My Free Speech Political Quotations and Commentaries Directory and Log ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Political/PoliticalQuotationsCommentaries.htm

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
George S. Patton

It's better to walk alone than in a crowd going in the wrong direction.
Diane Grant

Essentially, climate change is going to decrease our supply of food and water. And this, the IPCC suggests, will foment civil unrest and could lead to more armed conflicts than we have now. Other looming threats include greater risks of flooding, ocean acidification, and animal extinctions.
Annalee Newitz.
http://io9.com/famine-and-water-riots-are-coming-warns-new-intergover-1555054047?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_twitter&utm_source=io9_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
Rather than spending trillions to uselessly prevent changes in the climate from very complicated causes I think we should be spending trillions where it might do the most good starting with enormous solar farms to power desalinization of ocean water in the most productive farming regions of the world that are becoming arid. Nothing will probably prevent the rise in ocean levels --- populations should be relocated on a priority timeline. Birth rates should be severely curtailed beginning now. Since the beginning of life on earth climates have been in constant change.

Two Christian women were publicly beheaded by Islamist terrorists in southeastern Somalia, as part of a campaign to “wipe out” any Christian presence in the east African country ---
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/178624#.UyjCT01vChM

Democracy is Wrong for the World and Belgium is a Test Case ---
http://www.cbn.com/tv/embedplayer.aspx?bcid=1509282970001

So Close: House Rejects Obama 2015 Budget 413-2 ---
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2014/04/10/so-close-house-rejects-obama-budget-4132-n1822516
Reps. Jim Moran of Virginia and Marcy Kaptur of Ohio were the two Democrats who voted for the plan. Not one more vote could be mustered from the 199 members of the Democratic Party in the badly divided House in 2014. But the President had two votes more than the House vote on the Obama budget in 2012 when zero representatives voted for the President's proposed budget.

Watch (free) Episode 1 of Showtime's Years of Living Dangerously, The New Showtime Series on Climate Change ---
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/14555d8811341893

A Teachers Union Victory:  NYC children need not be tested for reading and arithmetic for passage to the next grade

"Bloomberg-era tests no longer top criteria for student promotion," by By Aaron Short and Carl Campanile, New York Post, April 9, 2014 ---
http://nypost.com/2014/04/09/city-scraps-bloombergs-standardized-tests/

The rigorous tests imposed during Michael Bloomberg's administration saw about 8,000 students repeat their grade.

Looks as if the bad old days of “social promotion” are returning to New York City public schools.

The de Blasio administration Wednesday scrapped the results of standardized exams as the chief measure for determining promotions in grades 3 through 8.

“This is absolutely dumbing down the standards,” said Mona Davids, head of the NYC Parents Union.

Undoing one of the major policies of the Bloomberg administration, schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña said teachers and principals would now adopt a more “holistic” approach that relies on everything, including classroom attendance, to determine which students move ahead and which get left back.

Test scores would no longer be used as the “primary” or “major factor” in making those decisions, Fariña said.

“This new way forward maintains accountability, but mitigates the unintended consequences of relying solely on a single test,” Fariña said.

Education reformers immediately questioned if the city was returning to the days when kids were promoted as they aged, regardless of their ability to make the grade.

It also raised red flags because teachers have a stake in promoting students, since their evaluations are based, in part, on how well those students perform.

Campbell Brown, of the Parents Transparency Project, said promoting kids who aren’t prepared would be disastrous.

“No one benefits from the promotion of a student who is not ready for the next grade level — particularly the student himself or herself, who will be ill-prepared and at risk of never catching up with his or her peers,” Brown said.

“If there is a set of metrics other than exams to determine if a child is truly ready for the next step, we’re all ears, but not if that criteria in any way waters down the standards for promotion.”

Fariña insisted Wednesday that standards would be maintained.

“The test still counts because the test will give us some idea of what strategies the kids need,” she said.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
California also dumbed down its achievement tests. Outstanding athletes who cannot read or multiply fractions are encouraged to apply to the University of North Carolina after graduating with honors from high schools.

For many wealthy residents of New York:  It's time to move --- immediately!
Think of all that sunshine in Florida or those cool summers in the mountains of New Hampshire. But you may have to move to Ireland or Switzerland to beat the incrasing taxes on wealth throughout the USA.

"Wealthy New Yorkers Face 164% Estate Tax Rate," by Paul Caron, TaxProf Blog, April 9, 2014 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/04/wealthy-new-yorkers.html

Jensen Comment
I read where the teachers union in NYC is going to sign an 8-year generous contract in case the current socialist NYC mayor gets booted in a re-election bid.

"Avoiding the squeeze: Trusts, estates, and the new ATRA tax regime:   Higher income tax rates and the net investment income tax change the rules for trust and estate planning," by Robert S. Barnett and Elizabeth Forspan, Journal of Accountancy, April 2014 ---
http://journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2014/Apr/trusts-estate-planning-20138750.htm

Taxes rose significantly in 2013, with new top rates of 39.6% on ordinary income and 20% on capital gain income and the new 3.8% net investment income tax.

These taxes apply to trusts and estates at much lower income levels than for individuals, changing the tax planning that must be done to maximize the income that is distributed to beneficiaries.

Distributing income subject to the 3.8% net investment income tax to beneficiaries may avoid the tax entirely because the tax applies to individuals at much higher income thresholds than for trusts and estates. Those beneficiaries are also subject to the top income tax rate of 39.6% at much higher income levels, so distributing more income to beneficiaries will further reduce income taxes.

Capital gain income, which is normally taxed to the trust and estate and not distributable to beneficiaries, may be distributable, in some circumstances, to beneficiaries and deductible from gross income, another planning technique to lessen taxes.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates are at
 http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

"Post-Chavez, Venezuela Enters a Downward Spiral," Knowledge@wharton, April 4, 2014 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/post-chavez-venezuela-enters-downward-spiral/

Beginning in mid-February, Venezuela has experienced a stream of social demonstrations that have left about 30 people dead and hundreds wounded or under arrest, opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez among them. The incidents are being called the largest wave of protests in Venezuela in the last decade.

Much like the social revolts that have occurred elsewhere in the world, students were the first in Venezuela to take their frustrations to the streets. They were later joined by others who were similarly concerned with the country’s high crime rate, galloping inflation and chronic shortages of basic goods. According to the country’s Central Bank, nearly 30% of all products — or their substitutes — cannot be purchased in Venezuela.

