Stones Cry Out

Reflect a moment on the Olympics, the US and many Western leaders have decided “not to attend”, Google followed suit with a rainbow Olympic rings display, and publicly gay (privately … who knows) stuffed shirts were sent as part of the US delegation and many others. This was supposedly in response to how Russia is perceived to deal with public homosexuality.

Consider the following. Make an honest list of the top 10 economic, liberty, social, legal, and cultural issues facing the Russian people and the Russian Federation today. Order these by which have the highest priority and will do the greatest good. If you are honest (and I will charitably assume that is the case), gay rights did not appear on the list. Extend it to 20. Gosh. Still not there. In fact, I’d be willing to bet, if you put the time and effort it that gay rights might not even (if you are honest) make the top 100.

So …. why is that a putative issue for our leaders? Could it be because all politics is local and this is a safe way of pretending to do something about gay issues in their country without having to actually, you know, do anything about those issues? Crocodile tears all around.

One of the big promises of ObamaCare was that, with a much larger pool of insured people, the cost to the average individual or family would go down. That’s how insurance works, right? You spread out the risk over a bigger population, and the required payouts become less than the premiums taken in. More people, less risk, lower costs.

You’d think so. But as it turns out, the insurance offered by one of those eeevil corporations, Wal-Mart, beats the equivalent ObamaCare plan handily. David Todd, an independent insurance agent based in Little Rock, Ark., compared the health plans.

Todd looked at a 30-year-old woman who could qualify for the government subsidy. “The nonsubsidized premium is $205 a month for this 30-year-old. If they get a subsidy, then the premium is zero. But that person has to come up with $6,300 if something catastrophic happened,” he said.

The Walmart monthly premium for the same 30-year-old woman would be about $40. Her deductible would be $2,750, minus $250 in cash advance, for a total net deductible of $2,500.

Todd said some Obamacare exchange family plan deductibles can go as high as $12,000 before benefits kick in.

This is what the government considers “subsidized”; pay thousands up front and get your money back, depending on when you spent it, over a year from now. OK, but what is the actual coverage like? Very good question. Let’s take a look at some of the particulars.

Walmart also offers a free preventive health plan that mirrors the Obamacare plan. Its employees can take advantage of a wide range of free exams and counseling, including screenings for colorectal cancer, cervical cancer, chlamydia, diabetes, depression and special counseling for diet and obesity.

Their children can get more than 20 free preventive services, ranging including screenings for genetic disorders, autism and developmental problems to obesity, lead poisoning exposure and tuberculosis. There are also 12 free vaccinations, and free hearing and vision testing.

Walmart employees pay as little as $4 for a 30-day supply of generic drugs and only $10 for eye exams through a separate vision plan.

Oh, and in Chicago, where this comparison was done, Wal-Mart employees have access to about 2 ½ times as many doctors than those with ObamaCare do. What does it say about ObamaCare that doctors and hospitals would rather do business with a private company than with the government?

Well, it says that we’re going about this all the wrong way.

Well better late than, uhm, tomorrow.

