Sandbox – 1jun15

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Sandbox – 1jun15

01 June 2015

[New month, new sandbox. The 30may15 sandbox seems to have turned into a kitty litter box with all the congealed poop balls flying back and forth. Perhaps the participants there will want to retain that venue for continuing those enthusiastic labors and use this new one for more edifying discourse. I for one am interested in what readers think about the Patriot Act's renewal and the trade-offs between our liberties and security. gjr]

Posted in Comment Sandbox

243 responses to “Sandbox – 1jun15”

fish

03 June 2015

I might be wrong about government run health care Paul…..I mean the federal school lunch programs have been having an unbroken string of successes since Michelle Obama involved herself! A testament as to just what one woman can accomplish when she sets her mind to it!
http://eagnews.org/its-heartbreaking-denver-school-board-members-get-a-taste-of-michelle-o-lunches/

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fish

03 June 2015

Was there really ever any doubt as to why President Bunny was so determined to import the needy, unskilled and unproductive to America?
Lever pullers for Team Democrat….!
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/the-supreme-courts-big-data-problem-118568.html#.VW8QI2DscXA

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Ben Emery

03 June 2015

Fish,
Let me push it and try to get the streak to 3.
Phasing out of the federal income tax by abolishing the Federal Reserve.

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fish

03 June 2015

Posted by: Ben Emery | 03 June 2015 at 07:39 AM
How do you square this attempt at extending our “agreement streak” with your earlier statement that during the last financial crisis the “too big to fail” banks needed to be bailed out? The primary reason for the existence of the Federal Reserve is to protect the banking cartel.
No Federal Reserve no financial protection for the big banks.

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Scott Obermuller

03 June 2015

We have national health care – ever hear of the VA? They have a marvelous track record. Don’t they, Paul? And Medicare? What a wonderful single payer system – if you can find a doctor.
Paul claims nationalised health care is wonderful because his friends say so. Well – my friends from Canada and England don’t think so.
That’s because they have sampled both systems.
We do need to make quite a few changes in health care. Get the lawyers out. Make the govt pay docs and hospitals full freight for the services it mandates on them. Make the govt reimburse private employers for the time and trouble of tax collecting for health care. End the waste and fraud in workmans comp and govt run health care systems. As long as the public doesn’t see that they have any skin in the game, most will abuse the system – hey, it’s free, who cares!

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fish

03 June 2015

Posted by: Bill Tozer | 02 June 2015 at 06:33 PM
Mr. fish. I cannot believe my eyes when I read that Caitlyn came out of the closet as a….a….Republican and was forgiven!!!
Tells you just where “she” sits in the progressive hierarchy of victimology. It’s funny too…..once you scratch the surface he/she is “just another privileged white guy” with a really expensive hobby!

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Ben Emery

03 June 2015

Fish,
I have never said in any company that the banks should have been bailed out.

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George Rebane

03 June 2015

re PaulE’s 937pm – This continues a well-circled barn. The list presented is ludicrous when comparing the availability and quality of healthcare in the US. But the socialists (here PaulE is definitely a socialist) are ever pointing out the northern EU countries as implementing their heartthrob healthcare systems.
Unfortunately, a closer examination reveals that all them have problems in that they are lowering the quality and range of services provided, and all of them are unsustainable. A government program is unsustainable when its funding makes up an increasing percentage of the national budget – a truth obvious to all but the most determined of progressives. For an example of single payer healthcare we need look no further than our own Medicare and Medicaid programs as was covered here.
http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2015/06/medicaid-the-growing-morass.html