These economic problems are not necessarily new — such imbalances already existed when Hugo Chavez, who had led the country since 1999, died of cancer last March. But the challenges have recently become more acute. “Venezuela is much worse off now than it was a year ago,” says Jaime Sabal, professor of financial management at ESADE in Barcelona. “It continues to get worse. Even the poorest sectors that have been benefiting from numerous subsidies and gifts over all these years are now beginning to be affected by economic shortages and other problems.”

Such subsidies created positive results with respect to social projects and social inclusion, “but their success came with a high cost,” according to Juan Carlos Martinez Lázaro, professor of economics at the IE Business School in Madrid. Martinez Lázaro notes that during the Chavez years, the government pursued an economic policy “based on subsidies in order to create a social ‘clientelism’ [a system that depends on patronage relationships, in which officials do special favors for their clients], which has brought the country to real ruin.”

Chavez’s hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, who assumed power after winning a narrow victory in elections last April, has inherited some imbalances that have grown “like a snowball,” says Martinez Lázaro, noting that the situation in Venezuela — with or without Chavez — “would have deteriorated inexorably.”

Continued in article

Question
How is democracy really purchased in the USA?

Hint"
It has little to do with campaign financing and more to do with block voting.

 

Hi Jim,
 

It's not the $931+ million given to Candidate Obama or the $999+ million given to Candidate Romney that mattered most in the 2012 election outcome. These are pittances compared to the $3+ trillion (read that $3,000,000 million) spending pinata.

It's a matter of which candidate buys the most voters in a proposed $3+ trillion budget.
Promises of government spending are where democracy is bought!

You are correct in a sense that more contributions to candidates do not necessarily buy voting outcomes ---
Who spent, and who gave the most money in the 2012 election ---
 http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2012/11/06/who-spent-and-who-gave-the-most-money.html?page=al

 

Jensen Comment
Promises of spending and taxation are undeniably more important than direct contributions to the candidates at election time. A candidate who promises to fight for drastically reducing the $1 trillion farm subsidy bill has zero chance of winning a presidential election in the USA. 

Nearly 50 million people who receive food stamps, and all of them are not likely to vote for a candidate who promises to cut back on food stamps.. Romney was not likely to win over the 6 million more votes he needed to win the election by promising to cut back on the food stamp program or to cut Medicare spending..

Romney got into deep trouble by merely suggesting that more than half (48%) the taxpayers now paying zero income taxes should pay in something in income taxes.

 

My point is that when you talk about "buying democracy" you have to be clear about what promises of money and goods are being made and to what massive block of voters. Candidates better not even whisper proposed cuts in Social Security benefits or Medicare.

 

This is why balancing the budget is literally impossible and anything close to a balanced budget is virtually impossible.

 

Perhaps the problem is that USA democracy is being bought with printed money (Quantitative Easing) and borrowed government money rather than more taxes.  One thing is certain --- fiscal insanity has become a bipartisan money matter in the USA.

 

t's not the $931+ million given to Candidate Obama or the $999+ million given to Candidate Romney that mattered most in the 2012 election outcome. These are pittances compared to the $3+ trillion (read that $3,000,000 million) spending pinata.

It's matter of which candidate buys the most voters in a proposed $3+ trillion budget.
Promises of government spending are where democracy is bought!

 

Respectfully,

Bob Jensen

"Amazing Graphic Shows Chicago’s Middle Class Disappear Before Your Eyes," CBS Chicago, April 3, 2014 ---
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/04/03/amazing-graphic-shows-chicagos-middle-class-disappear-before-your-eyes/

Jensen Comment
This is essentially an animated gif that cycles through neighborhood incomes 1970-2012. Keep watching as the neighborhood cells change color --- with low income cells in red becoming increasingly dominant. The flight of the middle class explains why so many Chicago schools grew empty --- leading to consolidations of more and more neighborhoods into fewer and fewer mostly low-income schools.

It is reminiscent of the flight of the middle class from Detroit just a few years earlier.

Even more than Detroit, Chicago, like New York, was a historic 1800s ethnic melting pot of citizens of almost every race, creed, and country of origin. The reasons for the late 1900s flight of the middle class and its ethnic diversity are many and varied in Chicago, but many of those reasons center on school quality and safety that, in turn, is exacerbated by racial imbalances and political corruption.

More than anything else I blame the flight of the middle class on the loss of the drug wars to violent gangs that took over most of the residential neighborhoods of Chicago. It became increasingly unsafe for children to walk to school, play in playgrounds, and even walk down the halls of school buildings. Law enforcement lost its grip. The middle class vanished to the suburbs and beyond.

The decline in two-parent families fanned the fires of gang formation and gang wars.

Of course there are other causes. Unionized jobs in Chicago and Detroit disappeared as employers moved operations to non-unionized southern states, Mexico, Asia, and elsewhere around the world.

Both Chicago and Detroit had monumentally corrupt governments 1970-2012. The middle class grew tired of watching tax revenues being being siphoned off to organized gangsters.

All these causes gave rise to the middle class flight from Chicago and Detroit 1970-2012.

Now Detroit is a bankrupt city with boarded up middle class houses, and Chicago desperately struggles against becoming another Detroit.

"Democracy: Should We Bother? (with special focus on transportation policy)" by Eric A. Morris, Freakonomics, March 10, 2014 ---
http://freakonomics.com/2014/03/10/democracy-should-we-bother/

What could be less controversial than the principle that the public should be consulted about transportation policy? In future posts, I’m going to write about why puppy dogs are despicable and why we should all root for the Miami Heat, but for today I’m going to question this seemingly unquestionable proposition.

There is good reason that one of modern transportation planning’s most fundamental precepts is that the public should be consulted on policies large and small, from constructing a new subway line to changing a humble bus schedule. This is the product of very real abuses, particularly during the creation of the Interstate Highway System. At that time, government had virtual carte blanche to displace residents and bulldoze neighborhoods. For example, for Los Angeles’s Harbor Freeway in the late 1940s, the condemnation resolution for the right-of-way was approved by the court the day after it was filed by the state. The following day, every piece of property along the route was posted with a fifteen day notice to vacate. And less than three weeks after the filing of the condemnation resolution, the Division of Highways began clearing the property.

