Usually Right: Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., April 10 & 11

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., April 10 & 11

As the world turns...

29 comments:

William R. Barker said...: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5idiGLGKQYwDSrpj-R7QVJDNuSDPAD9F0D2080

President Barack Obama quietly breached years of protocol on Saturday morning by leaving the White House without the press with him.

About two hours before reporters were supposed to be in position to leave with the president, Obama left the grounds of the White House. Members of the press were told he was attending one of his daughter's soccer games in northwest Washington, D.C.

* GOOD FOR HIM!; April 11, 2010 at 11:01 AM
William R. Barker said...: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5idiGLGKQYwDSrpj-R7QVJDNuSDPAD9F0D2080

* HERE'S SOMETHING INTERESTING FROM THE "MEDIA WATCH" PERSPECTIVE. FIRST... NOTE THE HEADLINE:

GOP promises "whale of a fight" if court pick "too liberal"

* NOTE: THE "IN QUOTES" ARE FROM THE HEADLINE ITSELF. (THIS IS AN AP STORY RUN BY THE DENVER POST.)

* NOW... IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE 8TH PARAGRAPH YOU'LL FIND THE FOLLOWING ACTUAL QUOTE:

"I have hopes that President Obama will at least try to appoint somebody who will get a huge bipartisan vote, and if he will, he's going to go down in history as a better president," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "If he doesn't, there's going to be a whale of a fight if he appoints an activist to the court. That's not good for him, it's not good for the Senate, it's not good for the country." Looking toward the hearings, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said, "Americans can expect Senate Republicans to make a sustained and vigorous case for judicial restraint and the fundamental importance of an evenhanded reading of the law."

* IN CASE ANYONE MISSES MY POINT, ALLOW ME TO LAY IT OUT: THERE'S NOTHING IN EITHER REPUBLICAN QUOTE ABOUT "TOO LIBERAL." HATCH WARNS OF TRYING TO APPOINT AN ACTIVIST TO THE COURT. MCCONNELL CALLS FOR A NOMINEE CAPABLE OF JUDICIAL RESTRAINT. THIS IS ABOUT JUDICIAL PHILOSOPHY, NOT POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. EITHER THROUGH IGNORANCE OR DELIBERATE PURPOSE THE HEADLINE WRITER MISCHARACTERIZES THE NATURE OF THE DEBATE.; April 11, 2010 at 11:02 AM
William R. Barker said...: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2926952/iPranged-a-submarine.html

A US nuclear sub rammed another ship causing [approximately $87 million in damage to the submarine USS Hartford and $2.3 million to the transport ship USS New Orleans] - while its navigator was listening to his iPod.

Sailors aboard the USS Hartford had also rigged up loudspeakers so they could play MUSIC on duty, an official report found last night.

Sonar operators and radio men were missing from their posts. Others drove the attack sub while "with one hand on the controls and their shoes off," it said.

The captain, Commander Ryan Brookhart, was relieved of his duties after the Navy found that more than 30 errors, - including "an informal atmosphere" and "a weak command" - led to the "avoidable accident".

Fifteen sailors on the Hartford were injured when it hit the transport ship USS New Orleans in the Persian Gulf in March 2009.

* NOW THE FIRST THING I DID WAS TRY AND FIND THE OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY REPORT - THE OFFICIAL RESULT OF THE INVESTIGATION INTO THIS MATTER - BUT I COULDN'T. HERE'S SOMETHING FROM WAY BACK IN NOVEMBER, 20009 THOUGH:

http://www.wtic.com/Navy-Report--Lax-Behavior-Contributed-to-USS-Hartf/5704854

* BASICALLY ALL THE STORIES FOLLOW THE SAME THEME.

* AND THERE ARE SOME WHO STILL DENY THAT THE U.S. IS IN DECLINE.. (*SIGH*); April 11, 2010 at 11:03 AM
William R. Barker said...: http://article.nationalreview.com/430829/unconstitutional-mandate/kenneth-t-cuccinelli-ii

There are very good reasons that the federal government has never, in the last 221 years, used the Commerce Clause of the Constitution as a vehicle for requiring citizens to purchase goods or services from other citizens.

The first is textual. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution provides that “the Congress shall have Power . . . To regulate Commerce with Foreign Nations, and among the several States.” Although there have been disputes about just how far this should reach into commerce that is entirely intrastate, until now, it has been recognized that this constitutional provision deals with regulation of commerce — that is, with the use of law to impose reason and order on the voluntary commercial actions of citizens, as well as on activities that substantially affect commerce. An individual mandate to purchase health insurance is not regulation in that sense.

Another good reason this has not been done before is that it turns the Commerce Clause into an alternative, off-books funding mechanism.

