Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, February 19, 2014
So... "regulation"... "government regulation"... how's it work in practice?
Not all that well from what I can see. What say the rest of you?
Let's just take one facet of government regulation I'm intimately familiar with - airline/airport regulation.
I just checked on a Jet Blue flight coming into Stewart at 2:15. (Actually, Jet Blue shows it coming in at 2:17 p.m. - two minutes later than scheduled.) It's a direct flight from Ft. Lauderdale which... according to Jet Blue's website... actually "departed" at 11:13 a.m. - two minutes early.
Here's the thing, though...
It's all lies...
The Jet Blue plane is at this very moment sitting on the tarmac. In Florida. Ft. Lauderdale to be precise.
Because I do this for a living I know that by "departed" Jet Blue meant "departed the gate" and that by "2:17 p.m." they mean... er... maybe... perhaps... unless it's later... or unless the flight is cancelled.
And here's the thing, folks... all this bullshit... this gamesmanship... it's all Grade A government approved! Departing "the gate" yet sitting on the runway while the Jet Blue corporate website does all within it's power to create the illusion that the flight is speeding on it's way to New York is apparently the government's idea of "regulation in the public interest."
I could go on and on... but you folks get it.
Heck... yesterday I mentioned the Ethanol mandates! I'm confident that each and every one of my regulars - including "He Whose Name Dare Not Be Mentioned" - understands what a counter-productive and actually harmful crony capitalist scam the Ethanol mandates are... but we all keep paying, don't we...???
Anyway... icy rain up here in Orange County is the problem with my flight I'm guessing. I've already hit the gym so they can delay the flight all they want. Frankly, I'm more worried about driving conditions than flying conditions. I was just out there... it's a bit slippery.
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* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303491404579391740095244018
On Jan. 1, the key provisions of the Affordable Care Act took effect.
[Certain] Americans gained access to new health plans subsidized by federal dollars.
Insurers no longer can turn away people with existing conditions.
Millions are now eligible for new Medicaid benefits.
* FROM A BROKE-ASS GOVERNMENT...
(*SHRUG*)
But the federal law also upended existing health-insurance arrangements for millions of people. Companies worry about the expense of providing new policies, some hospitals aren't seeing the influx of new patients they expected to balance new costs and entrepreneurs say they may hire more part-time workers to avoid offering more coverage.
The law's true impact will play out over years. It will depend in part on whether backers overcome serious early setbacks, including crippling glitches in the new online insurance marketplaces and many states' rejection of the Medicaid expansion. But another obstacle the law faces is push-back from some consumers and industry over the higher costs, complex rules and mandatory requirements it imposes.
* WEREN'T WE PROMISED LOWER COSTS...???
So far, 3.3 million have signed up for plans through the new government marketplaces, federal officials said Feb. 12. About 6.3 million were determined eligible for Medicaid through the exchanges over the final three months of 2013, including people who might have been able to enroll without the law.
* FURTHER EXPANSION OF THE WELFARE STATE...
The law's potential for change can be seen in the lives of people like Jaime Hood, a 37-year-old in Belton, Mo. She suffers from hemophilia and had been rejected for coverage until this year. Now, she will have access to drugs and other treatments she sometimes skipped.
* BUT HERE'S THE PROBLEM: WHY CREATE THIS WHOLE SMOKE AND MIRRORS OBAMACARE SYSTEM RATHER THAN SIMPLY DIRECTLY SUBSIDIZE HEALTHCARE (HEALTHCARE! NOTE... CARE... NOT "INSURANCE") FOR PEOPLE IN SITUATIONS SUCH AS THIS?! WHY...?!?! THE ONLY ANSWER I CAN THINK OF IS TO INCREASE GOVERNMENTAL POWER AND GROW GOVERNMENT AND FURTHER SOCIALIZE SOCIETY.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Alfred Chavis, of Philadelphia, works part-time at McDonalds and takes classes at a community college. He says he needs health care to be a productive member of society, but he's been frustrated by the slow process of getting enrolled.