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Ben Emery

03 June 2015

I am 100% against the big banks and believe they need to be broken up and we need to reinsert Glass Steagall.
Here was my position in 2010 and is basically the same today but possibly with more emphasis on holding big banks accountable and breaking them up.
On October 3, 2008, President George W. Bush signed into law the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Also known as the Bank Bailout Bill, the president and the lobbyists from the financial sector pushed hard to get this bill passed, and quickly.
In the fall of 2008 our financial sector brought the United States of America and the world economies to the brink of collapse. We still haven’t recovered. The U.S. taxpayers bailed out the major banks in hope of preventing a total collapse and so the lending banks would start investing in the productive economy, to fuel an economic recovery. Instead these banks are receiving taxpayer-financed 0% interest loans through the Federal Reserve and investing in Government Bonds that have a 3% return on investment. In the process they have given themselves billions of dollars in bonuses. In 2009 the 40 largest banks, a few thousand individuals, gave themselves $148,000,000,000 (billion) in bonuses.
Both the Republican and Democratic Parties receive huge amounts of bribe/campaign contributions from the financial industry and have failed to pass any meaningful legislation to get this reckless behavior in check. In fact, the banks that were bailed out are now even bigger than before the crisis began. Why aren’t people being charged and convicted of crimes throughout this whole ordeal? It is because the lobbying efforts and the corruption of our government officials have made everything they are doing legal.
Some numbers
Wells Fargo
JP Morgan Chase
Bank of America
Citigroup
These four banks manage and control:
§ 50% of mortgages in America
§ 66% of credit cards in America
An accumulated $7,400,000,000,000 (trillion) in assets, which is around half of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP)
Since no structural reform has been applied to our financial sector, these banks will fail again and the United States will not have the ability to bail them out, AGAIN.
What happens to our country then?
The largest six banks in our economy went from having 17% of GDP in total assets in the mid 1990s to having 63% of GDP in total assets in 2010.
Solutions for the short term and long term
• Enforcement of Sherman Anti-Trust Laws upon banks that are “too big to fail”
• Interest rate credit card cap
• Open the books up to the Federal Reserve
• Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, separating lending banks and investment banks. FDIC insured money can no longer be gambled with investment banks
• Repealing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act 1999
• Repeal the Commodities and Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (so called Enron loophole)
Proposed Legislation That I Support
• S. 2746. This bill addresses the concept of “Too Big to Fail” with respect to certain financial entities and would help enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Laws.
• H.R. 2424. The Federal Reserve Credit Facility Act of 2009 would authorize the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to audit the Federal Reserve
• H.R. 4191. Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act of 2009 (STET tax of 0.25% transaction fee on Wall Street to help control speculation and bubble economies)
• S.2914. United States Employer Ownership Bank Act (this would begin to create federal incentives for employer-owned banks or state-owned banks)
S. 582 Interest Rate Reduction Act ( A bill to amend the Truth in Lending Act to protect consumers from usury or in other words high interest rates and for other purposes)

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fish

03 June 2015

From an exchange we had last October.

