The government's drone strikes seem to lack the whole "Testimony of two Witnesses". And last I checked, Congress hadn't gotten around to explicitly creating a special federal death penalty of "Blown to Flinders by a Hellfire missile". And blowing up minors because their parent was 'treasonous' seems an awful lot like "Corruption of Blood" to me.
The key concept you are missing that is leading to confusion is "enemy combatant." Lets use it in a sentence: Anwar al-Awlaki was a recruiter for Al Qaida, and an enemy combatant linked to many attacks and attempted attacks against the United States and its allies, so he became a target for a Hellfire missile in Al Qaida controlled areas of Yemen. No need for a trial when he was in the enemy camp, so to speak, performing duties with them.
The Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners held a meeting with the vendor in May, held another meeting in June, and then an order was placed for software to support exporting in CSV format in September. You can't think of a more likely scenario for the meetings and order than FRAUD! MASSIVE OBVIOUS FRAUD!!??
Show us your stuff. We want to do this different, can you change it?
Talk to lawyers, talk to budget office, agree on price, schedule, and delivery. Here is an order.
You seem to be generally misinformed on this matter, so here are a few things. The Congress passed the resolution noted in the following document: Authorization For Use Of Military Force in Response to the 9/11 Attacks. The Supreme Court of the United States has held this type of Congressional authorization to be equivalent to a declaration of war. If you join the enemy making war on the United States, you can be captured or killed under the law of war - no trial is necessary beforehand. All of your hand waving on these matters is just that. Your lack of familiarity with the personal involvement of an enemy combatant with attacks or attempted attacks doesn't change or weaken the findings against them.
As an American citizen you don't have a Constitutional right to join a terrorist group and attack the United States or its allies. If you join with them, you will be treated like them, i.e. captured or killed as possible or necessary. Renegade Americans may be the most dangerous of all since they know the ins and outs of American society, and can identify weak points for attack, and coach would-be attackers to be more effective. If you go renegade, you accept the consequences of war. If you want a nice trial, then surrender so that charges can be prepared and a trial set.
There is no great mystery about why Al Awlaki was killed. The man actively recruited for Al Qaida, was directly tied to numerous people making attacks, and was apparently involved in planning attacks. The man was an enemy of the American people, whom he plotted to kill in large numbers, an enemy of the state that he hoped to help destroy, and an enemy of humanity as a stateless terrorist, the very kin to pirates, hostis humani generis. Is slaveryfar behind?
I do not support many of President Obama's policies, but he is correct in this one, and against that man.
The United States is not rounding up or making war against people who insult the First Lady, or the President, but rather against actual and would be mass murderers, terrorists, war criminals. It is quite amazing to me that so many people get this elementary question wrong, this isn't even close to being hard to understand. Somehow I expect you will amaze me again.
why is no one fuming over Obama's killing of two American citizens with drones?
People like you are. Most Americans aren't. Those two citizens took up arms against the United States to make war against it as members of an enemy engaged in war against the United States. Is this a puzzle? They could have surrendered, but didn't. There is precedent for this sort of action. In fact, the Federal government has shot down many Americans in the same status before. There is actually a video representation of one of these incidents.
This is one of the two men you worry was treated unfairly in some manner.
If you read the contract, there are a number of things that jump out at you.
The contract was signed September 17, 2012. Given the time needed to generate quotes, negotiate the contract, and work it through legal, it is obvious that this was in the works for some time prior to that.
If you read pages 17 & 18, the purpose is to export comma separated value (csv) files in the format specified in the contract.
The program is written in COBOL. (As has been discussed many times on Slashdot, all great hacks are performed in COBOL.)
I see in the meeting notice below that the OHIO BOARD OF VOTING MACHINE EXAMINERS was scheduled to meet June 21st. That would seem to be about right to start dealing with this proposal / contract. NOTICE OF MEETING: OHIO BOARD OF VOTING MACHINE EXAMINERS
Ohio law allows for the experimental use of voting equipment as long as it’s restricted to a limited number of precincts, and under the experimental label, equipment can legally be used without certification.
The Free Press revealed the contract between Husted’s office and the contracted vendor Election Systems and Solutions reads that the software has not been and does not need to be reviewed by any testing authority at the state or federal level.
Election Counsel Brandi Laser Seske sent out a memo to Secretary of State personnel yesterday, detailing the software. In the memo, she explains the software did not require review because it is not “involved in the tabulation or casting of ballots or a modification to a certified system.”
