Ruminations - 20jun13 (updated 21jun13)

George Rebane

So much bad stuff is happening that it’s literally hopeless to keep track of it any more.  A few samples follow.

Asylum for climate change refugees.  A correspondent sends me this heads up on the latest from the idiot senator from Hawaii.  He writes, “Sen. Brian Schatz’s bill would create a sort of political asylum for global warming refugees.  Senator Brian Schatz’s (D-HI) filed an amendment for the immigration bill Wednesday that would allow stateless people in the U.S. to seek conditional lawful status if their nations have been made uninhabitable by climate change.  Who decides what is uninhabitable? Does that mean all countries without air conditioned buildings?”  You can't make this stuff up.

Speaking of the immigration bill, it looks like the Republican heartthrob Senator Marco Rubio has caved.  No more requirement for a secure border.  The new bill would keep it porous and plug the holes with ‘best efforts’ rhetoric directed at the isheeple (q.v.).  Things will really look bad when the Border Patrol agents strap on their buttons that read ‘Pardon me, but you have me confused with someone who gives a crap.’

The Dow has dropped about 550 points in the last three days.  Helicopter Ben has now told everyone in the world that his chopper will soon be running out of gas thereby quenching QE whatever its number is.  Is this a Black Swan event?  Hard to believe that it is since everyone has been anticipating it for at least six months.  As predicted here, everyone thought that they could get out whole when the time came, because they would know it ahead of time.  Well, had they known, then the markets would not have plunged as they have, and it ain’t over yet.

“Signs of ObamaCare's failings mount daily, including soaring insurance costs, looming provider shortages and inadequate insurance exchanges. Yet the law's most disturbing feature may be the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB, sometimes called a "death panel," threatens both the Medicare program and the Constitution's separation of powers. At a time when many Americans have been unsettled by abuses at the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department, the introduction of a powerful and largely unaccountable board into health care merits special scrutiny.” So say DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. and ELIZABETH P. FOLEY in the 20jun13 WSJ of these un-fireable appointed bureaucrats. And the bad news on that law will get a lot worse before serious attempts to repeal it are mounted.  Attributed deaths will have to number in the thousands before progressives will take notice (if then).

But there is an outside chance that this monster may collapse on itself from the gross incompetence at HHS according to the auditing arm of the GAO.  It seems that the HHS dunces in residence have not done their homework, and are having one hell of a time setting up the infamous insurance ‘exchanges’.  In fact, no one really knows what all is supposed to happen in these new bueraucracies that will dot the national landscape – that is one of the many reasons why HHS is running Obamacare as a black ops mission that is as opaque as it can possibly be – and the band starts playing in October.  Nationwide support for Obamacare is now down to about one out of three Americans, true believers all (more here).

To feel better, just go to the lamestream and/or any of the leftwing blogs where you will be burdened with none of this.

[21jun13 update]  The kids will get to ride elephants at the Nevada County Fair.  The fair board listened politely to the protestations of local ‘animal activists’, and then refused to cancel the contract with Have Trunk Will Travel.  To me people from organizations like Center for Animal Protection and Education comprise the faction of soft-headed, politically correct busybodies that have done so much to take our nation into the cultural oblivion and proscribed property rights mess in which we now wallow.  It’s good to celebrate a rare sparkle of sanity here and there in the public forum.

The WSJ’s enthusiastic editorial policy on immigration reform continues to miss the mark.  They celebrate the CBO’s analysis that the present bill would slightly lower our deficits by supplying new workers to boost GDP.  This is supposed to represent CBO’s new approach to ‘dynamic scoring’ instead of the ‘static’ type that they usually do in which every law is evaluated as if it will act in a hermetically sealed container from which collateral effects are removed.  Well, the CBO’s analysis and the WSJ’s assessment ('Mi Casa Su Growth Casa') of it both overlook the overriding effect of technology induced systemic unemployment (much discussed in these pages).  Neither organization recognizes that the existing legal American workforce continues to have trouble selling their outdated and rapidly diminishing skillsets into job markets that today demand so much more.

I expect this from the gang that can never shoot straight at the CBO, but the WSJ error continues to surprise me.  The new beneficiaries of amnesty that this immigration bill would create will be able to add significantly to the lines at the various welfare windows that the feds and state governments operate.  And we haven’t even begun to consider that the illegal alien problem will continue under the new perpetually porous borders provisions of this so-called immigration reform.

