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Saturday, July 27, 2013

Speech July 25

Text of speech I gave to Republicans on Thursday.  Guess it was good because they laughed and learned. 

First I want to thank Princess Kate for having the baby and sparing USA from talking about nothing but Trayvon Martin for the rest of the summer. I want to talk about court cases and not about race.  Our President said when he walked across the street, car doors locked due to all you racist people.  Here’s my solution.  Do not lock your car door when you see the Prez coming.  Hold your hand over your wallet instead!

Gay Marriage ruling

Now lets talk about gay marriage.  A lot of people have changed their minds about gay marriage in the last few years. 

I had 3 gay roommates in my twenties.  I don’t mind gays. But I’m still against gay marriag for reasons of faith 

Supreme court handed down what’s called a narrow decision—means it won’t be used for precedents by lawyers. They simply handed back the matter of Proposition 8 to the state of California and struck down DOMA as being formed out of bias.  So I thought maybe you’d be interested in some statistics that are illuminating. 

1.7-6% of population is gay

3-6% of gay males are seeking or have found a permanent partner.

7% of all males were molested as a child.

46% of gay males were molested as a child.

86% of child molesters (prison study) describe themselves as gay or bi

83% of children molested in Catholic priest scandal were male

Clearly a problem with gay population and molestation.  Has huge implications with recent Boy Scout ruling.

Name church denominations that support gay ordination or marriage.  Episcopal, UMC, ELCA, PCUSA

Reason so few do is because of scripture: Lev. 18, Matt. 19, Rom. 13

Christianpost.com noted that few pastors had much comment. More recently, a lot more pastors have spoken out about the threat if churches are required to marry gays or are sued for their beliefs.  Is this the beginning of talk within our churches about civic rights and duties, so long missing from the dialog?

Here’s my solution to the gay stuff.  Create a new adult leadership position in each Boy Scout troop, the position of Gay Divorce Lawyer who would report to partners of Gay Boy Scout Leaders. That’ll fix it.

 Pruitt v. Sibelius

Let me see if I can explain in man-in-the-street terms the lawsuit OK has going against Obamacare.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) specifically states that the federal government can only give subsidizes (in the form of tax credits) if the state has set up an exchange.  Oklahoma declined to set up an exchange.  But Obama says that the feds will do it anyway once they set up a federal exchange within the state.  Attorney General Pruitt objected saying that the ACA forbids such subsidies and filed the lawsuit.

So why did OK decline to do an exchange? 

The way the feds learn of a business not providing health care is if an employee applies for a subsidy with an exchange.  The employer gets socked with a $2000 penalty. 

But there may be sundry reasons for an employee applying.  Boss may not carry what the employee wants. 

The employee may do it out of stupidity.  Or he might do it fraudulently.  Medicare and Medicaid have some of the highest fraud rates of any government program.  Some state show 20+% of payments are fraudulent.  And considering the latest Obamacare deadline postponement with people being asked an unaccounted income, is almost certain to create massive fraud. 

     The upshot is that businesses get unwarranted penalties and this threatens a state’s economy.

 34 states decided to not do exchanges and only 16 very blue states decided to play along with Obamacare.  And so Pruitt v. Sibelius moves along it’s path to the Supreme Court.  Holder tried to argue in another case that since the business mandate was being postponed, the lawsuit should also be postponed.  The 4th Circuit Court last week slammed this idea --even more imperative to have a decision on Pruitt. 

It could get interesting.  If OK wins, Obamacare, if not dead is mortally wounded and only operable in 16 states.

Here’s my solution to the exchange thing.  Let’s exchange all the Congressional Democrats for the doctors put out of business by Obamacare. Make Coburn head of Senate Appropriations. No more deficit spending or ACA

Detroit Bankruptcy

Detroit declared Chapter 9.  Immediately Union-friendly county and state judges declared this unconstitutional. In bankruptcy, leadership must stand aside and the court appoints a trustee to take control of the entity. That trustee can re-do all contracts and wage agreements.Hence Detroit can get rid of huge unfunded pension obligations.  Also creditors may have claim on non-infrastructure items like art works and museum collections.  I don’t know about those salt trucks that destroy cars. $18B in debt and $1B in income which compares to USA with $17T in debt and $1.2T in income tax. We will see how this plays out. 

Here’s my solution.  Give Detroit to the 11million illegals.  If you can fix and rebuild it, you are true Americans!