The apparently sensible response to this arbitrary exercise of authority has been the rise of public power and participation, which is something of a mantra among transportation planners. But while this is great in principle, there are some severe problems in practice.

The first is actually getting the public interested. Here in Greenville, S.C., for example, public hearings about the long-range planning of the transportation system, which is presumably of considerable import, often attract attendees who can be counted on the fingers of one hand, despite herculean efforts to drum up interest. In such a situation, a handful of people who may have turned out because that night’s episode of Real Housewives of New Jersey was a rerun may have an outsized voice in making policy.

Meetings about near-term, specific programs often don’t have this problem—in fact, they are sometimes swamped with eager attendees. However, this raises another problem: a small number of committed citizens can, and often do, stymie projects that would have very great benefits for the public at large.

I say stymie projects, as opposed to promote them, because this is typically what happens. Economists have long noted that people are generally highly averse to change, no matter what that change is. They also hate losing much more than they enjoy gaining. Most people vastly prefer to avoid losing ten dollars than to get ten dollars, despite the fact that they are the exact same thing.

People are also quite imaginative. So public officials who want to do anything at all are often bombarded with apocalyptic charges that a change to the transportation system, no matter how minor, will jam residential streets with a sea of traffic, result in cars parked on front lawns, generate earsplitting noise, block out the sun, invite armies of miscreants and criminals into the neighborhood, and result in boils, locusts, frogs, and slaying of the neighborhood’s firstborn. In contrast to the hyperbole about the costs, the potential benefits receive scant attention, even when the residents who are complaining would be the biggest beneficiaries of the accessibility the project will generate.

Of course, the benefits of such projects may be large, even gigantic, in the case of things like freeways, subway lines, or port or airport expansions. Literally hundreds of millions of travelers might save money and/or time. Even those who do not use the facilities benefit due to economic growth, wealth, and jobs for the entire region. The problem is that few of those future travelers or residents of the region are going to turn out at public meetings or bombard legislators with emails and calls, because the benefits, though widespread, are hard to conceptualize. How can anybody be expected to be able to understand and calculate, let alone get out and campaign for, potential savings on airline tickets or more convenient connections a decade in the future? The main voices representing the interests of those travelers are the airlines, but it is easy enough for opponents to dismiss them as greedy capitalists. (This they certainly are, but for the most part the only way they can satisfy their greed is to serve the public interest, a fact that few critics of the evils of the profit motive ever consider.)

For the relatively small number of airport neighbors, however, the costs—or at least the imagined costs—are great enough to prompt energetic lobbying. In turn, their elected representatives are willing to focus all of their efforts on blocking these projects, and are willing to horse-trade their votes on other issues to bring other legislators onboard.

In addition to political lobbying, another favorite tactic is recourse to the legal system. Of course, the ability of citizens to seek restitution for harm is one of the great strengths of our system of government, but as we all know, it can also be badly abused. I once heard a talk from an activist fighting the expansion of Los Angeles’s ports, who boasted that her organization’s immediate response to any such project was the filing of a lawsuit based on California’s Environmental Quality Act. This person happily admitted that the actual merit of such suit was of little relevance, since even if it was ultimately unsuccessful it would have to be defended against, raising the project’s cost and delaying it long enough for opponents to dream up other obstructionist tactics.

Contrast Los Angeles’s Harbor Freeway experience with the building of the Century Freeway a few decades later. For the Century Freeway, acquiring and clearing the land for the right-of-way took 20 years. The project faced numerous lawsuits from residents and pressure groups, resulting in ten years of delay and costly litigation. The suits were eventually settled with a consent decree that resulted in costs ballooning to $250m/mile (today’s dollars), well more than double what was initially forecast. For these reasons, the era of building urban freeways is basically over.

You may hate freeways, and consider this a success, and in some respects it is. But don’t forget that this same principle will stymie other interventions that might be more to your liking. For example, for reasons that are entirely unclear to me, residents of Beverly Hills have long blocked making the curb lane on Wilshire Blvd. a bus lane during rush hours, despite the fact that this would ease the lives of transit riders, help to get Angelenos out of their cars, and reduce traffic on Wilshire, of which Beverly Hills residents themselves are the biggest victims.

Or maybe you simply don’t like transportation. But few stop to consider the mammoth cost of a world with no highways or airports. Their benefits are utterly taken for granted by most people, who grouse only about the system’s failings. Yet while I know of many passionate critics of the Interstates, I don’t know a single one who doesn’t travel on them. Past sacrifices were essential for today’s prosperity, but thanks to the current gridlock, we ourselves are now unwilling to make such sacrifices for future generations.

Continued in article

Democracy is Wrong for the World and Belgium is a Test Case ---
http://www.cbn.com/tv/embedplayer.aspx?bcid=1509282970001

"Eric Holder defends using Justice Department airplane for 27 personal trip," by Joel Gehrke , Washington Examiner, April 6, 2014 ---
http://washingtonexaminer.com/eric-holder-defends-using-justice-department-airplane-for-27-personal-trips/article/2546816

Attorney General Eric Holder disputed a Government Accountability Office report on his use of Justice Department airplanes for personal trips, saying it overstated the number of trips he took and failed to recognize that some trips were job-related.

"My staff keeps telling me to take it easy, you know, well, this is one that gets me," Holder told Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing. "There was this notion that we've taken -- I think it was described as hundreds of personal trips. That was wrong. GAO counted flights, not round trips. And we looked at it and figured out from the time period that they were looking, we took not hundreds, but 27 personal, four combined -- official and nonpersonal trips -- and none of the trips that I took or that the [FBI] director took ever had an impact on the mission capability of those airplanes."

Holder made the comment when asked if he would report those trips to the General Services Administration in the future.

"We didn't have a reporting requirement that existed before," he said. "If they want to change those rules, we'd be more than glad to make sure that we share that information with the appropriate organization, but this is something that is really wide open."

Continued in article

Bond Investors Seem to Be Ignoring How the Greek Economy and Unemployment are Still Deeply Troubled
"Greece's Unemployment Rate Continues To Be Totally Horrific," by Sam Ro, Business Insider, April 10, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/greece-unemployment-rate-267-2014-4#ixzz2yToBNUjM

Greece made it's triumphant return to the bond markets today after nosebleedingly high interest rates kept the country shut out for four years.

