Where is this "sub 10K investment to power a reasonably efficient house"? I live in a modest home, very well insulated, and have had two renewable contractors out here. A $20,000 investment in solar has a payback of 20 years, and will handle 30% of our electricity needs - we heat with natural gas. It took days and days of calling just to find a contractor who would return my calls.
If it wasn't for the safety crats, and all those folks in Washington looking out for us, you could get a 60 MPG car for $12,000.
These folks, who gave us mandate after mandate after mandate, is why cars aren't as efficient as they could be. And then we lower the quality of our fuel by rewarding Agri-Business for all of those bribes they paid, and mileage goes down again. And the rules for Ethanol were written so poorly, there is now an overabundance of it, and we are going to be forced to consume more of it, ruining all the poor people's cars in the process.
If the government were put in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there would be a sand shortage.
Cherry picking on year's financials without any details proves nothing. Truth be told, the biggest crime committed by the oil companies is they don't give enough money to Democrats. Seriously.
The same story can be told for the fantasy about those horrible oil company subsidies, that go to small wildcat drillers to encourage exploration. One Solyndra pays for those for several years....
And where does the money for these subsidies come from? More debt? Taxes on the rich? Punish the middle class?
The same people who predicted the ice age coming in the 1970's, the same people who are predicting horrible, dire consequences for Global Warming, climate change, what ever, are the same people who stuck us with Daylight Savings Time... And there are legions of people out there who religiously believe everything these people say we need in order to save ourselves from certain destruction.
Maybe the problem is... these people, not the time zones.
You proved that I am speaking the truth the second you called me a sorry excuse for a human being. That's what lefties do when they can't make any counterpoints that make sense. Thanks!!
For the record I despise both parties, although I despise the left's Alinsky tactics more, as this method of propaganda is destroying the country by fomenting the kind of hateful, insulting statements coming out of the left. Clearly you've never been to an ex-communist country, you really should see what one party rule was really like.
Are you sure you didn't use a state run exchange site?
I know lots of people who have tried to get on, but have had no success at all. If lots of people were getting on, and registering, and buying insurance it wouldn't be a secret. The only reason it's a secret is because the numbers are incredibly low.
So we have three more no-bid contracts for an undisclosed sum.
Of course not even a whimper of discontent from the media, the lefties, or the commentators here, many of whom wailed and howled for years about such practices when the evil Rethugnikans did this out of necessity for ONE MONTH. Because as we all know some pigs are equal, but some pigs are not as equal as others.
By the time this is over we'll have a trillion dollar website. And then we will hear about the CRISIS where the whole thing has to be rewritten, or we are all doomed, and if the opposition party protests, well, they hate children, want grandma to starve, and just want people to die.
Not true at all. I'm sure you read this on some left wing alleged "news" site, and believe it to be true, because you believe that the opposition party is pure evil of the worst sort, and follow the prime directive of the Democrat party - demonize your opponent.
That's a shame, because the end result of this philosophy is total gridlock on everything.
Back when the Clintonista's tried to push this through, they did it the same exact way - Secret meetings, back room deals with the insurance companies, etc. and no surprise it failed. The Obama Administration had a majority in both houses, so they were able to ram it though - although it only passed in the Senate by using a procedural trick where it was attached to a budget bill.
Since then, the Democrats have engaged in a propaganda war where the Republicans only want to kill the whole thing because they want old people to die, grandma to starve, etc. etc. (yes, a few Republicans want to throw the whole thing out, but not all). The Democrats are following the Alinsky rule to the letter by refusing to negotiate with their opponent. Republicans made such horrible suggestions as "Treat individuals the same as corporations" or "Don't give waivers to your political friends" or "Delay this thing until you get it right" - oh the horror!! A mere month ago any delay of ObamaCare was the act of a terrorist, and what a surprise last week the Democrats just delayed part of it. Which means, of course, that the Democrats are terrorists to anyone who has any memory at all. I am sure you believe the party line version, not the truth, and I am wasting my breath.
This week we have the Democratic Party arguing over the meaning of the word "lie" and "most", just like the Clintonistas argued over the meaning of the word "is".
