My Free Speech Political Quotations and Commentaries Directory and Log
---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Political/PoliticalQuotationsCommentaries.htm
Be brave enough to start a conversation that
matters.
Margaret Wheatley,
We must be willing to get rid of the life we've
planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell
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
Michael Jordan ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jordan
I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've
lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the
game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my
life. And that is why I succeed.
Michael Jordan as quoted in the CPA
Newsletter on September 29, 2014
Yeah, I've gotten myself into (gambling) situations
where I would not walk away and I've pushed the envelope. Is that compulsive?
Yeah, it depends on how you look at it. If you're willing to jeopardize your
livelihood and your family, then yeah.
Michael Jordan in reply to Ed Bradley's question on CBS
Sixty Minutes as to whether he's a compulsive gambler.
It would be very important for Democrats to retain
control of the Senate. Civilization as we know it today would be in jeopardy if
the Republicans win the Senate. It's really important.
Nancy Pelosi, U.S. House of
Representatives Minority Leader who also claimed tunneling-obsessed Hama was a
humanitarian organization ---
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/09/15/nancy-pelosi-warned-about-the-end-of-civilization-if-republicans-win-in-november-n1891959?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm
Destroying ISIS should be 'No. 1 priority '
Elizabeth Warren, Democratic Senator
and Possible Presidential Candidate (someday)
http://thehill.com/policy/international/216559-warren-destroying-isis-should-be-our-no-1-priority
French welfare fraud costs 20-25 billion euros per
year - report ---
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0HC1DI20140917?irpc=932
A village of just 1,000 residents in Switzerland has
been forced to raise taxes because an African refugee and her seven children
cost the local authority $65,000 in benefits every month. Hagenbuch, in the
Swiss canton of Zurich, is understood to be spending close to a third of its
total annual budget on the family after they arrived from Eritrea in East Africa
three years ago.
Daniel Greenfield ---
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/village-forced-to-raise-taxes-after-muslim-refugee-family-consumes-13-of-budget/
Democracy is Wrong for the World and Belgium is a Test Case ---
http://www.cbn.com/tv/embedplayer.aspx?bcid=1509282970001
Human Rights Watch: Defending Human Rights Worldwide ---
http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014
Autograph ABP (human rights photography charity) ---
http://autograph-abp.co.uk
Here Are 10 Things That Are Right With America ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/whats-right-with-america-2014-8?op=1
Johnston Reviews Kleinbard's We Are Better Than This ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/09/johnston-reviews.html
"Ruth Bader Ginsburg Is an American Hero," by Jeffrey Rosen, New
Republic, September 2014 ---
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119578/ruth-bader-ginsburg-interview-retirement-feminists-jazzercise
"Why everybody is moving to Texas," by Les Christie, CNN Money,
September 29, 2014 ---
http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/29/real_estate/affordable-housing-growth/index.html?iid=Lead
More Americans moved to Texas in recent years than
any other state: A net gain of more than 387,000 in the latest Census for
2013. And Austin was the fastest growing major city.
Jobs is the No. 1 reason for population moves, with
affordable housing a close second.
"It take two things to draw people inland in big
numbers: jobs and housing affordability," said Nela Richardson, chief
economist for the real estate broker Redfin.
Texas and other heartland states have two
advantages that translate into affordable housing: Plenty of cheap land
around cities and easy regulations that enable developers to build quickly.
Related: Best cities for Millennial buyers
Nine of the top 10 fastest growing U.S. metro areas
last year were ones where homes were more affordable than the U.S. average,
according to Redfin. Many were in Texas, Oklahoma, Utah and other heartland
states.
Five Texas cities -- Austin, Houston, San Antonio,
Dallas and Fort Worth -- were among the top 20 fastest growing large metro
areas.
Some smaller Texas metro areas grew even faster. In
oil-rich Odessa, the population grew 3.3% and nearby Midland recorded a 3%
gain.
obs was the main driver in Austin, where population
rose by 2.6% between 2012 and 2013. That's nearly four times faster growth
than the United States as a whole.
Jobs are plentiful in Austin, where the
unemployment rate is just 4.6%. Moody's Analytics projects job growth to
average 4% a year through 2015.
Just as important, many jobs there are well paid:
The median income of more than $75,000 is nearly 20% higher than the
national median. The median home price is $243,000, higher than the U.S.
norm, but a price level that income can support.
Related: Mansions for under $1 million
During the boom years, population actually grew
faster in high-priced markets like New York and San Francisco.
Continued in article
Here's Where The US Really Gets It Oil Imported Oil (excluding our
significant USA production) ---
http://www.randalolson.com/2014/08/28/where-the-u-s-gets-its-oil-from/#ixzz3EhthpD5U
Many of our suppliers (not Canada) either hate us or fake being our friends.
Keep in mind that prices are set in global markets such that no single supplier
nation has horrific monopoly powers. Saudi Arabia, however, still has
significant influence on global pricing. An ISIS takeover of Saudi Arabia is a
nightmare --- except maybe for Putin.
Parts of Europe are increasingly dependent upon the Russian pipelines.
Our energy long-term future is most likely in cheap hydrogen. Of course oil
producers always price to compete with alternative energy making it difficult to
get these alternatives off the ground. Having gasoline for $1 per gallon will
probably come back again at our fuel pumps.
The Unsolved Mystery Of The Deadliest Terror Attack On Wall Street
(nearly 100 years ago) ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/unsolved-wall-street-terror-attack-2014-5#ixzz3DUpWQNfj
Questionable Integrity of Paul Krugman: How to Mislead With Statistics
"Paul Krugman's Interesting Semantic And Statistical Dodge On Tax Rates,"
by Tim Worstall, Forbes, September 26, 2014 ---
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/09/26/paul-krugmans-interesting-semantic-and-statistical-dodge-on-tax-rates/
Nobel Laureate economist and political activist Paul Krugman is sometimes
known to cherry pick data or even invent data in order to make a political point
---
Paul Krugman ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman
. . .
Krugman's columns have drawn criticism as well as
praise. A 2003 article in The Economist[ questioned Krugman's
"growing tendency to attribute all the world's ills to George Bush," citing
critics who felt that "his relentless partisanship is getting in the way of
his argument" and claiming errors of economic and political reasoning in his
columns. Daniel Okrent, a former The New York Times ombudsman, in his
farewell column, criticized Krugman for what he said was "the disturbing
habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that
pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assault.
"The Missing Data in Krugman’s German Austerity Narrative" Daniel J.
Mitchell, Townhall, February 25, 2014 ---
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/danieljmitchell/2014/02/25/the-missing-data-in-krugmans-german-austerity-narrative-n1800047?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
There’s an ongoing debate about
Keynesian economics, stimulus spending, and
various
versions of fiscal austerity,
and regular readers know I do everything possible to explain that you can
promote added prosperity by reducing the
burden of government spending.