However, tumbling government borrowing costs belies the fact that the Greek economy remains deeply troubled.

According to new data from the Hellenic Statistical Authority, Greece's unemployment was at a staggering 26.7% in January. This is up from 26.5% a year ago, but down from 27.2% in December.

In January 2009, the unemployment rate was at 8.9%.

The economic crisis has been particularly harsh for young workers.

The unemployment rate among 15-24-year-olds and 25-34-year-olds were at 56.8% and 35.5%, respectively.

SEE ALSO:  Wall Street's Brightest Minds Reveal THE MOST IMPORTANT CHARTS IN THE WORLD

Jensen Comment
Much still depends upon continued Greek turnaround of a long tradition of not enforcing tax laws amidst a bloated and inefficient public sector.

European Tax Avoiders Stay One Step Ahead of Authorities --- Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/european-tax-avoiders-stay-one-step-ahead-of-authorities/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29&cm_ite=DailyAlert-041014+%281%29&cm_lm=sp%3Arjensen%40trinity.edu&cm_ven=Spop-Email

From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on March 24, 2014

Mortgage Tax Breaks Trickle Up, New Study Shows
A new study has revealed that Federal tax benefits, rather than boost first-time home ownership enable wealthier people to borrow more money for bigger houses instead,  the WSJ reports.  The research by the R Street Institute estimates that tax preferences, particularly the mortgage-interest deduction, have helped drive up the size of houses by as much as 18% in the nation’s most affluent areas while not broadly encouraging people to buy homes. The new findings add to a growing body of economic research that suggests Americans don’t benefit broadly from the tax preferences, which the study estimates cost the government $175 billion annually in forgone revenue. The study also found that suburban residents were twice as likely to benefit from the tax code as those in urban areas.

Jensen Comment
There are other considerations. Firstly, elimination of the mortgage tax break in the U.S. will once again cripple the real estate market that has been much slower recovering on a broad basis than the stock market. Secondly, mortgage contracts are a beneficial forced savings relative to monthly rent payments. A portion of each mortgage payment generally goes toward increased percentage of ownership in the property. Thirdly, owners take pride in both maintaining their property and investing in improvements. Renters do not make sacrifices to maintain and improve rental properties.

Some of the conclusions of the above study are obvious. Of course suburban people are more likely to own homes. They are the people that moved out of the cities in search of better schools and bigger houses for their growing families.

The conclusion that "Americans don't benefit greatly from the tax preferences" is absurd in my judgment. America has the best housing in the world, and tax preferences played a huge role in maintaining and improving housing quality. Firstly, as mentioned above, home owners are much more likely to make sacrifices to maintain and improve their land and houses. Secondly, new housing developments are financed by people borrowing to own their new homes. It's possible that government will build and rent all the new suburbs of each village, town, and city in America but onely if taxes to pay for such developments soar through the roof. Welcome to socialism on a grand scale.

One need only compare the quality and cost of housing in Canada versus the USA. In Canada, smaller houses on postage-stamp-sized lots cost a lot more than big houses on one or two acres in the USA>Rents are also much higher in Canada after adjusting for currency differentials. I think housing would be a whole lot cheaper and better in Canada if there were more tax preferences for home ownership.

"The Problem of Dominated Funds," by Ian Ayres, Freakonomics, March 13, 2014 ---
http://freakonomics.com/2014/03/13/the-problem-of-dominated-funds/

This is the second in a series of posts about the problem of excess fees charged to defined contribution retirement plans.

Retirement regulations have largely been successful in giving worker/participant defined contribution plans the opportunity to diversify.  Most plans nowadays give participants a sufficient variety of investment options that it is possible to allocate investments so as to diversify away most idiosyncratic risks.

However, the 1974 Employment Retirement Income Security Act’s (ERISA) emphasis on diversification has diverted attention from the problem of excess costs.  Courts evaluating whether plan fiduciaries have acted prudently have tended to just ask whether the plan offered a sufficient number of reasonably-priced investment opportunities.  For example, in Hecker vs. Deer & Co. (7^th Cir. 2009), the 7^th Circuit found it was “untenable to suggest that all of the more than 2500 publicly available investment options had excessive expense ratios.”

The Hecker approach is wrongly decided because it effectively immunizes fiduciaries that offer what Quinn Curits and I call “dominated funds” in their fund menus.

A dominated fund is a fund that no reasonable investor would invest in given that plan’s other investment offerings.  In our recent working paper, we find that:

[A]pproximately 52% of plans have menus offering at least one dominated fund. In the plans that offer dominated funds, dominated funds hold 11.5% of plan assets and these dominated investments tend to be outperformed annually by their low-cost menu alternatives by more than 60 basis points.

Informed investors should be investing 0.0 percent of their plan assets in dominated funds, so it’s disturbing to see that when given the opportunity, 11.5 percent of plan assets flow into these funds.

To my mind, dominated funds are a kind of product design defect:

A car or computer manufacturer which included a button on their product which had no beneficial purpose and would only cause the device to perform less safely would run a substantial risk of being held accountable under product liability for failing “to design a product to prevent a foreseeable misuse.” The fact that informed consumers would not push the button would not absolve the manufacturer from including an option that no reasonable user should ever push if it was foreseeable that even some users would misuse the product by pressing the button. The likelihood of investor misallocation is just as foreseeable.

Even my own retirement plan at Yale may have a dominated funds problem.  The good news is that Yale has successfully negotiated with TIAA-CREF so that the Yale menu of funds now includes super-low cost “Institutional Class” index funds with a net expense ratio of just 7 basis points.  But the bad news is that Yale’s menu still includes a similar stock fund with much higher costs.  In my last retirement post, I wrote about how my Stanford “CREF Stock Account” charges 49 basis points (.49 percent) as its annual “Estimated Expense Charge.”  Yale has kept me in the higher cost fund even after it introduced the similar, lower cost option.  I’m not saying that this particular instance is a dominated fund problem, as the CREF Stock Account has a small amount of active management that may justify its higher fees.  I haven’t crunched those numbers to be sure.  But there’s a good chance that the Institutional Class index fund dominates.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on pensions and pension accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#Pensions

From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on March 28, 2014

Senator Wyden Will Push to Renew $54 Billion in Tax Breaks
The newly-appointed Senate Finance Committee Chairman wants to get an agreement on renewing some 55 tax credits and deductions that expired last year – but for the last time. As the CFO Journal’s Emily Chasan writes, Oregon democrat Ron Wyden who took charge of the influential committee in February said Thursday that renewing the so-called tax extenders – worth some $54 billion – was a top priority. He said the renewals would bring peace of mind to businesses and families on tax breaks. “This means jobs and much needed certainty for families and businesses alike,” Mr. Wyden said. “But let me be clear – I’m determined that this is the last time we do extenders and would like to leverage this last extension to reform the broken tax code.”

