It's not
about being liberal or conservative anymore y'all. That is a hype offered by the fascist whores who want to confuse the people with lies while they turn this country into an aristocratic police state. Some people will say anything to attain power and money. There is no such thing as the Liberal Media, but the Corporate media is very real.
A comment from a comment section about Health Care economics
I don’t believe there are a significant number of policy makers who really believe that market
forces can bring the kind of efficiency to health care, that they can to commodities.
When I took undergrad Econ in college, in the eighties(!), the classes in which the basic concepts
of how “free markets” work are taught, always taught about the limited conditions required for the
theories to hold. The exceptions to the theories were just as much a part of the curriculum. Namely,
the undergrad in Econ 101 learns about “externalities, monopoly and monopsony power, problems of
asymetric information, problems with “goods” like health care that have very inelastic demand
curves, the problem of public goods.”
This is Econ 101. I suspect the only people who have a simplistic “market fundamentalist” view of
healthcare, are unsophisticated persons, with a conservative/libertarian instinct.
Paul Ryan is not such a person, and I believe that when Republicans, like him, speak with apparent
fealty to such simple minded notions, they are doing so as a cheap and easy form of Propoganda. To
persuade uninformed voters that their proposals have merit. That they are really looking out for the
good of the American people.
The reason I think this distinction matters, is that there are very real conflicts, of wealth,
power, prestige, that permeate human culture. The complicated systems that determine “who serves,
and who eats.”
They will cluelessly destroy something that was working because they are blind ideologues. But as
long as their rich donors get tax cuts, then problem solved. You losers should stop buying thousand
dollar i-phones and invest in those health care savings accounts instead -- for health insurance that
offers meagre coverage and expects you to pay a decent amount out of pocket while not paying for
pre-existing conditions.
These people are so stupid. Sean Spicer actually had a press conference where he put the Obamacare
bill and this current bill on the table and bragged about how much smaller in size the current bill
is. He claimed the larger stack of paper was evidence of government bureaucracy, without mentioning
that 6 pages of the smaller stack of paper were devoted to limiting poor people who win the lottery
getting health care tax credits. Really? That's what you are worried about? I didn't realize poor
people winning the lottery was driving health care costs.
Because they are con artists, and don't really care about trying to actually address the issues and
solve the health care problem. They are simply disguising a tax cut to the very wealthy as health
care reform. They drape
everything in this bullshit mantra of anti-government free-market fundamentalism, when it really is
just a costume for the savage incompetent, short-sighted greed of their wealthy donors. They are
clueless dopes selling nonsense with a bunk philosophy.
Sunday, 12 March 2017 at 20h 45m 10s
Modern music rocks
This band is one of the best post-2000 bands. Headed by the amazing guitarist Tosin Abasi, Animals
As Leaders rocks. A former student named Alex actually introduced me to this band. Thank you Alex. :-)
He's doing this on an 8 string guitar. Wow.
Here is Tosin Abasi on his 8 string electric guitar.
Here is "Wave of Babies"
Sunday, 12 March 2017 at 18h 15m 16s
The Health Care Debate in a nutshell
Paul Krugman explains the difference between Obamacare and the Republican replacement bill. The
bolded phrase is mine.
The structure of the Affordable Care Act comes out of a straightforward analysis of the logic of
coverage. If you want to make health insurance available and affordable for almost everyone,
regardless of income or health status, and you want to do this through private insurers rather than
simply have single-payer, you have to do three things.
Regulate insurers so they can’t refuse or charge high premiums to people with preexisting conditions
Impose some penalty on people who don’t buy insurance, to induce healthy people to sign up and
provide a workable risk pool
Subsidize premiums so that lower-income households can afford insurance
So that’s Obamacare (and Romneycare before that): regulation, mandates, and subsidies. And the
result has been a sharp decline in the number of uninsured, with costs coming in well below
expectations. Roughly speaking, 20 million Americans gained coverage at a cost of around 0.6 percent
of GDP.
Republicans have nonetheless denounced the law as a monstrosity, and promised to replace it with
something totally different and far better. Which makes what they’ve actually come up … interesting.
For the GOP proposal basically accepts the logic of Obamacare. It retains insurer regulation to
prevent exclusion of people with preexisting conditions. It imposes a penalty on those who don’t buy
insurance while healthy. And it offers tax credits to help people buy insurance. Conservatives
calling the plan Obamacare 2.0 definitely have a point.
But a better designation would be Obamacare 0.5, because it’s really about replacing relatively
solid pillars with half-measures, severely and probably fatally weakening the whole structure.
First, the individual mandate – already too weak, so that too many healthy people opt out – is
replaced by a penalty imposed if and only if the uninsured decide to enter the market later. This
wouldn’t do much.
Second, the ACA subsidies, which are linked both to income and to the cost of insurance, are
replaced by flat tax credits which would be worth much less to lower-income Americans, the very
people most likely to need help buying insurance.