It really is business shooting themselves in the foot over the long run due to workers not earning enough money to sustain our economy and the ability to borrow against future wages this economy will sputter and fizzle out.
Agree with the first part of your statement….disagree with the second part (partially). This will be a bigger factor going forward especially with the trend towards automation.
We are in the sputtering stages at the moment and the next crash with be the fizzle out stage since we as a country no longer have the ability to bail ourselves out with more debt. We had the perfect scenario to do so in 2008 but we decided to bail out irresponsible banking/ financial industry and then gave out huge tax breaks with the stimulus package that was about 1/3 of the size needed to get our outdated and failing infrastructure up to 21st century standards.
Again…agree with the first part of your statement….disagree with the second part. The next time will be worse….I suspect much worse. But let’s be honest Ben, you yourself argued for this bailout!
From RL’s Blog
fish says:
September 28, 2014 at 9:19 am
But Ben it’s the disagreements that are so much more interesting. If I wanted that I could have joined “jeffys furious affirmation society”….no thanks!
You posted something once at Rebanes that always puzzled me….a Nader quote that said, in essence.
“Capitalism will never fail because Socialism will always rescue it”
Why would socialism bail out a system that it considers so egregiously flawed?
Reply
Ben Emery says:
September 28, 2014 at 10:02 am
Fish,
Because everyday people will suffer if it does not act.
Ben Emery says:
September 28, 2014 at 10:08 am
oops it should have read
Fish,
“Why would socialism bail out a system that it considers so egregiously flawed?”
-Because everyday people will unduly suffer if it does not act.-
I will add, the predatory form of capitalism we find ourselves in today understands this fully. This is why big industry will take such huge risks. I believe we need to remove the security of limited liability from those who sit atop large institutions/ industry. In a 24 month period BP killed over two dozen people with their negligence and nobody went to jail, this is not justice in any way shape of form.
fish says:
September 28, 2014 at 10:20 am
So your argument is that we must sustain a flawed system that leftist social theorists say must fail eventually because “people will unduly suffer if it doesn’t act”.
I find your argument circular….if this is how it must be so people don’t suffer unduly then how can you criticize it? The predatory capitalist system is in ascendence. Enabled and maintained by progressive politicians and social policies. I don’t recall any of this coming to pass in what little leftist political literature I’ve read?
So you say that these bailouts needed to happen to mitigate “suffering”
Now I won’t lump you in with those who identify as “progressive” who support the democrats since you self identify as a Green/Socialist. But socialist theory requires that a critical phase like the one presented to the democrats in 2007-2008 is necessary to usher in change and yet with a fully democratic legislature and with control of the executive branch and with the whip hand (the ability to bail out these financial institutions…or not) we didn’t do so and find ourselves back in a similar set of conditions as those in place nearly eight years ago.
How exactly do you plan on getting to socialism if you won’t accept a little suffering? I was all for letting the banks fail, liquidating their assets and arresting and prosecuting the bankers for their criminal activity. Letting the “chips fall where they may” as it were.
Remind me again why you consider me a fascist.
Posted by: fish | 19 October 2014 at 03:52 AM

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Ben Emery

03 June 2015

George, 03 June 2015 at 08:22 AM
What you are doing is taking a page from the two major parties and confusing the issues we are talking about.
Paul is talking about health care system and you’re talking health care. Big difference between the two.
1) Access to health care no matter how primitive is better than having no access to the best health care in the world.
2) It is very debatable whether health care in Scandinavian countries is inferior to the US health care. Possibly in specialty medical fields but for overall treatment it is very comparable.
3) Every human being on the planet will get hurt or ill at some point making health care a basic human necessity.
4) In my case I had full insurance and ability to pay deductibles/ copays but still was put on a 8 week wait list for a colonoscopy. After 5 weeks of not eating since my colon was 90% plus blocked by a tumor I finally got a emergency/ urgent colonoscopy, which lasted less than 5 minutes because the scope could not get passed the tumor.
5) What makes you think our health care SYSTEM is sustainable or functional?

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Walt

03 June 2015

Hay Paul. I got shoved into the VA system by Ca. because I was a VET at some point in my life. The last time I needed to see a doc, it took me 3.5 months “to wait in line”.
On top of that I have to go to Reno.
Needed to have a surgical procedure done, and was on the table of 3 hours. When they were done, gave me a handful of tylenol 3 and sent me home. Anywhere else, I would have stayed in the hospital for observation at least. Call it a step above civil war surgery.
I was better off with the insurance I had prior to government meddling. Now I even scare little kids with the scares that are left. Hence the face hair.
My advice to you is, keep your trap shut on matters you don’t have a clue about.
Now the state is going to give illegals better care than I get.

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Ben Emery

03 June 2015

Jesus Fish,
In no way was I advocating the bailout of the big banks, you really have to stretch what was being said into something you want to believe. Calling for action doesn’t mean supporting TARP or the Bail Outs.
– What should have happened is the banks should have been broken up and allowed to fail.
– US federal government and state governments across the US should have started public owned banks with low interest rates so people could stay in their primary residents. 80% of sub prime loans were predatory and a majority of those loans were given to people who qualified for prime loans but were sold a bag of goods from the banks, who are supposed to be the experts. Secondary properties should have been left to the sharks to feast on.