Jensen Comment
When does Senator Wyden think there will never be a need for an employment tax stimulus?
Not in my lifetime!

"The Charter School Performance Breakout The oft-heard claim that charters perform no better than conventional schools is out of date and inaccurate," by Karl Zinsmeister, The Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303725404579461121157868830?mod=djemMER_h&mg=reno64-wsj

States With the Highest (and Lowest) Taxes ---
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2014/04/02/states-with-the-highest-and-lowest-taxes/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=APR022014A&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter

Jensen Comment
States vary in these rankings over time. For example, Vermont and Maine used to be the most taxing states. Maine dropped out of the Top 10 and Vermont dropped to Number 9. Also the tax bite varies a lot with income. Maryland has a proportionately large number of very wealthy people. Hence, Maryland makes the Top 10 ranking of the most taxing states. But this is not so for Maryland's share of the 50% of the USA taxpayers who pay no income taxes.

Except when people retire, state taxation is probably not the main driver of where to live. Other things like economic opportunity and life style preferences are more important before retirement.

Also the differences in the highest taxing states are not all that great in total, but they can be highly different in terms of certain individual taxes. For if you commute or otherwise drive a lot, Pennsylvania is worse than nearly every other state even though is barely makes the Top 10 list in total state taxation.

It's easy to get around some taxes. For example, since New Hampshire has no sales tax, New Hampshire is where people from Vermont shop. Hotel chains build close to Wal-Mart stores in New Hampshire. New Hampshire Wal-Mart parking lots have to accommodate the big pickup trucks pulling huge trailers with green Vermont license plates. An added attraction is the relatively low liquor and cigarette pricing in New Hampshire. New Yorkers, however, live further away from New Hampshire and are screwed in many ways by the NY tax collectors. and liquor stores.

"The 77 Percent Lie -- and Why Obama Keeps Telling It," by Larry Elder, Townhall, April 3, 2014 ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/larryelder/2014/04/03/the-77-percent-lie--and-why-obama-keeps-telling-it-n1818086?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

A quick way to kill debate is to accuse your political adversary of "lying."

Still, it's hard to figure out what else propels President Barack Obama to falsely assert, yet again, that employers rip off female employees by paying them 23 cents less per dollar than men -- for doing the same work.

In his last State of the Union address, Obama said: "Today, women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment. A woman deserves equal pay for equal work. She deserves to have a baby without sacrificing her job." See, the president begins the statement with a fact. That is, women on the whole make 77 cents on the dollar compared to the earnings of men, on the whole. But here, as he has other times, Obama has added for the same work, or, as in this case, "equal pay for equal work." This makes the statement not only flat out false, but insultingly so.

MSNBC's "Morning Joe" co-host, Mika Brzezinski, echoed Obama: "Of course, women get paid 77 cents for every dollar men earn for the same exact job, so it's something that needs to be rectified, obviously." (Now according to the Daily Beast, at $2 million, Mika makes half of what Scarborough makes. Time to hire a new agent perhaps, but it does not excuse falsely telling woman that they face a 23-cent ovary discount.)

Even the federal government -- that Obama serves as chief executive -- knows this is nonsense.

. . .

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Labor found that, after controlling for obvious education and job differences, the gender "wage gap" shrank to only 95 percent. The Labor Dept. report also noted women often make different choices than men: "A greater percentage of women than men tend to work part-time. Part-time work tends to pay less than full-time work. A greater percentage of women than men tend to leave the labor force for childbirth, childcare and elder care. Some of the wage gap is explained by the percentage of women who were not in the labor force during previous years, the age of women, and the number of children in the home. Women, especially working mothers, tend to value 'family friendly' workplace policies more than men. Some of the wage gap is explained by industry and occupation, particularly, the percentage of women who work in the industry and occupation."

Even the 5 percent "gap" has a non-exploited explanation. The Labor report said: "Research also suggests that differences not incorporated into the model due to data limitations may account for part of the remaining gap. ...(M)uch of the literature, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics Highlights of Women's Earnings, focus on wages rather than total compensation. Research indicates that women may value non-wage benefits more than men do, and as a result prefer to take a greater portion of their compensation in the form of health insurance and other fringe benefits."

Continued in article

"El Niño Probably Won’t Quench California’s Thirst," by Stephen Stirling, FiveThirtyEight, April 3, 2014 ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/el-nino-probably-wont-quench-californias-thirst/

Jensen Comment
If there ever was a time to commence high-volume desalinization with solar power it's now!

"Congressional Officials Grant Access Due To Campaign Contributions: A Randomized Field Experiment," by Joshua L. Kalla (Yale) and David E. Broockman (UC Berkeley), Working Paper, 2014 ---
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~broockma/kalla_broockman_donor_access_field_experiment.pdf

Concern that lawmakers grant preferential treatment to individuals because they have contributed to political campaigns has long occupied jurists, scholars, and the public. However, the effects of campaign contributions on legislators’ behavior have proven notoriously difficult to assess. We report the first randomized field experiment on the topic. In the experiment, a political organization attempted to schedule meetings between 191 Members of Congress and their constituents who had contributed to political campaigns. However, the organization randomly assigned whether it informed legislators’ offices that individuals who would attend the meetings were contributors. Congressional offices made considerably more senior officials available for meetings when offices were informed the attendees were donors, with senior officials attending such meetings more than three times as often (p < 0.01). Influential policymakers thus appear to make themselves much more accessible to individuals because they have contributed to campaigns, even in the absence of quid pro quo arrangements. These findings have significant implications for ongoing legal and legislative debates. The hypothesis that individuals can command greater attention from influential policymakers by contributing to campaigns has been among the most contested explanations for how financial resources translate into political power. The simple but revealing experiment presented here elevates this hypothesis from extensively contested to scientifically supported.