But don't let a few facts get in the way of your emotionally charged Alinsky fueled hate machine, where the opposition is pure evil, and the only way to survive at all is to completely eradicate them, leaving us with one party rule and a glorious Utopian paradise. Of course a thousand plus years of human history would tell you exactly what happens when this occurs, but you probably wouldn't believe it anyway.
Go talk to people in countries that were once under Communist rule, you'd learn a lot. Go talk to people that live under single payer - lots of them, not just cherry picked examples presented online. The money would be well spent.
Obamacare is not Romney Care. Romney care started with three years of bipartisan negotiation... Obamacare was written in secret, excluding the Republicans completely... And it continues from there.
The 1.4% cost doesn't take into account the costs incurred by the providers... which are simply added to the reimbursement rates doctors will provide service for...
So another company, seeing an advantage, offers same widget for $9, undercutting your example. They then, in turn reduce the price to $8. And so it goes.
What's really happening, my friend, is that your company bribes a few politicians and gets a law passed that says the lowest price the widget can be sold for is $10...
The problem with this wonderful Marxist argument is that it completely ignores one critical factor: The customer.
Without customers, you have no sales. Without sales, you have no profit. Business is the balance of what the stockholders want against what the customers want, and a successful business balances those two groups.
The alternative is that the government controls the means of production, and forces you to consume what it thinks you need. Please, go visit Eastern Europe, or Russia, and talk to the people who lived under this system, ask them what it is really like. You'll be very surprised.
Your point is devoid of any rational consideration of reality. It sounds good, of course, and is emotionally appealing.
First, individual insurance costs more than group - because the risk pool is smaller, it's just you. Duh.
Second, the whole "pre-existing conditions" argument is bunk. What you can't do is walk into the insurance company with a broken leg and demand they pay for it when you are not covered. Some pre-existing conditions have been covered by law for YEARS, others are not.
Having a single, national group that insures everybody requires an organization that is 1/6th of the whole economy. The inefficiency in an organization that size is beyond comprehension of most folks. The management team of this organization would have the power of life and death over every single citizen. Where are you going to find these awesome people, who will toil away for the benefit of us all, never taking advantage, never putting money in their own pockets? They do not exist.
What motivation are they going to have to provide the best healthcare at the best price? ZERO....
To top it off you want an accountant who lives in Fargo. ND to be in same risk pool as a fisherman in the Bering Sea. That, is also a very crazy idea.
The health insurance industry is one of the most over-regulated, over-overisghted, Overlord controlled industries in the U.S. aside from perhaps nuclear power.
I was involved in HealthCare I.T. for a time, and the driving force behind 99% of the decisions was some new government regulation - that always, always, always drove up costs and reduced patent care. Every single time.
This whole crazy idea that an insurance companies strategic objective is to make ridiculous profits while fucking all the customers is bunk. YES, they expect to make a profit - they are beholden to their stockholders, after all, that is how a public corporation works. However if you're customers are all angry because of how you treat them, they go elsewhere. This is the reality for all businesses.
Insurance companies are legalized gambling. They set the price of the policy based on what they expect to pay out in claims, plus any income they hope to gain from the investments they make from the premiums. It really is that simple.
There are a few people on SlashDot that are over the age of 30, have control of their emotions, and are not easily influenced by propaganda.
I get so tired of hearing "THE NARRATIVE" parroted over and over by people who refuse to compare what has actually happened as result of the ideas within certain parts of with "THE NARRATIVE" being implemented. Then again, I live near Detroit, it's easy to see this first hand.
And when you try to discuss things with them in a calm, rational way, you get "Demonize your opponent" and it quickly becomes hopeless.
Not at all. Dumb managers hire dumb people because all they care about is not looking bad. Smart managers hire smart people, because they care about results.
You are exactly right, and the same argument applies to the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs.
Since the days of LBJ we've spent untold trillions and trillions of dollars "eradicating poverty" and surprise the poverty rate hasn't improved one bit. What we have done is make being poor more comfortable, reducing the number of poor folks who really want to succeed.
