Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, February 5, 2014
A snowy morning here in Harriman! Mary just called; she made it to work. Last time I checked my bro-in-law Craig was on the Thruway taking my sis-in-law into the City for some medical tests... I have every confidence they'll make it back and forth safe and sound.
Again... folks... it's winter. In New York!
Yes, this snowstorm comes complete with icy rain. I'm not suggesting people go out and drive just for the heck of it. What I am saying, however, is that America is in decline and the way we handle (or rather fail to handle) WINTERS is definitely a symptom.
Think about it... in 1969 - 45 years ago - we landed a man on the moon. Today? We're dependent upon the Russians if we want to send an American into space.
Think about 1969. (If you're old enough, that is!) I was born in 1962 myself, but I don't recall my dad being deterred from going to work (or the bar for that matter) by a little snow! Sure... kids don't pay attention to the nuances of weather reporting so perhaps it's simply that I don't remember... however... "remember" or not, I'd bet that back in the 1960's U.S. air travel wasn't basically halted every time a storm popped up somewhere!
Hey... new topic! Did you folks read yesterday's newsbites? Do me a favor (do yourselves a favor) and make sure you read "The Liberal Newcomers", a column written by Phyllis Schlafly which first ran yesterday on the NRO Blog. (The column was one of my newsbites yesterday!)
On my way home from the gym last night I happened to catch former Wall Street Cokehead Larry Kudlow being interviewed by John Batchelor and both men were criticizing Schlafly's column. What caught my attention was Kudlow totally ignoring the data Schlafly presented! Unfriggin'believable...!!! God save the GOP from the RINOs current in charge of it!
Anyway... off to newsbiting! Enjoy - and learn from - the upcoming newsbites (as always, found in the Comments section) and enjoy your day!
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* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-obamacare-patients-20140205,0,1675336,full.story#axzz2sSbdrZxI
* FIRST OF ALL, FOLKS, WATCH THE VIDEO... PLEASE... WATCH THE VIDEO!
After overcoming website glitches and long waits to get ObamaCare, some patients are now running into frustrating new roadblocks at the doctor's office.
* DO TELL?!
(*SNICKER*)
A month into the most sweeping changes to healthcare in half a century, people are having trouble finding doctors at all, getting faulty information on which ones are covered and receiving little help from insurers swamped by new business.
* FAULTY INFORMATION FROM...??? (FROM THE GOVERNMENT...???) (YEP!)
Aliso Viejo resident Danielle Nelson said Anthem Blue Cross promised half a dozen times that her oncologists would be covered under her new policy. She was diagnosed last year with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and discovered a suspicious lump near her jaw in early January. But when she went to her oncologist's office, she promptly encountered a bright orange sign saying that Covered California plans are not accepted.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
"I'm a complete fan of the Affordable Care Act, but now I can't sleep at night," Nelson said. "I can't imagine this is how President Obama wanted it to happen."
* TWO POINTS: 1) OBVIOUSLY NELSON IS A MORON; 2) OBAMA'S ULTIMATE GOAL IS SINGLE PAYER; IF OBAMACARE LEADS TO A COLLAPSE OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE OBAMA WILL PROPOSE TO REPLACE THE "BROKEN" SYSTEM WITH?
(*SMIRK*)
* NOT A CONSPIRACY FAN...? OK. THEN THAT MEANS YOU MUST NOW BELIEVE OBAMA IS A TOTAL INCOMPETENT! (FOLKS... YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS!)
Maria Berumen, a tax preparer in Downey, was uninsured for years because of preexisting conditions. The 53-year-old was thrilled to find coverage for herself and her husband for $148 a month after qualifying for a big government subsidy.
* THE GOVERNMENT IS BROKE. (DEFICIT SPENDING...?!?!) MARIA'S FAMILY INSURANCE IS BEING PAID FOR VIA BORROWING AND DEBT AND VIA FORCING ME TO PAY TEN TIMES THE PREMIUM SHE AND HER HUSBAND PAY. HOW THE FUCK IS THAT FAIR?
She jumped at the chance in early January to visit a primary-care doctor for long-running numbness in her arm and shoulder as a result of bone spurs on her spine. The doctor referred her to a specialist, and problems ensued. At least four doctors wouldn't accept her health plan — even though the state exchange website and her insurer, Health Net Inc., list them as part of her HMO network.
