Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, May 17, 2011


Why, yes... yes, you do!
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7 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://dailycaller.com/2011/05/17/nearly-20-percent-of-new-obamacare-waivers-are-gourmet-restaurants-nightclubs-fancy-hotels-in-nancy-pelosi%E2%80%99s-district/

* NOTE: I'LL SEE WHAT OTHER LINKS I CAN FIND AND ATTACH THEM!

* ANYWAY... HERE'S THE TITLE:

Nearly 20% of new Obamacare waivers are gourmet restaurants, nightclubs, fancy hotels in Nancy Pelosi’s district

(*SNORT*) (*CHUCKLE*)

Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.

That’s in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services approved.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

Pelosi’s district’s waivers are the first major examples of luxurious, gourmet restaurants and hotels getting a year-long pass from Obamacare.

(*SIGH*)

* FOLKS... ASIDE FROM THE "GOTCHYA" ELEMENT... THIS NEWS REALLY AIN'T FUNNY. IT'S DISGUSTING. IT'S LIKE WE'VE BECOME SOME THIRD WORLD NATION.

* HERE WE GO, FOLKS... THE ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION! http://blogs.ajc.com/jamie-dupree-washington-insider/2011/05/15/san-francisco-health-waivers/?cxntfid=blogs_jamie_dupree_washington_insider

* FUNNY... FOX NEWS IS ALSO COVERING THIS LATEST DEM SCANDAL, AS ARE THE BLOGS, BUT FROM AN ADMITTEDLY BRIEF GOOGLING... NOTHING YET OUT OF THE NYT, WP, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, CNN...

(*SHRUG*)

May 17, 2011 at 10:45 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/may/16/nevada-secures-partial-waiver-federal-health-care-/

Nevada got a partial waiver from the health care law...

* NEVADA. AS IN... THE ENTIRE STATE OF NEVADA... (*HEADACHE*)

[Obama's] Health and Human Services Department announced late Friday that Nevada had secured a statewide waiver from certain implementation requirements of the Obama administration’s health care law, because forcing them through, the department found, “may lead to the destabilization of the individual market.”

(*SNORT*) FOLKS... YA CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP!

The announcement makes Nevada one of only three states to have compliance requirements under the health care bill waived.

New Hampshire received a similar, but more extensive waiver...

(*SNICKER*) HMM... I'M SURE IT'S JUST A COINCIDENCE THAT NEW HAMPSHIRE HOSTS THE NATION'S FIRST PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY... (*SNORT*)

Maine secured the first state waiver.

* NOT LIKE OBAMA WOULD EVER TRY AND BRIBE RINO SENATORS SNOWE AND COLLINS... (*SNICKER*) (*ROLLING MY EYES*)

For Republicans, the waiver is proof of what they’ve been arguing all along - that Obama’s health care law was never going to work...

“It is becoming increasingly clear how flawed this law really is,” Nevada Sen. Dean Heller said in a statement Monday. “Not only did it cut a half trillion dollars from Medicare, impacting thousands of Nevada’s seniors, now the law would have driven health insurers out of our state if a reprieve had not been granted. This is why ObamaCare will not work for Nevada.”

(*SHRUG*)

May 17, 2011 at 3:51 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/05/029042.php

Economists Timothy Conley and Bill Dupor have studied the effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the purported "stimulus bill") with great rigor.

Earlier this week, they reported their findings in a paper titled "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Public Sector Jobs Saved, Private Sector Jobs Forestalled." The paper is dense and rather lengthy, and requires considerable study. Here, however, is the bottom line:

* QUOTE:

"Our benchmark results suggest that the ARRA created/saved approximately 450,000,000 state and local government jobs....

(*PAUSE*) (*SILENCE*) WAIT FOR IT... WAIT FOR IT...

...and destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector jobs."

(*SIGH*)

"State and local government jobs were saved because ARRA funds were largely used to offset state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than boost private sector employment. The majority of destroyed/forestalled jobs were in growth industries including health, education, professional and business services."

(*ANOTHER SIGH*)

So the American people borrowed and spent close to a trillion dollars to destroy a net of more than one-half million jobs.

(*SHRUG*) YEP. IF CONLEY'S AND DUPOR'S ANALYSIS IS CORRECT... THAT'S THE BOTTOM LINE.

* ANYWAY, FOLKS... HERE'S THE LINK TO THE FULL REPORT: http://web.econ.ohio-state.edu/dupor/arra10_may11.pdf

May 17, 2011 at 5:29 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-speeds-up-direct-talks-with-taliban/2011/05/16/AFh1AE5G_story.html

The administration has accelerated direct talks with the Taliban...

* TALKS...??? WHAT'S THERE TO TALK ABOUT...??? (OH... YEAH... I MEAN BESIDES TURNING OVER PARTS OF AFGHANISTAN TO THE TERR... er... TALIBAN. (*SNORT*)

The Taliban, one U.S. official said, is “going to have to talk to both the Afghans and the Americans” if the process is to proceed to the point that it would significantly affect the level of violence and provide what the Taliban considers an acceptable share of political power in Afghanistan.

* FOLKS... I WASN'T KIDDING UP ABOVE! AT LAST COUNT, WE'VE HAD 1,580 OF OUR MEN AND WOMEN IN UNIFORMED KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN; AND I HAVE NO DOUBT THAT THE TALIBAN WILL END UP WITH OFFICIAL POWER IN AFGHANISTAN LONG BEFORE THIS DECADE IS OUT.