. . .
But here’s the problem with his article. We know
from the (misleading) examples above
(not quoted here) that he’s complained about supposed
austerity in places such as the United Kingdom and France, so one would
think that the German government must have been more profligate with the
public purse.
After all, Krugman wrote they haven’t “imposed a
lot of [austerity] on themselves.”
So I followed the advice in Krugman’s “public
service announcement.” I didn’t just repeat what people have said. I dug
into
the data to see what
happened to government spending in various nations.
And I know you’ll be shocked to see that Krugman
was wrong. The Germans have been more frugal (at least in the sense of
increasing spending at the slowest rate) than nations that supposedly are
guilty of “spending cuts.”
"About Those Income Inequality Statistics An answer to Paul Krugman,"
by Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304325004579298502492870522?mod=djemEditorialPage_h
Let me do something
New York Times
NYT -0.13% columnist
Paul Krugman isn't exactly famous for doing, at
least not graciously: acknowledge a mistake.
In my Dec. 31 column on income inequality, I used a
data set from the U.S. Census Bureau to make the case that incomes in the
U.S. have been growing across the board, even if the incomes of the wealthy
have grown faster than those of others further down the income scale. But I
wrote those lines looking at a set of numbers that had not been adjusted for
inflation.
Professor Krugman, in a post on his New York Times
blog, takes me to task for this. Had I done so looking at the
inflation-adjusted table, it would have shown the incomes of the bottom 20%
essentially stagnating since 1979 (and long before then, too), though it
also would have shown incomes for the top 20% rising far less dramatically.
That was an error, roughly of the kind the Nobel
Laureate economist made last August when he confused an x for a
1/x. As is his charming wont, Mr. Krugman accuses me not of making an
honest mistake, but of "pulling a fast one."
My mistake is all the more unfortunate because
the basic point I was making is right: Americans are getting richer across
the entire income spectrum, even if they are getting richer at very
different rates. That much is confirmed by data from the Congressional
Budget Office. The CBO finds that between 1979 and 2007 income for poor
households grew by 18%, for the middle classes by nearly 40%, and for the
top 81-99% by 65%. It's the top 1% who have made out very handsomely, with a
jump of 275% over nearly three decades.
The difference between the Census Bureau and CBO
data comes down to the complicated (and ultimately subjective) way in which
"income" is defined. The Census Bureau data relies on a definition of income
that is pre-tax but post-transfer cash income. But it also excludes the
non-cash benefits that go to many of the poor, such as food stamps,
Medicaid, CHIP (children's Medicaid) and housing subsidies. (and now
more free or subsidized medical care and medications)
By contrast, the CBO numbers measure after-tax,
after-transfer income. It also includes non-cash transfers. Those benefits
may not be fungible, but they do have value. And they vindicate my core
point: "The richer have outpaced the poorer in growing their incomes, just
as runners will outpace joggers who will, in turn, outpace walkers." What
mattered, I said, was that "the walking man walks."
My column also noted that President Obama erred
when he said the top 10% take half of aggregate income; in fact, it's the
top 20% who take half the income, according to Census Bureau data. Mr.
Krugman takes issue with this, too, saying the Census Bureau figures are
pretty much worthless when it comes to quantifying the aggregate incomes of
the very rich. Much better, he says, is data from a controversial study by
two left-wing French economists, Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, which is
in line with President Obama's contention.
Talk about a fast one. As Greg Mankiw, chairman of
the Harvard Economics department, notes, Saez-Piketty has its own set of
very large problems: "The data are on tax units rather than households, they
do not include many government transfer payments, they are pre-tax rather
than post-tax, they do not adjust for changes in household size, and they do
not include nontaxable compensation such as employer-provided health
insurance."
Ultimately, debates about income inequality are
never going to be settled because both "income" and "inequality" are very
hard to measure. Is the best measure of inequality wage inequality,
income inequality, or consumption inequality? If a poor family today can now
afford a car, an air conditioner, a computer and other goods unaffordable or
unavailable to the poor of 35 years ago, can they really be said to have
stagnated economically? How do changes in the tax code affect the ways in
which income can be reported, sheltered and measured? What is the true money
value of health insurance?
And so on and on. The argument I made in my column
is that inequality should only matter to Americans if, Russia-like, the rich
are getting richer at the expense of the poor.
Neither the Census Bureau nor the CBO figures show
that.
None of this is to excuse the fact that I goofed in
my use of data. My apologies. As for Mr. Krugman, he should bear in mind
something the public editor of the New York Times once said about him: "Paul
Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing
numbers in a fashion to please his acolytes but leaves him open to
substantive assaults."
"Is Paul Krugman Leaving Princeton In Quiet Disgrace?" by Ralph Benki,
Forbes, July 14, 2014 ---
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2014/07/14/is-paul-krugman-leaving-princeton-in-quiet-disgrace/
Professor Paul Krugman is
leaving Princeton. Is he leaving in disgrace?
Not long, as these things go, before his departure
was announced Krugman thoroughly was indicted and publicly eviscerated for
intellectual dishonesty by Harvard’s Niall Ferguson in a hard-hitting
three-part series in the Huffington Post, beginning
here, and with a coda in
Project Syndicate, all
summarized at Forbes.com. Ferguson, on
Krugman:
Where I come from … we do not fear bullies. We
despise them. And we do so because we understand that what motivates
their bullying is a deep sense of insecurity. Unfortunately for Krugtron
the Invincible, his ultimate nightmare has just become a reality. By
applying the methods of the historian – by quoting and contextualizing
his own published words – I believe I have now made him what he richly
deserves to be: a figure of fun, whose predictions (and proscriptions)
no one should ever again take seriously.
Princeton, according to
Bloomberg News, acknowledged Krugman’s
departure with an extraordinarily tepid comment by a spokesperson. “He’s
been a valued member of our faculty and we appreciate his 14 years at
Princeton.”
Shortly after Krugman’s departure was announced
no less than the revered Paul Volcker, himself a Princeton alum, made a
comment — subject unnamed — sounding as if directed at Prof. Krugman. It
sounded like “Don’t let the saloon doors hit you on the way out. Bub.”
To the
Daily Princetonian (later reprised by the
Wall Street Journal, Volcker
stated with refreshing bluntness:
The responsibility of any central bank is price
stability. … They ought to make sure that they are making policies that
are convincing to the public and to the markets that they’re not going
to tolerate inflation.
This was followed by a show-stopping statement:
“This kind of stuff that you’re being taught at Princeton disturbs me.”
Taught at Princeton by … whom?
Paul Krugman, perhaps? Krugman, last year, wrote
an op-ed for the New York Times entitled Not
Enough Inflation. It betrayed an
extremely louche, at best, attitude toward inflation’s insidious
dangers. Smoking gun?