Jensen Comment
My own opinion on this is that big donors can influence spending  that comes back to line the pockets of those donors such as when the corn producers lobby persuaded Congress to pass required mixing of corn ethanol with gasoline or when a generous political donor lands a construction contract for a new addition to a local airport.

However, more often than not blocks of voters trump donations. For example, no Presidential candidate dares to promise to reduce the $1 trillion dollar farm subsidy program or promise to significantly cut back on Medicare expenditures. No Presidential candidate dares to promise to cut back on the 50 million recipients of food stamps. It's not so much the political donations as it is the power of voting blocks to sustain their government benefits.

Huge labor unions really don't have to give enormous campaign contributions if they can control how their millions of members will vote. My point is that control over voting blocks trumps millions or billions donated to campaigns. Political clout of some voting blocks have waned. For example, the Roman Catholic church has diminished  control over Catholics at the ballot box.

How to Mislead With Statistics
From MIT:  Living Wage Calculator --- http://livingwage.mit.edu/

Jensen Comment
There are quite a few sources of error. For example, I live in Grafton County, New Hampshire. Within Grafton County, the cost of housing has a wide variation between Hanover (home of Dartmouth College) having very, very high housing purchase and rental costs versus decadent mill towns in Grafton County like Lisbon. But the Living Wage Calculator does not distinguish between the living wage in Hanover versus the living wage in Lisbon that has to much lower than that of Hanover.

Another source of error arises between larger towns and very small villages. For example, larger towns in New Hampshire have free transportation services for the poor and elderly. Small villages do not even have local taxi services. In comparison large cities like Boston have various options for low cost public transportation that do not exist for most of the rest of New England. Also a city like Boston has wider ranging rental prices for housing that vary in different parts of the city. The living wage calculator does not factor in the fact that non-unionized big stores like Wal-Mart are not allowed in Boston, thereby increasing the shopping costs of residents of Boston.

The living wage calculator factors in taxes when comparing living costs of a New Hampshire county having no income or sales taxes versus an adjacent Vermont county having the highest income, sales, and property taxes in New England. The Living Wage Calculator will not, however, adjust for the fact that a Vermont resident has a high probability of both working and shopping in New Hampshire if the commuting distances are relatively short. Thus reported differences in living wages for many counties in Vermont can be misleading.

Residents in northern New England have access to Canada's inexpensive prescribed medications, where it is much more costly and inconvenient for residents of southern New England to traverse back and forth to Canada.

Residents in San Antonio can and do live fairly well without air conditioning (there's breeze almost every night caused by the Balcones Fault). But residents of New England cannot live without heat. I'm not certain how the Living Wage Calculator adjusts for this difference, but my guess is that it factors in the costs of cooling and heating without accounting for the fact that it's possible in many warm climates to live fairly well without cooling. I should add, however, that I would not want to live in San Antonio without air conditions, but many, many residents there do live without air conditioning.

The list of variations in "living" expenses that are not factored into the "Living Wage Calculator" is enormous.
No one variation may be significant but in aggregate I think they can add significant error to the numbers pumped out of the "Living Wage Calculator."

"An Unusual Accounting Move in Paul Ryan’s Budget." by Andrew Flowers, FiveThirtyEight, April 1, 2014 ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/an-unusual-accounting-move-in-paul-ryans-budget/ 

. . .

So, while the dynamic scoring numbers in the Ryan budget are in line with CBO’s estimates, they don’t mean much. The CBO is modeling the overall effect of lower budget deficits assuming no change in particular policies. But Ryan’s proposal makes changes to several policies, including corporate tax rates, Medicare payments and food stamps. And the specifics of those changes matter. There’s a big difference between cutting the deficit by eliminating the Department of Education and cutting the deficit by eliminating the Department of Defense.

Whether the dynamic scoring in Ryan’s budget is realistic — and thus whether it would balance the budget — depends partly on the effects of Ryan’s specific policy proposals, and neither the CBO nor Ryan addresses that question.

What Is the Relationship Between Technology and Democracy?
Condoleezza Rice and Google's Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen discuss communication technologies, foreign policy, and geopolitics.
Stanford Graduate School of Business
April 2014 --- Click Here
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/what-is-relationship-between-technology-democracy?utm_source=Stanford+Business+Re%3AThink&utm_campaign=7545c3ff4a-Stanford_Business_Re_Think_Issue_344_2_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b5214e34b-7545c3ff4a-70265733&ct=t%28Stanford_Business_Re_Think_Issue_344_2_2014%29

Jensen Comment
This program focuses heavily upon leakage issues from huge databases collected for intelligence purposes. Intelligence is needed to get advance warnings on threats and to defuse threats. At the same time getting this information may impinge on rights to privacy and to misuse of the data for unintended purposes. There are no easy answers even among these outstanding experts.

Some of the mean and politically-motivated predictions about the Affordable Care Act that we could have done without ---
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117229/obamacare-doom-predictions-quotes-conservatives-and-critics

Jensen Comment
I still think that the Affordable Care Act is a politically-crafted abomination that proves once again that compromise solutions can be terrible solutions due to absurd compromises. The ACA should should be administered by the government, leaving out the private sector insurance companies much like Medicare is administered. Only I would insist on better fraud controls that drag down Medicare.

Private sector insurance companies should be involved only in providing supplemental plans. In this respect I favor the German plan where there is basic public sector insurance coverage for everybody plus optional supplemental plans. Here's how the German system works:
Health Insurance in Germany --- http://www.toytowngermany.com/wiki/Health_insurance

Having said this, the USA will probably have to live with the ACA as written until it is significantly improved by Congress or the courtsw. Here are a few of my major concerns where improvements are drastically needed.

• The high-deductible plans having 20% or higher deductibles are terrible. Too many people having these plans will put off paying for medical treatments and medications because ACA-covered people simply cannot or will not pay the high deductibles. People in the USA will literally become sicker and sicker, suffer more, and die sooner.
   
• There's a 90-day grace period in the ACA where people who default on paying premiums are still covered for the first 30-days by the insurance company and the next 60 days by the doctors and hospitals providing the care is absolutely absurd. The insurance companies will simply pass on these bad debt losses (which may be enormous for surgeries and hospital confinements) into higher premiums for the people who pay their medical insurance billings.
  
  An enormous number of doctors and hospitals are so afraid of having to provide free care to ACA deadbeats that they are refusing to participate in the ACA medical care networks. For example, in New Hampshire where I live about half the hospitals and many physicians in the state are refusing to care for ACA patients except in dire emergencies where patients cannot be shipped by ambulance to other hospitals.
   