And yet your mode liberal howls and wails that my statement proves I want poor people to starve and die, and the REAL solution is to shovel ever increasing buckets of money at the problem. After 50 years of hard evidence - THIS DOES NOT WORK.
So we need to force everyone to get a college degree. No, we don't. And if we do, we'll end up dumbing down everybody else, because we'll be forced to teach college to the lowest common denominator - something that is already happening! What's being taught at the college level TODAY was being taught at the High School level when I was in High School in the 1970's -- all because the government created a system were student test scores were used to dole out funding. No Child Left Behind means Every Child an equal idiot.
When, I wonder, will the social engineering types learn to think rationally and figure this out... I'll be long gone before that happens.
When a politician passes a law that puts money in his or his party's pocket by making a back door deal with a corporation, or a lobbying firm, that results in money being taken from me, it's stealing from me to pad his (and his parties) pockets. When I pay taxes for things that result in income redistribution to other citizens, that is an entirely different matter.
Those of us who live in or near some of America's most corrupted cities (Detroit, Chicago) know exactly how this works, and have watched this same way of doing business imported into Washington, DC by this Administration-- not surprising as Chicago is where Obama learned politics. Not that it was clean as whistle before Obama came by any means:-)
In Detroit the difference between the Mafia and the Democratic Party and the Unions is negligible. Same thing in Chicago... In Detroit a good percentage of the last administration is in prison, and the city went bankrupt because they couldn't possibly pay all the bribes they had committed to pay!!
Plus pad their own pockets, or the parties pockets while making these deals. A LOT of that funding money is money laundering. I call it THEFT. They are stealing from ME, the taxpayer, to pay BRIBES back to the politician or the party....
Slashdot Mirror
Where is this "sub 10K investment to power a reasonably efficient house"? I live in a modest home, very well insulated, and have had two renewable contractors out here. A $20,000 investment in solar has a payback of 20 years, and will handle 30% of our electricity needs - we heat with natural gas. It took days and days of calling just to find a contractor who would return my calls.
No subsidies, no tax credits are available.
Absolutely correct. We would have safer, newer nuclear plants if the greenies hadn't fought so hard to stop nuclear energy.
Large scale wind/solar can't survive without subsidies, but big projects pay big bribes to the politicians.
If it wasn't for the safety crats, and all those folks in Washington looking out for us, you could get a 60 MPG car for $12,000.
These folks, who gave us mandate after mandate after mandate, is why cars aren't as efficient as they could be. And then we lower the quality of our fuel by rewarding Agri-Business for all of those bribes they paid, and mileage goes down again. And the rules for Ethanol were written so poorly, there is now an overabundance of it, and we are going to be forced to consume more of it, ruining all the poor people's cars in the process.
If the government were put in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there would be a sand shortage.
My modern full sized pickup gets 22 MPG. So an 8mpg difference is something I should be punished for? I can afford the fuel.
If it wasn't for the ethanol I am forced to buy along with the gas it would probably get 25 mpg.
Cherry picking on year's financials without any details proves nothing. Truth be told, the biggest crime committed by the oil companies is they don't give enough money to Democrats. Seriously.
The same story can be told for the fantasy about those horrible oil company subsidies, that go to small wildcat drillers to encourage exploration. One Solyndra pays for those for several years....
And where does the money for these subsidies come from? More debt? Taxes on the rich? Punish the middle class?
Wage/Price controls never work. They have been tried, and tried, and tried again without a single success.
People who don't understand economics believe you can pass some law and fix everything. It just doesn't work...
The same people who predicted the ice age coming in the 1970's, the same people who are predicting horrible, dire consequences for Global Warming, climate change, what ever, are the same people who stuck us with Daylight Savings Time... And there are legions of people out there who religiously believe everything these people say we need in order to save ourselves from certain destruction.
Maybe the problem is... these people, not the time zones.
You proved that I am speaking the truth the second you called me a sorry excuse for a human being. That's what lefties do when they can't make any counterpoints that make sense. Thanks!!
For the record I despise both parties, although I despise the left's Alinsky tactics more, as this method of propaganda is destroying the country by fomenting the kind of hateful, insulting statements coming out of the left. Clearly you've never been to an ex-communist country, you really should see what one party rule was really like.