Volcker’s comment, in full context:
The responsibility of the government is to have
a stable currency. This kind of stuff that you’re being taught at
Princeton disturbs me. Your teachers must be telling you that if you’ve
got expected inflation, then everybody adjusts and then it’s OK. Is that
what they’re telling you? Where did the question come from?
Is Krugman leaving in disgrace? Krugman really
is a disgrace … both to Princeton and to the principle of monetary
integrity. Eighteenth century Princeton (then called the College of New
Jersey) president John Witherspoon, wrote, in his
Essay on Money:
Let us next consider the evil that is done by
paper. This is what I would particularly request the reader to pay
attention to, as it was what this essay was chiefly intended to show,
and what the public seems but little aware of. The evil is this: All
paper introduced into circulation, and obtaining credit as gold and
silver, adds to the quantity of the medium, and thereby, as has been
shown above, increases the price of industry and its fruits.
“Increases the price of industry and its fruits?”
That’s what today is called “inflation.”
Inflation is a bad thing. Period. Most of all it
cheats working people and those on fixed incomes who Krugman pretends to
champion. Volcker comes down squarely, with Witherspoon, on the side of
monetary integrity. Krugman, cloaked in undignified sanctimony, comes down,
again and again, on the side of … monetary finagling.
Krugman consistently misrepresents his
opponents’ positions, constructs fictive
straw men, addresses marginal figures, and
ignores inconvenient truths set forward by figures of probity such as the
Bank of England and the
Bundesbank,
thoughtful work such as that by Member of
Parliament (with a Cambridge Ph.D. in economic history) Kwasi Kwarteng, and,
right here at home, respected thought leaders such as
Steve Forbes and
Lewis E. Lehrman (with whose
Institute this
writer has a professional affiliation).
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on professors who cheat ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize
"Here's A Quick Guide To The Startling New Scandal Involving Goldman And
The New York Fed," by Elena Holodny, Business Insider, September 26, 2014
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/propublica-fed-goldman-sachs-recordings-2014-9
. . .
The report is driven by secret recordings that
suggest that the NY Fed regulators were too soft on Goldman and therefore
possibly other banks as well.
The recordings come from former New York Fed bank
examiner Carmen Segarra, who was fired after just seven months on the job.
The article is nearly 6,000 words long, and the
podcast runs for over an hour.
Continued in article
"Why the Fed Is So Wimpy," by Justin Fox, Harvard Business Review
Blog, September 26, 2014 ---
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/09/why-the-fed-is-so-wimpy/?utm_source=Socialflow&utm_medium=Tweet&utm_campaign=Socialflow
Regulatory capture — when regulators come to act
mainly in the interest of the industries they regulate — is a phenomenon
that economists, political scientists, and legal scholars have been
writing about for decades.
Bank regulators in particular have been
depicted as
captives for years,
and have even taken to
describing themselves as such.
Actually witnessing capture in the wild is
different, though, and
the new This American Life episode with
secret recordings of bank examiners at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
going about their jobs is going to focus a lot more attention on the
phenomenon. It’s really well done, and you should
listen to it, read
the transcript, and/or
read the story by ProPublica reporter Jake
Bernstein.
Still, there is some context that’s inevitably
missing, and as a former banking-regulation reporter for the
American Banker,
I feel called to fill some of it in. Much of it has to
do with the structure of bank regulation in the U.S., which actually seems
designed to encourage capture. But to start, there are a couple of
revelations about Goldman Sachs in the story that are treated as smoking
guns. One seems to have fired a blank, while the other may be even more
explosive than it’s made out to be.
In the first, Carmen Segarra, the former Fed bank
examiner who made the tapes, tells of a Goldman Sachs executive saying in a
meeting that “once clients were wealthy enough, certain consumer laws didn’t
apply to them.” Far from being a shocking admission, this is actually a
pretty fair summary of American securities law. According to the Securities
and Exchange Commission’s “accredited
investor” guidelines, an individual with a net
worth of more than $1 million or an income of more than $200,000 is exempt
from many of the investor-protection rules that apply to people with less
money. That’s why rich people can invest in hedge funds while, for the most
part, regular folks can’t. Maybe there were some incriminating details
behind the Goldman executive’s statement that alarmed Segarra and were left
out of the story, but on the face of it there’s nothing to see here.
The other smoking gun is that Segarra pushed for a
tough Fed line on Goldman’s lack of a substantive conflict of interest
policy, and was rebuffed by her boss. This is a big deal, and for
much more than the legal/compliance reasons discussed in the piece. That’s
because, for the past two decades or so, not having a substantive conflict
of interest policy has been Goldman’s business model. Representing both
sides in mergers, betting alongside and against clients, and exploiting its
informational edge wherever possible
is simply how the firm makes its money. Forcing it
to sharply reduce these conflicts would be potentially devastating.
Maybe, as a matter of policy, the United States
government should ban such behavior. But asking bank examiners at
the New York Fed to take an action on their own that might torpedo a leading
bank’s profits is an awfully tall order. The regulators at the Fed and their
counterparts at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation correctly see their main job as
ensuring the safety and soundness of the banking system. Over the decades,
consumer protections and other rules have been added to their purview, but
safety and soundness have remained paramount. Profitable banks are generally
safer and sounder than unprofitable ones. So bank regulators are
understandably wary of doing anything that might cut into profits.
The point here is that if bank regulators are
captives who identify with the interests of the banks they regulate, it is
partly by design. This is especially true of the Federal Reserve System,
which was created by Congress in 1913 more as a friend to and creature of
the banks than as a watchdog. Two-thirds of
the board that governs the New York Fed is chosen
by local bankers. And while
amendments to the Federal Reserve Act in 1933
shifted the balance of power in the Federal Reserve System from the regional
Federal Reserve Banks (and the New York Fed in particular) to the political
appointees on the Board of Governors in Washington, bank regulation
continues to reside at the regional banks. Which means that the bank
regulators’ bosses report to a board chosen by … the banks.
Then there’s the fact that Goldman Sachs is a
relative newcomer to Federal Reserve supervision — it and rival Morgan
Stanley only agreed
to become bank holding companies, giving them
access to New York Fed loans, at the height of the financial crisis in 2008.
While it’s a little hard to imagine Goldman choosing now to rejoin the ranks
of mere securities firms, and even harder to see how it could leap to a
different banking regulator, it is possible that some Fed examiners
are afraid of scaring it away.
All this is meant not to excuse the extreme
timidity apparent in the Fed tapes, but to explain why it’s been so hard for
the New York Fed to adopt the more aggressive, questioning approach urged by
Columbia Business School Professor David Beim in a
formerly confidential internal Fed report that
This American Life and ProPublica give a lot of play to. Bank
regulation springs from much different roots than, say, environmental
regulation.