1. Let’s see, you can’t make it legal to shoot them down and at the same time you can’t fly them. The libertarian argument gets better every day.
2. The President feels the fetus is guilty … (of what?) or something like that. Just remember, liberals like Rawls at least pay lip sevice to it, but just don’t pay attention to the consequences.
3. The Boston bomber and penalty.
4. Obamacare and economic consequences. More on the same … attack a straw man is one strategy in Obamacare defense (apparently someone doesn’t realize that if you stop working to pay for your medical care and instead stop working and let taxes (other peoples money) to handle it … that’s not a net gain for the country).
5. And one more “how not to defend” Obamacare.
6. A book suggested. I picked up the first one, as I’ll be on the road starting tomorrow night until Thursday night.
7. Or you could just figure out it’s just a cat or a dog, and get a new one.
8. Hello? The surprise would be the government doing it well. Duh.
9. “more likely to seek treatment” … that would be on planet liberal-pipe-dreams-come-true. Back on this world, the mentally ill rarely seek treatment voluntarily because they are, wait for it …, mentally ill. This can be put along side of the “those without insurance don’t have it because they can’t afford it (as opposed don’t really want it and want to spend their money elsewhere).
10. Self parody. In which the poster notes in his second part “one of those annoying columns that comes so close to making an important point, only to swerve away into inanity” and then in his response, does exactly that. Examine for example, ” Ironically, government is far, far better at this — by maintaining a monopoly on sanction, they can make punishments more precise and ultimately more just” … in the context of the IRS “justly” decided to single out one parties groups for antagonistic vetting at the prompting of the President.
11. In which “strange” probably means “kinda neat”.
12. And the problem is … likely that the NSA doesn’t have the data but ordinary people do. Ordinary people, on might note, having such information is less problematic than the government.
13. Quantity and quality.
14. Trust and vendors.
15. Don’t worry, wait 2 more years and the expected costs will double again, … why not worry? Well, it was all part of the original “cunning plan.” All part of the “Obama = BlackAdder” (with Biden as Baldrick) theme.
16. Scurillous for whom? I’d hope Ms Hurley would have far better taste than spending time with a sleaze like that.

Dana Milbank explains that the Congressional Budget Office issued glowing reports years ago about how ObamaCare was going to save money. The Obama administration trumpeted those findings far and wide. I noted at the time that the system was gamed because the administration knows the rules by which the CBO comes up with estimates, and wrote the bill to get the best looking numbers at the start. It wouldn’t matter that later estimates would be worse; it would have already been sold to the American people.

But now, things are looking much worse.

The congressional number-crunchers, perhaps the capital’s closest thing to a neutral referee, came out with a new report Tuesday, and it wasn’t pretty for Obamacare. The CBO predicted the law would have a “substantially larger” impact on the labor market than it had previously expected: The law would reduce the workforce in 2021 by the equivalent of 2.3 million full-time workers, well more than the 800,000 originally anticipated. This will inevitably be a drag on economic growth, as more people decide government handouts are more attractive than working more and paying higher taxes.

This is grim news for the White House and for Democrats on the ballot in November. This independent arbiter, long embraced by the White House, has validated a core complaint of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) critics: that it will discourage work and become an ungainly entitlement. Disputing Republicans’ charges is much easier than refuting the federal government’s official scorekeepers.

The President’s spokesman, Jay Carney, tried to spin it as people who would "spend more time with their family", or perhaps become entrepreneurs. The latter guess is just that; a guess trying to make it sound wonderful. The former is a euphemism for living off the dole because the benefits are better.

Carney noted that these were "personal choices", but he conveniently neglects to mention that they are personal choices spurred on by the government. People respond to incentives; that’s why things like tax deductions work the way they do. ObamaCare is pushing people to dependency.

The CBO numbers prove it.

I knew that many Canadians were leaving their borders to come to the US to avoid the long waits they have to endure up there. I just didn’t know how many. Well a free-market think tank, the Frasier Institute, has published the numbers for 2013. Turns out just under 42,000 folks fled the country, at least temporarily, to jump the line and get the timely care they needed. That was down just slightly from the just over 42,000 that came here in 2012.

This brings up a question in my mind. With the advent of ObamaCare down here, where will these folks go now? And I guess the next obvious question would be, where will we go?

Well, the 3-6 inches of snow turned out to be closer to 6 than 3, perhaps 5 here.

