Finding silver linings in a crappy economy

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We're sure you remember this:

"...if you like your doctor or healthcare plan, you can keep it..."

However, if you are possessing of two brain cells with which to rub together and you pause to consider that the Affordable Care Act aka ObamaCare had the intent of effectively dumping 30 million additional Americans onto the Medicaid rolls and then pile on additional health care coverage requirements, that promise might not necessarily pan out.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office would tend to agree:

President Obama's health care law will push 7 million people out of their job-based insurance coverage — nearly twice the previous estimate, according to the latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday.

CBO said that this year's tax cuts have changed the incentives for businesses and made it less attractive to pay for insurance, meaning fewer will decide to do so. Instead, they'll choose to pay a penalty to the government, totaling $13 billion in higher fees over the next decade.

But the non-partisan agency also expects fewer people to have to pay individual penalties to the IRS than it earlier projects, because of a better method for calculating incomes that found more people will be exempt.

(italics, ours)



That ObamaCare has created perverse incentives is no surprise. Burdening businesses with additional requirements will not come without consequences. That it is a bug or a feature (a back door to the public option/single-payer system that statists in this county have been clamoring for years) we still haven't figured out.


And that last paragraph contains a cruel irony. More and more people will be exempt from paying the penalty/tax for not signing up for ObamaCare because of the persistently dismal economic climate of which hopelessly misguided and ill-executed economic policies like ObamaCare have created.

You and your family no longer have healthcare but, no worries... at least you don't have to pay the tax for not having healthcare.


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What we've been tweeting

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Alternate headline: How he stopped worrying and learned to love the drone




Against the backdrop of confirmation hearings for John Brennan for head of the CIA, a memo from the Justice Department was released that claimed there was legal justification for drone strikes against U.S. citizens without traditionally-recognized due process and even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.


From NBC News:

The secrecy surrounding such strikes is fast emerging as a central issue in this week’s hearing of White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, a key architect of the drone campaign, to be CIA director. Brennan was the first administration official to publicly acknowledge drone strikes in a speech last year, calling them “consistent with the inherent right of self-defense.” In a separate talk at the Northwestern University Law School in March, Attorney General Eric Holder specifically endorsed the constitutionality of targeted killings of Americans, saying they could be justified if government officials determine the target poses “an imminent threat of violent attack.”

But the confidential Justice Department “white paper” introduces a more expansive definition of self-defense or imminent attack than described by Brennan or Holder in their public speeches. It refers, for example, to what it calls a “broader concept of imminence” than actual intelligence about any ongoing plot against the U.S. homeland.

“The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,” the memo states.

Instead, it says, an “informed, high-level” official of the U.S. government may determine that the targeted American has been “recently” involved in “activities” posing a threat of a violent attack and “there is no evidence suggesting that he has renounced or abandoned such activities.” The memo does not define “recently” or “activities.”

We don't know about you but having our lives in the hands of an "informed, high level" official is chilling to say the least even if we did have an operational definition of the same.

Twitter was blowing up yesterday over this and our contributions focused on the potential for abuse of this power (one could make the argument that merely having that power is aubuse of power in itself and we would not object) to the absolute hypocrisy of the left with respect to the current President's predeccessor and the practice of enhanced interrogation/waterboarding.

We’ve ended the heinous Bush-era tactic of waterboarding terrorists by killing Americans instead. #sendinthedrones


Hordes of human rights activists will be descending upon Crawford, TX any minute now. #sendinthedrones


#MartinSheen your little boycott campaign of #ZeroDarkThirty is charming in it’s own special way. #sendinthedrones

What is zero? The amount of information that can be gleaned from waterboarding a corpse #sendinthedrones

Only Nixon could go to China and only a Nobel Peace Prize winner could wack his own citizens. #sendinthedrones


We fully expect a stronger letter to follow from the #ACLU any minute now. #sendinthedrones


The logic of the modern left: enhanced interrogation in order to glean intel: bad. Killing Americans via drone strike: Outfu$kingstanding! #sendinthedrones