According to the “findings” section of the law itself, the mandate achieves economies of scale, but in reality, it achieves income redistribution.

The law caps the amount that insurance companies can charge based on age, and forbids them to exclude those with pre-existing conditions. As such, the young and healthy people the law forces to buy insurance are overcharged for the purpose of subsidizing the old and those with pre-existing conditions.

One of the drafters of the health-care legislation acknowledged that it uses the Commerce Clause to redistribute income. Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, admitted during the Senate reconciliation debate, “This is also an income shift. . . . This legislation will have the effect of addressing . . . mal-distribution of income in America.”

Congress could have achieved this in an aboveboard fashion by establishing a special insurance fund for persons with pre-existing conditions, to be funded with general tax revenues, but it lacked the political will to do so. The Sixteenth Amendment authorizes the progressive income tax. It, the taxing powers, and the spending power are the traditional sources of the federal government’s authority to create social-welfare programs such as Medicaid.

The use of a purchasing mandate instead crosses an important constitutional line.; April 11, 2010 at 12:53 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://article.nationalreview.com/430842/obamacares-disastrous-preview/rich-lowry

Pres. Barack Obama has an unsettling defense of his health-care reform - it’s merely a version of the plan implemented by Massachusetts.

This is superficially clever. It not only gives Obama’s plan a centrist patina, it shines a light on a significant obstacle to Romney’s likely repeat bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

Except for the fact that the Massachusetts reform is spiraling out of control.

If the states are the laboratories of democracy, Obamacare’s Menlo Park is about to blow up. Unsustainably high costs and high insurance premiums are leading inexorably toward price controls and rationing. Obama might as well boast that he’s adopted a version of the California fiscal plan, or the Michigan economic-recovery plan.

[Mitt] Romney believed - and still maintains to this day - that emergency-room visits by the uninsured shifted costs onto everyone else. Never mind that in post-reform Massachusetts there are just as many non-emergency visits to the emergency room as previously, even though only 3% of people are uninsured. Many of these patients simply have trouble finding a doctor, a shortage the Massachusetts reform only exacerbates.

Massachusetts has created a different cost-shift problem through its Obamacare-style guarantee that people can wait to get coverage until they’re sick or want medical procedures. The Boston Globe reports, “Thousands of consumers are gaming Massachusetts’ 2006 health insurance law by buying insurance when they need to cover pricey medical care, such as fertility treatments and knee surgery, and then swiftly dropping coverage, a practice that insurance executives say is driving up costs for other people and small businesses.”

Predictably, costs in Massachusetts - always high - have only gone higher; the state now spends about 30% more per capita on health care than the rest of the nation.

Predictably, the insurance regulations have only made insurance more expensive, as has been the case elsewhere; premiums in the individual market have been growing at a 30% annual rate.

Predictably, the new health-care program has cost more than expected; spending grew by about 40% from 2006 to 2009.

At first, Massachusetts plugged the holes with more taxes and fees. Now, just as Obama is hailing the state as his opening act, it is moving to the next inevitable phase: unapologetic price controls. ... The state’s arbitrary clamp-down on rates will force insurers to cut access to care, or go out of business. As subtle as a kneecapping, the state’s move is rationing by proxy. Insurers have taken to the courts, and most of them have stopped offering new coverage for individuals and small businesses pending a ruling on their request for an injunction.

* AND IF THEY DON'T GET IT I SUPPOSE BANKRUPTCIES WILL SOON FOLLOW - OR ELSE THE COMPANIES WILL SIMPLY MOVE OUT OF STATE.

And so the free lunch promised Massachusetts in 2006 devolves toward a fiscally beleaguered government setting prices and limiting care, exactly the downward spiral critics fear from Obamacare.; April 11, 2010 at 12:53 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://article.nationalreview.com/430938/tax-season/mark-steyn

[F]or an increasing number of Americans, tax season is like baseball season: It’s a spectator sport. According to the Tax Policy Center, for the year 2009, 47% of U.S. households will pay no federal income tax.

Obviously, many of them pay other kinds of taxes - state tax, property tax, cigarette tax. But at a time of massive increases in federal spending, half the country is effectively making no contribution to it, whether it’s national defense or vital stimulus funding to pump monkeys in North Carolina full of cocaine (true, seriously, but don’t ask me why).

Half a decade back, it was just under 40% who paid no federal income tax; now it’s just under 50%.

By 2012, America could be holding the first federal election in which a majority of the population will be able to vote themselves more government lollipops paid for by the ever shrinking minority of the population still dumb enough to be net contributors to the federal treasury. In less than a quarter-millennium, the American Revolution will have evolved from “No taxation without representation” to representation without taxation.