Are you sure you didn't use a state run exchange site?
I know lots of people who have tried to get on, but have had no success at all. If lots of people were getting on, and registering, and buying insurance it wouldn't be a secret. The only reason it's a secret is because the numbers are incredibly low.
We have tried to get registered since the day the site opened with zero success, trying every day. I think you, sir, are a paid troll.
So we have three more no-bid contracts for an undisclosed sum.
Of course not even a whimper of discontent from the media, the lefties, or the commentators here, many of whom wailed and howled for years about such practices when the evil Rethugnikans did this out of necessity for ONE MONTH. Because as we all know some pigs are equal, but some pigs are not as equal as others.
By the time this is over we'll have a trillion dollar website. And then we will hear about the CRISIS where the whole thing has to be rewritten, or we are all doomed, and if the opposition party protests, well, they hate children, want grandma to starve, and just want people to die.
Not true at all. I'm sure you read this on some left wing alleged "news" site, and believe it to be true, because you believe that the opposition party is pure evil of the worst sort, and follow the prime directive of the Democrat party - demonize your opponent.
That's a shame, because the end result of this philosophy is total gridlock on everything.
Back when the Clintonista's tried to push this through, they did it the same exact way - Secret meetings, back room deals with the insurance companies, etc. and no surprise it failed. The Obama Administration had a majority in both houses, so they were able to ram it though - although it only passed in the Senate by using a procedural trick where it was attached to a budget bill.
Since then, the Democrats have engaged in a propaganda war where the Republicans only want to kill the whole thing because they want old people to die, grandma to starve, etc. etc. (yes, a few Republicans want to throw the whole thing out, but not all). The Democrats are following the Alinsky rule to the letter by refusing to negotiate with their opponent. Republicans made such horrible suggestions as "Treat individuals the same as corporations" or "Don't give waivers to your political friends" or "Delay this thing until you get it right" - oh the horror!! A mere month ago any delay of ObamaCare was the act of a terrorist, and what a surprise last week the Democrats just delayed part of it. Which means, of course, that the Democrats are terrorists to anyone who has any memory at all. I am sure you believe the party line version, not the truth, and I am wasting my breath.
This week we have the Democratic Party arguing over the meaning of the word "lie" and "most", just like the Clintonistas argued over the meaning of the word "is".
But don't let a few facts get in the way of your emotionally charged Alinsky fueled hate machine, where the opposition is pure evil, and the only way to survive at all is to completely eradicate them, leaving us with one party rule and a glorious Utopian paradise. Of course a thousand plus years of human history would tell you exactly what happens when this occurs, but you probably wouldn't believe it anyway.
Go talk to people in countries that were once under Communist rule, you'd learn a lot. Go talk to people that live under single payer - lots of them, not just cherry picked examples presented online. The money would be well spent.
Obamacare is not Romney Care. Romney care started with three years of bipartisan negotiation... Obamacare was written in secret, excluding the Republicans completely... And it continues from there.
The 1.4% cost doesn't take into account the costs incurred by the providers... which are simply added to the reimbursement rates doctors will provide service for...
Too bad the reality is that everybody's premiums are simply going up.
So another company, seeing an advantage, offers same widget for $9, undercutting your example. They then, in turn reduce the price to $8. And so it goes.
What's really happening, my friend, is that your company bribes a few politicians and gets a law passed that says the lowest price the widget can be sold for is $10...
The problem with this wonderful Marxist argument is that it completely ignores one critical factor: The customer.
Without customers, you have no sales. Without sales, you have no profit. Business is the balance of what the stockholders want against what the customers want, and a successful business balances those two groups.
The alternative is that the government controls the means of production, and forces you to consume what it thinks you need. Please, go visit Eastern Europe, or Russia, and talk to the people who lived under this system, ask them what it is really like. You'll be very surprised.
Talk to people who live in these countries to learn the truth.
Your point is devoid of any rational consideration of reality. It sounds good, of course, and is emotionally appealing.
First, individual insurance costs more than group - because the risk pool is smaller, it's just you. Duh.
