Even The AP Notices That Government Might Be Too Big

By William Teach October 15, 2013 – 2:20 pm

A random act of journalism…I hope the writer, Nancy Benac, is prepared for the typical despicable discourse liberals will throw her way

(WRAL) The lingering federal shutdown is transforming a musty debate over the role of government in America into a coast-to-coast, prime-time reality show.

With landmarks closed, paychecks delayed and workers furloughed, Americans are drawing dueling lessons from the rippling effects of the partial shutdown: The disruptions show that the feds are way too involved in people’s lives or that the government does a lot of vital things that people take for granted.

There’s a messaging war underway to see which viewpoint will prevail. But any shift in public opinion also may well hinge on how much, or how little, people are personally affected as the shutdown drags on.

And that last part is the crux of the matter: so many people say the federal government is too big, does too much (something I mentioned Monday), but only as it effects Other People. The trillion-armed octopus known as the federal government has its tentacles in so many things that any cutbacks or changes effects quite a few Americans. We see state programs that are funded by Los Federales. Home mortgages. Student loans. Inspections of this and that. This program, that program. Things that should be done at the state, county, or local level receive federal backing. A federal shutdown should have a minimal impact on the lives of Americans. Yet, we see these sob stories left and right.

Republican analyst Rich Galen said people who started out disliking the federal government are likely to look at the shutdown’s effects and say, “See, the world is still spinning on its axis, even with these shutdowns and those 800,000 people furloughed. Apparently we don’t need them. They’re not critical.”

But Galen added that every type of government spending “has a champion, and these are services that we are demanding.”

“When it’s your house that’s underwater or your house that got blown over by a tornado, boy, do you want FEMA there,” referring to the federal disaster relief agency.

Bingo. Why is FEMA providing money to rebuild? If yours or my home burned down because of a lightning strike, would the feds give us money? No. We’d have to use our insurance. This goes to so many things. Where does it end?

 

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If All You See…

By William Teach October 15, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is warmth created snow, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Sunshine Hours, with a post on northern hemisphere winter doom.

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Bummer: “Climate Change” Silencing The Sounds Of Nature

By William Teach October 15, 2013 – 10:49 am

All because you purchased a plastic bottle of water, you Gaia hater you

(Accuweather, which should probably deal with simply the weather, rather than activism) Climate change has brought once lively and loud habitats to utter silence as their inhabitants of birds, frogs and insects have either vanished or drastically changed their migration patterns.

A relatively new study known as biophony, or the signature of collective sounds that occur in any given habitat at any given time, has provided scientific evidence to show that the sounds of nature have been altered by both global warming and human endeavors.

Warmists are the ultra-flat earthers, not wanting to see anything ever change.

While soundscape research has not been fully developed, hypotheses for the causes of these changes have been formed.

“My hunch from my work is that it has a lot to do with global warming,” Krause said. “Springtime is occurring almost two weeks earlier than it was even 20 years ago.”

Nature changes. And Mankind will change things through deforestation, habitat destruction, and real pollutants. But, not “climate change”. It was warmer during many of the previous warm periods during the Holocene. It may get warmer during this period, it may not. If Warmists really believed what they are saying, they’d modify their own behavior. Since most won’t make more than token changes, we have all the statistical evidence we need to call the issue mule fritters.

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Shutdown Theater: Squirrels Simply Love Michelle Obama’s Garden

By William Teach October 15, 2013 – 8:39 am

Can we really call it Michelle Obama’s garden, when she isn’t the one who actually does any work?

(Daily Mail) While neither Republicans or Democrats are winning in the government shutdown, there is one group that’s having a field day: the White House squirrels.

The government shutdown coincided with the White House garden’s harvest season, and since much of the staff that tends to the garden has been furloughed the crop has gotten out of control.

The staff that were allowed to stay are only allowed to water the plants. Triming, fetrilizing, transplanting, mowing and harvesting are all off limits.

Gotta love that. Perfect encapsulation of Government. They can only water. So, the squirrels gorge.

Which begs the question: why the heck doesn’t Michelle O get out and do it herself? Actual work instead of a photo op. She could drag the kids out for some exercise. And Barack, since he doesn’t seem to be doing any actual work that helps the country. Seriously, we have to pay people to deal with Michelle’s garden? The very definition of government waste.