Matt McClellan, a spokesman for the Secretary of State’s office, told theGrio that no patches were installed, describing instead a reporting tool software meant to “assist counties and to help them simplify the process by which they report the results to our system.”
“The choice is between two ways of life: between individual liberty and State domination; between concentration of ownership in the hands of the State and the extension of ownership over the widest number of individuals; between the dead hand of monopoly and the stimulus of competition; between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energy and ingenuity; between a policy of levelling down and a policy of opportunity for all to rise upwards from a basic standard. — Sir Winston Churchill, WOLVERHAMPTON, 23 JULY 1949” (Kudos )
There are probably more people in the world who can benefit from a robust, easy to build, easy to repair, fully documented bulldozer than there are people who can benefit from open source software.
If such a thing could be created without the use of serious industrial machinery, it would probably exist now. Just making an internal combustion engine of the class needed to run a bulldozer is a major design and manufacturing task, let alone the drive train and the rest. This is not a serious undertaking.
My "lead" itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The graphite is mined in Ceylon. Consider these miners and those who make their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped and those who make the string that ties the sacks and those who put them aboard ships and those who make the ships. Even the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted in my birth—and the harbor pilots.
The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally appears as endless extrusions—as from a sausage grinder-cut to size, dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural fats.
Apparently you aren't old enough to realize that not only insurance prices, but the actual cost of care has been going up faster than the rate of inflation for many years. But Obamacare has been a force of its own, and has resulted in many workers losing their coverage since employers see the writing on the wall. There are other roads they could have taken in reform, but they decided to jam this one through on a party-line vote, heavily amended up till the last moment, unread, late at night, requiring massive bribes to even their own. You might be cheering now, but will you in the end?
I hope it happens to you. I normally don't wish suffering on people but you seem heartless and cold, and so maybe a lesson to you would be justice for the world.
So, because of what he thinks, you wish him ill. . . literally.
However, most states had made provisions for the "uninsurables" long before ObamaCare came around. Thirty-five states have created state-based high-risk pools—Minnesota and Connecticut established the first ones as far back as 1976—which currently provide comprehensive health coverage to some 222,000 Americans who couldn't qualify for standard health insurance because of a pre-existing condition.
Instead of tapping into this existing system, ObamaCare set up a temporary, and mostly redundant, system of high-risk pools, complete with $5 billion in funding, to cover the uninsurables until 2014. Only 62,000 people have enrolled in the new pools, about one-seventh of the predicted number.
Consider also the experience of eight states—Maine, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Washington, Massachusetts, Kentucky and New Hampshire—which passed guaranteed-issue legislation in the mid-1990s. None of them included a mandate to have coverage—which meant that people could wait until they needed health-insurance to get it, making the insurance pools very small and policies very expensive. As a result, New Hampshire, Washington and Kentucky eventually abandoned guaranteed issue. Kentucky repealed most of its law in 2000 after premiums exploded by an average of 50% and 45 health insurers, including New York Life, Mass Mutual and The Principal, fled the state.
. . . Sunday’s British papers report that a study by the research firm Lloyd’s TSB Premier Banking found that nearly two-thirds of Britons earning more than $78,700 a year have taken out private health insurance because they don’t trust the NHS. A survey by the British health-care organization Bupa found that two-thirds of its customers cited the risk of infection from superbugs as a top reason for buying private insurance. Shaun Matisonn, the chief executive of PruHealth, says that “patients today are sophisticated consumers of health care. They research the treatments they want, but cannot always get them through the NHS.”
Horror stories about the NHS abound. A 2007 survey of almost 1,000 physicians by Doctors’ Magazine found that two-thirds said they had been told by their local NHS trust not to prescribe certain drugs, and one in five doctors knew patients who had suffered as a result of treatment rationing. The study cited one physician who characterized the NHS as “a lottery.” A new study this year by GP magazine supports that conclusion. Through Freedom of Information Act records, it found that 90 percent of NHS trusts were rationing care. . . . more . . .
...jobs under Obama have been going up WHILE he's been reducing gov't head count.
The vast majority of decline in government jobs have been at the state and local level. The Federal government had been on a huge hiring binge and has only recently made some tiny reductions. It should go without saying that President Obama does not control state and local government hiring.
Federal employment has fallen for seven of the last eight months, the longest sustained drop in more than a decade. The decline is tiny: Just 9,900 fewer workers in May compared with a year earlier, excluding postal and temporary Census workers, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's a fraction of the 2.2 million civilian federal workforce. . . .