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Ben Emery

03 June 2015

George,
To clarify my 8 week wait list, all the tests trying to figure out what was going on came back negative for cancer. All the doc’s were certain it was Ulcerative Colitis(UC). I kept telling them I could feel something internally on the left side pretty low in the digestive tract and they kept lumping it in UC camp and I was told not to worry about it. I was denied a CT Scan for weeks that would have determined it to be something much more serious than UC. Every step of the way the doctors offices and surgeon’s had to look up my insurance coverage to determine what strategies and treatments they would offer me. Once the strategy based on economics not outcomes was put in place the fights with the insurance company’s started to actually cover the treatments. Sometimes we got what the doctors ordered but more times than not it would have to be modified and some times just outright denied.
Our system is the most complex and about twice as expensive as the next developed nation on the list because of it. The Public/ Private relationship works in some cases but is the recipe for corruption and fraud that plagues our health care system.

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George Boardman

03 June 2015

Industrialized nations with single-payer health care spend less of their GDP on medical care than we do, and their citizens live longer lives than we do.
All of the medical advances pioneered in the U. S. are terrific, but only if you can afford to get access to them.

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Paul Emery

03 June 2015

George
Once again our fundamental difference is that I believe health care for all should be part of our infrastructure, you believe it can be handled by the capitalist free enterprise system. Again I ask you provide me one example of a non subsidized free enterprise health care system anywhere in the world to illustrate your viewpoint.
Your view does condemn all of the countries in my 9:37 to bankruptcy, quite a scope I must add. (ignore the Continent listings)
Fish writes
“Now were letting a corrupt religious institution set public policy for the world? Unreal hypocrisy!!!
You completely miss the point of what I wrote. Santorum claims and campaigns as a Catholic yet wants to dictate the Popes agenda. That about does it for the Catholic vote which will dip him below 2% in the polls. Talking about Santorum as a serious candidate is just comic relief anyway so who cares.

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George Rebane

03 June 2015

BenE 902am – First, I have never maintained that our polyglot healthcare system combining public/private providers under hideous tort laws and insurance companies trying to make a profit is sustainable. We do need to reform our healthcare markets, but not through a demonstrably more unsustainable socialist single-payer system.
The travails you describe on your encounters with our healthcare are not unique to the US. In single-payer countries the state places very definite and often byzantine rules on who, under what circumstances, get which tests and subsequent care. Why do you think the well off travel to second world countries for their ‘healthcare vacations’, a lucrative and rapidly growing global industry?

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Jon

03 June 2015

Ben’s tale about his own experience with the Economic decision tree of healthcare treatment should be enough to outrage any person with an ethical or moral bone in his body. How can anyone calling themselves a Christian support economic discrimination over a basic human need? Something is very, very wrong there, and its an issue that combined with the coming Supreme Court decision on ACA will play a massive role in 2016. Bernie Sanders and the progressive position on healthcare will come out of that one looking really good.
Paul, I saw the Santorum piece as well regarding his lecturing of the Pope. Perhaps the single most idiotic statement yet in the 2016 campaign. Surely won’t be his last idiotic statement. From a guy absolutely despised by the residents of his own state. Go Rick!

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fish

03 June 2015

Posted by: Paul Emery | 03 June 2015 at 09:34 AM
Talking about Santorum as a serious candidate is just comic relief anyway so who cares.
You were the one who raised the topic….apparently you cared.

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fish

03 June 2015

Posted by: Ben Emery | 03 June 2015 at 08:48 AM
Ben….I don’t have to stretch it at all…..the Nader reference was specifically in reference to bailing out the banks!
A position that you yourself endorsed.

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Paul Emery

03 June 2015

Come on Fish, don’t you appreciate a little comic relief? Santorum ha ha ha

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fish

03 June 2015

Posted by: Paul Emery | 03 June 2015 at 10:22 AM.
I do……was that what that was?

