Obamacare – Thy Name Shall Not Be Spoken…

Why are so few people working in the US?

It’s sequestration,

“Sequestration is going to have an adverse effect” on the economy, Alan Krueger, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said on Bloomberg Television. “That’s one of the headwinds we’re facing.”

it’s the weather,

“The big weakness in March was retail, and this was the coldest month of March we’ve had in over a decade,” said Russell Price, a senior economist at Ameriprise Financial Inc. in

it’s payroll tax hike,

Some of the weakness appeared due to tax hikes enacted in January.

But it couldn’t possibly be Obamacare… could it?

…there is expected to be an increase in costs associated with the affordable health care act (“ACA,” see “Risks” section). To mitigate this cost, employees that were working more than 30 hours per week, but less than 33, have moved down to 29 hours per week, reducing the “full time” pool requiring health insurance from 1100 to 835 employees…

 

Zero Hedge, Bloomberg, Reuters, Power Line

 

 

Socialized Medicine – Defying Economic Logic

The Odd Economics of Canadian Health Care

Canada’s health care system has become unworkable and uneconomic. Politicians of all stripes use the promise of “free” health care to buy votes. The majority of Canadians will complain about wait times, the lack of available doctors and shortages of drugs, treatments and hospitals. At the same time, many of these people use socialized health care as a way to define their “Canadianism”.

It takes a fair amount of willful ignorance to accept that reducing the supply of anything, in the face of rising demand, results in lower cost — but when it comes to health care, millions of Canadians do.

Penticton Western News

Obamanomics – Trickle Up Economics in Action

Because “trickle-down” success is a myth

Personal Income Drop Is Bottom-Up Economics Failure

According to the Commerce Department report issued Friday, personal income fell by $505.5 billion in January — a 3.6% drop — erasing all the income gains made since last September.

On a real, per-capita basis, it’s even worse, with incomes falling 4.2% in January, leaving income still well below where it stood when President Obama took office four years ago promising “hope and change.”

Meanwhile – Over at the IRS…

CBO: Taxes Will ‘Shoot Up by More Than 30 Percent’ Over Next 2 Years

“In particular, between 2012 and 2014, revenues in CBO’s baseline shoot up by more than 30 percent,” said CBO, “mostly because of the recent or scheduled expirations of tax provisions, such as those that lower income tax rates and limit the reach of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), and the imposition of new taxes, fees, and penalties that are scheduled to go into effect.”

The U.S. economy, CBO projects, will perform “below its potential” for another six years and unemployment will remain above 7 percent for another three.

Forbes, CNS, IBD

You Have to Read it to Find Out What’s in it…

Unions Sour On Obama(Care)…

Union leaders say many of the law’s requirements will drive up the costs for their health-care plans and make unionized workers less competitive. Among other things, the law eliminates the caps on medical benefits and prescription drugs used as cost-containment measures in many health-care plans. It also allows children to stay on their parents’ plans until they turn 26.

To offset that, the nation’s largest labor groups want their lower-paid members to be able to get federal insurance subsidies while remaining on their plans. In the law, these subsidies were designed only for low-income workers without employer coverage as a way to help them buy private insurance.

Top officers at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the AFL-CIO and other large labor groups plan to keep pressing the Obama administration to expand the federal subsidies to these jointly run plans, warning that unionized employers may otherwise drop coverage.

 

If you like your Doctor…

 

Forward….

Via Zero Hedge

If You Want to Keep Your Health Insurance …

You’re about to get screwed by Obamacare…

Health Insurance Brokers Prepare Clients For Obamacare Sticker Shock

Around the country, insurers are fixing to raise rates by double digits. They’re privately briefing politicians in Washington on what’s in store…

…Washington can try to force health plans to price insurance below the cost of these mandates. But then the health plans will simply lose money and move out of markets. To keep the insurers whole, and accommodate new rules, the cost of insurance must get re-priced higher. That re-pricing is what’s coming this fall.

Obamacare – free healthcare…

Forbes

Bad People Kill People…No Matter Where They Live

As long as we continue to be willfully ignorant of the impact of culture, mental health issues and the demonstrable futility of harsher gun regulations, the gun violence issue cannot be addressed, much less solved.

Guns are big news today. Obama announced 23 largely meaningless executive “statements” that he claims to will address gun violence.  Mass shootings have grabbed headlines, incited the nanny-state nuts and provided talk show fodder.  The result is emotional and largely irrational anti-gun sentiment that drives the “gun” debate to new lows.

Canadians have been conditioned to believe that there are two things that set us, as a society, above our Americans neighbors.  The first is our healthcare system. Despite the outrageous cost, long wait times and poor patient outcomes, the fact that it is universally substandard and available to all, we somehow see it as superior to the US system.

The second is our supposed “aversion” to guns, and the notion that Canadians are a “less violent” people than Americans. The US has a violent crime rate of 466/100,000 of population, Canada’s is about 1400/100,000. In the UK, where guns are banned, there are nearly 2000 violent crimes for each 100,000 population.

Just as there is little evidence that Canada’s healthcare system provides better or cheaper care than the pre-Obamacare US system, there is no evidence that Canada is less violent, or significantly less firearms oriented. While the US leads the world in total reported crime, Canada comes in at number eight, with 1/10 the population.

The National Firearms Association in Canada estimates there are as many as 18 million firearms in Canada.  That is more than one firearm for every two Canadians, nearly 50%.  42% of US citizens own firearms, according to Gallup.