Federal employment grew 13% — 250,000 jobs — from the recession's start in December 2007 to a peak last September. During that time, private employment fell 5% and state and local governments cut staffs by 2%.
I believe that Obama naively did not expect the Republicans to dedicate themselves to stopping him from getting reelected.
Yes, I'm sure that was his first and enduring thought on the matter.
Also, I don't think anyone expected the Republicans to declare war on reality.
That should be, "war on reality, as reported." That is the key, as reported. The BBC leadership admits it as a bias problem, but there can't be a problem in the United States?
As Margaret Thatcher noted, "The facts of life are conservative." It is the reporting that is liberal.
In Pew's biennial news survey, out today, the public revealed an alarming opinion that the media just can't be trusted to tell a story straight. . . . Said Pew, "The overall ratings for the performance of the news media are quite negative: Fully 66% say news stories often are inaccurate, 77 % think that news organizations tend to favor one side, and 80% say news organizations are often influenced by powerful people and organizations. The percentage saying that news stories are often inaccurate has risen 13 points since 2007, with much of the increase coming among Democrats and independents."
Rasmussen Reports Tuesday revealed poll results that 47 percent of likely voters feel that "media bias is a bigger problem in politics today than big campaign contributions." Fewer, 42 percent, say money is more evil.
Worse for the media, 51 percent believe that "most reporters will try to help the president," while just 9 percent will go to bat for Republican Mitt Romney. The polling is just the latest to slam media bias, with most still viewing the TV, internet and print reporters on the left's payroll.
The following has been known for some time now, from more than one study.
Msnbc.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.
When I'm talking to people from outside Washington, one question inevitably comes up: Why is the media so liberal? The question often reflects a suspicion that members of the press get together and decide on a story line that favors liberals and Democrats and denigrates conservatives and Republicans.
My response has usually been to say, yes, there's liberal bias in the media, but there's no conspiracy. The liberal tilt is an accident of nature. The media disproportionately attracts people from a liberal arts background who tend, quite innocently, to be politically liberal. If they came from West Point or engineering school, this wouldn't be the case.
Now, after learning I'd been targeted for a smear attack by a member of an online clique of liberal journalists, I'm inclined to amend my response. Not to say there's a media conspiracy, but at least to note that hundreds of journalists have
Yes assuming this "new negative news stream" that I haven't noticed is coming from Fox News. It also explains why you think no one has read the bill.
I'm sure you don't mean to be obtuse, but what I wrote was, "passed without anyone reading the whole thing first." Are you going to deny that is true? They were making massive deletions and additions up till the last moment. Do you think passing major laws with massive effects on 1/6 of the economy without reading them first, let alone study, understand, and debate them, is a good thing? This isn't the first time that happed.
Welcome to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives. The “people’s House” is now a place where bills are voted on not only before legislators or the public have read them, but also before parts of the bills even have been written. Such was the case with a 300-page amendment to the cap-and-trade bill the House passed on June 26. The House leadership could not even produce this amendment on paper, in final form, before it was voted on.
Fox New, AP, whatever, I can't account for you being uninformed.
Hours after President Barack Obama signed historic health care legislation, a potential problem emerged. Administration officials are now scrambling to fix a gap in highly touted benefits for children.
Obama made better coverage for children a centerpiece of his health care remake, but it turns out the letter of the law provided a less-than-complete guarantee that kids with health problems would not be shut out of coverage.
Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday.
- - - - -
So let's perpetually bend over to the insurance companies hoping to God that they keep rates reasonable. The point of the exchanges is to introduce some competition so that insurance companies can't easily abuse customers as you describe.
To borrow your phrase, do you know who you will bending over to instead? (And won't that be so much better? You can always try to change insurance companies, at least till now, but you aren't really going to change the IRS, are you?)
A March 18 report from House Ways & Means Committee Republicans estimates the IRS will need to hire between 11,800 and 16,500 new agents to enforce the bill.
The primary place ObamaCare's pre-existing condition provision will have an impact is in the individual market, where about 14 million people buy their own coverage. Individuals are the ones most likely to wait until they need coverage to buy it; hence ObamaCare's mandate requiring them to have insurance.
However, most states had made provisions for the "uninsurables" long before ObamaCare came around. Thirty-five states have created state-based high-risk pools—Minnesota and Connecticut established the first ones as far back as 1976
Obama wants the top tax bracket to go up 3%. That's it. It was higher under Reagan.