So what is to be done? A lot of the
classic regulatory capture literature tends toward
the conclusion that we should just give up — shut down the regulators and
allow competitive forces to work their magic. That means letting businesses
fail. But with banks more than other businesses, failures tend to be
contagious. It was to counteract this risk of systemic failure that Congress
created the Fed and other bank regulators in the first place, and even if
you think that was a big mistake, they’re really not going away.
Continued in article
Also see
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-26/the-secret-goldman-sachs-tapes
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
The financial statements from states are misleading
and don’t show the true picture,” she said, “yet legislators are making
decisions based upon these inaccurate budgets
"Ohio Dubbed a ‘Sinkhole’ State for Mounting Debt," State Data Lab,
September 22, 2014 ---
http://www.statedatalab.org/news/detail/ohio-dubbed-a-sinkhole-state-for-mounting-debt
"Measuring Pension Liabilities under GASB Statement No. 68," by John W.
Mortimer and Linda R. Henderson, Accounting Horizons, September 2014,
Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 421-454 ---
http://aaajournals.org/doi/full/10.2308/acch-50710
While
retired government employees clearly depend on public sector defined benefit
pension funds, these plans also contribute significantly to U.S. state and
national economies. Growing public concern about the funding adequacy of
these plans, hard hit by the great recession, raises questions about their
future viability. After several years of study, the Governmental Accounting
Standards Board (GASB) approved two new standards, GASB 67 and 68, with the
goal of substantially improving the accounting for and transparency of
financial reporting of state/municipal public employee defined benefit
pension plans. GASB 68, the focus of this paper, requires state/municipal
governments to calculate and report a net pension liability based on a
single discount rate that combines the rate of return on funded plan assets
with a low-risk index rate on the unfunded portion of the liability. This
paper illustrates the calculation of estimates for GASB 68 reportable net
pension liabilities, funded ratios, and single discount rates for 48 fiscal
year state employee defined benefit plans by using an innovative valuation
model and readily available data. The results show statistically significant
increases in reportable net pension liabilities and decreases in the
estimated hypothetical GASB 68 funded ratios and single discount rates. Our
sensitivity analyses examine the effect of changes in the low-risk rate and
time period on these results. We find that reported discount rates of weaker
plans approach the low-risk rate, resulting in higher pension liabilities
and creating policy incentives to increase risky assets in pension
portfolios.
Bob Jensen's threads on pension accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#Pensions
Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of governmental accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#GovernmentalAccounting
Misleading Statistics
"Lies, Damned Lies and (Jobs) Statistics," by Allysia Finley, The Wall
Street Journal, September 23, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/articles/political-diary-lies-damned-lies-and-jobs-statistics-1411506703?tesla=y&mod=djemMER_h&mg=reno64-wsj
Jobs numbers don't lie, but they don't always
capture the entire truth. Just ask Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, who was
ridiculed by Democrats last week for suggesting that the gnomes at the
Bureau of Labor Statistics were rigging state unemployment data.
"It's ironic that in a year in which Republican
governors are leading some of the states that are making the most progress,
that they almost, without exception, are classified as having a bump in
their unemployment rates," Mr. Deal groused. "Whereas states that are under
Democrat governors' control, they are all showing that their unemployment
rate has dropped. And I don't know how you account for that. Maybe there is
some influence here that we don't know about."
Mr. Deal is in an unexpectedly tight race for
re-election against Democratic state Sen. Jason Carter, the grandson of the
former president. Georgia's recent disappointing jobs numbers are figuring
heavily into Mr. Carter's campaign. During the governor's first 40 months in
office, the state's unemployment rate dropped to 6.9% from 10.1%. However,
the rate has ticked up to 8.1% since April as 52,000 jobs were reportedly
lost.
North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia have
also recorded jobs losses and unemployment increases this summer, so the
problem appears regional. The BLS may later revise the numbers up, though
the timing of the downward blip is no doubt inconvenient for Republicans in
Georgia.
There's no evidence that unemployment rates are
spiking in GOP-governed states while plunging in Democratic ones. However,
it's true that job gains in some Republican states like Kansas and Florida
aren't being reflected in their unemployment rates because their labor
forces have expanded equally fast. It's also true that unemployment rates in
some Democratic states have fallen sharply in part due to a contraction of
the labor force.
Case in point is Illinois, where the unemployment
rate has slid to 6.7% from 8.7% since January. Gov. Pat Quinn bragged that
"it's the steepest decline in unemployment in the last 30 years in
Illinois." Yet during this period, 56,000 Illinois workers dropped out of
the labor force, which isn't exactly a sign of a healthy economy. The
Illinois Policy Institute notes that the state's labor-force participation
rate is at a 35-year low.
The point here is that unemployment numbers can be
misleading, which is why Republicans like Mr. Deal need to be able to cite
significant policy accomplishments and present a broader governing agenda.
"How the Education Spendthrifts Get Away With It: Politicians
exploit Americans' sense that local education costs are about half of what is
really being spent," by Paul E. Peterson (Harvard), The Wall Street
Journal, September 21, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/articles/paul-peterson-how-the-education-spendthrifts-get-away-with-it-1411339685?tesla=y&mod=djemMER_h&mg=reno64-wsj
Money for schools has again become a campaign
issue. In the Florida governor's race, Charlie Crist says that the "first
thing [Gov. Rick Scott ] does when he comes in . . . is cut education by
$1.3 billion." To which Gov. Scott replies, "The $18 billion in funding for
K-12 education funding is the highest in Florida history and includes a
record $10.6 billion in state funds." Pennsylvania's Democratic
gubernatorial hopeful Tom Wolf accuses Republican Gov. Tom Corbett of
cutting the state's school budget by $1 billion, to which Gov. Corbett
replies that spending has actually risen. Similar claims and counterclaims
have been heard in Illinois, Michigan, Florida, Kansas and elsewhere.
It's easy to see why candidates promise more money
for schools. As long as taxes are ignored and no mention is made of current
levels of expenditure, calling for more spending is a political no-brainer.
In the recently released Education Next poll of a nationally representative
sample of the public, for which I serve as a co-director, 60% of Americans
say they want to spend more. Among parents, 70% want more spending, and 75%
of teachers agree.
But if one drills down, much of that enthusiasm
evaporates in a cloud of confusion and inconsistency. We discovered this by
dividing respondents to our survey into three randomly selected, equally
representative groups.
The first group was asked whether they thought
school spending "to fund public schools in your district should increase,
decrease or stay the same?" The second group, though asked that same
question, was first told the level of expenditure per pupil in their
district for 2011 (the most recent year for which data is available from the
Education Department). The third group was given that same information but
was asked whether they thought "taxes to fund public schools in your
district should increase, decrease or stay the same?"
Support for more spending fell to 44% from 60% when
respondents were given information on current amounts of spending. Levels
fell further to only 26% favoring more spending among the group asked if
they favored tax increases to fund higher spending.