We have bigger government, bigger bureaucracy, bigger spending, bigger deficits, and bigger debt, and yet an ever smaller proportion of citizens paying for it.

The top 10% [of taxpayers] provide 75% [of government revenues].

Rep. Paul Ryan [R-WI] pointed out recently that, [in] 2004, 20% of U.S. households were getting about 75% of their income from the federal government.

* HMM... I WONDER WHAT THAT FIGURE WAS FOR 2009?

As a matter of practical politics, how receptive would they be to a pitch for lower taxes, which they don’t pay, or lower government spending, of which they are such fortunate beneficiaries? How receptive would another fifth of households, who receive about 40% of their income from federal programs, be to such a pitch?

(*SIGH*)

And what’s to stop this trend? Democracy decays easily into the tyranny of the majority, in which 51% of voters can empty the pockets of the other 49%. That’s why a country on the fast track to a $20 trillion national debt exempts half the population from making even a modest contribution to reducing it. And it’s also why the remorseless shriveling of the tax rolls is a cancer at the heart of republican citizenship.

We are now not merely disincentivizing economic energy but actively waging war on it. If 51% can vote themselves government lollipops from the other 49%, soon 60% will be shaking down the remaining 40%, and then 70% will be sticking it to the remaining 30%. How low can it go?

When you think about it, that 53% of American households props up not just this country but half the planet: They effectively pick up the defense tab for our wealthiest allies, so that Germany, Japan, and others can maintain minimal militaries and lavish the savings on cradle-to-grave entitlements. A relatively tiny group of people is writing the check for the entire global order. What proportion of them would need to figure out that the game’s no longer worth it to bring the whole system crashing down?; April 11, 2010 at 12:53 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=529897

The Angelides Commission finally asked Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac what drove them to overinvest in risky subprime loans.

Former officials with the mortgage giants testified that they loaded up on subprime loans and securities to meet "government-mandated housing goals" for low-income borrowers with typically weak credit.

"We were balancing against our HUD housing goals," former Freddie CEO Daniel Mudd told the panel. And as a result, the agency's underwriting "standards slipped."

Added former Fannie official Robert Levin: "HUD increased their goals," and the billions in subprime securities "contributed greatly to affordable housing objectives."

Former Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart said that the HUD credit quotas had "increased so rapidly" that it was almost "mathematically impossible" for Fannie and Freddie to comply with them. But they had no choice. "They would have incurred the wrath of Congress if they missed those goals," he noted, not to mention penalties by HUD.

Now taxpayers are on the hook for their collapse. Their bailout is expected to cost at least $400 billion - more than double the 1990s bailout of the entire savings and loan industry.

Who put them up to such risky investments? The Clinton administration.

Starting in 2000, HUD required Fannie and Freddie to position fully half their mortgage portfolios in high-risk, low-income loans - despite a spike in subprime foreclosures at the time.

The "affirmative-action" credit quotas, raised higher still by Bush's two Hispanic HUD secretaries, drove the mortgage giants into the subprime market - and eventually into financial insolvency.

* HMM... RATHER THAN SIMPLY INFER THAT THE ETHNIC BACKGROUND OF BUSH'S TWO HUD SECRETARIES HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH THEIR IRRESPONSIBLE DECISION MAKING, I'D LIKE TO SEE IBD MAKE THE CASE POINT BY POINT, CITING THE EVIDIENCE.

* THAT SAID, IF I HAD TO GUESS... (*SIGH*)... I'D GUESS THAT BOTH HISPANIC HUD SECRETARIES DID BELIEVE THEY WERE HELPING "THEIR PEOPLE' THROUGH THEIR POLICIES.

* BOTTOM LINE... CLINTON AND HIS APPOINTEES AND BUSH AND HIS APPOINTEES ALL SHARE THE BLAME FOR WHAT TRANSPIRED.

While Wall Street no doubt contributed to the feeding frenzy, Washington chummed the waters by giving Fannie and Freddie affordable-lending credits for subprime securities. The primary culprits in this crisis are in Washington, and so far they've gotten off scot-free. If former HUD secretaries aren't called to testify about the pressure they applied to Fannie and Freddie to make politically correct loans, and subjected to the same grilling as bankers, the hearings will prove a farce.; April 11, 2010 at 12:54 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8d8ec902-4434-11df-b327-00144feab49a.html

Pope Benedict, in a previous post as a high Vatican official, recommended caution in the defrocking of a California Roman Catholic priest who pleaded guilty to molesting children, according to a letter released on Friday by lawyers for the victims.

In a 1985 letter, typed in Latin and translated for The Associated Press, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told the bishop of Oakland he needed more time ”to consider the good of the Universal Church” as he reviewed a request to remove the priest.