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Walt

03 June 2015

LOL! Socialists, If you think state run health care is great, try dealing with Ca. worker’s comp. They own my injury, and are doing everything they can NOT to pay a dime, or cover meds. The fight is on. Some Ahole sitting in front of a computer decides what need or don’t need. The more they deny, the bigger the “cut” of the “savings”. ( third party review… a private business) Someone who isn’t a Dr.,, just someone with a “certificate” of GOD knows what. There is Socialized medicine for you.
Thank You Jerry Brown. 2 million illegals in the state do to.

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Gregory

03 June 2015

So many targets, so little time.
Paul, 10:49PM 2 June, regarding Santorum’s urging the Pope to stay away from climate encyclicals. Good advice, even a stopped clock like Santorum can be right twice a day.
You need to stop taking HuffPo’s word for anything, and they need to not take a SciAm blog’s word in passing for anything. Following your links, the claim is that The Pope has a master’s degree in chemistry. No, he has a technical certificate in chemistry from a high school not unlike Ghidotti, only without the same selectivity (I’m currently NOT a fan of the Ghidotti model). He then worked as a chemistry technician in a food lab for a couple of years, where I assume he did lab work like checking temperatures, pH, sugar content, etc using standard lab equipment. When he entered college, he studied humanities, earning philosophy degrees. Not physics, chemistry or math.
I’ve a bro-in-law who went to a similar Salesian Don Bosco high school in SoCal. One of the better parochial boy’s high school education traditions continued by Catholics, but CalTech it ain’t.
No, Santorum is no climate expert but neither is the Pope, if he takes the expected course, will eventually be up there with Pope Paul V, the fellow who subjected Galileo to the Inquisition and again present the whole ‘papal infallibility’ doctrine as another laughing stock of history. There is a danger in accepting “consensus” as truth, just ask Paul V.

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Gregory

03 June 2015

Fish did the italic thing a’gin

Fixed?

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Todd Juvinall

03 June 2015

90% of Americans were happy with their health care and it delivery system. Paul and the complainers in the 10% have screwed it up royal.

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Paul Emery

03 June 2015

Gregory
The Catholic believe the Pope is the direct word from Christ passed on when Peter was appointed by Christ which not only made him leader, but also made him infallible when he acted or spoke as Christ’s representative on earth. They believe Pope Francis and all Popes are direct descendents of Peter.
Not my cup of religion but it’s what Catholics subscribe to.

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Paul Emery

03 June 2015

Gregory
You’re wrong about Pope Francis, at least according to Forbes:
“When Jorge Mario Bergoglio was a young man, he graduated from technical school as a Chemical Technician. He then earned his Masters Degree in chemistry from the University of Buenos Aries. It was only after that that he decided to become a priest.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/03/12/pope-francis-scientist-2/

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Gregory

03 June 2015

No, “Jon” and Ben, being human and alive in the USA in the 21st century does not give you the right to demand the health care the Koch’s can afford to buy for themselves.
I’ve had gold plated insurance, and it made my first wife’s bout with cancer easier to bear. With access to every treatment available she lived 18 months, had she only the simplest chemotherapy, it might have been as short as a year and a half.
The #1 reform in the wretchedly misnamed PPACA was taxing health benefits, and it still is in the future. Unions and government workers are balking at having what are in essence prepaid health care, tax free. It’s unlimited amounts of other peoples money that fund many of the most bloated systems in the USA, health care and education. Now that we have young people indebted to the tune of over a trillion dollars of debt to the federal government, we now have calls for the government to just pay all tuition. Free education for as long as a college will let you be a student. Wahoo!
How is everyone here spending their $2500 a year health care savings?