Today, the American left confirmed what a bunch of worthless hypocrites we always knew them to be. #sendinthedrones


Administration that has the power to kill its own citizens wonders what we’re doing with an assault rifle. #sendinthedrones


Q for the left: Will u also trust a (R) with this power? We’ll answer that for you: No. So please drop your shameless hypocristy. #sendinthedrones


What fun is waterboarding a terrorist when they’re already dead? #sendinthedrones

Administration that promised to close Gitmo simply kills potential inhabitants. #sendinthedrones

Administration will just kill those that they want to give civilian trials to. #sendinthedrones

Lefties: if you wouldn’t want a (R) president with that power, then it’s a solid bet no president should have that power. #sendinthedrones

We'll say it again: the stunning inconsistencies of how Obama has prosecuted his war on terror points to the man being just lazy. He doesn't want the hassle of actually capturing, detaining and questioning the bad guys lest he look anything like his predeccessor so... he kills them instead. And not just foreigners anymore. If they were still around, you could've asked Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 yr. old son

Your California high-speed choo-choo update

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All you really need to know with respect to just how big of a mess California’s high-speed rail project is the fact that 4 losing bidders to design and build the initial 30 mile set of tracks in the Central Valley each received $2 million for their troubles.


From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Only one out of five bidders to design and build the first phase of California’s high-speed rail project will win the $1.8 billion contract — but they will all get paid.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority has agreed to issue a $2 million “stipend” to all four of the losing bidders, an obscure practice used for some large-scale construction projects. Bullet-train officials say the incentive was designed to attract bidders and therefore spur better, more competitive proposals.

“It might seem curious to people at first why we would pay losing bidders, but it’s very much a mathematical proposition,” said Dan Richard, authority chairman. “We think that we’ll get better bids and lower bids as a result.”

Richard described the stipends as standard policy on large projects and added that the reimbursements do not come close to the costs incurred by unsuccessful construction firms.

Contractors last month submitted proposals to design and build the first 30-mile stretch of track for the proposed $68 billion high-speed rail system. The statewide network endeavors to eventually stretch more than 800 miles north to south with trains traveling at speeds of up to 220 mph.

Allow us to translate what Dan Richards was attempting to communicate:

“There is no way in hell we would be able to attract any serious bidders and ask them to design and build a high-speed railroad when we don’t yet own any of the land upon which to build this without that $2 million cushion. There is too great a risk for bidding firms for us not to pay them off afterwards."

And you would not be surprised to learn that this bidding practice of “stipends” is, uh, somewhat irregular.

Eric Christen, executive director of the Poway-based Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction and a project opponent, said in his 13 years in the business he has never seen a payout for losing bidders.

“If it was the only thing that these guys were doing like this, well, I might give them the benefit of the doubt,” Christen said. “But it’s one after another, after another, after another.”

As to the amount of the stipends, he said, “The numbers to me as a taxpayer and as a private citizen are shocking.”


Assemblywoman Diane Harkey, an outspoken critic of the project, cited the recent dust-up in arguing for legislative oversight of the rail authority.

“We’ve never had a business plan. We’ve never had a funding source. We’ve never had an accurate ridership study and we are thinking of eminent domaining hundreds of parcels,” said Harkey, R-Dana Point. “And we’re sending out bids and paying out $2 million as if we are a private company for anyone who wants to bid but doesn’t happen to win.

“It’s easy to see how this money could just be sucked out of the state and end up going into the black hole and never producing any transportation element for the people of California.”

More from the article:

Sajeev Malaveetil, an expert in government contract accounting, administration and compliance, said stipends are most frequently seen at the state level on major transportation projects.

“It’s not a common practice, and I can’t necessarily think of situations where you see it outside of a major construction or developmental project, but it’s not unprecedented,” said Malaveetil, a director at the Berkeley Research Group in Washington. “It is used primarily in situations where the procuring party cannot itself identify the specific requirements they are looking for.