* ONE MORE TIME...
... even though the state exchange website and her insurer, Health Net Inc., list them as part of her HMO network.
"It's a phantom network," Berumen said.
* DUH!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
Berumen said she was seen by a neurosurgeon Thursday — after state regulators intervened on her behalf.
* "A" NEUROSURGEON. (AS OPPOSED TO AN "A-RATED" NEUROSURGEON...?)
(*SMIRK*)
Insurers say they are working hard to resolve customers' problems as they arise, and they continue to add physicians to augment certain geographic areas and medical specialties.
* FOLKS... REMEMBER... THE BIG INSURERS WORKED WITH OBAMA TO GET OBAMACARE PASSED! REMEMBER... OBAMACARE FORCES PEOPLE TO GET INSURANCE WHETHER THEY WANT IT OR NOT AND THIS WAS SEEN BY THE INSURERS AS A WINDFALL OF NEW "FORCED" CUSTOMERS! OBAMA ACTED IN ACCORD WITH HIS IDEOLOGY. THE INSURERS ACTED IN ACCORD WITH THEIR GREED. THE DOCTORS STOOD MAINLY SILENT. AND NOW IT'S THE AMERICAN PEOPLE GETTING SHAFTED. (OF COURSE IF YOU'RE RICH ENOUGH IT DOESN'T REALLY MATTER TO YOU.)
"Any huge implementation like this comes with a lot of moving parts," said Health Net spokesman Brad Kieffer. "There is a learning curve for everyone, and we expect as time goes on these issues should dissipate."
Looking to head off potential problems, government regulators and patient advocates are pushing for tougher rules to ensure health plans provide timely access to care.
* SUCH AS...???
Last week, the California Assembly approved legislation enabling people who lost coverage because of the overhaul to keep seeing their doctors if they're pregnant or undergoing treatment for cancer or other conditions.
* AND WHO PAYS THE DOCTORS... AND THUS THE DOCTOR'S EMPLOYEES... AND THE HOSPITALS... AND THE MEDICAL CARE INFRASTRUCTURE COSTS...??? (IF MEMORY SERVES SLAVERY WAS OUTLAWED SOME TIME BACK... CAN GOVERNMENT ORDER DOCTORS TO WORK FOR FREE...??? IF SO... HOW LONG TILL THEY ORDER YOU TO WORK FOR FREE? IS THAT THE AMERICA YOU WANT? THAT'S THE AMERICA WE'RE HEADING TOWARDS!
Nelson, the cancer patient in Orange County, and her family lost their previous coverage when Aetna stopped selling individual policies in the state last year. After numerous complaints to her new insurer, Anthem, and to public officials, the company said it would cover visits to her current oncologist through March 31.
* SO GOVERNMENT BASICALLY EXTORTED THE INSURANCE COMPANY VIA SOME THREAT OR OTHER...
(*SHRUG*)
* WELCOME TO AMERIKA!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
Nationwide, about 70% of new insurance plans under the healthcare law feature relatively narrow hospital networks compared with many existing plans, according to consulting firm McKinsey & Co.
* SOUND LIKE "PROGRESS" TO YOU, FOLKS? (OF COURSE IF YOU'RE WEALTHY YOU CAN PAY OUT OF POCKET... IF YOU'RE WEALTHY ENOUGH NONE OF THIS MATTERS TO YOU... NONE OF THIS APPLIES TO YOU...)
"It's pretty clear insurers responded to greater competition by trying to hold down costs through narrower networks," said Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. "Insurers have made the judgment that people prefer lower premiums to broader networks."
* BUT IN ACTUALITY THEY'RE GETTING NEITHER! IF THE PREMIUMS ARE LOWER IT'S ONLY BECAUSE THE PREMIUMS ARE BEING SUBSIDIZED BY A BROKE-ASS GOVERNMENT WHICH CAN'T EVEN MEET ORDINARY OPERATIONAL EXPENSES!
Health policy experts and some consumer advocates say the trade-offs may pay off. Despite some consumer complaints, the exclusion of some higher-priced hospitals such as Cedars-Sinai Medical Center from nearly all exchange plans is a positive sign, they say.
* NO CEDARS-SINAI FOR YOU, FOUL PEASANT!
