George Rebane

Overwhelmingly what government touches, government taints.

NPR reported this morning that 2 million who signed up for Obamacare last year have now dropped out due to not being able to afford the cynically named Affordable Care Act.  The embarrassing stats show that with more and more people opting out, the net sign-ups have slowed to a trickle.  This mandated travesty that has inflicted our country’s healthcare now reveals more of its fraudulent sides every day.

Recall back in 2009 there were supposed to 20 million Americans without healthcare insurance, and of those there wee 9 million who actually wanted it and couldn’t afford it.  This number was a pittance for an excuse to destroy the nation’s healthcare system and revamp one sixth of its economy.  So it was upped – first to 30 million, then to 40 million.  The overwhelming number of these were the young and self-insureds who chose not to buy health insurance, and, of course, those very same on whom the touted ‘success’ of Obamacare depended.  Well boys and girls, today the government reports that after people found out enough truth (there is more to come) about this dose of socialist medicine, there are still 41 million Americans without healthcare insurance.

This hits hardest the poor and the lower middle class most (all?) of whom must pay a penalty if they don’t sign up – apparently there is another complication about those hoped for subsidies that involves what kind of co-op is available in your state.  The bottom line is that the system continues to be a costly mess for all except the healthcare and pharma corporatists who have gamed the system.  But then, who could have predicted that?  (more here)

The upcoming Paris conference on preventable global warming (PGW) is starting to hit some early speed bumps.  A major one is President Putin of Russia who readers may remember years ago identified PGW as a scientific and political fraud – “there is no global warming, that this is a fraud to restrain the industrial development of several countries including Russia,”  Russia’s position has been “that the climate is a complicated system and that, so far, the evidence presented for the need to ‘fight’ global warming was rather unfounded.”  Anthony Watts has a piece (here) that goes into some detail about what to expect from Russia and poor countries in Paris.

But the greatest fraudster at the conference will be China who today has completely bamboozled the nitwits comprising Team Obama.  Recall the happy dancing in the oval office when China ‘agreed’ to curtail CO2 emissions in some remote future epoch.  But, of course, we were never told the real details of the deal.  China, along with other second and third world countries, will demand exceptions and payments from the first world (i.e. the US) if they are to play along in Paris and contribute to maintaining the hysteria.  This becomes comical when we consider that we have to borrow the money from China to first pay it and the G77 block of nations the agreed upon subsidies, and then second, repay China the borrowed amount.  The bamboozle doesn’t get any better than this.  Meanwhile our leftwing loonies are touting to our gruberized all the added economic benefit and green jobs that PGW spending will create – NOT!  (see also 3nov15 update below)

[update]  Racial profiling done right.  Former GM auto loan maker Ally (nee GMAC) was accused of stiffing minorities by charging them too much to finance their cars.  Ally has agreed make reparations without admitting guilt, so it wants to send checks to hundreds of thousands of blacks and Hispanics.  The problem is Ally doesn’t know who the minorities were since it didn’t collect race data on its customers, only names and addresses.  Enter the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (a present from Dodd-Frank) and DoJ.  Their solution is racial profiling done right – it’s always done right when the gummint does it.

The CFPB has to help Ally infer their customers’ minority status just from name and address data.  However, because a lot of blacks share surnames and live cheek by jowl with one another (you know, 'ghetto' and all that).  So not to worry because this bureau has got a spiffy little Bayesian algorithm that Rand developed for them to do exactly this kind of work – determine race from a person’s attributes, and, of course, determine attributes using a person’s race (and that's another story).  But don’t you dare do it – no, no, no, noooh!  The CFPB is running Ally’s customer data through something appropriately named Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding (BISG).  While not perfect, BISG does a hell of a job given a bunch of names and addresses.  (more here)

Bottom line, Ally is currently spraying the countryside with checks of around $300-$500.  And get this (trigger warning – blow your nose and seatbelts please), Ally is also sending along letters asking the check recipients to return the money if they are not a minority.  Now you have to understand that the recipient has no legal requirement to return the manna from heaven, but that’s the solution that pleases CFPB.  Actually, Ally doesn’t give a big rat’s a$$ – they will just send out checks that sum to a stipulated amount, and then everyone declares total victory.  Now did anyone do a bit of racial profiling here?  Nah, not so’s you could tell.

[2nov15 update]  The Union’s oversight in promoting tourism.  Last Friday the 30oct15 edition of The Union had its usual Our View column that is supposed to represent the consensus thinking of its editorial board.  The titled ‘We need to scare up as many tourists as we can’ went through the well-known litany of what economic benefit tourists bring to our community.  But it and so many other good-hearted promoters of Nevada County almost always miss is tourism’s major component – the performance arts and what is required to bring more here to enjoy live performances.  Few come here only drawn by our shops and restaurants – they mostly come to enjoy the events for which our county is known.  These range from symphony concerts under the stars to car and dog shows, and everything in between.  Music is a special forte of our neighborhood with organizations offering classical and pop music concerts, three or four theaters, the Art Center, numerous fairground events for affinity groups, the county fair, …

But what we don’t have is sufficient overnight accommodations.  Many (most?) of our events – performance and exhibits – occur either in the evenings or over more than one day.  No one wants to drive up here from the flats to attend and evening show that most certainly includes a dinner, and then contemplate driving an hour or two in the dark to get back home.  Many – most certainly the retirees – would rather have a hotel room or B&B waiting for them when it’s time for bed.  The visit would then be concluded after a fine breakfast the next morning in one of our unique eateries.  But we don’t have the necessary hotel rooms, nor are we making any visible efforts to fix that problem.  And editorial pieces like the mentioned one in The Union and other civic promoters don’t even include this significant deficit when they talk of tourism and economic development in general.  Maybe next time.

[3nov15 update]  The Left's policy of silencing dissent is universal, and always has been.  A correspondent points out the latest from an AP dateline Paris.  "A weather forecaster for French state television has been fired after releasing and promoting a book criticizing politicians, scientists and others for what he calls an exaggerated view of climate change. … Philippe Verdier's dismissal from France-2 comes a month before Paris hosts a U.N. conference aimed at the most ambitious worldwide agreement yet to limit global warming. He announced the dismissal in an online video over the weekend in which he described it as an attack on media freedom."