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Pruitt v. Sibelius


Let me see if I can explain in man-in-the-street terms the lawsuit OK has going against Obamacare.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) specifically states that the federal government can only give subsidizes (in the form of tax credits) if the state has set up an exchange.  Oklahoma declined to set up an exchange.  But Obama says that the feds will do it anyway once they set up a federal exchange within the state.  Attorney General Pruitt objected saying that the federal government cannot do this since it is forbidden by the Act. 

 

So why did OK decline?  The answer is that the feds learn of a business not providing health care if an employee applies for a subsidy with an exchange.  The employer gets socked with a $2000 penalty.  But there may be many reasons for an employee applying.  The employer may carry insurance but not what the employee wants.  The employee may do it out of stupidity.  Or he might do it fraudulently.  Medicare and Medicaid have some of the highest fraud rates of any government program.  Some state show 20+% of payments are fraudulent.  And considering the latest Obamacare deadline postponement with people being asked an unaccounted income, is almost certain to create massive fraud.  So what happens if your $90,000 employee goes into an exchange and swears he makes $25,000 a year in order to get a huge subsidy rather than paying half the premium at work? 

 

The upshot is that businesses get hammered with penalties and often will be hammered unfairly. It would kill a state’s economy and may play havoc with certain industries.  That is why 34 states decided to not do exchanges and only 16 very blue states decided to play along with Obamacare.  And so Pruitt v. Sibelius moves along it’s path to the Supreme Court.  Holder tried to argue in another case that since the business mandate was being postponed, the lawsuit should also be postponed.  The 4th Circuit Court last week slammed this idea saying that it had become even more imperative to have a decision on Pruitt. 

 

It could get interesting.  If OK wins, Obamacare, if not dead is mortally wounded. 

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Cousin George


Cousin George finally won his trial in Florida.  The liberal media has made a career of his supposed guilt, whipping the mob into a lynching frenzy each day on MSNBC.  And so when the verdict came, I naturally  had to watch MSNBC to see what they had to say.  First was Al Sharpton who has added this case to his Twana Brawley success.  Sharpton is the epoxy guy.  He makes sure that someone with a chip on  their shoulder doesn't let it come off. He was quick with a disclaimer of how the only reason he went to Florida to agitate for the removal of the district attorney was the family’s sincere pleas over the mismanagement of the police department.  No, sir.  Al didn’t see this as a chance to gin up racial stuff.  He didn’t see himself in the cameras and limelight.  He wasn’t interested except to hold hands with this poor family.  Al’s a minister.

 

And then came MSNBC’s bevy of commentators of African descent.  All agreed that this trial would have had a completely different outcome if there had been just one Afro-American on the jury.  Because the jury, evil bunch of white Hispanics, could not know what black people have gone through.  (“Nobody knows, da trouble I seen.”)  In other words the jury didn’t buy the template of an innocent and unarmed child of 17 who simply went to the store to buy snacks and was walking home when he was gunned down in cold blood by the crazy-ass cracker.  Which reminds me, I am a white Hispanic.  We had a Mexican foster daughter.  I learned a lot about Latino culture in the process.  Have Mex friends now. There you go.  “White Hispanic.”  

 

The exercise of having 9 different teenagers grow up under our roof of different backgrounds, the mentoring of kids without moms and dads taught us a lot about development.  Travon Martin was living with his mother in Miami and visiting his dad in Sanford.  They were divorced and so he was a kid raised by a single mom.  Travon had spent little time with his dad and evidently had joined gangs in Miami.  The fighting culture and the troubles at school were not allowed as evidence in the trial, though drug use was briefly noted in the toxicology report of the autopsy.  The defense lawyers said it was unknown as to why Martin decided to begin beating up on Zimmerman. That’s quite true.  But if I could guess, I’d guess that here was a young man, trying to prove himself by being ‘tough’ and deciding to teach that crazy-ass cracker a lesson with his fists.  If he had a close dad or uncle advising, they would have taught him to “watch your fists and prove it some other respectable way.”

 

But just as the race templaters had concerns about the lack of African representation of the jury, I was a bit concerned that they were all females.   Well, now that said, let's say that we appreciate the women who were on the jury.  If Americans don't like jury duty and illegals do the jobs Americans don't want, do we put them on juries?   However, do women understand men having fights?  Female fights are mostly a war of words.  Man fights are physical. Often it is hard to say and fruitless to say who started it.  Some guy says something or gestures something that the other finds offensive.  Insulting words lead to a push-off, then a fist flies and a take-down. Usually male fights don’t escalate, because men realize what is at stake.  Somebody gets a sharp punch in, and the fight ends as quickly as it starts.  It is the females in nature who fight to death over their threatened young--and young men who don’t know how bad a true fight can turn out.  Which is evidently what happened when Martin pinned cousin George to the ground.  Tragedy happens easily if you are foolish.

