Affordable Care Act and the Supreme Court - a response to George Will of the Washington Post

This is a verbatim copy of my response to a Washington Post editorial in today's online issue:

Liberals put the squeeze to Justice Roberts


Will's clearly partisan opinion piece misses two central points that somehow elude those enamored in the so-called "libertarian" or conservative sound-bites of this issue.

First - Congress has not "created commerce" - it already exists.  Under current law emergency rooms MUST take all those who present for care, and if they can't pay, the government does.  This makes good sense from a public health stand point (unless you want people dying because they can't pay, or not presenting when they have contagious diseases.), as well as from a civil and social standpoint.

Second - the market for healthcare is a natural one.  No matter how healthy you are, at some point you'll need a doctor.  So to not be financially covered for this impending need, and to ultimately depend on the government for your coverage means you, by refusing insurance, are getting a free ride on the rest of the taxpayers and those who pay for their insurance.

Thus, this isn't a matter of freedom of choice as so called Conservatives would have you think.  This is a matter of you as an individual taking accountability for your life, and your expenses, rather than living on the dole.

I find it fascinating that the Conservatives don't want to understand this - I mean isn't that what they supposedly stand for?  Personal accountability?  But I digress.

If the matter here is whether the Congress has the authority to regulate this industry and require individuals to participate financially, I think it's relatively clear that
1) it is an existing commercial marketplace, and
2) all residents and visitors in the United States participate in it

So therefore the Congress has the Constitutional authority to regulate it.  That much is crystal clear.  And thus the Supreme Court really has no choice to affirm the law on that basis - unless it's truly voting a political agenda rather than ruling on the matter of Law, or attempting to overturn all Commerce Legislation since the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.

A more fundamental question should be asked - is requiring everyone to buy private health insurance an adequate or even desirable way to achieve the required market participation?

I would submit no.  A far better solution would be to eliminate private insurance and institute a Single Payor system.  To be sure we could encourage additional riders or coverage from the private marketplace, but base can be provided far more efficiently, with lower cost, and higher quality for more people with a government run Single Payor system.  Current estimates are that as much as 25% of healthcare expense (thats 25% of nearly 3 Trillion dollars a year) is due to multiple billing relationships from multiple payors.  Eliminating this would save up to $750 BN a year.  Which pays for a lot of coverage.  And reduces the debt to boot.

So George Will is either naively misunderstanding the case in front of us, or pursuing some other partisan agenda - which do you think is going on here?

CIA Unravelled Bomb Plot From Within

Who out there really believes this stuff? By my count the past, oh, dozen "foiled terrorist plots" have consisted of security alphabet soup apparatus brilliantly infiltrating, outwitting, and then neutralizing what in the US are arguably impressionable angry young men by 


first - suggesting they should attack the US, 
second -  showing and giving them the means to attack the US, and 
finally neatly rolling them up with what ever fake bomb, IED, WOMD they've engineered for the occasion. 


If true, then they're batting 1000, and are up against the dumbest and ineffectual enemy we've seen in ages.  Reminds me of Mad Magazine's Spy vs. Spy...

Now comes along the latest coup - "Saudi Intelligence" infiltrate a terrorist cell in Yemen, take control of their super-dooper underwear bomb program and then get outed by the media. All under another alphabet soup guided effort.

Really.

It stretches credulity just a bridge too far.

IMHO, domestic "wins" are increasingly looking like a combination of self serving entrapment schemes, targeted at convincing the American people to 


a) continue the exorbitant funding levels we've grown to for "Homeland Security", and 


b) further the path we're on on eroding our essential liberties in the false search for security from an enemy that increasingly we're having to fabricate ourselves to keep real.

The Saudi / Yemeni underwear bombing incident looks suspiciously to me of misinformation spread after the media knowingly sat on the story for days at intelligence's request, giving them time to create a narrative that not only will sell to the American people (look - once agin our infallible security forces have saved the day) as well as sew the seeds of internal doubt at what ever ineffectual terrorist cells still remain out there (oh my Allah! who amongst us are really double agents???!!!!) If successful the alphabet soup folks will both reinforce their core campaign against the American people, as well as spin the terrorist cells int internally destructive activities for months.

Brilliant.

All I can say is:

Got Rights?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-unraveled-bomb-plot-from-within/2012/05/08/gIQA5tKOBU_story.html

North Carolina passes Defense of Marriage Act

North Carolina is well on the path to establishment of a Christian Theocratic state. It is natural, of course, that as a discriminated upon majority they should do so, to protect their views and rights and ensure their safety from fringe elements.

As the Bible is the Christian majority's playbook, and as the New Testament offers no words of wisdom on just how damned the gays are (other than "love your neighbor as yourself ,"which I guess means that gays are the antichrist in some code I haven't the grace to discern - but I'll believe! as we have been told it is so), we must turn to the Old Testament to understand the rationale behind this event, and the logical course of action the State of North Carolina must now follow.

North Carolina should immediately pass laws requiring:

1) Prohibition of looking upon a woman while she is menstruating. (Leviticus 18)

2) don't used mixed seeds, do not wear two types of fabric at once (Leviticus 19)

3) all who do not respect their parents will be put to death, both of those who adulterer shall be put to death, (Leviticus 20)  (Go Newt Gingrich, bastion of Conservative Morality! - don't be visiting NC anything soon ...