1. I’m on a 6 month “fix it with diet” deal with my doctor or these are likely in my future. Apparently I “lost the genetic lottery” as exercise which normally has a big effect in normalizing your LDL/HDL ratio doesn’t work for me.
2. Misunderstanding miracle.
3. Yesterday I linked a piece noting the silent assent which permitted Mr Hoffman’s death. It’s not like this isn’t a somewhat regular thing.
4. We’re just glad it doesn’t include the partially female athletes.
5. So, does Madison avenue have a clue? Or do the Democrats? Here is a suggestion that November might be a litmus test for that question.
6. So, decades ago, science fiction writer Poul Andersen wrote a series of books featuring the exploits and adventures of a Dominic Flandry. Mr Flandry’s problem was he was knowingly fighting a lost cause, his people (a large human dominated stellar empire) was failing due to cultural decadence. He knew it was a lost cause, but soldiered on regardless. This post reminds me of that. As does this one. And this one.
7. Meanwhile lawmakers concentrate on what is important.
8. Apparently the “new atheists” are “very certain” about many things, kind of like the global warming crowd. Odd then that this is in the context of a Physics community (which involves measurements far more accurate and simpler systems) that isn’t sure if protons decay.
9. Let’s see, first sexual slavery/trafficking and the Super-Bowl was a problem, then it wasn’t. It seems the former might have been more accurate.
10. The real reason.
11. Seriously?
12. Climate and negative feedback. Uhm, the climate has been amazingly stable for hundreds of millions of years. If you don’t think there are lots and lots of negative feedback mechanisms keeping on the rails, then check your shoes, you probably never learned to tie them for that’s clearly pushing your cognitive boundaries.
13. That’s not a “car” engine. It’s a jet fighter plane that forgot to wear its wings.

G’day.

1. Beating a dead horse as it were.
2. Yikes.
3. The crux of the liberal notion that in government lies the solution.
4. Mr Hoffman, justly mourned or a death enabled.
5. Clever.
6. The upcoming political moves by the Admin noted.
7. Lame duckisms.
8. Two governments move toward economic suicide.
9. Obamacare looking more and more like a cunning plan.
10. Well, heck, that describes everyone who came of age in the Nixon era.
11. Mr Obama interview notes “politicians are liars“.
12. Cool tech.
13. 29ers, the new trend. Thank your Democrat leaders for that.
14. Hawkings and the black hole.
15. Some towns have snow removal problems, others don’t.
16. Obama and his “art history” diss … setting aside why he didn’t go for the actual popular fluff majors.

One of the reasons used against the idea of requiring ID to vote is that there has been so little voter fraud detected, that this is a solution looking for a problem. Well, the Department of Investigations in New York City recently finished up a report that shows that voter fraud can be pretty darn easy. Worse, we would have no idea at all that it was actually happening.

Undercover agents from the DOI tried to cast ballots as felons or dead people at 63 polling places last fall. Of the 63 attempts, 61, or 97%, were successful. Now, when they voted, they did so with a write-in for a fictitious “John Test” to keep from affecting the vote count. Ultimately, the DOI published its findings a few weeks ago in a 70-page report accusing the city’s Board of Elections of incompetence, waste, nepotism, and lax procedures.

Of the two attempts that failed, in the first case, a poll worker followed the agent outside and the “voter” was advised to go to the polling place near where he used to live and “play dumb” in order to vote. In the second case, the investigator was stopped from voting only because the felon whose name he was using was the son of the election official at the polling place. So basically, we’re talking about a 100% success rate, completely undetectable, with just a few changes in circumstances.

So the Board of Elections immediately got down to business and started coming up with ways to avoid this in the future. Heh, no, of course not. This is government we’re talking about! John Fund, who wrote the article I’m referring to, put it this way. “The Board approved a resolution referring the DOI’s investigators for prosecution. It also asked the state’s attorney general to determine whether DOI had violated the civil rights of voters who had moved or are felons, and it sent a letter of complaint to Mayor Bill de Blasio.”

Yup, they pointed fingers instead of fixing the problem. That’s why the legislature needs to deal with this, so entrenched bureaucracies don’t stick us with a broken system that’s easily gamed. And, as I’ve noted before, when Georgia got its voter ID law, minority participation went up, and higher than majority participation did. A win-win situation, and one that gets around a government board that is too busy with their little fiefdom to do the right thing. Who could be against that?