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Walt

03 June 2015

Polls now say, ” Give us back George Bush!” And CNN no less!!!
( I guess CNN needs to do something to get ratings up)
Good Morning Gregory,, remember what you were saying about that plane?
The odds are even better in my favor. Not a military bird, but FBI. ( even though it’s registered as “privately owned”.
Today it’s staying within Beale’s airspace. ( just checked)

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Gregory

03 June 2015

No Paul, Forbes isn’t infallible either, it was just a technical degree from a high school not unlike Ghiddoti. Here’s his official biography:
http://www.news.va/en/news/biography-who-is-jorge-mario-bergoglio
He isn’t a scientist.
Here’s a link to an Argentine paper’s mention (via google translate) of his technical high school diploma
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lanacion.com.ar%2F1562738-bergoglio-un-sacerdote-jesuita-de-carrera&edit-text=&act=url

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Gregory

03 June 2015

Yes, Walt, by all accounts the Beale plane is a USAF MC-12 Liberty on a training mission, not the FBI.
There are single engine planes being operated by both the DEA and Fish & Game that are occasionally flying in Nevada County but as yet there ain’t been anything seen like the single engine Cessnas bristling with antennae like the FBI is said to be flying. They don’t fly in circles all day.

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Paul Emery

03 June 2015

Gregory
IBTimes (International Business Times) also confirms his degree. There are endless others if you choose to look.
“Pope Francis, Master of Chemistry, Another Example Of Catholicism’s Long Association With Science”
http://www.ibtimes.com/

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fish

03 June 2015

Posted by: Paul Emery | 03 June 2015 at 11:36 AM
Looks like IBT is confusing their headline writing with the title from a credential. Master of Chemistry probably isn’t the same as “Masters degree in Chemistry”. But hey….if you think that the Catholic Church will make your fever dreams come true regarding Global Warming maybe you should look into converting.

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Walt

03 June 2015

I must disagree. the one I reference is registered “private owner”, and is operated out of Beale. Yes, news reports single engine aircraft, but can only confirm some, not all, are.
If it was a military bird, it wouldn’t even show up on flighttrader.

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Gregory

03 June 2015

Paul, you’re looking only as far as you need to find someone to confirm what you want to believe. The IBTimes article (you blew the link but I found it) pointed to what may be the original source of the misinformation.
“Jorge Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital city, Dec. 17, 1936.
He studied and received a master’s degree in chemistry at the University of Buenos Aires, but later decided to become a Jesuit priest and studied at the Jesuit seminary of Villa Devoto.
He studied liberal arts in Santiago, Chile, and in 1960 earned a degree in philosophy from the Catholic University of Buenos Aires.”
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2013/03/13/cardinal-bergoglio-profile/
So, AFTER the “masters degree”, he then studied philosophy, earning a degree in philosophy in 1960. At the ripe old age of 24, about the age you’d expect for someone who worked for a couple of years after high school and then entered college.
Either he was a prodigy in chemistry whipping through a BS and MS Chemistry by the time he was 20 or so in time to study philosophy, or the official biography is correct and it was a technician’s certificate. The UK Catholic Herald seems to have made a booboo, but then, they might be passing on someone else’s mistake by not going back to more original sources.
Here’s a Facebook page with photos… there’s a great shot of those college students in the 2nd to last row for 2012:
https://www.facebook.com/etn27/photos_stream?ref=page_internal
Sure look like high school kids, don’t they? It’s a Universitu of Buenos Aires in the same way Ghidotti is Sierra College.

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Gregory

03 June 2015

So, Paul, has KVMR been reporting the Pope to be a chemist with a master’s degree in the subject? If so, perhaps it’s time for the News Director to issue a retraction?

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Gregory

03 June 2015

Walt, perhaps you could cite the tail numbers of your suspected FBI flights to make this a bit less open ended.
If the private company that owns the plane you’re worried about is The Rockhill Group, they’re the ones who were awarded the contract to provide the training MC-12 at Beale AFB.