 

None of this matters if the jury has the particulars of the case and the law in mind.  None of the character assassination matters either.   It doesn’t matter if both guys profiled one another, who followed who, what state of mind anyone was in.  Maybe Zimmerman was a race-hater cop-wannabe of the highest order.  Maybe Martin was racist too.  What legally matters is what happened in the fight.  If Zimmerman was threatened with his life or even great bodily harm, he’s desperate to defend himself even to use a gun.  Only Bob Beckel disagrees with this. Burly Bob thought that Zimmerman was a wuss.  He should have just taken a beating and laughed it off. Just a little dust-up.  Manly fisticuffs.  (Tell that to the women of the jury!)  

 

I also understand the politicians.  Sanford is 31% Afro.  (Try not to think “S-A-N-F-O-R-D-period”) The mayor and city fathers were scared of that voting block.  So too was the governor of Florida who decided that the duly-elected district attorney and sheriff  didn’t know anything because they weren’t charging Zimmerman with murder.  The Afro-American vote matters.  Likewise our President decided to cast a verdict 17 months ago.  (It was a campaign year and any issue that can gin up the vote) “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”  Nothing like identity politics.  Hey, maybe I should say, “If I had a cousin, he would look like George.”              

Monday, July 8, 2013

Obamacare for dummies


I renew my health insurance every July.  This year I asked the insurer, “Does this policy meet Obamacare requirements or am I going to get fined?”  The answer was, “We don’t know.  A lot of things haven’t been announced and exchanges haven’t been set up yet.”  Comforting, hunh?  It was the same when Senator Ted Cruze asked rhetorically about hiring.  Since health insurance costs an average of $7700 per employee and illegals (well what would we call them after immigration reform, pathwayers?) are exempt from Obamacare, would employers hire pathwayers preferentially over American Citizens?  Just asking, you know.  The news media thereupon asked the Gang of Eight and nobody could say.  Well, except John McCain who yelled testily, “Get out of here! I don’t have time to answer it!” 

     What a mess Obamacare is in.  No state exchanges in 24 states.  Feds hadn’t planned on this and aren’t ready with any federally run exchanges, so they punted for a year.  No employer mandate, so they have no data to assess who is eligible for a subsidy from an exchange where those do exist.  And then they announced that the exchanges would therefore not verify either your income or your eligibility.  So now Bill Gates and Warren Buffet can say they only make 10K a year and they need subsidizing.  But other than that, there won’t be any fraud to speak of.  Comforting, hunh?

     And half the states haven’t complied with the Medicaid expansion to 138% of poverty level.  So there will be a lot of lower middle income folks heading for an exchange if they can find one to buy subsidized insurance.  The Medicaid ploy was to force states to pay for much of Obamacare costs.  Now since that isn’t working, Obama has asked Congress to increase the subsidies by more than double—a 107% increase.  That’s the game.  Get as many people to sign up for the program in some way where some government gives freebie insurance or near freebie insurance.  That way, the people will be sucked into the entitlement and will raise cain if anybody tries to repeal it.   

    My better half has been talking to her doc about a surgery and he warned her he is soon not to be in private practice.  He will be part of the hospital, paid on a fee for services arrangement.  You see docs get reimbursed by roughly half as much from Medicare as hospitals do, for many procedures.  Hospital corporations have figured a slick fix to this.  Hire a stable of docs and pay them as employees.  It’s forcing doctors out of practices and into hospital run umbrellas where individual diagnoses will be set aside for more common procedures, another Obamacare mandate, to save costs.  "Just go home and take this pill," Obama said.  Death by bureaucracy, in other words.  Comforting, hunh?

     Comes now the CBO report that shows the effect of Obamacare will probably not put, as promised, another 15 million into affordable health care but will increase the ranks of those without health care by 30-48 M. Smaller employers are terrified of the prohibitive costs.  Pools of the already insured are soon to be joined by a whole lot of sick people, driving the price up by maybe double.  That is, unless the 20-somethings who don’t have health insurance can be induced to sign up for several thousand a year by the cooing and comforting sirens from the NBA and the city librarians.  I’m betting on the kids opting for the fine and insurance costs doubling for the rest of us.