Actually, President Obama wants the top rate to go from 35% to 39.6% (4.6%). There is also likely a double hit there as many states index their taxes to Federal taxes, so an increase in Federal taxes results in an increase in state taxes. He also wants to increase the capital gains tax by 33%, from 15% to 20%. And this isn't all,:
- Personal income taxes: Obama would keep tax rates the same for families making less than $250,000 annually. For families earning more than that, he would raise the top two tax brackets to 36 percent and 39.6 percent. The highest tax rates have been 33 percent and 35 percent for the last 11 years.
Obama in February offered a long list of corporate tax breaks he wants to end, ranging from accelerated depreciation and inventory accounting to interest on overseas profits and various tax provisions benefiting oil and gas companies. . . .
- Investment income: Obama wants to raise the tax rate on dividends to match the ordinary income tax rate for the two highest income brackets. He would boost capital gains taxes from 15 percent to 20 percent for that group.
Private equity and other financiers would see a portion of their compensation, known as "carried interest," taxed as ordinary income, a change from the 15 percent rate they pay now.
- Alternative minimum tax: Obama has endorsed the "Buffett rule," named for billionaire investor Warren Buffett. It would require households making more than $1 million a year to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.
- Estate tax: Obama backs restoring the 45 percent estate tax level after a $3.5 million exemption imposed on assets passed to heirs. The current estate tax level is a 35 percent tax after the first $5 million.
- Corporate tax rates: The president would lower the top corporate rate to 28 percent from 35 percent. A corporation's foreign profits would be subject to an unspecified minimum tax rate. Businesses would get a 20-percent income tax credit to move operations into the United States while tax deductions for shifting operations abroad would be dropped.
There would be otherconsequences in a newly reelected President Obama as well.
It's actually less efficient for everyone else to let people like you go without insurance, so the affordable care act is going to (hopefully) make it cheaper for you to buy insurance from the exchange or at least require your employer to help out.
Its actually cheaper in many cases for the employer to pay the fine for not providing coverage than to pay for coverage. Coverage hasn't really been getting cheaper, but more expensive as insurance companies see the writing on the wall and so raise prices now because they know that they probably won't be able to do so easily in the future. They have also been dropping children's policies for similar reasons. That also doesn't account for people that lost their jobs as business shutdown some locations or down-sized so as to stay under the level that triggers required compliance with the law.
You won't be "fined for being poor" unless you're ignorant ideology prevents you from taking advantage.
Apparently you can find no wrong in a 2,000+ page bill significantly altering the role of government and establishing new power over the lives of individual Americans that was passed without anyone reading the whole thing first. The lack of reading it first explains the stream of negative news about yet another unintended consequence of the law. What is it that explains that? Ignorant ideology?
"For the duration of the crisis?" Who gets to decide when it's over, the Senate or Caesar?
And just as importantly, which "crisis?" I remember reading various people urging President Clinton to not step down, as if that was a possibility, at the end of his term following the 2000 elections and the disputes following it.
"President for life" is not a title that goes well with democracy.
. . . The National Labor Relations Act established the secret ballot election as the preferred method for determining employee free choice. Although the act has been interpreted to permit voluntary recognition by card check . . .
. . . An employer does not have to acquiesce to a union’s demand (or its employees’ request) for recognition based on a card check; the employer can demand a secret ballot election. Similarly, if an employer voluntarily recognizes a union based on a showing of majority support by cards, its employees are given 45 days to demand a secret ballot election challenging the union’s majority claim.
Unions prefer card check, however, for two main reasons. First, card check is less costly. Second, unions are more successful at securing an employee’s signature on a card than they are in earning the employee’s vote when it is cast in secret. The reasons are not hard to find. A card check subjects an employee’s vote to the scrutiny of third parties, peer pressure from fellow employees, and even coercion. Unions collect cards over time, often in secret and without the knowledge of the employer, and open workplace debate on the issue of unionization. A secret ballot election takes place after a campaign participated in by the union, the employees and the employer; it reflects employee sentiment, educated by the campaign’s debate, at one point in time.
Slashdot Mirror
The government's drone strikes seem to lack the whole "Testimony of two Witnesses". And last I checked, Congress hadn't gotten around to explicitly creating a special federal death penalty of "Blown to Flinders by a Hellfire missile". And blowing up minors because their parent was 'treasonous' seems an awful lot like "Corruption of Blood" to me.