• Something drastic must be done to reduce the number of uninsured and the number of formerly insured people who tried the ACA for a while and got tired of having to pay for lousy, high deductible health insurance policies. They take their chances as uninsured people who cannot be turned down by emergency rooms (much like the system before the ACA was passed).
   
  • One partial solution is to provide more and more incentives for large and small businesses and other employers to provide medical insurance coverage of employees.
    
     
  •  Another partial solution is to net health insurance premiums out of unemployment and disability benefits and welfare payments for people who do not qualify for Medicaid.
    
     
  • Another partial solution is to have the IRS garnish wages of people who are not up to date on paying health insurance premiums and/or cheat on their claims for subsidies on those premiums.

There are no easy answers here. I hope President Hillary Clinton reignites her preferred option of taking the private sector insurance companies out of universal health coverage in a government administered plan that takes us closer and closer to the German system for health care insurance.

I vote for the German system that operates a lot like Medicare for all ages of citizens but with better fraud controls. I used to lean toward the Canadian system, but it's elective medical procedure delays for new hips, knees, and shoulders forces too many Canadians to pay cash for such procedures in the USA. when they grow weary of waiting out Canadian health plan approval.

What bothers me the most are the blatant lies our leaders broadcast to voters just to get a health care bill passed. I would be much less critical if they had flat out been honest about what they really intend for this legislation to cost. One example of a political lie is that Cadillac insurance plans will be taxed. The unions didn't object very loudly because they know full well that by 2018 when the tax is supposed to commence, Congress will have repealed all or most of the Cadillac tax.  The same is true with many other provisions of the legislation that can be altered at taxpayer expense. Also our leaders promised that nearly a half trillion dollars will be saved by reducing third party payments to physicians. Dumb! Dumb! Dumb!

Bob Jensen's universal health care messaging --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm

Question
Why are many corporations going to drop their health care coverage of employees over the next several years?

"Ezekiel's Prophecy If he's right, ObamaCare's biggest disruptions are yet to come," by James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304418404579465480916914144?mod=djemBestOfTheWeb_h&mg=reno64-wsj

Ezekiel Emanual, Rahm's elder brother, is a physician who helped design ObamaCare and has been one of its most intense champions. So you may be surprised to learn that in his new book, "Reinventing American Health Care," he predicts that tens of millions more Americans will lose their medical plans in the coming decade.

In its "You're the Boss" small-business blog, the New York Times quotes his prediction that by 2025, "fewer than 20 percent of workers in the private sector will receive traditional employer-sponsored health insurance." As of March 2013 such benefits were available to 85% of full-time private-sector workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If Emanuel is right--and especially if, as he implies, ObamaCare was designed to produce such an outcome--the president's repeated pledge that "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan" was a far more widespread fraud than has yet been realized.

In the next two to three years, Emanuel predicts, "a few big, blue-chip companies will announce their intention to stop providing health insurance. Instead, they will raise salaries substantially or offer large, defined contributions to their workers. Then the floodgates will open." Small businesses will be even more eager to drop coverage.

The main reason Emanuel expects this result is the so-called Cadillac tax, which takes effect in 2018 and has nothing to do with the bailout of General Motors. Rather, it is a levy on what the Times calls "especially generous health plans."

Yet one cannot say ObamaCare was designed with the clear purpose of discouraging employer coverage. It leaves in place the tax exemption for such plans, which Emanuel understatedly acknowledges, in the Times's words, "is a big obstacle to this vision." It also imposes a fine on companies with more than 50 employees that don't insure enough of them. Although the fine for not insuring a worker is considerably less than the cost of insuring one, it's still an incentive to continue coverage.

Continued in article

Jensen
Many of these doomsday forecasts for the ACA are based upon the assumption that the 2010 ACA legislation won't be changed much. However, a Republican majority in the Senate could lead to some major revisions in the ACA, including repeal of the Cadillac Tax and repeal of the way physicians and hospitals must treat deadbeats for free if they renege on keeping their insurance premiums payments up to date.

I don't anticipate total repeal of the the ACA, but there are many disasters in need of legislative repair no matter what the outcomes of the 2014 and 2016 elections.

The Cadillac Tax: A Game Changer for U.S. Health Care:  Can you explain this tax to your students?
Do you understand the Cadillac Tax provision of the Affordable Healthcare Act that will have a monumental 2018 impact on healthcare coverage of employees who are now covered by employer plans --- plans now costing the government over $250 billion per year? But not for long!

Do you understand the Cadillac Tax provision?
Me neither. As Nancy Pelosi said years ago, Congress passed the ACA before anybody in the USA had a chance to study all the surprises in this the enormous bill.

If you're covered presently on your employer's plan you should most certainly learn about the Cadillac Tax provision that kicks in in 2018.

"The Cadillac Tax: A Game Changer for U.S. Health Care." by Jonathan Gruber (MIT), Harvard Business Review Blog, November 15. 2013 ---
http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/11/the-cadillac-tax-a-game-changer-for-u-s-health-care/

Jensen Comment
Non-profit organizations, especially labor unions, for whom Cadillac plans are especially popular will be allowed to keep their plans without penalty since tax deductions are not of concern to them.

Having preferred networks of doctors and hospitals is not unheard of in national health care plans. Germany, for example, has both public health insurance plus premium coverage with private insurance. Cuba notoriously has bourgeoisie plans for members of the Communist Party and the wealthy versus  proletariat plans for the poor people.

If you Congressional representative brags about signing up for Obamacare ask if he or she has a Cadillac Obamacare plan that lets them choose their own doctors and hospitals.

 

He was an old-time cowboy, don't you understand
His eyes were sharp as razor blades his face was leather tan
His toes were pointed inward from a-hangin' on a horse
He was an old philosopher, of course

He was so thin I swear you could have used him for a whip
He had to drink a beer to keep his britches on his hips
I knew I had to ask him about the mysteries of life
He spit between his boots and he replied
"It's faster horses, younger women,
Older whiskey, and more money"

He smiled and all his teeth were covered with tobacco stains
He said, "It don't do men no good to pray for peace and rain.
Peace and rain is just a way to say prosperity,
And buffalo chips is all it means to me."