* PERHAPS HE SHOULD BE WORKING FULL-TIME AT MCDONALDS WHILE TAKING CLASSES? IN ANY CASE, WHY MUST I BE RESPONSIBLE FOR CHAVIS' HEALTH CARE...?
John Lavey, a 60-year-old property-and-casualty insurance broker, says he's feeling forced to replace his previous family insurance coverage for a costlier Affordable Care Act policy that doesn't meet his needs. "The more I'm learning about it, the more unhappy I am about it," he says.
Erin Patinkin and Agatha Kulaga are the owners of Ovenly, a retail and wholesale bakery with 16 full-time employees in Brooklyn, N.Y. While they believe the Affordable Care Act is a step in the right direction, they're concerned about the cost to their business and whether they'll be able to afford it.
* IT'S NOT A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION. JUST THE OPPOSITE!
* OH... AND BTW...
Patinkin and Agatha say they may employ more part-timers as they expand, since they don't offer them insurance.
* GOTTA LUV "PRINCIPLED" LIBS...
(*SMIRK*)
Douglas Olson, is an internist and chief medical officer at the Norwalk Community Health Center in Norwalk, Conn., which serves as a safety net for many underprivileged and uninsured people in the community. He says the Affordable Care Act will probably mean more of his patients will be insured and more services will be covered.
* BY A GOVERNMENT THAT CAN'T MEET ITS OPERATING EXPENSES...
But the other side of the law is felt by customers such as John Lavey, 60, of Southern California's Orange County. His insurer sent him a letter in October saying his family's plan didn't comply with the law, and the closest thing he could get would cost nearly twice as much, or about $1,117 a month. "It doesn't seem fair to our situation," he said. To him, the law feels like "the redistribution of wealth theory."
* THAT'S BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT IT IS.
Under the health law, the hospital industry said it would accept big cutbacks in government payments in return for the revenue that would come from tens of millions of patients who would gain insurance. That isn't happening at Truman Medical Centers, a safety-net hospital system in Kansas City, Mo. Chief Executive John W. Bluford III is slashing expenses — he isn't seeing the new revenue, mainly because Missouri opted out of the health-law's Medicaid expansion.
* THAT LAST BIT IS SIMPLY CONJECTURE.
The law's fate will depend heavily on people like Tom Daly, a 29-year-old bike-shop owner in Portland, Ore., who is uninsured. Though he sees value in getting coverage, he is likely to pass on it, in part due to the cost. If young, healthy people like him don't buy policies, with their premiums helping to pay the claims of sicker consumers, the new government marketplaces won't work.
Erin Patinkin and Agatha Kulaga, owners of a bakery in Brooklyn, N.Y., face decisions about employee coverage, which likely will cost more when they renew it this fall. They say they may employ more part-timers as they expand, since they don't offer them insurance. Employers' responses will determine whether the law helps spark a decline in workplace health benefits, as some have forecast.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/18/for-federal-employees-office-often-closed-25-of-fi/
Between snow days, official holidays and the government shutdown, federal employees have worked a normal business day less than 75% of the time since Oct. 1, marking a startlingly chaotic beginning to the fiscal year.
Offices have been closed in whole or in part for 27 of the 105 weekdays so far in the fiscal year, according to a Washington Times analysis of announcements from the federal Office of Personnel Management that found the government was closed for 21 days because of the shutdown, snow days or holidays. Delayed openings or unscheduled leave and telework policies were in effect for six more days.
Congress is the worst offender when it comes to time away from the main office. Neither the House nor the Senate has worked a full Monday-to-Friday workweek in 2014.
House members have been in session for 17 of the 35 weekdays so far this year, less than 50%. Senators have met in full session for 18 days, slightly better than 50%.
http://nypost.com/2014/02/19/latest-obamacare-fix-could-extend-bailouts-for-insurers/
Another week, another possible unilateral and unconstitutional revision of ObamaCare from the White House — this time in the way the bill was successfully designed to buy the support of the nation’s insurance companies.
Susan Ferrechio of The Washington Examiner reports that the administration may extend the subsidy program it offered to insurers beyond 2016, when the program was set to expire.