The letter surfaced as the Vatican fights accusations that the pope mishandled cases of abuse when when he was a bishop in Germany and a Vatican official before his election in 2005.

Ratzinger wrote in the letter that arguments to remove the priest were of ”grave significance,” but also worried about what ”granting the dispensation can provoke with the community of Christ’s faithful, particularly regarding the young age of the petitioner.”

According to a letter from the Diocese of Oakland to Ratzinger in 1981, Kiesle had asked to leave the active ministry and the diocese asked Ratzinger to agree that he be ”relieved of all the obligations of the priesthood.”

Michael Brown, a spokesman for the diocese did not comment on the letters, but said, ”I think factually it (the record) shows the diocese did the right things in 1978, and in 1987 he was removed from the priesthood.”

Asked about reports about the documents, the Vatican’s deputy spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, told Reuters, ”Then-Cardinal Ratzinger did not cover up the case but wanted it studied with greater attention for the good of all persons involved.”; April 11, 2010 at 12:54 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303411604575168571508477964.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

A great sadness will descend over this border town today as mourners fill the local high school gym to pay their respects to Rob Krentz. Two weeks ago, the 58-year-old rancher was shot and killed by what appears to be a drug smuggler.

Last year the Border Patrol made an astonishing 241,673 arrests in the Tucson Sector, which covers 262 miles. Arrests in Douglas are up 25% this year - in part because tighter security elsewhere has funneled traffic through this remote region. Border agents say that 17% of the people they arrest in the sector have U.S. criminal records.

On the morning of March 27 Krentz was working on his 35,000-acre ranch when he radioed his bother Phil to say he was in trouble. Krentz's body was found in his Polaris Ranger. Trackers followed the trail of his apparent killer about 20 miles to the border where he crossed into Mexico. As of this writing, the suspect is still at large.

The Krentz ranch sits along the Chiricahua Corridor, a well known smuggling route with dirt trails pounded smooth by decades of foot traffic. For years, Rob's wife, Sue, has written pleading letters to politicians, media and others, detailing how the smuggling of drugs and people has become so bad that family members feared for their lives.

"It's worse than anybody knows," rancher Ed Ashurst told me. "There are outlaws roaming around with guns, and if you jack with them they'll kill you."

Louie and Susan Pope, who live outside the town of Portal some 46 miles from Mexico, lock their valuables in a safe before taking morning horseback rides. They've had three break-ins. According to Susan, the one-room school in Apache where she is a teacher and bus driver has been broken into so often there's nothing left worth stealing. "Americans shouldn't have to live like this," she told me. She is Rob Krentz's sister.; April 11, 2010 at 12:54 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html?th&emc=t

The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen [Anwar al-Awlaki]...

(*YAWN*)

* OF COURSE INSTEAD OF A YAWN THERE SHOULD BE OUTRAGE - INDEED, TALK OF IMPREACHMENT, CONVICTION, AND A SUBSEQUENT CRIMINAL TRIAL SHOULD NOT BE OUT OF BOUNDS, BUT IN AMERICAN 2010... (*SHRUG*)

It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing, officials said. A former senior legal official in the administration of George W. Bush said he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president.

But the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, told a House hearing in February that such a step was possible. “We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community,” he said. “If we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”

* AND THIS... er... AUTHORITY TO GIVE... umm... "PERMISSION" IS FOUND EXACTLY WHERE IN THE CONSTITUTION? (OR EVEN THE U.S. CODE...?)

* FOLKS. IF ORDING THE ASSASINATION OF AN AMERICAN CITIZEN ISN'T A VIOLATION OF THAT CITIZEN'S... er... CIVIL RIGHTS... THEN WHAT EXACTLY WOULD YOU CALL IT...???

The possibility that Mr. Awlaki might be added to the target list was reported by The Los Angeles Times in January, and Reuters reported on Tuesday that he was approved for capture or killing.; April 11, 2010 at 2:26 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/09/AR2010040904000.html?nav=hcmoduletmv

The 1935 Social Security Act established 65 as the age of eligibility for payouts.

[W]elfare state politics quickly becomes a bidding war, enriching the menu of benefits, so Congress in 1956 entitled women to collect benefits at 62 and in 1961 extended the entitlement to men.

Today, nearly half of Social Security recipients choose to begin getting benefits at 62. This is a grotesque perversion of a program that was never intended to subsidize retirees for a third to a half of their adult lives.

It also reflects the decadent dependence that the welfare state encourages: Because of the displacement of responsibility from the individual to government, 48% of workers over 55 have total savings and investments of less than $50,000.