Political debates over school spending also take
place in a fog because the public has the illusion that the rest of the
nation's schools are expensive but their local schools are a bargain. When
asked to estimate per-pupil expenditures nationwide, the public makes an
average estimate of $10,155—almost exactly the $10,615 per-pupil expenditure
level estimated by the Bureau of the Census for school expenditures in 2012,
though lower than the $12,608 per-pupil figure reported for 2011 by the
Department of Education.
But when asked about costs locally, Americans think
their schools are giving their children an education at reasonable prices.
On average, they say the cost is only $6,486 per pupil in their district,
barely half the actual costs of $12,608 per pupil in 2011, according to the
Education Department. Local estimates by both parents and teachers are even
lower.
The wide disparity in these estimates of national
versus local expenditures is bizarre, as the sum total of all local
expenditures are equivalent to those nationwide. The differing estimates may
be partly due to differences in news coverage. National school expenditures
are a regular part of the debate between Democrats and Republicans, making
the topic worthy for the national media. In 2013 The Wall Street Journal
reported that U.S. per-pupil expenditures in 2011 had dipped slightly to
$10,560. A month later, CBS News said the "United States spent more than
$11,000 per elementary student in 2010 and more than $12,000 per high-school
student."
Local school costs per pupil do not get the same
coverage. For one thing, local school officials never report them, and local
politicians have little incentive to do so. Those wanting to increase
spending have a stake in obscuring local levels of expenditure, and those
concerned about costs find it more worthwhile to propose tax cuts. While
local school spending information can be found on the National Center for
Educational Statistics website, few reporters have the incentive to dig
deeply.
Education expenditures may become a local issue if
the school board wants to raise local taxes. But, on average, only 45% of
school costs come from local revenues, with states (45%) and the federal
government (10%) supplying the remainder. Money coming from state and
federal governments is usually treated by local politicians as "free" to the
local community, and thus attention given to costs target only that 45% of
the total borne by the local community.
The public may also believe other school districts
waste money but their local one does not. More generally, the public may
suffer a delusion that for lack of a better phrase might be labeled "buyer's
delight," the tendency for people to think they "got a deal" even when an
objective observer would conclude otherwise.
Buyer's delight may also explain why people think
their local schools are so much better than the nation's schools: In the
Education Next poll, 58% of adults with school-age children give a grade of
an A or B to their local schools, but only 26% give these same two good
grades to the nation's schools.
Whatever the reasons for the misperceptions, the
facts are clear: Parents, teachers and the public at large all think that
local schools are giving them more for less—even when that is unlikely.
That's why politicians who favor more spending deliberately sow confusion
about current expenditures. These are all reasons why transparency in
spending should be part of the school-reform conversation.
Mr. Peterson, a professor at Harvard University, directs its Program
on Education Policy and Governance.
Jensen Comment
For me the issue is not so much how much is spent. Rather it's how much is
wasted. I watch the school bus go by and 7:45 am and return at 2:00 pm. After
taking out times for breakfast and lunch, students are getting about 4 hours of
classroom and break time per school day. Some students spend almost as much time
on busses and in cafeterias as they do with teachers.
The USA K-12 graduates rank well below graduates of other developed nations
in math, science, and reading and most every other topic that's tested. The USA
is doing a relatively good job in schooling of disabled students with special
needs but neglects its highly intelligent children by sending them home with
less than 760 hours per year in the classroom at an average cost of $15+ per
pupil per hour in relatively large classes.
Meanwhile the teachers unions make it virtually impossible to fire
ineffective and unmotivated teachers. Drug infestations long-confined to urban
school districts are now reaching out into rural schools. Gangland violence
meanwhile has overtaken virtually all public schools in large USA cities.
But due to grade inflation most of the students are graduating with A-B
averages even if they do poorly in math, science, and reading. The USA is not
getting much bang for its buck in K-12 education after adjusting for grade
inflation.
"Too reliant on the few Taxes are best raised on a broad base, but in many
countries it is worryingly narrow," The Economist, September 20, 2014
---
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21618784-taxes-are-best-raised-broad-base-many-countries-it-worryingly-narrow-too-reliant
“I LIKE to pay taxes,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes.
“With them I buy civilisation.” Most people recognise that taxes pay for
public services, but few are as keen to stump up for them as Justice Holmes
was. High income taxes tend to discourage effort and entrepreneurship, while
encouraging all manner of activity to avoid them. That is why a basic
principle of good tax policy has long been to charge a low rate over a broad
base.
It is a target which many countries miss, and the
gap is growing. Income taxes—one of the main sources of tax revenue across
the rich world—are increasingly paid by a small minority of the most
affluent. In Britain, employment has risen by 1.3m in the past five years,
but the number of taxpayers has fallen by 2.2m. More than 40% of American
households pay no income tax. In contrast, the most highly paid 1% of
workers in Britain pay 28% of all income tax, while in America it is 46%. In
1979 those shares were 11% and 18% respectively. Corporate income taxes show
the same concentration. In Britain just 830 firms pay almost half of all
corporation tax. Five American industries account for 81% of the country’s
corporate tax revenue, but just a third of its companies.
This narrowing of the tax base is partly the
natural consequence of widening inequality. Since an ever bigger share of
overall income goes to the highest earners, and since income taxes are
progressive (with a higher rate levied at higher income), it is
inevitable—and appropriate—that the most affluent should pay a growing share
of the overall tax take. Well-intentioned efforts to encourage work among
poorer folk have also concentrated the pool of taxpayers. America’s Earned
Income Tax Credit (EITC), which tops up the earnings of the least-skilled,
is one of its biggest poverty-fighting schemes. Thanks to the EITC, millions
get a cheque from Uncle Sam rather than paying income tax. Much of the drop
in the number of British taxpayers is also thanks to generous new exemptions
for low earners (see
article).
Unfortunately, the narrowing of the tax base, both
personal and corporate, also reflects two failures of tax policy. The first
is the proliferation of exemptions and deductions that go far beyond
reasonable poverty-fighting policies. America is the most egregious
offender. Its income tax (which contributes a bigger share of overall
revenue than in other rich countries) is riddled with myriad deductions,
from medical insurance to mortgage interest, which collectively cost a
whopping 7% of GDP and mean that income tax is levied on a much narrower
base than it could be. Other rich countries, from Italy to Australia, also
have too many unnecessary deductions.
The second problem, which applies most to corporate
income taxes, is that tax rules have failed to keep up with the reality of
the 21st-century economy. A web of arcane bilateral tax treaties allows
clever companies to shift their profits from high-tax to low-tax
jurisdictions, whether by registering patents or setting up intra-company
loans. A firm’s tax bills depend more on what industry it is in and how
clever its accountants are than its profitability. America, with the highest
marginal rate, has the biggest distortions.