“They know what the end result is, but they are looking for different options and design components and technical approaches with the understanding that when they make the final contract award, they may actually adopt some of those facets from one offer into the ultimate contract.”

It’s certainly no coincidence that the largest government-funded boondoggles are major transportation projects at the state level.
And to be clear, that $2 million stipend really does make sense when you are asking engineering firms to bid on a project where there are so many variables and so many unknowns. The risk factors are huge.

But what may necessarily make sense does not make it right. A massively complex public works project riddled with uncertainties and driven by unrealistic time tables will indeed generate unsavory business practices such as these stipends.

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Sticking it to the Man says... the Man?

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Recall there was a socio-political set in this country whose battle cry appeared in their voices, t-shirts and bumper stickers and it was: “Keep your laws off my body”. You do remember that don’t you because we sure as hell do.

Well, those folks have completely disappeared or have completely sold out to the establishment they claimed to be set against. Correction to both of those theories: they have become the establishment. How else do you explain the fact that they championed a poorly-concieved, deeply flawed health care law that will, at a minimum, cost a family of 4 or 5, $20,000/year and you cannot choose to opt out of it.



From CNS News:

In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year.

Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS.

The IRS's assumption that the cheapest plan for a family will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the government if they do not buy a mandated health plan.

The examples point to families of four and families of five, both of which the IRS expects in its assumptions to pay a minimum of $20,000 per year for a bronze plan.

“The annual national average bronze plan premium for a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) is $20,000,” the regulation says.

Bronze will be the lowest tier health-insurance plan available under Obamacare--after Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Under the law, the penalty for not buying health insurance is supposed to be capped at either the annual average Bronze premium, 2.5 percent of taxable income, or $2,085.00 per family in 2016.

In the new final rules published Wednesday, IRS set in law the rules for implementing the penalty Americans must pay if they fail to obey Obamacare's mandate to buy insurance.

It is duly noted that the feds still insist in calling it a penalty 7 months after the Supreme Court ruled it a tax. But, hey, penalty... tax... $2,085 is still $2,085 no matter what you call it.


The whole fiasco that is ObamaCare illustrates perfectly how America's counter-culture of the 60s and 70s that was fighting to stick it to the Man has indeed become the Man.

The choosing is of their own choosing.


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Radio KBwD is on the air: covers edition

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Cannot believe we've never matched up this song before as it's a classic tune done by two rock legends from two different eras.

Let's call it a Boomer vs. Gen X throwdown (which, because of the quality of music, should not influence your vote)


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Ladies and Gentlemen, from North London, England, it's The Kinks performing "Where Have All the Good Times Gone".




(dig the vocal harmony in the chorus)






And now, from Pasadena, California, it's Van Halen doing their turn on the same song.





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What have we been tweeting

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A free society requires a free press. While true, saying fails to mention anything abt corrupt press.

We can’t buy the “bias” angle anymore as it goes far beyond the simple statist cheerleading of this country’s 4th estate.

What inspired that tweet was MSNBC deliberately editing a legislative hearing this week in Hartford, CT to make it look as if Neil Heslin, the father of a Sandy Hook victim who was testifying, was being heckled by members of the audience. In fact, he was not being heckled.

This is shameless journalistic malpractice to alter footage of an event in order to stack the deck against those with whom’s politics you disagree.

We felt a similar manner of disgust in the tone of coverage regarding Abu Ghraib and now Benghazi. We have forgotten the exact figure but the NY Times ran a front page story on the tasteless and disgusting photos taken of Iraqi prisoners by our troops minding the prison for 33 straight days. Howls of indignation echoed from the media-political class calling for Rumsfeld’s and, at times, Bush’s head. We may remind everybody that though, humiliating, none of the prisoners died.

Fast forward some 8-9 years and the absolute fiasco that was Benghazi generates barely a shrug from our nation’s press. We ignored constant pleas for beefing up security there and as a result four Americans are dead from a well-coordinated assault on the Benghazi consulate on 9-11. There is probably a handful of embassies/consulates we would want to pay particular attention to on the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on this country in its history and Benghazi, a hub of anti-Qaddafi Islamist activity, would certainly be one of them.