Because most states' pension plans compute their present values - and minimize required current contributions - by assuming an unrealistic 8% annual return on investments, the cumulative funding gap of state pensions already may be $3 trillion and certainly is rising.

For example, Wednesday's New York Times contained this attention-seizing bulletin: "An independent analysis of California's three big pension funds has found a hidden shortfall of more than half a trillion dollars, several times the amount reported by the funds and more than six times the value of the state's outstanding bonds."

It is not news that California is America's home-grown Greece, but the condition of the three funds, which serve 2.6 million current and retired public employees, is going to exacerbate the state's decline by requiring significantly higher taxpayer contributions.

A recent debate on "Fox News Sunday" illustrated the differences between the few politicians who are, and the many who are not, willing to face facts. Marco Rubio, the former speaker of Florida's House of Representatives who is challenging Gov. Charles Crist for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination, made news by stating the obvious. Asked how the nation might address the projected $17.5 trillion in unfunded Social Security liabilities, Rubio said that we should consider two changes for people 10 or more years from retirement. One would raise the retirement age. The other would alter the calculation of benefits: Indexing them to inflation rather than wage increases would substantially reduce the system's unfunded liabilities.

Neither idea startles any serious person. But Crist, with the reflex of the unreflective, rejected both and said that he would fix Social Security by eliminating "waste" and "fraud"

(*ROLLING MY EYES*) (*GRITTING MY TEETH*) (*LITERALLY GROWLING*)

By the time the baby boomers have retired in 2030, the median age of the American population will be close to that of today's population of Florida, the retirees' haven that is Heaven's antechamber. The 38-year-old Rubio's responsible answer to a serious question gives the nation a glimpse of a rarity - a brave approach to the welfare state's inevitable politics of gerontocracy.; April 11, 2010 at 2:26 PM
Rodak said...: Al-Awlaki is a Yemeni who is an "American citize" only by virtue of having been born here--a form of citizenship which, I believe, the owner of this blog favors eliminating as a constitutional perk in order to slow the growth of the Hispanic community. I find it ironic that the neocon contingent is suddenly so worries about this moron's constitutional rights being violated simply because it's being called for by Obama.
Obama is wrong. But, that said, where is the intellectual integrity of his critics on this issue?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki; April 11, 2010 at 2:43 PM
William R. Barker said...: Rob,

Your extreme partisan bent drives you to come up with the most... er... interesting observations.

(*SMILE*)

Yes. Al-Awlaki is a citizen. He was born here.

Unless I missed it that's all the detail the Times article gave; they didn't mention whether his parents were legal visitors/residents/citizens at the time of al-Awlaki's birth.

In any event, under current U.S. law the status of his parents is/was irrelevant. Al-Awlaki is indeed a citizen whether Bill Barker (or Barak Obama) believes he "should" be or not.

(Yes... you are correct... I have long called for Congress to legally "clarify" the Constitution's intent that anyone born within the United States NOT "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" (within the meaning of the 14th Amendment) should not be acknowledged as a citizen by birth.)

While I'm gratified that you admit "Obama is wrong," please clarify...

In your opinion does a sitting president have the legal (constitutional) authority to order the assassination of a U.S. citizen?

(Hell... do you believe a U.S. president has the authority to order the assassination of ANYONE? Just curious...)

If you believe a president has the authority to order the assassination of a U.S. citizen then how do you deny (or do you not deny???) the "right" of a sitting president to order "lesser" deeds such as torture or even "simple" imprisonment?

If you DON'T believe a president has the authority to order the assassination of a U.S. citizen, then, (assuming the Times' and other media reporting is accurate) how do you step back from identifying President Obama as a criminal subject to impeachment, conviction, and following that criminal charges, trial, and conviction (assuming he did indeed issue the order)?

I've gotta head out soon, Rob, but I'll check back later to see how you tie yourself in knots trying to defend the (from the perspective of a true civil libertarian) indefensible.

Good luck!

BILL; April 11, 2010 at 3:25 PM
William R. Barker said...: TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/09/news/economy/healthcare_insurance_affordable.fortune/index.htm

A week ago, a good friend - let's call him Anthony - related a remarkable story about shopping for health insurance in two states, New York and Arizona.

For Anthony and millions of other consumers, New York represents the ultimate nightmare for finding affordable coverage, pairing outrageously high prices with a tiny roster of offerings.

* AS A NEW YORKER I CAN ATTEST TO THIS.

By contrast, Anthony found fabulous bargains and a rich variety of policies in Arizona's desert sun.

So it would be wonderful for folks like Anthony if the historic health-care reform law scuttled the rules that created the disaster in New York, and made America's insurance markets a lot more like Arizona's.

