangerous powers. It has become a big monopolistic, parasitic industry, but one with guns and cops and jails. Anybody who thinks that big government is altruistic is sorely misguided, delusional, naive, or stoned. Drunk on power and perqs, our public servants dread having to return to real life.
The SAT was designed to produce a more egalitarian, less elitist American college student, yet few are ever really happy with it. I tend to view it roughly as an IQ test, but one which conflates the upper end to eliminate the upper outliers (it's not fair to the others to be too good).
...once the Ivy Leagues started trying to find the most promising non-upper class kids from the rest of the country, they needed something more objective about individuals than just grades. Another issue is that high school grades have certain inherent shortcomings. The future Nobelist in physics might not care about his social studies class and thus wind up with a lower overall GPA than the well-adjusted grind. Plus, grades have a ceiling. Even an A+ in physics doesn't really tell you that much. Moreover, lots of future successes are alienated in high school. Some people who get all As in high school might not have the upside to continue to do so in college. Incentives toward grade inflation at the high school are built in. And so forth ...
President Obama's path to reducing deficits is being laughed off as playing politics with demagoguery while deficits widen. But, according to Obama, "this is not class warfare; it's math."
This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average of 29.1 percent of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes and payroll taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay 15 percent of their income in federal taxes.
Lower-income households will pay less. For example, households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average of 12.5 percent of their income in federal taxes. Households making between $20,000 and $30,000 will pay 5.7 percent.
That doesn't include the higher charges paid by middle-class and wealthier retirees for Part B Medicare, nor the lesser amounts received by them from Social Security relative to prior incomes or contributions.
One of the areas targeted by the tax-more crowd is capital gains. There's no recognition of the extra risks involved in investing, that much of the gains represent inflation, or that much or all of the amounts invested were already taxed.
Then, there's the false assertion that the middle class suffered most during the better pre-recession period.
No. In the seven years from 2001-2007 (inclusive), not only did the middle class get at least its fair share of overall income growth, the income gap between the rich and the middle class actually got smaller. In an apparent paradox, the same Census Bureau database that told us that median household income was essentially unchanged in 2007 versus 2000 also tells us that the middle class enjoyed a higher income growth rate than did either the overall economy or the rich—and therefore that their income gap versus the rich had actually decreased.
President Obama may be appealing to his base, largely made up of those who pay little or no taxes already, but is cementing the attitude of those who are productive who see him as further undermining and stalling economic recovery.
The International Monetary Fund just downgraded the economic outlook for the US (and Europe). Yeah, higher taxes should fix that, huh?
No, you are way worse than that, David. You were played, dude, because you wanted to be played. Had you done the job that you are well-paid to do, that would not have happened. His pressed pants, his skin color, his Harvard Law, and his glibness took you in. No real street newsman would have been conned that easily by an obvious street hustler:
You still are, David. You live in a rainbow pony cocoon, a land of wishful thinking. It is pathetic and irresponsible. A journalist without skepticism, a healthy dose of cynicism, and a healthy dose of whiskey, is not worth a damn.
You, David, are a pussy journalist. You drink milk with dinner. That's why you work at the Times.
Does any of that make any rational sense? Or am I stupid?
Since the recession, we have had a government doing everything it can to suppress, leash, and stifle the animal spirits of American enterprise. Why are the predictable results always "unexpected"? Where would we be, now, without China's loans?
We miss Reagan's common sense. The Dems are blinded to reality by ideological sentiment. Money doesn't grow on trees.
When one's kids get their own places, they tend not to have a lot of space. Few kids move out into 5000 square foot houses or apartments with giant closets and storage rooms. For both practical and sentimental reasons, their stuff tends to hang around, collecting dust and taking up potentially-usable space.
Even when you love them to death, at some point you want their stuff out. Baby birds have to fly. They will accumulate their own mountains of stuff, in time, and the cycle of stuff will repeat.
I remember when my Mom advised me to empty my old bedroom of anything I wanted to keep before it disappeared. I thought that sounded very cold at the time, but I now realize that it wasn't. They had done their job, and done it very well indeed at considerable sacrifice.
My old bedroom was destined to become a guest room - and a room where the grandkids could stay to visit. However, to this day it has a large ceiling to floor bookshelf with my old books on it.
From a medical malpractice defense lawyer: "I can pick any one of your charts at random and, in a little while, find a potential malpractice case in there. Why? Because few things in medical care work out perfectly, and they can easily find another doc in your specialty from an Ivy medical school to say, at $1500/hour plus expenses, that he would have done it a little differently. My advice? Move to Texas where they will appreciate you docs. Texas wants happy, caring doctors who do not view every patient as a potential lawsuit."
A "casino" (little house) is a place for social amusement and get-togethers, either public or private. The East coast used to have many clubs and assembly places called "casinos," often on the seashore. Gambling Casinos are a kind of casino.