* FOLKS... EVERY AMERICAN AND "COALITION" LIFE LOST IN AFGHANISTAN... EVERY WOUND... THEY'RE ALL FOR NAUGHT.

May 17, 2011 at 5:41 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/55125.html

Newt Gingrich, a fiscal conservative? Not when it comes to Tiffany’s.

In 2005 and 2006, the former House speaker turned presidential candidate carried as much as $500,000 in debt to the premier jewelry company...

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*) YOU HAVE GOT TO BE SHITTING ME...?!?!

[The former Speaker's] wife, Callista Gingrich, was employed by the House Agriculture Committee until 2007... She listed a “revolving charge account” at Tiffany and Company in the liability section of her personal financial disclosure form for two consecutive years and indicated that it was her spouse’s debt. The liability was reported in the range of $250,001 to $500,000.

(*SNORT*)

* I TRULY DO WONDER IF NEWT IS MENTALLY ILL... (I'M ABSOLUTELY SERIOUS!)

When asked by Politico whether Gingrich has settled this debt, and why he owed between a quarter-million and a half-million dollars to a jeweler, Rick Tyler, Gingrich’s spokesman, declined to comment.

May 17, 2011 at 7:21 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/05/17/affirmative-action-illegal-immigrants/?test=latestnews

This week, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) signed a bill to require the state's public universities to give undocumented aliens...in-state tuition privileges.

The bill, known as the Dream Act, is already the law in ten other states, including California, New York, Texas and Illinois.

* INSTEAD OF GIVING ILLEGAL ALIENS IN-STATE TUITION, THESE STATES SHOULD BE TURNING IN THEIR NAMES TO FEDERAL AUTHORITIES FOR DEPORTATION.

(Maryland's Dream Act differs from the other states' acts by only granting in-state tuition if the parents of the undocumented student have paid state taxes for at least three years.)

(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*) WOW... A WHOLE THREE YEARS... (*SMIRK*)

[T]he bill will give illegal aliens better treatment than Americans and legal immigrants thanks to existing diversity policies at universities.

(*NODDING IN SADNESS*)

Steven Camarota, the research director for the think tank Center for Immigration Studies [asks,] "Can you have mass immigration and affirmative action? Does that lead to a just social policy?”

* BTW, THE ANSWER IS A RESOUNDING "NO."

Affirmative action benefits can be substantial. A study of selective universities by Princeton sociologists Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford found that listing one’s race as “Hispanic” instead of ‘White” increased the likelihood of being admitted by the same amount as scoring an extra 130 points on the SAT.

* BUT, WAIT... IT GETS WORSE!

Compared to Asians, the study found, Hispanics receive a 240-point advantage.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

University of Maryland (College Park) computer science Prof. James Purtilo told FoxNews.com that, during his time as an associate dean, he frequently saw admission officers favor students because of their “undocumented” status. "They favor students with special circumstances. 'Undocumented alien' would be one of these special circumstances... They help fill out the diversity picture for the admissions office."

(*PURSED LIPS*)

Purtilo said that one reason he is speaking out about his university’s practices is that he feels they are unfair to U.S. citizens. “Too bad for the very well prepared student, a U.S. citizen and taxpayer in this state, whose parents might once have thought their kids should have a shot at the flagship campus.”

(*NOD*)

May 17, 2011 at 7:23 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://reason.com/blog/2011/05/16/medicares-chief-actuary-dont-t

Last week, Medicare’s Trustees released their annual report on the health entitlement’s finances. The news wasn’t good: Unfunded liabilities have grown since last year, and the program’s hospital trust fund, estimated last year to expire in 2029, is now expected to expire in 2024.

* AND WE'VE COVERED THIS AD NAUSEUM, FOLKS; THIS SUPPOSED "TRUST FUND" IS NOTHING MORE THAN BUDGETING SLIGHT OF HAND - GIMMICK-BASED ACCOUTING - DOUBLE COUNTING OF DEBTS MISLABELED AS ASSETS.

* BEYOND ALL THIS, HOWEVER... IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN I HAD THOUGH! READ ON!

[If] anything the report was far too optimistic in its assessment.

In a note buried at the end of the report, Richard Foster, Medicare’s chief actuary, warns readers that the long-range estimates shouldn’t be believed:

By the end of the long-range projection period, Medicare prices for hospital, skilled nursing facility, home health, hospice, ambulatory surgical center, diagnostic laboratory, and many other services would be less than half of their level under the prior law.

Medicare prices would be considerably below the current relative level of Medicaid prices, which have already led to access problems for Medicaid enrollees, and far below the levels paid by private health insurance.

Well before that point, Congress would have to intervene to prevent the withdrawal of providers from the Medicare market and the severe problems with beneficiary access to care that would result....

(*PAUSE*)

For these reasons, the financial projections shown in this report for Medicare do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program operations in either the short range (as a result of the unsustainable reductions in physician payment rates) or the long range (because of the strong likelihood that the statutory reductions in price updates for most categories of Medicare provider services will not be viable).

* FOLKS... YOU DO UNDERSTAND... THIS IS THE OFFICIAL REPORT OF MEDICARE'S CHIEF ACTUARY.

May 17, 2011 at 8:00 PM

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