But amazingly, the bill imposes a New York-style regime on the rest of the nation, then makes a gigantic bet that the results won't mimic those of the Empire State.

* BACK TO ME... er... I MEAN "ANTHONY..."

Anthony wanted an inexpensive, high-deductible policy, but he couldn't find a suitable one in the New York individual market.

So Anthony went shopping where he works - in Arizona. There, he found a far wider menu of offerings, including the inexpensive, high-deductible policies that best fit his needs. To obtain the lowest rates, Anthony needed a battery of tests to prove to the insurer that his health was excellent.

From his annual checkup, Anthony learned his cholesterol was high. (So he went on a crash campaign to lower it, working out on the elliptical machine at his health club, swapping cheese omelets for oatmeal and raisins at breakfast, and devouring Fage Greek yogurt, a favorite discovery on his adventure in healthy eating. "The system in Arizona gave me a major financial incentive to improve my health," says Anthony.)

Last year, thanks to his youth, good health history and newly tamed cholesterol, Anthony qualified for a $5,500 deductible plan with a premium of just $100 a month. (The policy in Arizona closest to the New York point-of-service coverage costs around $300, versus $1500.)

What accounts for the huge price differences between Arizona and New York?

* To be continued...; April 11, 2010 at 3:26 PM
William R. Barker said...: * CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)

Two regulations enormously inflate prices in New York, especially for young, healthy folks such as Anthony - just the kind of people who must buy in for the insurance pools to succeed. The first regulation is Guaranteed Issue.

In New York, and several other states including Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, carriers must accept all customers regardless of their medical condition. It would be illegal in New York to offer the deal Anthony got in Arizona - a lower rate in exchange for lowering your cholesterol.

The second premium-swelling rule is Community Rating. In New York, all customers pay the same rate regardless of either their age or medical status. As a result, someone Anthony's age or younger pays an identical premium for the same policy as a 64-year-old customer, although they actually cost a fraction as much in medical claims. So older patients effectively get a big subsidy, and the young pay far more then their actual cost.

It gets worse. Because of guaranteed issue, patients know they can enroll in a plan anytime they get cancer or diabetes, so they have little incentive to sign up when they're healthy. Community rating assures that they can re-enroll at premiums far lower than the actual costs of the tests and procedures they require. Hence, the pools of the insured in states like New York and Vermont consist of an extremely high proportion of sick people. As the old and ill flood the plans, the rates rise even further, pushing out more and more of the young and healthy in a cycle of rapidly rising premiums and sicker and sicker customers.

"There is no question that the combination of community rating and guaranteed issue drives up premiums in states that now have those regulations," says Thomas Snook of actuarial consulting firm Milliman Inc.

Starting in 2014, Obamacare will impose both Guaranteed Issue and Community Rating on the entire nation, including Arizona and the other states that don't have those regulations now. The Community Rating law will not be as strict at the one in New York: Insurers will be able to charge three times as much to a 64 year old, versus someone 18 or 20. (But that will still raise rates for the young, since they normally cost just one-sixth of patients in their 60s.)

* QUESTION: WILL NEW YORK (AND OTHER STATES) STILL HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO PROVIDE "STRICTER" REGULATIONS THAN THE OBAMACARE REGULATION...??? I DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER. I'M GUESSING "YES" THOUGH. (JUST AS SOME STATES ARE MORE "GENEROUS" WITH MEDICAID THAN OTHERS...); April 11, 2010 at 3:26 PM
Rodak said...: Between the comment above, and the comments I made here, I think I have the issue covered.

The bottom line is that this guy--who is a very bad actor, btw--is an "enemy combatant." He has been actively involved in attacks on the U.S. It is not clear to me that anyone placed in that category maintains any constitutional rights.
I think that Obama is morally wrong to issue a fatwa against any individual. That said, since as C-i-C, he can order the destruction of whole cities, should he so choose, targeted assassinations are pretty small beer by comparison. The legal distinctions in this case don't move me.; April 11, 2010 at 3:54 PM
Rodak said...: In any event, under current U.S. law the status of his parents is/was irrelevant. Al-Awlaki is indeed a citizen whether Bill Barker (or Barak Obama) believes he "should" be or not.