I told him I was a poet, I was lookin' for the truth
I do not care for horses, whiskey,
Women or the loot I said I was a writer,
My soul was all on fire
He looked at me an' he said, "You are a liar."

"It's faster horses, younger women,
Older whiskey, and more money"
Well, I was disillusioned, if I say the least
I grabbed him by the collar and I jerked him to his feet
There was something cold and shiny layin' by my head
So I started to believe the things he said
Well, my poet days are over and I'm back to being me
As I enjoy the peace and comfort of reality
If my boy ever asks me what it is that
I have learned I think that I will readily affirm
"It's faster horses, younger women,
Older whiskey, and more money"
"It's faster horses, younger women,
Older whiskey, and more money.

It ain't no damn expensive ACA medical  insurance plan
that mostly subsidizes sick folks.
 

Bob Jensen's universal health care messaging --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm

"The Individual Mandate Goes Poof:  The latest delays show that the supposed centerpiece of ObamaCare won't cause the uninsured to buy coverage," by Abby McCloskey And Tom Miller, The Wall Street Journal, March 26, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303802104579451103019884322?mod=djemMER_h&mg=reno64-wsj

One by one, the myths of the Affordable Care Act have been revealed. When the curtain on open enrollment falls on March 31, the last remaining big myth of ObamaCare will be fully exposed: The individual mandate has failed.

After a last-ditch effort with President Obama himself encouraging "young invincibles" to sign up before the deadline, the administration is scrambling to boost enrollment. On Tuesday, the White House announced that people who applied for coverage on the federal health-insurance exchange will have until mid-April to finish the paperwork.

The mandate was supposed to be the administration's magical elixir for the assorted shortcomings of the Affordable Care Act. Disappointing early enrollment numbers? More people will sign up eventually to avoid mandate penalties. Potential premium spikes for government-approved coverage that must ignore cost differences in the age- and health-related risks of enrollees? Forcing young and healthy individuals to buy coverage will spread out the costs.

But the individual mandate was never strong enough to force millions of Americans to buy insurance they did not want or could not afford. Last week, the Obama administration estimated that five million Americans had signed up thus far for insurance on the exchanges, falling short of original projections by the administration and the Congressional Budget Office that there would be seven million first-year enrollees. Yet even the five million figure needs to be discounted by at least another 20% to account for people who fail to pay for their first month's premium, according to insurers' estimates of early enrollees.

The individual mandate had the least effect on those it was supposed to encourage to gain coverage—the uninsured. McKinsey & Co. surveys found that a little over one-quarter of people signing up for coverage last month were previously uninsured. Goldman Sachs GS +0.35% analysts estimate that about one million uninsured Americans will sign up for the ObamaCare exchanges before open enrollment ends. For perspective, that's about 2% of the 48 million uninsured.

A larger share of the exchange enrollees is likely coming from people whose previous coverage was canceled (due to other ObamaCare rules) or those who found a somewhat better deal for exchange coverage (due to much more generous low-income subsidies). More recent increases in insurance coverage are appearing in health plans outside of the exchanges.

The mandate penalties are too small and limited to be very persuasive. Many uninsured individuals are exempted from them. Either their incomes are lower than the federal income tax filing threshold (roughly $10,150 for a single individual), the minimum essential coverage that ObamaCare requires would be "unaffordable" under the law (costing them more than 8% of their household income), or they fall within a growing list of other exemptions from the mandate.

Even when the CBO was more optimistic about the individual mandate's effects (in April 2010), it expected about two-thirds of the 21 million nonelderly persons still uninsured in 2016 to be exempt from the mandate or its penalties.

Those not exempt face modest fines compared with the out-of-pocket cost of paying premiums for ObamaCare-required insurance. For example, the maximum penalties for a single adult remaining uninsured throughout all of 2014 would amount to the higher of $95 or 1% of household income above the federal income tax filing threshold. This is a fraction of the cost of health insurance for potential enrollees in government exchanges.

The threat behind the penalties is even less believable. The Affordable Care Act explicitly prohibits the Internal Revenue Service from using its most powerful enforcement tools like criminal penalties and levying property—such as wage garnishment.

If the IRS manages to discover someone without required coverage for all or part of a year, it can do little more than collect the penalty by taking it out of any other income tax refunds owed to an uninsured taxpayer. That risk can be limited or avoided by reducing the amounts withheld from one's regular paycheck for income taxes.

For the mandate to have teeth, the size of the penalty would need to be greatly increased, exemptions would need to decrease, and enforcement would need to be stronger. Good luck with convincing congressional Democrats facing midterm elections to commit political suicide.

Even then, a tougher mandate still might not work. The CBO concedes that there is "little empirical evidence concerning individual people's responsiveness to health insurance mandates." In other countries with much higher penalties, such as Switzerland or the Netherlands, health-insurance mandates have had little success in changing the behavior of the uninsured and largely reinforced existing levels of coverage. This was the finding in a November 2007 Health Affairs study by former Obama Health and Human Services official Sherry Glied and two co-authors. They also found mixed results from mandates for auto insurance.

The March 31 deadline to gain coverage in government exchanges will come and go with a whimper, not a bang. Enrollment numbers may rally a bit, but likely still will remain low. Any net gains in coverage will be due primarily to ObamaCare's generous exchange subsidies for lower-income Americans, plus automatic enrollment of income-eligible Medicaid beneficiaries.

The ineffectiveness of the individual mandate is trumped only by its unpopularity. Two-thirds of Americans support getting rid of the individual mandate completely, according to a recent ABC News poll. This month, the House of Representatives voted again to delay enforcement of the individual mandate for a year, with support from 27 Democratic defectors.

The Obama administration already has been forced to delay, drop or revise a host of other requirements in the law, such as the employer mandate, minimum benefits standards, and nondiscrimination rules. Until now, the White House has refused to delay or repeal the unpopular individual mandate because it was supposed to hide the full "on-budget" costs of ObamaCare. Its architects hoped that the mandate could force millions of Americans to pay for the law's expensive coverage and cross subsidies through higher premiums instead of higher taxes. But they always lacked sufficient political support to try to make the mandate powerful enough to accomplish this.

Expect the mandate to turn into even more of a "suggestion" before votes are cast in this November's congressional elections. With the mandate illusion off the table, the Affordable Care Act can no longer hide what it truly is: another unfunded liability for taxpayers