4) All blasphemers shall be put to death. (Leviticus 24)

5) daughters will be burnt alive if they are "whores," (Leviticus 22)

(http://www.conservapedia.com/Leviticus)

And god looked upon his works and was pleased.

Update: The Real Unemployment Statistics, or what the government doesn’t want you to know about the economy

In my blogpost from February -  The Real Unemployment Statistics, or what the government doesn’t want you to know about the economy, I examined how the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has consistently under reported unemployment in the United States for the past 4 - 5 years.  This is an update on the situation based on the latest rates available for April.


The mainstream media continue to report the numbers directly from BLS with little critical thought given to what sits behind the numbers.  They've become complicit with the Big Lie that government is broadcasting to the citizens of the United States - that the economy is on a rebound, and that the unemployment situation is improving.


From the New York Times - U.S. Added Only 115,000 Jobs in April; Rate Is 8.1% - they've begun to look at the mass exodus from the labor pool we've been experiencing, but haven't connected the dots to the underlying figures the government is reporting:


"The unemployment rate, which is based on a separate survey of American households, ticked down to 8.1 percent in April, from 8.2 percent. But the decline was not due to the hiring of more unemployed workers; it was entirely because 342,000 workers dropped out of the labor force.

The share of working-age Americans who are in the labor force, meaning they are either working or actively looking for a job, is now at its lowest level since 1981 — when far fewer women were doing paid work. The share of men taking part in the labor force fell in April to 70 percent, the lowest figure since the Labor Department began collecting these data in 1948."

(emphasis in red mine)

340,000 Americans left the workforce entirely in April - they've given up looking for work because jobs just aren't there.

Keeping the same approach I laid out in my previous blog post, and using BLS data, the seasonal adjusted workforce was calculated to be  154,365,000 in April, down from 154,395,000 in January.  In other words the total workforce SHRUNK by 30,000 people in the past 3 months.  Sort of defies demographics doesn't it?  We've a net growth rate (0.899% according to the CIA) which means with a top line population of about 314 Million (US Census), we're adding about 2,825,000 net new people per year, or 235,000 new workers per month.  And this is using current growth rates - the growth rate 18 years ago was higher.  

This means that, in the 3 month period of February through April since I last commented on unemployment, the US should have added a MINIMUM of 700,000 net new labor participants just to cover basic demographics, with a corresponding number of net new jobs to stay at January's 8.3% level.  This much would have kept us treading water at the same levels,much less recoup the tens of millions of jobs lost since Wall Street's little fiasco in 2008.  And the government reports we LOST 30,000 in workforce participation in the same time period.

So for the numbers

Labor participation dropped from 63.7% to 63.6% from January to April, down from 66.4% in January 2002 (what I used as my baseline in my last blog:

Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate (2002 - 2012)

Calculating the real unemployment rate (once again - baselining workforce participation at 2002 levels and then adding back in the now 6,982,000 people that have given up looking for work), we get a real unemployment rate of 12.1% - fully 4 percentage points higher than what BLS is reporting.

You can see the difference in the graph below:

Until next time – If you’re not pissed off, then you haven’t been paying attention.

Banks robbing the US Treasury, or how the US government is printing money for the Banks

So today's blog is a real short one.

Ever ask yourself why there's a shortage of money to loan in the US?  Or why we don't have any money to invest in basic infrastructure, pay for teachers and schools or a hundred other things that we know we should be investing in but our "fiscally responsible" Republican Congressmen keep pointing out we have no money?

Well here's one reason.  (Thanks to Business Insider for pulling together a comprehensive review of economic issues, this is just a slice of them.)

First of all, after the 2008 crash the Federal reserve decided to drop the Federal Funds Rate (the rate major banks pay the Fed to borrow money to raise cash equivalents on hand) to about zero.  They've held it at the lowest levels ever for three years now, and have signaled the intent to keep it that way for the next 18 - 24 months.   The stated rationale was to put money into the economy to drive loans for investment, to invigorate the economy.

So the federal government essentially is printing trillions of dollars to give to the banks to make loans.

Effective Federal Funds Rate

This has been accompanied by a lagged and modest return of lending (source of data: Federal Reserve bank of Saint Louis) - about a 50% return to pre 2008 levels.

So where is all the money that these banks are borrowing going?

Simple.

To buy US Treasuries.

Do a quick double take.

"Really!!??" you say?

That's right.  The banks are borrowing money at essentially zero percent (OK, 0.25% as of late) to purchase US Treasuries, and pocket the spread (known in the industry as "Coining Money").

Nice work if you can get it.

So what's that worth?

According "Coining Money", from the Business Insider, Banks made $211 Billion dollars in the first six months of last year using this scheme.

Nice.

Annualize this and you have a $420 Billion annual subsidy from you, the US taxpayer, to the major US banks.

And still they try to sock you with overcharge fees and monthly ATM access fees.

$420 Billion.

How many schools would that build?

How many crumbling bridges would that replace?

So that's it for today.

Once again - If you're not pissed off then you really haven't been paying attention.