What? you say? Subsidies to evil rich insurance companies? Yessiree.
Under ObamaCare, insurers are at risk of losing money if they sign up too many sick and elderly people and not enough young and healthy people.
The new law “commits taxpayers to cover insurance-company losses beyond a certain level and places no limit on the taxpayers’ exposure to the risk of such losses,” Levin says. “Taxpayers could easily end up turning over billions to cover insurer losses.”
* RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU KNEW THIS!
* RAISE YOUR OTHER HAND IF YOU TRULY BELIEVE MOST AMERICANS KNEW THIS...
(*SHRUG*)
If the administration is planning to extend the risk corridors past 2016, that is yet another admission of the disastrous nature of the ObamaCare rollout. Despite happy talk a few weeks ago about how signups had accelerated in January and more young people were on board, the administration either doesn’t know or is lying about how many of the new enrollees are actually paying for their new health care, which is the point.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304914204579393493981280048?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLESecond
A new FBI report says that violent crime continues to fall nationwide, which might annoy liberals because gun purchases continue to rise.
In the first six months of 2013 murders fell by nearly 7% compared with the same period in 2012.
Aggravated assaults fell by 6.6%, and robberies are down 1.8%. Burglaries, larceny and auto thefts also decreased.
"All of the offenses in the violent crime category—murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, aggravated assault, and robbery—showed decreases when data from the first six months of 2013 were compared with data from the first six months of 2012," according to the FBI. Overall, violent crime in the U.S. fell by 5.4%.
The Left likes to link violent crime to the proliferation of guns in the country, so it's worth noting that the crime reductions described in the FBI report correlate with a steady increase in firearm sales.
* WHAT WAS THAT...???
It's worth noting that the crime reductions described in the FBI report correlate with a steady increase in firearm sales.
* YEAH... THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT I READ...
"Gun records checks, fueled by a post-Newtown boom of gun sales, hit a new high in 2013, and industry analysts expect ammunition to be the big seller this year as consumers catch up to all of those firearms purchases," reported the Washington Times last month.
"More than 21 million applications were run through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System last year, marking nearly an 8% increase and the 11th straight year that the number has risen."
It's also worth noting that gun-ownership rates in the Midwest (39%) and South (50%) far exceed gun-ownership rates in the Northeast (22%) yet violent crime is down more in the Midwest and South than it is in the Northeast according to the FBI statistics.
* WHAT WAS THAT...???
It's also worth noting that gun-ownership rates in the Midwest (39%) and South (50%) far exceed gun-ownership rates in the Northeast (22%) yet violent crime is down more in the Midwest and South than it is in the Northeast according to the FBI statistics.
(*NOD*)
And rural areas, where gun-ownership rates also are higher than average, saw a larger reduction in violent crime that metropolitan areas, where gun-ownership rates are lower than average.
Not that gun-control zealots, who are so certain of a causal link between firearms and violent crime rates, care about such details.
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303945704579391611041331266?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
In a Feb. 16 speech in Indonesia, Secretary of State John Kerry assailed climate-change skeptics as members of the "Flat Earth Society" for doubting the reality of catastrophic climate change. He said, "We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists" and "extreme ideologues to compete with scientific facts."
But who are the Flat Earthers, and who is ignoring the scientific facts?
In ancient times, the notion of a flat Earth was the scientific consensus, and it was only a minority who dared question this belief. We are among today's scientists who are skeptical about the so-called consensus on climate change. Does that make us modern-day Flat Earthers, as Mr. Kerry suggests, or are we among those who defy the prevailing wisdom to declare that the world is round?
Most of us who are skeptical about the dangers of climate change actually embrace many of the facts that people like Bill Nye, the ubiquitous TV "science guy," say we ignore. The two fundamental facts are that carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased due to the burning of fossil fuels, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a greenhouse gas, trapping heat before it can escape into space.
What is not a known fact is by how much the Earth's atmosphere will warm in response to this added carbon dioxide.