(*SNORT*)
"The Affordable Care Act often gets accused of not doing enough to control costs," said Ian Hill, senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank. "Excluding some of the most expensive hospitals and providers who don't demonstrate high-quality outcomes is one ripple effect that may help."
* HMM... I WONDER HOW CEDARS-SINAI WILL REPLY...
The Covered California exchange began enrollment in October without the provider directory it had promised.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
Delays and glitches ensued for weeks, frustrating many consumers who complained that it was impossible to compare health plans without details on what hospitals and doctors were included.
* WELL... ISN'T THAT THE CASE...?!?!
In November, the exchange updated its directory.
* AND APPARENTLY FILLED IT WITH ALL SORTS OF FALSE INFORMATION... ("It's a phantom network," Berumen said.)
The exchange said its 11 health plans offer more than 58,000 physicians to choose from, representing 80% to 90% of practicing physicians in the state.
* BUT APPARENTLY THIS SIMPLY ISN'T TRUE! WHAT THEY "SAY" ISN'T TRUE!
The California Medical Assn. credits the exchange for fixing many of the initial problems but maintains that the state's data are still flawed, often because of incorrect information from health plans. Insurers blame doctor's offices for frequently giving wrong information.
Scott Marshutz of Dana Point said he picked a Blue Shield PPO plan in the exchange so he and his wife would have greater choice of doctors, but when he booked an appointment recently with his orthopedic surgeon, the doctor's office said it wasn't taking Covered California plans. "I'm wondering how many other people have experienced this," he said, "and if it will backfire on the whole system."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/clout/chi-emanuel-seeks-to-borrow-900-million-20140203,0,1659900.storyhttp://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/clout/chi-emanuel-seeks-to-borrow-900-million-20140203,0,1659900.story
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration is making preparations to issue up to $900 million in bonds this year to lower some of its borrowing costs...
* WHILE INCURRING MORE DEBT...! $900 MILLION IN NEW DEBT TO BE PRECISE! AT INTEREST! (IT WOULD BE NICE IF THE TRIB WOULD CLARIFY THE FULL PAYOFF AMOUNT, BUT THEY DON'T OF COURSE...)
...push other debt off into the future at an overall higher cost...
* TILL OL' RAHM IS OUT OF OFFICE... PIGGING OUT IN NEW PASTURS... PERHAPS RETIRED TO A WARMER CLIMATE...
...cover legal settlements...
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
...and pay for construction, building maintenance and equipment.
* BUILDING MAINTENANCE ISN'T IN CHICAGO'S OPERATING BUDGET...?!?!
At the same time, the administration is making plans to double the city's short-term credit line to $1 billion, Chief Financial Officer Lois Scott told aldermen at a City Council Finance Committee meeting.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
* SOUNDS GREAT! A $900 BILLION BOND... (DEBT)... A FULL $1 BILLION IN ADDITIONAL SHORT-TERM CREDIT (DEBT; THINK LOAN SHARK).
* THAT RAHM... HE'S A REAL LEADER!
The committee recommended giving the administration authority to put together two major bond deals and double the city’s the line of credit to $1 billion, even as the city carries an outsized debt burden in comparison to most other major cities.
* WHAT'S THAT...? ONE MORE TIME, PLEASE...
...even as the city carries an outsized debt burden in comparison to most other major cities.
* EVEN OTHER DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES...??? (WOW...)
Chicago carries a high debt level for bonds previously issued, and it also owes more than nearly all other major U.S cities to its pension plans to cover current obligations.
* MUST BE BUSH'S FAULT! OR PERHAPS THE TEA PARTY'S FAULT! (YEAH... THAT'S IT... IT'S CRUZ'S FAULT... PAUL'S FAULT...)
The Tribune’s “Broken Bonds" highlighted the city’s habit — both under former Mayor Richard M. Daley and Emanuel — of kicking its debt obligations down the road at a higher cost to future generations.
* SCUMBAGS...
The city took out loans, some of which won't come due for three decades, to cover short-term costs.
* SCUMBAGS...
* FOLKS... IN ALL SERIOUSNESS... IT'S HARD TO FIND A MORE "DEMOCRATIC" CITY THAN CHICAGO - AND IT SHOWS.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/kelo-revisited_776021.html
"See that pole with the transformer hanging from it?” Michael Cristofaro asked me. “That was where my family’s home was.”
