There were supposed to be millions of people who were uninsurable because of pre-existing conditions. We heard lengthy testimony about their terrible plight. I don’t think it’s too strong to say that this fear–that you could get sick and no one would insure you, that’s right, you, Mr. & Mrs. Middle-Class Voter–was one of the main reasons offered for the health care overhaul. It was estimated by Medicare’s Chief Actuary that around 400,000 would sign up (the CBO estimated 200,000, but only because they assumed that HHS would use its authority to limit enrollment in order to stay within the $5 billion budgeted for the program).
So how many have signed up for this badly needed program? 18,000, less than of the lower CBO estimate. So, in true government fashion, they’ve decided, not to save money, but spend it anyway, which is what governments do best.
The administration is now loosening the requirements (you just need a note from a doctor or nurse saying you’ve been sick in the last year) and lowering premiums. But this doesn’t mean that they’re finally covering more "uninsurables"; it just means they’ve decided to use the money allocated for those people to cover someone else. They’re changing the "high-risk pools" to something that looks a lot more like simply subsidizing insurance. But the goal wasn’t to spend the $5 billion that HHS got in its budget; the goal was to provide insurance for people who want to buy insurance, but can’t find a company willing to write it.
If anyone tries to argue that some government program, this one especially, will stay within its legislative boundaries, they really have no idea how governments are addicted to your money.
Faux outrage from the left. I found the outrage at corporate tax dodging (queue GM/Chrysler images) amusing. Democrats ostensibly are for graduated taxes, while any corporate tax paid by the consumer irrespective of their earnings. I hadn’t realized the Democrats were so strongly for consumption taxes on non-luxury items.
It’s cute when Democrats slip in little racism jabs at the GOP … all while ignoring the fact that for 2 years they held the Presidency had a bi-Cameral majority.
If you drove on a public highway yesterday, then you almost killed someone else in a head-on collision
Or so goes the logic which was applied to Joe Zamudio. Zamudio was the armed citizen who happened to be buying cigarettes inside a store near where Gabby Giffords was conducting her constituent meet-up. Upon hearing (and recognizing) the gunshots, he ran towards the scene and helped secure the alleged shooter. While he considered drawing his weapon, his assessment of the situation upon his arrival was to keep it holstered. From an LA Times article, we read,
A bystander with a Ruger intent on ending the violence almost shot the wrong guy. But he made a split-second decision to keep the weapon in his pocket.
(emphasis added)
So, as Massad Ayoob, firearms trainer and podcaster, says,
…by that standard, if you’re listening to this podcast while driving, you just “almost” had a hundred head-on collisions with traffic in the opposite lane.
You can listen to an extended interview of Zamudio, by the Ayoob group, in which he explains not only what happened that day he was buying cigarettes, but afterwards with the media. The Zamudio interview begins around 10 minutes into the podcast.
Note that Zamudio categorically states that he did not draw his weapon. Yet another quote from the Times article states,
Zamudio, 24, had his finger on the trigger and seconds to decide.
He lifted his finger from the trigger and ran toward the struggling men.
No, he did not have his finger on the trigger.
Bottomline: if the media ever wants to interview you, then make sure you also record the entire interview.
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An interview of the Bell on Hell Interviewer
Audio interview of Martin Bashir, who recently interviewed Rob Bell regarding his universalist book Love Wins and, according to many Bell followers, was really mean to Bell.
The Obama economic "recovery" turned 2 years old in May. Upwards of a trillion dollars spent, for what? The number of people with jobs hasn’t changed, unemployment is far worse than they said it would be if we did nothing, median incomes are down, housing prices are down 10%, and I don’t need to tell you about gas prices. If George W. Bush were President, you just know he’d be personally blamed for this, but Obama gets a pass.
Canada, by the way, has been leading the US out of this mire by reducing debt and spending, even with a socialized medicine albatross around its neck.
When you make entitlements untouchable, you risk hurting those you purport to be concerned about because economic collapse hurts us all, including and especially the poor. The idea that it couldn’t happen here is severely myopic.
And finally, "smart" diplomacy". (Click for a larger version.)
That auto bailout again … costing 18 billion … you know my company could benefit from a free $250k per employee. I bet your’s could too. So, do you think they’ll get another bailout in 10-20 years just like last time?
If there is a dumber reason to take kids out of a parents home, I’ve never seen it.
Federal officials said Wednesday that the new Indiana law cutting Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood violates Medicaid rules — a determination that could cost the state millions and possibly even billions of dollars.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services informed state officials by letter that it was denying Indiana’s new Medicaid plan because states can’t pick and choose where recipients receive health-care services.
What happens next is, at best, a guess. But almost certain is that it will add fuel to a legal and political battle likely to be watched closely across the nation.
An HHS official would not comment on what happens if Indiana does not change its law, though one possible ramification would be withholding funding.
Indiana relies on about $4 million in federal Medicaid family planning funds and more than $4 billion in total Medicaid dollars.
Sounds like gangster government at work here. From the same report:
Anti-abortion activists challenged the Obama administration’s interpretation of federal Medicaid policy, saying they believe states do have authority to defund Planned Parenthood and called the letter a strong-arm tactic.
“We’re not surprised by it,” said Indiana Right to Life Legislative Director Sue Swayze. “This is the most pro-abortion president we’ve ever had. It almost feels like they’re bullying the state of Indiana over the wishes of our legislative branch.”
President Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group, said, “(HHS) Secretary (Kathleen) Sebelius is strong-arming states like Indiana to protect the administration’s powerful ally Planned Parenthood.”
According to the Associated Press report, Indiana attorney general Greg Zoeller intends to continue defending the statute.
Planned Parenthood is already challenging the statute in court. The actions of HHS will only add another layer of litigation to this battle.
Although opinion polls are often treated as if they were harmless detritus of the news-cycle, they are powerful tools for promoting overconfidence and slip-shod reasoning. Take, for instance, two of the worst types of polls—those that purportedly measure “favorability” and the “job approval rating” of politicians such as the president and members of Congress. Such polls might be useful if the general public were aware of the president and legislators’ duties, and if we could appeal to a single, objective standard to judge polls’ relevance and faithfulness to truth. But we don’t. Instead, polls create an illusion of assurance, allowing us to fool ourselves into thinking we have precisely quantified our vague qualitative judgments.
Commenter Boonton has on a few occaisons mused about complex industrial accidents and the avoidence of the same.
Complex project development, in a book which came out in the 80s (Have Fun At Work, by Mr Livingstone) was an interesting read. The main thesis of the book was that complex projects (those are too large basically to fit in one smart persons brain … and he gave specific concrete ways to recognize those projects) fail. They all fail (or at the best have horrible delays and massive cost overruns). Much of the book devoted itself to orienting tech/engineer personel to recognize if your project was one of those which would fail and how to prevent that from career or psychic injury to self. As a sidelight he noted the only way that complex projects succeed. Complex projects succeed if heirarchical information pathways are removed and replaced with a model in which everyone can talk (and does talk) to everone. The cannonical such project is the Lockheed Skunkworks, which developed the SR-71, the U-2, and stealth combat aircraft. In their working environment, aerodynamicists and systems engineers sat next to draftsmen and machinists. “Can this …?” questions didn’t filter up and down the chain but you would ask the guy who might know the answer directly.
Big systems with complex working parts are put in place all over the world. Refineries, airplans, chemical plants, nuclear power plants and so on are all complex working systems. One way in which one might approach minimizing the occurance of complex accidents is to follow the Kelly Johnson/Skunkworks approach and shift it from project development to ongoing system operations. Why isn’t this done?
One reasons might be tied to morale. The Skunkworks team was a high morale operation. They had an impossible (basically) cutting edge project. They worked rediculous hours because of their excitement and the demands of the project and the basic urge human urge for success and to win, defined in this case as completion of the project, to scale that technical mountain. How can this translate to a multi-decade task of keeping equipment running safely, a far more mundane and routine task? If one identifies a clear difference in the two tasks as one of morale. High morale is essential for the operation of a non-heirarchical task/team project. High morale might also be an essential telling point in the operation of a long term operational facillity if one were to attempt to shift it to a more skunkworks-like approach to management. You can’t do that without high morale.
Ultimately government “regulation” of industrial workplace might be better served not trying to pretend it knows better how to drill offshore, run nuclear plants, and so on. It can on the other hand, have a better shot a spotting any number of ways in which workplaces are poisoned by poor morale and other working conditions conducive to failure (reckless risk taking has its own signature on morale). The point is, inspectors might be better served watching dynamics of workplace (social) chemistry and less on technical questions which they have, likely, less (or captive) expertise (not to speak of other agenda).
Let’s see, after 8 years of Democratic obstructionism in the same venue (which was likely praised by this source) … now … now(!) it’s horrible. How about, it was bad then, it’s bad now. But you’d have to be admitting it was bad then, see.
“I want Americans to understand how the decisions of their presidents — then and now — shape world history in ways we don’t always understand at the time of a specific event. I want readers to know that Kennedy could have prevented the Berlin Wall, if he had wished, and that in acquiescing to the border closure he not only created a more dangerous situation — but also contributed to mortgaging the future for tens of millions of Central and Eastern Europeans. The relatively small decisions that U.S. presidents make have huge, often global, consequences.”
$3 million per job, at that rate … well, you know. It looks like when a company gets big gov’t grants, they get to borrow government inefficiencies and waste.
A poor tipper to boot. He may be innocent until proven guilty, but he sure seems like the horses back end.
Walter Russell Mead has a fascinating essay on what went wrong last week for President Obama in his latest attempts to move the Middle East peace process forward. The whole thing is worth reading. But the most striking passage comes at the end when Mead turns his focus onto what makes the relationship between America and Israel so special:
As the stunning and overwhelming response to Prime Minister Netanyahu in Congress showed, Israel matters in American politics like almost no other country on earth. Well beyond the American Jewish and the Protestant fundamentalist communities, the people and the story of Israel stir some of the deepest and most mysterious reaches of the American soul. The idea of Jewish and Israeli exceptionalism is profoundly tied to the idea of American exceptionalism. The belief that God favors and protects Israel is connected to the idea that God favors and protects America.
It means more. The existence of Israel means that the God of the Bible is still watching out for the well-being of the human race. For many American Christians who are nothing like fundamentalists, the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land and their creation of a successful, democratic state after two thousand years of oppression and exile is a clear sign that the religion of the Bible can be trusted.
Being pro-Israel matters in American mass politics because the public mind believes at a deep level that to be pro-Israel is to be pro-America and pro-faith. Substantial numbers of voters believe that politicians who don’t ‘get’ Israel also don’t ‘get’ America and don’t ‘get’ God.