I have to ask why you aren't saying: 1) Obama is correct to want this guy dead, as he is among the most dangerous enemies we have in the world; and 2) this case is a prime example of why being born in the U.S. shouldn't provide a person with automatic citizenship.
If an army officer can order the summary execution of an American citizen for cowardice or desertion on the battlefield, why can't the commander-in-chief order the summary execution of an American citizen who has become an "enemy combatant" and for whom, as a committed terrorist, the whole world is a "battlefield?"
Again, I oppose Obama on this issue on moral grounds. That said, however, I think that the legal issues here are rife with contradiction, and are being applied in an ideologically hypocritical and starkly partisan manner.
Is my position now clear?; April 11, 2010 at 4:08 PM
Rodak said...: I don't recall you, for instance, being so vociferous in your defense of this fellow's constitutional rights:

[Yasser] Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan by the Afghan Northern Alliance in 2001 and then turned over to U.S. military authorities during the U.S. invasion. The U.S. government alleged that Hamdi was there fighting for the Taliban, while Hamdi, through his father, has claimed that he was merely there as a relief worker and was mistakenly captured.

Hamdi was initially held at Guantanamo Bay, but then transferred to a naval brig in Norfolk, Virginia when it was discovered that he held U.S. (as well as Saudi) citizenship, and then finally to a brig in Charleston, South Carolina. The Bush administration claimed that because Hamdi was caught in arms against the U.S., he could be properly detained as an enemy combatant[1], without any oversight of presidential decision making, or without access to an attorney or the court system. The administration argued that this power was constitutional and necessary to effectively fight the War on Terror, declared by the Congress of the United States in the Authorization for Use of Military Force Act passed after the September 11th terrorist attacks. The government used its detention authority to ensure that terrorists were no longer a threat while active combat operations continued and to ensure suspects could be fully interrogated.; April 11, 2010 at 4:32 PM
William R. Barker said...: Rob wrote:

"Between the comment above, and the comments I made here, I think I have the issue covered."

You...
Think...
Wrong...

(*GRIN*)

While I appreciate the link, what your position amounts to is a tacit agreement that a sitting president has authority to order the assassination of U.S. citizens.

Basically, Rob, cutting through your (usual) faux sophistication, no, just throwing out the word "wrong" doesn't change the fact that your position is clearly that a president has a constitutional right to order the assassination of a U.S. citizen.

Now this position is just so blatantly unsupportable - on it's face - that no more need be said on the matter.

As to the matter of your extreme partisanship however... (*GRIN*)... with your recent remarks you've outdone yourself, Rob!

Yes... even ordering the murder of U.S. citizens is no crime if ordered by your Lord Obama.

Thanks for being honest, Rob.

BILL; April 12, 2010 at 8:44 AM
Rodak said...: Have you totally lost your mind? Your response to what I wrote over the weekend has little or nothing to do with what I actually said.; April 12, 2010 at 8:51 AM
William R. Barker said...: Rob wrote:

"I have to ask why you aren't saying: 1) Obama is correct to want this guy dead..."

Obama is right to WANT this guy dead.

(*SMILE*)

Rob wrote:

I have to ask why you aren't saying: 2) This case is a prime example of why being born in the U.S. shouldn't provide a person with automatic citizenship.

We've covered this before, Rob. If al-Awlaki's parents were citizens than al-Awlaki SHOULD be a citizen.

If al-Awlaki's parent's weren't citizens than in my view al-Awlaki shouldn't have been automatically deemed a citizen by birth.

(That said... also as previously noted... neither "what I would like" nor "what President Obama would like" is the current reality. The current reality is that al-Awlaki is a citizen.)

Rob wrote...

"If an army officer can order the summary execution of an American citizen for cowardice or desertion on the battlefield, why can't the commander-in-chief order the summary execution of an American citizen who has become an "enemy combatant" and for whom, as a committed terrorist, the whole world is a "battlefield?""

Because the Constitution clearly forbids it.

(*SHRUG*) (*AMUSED SMILE*)

As to your scenario regarding an army officer ordering the summary execution of a soldier during a combat operation for cowardice, desertion, refusal to follow orders... the analogy there would be "exigent circumstances" in terms of "trespass" without a search warrant.

No, Rob, the "analogy" you seek would be something along the lines of the Mayor of Los Angelas (or if you'd rather the Governor of California) ordering the police to simply assassinate the leaders of the Crips and Bloods rather than go through all those... er... tedious... umm... legal channels.

Rob finished up:

"Is my position now clear?"

Crystal!

You believe a President has constitutional authority to order the assassination of U.S. citizens.

Got it... (*CHUCKLE*) (*THUMBS UP*)

(Now why is it I suspect that if it were President Bush your position would be slightly... umm... er... "adjusted.")

(*LAUGHING OUT LOUD*)

BILL; April 12, 2010 at 9:05 AM
William R. Barker said...: Rob wrote:

"I don't recall you, for instance, being so vociferous in your defense of this fellow's constitutional rights..."

(*CHUCKLE*)

Rob. Since it's clear your recall of even your own previous words and position can't be trusted...

(*GRIN*)

...I don't take you failure to recall my positions correctly personally.