     Meanwhile Obama is telling us what part of the law he intends to enforce when and how.  Like DOMA. Does this seem a violation of Article II, Sect. 3 of the Constitution which mandates a President “shall take care that the Laws be faithfully Executed.”?  (Oh, it’s just some musty old document he swore to uphold in his oath of office.)  I can’t wait for a Conservative Republican to get in charge and tell the Dems he likewise intends not to enforce any Labor Acts or Food Stamps because he doesn’t believe in them and they are old and out of date.

     No, seriously, here’s what the R’s should do.  Since Obama’s ploy with dropping the business mandate of Obamacare is to drive more people into uninsured state whereupon they flee to the healthcare exchanges which grant them insurance almost for free, they should designate a spokesman Senator from an exchange-less state who doesn’t have to run for several years.  He could say, “Well, of course the IRS will audit posthumously all who apply at an exchange in order to catch fraud.”  And then he could say that Congress just won’t pass a 107% increase in subsidies.  It’s exorbitant.  The Obamacare bill should operate as designed, and let the people decide what they want to advise us to do about it in the future.  And then he could say, " Since we have a Prez who decides capriciously what laws to enforce, this violates his Oath of Office and the Constitution, we begin impeachment hearings tomorrow. Comforting, Mr. President, hunh?" 

   If they think this is not enough evidence to impeach, I have a list of 34 Presidential violations of our rights I would be glad to share.   

Friday, July 5, 2013

Housing


I keep watching construction.  There is a guy out at Buffalo Waller Ranch who is building a huge outdoor fireplace and we need to turn him into the EPA.  He needs an industrial stack permit because that chimney is so high. Today he was up on the roof of his pavilion, having outdone his scaffolding, with two young men bringing him mortar and huge limestones. So this is what State Representatives do for play.

 

Actually, US housing is recovering somewhat.  In 2006 just before the crash 2.3M homes a year were being built.  In 2008 there were just 500,000 and since then the numbers have been about 800,000. (still the lowest since the 1950’s) This year it looks like the numbers will perhaps top a million.  All this is happening despite economic growth of only 1.8%.  (Which proves that recessions really are caused by overspeculation and that in about 2 years of selloff, a recession is always over.  And it also proves Rogoff and Rheinhold that a government that holds debt greater than 90% of GDP is destined to moribund growth, even in heart of a recovery.)

 

It causes some ripple effects.  If this were an 80’s style recovery, we’d have a robust rebound in housing and the Fed would be trying to rein in inflation with high interest rates.  That hasn’t occurred and probably won’t.  Banks have also been very burned, and aren’t lending easily.  So mortgage interest rates are low and houses affordable (avg. 17% of household income—way less than the historic 24%) if you can get a loan.  Hereabouts, all the unbelievable bargains in repo properties have seemed to dry up.  So, it is now a crunch on landlords.  Buying a new property is not so cheap, many with good credit have a home already and the renters left are dregs of society.  Hence you hear landlords complain about how bad renters have become.  Many still renting are house trashers and druggies and deadbeats.  Oh for the days of a nice family who has just come to town temporarily with their work or who want to test the waters of the housing market for a year or two before they buy!  At least Oklahoma’s business is booming with unemployment 5.0% and houses rent briskly.  Not so elsewhere and new mortgage originations have fallen off a cliff with investors no longer buying much.

 

Turn that around and look at it from the low-end renter’s perspective.  Incomes of American middle class haven’t grown since the boom of the 80’s.  When there is a squeeze on rent prices and less state government largess in welfare and other programs, you get a squeeze on the renters with spotty employment.  Thus we see renters increasingly doubling up or even putting 8 people in a house.  Add to this the increasing gambling addiction from our numerous casinos, crackdown on crime by local police, etc.  Well, you can see how the poor are living poorer.  Then comes Obamacare mandates to buy health insurance and Amnesty—glut of newly-legals who suppress the market for unskilled workers.  It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

 

The drop of housing prices is causing a lot of folks to question the County Assessor.  Property taxes are local government’s best friend, a constant tax during recession or recovery, and the property can’t be moved.  Trouble is, people see their bills and get angry.  What do they call this—“salient”?  Schools depend on property taxes, and when there is downward pressure not only from lower prices, but also an aging population who are house-rich and fixed-income that will be ugly news for schools.  The saavy educators will be trying to decouple the issue of funding from performance.  More parental involvement, new tools and methods, etc.)

 

So my best guess is that housing will remain moribund in prices for years to come.  I don’t think there is likely to be another boom like we saw nationwide from 1970-2006.