And when it all went up in smoke, the administration immediately, and against all logic and reason, blamed some totally obscure alleged anti-Islam Youtube movie trailer. They maintained this lie for weeks and no one had the balls to call them out on it.

And when Hilary Clinton, before stepping down as Secretary of State, beclowned herself in congressional testimony (“What difference does it make?”) she was labeled by the press a tough-minded statesmen who, incredibly enough, may have possibly been using these hearings to launch her 2016 presidential campaign.

As far as we can tell, the only person that has been punished for this travesty is the poor sap who made the crappy Youtube movie trailer.


Again, mere bias doesn’t adequately explain what is going on here. The press has effectively abdicated their responsibility to have an inherently adversarial relationship with a presidential administration. Indeed, it appears quite the opposiste They are all, with few exceptions, corrupt to the core.

Maybe that fact alone is the single best reason for a Republican president.

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Your California high-speed choo-choo update

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We held off on running with the following regarding the state of California’s insistence that it did not need federal funding for its high speed rail project just yet. Obviously, having secured roughly just $2-1/2 billion via publicly-approved state bond sales of the $68 billion needed overall (which will certainly be much, much more as that total doesn’t include the cost of the actual trains or for actually electrifying the project), California is, no doubt, going to come hat in hand to DC at some point to get funding to get this Brown-doggle completed.


From Politico:

California’s landmark high-speed rail line won’t require cash from Congress for at least two years. But at some point, it will.

That’s the message the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s leadership team is sending to Washington about the massive $68 billion project set to break ground this year.

The planned statewide system is short about $60 billion, some of which will undoubtedly need to come from Congress. But CEO Jeff Morales and Chairman Dan Richard — in Washington last week for meetings during the U.S. Conference of Mayors — told POLITICO they didn’t come to the capital with hat in hand.

“We don’t need new federal money for about two more years,” Morales said during an interview at the Capital Hilton. “We’re not here asking for a new round of funding right now. Having said that, we do need — over the long run — some form of ongoing stable federal support.”

With Republicans in control of the House, there is scant hope of getting any federal scratch until, at least, January of 2015 at the earliest.

But there is something else going on here, something much more pedestrian than the political make-up of the legislative body in charge of this nation’s finances as a reason to not seek federal funding.


Cue the other shoe: they don’t yet own a single parcel of land on which to build.


From the L.A. Times:

Construction of California's high-speed rail network is supposed to start in just six months, but the state hasn't acquired a single acre along the route and faces what officials are calling a challenging schedule to assemble hundreds of parcels needed in the Central Valley.

The complexity of getting federal, state and local regulatory approvals for the massive $68-billion project has already pushed back the start of construction to July from late last year. Even with that additional time, however, the state is facing a risk of not having the property to start major construction work near Fresno as now planned.

It hopes to begin making purchase offers for land in the next several weeks. But that's only the first step in a convoluted legal process that will give farmers, businesses and homeowners leverage to delay the project by weeks, if not months, and drive up sales prices, legal experts say.

One major stumbling block could be valuing agricultural land in a region where prices have been soaring, raising property owners' expectations far above what the state expects to pay.

"The reality is that they are not going to start in July," said Anthony Leones, a Bay Area attorney who has represented government agencies as well as property owners in eminent domain cases.

State high-speed rail officials say it won't be easy, but they can acquire needed property and begin the project on time.

"It is a challenge," said Jeff Morales, the rail agency's chief executive. "It is not unlike virtually any project. The difference is the scale of it."

Under a deal worked out with the Obama administration, federal funding is contingent upon completing the first 130 miles of the project in the Central Valley by 2018, a schedule which would require burning through $3.6 million of the projected budget every day.

What the project now faces is an array of legal, bureaucratic, engineering, logistical and eminent domain challenges that makes the sunny face put on the project by Governor Brown and project officials appear farcical.