Taken together, these moves would almost surely lead to a death spiral. Healthy individuals,
especially low-income households no longer receiving adequate aid, would opt out, worsening the risk
pool. Premiums would soar – without the cushion created by the current, price-linked subsidy formula
— leading more healthy people to exit. In much of the country, the individual markets would probably
collapse.
The House leadership seems to realize all of this; that’s why it reportedly plans to rush the bill
through committee before CBO even gets a chance to score it.
[SOURCE:Paul Krugman | New York
Times | 7 March 2017]
If you want to make health insurance available and affordable for almost everyone...
Which is exactly the point. They don't want to make health insurance available and affordable for
almost everyone. These Rethuglicans like to co-opt their ideology into a surrogate view
for all business, economic markets, private enterprise, and entrepreneurial economics. Yet they
actually are just zealots for the greedy interests of a few oligarchs, stupidly mangling every
attempt at sensible legislation because they are just spokespersons for what their paymasters want.
They are cheerleaders and con artists. Most of them truly do not have a clue about how to
govern or create any policy analysis beyond lame bullet-points which are crafted more to manipulate
and disguise than to actually explain or delineate choices and ideas.
Sunday, 12 March 2017 at 18h 0m 10s
They are frauds
I love Paul Krugman. He has a way of making his point without offending people. Although all
ideologues consider having a different opinion to be offensive, if you can give a reasonable
explanation for your viewpoint, then you should be politely respected. Those who castigate with
loose adjectives and political labels are children.
[H]as [Paul] Ryan ever put together major legislation with any real chance of passage? Yes, he made
a name
for himself with big budget proposals that received adoring press coverage. But these were never
remotely operational — they were filled not just with magic asterisks — tax loophole closing to be
determined later, cost savings to be achieved via means to be determined later — but with elements,
like converting Medicare into a voucher system, that would have drawn immense flack if they got
anywhere close to actually happening.
...[H]e has never offered real plans for overhauling social insurance, just things that
sound like plans but are basically just advertisements for some imaginary plan that might eventually
be produced. Actually pulling together a coalition to get stuff done? Has he ever managed that?
What I’d say is that Ryan is not, in fact, a policy entrepreneur. He’s just a self-promoter, someone
who has successfully sold a credulous media on a character he plays: Paul Ryan, Serious, Honest
Conservative Policy Wonk. This is really his first test at real policymaking, which is a very
different process. There’s nothing strange about his inability to pull off the real thing, as
opposed to the act...
In other words, maybe this looks like amateur hour because it is. Ryan isn’t a skilled politician
inexplicably losing his touch, he’s a con artist who started to believe his own con; Republicans
didn’t hammer out a workable plan because there is no such plan, and anyway they have no idea what
that would involve.
[SOURCE:Paul Krugman | New York
Times | 10 March 2017]
Thursday, 9 March 2017 at 3h 36m 48s
Look who google just suggested
This is Ghosts and Vodka.
Nice stuff.
Thursday, 9 March 2017 at 2h 32m 6s
New Album
The new album "Voids" from Minus the Bear. Just found out right now, and am currently listening to
the first song on the album, "Last Kiss". A little too popified but still quality.
Thursday, 9 March 2017 at 2h 4m 56s
The coming Commercial Real Estate implosion
This is a 34 minute video discussion between two older financial gurus, one from Hawaii, the other
from the Northeast. Gordon T. Long and Charles Hugh Smith.
The two grey-haired men give solid reasons why they state that only "400 out of 1300" malls in the
United States will
remain open in the next 5 years. When you go to your local mall, there are a large number of empty
storefronts.
Most small shopping centers also have empty store fronts. This stresses the underlying financing
of these real estate investments, because of reduced revenue, which reduces the collateral value of
the property. When the financing of the property occurs again ("rolls-over") every 5 to 10 years,
if the necessary collateral of the property is depreciated, something has to give, but what happens
depends on the financial players involved as well as the specific property. A bank could decide to
take the property.
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, an entire mall was sold for $100. In the 34 minute video above, Mr. Long
speculates correctly
that he thinks this is because Wells Fargo didn't want to write down the assets.
Here's a local CBS news story on the event. In this news piece, the stated
reason by the Wells Fargo lawyer who went to the auction and bought the property was to make sure
another competitor didn't purchase the property on the cheap. That makes sense to me. I report you
decide.
However, I imagine if someone like me went to that auction and bid up the sale price to $100,000,
Wells Fargo would have bid $200,000. So my question is why were there so few people at this
auction? Wouldn't those "competitors" have bid at least another $500 at the auction? The stated
reason by the Wells Fargo lawyer just doesn't hold up to common sense, unless there is collusion.
Wednesday, 8 March 2017 at 3h 4m 24s
Rethuglicans Laughing at the Lower classes
This is truly how they feel. Feeling impregnable and laughing literally all the way to the bank.
Our hired putzes' pretend before a national audience.