So, everybody thinks … and perhaps rightly that Chechin terrorists are a looming threat for the safety of the Sochi Olympics. I don’t understand the following in that respect. So, you’re a dissident or rebel in Chechnia or elsewhere. Why would you set a bomb or attack in Sochi? If you do, you and your cause will be universally reviled the world over. How to you benefit from that? I fail to understand the motives behind an act like that. Why do you want your cause hated and reviled?

One of the nice things about the Internet and blogging is you hear ordinary voices from all over. Atlanta recently had a few inches of snow a condition with which drivers in Atlanta are not experienced at driving and the road crews are not equipped with the supplies of shovels and salt or sand that we have in the north. So … before y’all get all cocky about how you don’t even blink at a few inches in your area and schools don’t close unless more is dumped. Consider. I read a few years back from an Alaskan blogger who pointed out that schools in her town don’t close unless more than 48″ are dumped on the town in less than 24 hours. So. Set your pride aside and consider how Chicago, Minneapolis, or New York (or your town) would react to having a few inches less than 48″ of snow on a Tuesday and remember those Alaskans would treat it as business as usual.

This year, the traditional incandescent light bulb is becoming extinct. There was a big push by environmentalists to force the change to higher efficiency bulbs, like Compact Fluorescent bulbs, or CFLs. The idea was that they light with less energy, and so everyone should use them. Never mind the market; coercion was necessary.

And one of the things they like to trumpet about this was that the light bulb industry supported this move. The thought is that if even they think it’s a good idea, government ought to force the issue. But not one of those environmentalists ever considered this:

Competitive markets with low costs of entry have a characteristic that consumers love and businesses lament: very low profit margins. GE, Philips and Sylvania dominated the U.S. market in incandescents, but they couldn’t convert that dominance into price hikes. Because of light bulb’s low material and manufacturing costs, any big climb in prices would have invited new competitors to undercut the giants — and that new competitor would probably have won a distribution deal with Wal-Mart.

Basically, with a low-cost light bulb, the major players in the market couldn’t just jack up the price on their wares. Someone else could step in and, with a low cost of entry into the light bulb market, build a better mousetrap, so to speak, and the world would beat a path to their door.

Unless. Unless the light bulb companies could push government regulations that would make the bare minimum light bulb incredibly more expensive. They’d get their price hike, and they’d further their hold on the industry by keeping out competition, because start-up costs are now much higher.

Now, you may be saying, “See, Doug? Eeevil corporations are to blame for this! And you’re always defending them!” Two things. First, the law itself is the problem, and the blame for that comes, not from corporations, but from a big government with the power to pass such a law, and which is more than willing to stick its hand into your wallet. Government did this, not corporations. And I’ll reiterate that, if you don’t like a corporation, you can stop buying from them immediately. If you don’t like your government, you’ll have to wait for the next election cycle, and hope there are enough people who agree with you.

Second, I don’t blame corporations at all for trying to lobby the government for things that will benefit them. If I did blame them, then I’d have to blame every single grassroots organization that does the same sort of lobbying, even those environmentalists. Is lobbying the government an evil thing to do? Not at all! But government should know its boundaries and should stay within them. That’s why we have a constitution. But these days, the Constitution has been reinterpreted to say, for example, that you must buy a particular financial instrument. If the government can force you to buy something, I think it’s gone far beyond what the framers of the Constitution ever intended, and that power is for sale to the highest bidder.

Oh, and consider this. If anyone claims that certain government policies are required because the free market has failed, just let them know that we really haven’t had a “free market” in decades. Light bulbs and ObamaCare are only the two most recent examples.

G’day.