Dig this:

Indeed, the rail authority's formal right-of-way plan indicates it does not expect to acquire the first properties until Sept. 15, despite other documents that indicate construction would start in July. Rail officials said they padded the schedule to avoid claims for additional payments by construction contractors should land not be available by July.

This is also known as lying.



The General Accounting Office (GAO) has estimated that of the 400 parcels of land in way of the initial stages of construction of the project, about 100 of them were at risk of not being available at the time of construction. A gut feel tells us that is a conservative estimate.

And where market values price Central Valley acreage at $28,000, the high-speed choo-choo honchos have only budgeted values at $8,000/acre.

In summary, the mess that is California’s high speed rail project keeps getting hotter and hotter.

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Video clip of the day

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Are state and city budget cuts framing the gun control debate in a different light?

If so, then Milwaukee County Sheriff, David Clarke has some ideas.






Just a reminder to the gun control folks out there that the 2nd amendment wasn't about hunting and recreation.


And a quick aside to our lefty friends: If you likened Bush to Hitler and the right wing as a whole to a bunch of fascists, wouldn't you want the ability to defend yourself against that imminent threat?


Of course, it was just all cheap hypocrtical political grandstanding that did nothing to elevate the discourse of the debate back then which helps explain why the gun control types are getting their asses kicked in the debate today.

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(H/T: Hot Air)

"Rare" would indeed be in the eye of the beholder

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Some 20 years ago, President Bill Clinton assured us that he wanted to keep abortion safe, legal and rare. Safe and legal may be easier to quantify than rare but apparently Governor Cuomo of New York didn’t get Clinton’s memo because we’re betting that his idea of rare with respect to abortion doesn’t matchup that well with the vast majority of Americans.

This past week, Cuomo introduced legislation that would radically expand access to abortion services.

From Life Site News:

Cuomo is pushing for a massive expansion of access to abortion in the state, including lifting restrictions on third-trimester abortions, allowing non-doctors to perform the procedure, and enshrining a fundamental right to “terminate a pregnancy” in New York state law.

Democrats for Life of America deemed the proposed bill “the most sweeping abortion legislation in the nation.”

The Democratic governor introduced the bill to cheers during his January 9 State of the State address, shrouding it in the name of “women’s equality.”

“The abortion language would allow late-term abortions, allow non-doctors to perform abortions, and supersede any reasonable restrictions such as parental notification,” the group stated.

“It is out of touch with the views of most Americans, out of touch with the views of most Democrats, and could hamper real reform for women's rights,” the Democratic group concluded.

Particularly “in a state that already has one of the highest abortion rates,” double the national average.

One-third of all pregnancies in the state end in abortion, and in some parts of New York City the abortion rate is more than 60 percent.

One would think that whether you are pro-life or pro-abortion, that decision to abort one’s unborn should be a weighty one and access to have that abortion not on equal footing as walking down the hallway and depositing a dollar bill into the vending machine for a soda.

Is it anti-choice or anti-reproductive rights to say that getting an abortion ought to take a little more effort than popping a bag of popcorn? Shouldn’t it actually be more difficult to get an abortion than to renew your driver’s license at the DMV?

At what point did this stop being about reproductive rights and start being about a culture of death when expediency to terminate a pregnancy becomes of paramount and fanatical importance?

Probably about the same time when instead of celebrating the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, you want to make love to it instead.

Standby for the creepiest, most vile and disgusting Youtube videos we may have ever seen courtesy The Center for Reproductive Rights:







The mentality that is expressed here is one void of any compassion and empathy whatsoever. In fact it is soulless. Despite what the ad purports, there is no love expressed here only a selfishness that can't/won't recognize the gift of life seeing it merely as an inconvenience that should give way instead to inward directed gratification.

Our country is not better off because of this.

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What we've been Tweeting

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Tweets:

Provisions to make #ObamaCare more affordable are being unfairly derided as loopholes.