Have you ever tried tennis on a grass court? I have. It's fast and the ball skids low. You skid, too. It's good fun.
Sipp, our American architectural expert, says that Newport, RI is basically the birthplace of Shingle Style. Here's his pic of the courtyard of the shingle-style Newport Casino, now the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
A few ideas, while Mrs. BD and I plan our trip to visit the Pupette in Prague this Spring (think we'll use Club ABC to save $ this time. Prague is a hot place these days for the youths.):
VRBO - Vacation Rentals by Owner. It's worldwide. I like to move around on my trips, but it's a cool idea to rent a place, rent a couple of cars, and bring the whole family and your best friends for a week or ten days. When my Dad was slightly younger, he used to do this for the whole family in Tuscany. Kids, their spouses, grandkids, etc. Two weeks, villa with pool and a cook and a ton of bedrooms, spare cars, walk to the village. Nice. What's the point of a little money if you can't enjoy it and share treats with your family? Uncle Sam will take half your money when you croak to buy votes.
Vacations To Go: Discount ship tix. You have to pick a nice ship, however - not one of the tacky mass-market ones which are beneath the dignity of Maggie's readers. The Silver Explorer is a nice one, with only 132 passengers. Here are some pics of her. I am in favor of the cheaper rooms on ships, because you are hardly never in your room anyway. On ships, I like to spend my time up on the deck. My friends at the Holland America line let me hang out on the bridge.
Support your local DU Chapter this year. It's for conservation, not greenie silliness. Attend your local event. It's good fun.
We always have a good time at our annual dinner. Basically all guys, except for the delightful raffle gals. Our DU dinner is old-fashioned, but we realize that the fellas like a guy's night out.
America contains lots of cultures and subcultures.
In Yankeeland, men never seem to want to retire. It's a point of masculine pride in a part of the country where work and masculine pride and vigor have traditionally been equated.
Our tradition has always been a little suspicious of, and uncomfortable with, leisure. Perhaps "ambivalent" is the right word. People with Yankeeland roots tend to find some work to do when they find spare time on their hands. Idleness is a sin, and "relaxation" is not in the lexicon. I am not saying that this is right or wrong - it's just a cultural thing hereabouts.
Furthermore, Yankee women tend not to like having an idle guy around her domain.
Here's a link at The American: Entitled to Leisure? The growing length of retirement for men in part reflects a decline in the number of years spent working. Is this a good thing? One quote:
That men age 20 now devote only two-thirds rather than 90 percent of their remaining lifetimes to paid work will be regarded by many readers as a sign of progress. But would we be better off if such men “caught up” to women by devoting only half of their remaining lifetime to paid work? Or would it be better if instead women caught up to men by devoting two-thirds of their remaining lifetimes to paid work? From the standpoint of financing entitlements, the answer is clear. But whether that answer maximizes social welfare will be a topic of heated discussion in the months and years ahead.
The 92-year old who bags my wine says he keeps working so he can pick up chicks. He goes for the lonely 80 year-olds.
Here's how we cook corn on the cob: After removing the most loose outer husk, we soak the ears in cold water for an hour or so with husks on and silk still present, then toss them on the grill, turning regularly for roughtly 15 minutes.
They steam and char a little. Some of the husk will char a bit, and most of the silk will burn off. That's good.
Peel and eat. For me, no butter, no salt on it. Tastes good the cave man way.
Chesterton’s success would have been hard to predict. He was the opposite of precocious. He didn’t learn to read until his ninth year (but after that he was unstoppable). His performance at lower school was lackluster. One schoolmaster exclaimed in exasperation that “if we could open your head we should not find any brain but only a lump of white fat.” Chesterton began to blossom at St. Paul’s (whose notable alumni include Milton, Pepys, and Judge Jeffries), where he met and befriended E. C. Bentley, the creator of the Clerihew, a form Chesterton would have been proud to invent.
After St. Paul’s, Chesterton first contemplated a career in art. For a couple of years, he dabbled in classes at the Slade while also attending lectures in English, French, and Latin at University College, London. He took no degree. And art turned out to be an entrée, an avocation, not an end. He went on to entertain friends with his drawings. But his main revelation concerned criticism. Years later, Chesterton recalled that, “having failed to learn how to draw or paint, I tossed off easily enough some criticisms of the weaker points of Rubens or the misdirected talents of Tintoretto. I had discovered the easiest of all professions; which I have pursued ever since.”
His wife was phobic about sex. That is probably why he got so fat.
To this day, there are baby boomers who half believe that “sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three,” as Philip Larkin had it, “between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles’ first LP.”
This, from Sleeper, seemed relevant to the article:
Our friend Sipp got me back to studying American architectural styles. I realized that I had been making a rookie error by referring to some houses as "Victorian" which may have been Victorian-era but were, in fact, correctly identified as "Colonial Revival."