The key concept you are missing that is leading to confusion is "enemy combatant." Lets use it in a sentence: Anwar al-Awlaki was a recruiter for Al Qaida, and an enemy combatant linked to many attacks and attempted attacks against the United States and its allies, so he became a target for a Hellfire missile in Al Qaida controlled areas of Yemen. No need for a trial when he was in the enemy camp, so to speak, performing duties with them.
The Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners held a meeting with the vendor in May, held another meeting in June, and then an order was placed for software to support exporting in CSV format in September. You can't think of a more likely scenario for the meetings and order than FRAUD! MASSIVE OBVIOUS FRAUD!!??
Show us your stuff.
We want to do this different, can you change it?
Talk to lawyers, talk to budget office, agree on price, schedule, and delivery.
Here is an order.
Read the contract, it is clear what this is for - exporting data in CSV format.
The idea that you would base general election vote rigging on primary voting patterns is ridiculous as they are completely different.
You seem to be generally misinformed on this matter, so here are a few things. The Congress passed the resolution noted in the following document: Authorization For Use Of Military Force in Response to the 9/11 Attacks. The Supreme Court of the United States has held this type of Congressional authorization to be equivalent to a declaration of war. If you join the enemy making war on the United States, you can be captured or killed under the law of war - no trial is necessary beforehand. All of your hand waving on these matters is just that. Your lack of familiarity with the personal involvement of an enemy combatant with attacks or attempted attacks doesn't change or weaken the findings against them.
As an American citizen you don't have a Constitutional right to join a terrorist group and attack the United States or its allies. If you join with them, you will be treated like them, i.e. captured or killed as possible or necessary. Renegade Americans may be the most dangerous of all since they know the ins and outs of American society, and can identify weak points for attack, and coach would-be attackers to be more effective. If you go renegade, you accept the consequences of war. If you want a nice trial, then surrender so that charges can be prepared and a trial set.
There is no great mystery about why Al Awlaki was killed. The man actively recruited for Al Qaida, was directly tied to numerous people making attacks, and was apparently involved in planning attacks. The man was an enemy of the American people, whom he plotted to kill in large numbers, an enemy of the state that he hoped to help destroy, and an enemy of humanity as a stateless terrorist, the very kin to pirates, hostis humani generis. Is slavery far behind?
I do not support many of President Obama's policies, but he is correct in this one, and against that man.
The United States is not rounding up or making war against people who insult the First Lady, or the President, but rather against actual and would be mass murderers, terrorists, war criminals. It is quite amazing to me that so many people get this elementary question wrong, this isn't even close to being hard to understand. Somehow I expect you will amaze me again.
He could have surrendered at the American embassy, or to Yemeni authorities. Not that difficult.
why is no one fuming over Obama's killing of two American citizens with drones?
People like you are. Most Americans aren't. Those two citizens took up arms against the United States to make war against it as members of an enemy engaged in war against the United States. Is this a puzzle? They could have surrendered, but didn't. There is precedent for this sort of action. In fact, the Federal government has shot down many Americans in the same status before. There is actually a video representation of one of these incidents.
This is one of the two men you worry was treated unfairly in some manner.
If you read the contract, there are a number of things that jump out at you.
The contract was signed September 17, 2012. Given the time needed to generate quotes, negotiate the contract, and work it through legal, it is obvious that this was in the works for some time prior to that.
If you read pages 17 & 18, the purpose is to export comma separated value (csv) files in the format specified in the contract.
The program is written in COBOL. (As has been discussed many times on Slashdot, all great hacks are performed in COBOL.)
I see in the meeting notice below that the OHIO BOARD OF VOTING MACHINE EXAMINERS was scheduled to meet June 21st. That would seem to be about right to start dealing with this proposal / contract.
NOTICE OF MEETING: OHIO BOARD OF VOTING MACHINE EXAMINERS
The same company's software was directly discussed at the previous meeting of the Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners below.
notice of a meeting to be held by the Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners
Did someone miss some meetings?
Hmmm.... look like nothing to see here, move along.
Ohio Secretary of State accused of installing suspicious software on voting machines
Ohio law allows for the experimental use of voting equipment as long as it’s restricted to a limited number of precincts, and under the experimental label, equipment can legally be used without certification.
The Free Press revealed the contract between Husted’s office and the contracted vendor Election Systems and Solutions reads that the software has not been and does not need to be reviewed by any testing authority at the state or federal level.
Election Counsel Brandi Laser Seske sent out a memo to Secretary of State personnel yesterday, detailing the software. In the memo, she explains the software did not require review because it is not “involved in the tabulation or casting of ballots or a modification to a certified system.”