Don’t confuse savings designed to make #ObamaCare more affordable with saving designed to make healthcare more affordable.

We’ve written previously about how ObamaCare has created perverse incentives to force employers to take actions that work against its' employees’ best economic and healthcare interests.

Here are the money paragraphs from The American Interest article regarding how adjunct professors at certain colleges are getting the shaft because of the new healthcare law:

A new piece in the Wall Street Journal reports that many colleges are cutting back on the number of hours worked by adjunct professors, in order to avoid new requirements that they provide healthcare to anyone working over 30 hours per week. This is terrible news for a lot of people; 70 percent of professors work as adjuncts and many will now have to cope with a major pay cut just as requirements that they buy their own health insurance go into effect:

In Ohio, instructor Robert Balla faces a new cap on the number of hours he can teach at Stark State College. In a Dec. 6 letter, the North Canton school told him that “in order to avoid penalties under the Affordable Care Act… employees with part-time or adjunct status will not be assigned more than an average of 29 hours per week.”

Mr. Balla, a 41-year-old father of two, had taught seven English composition classes last semester, split between Stark State and two other area schools. This semester, his course load at Stark State is down to one instead of two as a result of the school’s new limit on hours, cutting his salary by about a total of $2,000.
Stark State’s move came as a blow to Mr. Balla, who said he earns about $40,000 a year and cannot afford health insurance.

“I think it goes against the spirit of the [health-care] law,” Mr. Balla said. “In education, we’re working for the public good, we are public employees at a public institution; we should be the first ones to uphold the law, to set the example.”

Because of what he makes, healthcare insurance for he and his family is out of reach and now with his hours being cut back, healthcare is just that more out of reach. How does that make any sense for a law called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act? Well, it doesn’t precisely because of the provisions built into ObamaCare to keep the cost of ObamaCare down.

As we suggested in our Tweet: don’t confuse attempting to control the cost of the politically-driven healthcare law with actually trying to control the costs of healthcare for individuals and families. The two are totally separate goals and as we are seeing, should not be seen as one in the same.

Also, the article suggested these are loopholes to be exploited by employers so that they can somehow extricate themselves from the more onerous portions of the law? Nonsense. As the saying goes, these are features, not bugs.

ObamaCare could not achieve its stated goal without having built-in “outs” for employers as the people who wrote the legislation had enough sense to know that small businesses and, in this instance, colleges would not be able to afford the additional mandates required by ObamaCare for all of their employees.

As it stands, ObamaCare is giving the shaft to those near-full employment employees who are seeing their hours being cut back thus combining less take-home pay with the security of health insurance for their families being that much more out of reach.

The statist-left can bitch and moan all they want about for-profit companies like Darden Foods (owners of Red Robin and Olive Garden, among others) trying to maximize their profits by “skirting” ObamaCare provisions but now not-for-profit industries like education are facing the same cold hard realities and are behaving in exactly the same, rational manner.

At the end of the day, we are even questioning the term “unintended consequences” with respect to this law as when you take a close look at how it was written (something that, of course, Nancy Pelosi famously admitted to not doing), the law is producing the exact results as intended.

There is no great mystery about this as we are finding out as the ObamaCare implementation roll-out continues and we see just how much havoc this will wreak on peoples’ healthcare and the economy as a whole.

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Video clip of the day

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Alternate headline: Honchos of newspaper that published names and addresses of those who hold gun permits not to keen on advertising the fact that they don’t.


Some red meat here if there ever was some: Conservative activist and all-around gangster, James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas crew go door to door of editors, writers and columnists of the Journal News to see if they have the courage of their convictions by publicly declaring their homes to be gun-free zones.

When it comes to touchy-feely, do-gooder activism that is not based on rationality or facts, the results become entirely predictable.


(video approx. 10 of the most deliciously short minutes of your life)







The last gentleman illustrates perfectly the logic of progressive gun control advocates. If lefties are worried about a right wing gun mob take-over then it makes perfect sense for said lefties to arm themselves to the teeth to prevent such a thing from happening.


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