Comments

[Bill Tozer]

Da exchanges, da exchanges! Look Boss, da exchanges! The CBO announced that only 17 states will make the Oct deadline to have the exchanges set up. New Hampshire hasn't had any willing participants, so their exchange to drive down the cost of health care insurance is limited to zero companies to choose from, lol. Washington State has one one carrier willing to be the exchange and that only covers part of Washington State. Talk about creating a monopoly. Me smells the can getting kicked down the road. October, socktober, it does not really matter. Jan 2014...nay, they did not really mean Jan 2014...it was just a figure of speech.

[Ben Emery]

Bill,
Basically the insurance companies are controlling the game at the state level and we have some insane republican controlled states who are playing chicken but in the end will dive right into the exchanges.

[fish]

Basically the insurance companies are controlling the game at the state level and we have some insane republican controlled states who are playing chicken but in the end will dive right into the exchanges.

So single payer then?

[Russ Steele]

Obamacare in California means more Dem voters, not better health care. This should work out well. /sarc

Katy Grimes at Cal WatchDog:

Obamacare is carefully institutionalizing a perverted style of corrupt politics throughout the U.S., but particularly in California where Democratic politicians are taking the law, and adding that special, corrupt California uniqueness to it.

How? Community organizers and unions will be recruiting people to enroll in Obamacare and sign up to be part of the permanent, beholden Democratic voting majority, according to Investor’s Business Daily.

The California Legislature set this up through SB 35, passed and signed into law in September 2012, requiring that voter registration part of the health insurance exchange.

“Last month, Covered California announced $37 million in grants to 48 organizations to build public awareness about the opening of the health exchange on Oct. 1,” IBD said.

“The California legislature and the new Covered California health insurance exchange are conspiring to keep secret how they will dole out more than half a billion dollars in taxpayer dollars to contractors,” IBD said. “The lion’s share of the money is going for what the exchange budget terms ‘outreach.’”

“The Obama administration granted a whopping $910 million to California to set up its insurance exchange,” IBD said. “That money is not for bandages, surgery, nurses and doctors to care for the sick. Nor is it for insurance plans, though $910 million could buy generous coverage for at least 113,000 people!”

The money will be used to register Democratic voters in California — new Democratic voters.

“The $910 million is slated for bureaucracy, including rich compensation packages for exchange employees ($360,000 a year for the executive director) and contracts for computer equipment, public relations and ‘outreach.’”
“Outreach is the largest expenditure and where the real monkey business occurs.”

Unfortunately, this is standard operating procedure in California politics.

- See more at: http://www.calwatchdog.com/2013/06/20/obamacare-california-means-new-dem-voters/#sthash.zUjyfo4O.dpuf

[Ben Emery]

The best thing they could have done for all Americans is to open up Medicare for anyone who wanted to buy into it. It could have been done with reconciliation due to it being an existing program.

http://blogs.jamaicans.com/gwgraeme/2010/03/10/denis-kucinich-has-a-point-and-democrats-should-listen/

[Gregory]

"we have some insane republican controlled states who are playing chicken but in the end will dive right into the exchanges." -Ben

No, they won't, and it's telling that you couldn't resist declaring Republican states resisting being assimilated into the collective as being"insane".

Time will tell which of us is correct on this one.

[Bill Tozer]

Dr. Rebane: If you thought Asylum for climate change refugees was out in left field, read this. Suppose a convicted embezzler was applying for the new purchasing department manager in your business. Or bookkeeper. Suppose a person convicted of three separate incidents of assault with a deadly weapon upon co-workers and unarmed little old ladies from Pasadena applied for the HR position or other openings. Would he make a good salesman or security guard wearing the company logo? Fact is stranger than fiction;

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/22/obama-administration-files-suits-against-businesses-using-criminal-background/?test=latestnews

[George Rebane]

BillT 1155pm - thank you for that Mr Tozer. We are indeed going deeper into Obamastan. Our legal system is so broken that now businesses will find themselves in "the dilemma in which a company does not run a criminal check and risks having a new hire with a violent criminal history assault a co-worker, or run a check and face a federal lawsuit." If that employee with criminal record causes ANY problems in the workplace or with its work product, the company immediately becomes a target of a rapacious civil suit for not acting prudently.