I looked up at a line of high telephone poles marching diagonally against a blanched winter sky across a vast, empty field — 90 acres — that was entirely uninhabited and looked as though it had always been that way.
New London, population 27,000, a run-down one-time whaling port on the Atlantic coast that never recovered after the whaling industry died at the end of the 19th century, is a desolate-looking city. Cristofaro, a 52-year-old New London-born computer network engineer, and I were in its most desolate neighborhood — actually, ex-neighborhood, for there was not a residential property left standing on the entire tract.
Cristofaro and I were walking through a section of New London called Fort Trumbull, a fist-shaped peninsula jutting out into the Thames. It is the battleground of what must be the most universally loathed Supreme Court ruling of the new millennium, Kelo v. City of New London (2005).
* NAH... THE OBAMACARE DECISION WAS EVEN MORE IN YOUR FACE "SCREW THE CONSTITUTION," THOUGH I WILL CONSIDER KELO AS #2.
The case is named after its lead plaintiff, Susette Kelo, a nurse who had owned a home a few blocks away from the Cristofaro house. The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to uphold a Connecticut Supreme Court ruling that the city of New London and a non-profit quasi-public entity that the city had set up, then called the New London Development Corporation (NLDC), were entitled to seize, in a process known as eminent domain, the homes and businesses of Kelo, the Cristofaros, and five other nearby property owners in the name of “economic development” that would generate “new jobs and increased revenue,” in the words of since-retired Justice John Paul Stevens, author of the majority opinion.
That is, the city and the NLDC were entitled to condemn and then bulldoze people’s homes solely in order to have something else built on the land that would produce higher property taxes — such as the office buildings, luxury condos, five-star hotel, spacious conference center, a “river walk” to a brand-new marina, and high-end retail stores that were part of an elaborate “economic development” plan for Fort Trumbull that the NLDC had launched in 1997.
The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment bars governments from taking private property unless the taking is for a “public use.” Historically “public use,” as courts had interpreted it, meant a road, a bridge, a public school, or some other government structure. But in the Kelo decision, the High Court majority declared that “economic development” that would involve using eminent domain to transfer the property of one private owner to a different but more economically ambitious private owner — such as a hotel—qualified as a public use just as much as, say, a new city library.
The nationwide outrage that followed in the wake of the Kelo decision spanned from Left to Right and back again on the political spectrum.
* AND YET NOT ONE OF THE FIVE JUSTICES WHO BASICALLY RULED THE PROPERTY PROTECTIONS OF THE 5TH AMENDMENT MEANINGLESS WERE "DEALT WITH."
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* SHIT! MAKE THAT... (Part 2 of 3)
* CONTINUING...
It didn’t help that one of the chief beneficiaries of the NLDC’s economic development plan would have been the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, Inc., which New London had lured into the city via an 80%, 10-year property-tax abatement...
* FRANKLY, I WOULD LIKE TO SEE THESE "PROPERTY TAX ABATEMENTS" FORBIDDEN BY LAW.
...for a $300 million research facility — an expansion of the company’s research operations in Groton, Connecticut, across the Thames.
The properties seized from Kelo, the Cristofaros, and others would be adjacent to Pfizer’s facility. It also didn’t help that Susette Kelo, a feisty working-class woman who had raised five sons and put herself through nursing school by working as an emergency medical technician, was an appealing lead plaintiff and that her 900-square-foot Victorian house, lovingly refurbished by Kelo and painted a vintage shade of salmon pink with white trim, was a showplace of devoted homeownership.
Nor did it help that the Fort Trumbull tract where the razed homes once stood never did get built on, despite a $78 million incentive package from the state of Connecticut.
In 2008, after the nationwide real-estate bubble burst, the construction company, Boston-based Corcoran Jennison, that the NLDC had engaged to develop the site announced that it couldn’t obtain enough financing for the ambitious enterprise and pulled out. In 2009 Pfizer itself left New London, abandoning its new digs only eight years after the building had been completed. In 2010 Pfizer sold the New London facility for a reported $55 million — a small fraction of what it had spent to build it—to General Dynamics’s Groton-based Electric Boat division, a submarine manufacturer. Few of the 1,400 or so Pfizer employees who worked there had chosen to live in New London, so its contribution to the city’s economic base had always been questionable.