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Why’s Obamacare Website So Glitchy? For One Thing, They Don’t Want You To Know The Costs

By William Teach October 15, 2013 – 8:24 am

Essentially, those running healthcare.gov mandated planned incompetence

(Forbes) A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.

“Healthcare.gov was initially going to include an option to browse before registering,” report Christopher Weaver and Louise Radnofsky in the Wall Street Journal. “But that tool was delayed, people familiar with the situation said.” Why was it delayed? “An HHS spokeswoman said the agency wanted to ensure that users were aware of their eligibility for subsidies that could help pay for coverage, before they started seeing the prices of policies.” (Emphasis added.)

As you know if you’ve been following this space, Obamacare’s bevy of mandates, regulations, taxes, and fees drives up the cost of the insurance plans that are offered under the law’s public exchanges. A Manhattan Institute analysis I helped conduct found that, on average, the cheapest plan offered in a given state, under Obamacare, will be 99 percent more expensive for men, and 62 percent more expensive for women, than the cheapest plan offered under the old system. And those disparities are even wider for healthy people.

That raises an obvious question. If 50 million people are uninsured today, mainly because insurance is too expensive, why is it better to make coverage even costlier?

Why indeed? Well, there’s that pesky individual mandate. Of course, it’s less than actually obtaining insurance through the “Affordable” Care Act. But we shouldn’t be surprised that Team Obama looked to obfuscate the true costs of the insurance. This is what “the most transparent administration ever” looks like.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

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Surprise: Obamacare #Failsite Used Just One Non-Competitive Bid

By William Teach October 14, 2013 – 3:02 pm

I’m sure you’re really, really shocked to learn this info about healthcare.gov (via Ace)

(Washington Examiner) Federal officials considered only one firm to design the Obamacare health insurance exchange website that has performed abysmally since its Oct. 1 debut.

Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a sole bidder, CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company with an uneven record of IT pricing and contract performance.

CMS officials are tight-lipped about why CGI was chosen or how it happened. They also refuse to say if other firms competed with CGI, or if there was ever a public solicitation for building Healthcare.gov, the backbone of Obamacare’s problem-plagued web portal.

Remember when Liberals whine about Halliburton? Which was (and still is) one of the only companies in the world that can do what they do? And was at least an American company?

(Washington Times) “I will finally end the abuse of no-bid contracts once and for all,” he thundered to a Grand Rapids, Mich., audience on Oct. 2, 2008. “The days of sweetheart deals for Halliburton will be over when I’m in the White House.” After becoming president, Mr. Obama continued the attack and promised on March 4 to “end unnecessary no-bid and cost-plus contracts. … In some cases, contracts are awarded without competition. … And that’s completely unacceptable.”

Weird, eh?

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If All You See…

By William Teach October 14, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is an evil bad weather creating plastic bottle of water, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Victory Girls, with a post on how CNN treated the Million Vets March.

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Schoolkids Won’t Know What On-Time Snow Looks Like

By William Teach October 14, 2013 – 11:57 am

Won’t someone please think of the children?

It was temporary chaos in southern Germany on Friday after as much as 40 centimeters (15.7 inches) of snow fell in some areas. The early winter weather has toppled trees and downed power lines in Bavaria, leaving about 12,000 people without electricity, and authorities told school children and drivers to stay home. In the Austrian province of Tyrol alone, nearly 30,000 people were lacking power.

It’s also some sort of record. All because you had sausage with your breakfast this morning.

 (The Local) According to the latest forecast from the Swedish weather agency (SMHI) snow will hit Umeå in the north of the country along with Mora and Östersund in central Sweden on Thursday.

Residents living in the capital can expect sleet and possible wet snow on Friday as a result of chilly winds blowing down from the north of the country.

The snow is arriving about a month earlier than normal but weather experts said there is no correlation between an early snowfall and a particularly harsh winter.

Well, there’s obviously a correlation between snow and GHGs, so Warmists tell us. Sadly, it isn’t even hard to find these nuts

Whether it is a freak, sudden blizzard that kills off tens of thousands of cows, or heat waves that seem to never end or storms and floods that drown a community or wildfires that consume miles of trees and countryside in large ravenous bites, our climate is changing.

Sigh.