Matt McClellan, a spokesman for the Secretary of State’s office, told theGrio that no patches were installed, describing instead a reporting tool software meant to “assist counties and to help them simplify the process by which they report the results to our system.”
I think this can be filed under "narrative fail."
“The choice is between two ways of life: between individual liberty and State domination; between concentration of ownership in the hands of the State and the extension of ownership over the widest number of individuals; between the dead hand of monopoly and the stimulus of competition; between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energy and ingenuity; between a policy of levelling down and a policy of opportunity for all to rise upwards from a basic standard. — Sir Winston Churchill, WOLVERHAMPTON, 23 JULY 1949” (Kudos )
Will the debate be this good?
I think you are being a little too cynical. A chip fab is probably well within their means as long as they are using spuddering as the process.
There are probably more people in the world who can benefit from a robust, easy to build, easy to repair, fully documented bulldozer than there are people who can benefit from open source software.
If such a thing could be created without the use of serious industrial machinery, it would probably exist now. Just making an internal combustion engine of the class needed to run a bulldozer is a major design and manufacturing task, let alone the drive train and the rest. This is not a serious undertaking.
The situation is more dire than you know - no one person knows everything needed to make a pencil.
Consider even just the lead-
I, Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read
My "lead" itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The graphite is mined in Ceylon. Consider these miners and those who make their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped and those who make the string that ties the sacks and those who put them aboard ships and those who make the ships. Even the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted in my birth—and the harbor pilots.
The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally appears as endless extrusions—as from a sausage grinder-cut to size, dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural fats.
Apparently you aren't old enough to realize that not only insurance prices, but the actual cost of care has been going up faster than the rate of inflation for many years. But Obamacare has been a force of its own, and has resulted in many workers losing their coverage since employers see the writing on the wall. There are other roads they could have taken in reform, but they decided to jam this one through on a party-line vote, heavily amended up till the last moment, unread, late at night, requiring massive bribes to even their own. You might be cheering now, but will you in the end?
Judging by NHS experience, I wouldn't bet on it, the games have barely started.
4 years of not having to deal with Mitt Romney.
You didn't mention the plus side - if there is one.
I hope it happens to you. I normally don't wish suffering on people but you seem heartless and cold, and so maybe a lesson to you would be justice for the world.
So, because of what he thinks, you wish him ill. . . literally.
No One Would Miss ObamaCare, but the Window for Repeal Is Two Years
However, most states had made provisions for the "uninsurables" long before ObamaCare came around. Thirty-five states have created state-based high-risk pools—Minnesota and Connecticut established the first ones as far back as 1976—which currently provide comprehensive health coverage to some 222,000 Americans who couldn't qualify for standard health insurance because of a pre-existing condition.
Instead of tapping into this existing system, ObamaCare set up a temporary, and mostly redundant, system of high-risk pools, complete with $5 billion in funding, to cover the uninsurables until 2014. Only 62,000 people have enrolled in the new pools, about one-seventh of the predicted number.
Consider also the experience of eight states—Maine, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Washington, Massachusetts, Kentucky and New Hampshire—which passed guaranteed-issue legislation in the mid-1990s. None of them included a mandate to have coverage—which meant that people could wait until they needed health-insurance to get it, making the insurance pools very small and policies very expensive. As a result, New Hampshire, Washington and Kentucky eventually abandoned guaranteed issue. Kentucky repealed most of its law in 2000 after premiums exploded by an average of 50% and 45 health insurers, including New York Life, Mass Mutual and The Principal, fled the state.
I used to drive a car, and I almost died in one when it crashed! Cars are horrible things - I'm glad we still have horses!
Horses can bite and kick. I guess there is no perfect answer.
Britain’s NHS: No Fun and Games
. . . Sunday’s British papers report that a study by the research firm Lloyd’s TSB Premier Banking found that nearly two-thirds of Britons earning more than $78,700 a year have taken out private health insurance because they don’t trust the NHS. A survey by the British health-care organization Bupa found that two-thirds of its customers cited the risk of infection from superbugs as a top reason for buying private insurance. Shaun Matisonn, the chief executive of PruHealth, says that “patients today are sophisticated consumers of health care. They research the treatments they want, but cannot always get them through the NHS.”