After Kelo, more than 40 state legislatures passed laws that banned or restricted the use of eminent domain for the purpose of economic rejuvenation, especially when it meant displacing homeowners. At least seven states amended their constitutions to ban the use of eminent domain for economic development, and some state courts explicitly rejected the Kelo ruling as precedent for interpreting those states’ own taking laws.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
The Kelo decision inspired ideological mass confusion, as when then-Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean declared in 2005 that the Kelo ruling had been all the fault of President George W. Bush. “The president and his right-wing Supreme Court think it is ‘okay’ to have the government take your house if they feel like putting a hotel where your house is,” Dean announced at a college rally.
In fact, the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc — the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the now-retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas (none of whom was a Bush appointee) — had dissented from Stevens’s majority opinion.
* WHAT A "SURPRISE" - HOWARD DEAN LIED.
It was the High Court’s liberal faction — Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the since-retired David Souter — along with swing-voter Anthony Kennedy — who had formed the narrow majority.
* INDEED...
* AS TO "THE RIGHT"...
O’Connor’s dissenting opinion was particularly scathing. “Today the Court abandons [the Fifth Amendment’s] long-held, basic limitation on government power,” she wrote. “Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded, i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public in the process.”
The Kelo decision did not come out of the blue, constitutionally speaking. In a 1954 decision, Berman v. Parker, the High Court had ruled unanimously, in an opinion written by William O. Douglas, perhaps the most liberal justice ever to sit on the Supreme Court, to uphold the power of a redevelopment agency created by Congress to seize and demolish almost the entire Southwest quadrant of Washington, D.C., on the ground that it was a “blighted area” and “blighted areas . . . tend to produce slums.” Blight removal was a “public use,” according to Douglas — and from there it was only a short step to economic development as a public use. The Berman and Kelo rulings affirmed a particular kind of liberal vision: that large-scale and intricate government plans trump individuals’ property rights. The Berman case involved a thriving department store in Southwest that could not in any way have been said to be a slum property and whose owners wanted it to stay where it was — just as Susette Kelo and the Cristofaros wanted to stay where they were. The only thing to be said for the Berman decision is that Southwest did eventually get rebuilt — although in a blockish, Brutalist fashion that made many architectural critics nostalgic for the old days of “blight.”
Still, my visit to New London on two subfreezing days in January revealed that the story of the Kelo case was something more than the story of a particularly nasty and overbearing abuse of either eminent domain or government power in general. It was also a tragedy, with all the classical Greek elements: hubris, turn of fortune, cathartic downfall, and possibly the “learning through suffering” that Aristotle in his Poetics argued was the point of tragic drama.
* THIS IS ACTUALLY A MUCH LONGER ARTICLE. ANYONE WHO'S INTERESTED... WELL... YOU HAVE THE LINK!
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.humanevents.com/2014/01/31/how-the-gop-lost-middle-america/
Out of the Republican retreat on Maryland’s Eastern shore comes word that the House leadership is raising the white flag of surrender on immigration.
The GOP will agree to halt the deportation of 12 million illegal aliens, and sign on to a blanket amnesty. It only asks that the 12 million not be put on a path to citizenship.
Sorry, but losers do not dictate terms.
* EXACTLY!
Rich Trumka of the AFL-CIO says amnesty is no longer enough. Illegal aliens must be put on a path to citizenship and given green cards to work — and join unions.
Rep. Paul Ryan and the Wall Street Journal are for throwing in the towel. Legalize them all and start them on the path to citizenship.
* THAT'S WHAT THE WSJ (AND I'M GUESSING THAT PHONY FRAUD RYAN) ALWAYS WANTED!
A full and final capitulation. Let’s get it over with.
To understand why and how the Republican Party lost Middle America, and faces demographic death, we need to go back to Bush I.
At the Cold War’s end, the GOP reached a fork in the road. The determination of Middle Americans to preserve the country they grew up in, suddenly collided with the profit motive of Corporate America.
(*NOD*)
The Fortune 500 wanted to close factories in the USA and ship production abroad — where unions did not exist, regulations were light, taxes were low, and wages were a fraction of what they were here in America.
* WELL... LET'S RECALL... THE EARLY '80'S WERE THE ERA OF "THE JAPANESE TSUNAMI." THE GERMANS WEREN'T DOING ALL THAT BAD EITHER. WE'RE TALKING TWO COUNTRIES WHERE TOTAL EMPLOYEE COMPENSATION WASN'T ALL THAT DIFFERENT FROM THE AMERICAN STANDARD.