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Keller: Republicans Should Be Cheering The “Affordable” Care Act

By William Teach October 14, 2013 – 9:33 am

Here’s the NY Times’ Bill Keller with The Rest Of The Story

Unless you’ve been bamboozled by the frantic fictions of the right wing, you know that the Affordable Care Act, familiarly known as Obamacare, has begun to accomplish its first goal: enrolling millions of uninsured Americans, many of whom have been living one medical emergency away from the poorhouse. You realize those computer failures that have hampered sign-ups in the early days — to the smug delight of the critics — confirm that there is enormous popular demand. You have probably figured out that the real mission of the Republican extortionists and their big-money backers was to scuttle the law before most Americans recognized it as a godsend and rendered it politically untouchable.

Just because people access a website doesn’t mean they’re going to purchase the product. And, they aren’t really purchasing the product. The Miami Herald has upgrade enrollees to “urban legand“. Yes, eventually people will sign up. They really do not have a choice. They’ll pay a fine/tax, otherwise. We do want people with health insurance, so that the rest of us aren’t paying for them. What they’re finding out is that it’s not particularly affordable.

What you may not know is that the Affordable Care Act is also beginning, with little fanfare, to accomplish its second great goal: to promote reforms to our overpriced, underperforming health care system. Irony of ironies, the people who ought to be most vigorously applauding this success story are Republicans, because it is being done not by government decree but almost entirely with market incentives.

Did Bill miss the point that these “market incentives” derive from government mandates and requirements? Sure looks like it. That’s not free market in the least.

Using mainly the marketplace clout of Medicare and some seed money, the new law has spurred innovation and efficiency. And while those new insurance exchanges that are now lurching into business will touch roughly 1 in 10 Americans (the rest of us are already covered by private employer plans or by government programs like Medicare), these systemic reforms potentially touch every patient, every taxpayer.

After telling us that we should be applauding these “market incentives”, which derive from government, he tells us that these “market incentive” actually derive from government and will touch virtually every single American. Why wouldn’t Conservatives love that?

Since the Affordable Care Act was signed three years ago, more than 370 innovative medical practices, called accountable care organizations, have sprung up across the country, with 150 more in the works. At these centers, Medicare or private insurers reward doctors financially when their patients require fewer hospital stays, emergency room visits and surgeries — exactly the opposite of what doctors have traditionally been paid to do. The more money the organization saves, the more money its participating providers share. And the best way to save costs (which is, happily, also the best way to keep patients alive) is to catch problems before they explode into emergencies.

There’s a lot of discourse regarding these ACOs, and whether they will work or not. Some say yes, some say no. Some say they will lead to substandard care, and cause people who should be referred to be left without the care they need. Time will tell. What this does do is insinuate The Government into more of our personal health care choices, meaning the decision is between the doctor and the government, not the doctor and the patient.

There’s no doubt that reducing ER visits can reduce health insurance costs. But people who should be heading to the hospitals may not be sent. That is dangerous. And based on Government interference. Anyhow, sure, there are some good parts to Obamacare. They’re the tasty pretzel bun covering the guano-patty. Said guano-patty is the Governmental interference in our lives, the increased control of our health care by Government, the increased costs, etc, you know the hit list. Just obtaining health insurance through the Exchanges involves a huge smattering of governmental agencies. Hugely complicated just to sign up.

One reason you may not have heard much about this part of the Obamacare story is that it is numbingly complicated.

The hell you say!

But I suspect another reason is partisan spite. The Democrats were passionately in favor of enrolling the uninsured, but many would have preferred a government-run program, or at least a public option. What Obamacare has wrought is the kind of market-driven reformation that Republicans pretend to believe in. Which makes you wonder how much of their opposition rests on the merits, and how much is just a loathing for anything associated with Barack Obama.

Got that? Liberal Bill Keller thinks a government driven program that’s incredibly complicated and involves a huge amount of government agencies enforcing a huge amount of government mandates is “free market.” But, we don’t like it cause of Obama. Right. Here’s free market principles in action

In order to fully appreciate that chart, you have to see it in full. Check at Rep. Kevin Brady’s website, where that is enlarged to 9000 x 7000. Yes, that big in order to understand all the connections. Which looked like this before passage of the ACA.

BTW, if Keller thinks the way the ACOs operate is great, having incentives to reduce costs, why don’t we try and do that for Government itself?

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Shutdown Theater: Um, Maybe Los Federales Spend Too Much

By William Teach October 14, 2013 – 8:52 am

Obviously, so many of the Shutdown Theater stories from the left leaning media are designed to tug on the heartstrings, as well as say “those evil mean Republicans are hurting the economy and businesses. But, this tells me something different

(WRAL) Finding work in a sputtering economy is difficult, especially for people with disabilities.

