Sunday, March 6, 2011

Obamacare Waivers Climb 311 Since Jan. 26 to 1,040, New Website Obscures Data

From the new reporting site here:

As of the end of February 2011, a total of 1040 one-year waivers have been granted.  This update includes 126 new approvals.  Key facts about annual limits waivers:

Of all the waivers granted to date, the vast majority – more than 95 percent of all waivers – were granted to health plans that are employment-related.  These include self-insured employer health plans, health reimbursement arrangements, collectively-bargained multi-employer plans, and health plans sold by issuers to fully-insured employers.  The links below contain descriptions of these and other types of entities receiving waivers.

The number of waivers processed each month continues to decline.  After granting over 500 waivers in December (an increase related to the fact that December 1 was the final day to apply for a waiver for a plan or policy year that begins on January 1, as many plans do), HHS granted less than 200 waivers in January, and 126 in February.

The number of enrollees in plans with annual limits waivers is 2.62 million, representing less than 2 percent of all Americans who have private health insurance today.

The old site listed the waivers sequentially (here), with the cumulative total of persons affected clearly shown. Now you have to cull the data from no less than 7 separate links.

In less than three months we've gone from 222 waivers in December 2010 to 1,040 waivers in early March 2011, and from 1.5 million affected to 2.6 million.

So we're told the number of waivers processed is declining even though the total waivers granted continues to climb dramatically, and the new website makes the data more difficult to retrieve and entitles it "promoting transparency."

Up is down, wrong is right, night is day. Obama isn't a Bolshevik. He is not an ideologue. 

How Much Capital Backs Your Assets?

Spanish banks are scrambling to raise capital amid new rules upping the requirements for "solvency":

Under the new rules, [Spanish] savings banks must raise the proportion of core capital they hold to 8.0 percent of total assets from the current six percent, or 10.0 percent if they are unlisted.

So imagine you have assets (for example, loans outstanding on a house and a car), together actually worth about $250,000.

Up until now, if you were a Spanish bank, you'd have to have 15,000 simoleons stashed away to cover the "business." The new rules mean you're going to have to have 20,000, or 25,000 simoleons.

In your case, think IRA, or 401K, or your brokerage account. Or some CDs at the bank. How much do you have stashed away?

And then consider that the median amount saved for retirement in America is only $2,000. That means half of the country has more than that saved, and the other half has less than that saved. But even at the median, that $2,000 is less than 1 percent of $250,000 in assets.

Easily half of the US population is probably insolvent by this measure, as are many US banks.

My own bank operates under a Consent Decree requiring Tier 1 capital of 8 percent, and total capital of 11 percent. Roughly 10 cents on the dollar.

Most of America is built and runs on this kind of debt. And much of it is insolvent, even on these less easy, easy terms.

"Owe no man anything . . .."

Observer Figures Obama Has Spent 2 Months of 25 as President . . . Golfing

As reported here:


This is the president’s 60th time golfing as president, meaning Obama has spent two months of his presidency on the golf course.

So far.

Does keeping track of this count as a stimulus job?

DC: Tops for Food Stamps, Surrounded by Richest Counties

DC ranks number one for the highest participation rate by population in the food stamp program, yet is surrounded by these, among the 25 richest counties in America:

 1. Loudoun County, VA
 2. Fairfax County, VA
 3. Howard County, MD
 6. Fairfax City, VA
 9. Arlington County, VA
10. Montgomery County, MD
12. Stafford County, VA (south of Prince William County)
13. Calvert County, MD
14. Prince William County, VA
21. Charles County, MD
23. Alexandria City, VA.

Story here.

Income inequality, writ large. Your tax dollars at work.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Housing Prices Fall to Q1 2000 Levels

With more declines of at least 5 percent expected.

Story here.

"I Am Surprised That People Are Not Even Angrier"

Me too:

'Too many current attacks on bank bonuses miss the point. There is no "right" amount of money. It is not fine to earn a quarter of a million but "obscene" to get £5 million. But what is true is that people who accumulate very large sums tend to think they are brilliant. In a proper market economy, if they are not brilliant, they get their comeuppance. In the too-big-to-fail economy, they just go on getting rich, paid for by the rest of us who go on getting poorer. Like Mr King, I am surprised that people are not even angrier.'