1. Not Crazy, more specifically defined.
2. Mr Obama apparently imitates one of my favorite Calvin/Hobbes cartoons (use your own words). Immigration will help businesses “to locate”, yah. Whatever you pretend that means I guess.
3. Some more detailed remarks, apparently the speech was very, if unintentionally, humorous.
4. Tech notes.
5. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.
6. Faith and action.
7. More Democrat Senators who haven’t been to a drug store to price condoms in quite some time.
8. India “perplexed” that the US is bug-nuts crazy. I am too I guess.
9. What to do? You mean besides learning to like red-beans+rice and/or split-peas with spam?
10. “Science” apparently confused which kids are fat, uhm, duh.
11. Speaking of childhood obesity … it’s not necesssarily permanent.
12. Palinquin lady.
13. ‘Cause industrial Carbon in the 11th century was omnipresent. Alas, the seas rose and killed everything (just after it had been turned into a newt). But, “it got better.”
14. Stupidity in schools.

Hello. Cold out there it seems. Mr Gore apparently not in touch (this weather may be cold but it only “extreme” if you are susceptible to confirmation bias … in which case you think the climate is radically changing because of normal weather patterns like el Nino (Nina?) moving the jetstream). Links?

1. Place and income mobility. At a glance, you’re best of in the Mid-west and West.
2. Chaos and electric demand.
3. Another question for the pseudo-intellectual Gore.
4. Repealing the 14th in practice.
5. Twitter as precis practice.
6. Finding love.
7. Or finding something akin to love in the wrong places.
8. Energy balance and the sloth.
9. Always beware of the “I can’t imagine” argument, it’s a not-well-known rhetorical/logical fallacy.
10. Cinema.
11. Mr Huckabee was he recently abused for making sense?
12. Return query, replace “all women” with “All men” or “all fans of Charles Dickens” “all prefer pink to purple” (to which you’d should object). If the criteria isn’t germane to the topic using it is a criteria is bigotry or race/sex/whatever-criteria -ism.
13. Language does not commute (order matters).
14. Uranium enrichment numbers.

So, -8 F here this morning. Seems like the weather is returning to that pattern of a few years ago, of about a week of bitter cold with occasional warming spells during which snow is dumped on us. #2 daughter opted to be dropped off at school instead of walking.

1. This person seems to have more difficulty with their child’s choice than might be expected.
2. I’d have to support the Att. Gen. decision if honest (even though I disagree with his conclusion), you have two choices when electing an official, that you want him to guess and vote/act according to his perception his constituents, or the constituents should expect evaluate him and expect him to vote/act according to his conscience. Back in the day, Mr Kerry claimed he did the former. I think the former is not right.
3. More Benghazi lies. First “it was the video” canard, now it was the Ambassador’s fault. Geesh.
4. We’ll be seeing lots of posts of this sort on this anniversary. Liberals often like to base civic ethics on Rawls and “they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society” … somehow they pretend that the fetus is more advantaged, has a louder/stronger voice in society, and more empowered than the mother. That illogical twist fuels much wickedness.
5. One more, “abortion allows women … to fulfill their dreams”. Say what? Little girls dream of many things, few dream of killing their child. I mean, I’ve joked with my daughter’s about embarking on the career path of “evil genius” and that they should practice their “evil laugh” but they just roll their eyes at me when I do that.
6. Revenge ala Christie claimed. I wouldn’t put it past the Admin.
7. So, in those states with legal marijuana … apparently the illegal street price is lower than the legal price. So, what besides taxes might cause that? Perhaps the FDA has a hand in raising those prices too.
8. Hacking and gas.
9. Another Obamacare suit which may have  legs.
10. More on the min wage.
11. Obama’s NSA speech (which apparently was roundly panned) graded here.

Well, back at home. Links?

1. A use for that valve cap.
2. Yer gubmit, looking out for … well, no good reason I guess.
3. No no no, don’t slander the teacher, if anything slander the administrators.
4. Speaking of teachers ….
5. Gender and quotes, not unexpected results.
6. Consequences for not towing the party line.
7. Prayer of very different sorts, here and here.
8. Of cold and calorie.
9. The IRS and implications.
10. Of hard drives and failure.