Horror stories about the NHS abound. A 2007 survey of almost 1,000 physicians by Doctors’ Magazine found that two-thirds said they had been told by their local NHS trust not to prescribe certain drugs, and one in five doctors knew patients who had suffered as a result of treatment rationing. The study cited one physician who characterized the NHS as “a lottery.” A new study this year by GP magazine supports that conclusion. Through Freedom of Information Act records, it found that 90 percent of NHS trusts were rationing care. . . . more . . .
...jobs under Obama have been going up WHILE he's been reducing gov't head count.
The vast majority of decline in government jobs have been at the state and local level. The Federal government had been on a huge hiring binge and has only recently made some tiny reductions. It should go without saying that President Obama does not control state and local government hiring.
Federal employment drops after years of explosive growth
Federal employment has fallen for seven of the last eight months, the longest sustained drop in more than a decade. The decline is tiny: Just 9,900 fewer workers in May compared with a year earlier, excluding postal and temporary Census workers, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's a fraction of the 2.2 million civilian federal workforce. . . .
Federal employment grew 13% — 250,000 jobs — from the recession's start in December 2007 to a peak last September. During that time, private employment fell 5% and state and local governments cut staffs by 2%.
The coming collapse in the state budgets
I believe that Obama naively did not expect the Republicans to dedicate themselves to stopping him from getting reelected.
Yes, I'm sure that was his first and enduring thought on the matter.
Also, I don't think anyone expected the Republicans to declare war on reality.
That should be, "war on reality, as reported." That is the key, as reported. The BBC leadership admits it as a bias problem, but there can't be a problem in the United States?
As Margaret Thatcher noted, "The facts of life are conservative."
It is the reporting that is liberal.
Pew: Public Perception of Media Bias Hits Historic High
In Pew's biennial news survey, out today, the public revealed an alarming opinion that the media just can't be trusted to tell a story straight. . . . Said Pew, "The overall ratings for the performance of the news media are quite negative: Fully 66% say news stories often are inaccurate, 77 % think that news organizations tend to favor one side, and 80% say news organizations are often influenced by powerful people and organizations. The percentage saying that news stories are often inaccurate has risen 13 points since 2007, with much of the increase coming among Democrats and independents."
Media bias worse than money in politics
Rasmussen Reports Tuesday revealed poll results that 47 percent of likely voters feel that "media bias is a bigger problem in politics today than big campaign contributions." Fewer, 42 percent, say money is more evil.
Worse for the media, 51 percent believe that "most reporters will try to help the president," while just 9 percent will go to bat for Republican Mitt Romney. The polling is just the latest to slam media bias, with most still viewing the TV, internet and print reporters on the left's payroll.
The following has been known for some time now, from more than one study.
Journalists dole out cash to politicians (quietly)
Msnbc.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.
The Vast Left-Wing Media Conspiracy
When I'm talking to people from outside Washington, one question inevitably comes up: Why is the media so liberal? The question often reflects a suspicion that members of the press get together and decide on a story line that favors liberals and Democrats and denigrates conservatives and Republicans.
My response has usually been to say, yes, there's liberal bias in the media, but there's no conspiracy. The liberal tilt is an accident of nature. The media disproportionately attracts people from a liberal arts background who tend, quite innocently, to be politically liberal. If they came from West Point or engineering school, this wouldn't be the case.
Now, after learning I'd been targeted for a smear attack by a member of an online clique of liberal journalists, I'm inclined to amend my response. Not to say there's a media conspiracy, but at least to note that hundreds of journalists have
I'm sure you don't mean to be obtuse, but what I wrote was, "passed without anyone reading the whole thing first." Are you going to deny that is true? They were making massive deletions and additions up till the last moment. Do you think passing major laws with massive effects on 1/6 of the economy without reading them first, let alone study, understand, and debate them, is a good thing? This isn't the first time that happed.
Passing unread laws
Welcome to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives. The “people’s House” is now a place where bills are voted on not only before legislators or the public have read them, but also before parts of the bills even have been written. Such was the case with a 300-page amendment to the cap-and-trade bill the House passed on June 26. The House leadership could not even produce this amendment on paper, in final form, before it was voted on.
Fox New, AP, whatever, I can't account for you being uninformed.
Kids with Pre-Existing Conditions NOT Covered By Obamacare
Now the AP tells us
Hours after President Barack Obama signed historic health care legislation, a potential problem emerged. Administration officials are now scrambling to fix a gap in highly touted benefits for children.
Obama made better coverage for children a centerpiece of his health care remake, but it turns out the letter of the law provided a less-than-complete guarantee that kids with health problems would not be shut out of coverage.
Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday.
- - - - -
To borrow your phrase, do you know who you will bending over to instead? (And won't that be so much better? You can always try to change insurance companies, at least till now, but you aren't really going to change the IRS, are you?)
IRS looking to hire thousands of tax agents to enforce health care laws
A March 18 report from House Ways & Means Committee Republicans estimates the IRS will need to hire between 11,800 and 16,500 new agents to enforce the bill.
No One Would Miss ObamaCare, but the Window for Repeal Is Two Years
Its alleged benefits are overrated, and by 2014 the bureaucratic mess may be impossible to untangle.
The primary place ObamaCare's pre-existing condition provision will have an impact is in the individual market, where about 14 million people buy their own coverage. Individuals are the ones most likely to wait until they need coverage to buy it; hence ObamaCare's mandate requiring them to have insurance.
However, most states had made provisions for the "uninsurables" long before ObamaCare came around. Thirty-five states have created state-based high-risk pools—Minnesota and Connecticut established the first ones as far back as 1976
Only on Slashdot are these comparable accomplishments...
He didn't say they were, and if that is all you got out of it, you should probably reread it.
Obama wants the top tax bracket to go up 3%. That's it. It was higher under Reagan.
Actually, President Obama wants the top rate to go from 35% to 39.6% (4.6%). There is also likely a double hit there as many states index their taxes to Federal taxes, so an increase in Federal taxes results in an increase in state taxes. He also wants to increase the capital gains tax by 33%, from 15% to 20%. And this isn't all,:
Factbox: Stark differences in Ryan, Romney, Obama tax plans
There would be other consequences in a newly reelected President Obama as well.
It's actually less efficient for everyone else to let people like you go without insurance, so the affordable care act is going to (hopefully) make it cheaper for you to buy insurance from the exchange or at least require your employer to help out.
Its actually cheaper in many cases for the employer to pay the fine for not providing coverage than to pay for coverage. Coverage hasn't really been getting cheaper, but more expensive as insurance companies see the writing on the wall and so raise prices now because they know that they probably won't be able to do so easily in the future. They have also been dropping children's policies for similar reasons. That also doesn't account for people that lost their jobs as business shutdown some locations or down-sized so as to stay under the level that triggers required compliance with the law.
You won't be "fined for being poor" unless you're ignorant ideology prevents you from taking advantage.
Apparently you can find no wrong in a 2,000+ page bill significantly altering the role of government and establishing new power over the lives of individual Americans that was passed without anyone reading the whole thing first. The lack of reading it first explains the stream of negative news about yet another unintended consequence of the law. What is it that explains that? Ignorant ideology?
"For the duration of the crisis?" Who gets to decide when it's over, the Senate or Caesar?
And just as importantly, which "crisis?" I remember reading various people urging President Clinton to not step down, as if that was a possibility, at the end of his term following the 2000 elections and the disputes following it.
"President for life" is not a title that goes well with democracy.
It is amazing! New Jersey had 100% voter turnout and that ALL voted for Romney!
Your post isn't clear, which is it you oppose - dirty elections or Obama losing?
There is no such protection in online voting. A church could put the computer, oh, right in front of the altar and have the congregation line up.
There is no need to conjure a theoretical example when the real example of unions and "card check" exists, and is being repeatedly litigated.
The National Labor Relations Board’s attack on the secret ballot
. . . The National Labor Relations Act established the secret ballot election as the preferred method for determining employee free choice. Although the act has been interpreted to permit voluntary recognition by card check . . .
. . . An employer does not have to acquiesce to a union’s demand (or its employees’ request) for recognition based on a card check; the employer can demand a secret ballot election. Similarly, if an employer voluntarily recognizes a union based on a showing of majority support by cards, its employees are given 45 days to demand a secret ballot election challenging the union’s majority claim.
Unions prefer card check, however, for two main reasons. First, card check is less costly. Second, unions are more successful at securing an employee’s signature on a card than they are in earning the employee’s vote when it is cast in secret. The reasons are not hard to find. A card check subjects an employee’s vote to the scrutiny of third parties, peer pressure from fellow employees, and even coercion. Unions collect cards over time, often in secret and without the knowledge of the employer, and open workplace debate on the issue of unionization. A secret ballot election takes place after a campaign participated in by the union, the employees and the employer; it reflects employee sentiment, educated by the campaign’s debate, at one point in time.
You mean like the atheistic communists in their repeated attempts to build a "worker's paradise" cum "hell on earth"?