-- Charles Moore, here, for the UK Telegraph

To Forgo Something is Acting, Says Judge Kessler


But National Review's Rich Lowry is having none of it, here, responding to this statement by Kessler:

"It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not 'acting,' especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something." ...

Long ago, the Commerce Clause got stretched beyond recognition. In 1942, the Supreme Court used it to uphold a law penalizing a farmer for growing wheat in excess of his approved allotment, even though it was for his own consumption. At least the poor sap was doing something. According to Kessler, Congress could also punish him for acting on a thought not to grow wheat.

Opponents of ObamaCare say that if it's blessed by the courts, there will no longer be any limiting principle on federal regulatory power. If that seems far-fetched, behold the mental activities of one Judge Gladys Kessler.

Which begs the question, Isn't Kessler's reasoning a residual influence of the Christian religion on matters of state?

Christianity teaches that there are plenty of sins of commission, but also of omission, as per Paul's letter to the Romans, and the letter of James. By refusing to purchase health insurance, by Kessler's reasoning, one is almost committing a sin against the state, of, by and for the people, who will have to bear the costs of paying for the deadbeat's omission.

At the Last Judgment the offender would be punished in hell, but in the Immanentized Eschaton which ideologues are trying to foist upon us, he'll just pay a fine.

Virtue should be so easy. 

FDIC Rewards Banks Which Themselves Violate Regulatory Guidelines

Richard Suttmeier noted here on February 22 that three banks which acquired the assets of failed banks on Friday, February 18, 2011, are themselves overexposed to construction and development loans or commercial real estate loans, or both:

Three of the banks that acquired the assets of Friday’s failed banks were also in violation of the regulatory guidelines for exposures of risk-based capital to construction and development loans and to commercial real estate loans. SCBT National Association (SCBT) has risk ratios of 145% for C and D loans and 423.7% for CRE loans that are 89.3% funded. Bank of Marin (BMRC) has a risk ratio of 67.4% for C and D loans, which is fine, but has a 485.2% exposure for CRE loans with a loan pipeline that’s 78.7% funded. First California Bank (FCAL) has a risk ratio of 41.5% for C and D loans, which is fine, but has a 358.2% exposure to CRE loans with a loan pipeline of 86.9%. ValuEngine rates each of these banks a Hold. The FDIC policy of rewarding banks with overexposures to real estate loans is deciding which banks fail and which banks survive, which is wrong.

State capitalism is the official economic policy of the American Fascist Police State.

Friday, March 4, 2011

78 Year Old Louisiana Molester Undergoes Castration for Early Release

Nuts to the victims.

Story here.

Broadest Measure of Unemployment/Underemployment Drops Below 16 Percent

After 21 consecutive months at or above 16 percent, U-6 has fallen to 15.9 percent in February, as illustrated by portalseven.com here:






February Unemployment Drops .1 to 8.9 Percent, Breaking 21 Month Record

For 21 consecutive months, unemployment had been at or greater than 9.0 percent.

Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports here the headline number of 8.9 percent:


Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 192,000 in February, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 8.9 percent, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today . . ..

The number of unemployed persons (13.7 million) . . ..

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was 6.0 million and accounted for 43.9 percent of the unemployed.

Both the civilian labor force participation rate, at 64.2 percent, and the employment-population ratio, at 58.4 percent, were unchanged in February . . ..

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was essentially unchanged at 8.3 million in February . . ..

In February, 2.7 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, up from 2.5 million a year earlier. ... These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. ...

The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 34.2 hours in February . . ..

In February, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 1 cent to $22.87. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 1.7 percent.

Break out the party hats and fireworks.


Thursday, March 3, 2011

January Unemployment Marked the 21st Consecutive Month At or Above 9 Percent

January unemployment fell .4 point to 9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, here.