In the area where I live, the vast majority of the gracious houses built after 1890 are Colonial Revival. Many of them were built as summer, weekend, or "country" houses. Pre-war and pre-income tax, ordinary comfortable people could do much more than they can today.
What style is this house (my pic in Newport, RI last summer - not a rich guy's house but a pre-income tax middle-class house)?:
Follow-up: Many readers fooled by those rocket ships - and the white paint on the shingles or whatever it is sided with now. My expert tells me it's actually Shingle-Style and not Queen Anne. It would look better with natural cedar shingles, would it not?
Darn pleasant home, regardless, and in a fun town, especially for boaters and barflies. Boat drinks!
Among the people we tend to dine with, nobody ever orders a dessert.
I am one to enjoy good stinky cheeses with a sliced pear after a dinner, or maybe a tiny bowl of fruit with some creme fraiche, but if nobody is ordering anything except coffee, you hate to be the only one still greedily munching.
Dessert seems to have become a special treat in America, only for special occasions. Nobody wants to act like, or look like, a pig at the trough.
Trust is a fascinating topic mingling, as it does, personality tendencies (especially extent of projection of one's own evil impulses and thoughts) with cultural or subcultural norms and rational expectations. There are trust cultures and distrust cultures.
Life has slowly taught me to be less trusting than I am naturally inclined to be, given my cocooned upbringing. I am most trusting, rightly or wrongly, of my own sort of people amongst whom, on the whole, there are strict and agreed-upon codes of behavior.
I counted. There were 77 cars at my local gym this morning at 6:10 AM. Clearly, from the visible sweat, many people had been there since opening time, 5:00 AM.
Many Americans devote much energy into obtaining work where one can sit all day with no heavy lifting, and then get up early, renouncing wholesome morning sex or slumber to engage in unprofitable labor and exertion in the high-tech gyms. Do people do this in other countries? Are we insane?
About half the people at this place arrive in the morning with their work clothes or dress clothes in hand, on hangers. I see friends and neighbors every time I go.
What am I doing there? Mrs. BD insists that I remain vigorous. I love manual labor and playing sports, but I hate exercise. I am not overweight at all, so that's not an issue. Well, maybe 5 or 6 pounds. I can do heavy labor and tennis all weekend, happily, although happiest with my butt on a metal tractor seat with a cold one in my paws. On second thought, maybe happiest busting brush with dog and gun in Maine, Canada, or the Adirondacks. I dunno. Lots of things please me. Skiing too.
The sedentary work week is the issue, same as for bus drivers. Use it or lose it. That's my mantra, for now.
I would like it better if they had Teaching Company on the TVs instead of the FOX business channel.
True, in my experience: What Job 'Training' Teaches? Bad Work Habits - A 1969 government study warned that teens in federal jobs programs 'regressed in their conception of what should reasonably be required in return for wages paid.'
Government "Job-training" provides jobs for the job trainers, and not much else.
The preamble to the Constitution lists several reasons for it, including providing for the common defense. It is the only one listed for which the federal government is uniquely essential.
Yet, while our defense expenditures are already being heavily trimmed, it is likely that they will be virtually gutted. Fifty percent of the budget cuts are supposed to come from 20% of our federal spending. Meanwhile, the threats abroad have not only not receded but are growing.
It is disgraceful that the Republican candidates for the nomination didn’t get into this, while spending two hours repeating clichés and arguing how much wall to have along the Mexican border. Yes, the domestic issues are pressing and very important, but to ignore the global threats, the denuding of our military capabilities, the added burdens on our already heavily burdened volunteers, and our responsibilities to defense is deplorable.
Read about what the Republican Chair of the House Armed Services Committee has to say. A sample:
I am afraid that once again, we are sliding back to a place we pledged never to return to, and are repeating the mistakes of a September 10th America. As we begin to emerge from a long, tough fight, this should be the time to reset and rebuild our military. Instead, we are lowering our gloves. At a time when our military is falling into disrepair, we have laid out over half a trillion dollars in projected cuts to Pentagon spending. I cannot understate how dangerous these defense cuts have become.
Apparently, the Republicans vying for the nomination can understate, indeed ignore it. I’m not feeling safer tonight.
And, Jennifer Rubin, also at the Washington Post called the debate A foreign policy horror show : "It’s time to figure out if any of these guys and gal are up to the job of commander in chief."
Jonathan Tobin chimes in at Commentary's Contentions blog, The GOPs Foreign Policy Void: "...the Republicans are in danger of throwing away one of their party’s greatest strengths."
Regarding the jobless American economy, the esteemed 
Vacations To Go
Here's how we cook corn on the cob: After removing the most loose outer husk, we soak the ears in cold water for an hour or so with husks on and silk still present, then toss them on the grill, turning regularly for roughtly 15 minutes.
Among the people we tend to dine with, nobody ever orders a dessert.