Corporate America was going global and wanted to be rid of its American work force, the best paid on earth, and replace it with cheap foreign labor.
* THAT IS WHERE IT LED, THOUGH... TRUE ENOUGH...
While manufacturing sought to move production abroad, hotels, motels, bars, restaurants, farms and construction companies that could not move abroad also wanted to replace their expensive American workers. Thanks to the Republican Party, Corporate America got it all. U.S. factories in the scores of thousands were shut down, shedding their American workers. Foreign-made goods poured in, filling U.S. stores and killing the manufacturers who had stayed behind, loyal to their U.S. workers.
* AND THE SERVICE INDUSTRY (AND TO A LESSER EXTENT THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY)... BRING ON THE ILLEGAL ALIENS! EXPLOIT CHEAP FOREIGN LABOR! (AND THIS ULTIMATELY LED TO A CHANGE IN THE WAY AMERICANS GREW UP... LEADING TO TODAY'S GENERATION.)
(*SIGH*)
The Reagan prosperity was exported to Asia and China by the Bush Republicans.
* BUSH BETRAYED REAGANISM!
And the Reagan Democrats reciprocated by deserting the Bush Republican Party and going home.
* TO AN EXTENT... BUT IN TRUTH IT WAS HOW THE NEXT GENERATION WAS REARED.
But this was not the end of what this writer [Patrick J. Buchanan] described in his 1998 book, “The Great Betrayal.”
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
As those hotels, motels, restaurants, bars, fast-food shops, car washes, groceries and other service industries also relished the rewards of cheap foreign labor, they got government assistance in replacing their American workers. Since 1990, some 30 to 40 million immigrants, legal and illegal, have entered the country. This huge increase in the labor force, at the same time the U.S. was shipping factories abroad, brought massive downward pressure on wages. The real wages of Middle Americans have stagnated for decades. What was wildly wonderful for Corporate America was hell on Middle America. But the Republican Party had made its choice. It had sold its soul to the multinationals. And as it went along with NAFTA, GATT, fast track and mass immigration, to appease Corporate America, it lost Middle America.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
The party went with the folks who paid for their campaigns, only to lose the folks who had given them their landslides.
When Republicans accede to the demand for amnesty, and immigration without end, it does not take a political genius to see what is going to happen... for it is happening now.
Almost all of those breaking our laws, crossing the border, and overstaying their visas are young, poor or working class. Between 80% and 90% are from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. They are Third World peoples. They believe in government action and government programs that provide their families with free education, health care, housing, food, and income subsidies. They are not Bob Taft or Barry Goldwater conservatives.
* AND... AND, AND, AND... KEY... ONLY A PERCENTAGE ARE GRATEFUL FOR AND EAGER TO UTILIZE THE FREE EDUCATION! IF YOU'RE FAMILIAR WITH THE CALIFORNIA AND SOUTHWEST STATES EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCES YOU CAN'T DENY THAT THE HUGE POPULATION OF POOR CHILDREN FROM DYSFUNCTIONAL (OFTEN SINGLE-MOTHER RUN) HOUSEHOLDS IS BREAKING THESE SYSTEMS! (AND WITH BLACK ILLEGITIMACY AT 73%...)
Perhaps 85% of all immigrants, legal and illegal, more than a million a year now, are people of color.
* I KNOW THIS IS A QUESTION SOME OF YOU REFUSE TO CONSIDER... BUT... FACE THE QUESTION: HOW HAVE COUNTRIES POPULATED AND RUN BY "PEOPLE OF COLOR" DONE IN GLOBAL COMPETITION... HOW DO THEY RANK IN GLOBAL STANDARDS...? RETURNING "HOME," HOW IS IT GOOD THAT THE U.S. BECOME MORE AND MORE LIKE MEXICO EVERY DAY WHEN MEXICO IS LITERALLY FALLING APART?
And while over 70% of Hispanics and Asians voted Democratic for Obama, among voters of African descent, the Obama vote was well above 90%.
Four of every five U.S. citizens of Asian, African and Hispanic descent vote Democratic in presidential elections. And it is their numbers that are growing. Already they are well over a third of the U.S. population.