Just Undo It.

http://www.thoseshirts.com/jus.html

"The Euro Crisis is First and Foremost a Banking Crisis"

"Essentially, all Germany and France want to achieve with these [austerity and bailout] measures is to protect their own banks from collapsing. Now people are beginning to realize that there is no way around rescheduling Greece's debt -- and that will also involve the banks. For this to happen, there is only one solution: Europe needs to strengthen its banks! Greece lived beyond its means, but in Ireland and Spain it is the banks that are the problem. The euro crisis is first and foremost a banking crisis. ... Europe's banks are in far greater danger than people realize."

-- Barry Eichengreen, quoted here

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

TSA Misses Boxcutters in Carry On at JFK

The New York Post has the exclusive story:

A passenger managed to waltz past JFK's ramped-up security ga[u]ntlet with three boxcutters in his carry-on luggage -- easily boarding an international flight while carrying the weapon of choice of the 9/11 hijackers, sources told The Post yesterday.

Read the rest, here.

Bush's DHS Planned to Test Mobile Scanning of Pedestrians

The creeping American fascist police state may have begun in earnest under Bush, but Obama is doing nothing to stop it. There are mobile scanning vans in the possession of the federal government right now. And you'd know nothing about it from Obama, either, but for a Freedom of Information Act request by EPIC.

Forbes has the story, here:

Newly uncovered documents show that as early as 2006, the Department of Homeland Security has been planning pilot programs to deploy mobile scanning units that can be set up at public events and in train stations, along with mobile x-ray vans capable of scanning pedestrians on city streets.

The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on Wednesday published documents it obtained from the Department of Homeland Security showing that from 2006 to 2008 the agency planned a study of new anti-terrorism technologies that EPIC believes raise serious privacy concerns. ...


“When you’re out walking on the street, it’s not acceptable for an officer to come up and search your bag without probable cause or consent. ... This is the digital equivalent” [said an attorney for EPIC]. ...

[S]ecurity contractor American Sciences & Engineering ... sold more than 500 of its backscatter x-ray vans to governments around the world, including some deployed in the US. Those vans are capable of scanning people, the inside of cars and even  the internals of some buildings while rolling down public streets. ... [T]he van scans do penetrate clothing, and EPIC president Marc Rotenberg called them “one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”

The Forbes story has links to the documents obtained under the FOIA request.

For a guy who won't disclose any of his academic or medical records, Obama sure does think he has the right to invade your privacy, against your will and without your knowledge.

Mubarak should have resigned? Gaddafi? I say Obama should resign, NOW.

Obama's Baked Brain Eludes Ruth Marcus


Not about Bush . . .

But about Obama:

Obama can be a strangely passive president. There are a startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action - unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issue of the moment. ...

Each of these instances can be explained on its own terms, as matters of legislative strategy, geopolitical calculation or political prudence. ...

Yet the dots connect to form an unsettling portrait of a "Where's Waldo?" presidency: You frequently have to squint to find the White House amid the larger landscape. ...

[T]he White House - much to the frustration of some congressional Democrats - has been unclear in public and private about what cuts would and would not be acceptable. ...

Obama seems more the passive bystander to negotiations between the House and Senate than the chief executive leading his party. ...

Hum. Passive, startlingly missing in action, unwilling, reluctant, late . . . and unclear, a bystander . . . all that from a sympathetic liberal supporter, an honest observer, who can't quite put her finger on the problem.

You would think someone born even in 1958 could theorize psychotic effects of THC overexposure when she sees them.

Just why is it again that Obama keeps his medical records sealed? And why is it that so-called journalists just don't seem to want to know?

Come on, Ruth. You might even get that Pulletsurprise after all.

Present-a-tive Justin Amash Bucks His Freshman Peers As He Did His Party In Michigan

Politico has part of the story here:

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) voted against the class 30.1 percent of the time, including the five times he recorded himself as “present” rather than supporting or opposing an amendment outright.