Better simpler and better together
These failures need to be fixed. A narrow tax base
is economically and politically risky, particularly if the logic for who
pays taxes seems capricious. Governments across the rich world, but
particularly in America, should aggressively prune deductions. And they
should work together to reach international agreement on how firms should
book their profits. This week’s blueprint from the OECD is a good start (see
article). As with
trade, a multilateral approach to tax treaties is far better than bilateral
deals. That way, more countries have a better chance of raising the taxes
that help build civilisation.
Case Studies in Gaming the Income Tax Laws ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/TaxNoTax.htm
Question
What large CPA firms came out very well in this gender ranking?
"The 100 Best Companies For Working Moms," by Jacquelyn Smith,
Working Mothers Magazine via Business Insider, September 16, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-companies-for-working-moms-2014-9
Bob Jensen's threads on careers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
Bob Jensen's threads on the history of working women ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#Women
The State of the World Population 2013: Motherhood in Childhood ---
http://www.unfpa.org/swp#ref_state-of-world-population-2013
American Migrations
http://americanmigrations.uic.edu
Malthus Revival: World Population Will Not Plateau in 2050 After All
"U.N. Predicts New Global Population Boom: A new study says the
population could hit 12 billion by 2100, though it doesn’t take into account the
effects of climate change, food shortages, disease, or conflict," by David
Talbot, MIT's Technology Review, September 18, 2014 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530866/un-predicts-new-global-population-boom/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20140919
A new analysis suggests that the world’s population
will keep rising through 2100, and not flatten around 2050 as has been
widely assumed. Such an increase would have huge implications, but the
prediction’s reliability is debatable, given that it does not take into
account future hardships a large population would likely face.
According to the new analysis by researchers at the
United Nations and several academic institutions, there is an 80 percent
chance that the world’s population, now 7.2 billion, won’t stop at nine
billion in 2050, but will instead be between 9.6 billion and 12.3 billion by
2100. The researchers increased their estimates after noting persistent high
birth rates and faster-than-expected progress in combatting HIV/AIDS in
Africa, according to the
study, which is published today in the journal
Science.
There are significant caveats. Climate change is
projected to put major stresses on agriculture and water supplies, and these
stresses were not considered as potential checks on population growth. Nor
does the study take into account that population growth could trigger deadly
calamities like food shortages, war, and disease even without climate
change, says
John Bongaarts, vice president and distinguished
scholar at the Population Council, a think tank and research organization
based in New York City.
Past studies assumed that the pattern of declining
birth rates observed in Asia and Latin America in recent decades would be
repeated in Africa. This assumption is built into previous projections, nWolfgang
Lutzotably ones of , director of the Vienna
Institute of Demography.
But that’s not what’s actually happening. For
example, in Nigeria—Africa’s most populous nation, with 160 million
residents—women are still having an average of six children each, as they’ve
been doing for about the past 15 years. Such trends contribute to new
estimates predicting a 90 percent probability that in 2100, Nigeria’s
population will exceed 532 million. Africa’s
overall population is now expected to go from one billion to four billion,
says
Adrian
Raftery, a professor of statistics and sociology
at the University of Washington who coauthored the report.
Raftery also points out that United Nations
estimates have a history of accuracy. Projections made in the 1950s held
that the population in 2000 would be 6.2 billion, and would be around seven
billion now, both of which are close to what actually happened.
In response to the study, Lutz says, his newest
analysis still suggests a less-dire outcome. “Our most likely scenario comes
out somewhat lower than the current United Nations projections,” and
suggests population will peak at 9.4 billion around 2070 and start a slow
decline to nine billion by the end of the century, he said in a
statement. “The end of world population growth is still to be expected this
century.”
The differences in the two projections, he said, is
due to differing methods and assumptions made about future birth and death
rates for individual countries.
Continued in article
Story Maps Illustrate Metro Area and County Population Change ---
http://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/maps/
Where We Came From, State by State
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/upshot/where-people-in-each-state-were-born.html
New Upshot Tool Provides Historical Look at Migration
http://taxfoundation.org/blog/new-upshot-tool-provides-historical-look-migration
Migration Study Shows Illinois Residents Bolt State For Warm Climates
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/08/15/migration-study-shows-illinois-residents-bolt-state-for-warm-climates/?utm_medium=VPH&utm_source=topvph_news&utm_campaign=577413
American Migration [Interactive Map]
http://www.forbes.com/special-report/2011/migration.html
A State-by-State Look at Where Each Generation Lives
http://www.governing.com/topics/urban/gov-generational-population-data-maps-by-state.html
Story Maps Illustrate Metro Area and County Population Change ---
http://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/maps/
The State of the World Population 2013: Motherhood in Childhood ---
http://www.unfpa.org/swp#ref_state-of-world-population-2013
American Migrations
http://americanmigrations.uic.edu
This reminds me of the time when I was in graduate school at Stanford when I
had two girlfriends outside the state of California. I wrote letters to each of
them and switched the addresses on the envelopes. This is how I ended up with
two former girlfriends.
Under the Obama Administration the Department of Justice Has Hardly Been
Bipartisan
"Covering for the IRS: New details on the Administration's spin and
stall strategy." The Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/articles/covering-for-the-irs-1410729249?tesla=y&mod=djemMER_h&mg=reno64-wsj
The IRS targeting of conservative groups has now
become a story about the cover-up. More than a year after the scandal became
public, the most transparent Administration in history has done everything
in its power to spin the story, stymie Congressional investigators and run
out the clock.
Take the latest moment of hilarity, er, clarity
from the Justice Department, in which a communications aide to Attorney
General Eric Holder mistakenly called Republicans on the HouseOversight and
Government Reform Committee when he meant to call Democrats. The aide, Brian
Fallon, told staffers he was calling to see if they could leak information
to friendly reporters and give the Justice Department a chance to comment
before the majority got their hands on it.
When he realized his error, committee staffers say
Mr. Fallon came back on the line to say, oh, sorry, there has been a change
of plans and Justice wouldn't share the information after all. Mr. Fallon
has since said it is perfectly normal to call Congressional Republicans and
Democrats, though he does deserve a place in the dimwit government hall of
fame.
Mr. Fallon wanted to leak something about Andrew
Strelka, the former Justice Department lawyer who was assigned to a case
brought against the IRS by Z Street, a pro-Israel group that says its
application for tax-exempt status was delayed in 2009 because of a policy
giving special scrutiny to groups whose missions conflicted with the White
House line.
Before becoming the Justice Department's lawyer on
the case, Mr. Strelka was a presidential management fellow working in the
IRS office that handled the case, presenting a conflict of interest. To wit:
Mr. Strelka is likely to be interviewed as a witness in the discovery phase
of the trial he was previously litigating. Mr. Strelka has since resigned
from the case and left the Justice Department, but the department has
provided Congressional investigators with no forwarding address.