The warming numbers most commonly advanced are created by climate computer models built almost entirely by scientists who believe in catastrophic global warming. We might forgive these modelers if their forecasts had not been so consistently and spectacularly wrong. From the beginning of climate modeling in the 1980s, these forecasts have, on average, always overstated the degree to which the Earth is warming compared with what we see in the real climate. For instance, in 1994 we published an article in the journal Nature showing that the actual global temperature trend was "one-quarter of the magnitude of climate model results." The disparity between the predicted temperature increases and real-world evidence has only grown in the past 20 years.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
When the failure of its predictions become clear, the modeling industry always comes back with new models that soften their previous warming forecasts, claiming, for instance, that an unexpected increase in the human use of aerosols had skewed the results. After these changes, the models tended to agree better with the actual numbers that came in — but the forecasts for future temperatures have continued to be too warm. The modelers insist that they are unlucky because natural temperature variability is masking the real warming. They might be right, but when a batter goes 0 for 10, he's better off questioning his swing than blaming the umpire.
The models mostly miss warming in the deep atmosphere — from the Earth's surface to 75,000 feet — which is supposed to be one of the real signals of warming caused by carbon dioxide. Here, the consensus ignores the reality of temperature observations of the deep atmosphere collected by satellites and balloons, which have continually shown less than half of the warming shown in the average model forecasts. [O]bservations show that the warming of the deep atmosphere (the fundamental sign of carbon-dioxide-caused climate change, which is supposedly behind these natural phenomena) is not occurring at an alarming rate: Instruments aboard NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association satellites put the Mid-Tropospheric warming rate since late 1978 at about 0.7 degrees Celsius, or 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, per 100 years. For the same period, the models on average give 2.1 degrees Celsius, or 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit, per 100 years.
The models also fail to get details of the past climate right.
For example, most of the observed warming over land in the past century occurred at night. The same models used to predict future warming models showed day and night warming over the last century at nearly the same rates.
(*SNORT*)
Past models also missed the dramatic recent warming found in observations in the Arctic. With this information as hindsight, the latest, adjusted set of climate models did manage to show more warming in the Arctic. But the tweaking resulted in too-warm predictions — disproved by real-world evidence — for the rest of the planet compared with earlier models. Shouldn't modelers be more humble and open to saying that perhaps the Arctic warming is due to something we don't understand?
While none of these inconsistencies refutes the fundamental concern about greenhouse-gas-enhanced climate change, it is disturbing that "consensus science" will not acknowledge that such discrepancies are major problems. From the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's beginning, that largely self-selected panel of scientists has embraced the notion that consensus on climate change is the necessary path to taking action and reducing man-made carbon emissions around the world. The consensus community uses this to push the view that "the science is settled" and hold up skeptics to ridicule, as John Kerry did on Sunday.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
We are reminded of the dangers of consensus science in the past. For example, in the 18th century, more British sailors died of scurvy than died in battle. In this disease, brought on by a lack of vitamin C, the body loses its ability to manufacture collagen, and gums and other tissues bleed and disintegrate. These deaths were especially tragic because many sea captains and some ships' doctors knew, based on observations early in the century, that fresh vegetables and citrus cured scurvy. Nonetheless, the British Admiralty's onshore Sick and Health Board of scientists and physicians (somewhat akin to the current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) dismissed this evidence for more than 50 years because it did not fit their consensus theory that putrefaction (or internal decay) caused scurvy, which they felt could be cured by fresh air, exercise and laxatives.
"Consensus" science that ignores reality can have tragic consequences if cures are ignored or promising research is abandoned. The climate-change consensus is not endangering lives, but the way it imperils economic growth and warps government policy making has made the future considerably bleaker.
The recent Obama administration announcement that it would not provide aid for fossil-fuel energy in developing countries, thereby consigning millions of people to energy poverty, is all too reminiscent of the Sick and Health Board denying fresh fruit to dying British sailors.
We should not have a climate-science research program that searches only for ways to confirm prevailing theories, and we should not honor government leaders, such as Secretary Kerry, who attack others for their inconvenient, fact-based views.
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