Second, the whole "pre-existing conditions" argument is bunk. What you can't do is walk into the insurance company with a broken leg and demand they pay for it when you are not covered. Some pre-existing conditions have been covered by law for YEARS, others are not.
Having a single, national group that insures everybody requires an organization that is 1/6th of the whole economy. The inefficiency in an organization that size is beyond comprehension of most folks. The management team of this organization would have the power of life and death over every single citizen. Where are you going to find these awesome people, who will toil away for the benefit of us all, never taking advantage, never putting money in their own pockets? They do not exist.
What motivation are they going to have to provide the best healthcare at the best price? ZERO....
To top it off you want an accountant who lives in Fargo. ND to be in same risk pool as a fisherman in the Bering Sea. That, is also a very crazy idea.
His entire story is a load of bull.
The health insurance industry is one of the most over-regulated, over-overisghted, Overlord controlled industries in the U.S. aside from perhaps nuclear power.
I was involved in HealthCare I.T. for a time, and the driving force behind 99% of the decisions was some new government regulation - that always, always, always drove up costs and reduced patent care. Every single time.
This whole crazy idea that an insurance companies strategic objective is to make ridiculous profits while fucking all the customers is bunk. YES, they expect to make a profit - they are beholden to their stockholders, after all, that is how a public corporation works. However if you're customers are all angry because of how you treat them, they go elsewhere. This is the reality for all businesses.
Insurance companies are legalized gambling. They set the price of the policy based on what they expect to pay out in claims, plus any income they hope to gain from the investments they make from the premiums. It really is that simple.
There are a few people on SlashDot that are over the age of 30, have control of their emotions, and are not easily influenced by propaganda.
I get so tired of hearing "THE NARRATIVE" parroted over and over by people who refuse to compare what has actually happened as result of the ideas within certain parts of with "THE NARRATIVE" being implemented. Then again, I live near Detroit, it's easy to see this first hand.
And when you try to discuss things with them in a calm, rational way, you get "Demonize your opponent" and it quickly becomes hopeless.
Kudo's to you Sir, keep it up!
Not at all. Dumb managers hire dumb people because all they care about is not looking bad. Smart managers hire smart people, because they care about results.
You are exactly right, and the same argument applies to the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs.
Since the days of LBJ we've spent untold trillions and trillions of dollars "eradicating poverty" and surprise the poverty rate hasn't improved one bit. What we have done is make being poor more comfortable, reducing the number of poor folks who really want to succeed.
And yet your mode liberal howls and wails that my statement proves I want poor people to starve and die, and the REAL solution is to shovel ever increasing buckets of money at the problem. After 50 years of hard evidence - THIS DOES NOT WORK.
So we need to force everyone to get a college degree. No, we don't. And if we do, we'll end up dumbing down everybody else, because we'll be forced to teach college to the lowest common denominator - something that is already happening! What's being taught at the college level TODAY was being taught at the High School level when I was in High School in the 1970's -- all because the government created a system were student test scores were used to dole out funding. No Child Left Behind means Every Child an equal idiot.
When, I wonder, will the social engineering types learn to think rationally and figure this out... I'll be long gone before that happens.
When a politician passes a law that puts money in his or his party's pocket by making a back door deal with a corporation, or a lobbying firm, that results in money being taken from me, it's stealing from me to pad his (and his parties) pockets. When I pay taxes for things that result in income redistribution to other citizens, that is an entirely different matter.
:-)
Those of us who live in or near some of America's most corrupted cities (Detroit, Chicago) know exactly how this works, and have watched this same way of doing business imported into Washington, DC by this Administration-- not surprising as Chicago is where Obama learned politics. Not that it was clean as whistle before Obama came by any means
In Detroit the difference between the Mafia and the Democratic Party and the Unions is negligible. Same thing in Chicago... In Detroit a good percentage of the last administration is in prison, and the city went bankrupt because they couldn't possibly pay all the bribes they had committed to pay!!
Plus pad their own pockets, or the parties pockets while making these deals. A LOT of that funding money is money laundering. I call it THEFT. They are stealing from ME, the taxpayer, to pay BRIBES back to the politician or the party....