The cloak and dagger operation also raises
questions about the Administration's attempts to delay the Z Street case
from moving into discovery after federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson ruled
it could proceed. First the Justice Department waited until the last hour to
file a motion to appeal, then it failed to check a box (literally) when it
withdrew its appeal to note that the withdrawal motion was uncontested, a
technicality that left the case to moulder for another month before
discovery can get underway.
Even allowing for dimwits, count us skeptical that
this legal slowrolling is any more coincidental than the congressional
version. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton says that when federal Judge
Emmet Sullivan ordered the IRS to produce documents in Judicial Watch's FOIA
lawsuit against the agency, the IRS produced them in reverse chronological
order—the better to withhold the most sensitive for as long as possible.
Judge Sullivan has been riding herd on the
government's gamesmanship, calling the IRS responses to questions about
former Treasury official Lois Lerner's missing emails deficient and ordering
the agency to provide more complete information. When long-withheld
documents do surface after long delays, they are invariably pertinent to the
questions conservatives have been asking for more than a year. It was after
one such request by Judge Sullivan that the IRS fessed up to wiping Ms.
Lerner's Blackberry after the investigation into IRS targeting had begun.
Another such moment happened earlier this month,
when the Judicial Watch lawsuit produced a document that raises questions
about an IRS "secret research project" related to donor names. In a heavily
redacted email chain from May 2012, Ms. Lerner asks how to return some donor
lists that the IRS should not have had.
In a June 2012 email to IRS official Holly Paz, IRS
Acting Director of Rulings and Agreements David Fish wrote that " Joseph
Urban [IRS Technical Advisor, Tax Exempt and Government Entities] had
actually started a secret research project on whether we could, consistent
with 6104, argue that [REDACTED] Joe was quite agitated yesterday when I
told him what we were doing." The email continues: "At one point he started
saying that this was a decision for Steve Miller . . . Would not be
surprised if he already started working on Lois." Mr. Miller is the former
IRS Acting Commissioner who resigned shortly after the scandal broke.
Another batch of emails from the FOIA lawsuit also
showed that Ms. Lerner was talking to the Justice Department in 2013 about
the possibility of prosecuting some of the same politically active groups
that the agency had been targeting.
This is the same Justice Department that is now
conducting what by all available evidence is its non-investigation into the
IRS's behavior in the scandal. Your tax dollars at work.
"Surprise: IRS 'Loses' Emails of Five More Employees Connected to
Targeting Investigation," by Guy Benson, Townhall, September 8, 2014
---
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2014/09/08/surprise-irs-loses-emails-of-five-more-employees-connected-to-targeting-investigation-n1888323?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm
This admission dropped
late Friday in a classic news dump -- the purpose
of which is to bury a damaging story over the course of a weekend. There
was zero chance we'd allow this update to the IRS scandal to slip our minds,
however. The preposterous and insulting cover-up continues apace, reports
the Associated Press:
The IRS says it has lost emails from five
more workers who are part of congressional investigations into the
treatment of conservative groups that applied for tax exempt status.
The tax agency said in June that it could not locate an untold
number of emails to and from Lois Lerner, who headed the IRS division
that processes applications for tax-exempt status. The revelation set
off a new round of investigations and congressional hearings. On Friday,
the IRS said it has also lost emails from five other employees related
to the probe, including two agents who worked in a Cincinnati office
processing applications for tax-exempt status.
The agency blamed computer crashes for the lost
emails. In a statement, the IRS said it found no evidence that anyone
deliberately destroyed evidence.
Continued in article
A Big Oops! When Brian Fallen Dials the Wrong Number: The
Department of Justice is Politically Motivated to Protect the Wrongdoers
"Is Eric Holder Trying to Protect the IRS?" by Seth Mandel, Commentary
Magazine, September 10, 2014 ---
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/09/10/is-eric-holder-trying-to-protect-the-irs/
A remarkable conversation about the IRS’s illegal
targeting of conservative groups took place on Friday in Washington.
According to Rep. Darrell Issa’s office, at 5:01 Friday Brian Fallon, a
former aide to Chuck Schumer and currently a communications aide to Attorney
General Eric Holder, called Issa’s office. By mistake. And it’s quite a
mistake.
The purpose of the call, according to a letter Issa
wrote to Holder, was to work with the intended recipient of the call to
strategically leak damaging information to selected, friendly reporters and
to coordinate a damage-control plan. The intended recipient of the call was
apparently Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight
Committee who has gotten quite visibly nervous over the extent of the
investigation into the IRS abuse–despite his attempts to protect the
abusers.
Here’s Jonathan Strong at Breitbart:
The aide, Brian Fallon, is a former senior aide to
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and a well-known personality on Capitol Hill. The
letter describes Fallon as “audibly shaken” when he realizes his request to
leak documents to help get ahead of news stories about them was mistakenly
made to the very office he was seeking to undermine. Issa believes the call
was intended to be made to Democratic Rep. Elijah Cumming’s staff, the
ranking member on the oversight panel, the letter said.
According to the letter, Fallon – who is not named
in the letter but confirmed he made the call – asked if the aides could
release the IRS scandal documents to “selected reporters” to give Fallon an
“opportunity to comment publicly on it.”
Fallon explained to Issa aides that the Justice
Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs had not permitted him to release
the documents to the public and he wanted to get ahead of the story “before
the Majority” – meaning Issa – could share it, according to the letter.
Issa aides – who had placed the call on
speakerphone – were “caught off guard by the unusual nature of the call and
the odd request” and asked Fallon to “e-mail the material for evaluation.”
“At this point,” Fallon “abruptly placed the call
on hold for approximately three minutes.” When Fallon returned to the call,
“he was audibly shaken. He immediately stated that there was a ‘change in
plans’ and that there would be no effort” by DOJ to release the material
early.
In other words, it looks like Holder’s Department
of Justice is seeking to help the IRS and the Democrats protecting the IRS.
And the only reason the public knows about it is that Holder’s office
accidentally called the wrong phone. Oops.
The left’s response to the IRS targeting scandal
has morphed over time as more information has come to light. Mostly gone are
the truthers who think nothing unethical happened or that this is an aimless
witch hunt. It’s now clear to any sentient person that the IRS was indeed
engaged in this targeting scheme ahead of a presidential election.
Additionally, as I wrote last week, it’s since been revealed that the IRS
began destroying evidence once the investigation into the targeting began.
That particular destruction of evidence concerned
Lois Lerner, the former official at the center of the scandal, in order to
get rid of her email correspondence. The media yawned at the revelation of
the destruction of evidence, apparently tiring of this story. So the same
day of Fallon’s phone call to Issa’s staff, the IRS admitted it lost the
email of “five more workers who figure in the investigation into the alleged
targeting of conservative nonprofit groups,” as the Wall Street Journal
reported.