Four out of five disabled adults are unemployed, and their prospects for landing a job are getting slimmer now that the government shutdown has idled the people who train them for jobs and help them stay employed through coaching and support.

Greg Lazo’s vocational rehabilitation position is federally funded, and he was told this week to stop working, leaving his clients on the job without support.

Getting beyond the notion that there are lots and lots of unemployed who are suffering during the Obama Economy, this story is meant to yank on those heart strings. Let’s look deeper: the federal government is funding this program. Why? Before we answer (and someone calls me heartless), let’s see a few more (these all come from the Raleigh N&O while I was looking for the last excerpt)

(Raleigh N&O) A company that makes solar panels for the Department of Defense has no orders to fill.

A consulting firm recently named one of America’s fastest-growing companies has been forced to tap cash reserves without its No. 1 client: the federal government.

(N&O) Illinois is scaling back on certain hospital and nursing home inspections because of the partial federal government shutdown, state officials said.

The Illinois Department of Public Health gets about $1.3 million a month to pay for inspections of medical facilities, but that money’s been stopped because of the shutdown, according to a report (http://bit.ly/18UuKXa ) by the Springfield bureau of Lee Enterprises newspapers.

(Cary News) For many months, I have been preparing to move to Denver, Colo., for Americorps, a federal program that allows young people to do service projects in the U.S. and receive an education award to go toward college or student-loan debt.

Less than one week before my departure date, the government shut down, leaving me with no options.

(N&O) Deanna Osmond, a soil scientist at N.C. State University, recently got the good news she’d been hoping for: a $450,750 research grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Her project is a three-year test of a tool that may help corn farmers adjust nitrogen fertilizer levels during the growing season, rather than guessing at the right amount. The research has practical implications for corn yields in North Carolina and elsewhere.

Then came the bad news: Because of the partial shutdown of the federal government, Osmond was told that her team can’t get the money or start the research. The clock is ticking to launch the study in time for the next corn growing season.

These are just a smattering of stories about the Reliance On Federal Funds. The Helping Hand Of The Federal Government. Your tax dollars, taken at the point of a barrel, well, jail cell. From a federal government that is far away and typically unresponsive to the taxpayer him/herself. These programs themselves are necessarily bad or wasteful, but would be best funded from a more responsive state or local government, or from the private sector. The use of federal money for programs continues to increase yearly, as do the expenditures. And once established, it is darned near impossible to get rid of. If you oppose this use of money, you are heartless, hate science, hate people, are a scrooge, are mean.

Look at that last one: Almost $451k may seem like a drop in the bucket when the federal budget is almost $4 trillion, but it all ads up. Why fund this through the USDA? People have been farming for most of modern human history. If this was really great research, wouldn’t some private company step up, seeing a return on investment?

There are all sorts of waste lists. Consider a few from Zero Hedge‘s 66 ways government wastes your money

  • The IRS is about to pay out 70 million dollars in bonuses to employees even though discretionary bonuses are supposed to be cancelled due to the sequester.
  • The NIH plans to spend $509,840 on a study that “will send text messages in ‘gay lingo’ to methamphetamine addicts to try to persuade them to use fewer drugs and more condoms.”
  • The National Science Foundation has given $384,949 to Yale University to do a study on “Sexual Conflict, Social Behavior and the Evolution of Waterfowl Genitalia”.  Try not to laugh, but much of this research involves examining and measuring the reproductive organs of male ducks.
  • During 2012, $25,000 of federal money was spent on a promotional tour for the Alabama Watermelon Queen.
  • The U.S. government spent $505,000 “to promote specialty hair and beauty products for cats and dogs” in 2012.
  • During fiscal 2012, the National Science Foundation gave researchers at Purdue University $350,000.  They used part of that money to help fund a study that discovered that if golfers imagine that a hole is bigger it will help them with their putting.

I play golf a few times a month (skinned the ever-loving hell out of my knee a few weeks ago…long story, did not involve alcohol, surprisingly), and, wow, that last one was dumb. Tom Coburn should be releasing his 2013 waste list soon. Here’s his 2012. It’s time to reduce the dependency on Los Federales, and reduce this pork and waste. Sure, we would like to help disable folks prepare for jobs and find them, we’re a damned charitable, caring country. So many of these programs are funded not because of caring, but because elected officials want to get re-elected by giving Someone Else’s money away. Where does it end?

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

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