Comparing homicide statistics in both countries,  (FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, StatsCan, Canadian Ministry of Justice) the US clearly has a much higher homicide rate at about 4.4/100,000 of population, while Canada’s (2010) is about 1.62/100,000.  The US statistics are skewed significantly because the homicide rate in the Black population is nearly ten times that of the non-Black population – when the Black on Black homicide rate is taken out, the US homicide rate is 1.3/100,000.  Canada does not have a similar large segment of the population that experiences a significant difference in homicide rates. Any objective comparison of the two sets of data must take into account those cultural differences. 

Not all homicide in either country was the result of firearms, and the numbers fluctuate. In Canada in 2011, there were 598 homicides, 158 by shooting and 440 by others including 204 by stabbing.  In the US (2011) there were 12,644 homicides, 6220 by handguns, 5668 by “other” including knives and blunt instruments, hands and feet.  It is factually incorrect to assume guns are the main driver of homicide.

When broken down by region, in both countries most of shootings takes place in the most populated centres.  Toronto is Canada’s gun crime capital, followed by Montreal and Vancouver.  In the US the highest gun crime takes place in New York City, Washington DC, Chicago and Los Angeles. The Toronto and US examples share the presence of large Black communities and are governed by strict gun laws, including outright handgun bans in Chicago and gun, magazine and bullet bans in Washington DC.

Chicago racked up 504 gun murders in 2012, Washington DC had 242.  The high profile shootings in the Jamaican community in Toronto in 2012 took place under Canadian gun laws that prohibit the use and transport of handguns without documentation.

In Canada, legal handgun owners cannot transport weapons unless to a registered gun club to which they belong, or a gunsmith.  Pointing a gun at someone, storing a loaded weapon, or storing ammunition “with” a firearm is illegal, punishable by up to 5 years in jail. All firearms must be deactivated and/or locked during transport.

Gun laws in Connecticut, where the recent school shootings took place are the fifth toughest in the US, in many respects similar to Canadian law. 

Experience demonstrates “tougher” gun laws don’t stop high profile or endemic gun crime.

As long as we continue to be willfully ignorant of the impact of culture, mental health issues and the demonstrable futility of harsher gun regulations, the gun violence issue cannot be addressed, much less solved.

Continuing to allow immigration from countries like Jamaica and Somalia, where murder rates are over 50/100,000 guarantees that Canada will import more gun murder.  The continued “mainstreaming” of the mentally ill, for fear of stigmatizing the insane, some notion of “human rights” or as a result of budget constraints will result, from time to time, in violent and deadly tragedies at the hands of the insane. Imposing further restriction on legal, stable gun owners will encourage the illegal firearms trade.

Bans and “zero-tolerance” policies never produce the desired result.  We have many examples, from prohibition, to the “war on drugs” to impaired driving laws. Under bans, law abiding citizens become law breakers, while the criminals continue to commit crime and mentally disturbed individuals when left untreated or supervised, do harm to themselves and others.  It doesn’t matter what side of the border you are on.

Kootenaybob

 

 

 

 

CBO’s Friday Night Bomb… We’re Not Surprised

CBO Admits Error, Now Expects Another $600 Billion In Deficits From Obama Tax Cuts

Their initial estimate of a $4.0 trillion budget increase was wrong and when one factors in the fact that this incremental spending would have to be funded by, you guessed it, debt, debt which has interest, the full impact of the Obama tax cut rises deficits by 15% to $4.6 trillion over the next decade.

Relative to what would have occurred under the laws previously in effect, this legislation will increase budget deficits in coming years.

…we estimated that real gross national product (GNP) would be 1.7 percent lower in 2022 than would have been the case under prior law. .

Oops…

Zero Hedge

Elections Have Consequences – Default Being One

Now comes the time to pay the piper…

A nicer term for what’s about to sock the middle class is ‘entitlement reform.’

One way or another, then, entitlements will be cut. Don’t call it default. The correct term is entitlement reform

You saw this day coming and saved for your own retirement. Don’t call it default when Washington inevitably confiscates some of your savings, say, by raising taxes on dividends and capital gains. Taxpayers accept the risk of future tax hikes that may make the decision to save seem foolish in retrospect.

Here’s what you weren’t told about Medicare during the presidential debates. Under the Paul Ryan plan, the affluent would pay more. Under the Obama plan, the affluent would flee Medicare to escape the waiting lists, shortages and deteriorating quality as Washington economizes by ratcheting down reimbursements to doctors and hospitals. Don’t call either default. You don’t have a legally enforceable right to the free care you imagined you were promised.

This will come as something of a surprise to those who “love” Obamacare…

WSJ

Now That We Have Voted for Certainty…

We can enjoy the decline… Welcome to Obama’s New World Order…

Jobless Claims – 4 week moving average..

Consumer Price Index – 5 yr

Median Income Falls, Health Insurance Participation Falls.

Nice Work America – Four More Years!

St. Louis Fed, FT

Shocked, Shocked I Tell Ya…

Shocking report: LA porn industry full of STDs

Who knew there were STD’s in the porn industry…

“Our first instinct was the safety of the talent,” Shy Love, the actor’s former talent agent at Adult Talent Managers, told XBIZ (the actor has since been nixed from the roster). “We’re not going to hide something because the talent happens to be on our roster. It’s important to make talent aware that there is one positive performer and they should get tested because there is a potential risk right now.”

Amazing

 

DC