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Ben Emery

03 June 2015

Fish,
You must be a yoga teacher if you don’t think that is a stretch.
Here is Nader in his own words.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbm6xYsJ-5s
Minute 1:50 he addresses his position on the bailouts

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Ben Emery

03 June 2015

Todd, 03 June 2015 at 10:46 AM
You must have gone pretty deep into your ass to pull out the 90% of Americans were happy with the health care system prior to what I assume you’re talking about with the ACA and 10% complainers.
Here is the opening to a comprehensive 2006 paper and polls on US Health Care System.
Health Care in America by ABC News, the Kaiser Family Foundation and USA Today.
Health care in America, 2006: Concerns Focus on Cost.
http://kff.org/health-costs/poll-finding/summary-and-chartpack-health-care-in-america/
• Most Americans are not satisfied with the nation’s health care system. At the root of this dissatisfaction: its price tag.
• An overwhelming 80 percent of the public is dissatisfied with the total cost of care in the nation, including six in ten (58
percent) who are very dissatisfied with costs.
• Slightly more than half –54 percent –are dissatisfied with the quality of care in the nation.
• At the same time, most people are satisfied with their own health insurance coverage (88 percent of the insured rate their coverage
as excellent or good) and with various aspects of their medical care (for example, 89 percent are satisfied with the quality of care
they receive.) Even in the personal realm, costs are the area of least satisfaction, with four in ten saying they are very (19 percent)
or somewhat (22 percent) dissatisfied with their own health carecosts.
• There’s a precariousness to Americans’contentment with their own health insurance coverage. Among theinsured, six in ten are
at least somewhat worried about being able to afford the cost oftheir health insurance over the next few years, and nearly as many
(56 percent) say they worry that by losing a job, they or their family might be left without coverage. Among the uninsured, more
than eight in ten (85 percent) say they are worried about affording the cost of their health care over the next few years, including
63 percent who are very worried.
• Furthermore, problems paying for care are on the rise. The new ABC/KFF/USA Today survey found that the percentage of people
who have had difficulty paying for health care in the last year, or had to put off needed care because of its price, are at new highs.
• One in four Americans say their family has had a problem paying for care sometime during the past year, up 7 percentage
points over the past nine years.
• This rises to 40 percent among young people (aged 18 to 29), and 42 percent among households making less
than $35,000 a year. Among the uninsured, a significant majority (59 percent) report having struggled to pay
for health care.
• Slightly more, 28 percent, say someone in their family has delayed care in the past year, a new high in the ABC and Gallup
trend (compared with between 14 and 25 percent from 1991 through2003). Most in this group said the condition they were
hoping to treat was at least somewhat serious
• Among the uninsured, 68 percent had delayed care in the same period.
• Though the uninsured are the most vulnerable to problems financing care, the majority of Americans who reported having a
problem paying for their care actually have health insurance (69percent of those with problems had insurance coverage.)
• And the cost of purchasing insurance is the major barrier for those who don’t currently have coverage. Slightly more than half (54
percent) of the uninsured say the main reason they don’t have insurance is that they can’t afford it. Another 15 percent have been
refused due to poor health or age. Only 4 percent said the reason they didn’t have insurance was that they didn’t need it.

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fish

03 June 2015

Posted by: Ben Emery | 03 June 2015 at 12:46 PM

The bailout of Wall Street was the “collapse of corporate capitalist ideology” and was clearly a case of socialism bailing out capitalism, independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader said Thursday in an interview with The Denver Post.
“The bailout was so frantic, so ultimatum-laced, so open-ended, so absent of criteria or standards . . . that it was clearly socialism bailing out capitalism,” said Nader, a lawyer, author and longtime consumer advocate.
“I emphasize ‘corporate’ because the only capitalism left now is small business. They are the only ones free to go bankrupt,” added Nader.