(*WINK*)

My position has ALWAYS been that no President has the constitutional authority to simply "declare" an American citizen an "enemy combatant" and thus strip that citizen of his or her constitutional rights.

(*SHRUG*)

My position is and always has been that the Constitution itself provides the pathway for prosecutions of Treason.

(*SHRUG*)

On the broader issue, I've always CLEARLY separated "citizens" from "non-citizens" as a clear dividing line.

(Unfortunately the Courts have blurred that line... but that's apart from your question of where I stand personally.)

BILL; April 12, 2010 at 9:41 AM
Rodak said...: My position has ALWAYS been that no President has the constitutional authority to simply "declare" an American citizen an "enemy combatant" and thus strip that citizen of his or her constitutional rights.

Fine. Prove it. What did you write about the case to which I alluded, and upon which the contitutionality of declaring U.S. citizens to be Enemy Combatants is based? Hit the archives: quote yourself.; April 12, 2010 at 9:51 AM
William R. Barker said...: Rob writes...

"Fine. Prove it."

(*SNORT*)

No... it's not up to me to "prove" what I write is the truth. Anyone who doubts me is free to do so, but if he expects to be taken seriously I recommend he provide some evidence.

(*SHRUG*)

Rob... seriously... are you ACTUALLY "challenging" me because you doubt me or are you simply attempting to cause me to waste my time...???

Is your memory so weak; I know my views were raised at Ragged Thots "back in the day."

(*WINK*) (*SMILE*)

No, Rob, I feel no need to "hit the archives." I know what I believe and I know the record exists.

Here's what I will do, Rob:

Any lurkers... Moose... Oli... Carl... any who can attest to my intellectual consistency please feel free to throw in your two cents worth.

BILL; April 12, 2010 at 12:26 PM
Rodak said...: No... it's not up to me to "prove" what I write is the truth. Anyone who doubts me is free to do so, but if he expects to be taken seriously I recommend he provide some evidence.

Oh, please--you've demanded exactly this of others on numerous occasions, myself included. Besides that fact, nobody is asking you to prove that what you've written is true; you're being ask to prove that you've written anything on a particular question at all.
My contention is that you are suddenly so worried about the constitutional rights of an avowed terrorist and enemy of the U.S. simply because Obama is violating those rights. If he is. That's not clear.
Finally, you have responded to none of the points I've made (e.g. battlefield execution of deserters, which may mitigate Obama's actions here, legally).
In short, as usual--you've got no game when push comes to shove. It's all bluster and cut and paste jobs with you.
Please, Moose--anybody--defend the man!; April 12, 2010 at 12:32 PM
William R. Barker said...: Rob wrote...

"Oh, please--you've demanded exactly this of others on numerous occasions, myself included."

Au oontraire, mom ami...

(*SMILE*)

When I "charge" you with something I back it up; using your own quotes "against" you is one of my favorite debating techniques.

(*WINK*)

Often... (thanks to your extraordinarily weak memory)... I need go back only to previous posts upon the same thread the "debate" is taking place on!

(You tend to easily contradict yourself, Rob...) (*SHRUG*)

Anyway, Rob... (*SHRUG*)... perhaps your memory simple is really, really, really bad.

If you insist upon sticking to your claim that you've never laid eyes upon my position that a president has no extralegal constitutional authority to declare American citizens "enemy combatants" (bypassing the constitution... ignoring the "treason" provisions of the constitution... summarily stripping American citizens of their most basic civil right...) then so be it.

(*SHRUG*)

As I wrote before, perhaps one of my "lurkers" will attest to my honesty.

(*SMILE*)

If not... think what you will.

(*WINK*)

BILL; April 12, 2010 at 2:36 PM
Rodak said...: Yeah, right.
As a for instance, you demanded--back at the height of "Ragged Thots" days, that I prove that I had opposed the invasion of Iraq prior to the launching of that war. I provided you with email proving just that, sent to the blog of Eve Tushnet and predating predating "Shock and Awe." Then you accused me of faking them.
There's no bottom to the depths to which you will sink in your desperate efforts to come off as something more than a buffoon.
As usual, you are projecting: accusing me of everything that you do yourself. You never change.

(You tend to easily contradict yourself, Rob...) (*SHRUG*)

So, show me contradicting myself. Show us anything other than your unsupported accusations of this and then that and then the other.; April 12, 2010 at 2:53 PM
William R. Barker said...: "Yeah, right..."

Backatchya!

(*WINK*)

I'm movin' on, Rob... but as always, thanks for the back and forth.

(*SMILE*)

BILL; April 12, 2010 at 7:51 PM
Rodak said...: You really have no choice, do ya?; April 12, 2010 at 7:53 PM

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Sunday, April 11, 2010

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