We had the other part, here, on February 27:

In Michigan Amash's record meant that he went against his own party almost 36 percent of the time (472 votes), which makes perfect sense of the rhetoric to get more Democrats and independents into the Republican Party (without the singular "libertarian" votes, Amash voted against his own party 30 percent of the time). His election night remarks in that regard were jarring and startling in a year marked by one of the biggest partisan Republican victories nationwide in decades, but play well in a district full of Democrats and independents and union members. The clarion call of the Tea Party was not bipartisanship, but that's often the ploy of libertarians, whose small numbers keep them forever in need of allies. It's smart politics, not but it's not principled conservatism.

Amash promoted himself as consistent, principled and conservative in his campaign for the MI-3 House seat. So far, he's batting a thousand on consistent. The question is whether the voters will decide next time that consistency is, after all, merely the proverbial hobgoblin of little minds if he too often sacrifices his conservatism, and his principles, to it.

We've Already Got a Democrat Stoner Schizophrenic as President, We Don't Need a Republican One

With more and more people realizing that repeated use of the weed is bad for your health, a new study in the news links marijuana use to various mental problems like schizophrenia:

Sir Robin Murray, professor of psychiatric research at Kings College London, said: "This study adds a further brick to the wall of evidence showing that use of traditional cannabis is a contributory cause of psychoses like schizophrenia."

Among the signs and symptoms which schizophrenics may exhibit are these behaviors not often firmly attributed to habitual use of marijuana as a cause of the mental illness:

. . . disorganized thinking and speech. The latter may range from loss of train of thought, to sentences only loosely connected in meaning, to incoherence known as word salad in severe cases. Social withdrawal, sloppiness of dress and hygiene, and loss of motivation and judgement are all common in schizophrenia. There is often an observable pattern of emotional difficulty, for example lack of responsiveness.

The American people should think about that paragraph and ask themselves:

Why does Obama rely so much on his teleprompter, even in the smallest of settings?

Why did Obama exhibit such an inappropriately light mood in his first public comments after the Ft. Hood terrorist incident?

Why did it take Obama so many days to respond to the Fruit of Kaboom bomber incident?

Why was Obama the last world leader to come out and condemn Gaddafi?

And then they ought to think about this from Jacob Sullum for Townhall.com, here, about Indiana's Republican Governor and presidential hopeful, Mitch Daniels:

But like many pot smokers who became politicians, Daniels -- a potential contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination -- seems to have two standards of justice: one for him and one for anyone else who does what he did.

Although Daniels was caught with enough marijuana to trigger a prison sentence, he got off with a $350 fine. Yet he has advocated "jail time" for "casual users" -- a stark illustration of the schizophrenic attitudes that help perpetuate drug policies widely recognized as unjust.

According to the Princetonian, "officers found enough marijuana in (Daniels') room to fill two size 12 shoe boxes." Under current New Jersey law, possessing more than 50 grams (about 1.8 ounces) of marijuana is a felony punishable by up to 18 months in prison. Given the amount of pot Daniels had, he easily could have been charged with intent to distribute, which under current law triggers a penalty of three to five years.

At the time of Daniels' arrest in May 1970, New Jersey's marijuana penalties were even more severe.


Not exactly your daddy's Republican.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

I Guess That British Kid Who Told Obama He was a Pussy was Right

Matthew Franck weighs in here with an excellent discussion of Obama's concession to judicial supremacy in the case of DOMA:

Obama is the "un-Lincoln," a president who would rather hint, and wheedle, and pine for an eventual Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, than forthrightly assert the equal standing of each branch of government to act on its own understanding of the Constitution. He makes no challenge to the reigning doctrine of judicial supremacy. Obama is instead the Court's courtier, surrendering the dignity of his office, and the legislative power of Congress, to a hope that the Supreme Court too will "evolve" in its view, change the effective meaning of the Constitution, and foist same-sex marriage on the American people with an authority more difficult to challenge than that of a mere president.

Mr. Franck rather likes Mr. Lincoln. But even if olde Abe was an acute practitioner of a constitutional departmentalism now lamentably in decline, the War Between the States proves that correct interpretations of some things do not always protect us from fanatical interpretations of others. There's only one Trinitarian monotheism.

On the British kid, see here.