But we weren’t speaking about what Nader said Ben….the exchange above was your response to my question about letting the banks fail as opposed to bailing them out.
“Why would socialism bail out a system that it considers so egregiously flawed?”
-Because everyday people will unduly suffer if it does not act.-
You answer every question except the one that is asked.
But OK….the next time the banks get into trouble, and that time is coming, you are on the record as being in favor of letting the whole thing implode regardless of any “suffering” that that event might cause?

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Gregory

03 June 2015

From Ben’s latest missive:
“89 percent [were] satisfied with the quality of care they receive”
I’d give Todd a pass on that 90% satisfied, Ben.

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Gregory

03 June 2015

While the Final Jeopardy! theme is playing awaiting Paul’s return, there’s an interesting Wiki article on the biochemist who was the Pope’s boss at that food laboratory after he graduated from that high school with the “masters in chemistry”. A Marxist, she died in a skydiving accident when the Argentine military forgot to give her a parachute:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Ballestrino

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Scott Obermuller

03 June 2015

“The bailout of Wall Street was the “collapse of corporate capitalist ideology” and was clearly a case of socialism bailing out capitalism, independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader said Thursday in an interview with The Denver Post.”
Correct – note that he said ‘corporate capitalism’. Basically fascism.
He did not blame free market capitalism because because we don’t have that. The govt and some of the banks and a whole lot of idiot greedy American home owners were to blame. And they took others down with them because of socialism. That’s ‘shared misery’. And it will happen again and the govt will bail out some of the favored ones again, because if they don’t, what are we left with? Just the financially healthy folks and companies with cash and we would make the killing of all time in asset acquisition. And we’re the ‘wrong’ folks to hold power. So, yes, it’s coming and we’ll all find out who’s too big to fail. Because in socialism the intelligent and industrious are always bailing out the lazy, greedy and stupid.

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Gregory

03 June 2015

Paul, here’s something else to chew on, complete with a twitter statement by the Pope’s biographer:
http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/2015/05/pope-francis-does-not-have-masters.html
It was some sort of food chemistry diploma, which explains why he got a job at a food chemistry lab after high school.

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Todd Juvinall

03 June 2015

Sorry Ben Emery, I was wrong it was 89% not 90%, mea culpa.

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Todd Juvinall

03 June 2015

Oh and Ben Emery, I didn’t have to pull it out, you are just a hootless hoot!

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Walt

03 June 2015

Gregory. Note the info on the plane.
This is live.
http://www.flightradar24.com/66d9ed4
This is the same “turkey vulcher” spotted over PV and GV off and on for the past year.
today it’s over it’s roost.

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Paul Emery

03 June 2015

Gregory
We don’t do much Pope news at KVMR. The whole thing is curious though. Huffington Post, Forbes and IBTimes and several others are serious ventures that I doubt would make such an error.
Here’s another from the Catholic Herald
“He studied and received a master’s degree in chemistry at the University of Buenos Aires, but later decided to become a Jesuit priest and studied at the Jesuit seminary of Villa Devoto. ”
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2013/03/13/cardinal-bergoglio-profile/
And more:
“His master’s in chemistry is especially important for the Catholic Church in the 21st century, says Hank Campbell at Science 2.0. In fact, we’ve now “had back-to-back popes with solid support for science,” which carries on “a long tradition of advancement of science among Catholics” — believe it or not, “the Catholics have the oldest science institute in the world,” and Galileo was one of its first presidents. “Pope Francis is a humble man and that’s good, because 21st-century science is humbling. The world is going to change pretty fast.”
http://theweek.com/articles/466652/6-key-things-everyone-should-know-about-pope-francis
I find it hard to believe that with all the publicity surrounding his Popedom that such a crucial fact would be wrong.

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George Rebane

03 June 2015

FYI – the Catholic pope claims to speak infallibly for God only when he assumes and pronounces his words to be ‘Ex Cathedra’ – from the cathedral, the pulpit, or (Latin) the chair (of authority and teaching). And even in that event, he has that dispensation only in the realms of morals and the exercise of faith. I think that last pope to speak ex cathedra was Pius XII in 1950.

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