* FOLKS... A NON-WHITE AMERICA IS NOT AMERICA. A LESS-WHITE AMERICA IS LESS AMERICAN. THAT'S SIMPLY THE TRUTH. THAT'S THE DEMOGRAPHIC STORY.
As has been observed often, America, demographically, is going to look like California. And while Nixon won California all five times he was on a national ticket, and Reagan won California in landslides all four times he ran, California has not gone Republican in six straight presidential elections.
* CALIFORNIA IS LOST...
Democrats outnumber Republicans there by more than two-to-one in the Congressional delegation and in the state assembly, and not a single Republican holds statewide office.
If Bush I had built that border fence back in 1992 and declared a moratorium on legal immigration that fall, as many implored him to do, the party of the Bushes would not be facing its demise well before mid-century.
* I... HATE... THE... BUSH... FAMILY...
http://thefederalist.com/2014/02/05/the-great-deflection/
Unemployment Is Freedom.
Dependency Is Choice.
Numbers Lie.
(*CHUCKLE*)
ObamaCare will reduce American workforce participation by the equivalent of 2 million full-time jobs in 2017, according to a new report by the Congressional Budget Office.
Work hours would be reduced by the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs in 2024, a tripling of the previous estimates.
If you believe this report — and I’m not sure why we pay this much attention to CBO projections — you can then believe that ObamaCare discourages work, pushes people out of the labor market and, consequently, leads to fewer people having jobs.
(*SHRUG*)
Certainly, it is well within the parameters of political rhetoric for the opposition to assert that the CBO has found ObamaCare is “costing” or “killing” American jobs. It is no more a “lie” to say so than it is to claim Mitt Romney was “shipping jobs overseas” or hear an administration assert that it “created jobs” — or any of the other countless shorthand we use for economic consequences in political debate.
But the only way to blunt the negative force of the CBO findings was to deflect from the numbers and gin up a controversy over semantics. And the synchronicity and speed in which Left punditry accomplished this task was pretty extraordinary.
No, absolutely false, [Leftist proclaim,] the term “killing jobs” implies that the problem is on the labor demand side, but the CBO, as any honest person can see, is talking about the labor supply side. So really, “jobs” aren’t being lost, people just don’t want to work.
* HA! HA! HA!
“ObamaCare is inducing labor demand to shrink!” doesn’t have the quite the same punch as “Obamacare is costing us jobs!” though both are accurate. Yet, all of a sudden, a precise elucidation on every underlying economic reasons for what’s happening must be offered with each and every mention of the CBO report. Otherwise, “lies.”
Well... unless, you spin the projection as good news.
Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors Jason Furman told reporters that ObamaCare allowed greater “choice” not to work.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Jay Carney followed. And soon left-wing media followed.
The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler prepared a bizarre fact-checking piece that was helpfully titled “No, CBO did not say ObamaCare will kill 2 million jobs.” “First, this is not about jobs. It’s about workers — and the choices they make,” writes Kessler. Yes, the choice not to work at a job. Using Kessler’s logic, each time some clueless reporter mentions the word “jobs” in any story about labor force participation rate, or the unemployment rate for that matter, he or she might be lying to the public.
Magically, it was either a good thing that Americans were dropping out of the labor market or a “lie” to claim that Obama was the impetus for impeding job growth.
Yes, for an estimated $1.2 trillion over the next decade, we can subsidize your freedom.
* WITH MONOPOLY MONEY...
(*SHRUG*)
* AFTER ALL... WE'RE BROKE... WORSE THAN BROKE... DEFICITS AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE... DEPT PILED ATOP DEBT...
(*ANOTHER SHRUG*)
In ordinary times, if a projection had found legislation was the impetus for over 2 million people dropping out of the labor force during serious economic stagnation, newspapers might have reported it in a negative light. And maybe that was their initial intent. But within a few hours, many were changing headlines. Here are a few according Erik Wemple:
Politico at first: CBO: Lower enrollment, bigger job losses with ObamaCare
Politico now: Report reignites debate over ObamaCare and jobs
UPI at first: CBO: ObamaCare to cost 2.3 million jobs over 10 years
UPI now: WH disputes media claims on CBO ObamaCare study
What was once a story about ObamaCare discouraging work and impeding job creation is now a dispute about semantics.
Mission accomplished.
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