The Democratic response to the investigation has
thus gone from the eminently silly denial that anything untoward took place
to actively trying to thwart the investigation and run interference for the
IRS–which, in its targeting scheme, was only following the pronouncements of
high-level congressional Democrats, after all. And those Democrats have
gotten quite uncomfortable with the investigation. Democratic Sen. Carl
Levin has put together a report attacking the inspector general conducting
the investigation.
Such interference and/or stonewalling wouldn’t be
out of character for this DOJ. As the Washington Examiner reported
yesterday, according to the department’s inspector general “Department of
Justice senior officials have barred or delayed the inspector general there
from gaining access to documents crucial to high-visibility investigations.”
The “nothing to see here” brigade has lost any
semblance of credibility. In response, they’d like to make sure there’s
actually nothing to see by the time investigators come looking for it.
The IRS Scandal Day 490 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/09/the-irs-scandal-3.html
It is now well known that the IRS targeted tea party
organizations. What is less well known, but perhaps even more scandalous, is
that the IRS also targeted those who would educate their fellow citizens about
the United States Constitution.
The IRS Scandal, Day 503, by Paul Caron, TaxProf Blog, September 24, 2014 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/09/the-irs-12.html
. . .
According to
the inspector general’s report (pp. 30 & 38), this
particular IRS targeting commenced on Jan. 25, 2012 — the beginning of the
election year for President Obama’s second campaign. On that date: “the BOLO
[‘be on the lookout’] criteria were again updated.” The revised criteria
included “political action type organizations involved in … educating on the
Constitution and Bill of Rights.”
Continued in Article
"Venezuela’s President Lashes Out at Harvard Economist," by Andy
Thomason, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 15, 2014 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/venezuelas-president-lashes-out-at-harvard-economist/86001?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
It might be interesting for students to analyze piling on debt ala Paul
Krugman's Keynesian theories has been such a disaster in Venezuela. Also analyze
why these theories have not worked well in reducing unemployment in such nations
as Greece and Spain even though there appears to be toilet paper available for
sale in Greece and Spain but not Venezuela.
When Keynesian Theory Morphed Into the Theories of Milton Friedman
"How 'Keynes' Became a Dirty Word," by Noah Smith, Bloomberg View,
September 11, 2014 ---
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-11/how-keynes-became-a-dirty-word
If you use the word "Keynesian" as a synonym for
"socialist," "progressive," or "liberal," well my friend, you’re doing it
wrong.
If you’ve been involved in Internet arguments about
economics, then you must have heard the term "Keynesian" being applied this
way. And it seems to make sense. After all, many of the bloggers and writers
who describe themselves as "Keynesian" are also of a liberal bent. And more
importantly, John Maynard Keynes himself was in favor of some amount of
wealth redistribution and government intervention in the economy. So why am
I saying it doesn’t make sense to use the word "Keynesian" in this way?
One reason is because this isn’t how academic
economists use it. In academia, there is a class of models called "New
Keynesian" models that try to describe how monetary policy might affect the
economy. But the thing is, despite the name, these models aren’t actually
very close to anything Keynes ever conceived. In fact, they’re very
close to the ideas of Milton Friedman, who was a
rhetorical and political opponent of Keynes. My doctoral adviser, Miles
Kimball, actually tried to change the name of the models to "Neomonetarist,"
to be more faithful to Friedman’s legacy, but no one
went along with it, and the "New Keynesian" label stuck.
In fact, many of the people who invented New
Keynesian economics were politically conservative, and deeply opposed to
wealth redistribution and to government intervention. The New Keynesians
included Greg Mankiw and John Taylor, who are among the most prominent
conservative economists writing in the popular media today.
OK, so why should you care about the arcane jargon
of academia? Well, because there’s a good reason Taylor and Mankiw chose to
name their theory after Keynes.
New Keynesian economics says that monetary policy
-- and even fiscal policy -- is all about stabilization. It’s about
smoothing out the fluctuations in the economy, reducing risk for everyone
concerned. When the economy is doing well, raise interest rates to slow
things down; when it’s doing badly, lower interest rates to give it a boost.
And that’s it. No wealth redistribution, no
regulation, no command economy. Stabilization theory says that you can
smooth out the wrinkles of the business cycle without messing with the deep
structure of how the economy works. The expectation is that if the
government does just that -- just that one small, minor intervention -- then
recessions won’t be a big problem, and angry unemployed people won’t demand
more lasting government interventions.
In other words, stabilization policy is supposed to
guard against socialism. This, in fact, is what Keynes intended.
Keynes lived during a time when communism and socialism were considered
real, viable alternatives to capitalism. He devised his theories as an
alternative to
socialism -- a way to save capitalism with the smallest possible
intervention.
Now, it is true that stabilization policies do
inevitably involve some redistribution. Boosting inflation to fight
recessions will benefit those who are in debt -- companies, for example,
that borrow to invest, or people with mortgages -- while hurting people
living on a fixed income. But the expectation is that this redistribution
will be reversed in the good times, when the Federal Reserve hikes interest
rates to put on the brakes. Fiscal stimulus is a bit of a different story,
since the unemployed reap the benefits while taxpayers pick up the bill. But
the point here is that Keynesian policies are fundamentally not about
redistribution -- they’re about economic stability.
So why do people think Keynesianism is socialism-lite?
It might be the fault of Keynes’s main intellectual opponent, Friedrich
Hayek.
Friedrich Hayek tried to argue against Keynes’
theories, but for whatever reason, he lost the debate among economists in
the 1930s. But Hayek would have the last laugh, because in his book, "The
Road to Serfdom," he attacked Keynes from a very different angle. Instead of
saying Keynes’ theories were wrong, Hayek prophesied that Keynesian
stabilization policies would lead down the slippery slope to
totalitarianism.
Hayek’s warning was dead
wrong. Most rich countries tried some form of
Keynes’s policies in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, and while they didn’t always
work as advertised, they most definitely did not lead to
totalitarianism. Yet somehow Hayek’s meme entered our collective
consciousness. On blogs and in the financial media, where politics and
economics mix freely, self-described "Austrians" kept using the word
"Keynesian" as a political epithet, the way National Review writers or Fox
News anchors use the word "liberal."
Continued in article
What is California-Styled "Advanced Manufacturing?"
Manufacturers may not have to leave litigious California to avoid high wages,
activist unions, labor regulations, and labor safety regulations
"Mother Machines: A California factory recently built by
Japanese-German firm DMG Mori Seiki makes the case for the future of U.S.
advanced manufacturing," by Robert L. Simison, MIT's Technology Review,
September 18, 2014 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530716/mother-machines/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20140916
Jensen Comment
But industries caught up in pollution and other environmental-protection
regulations had best look outside activist California in the grips of politics
dominated by progressives and lawmakers to the left of progressives. Also it's
not a good time for industries needing lots of water to expand in California.
Why can't Nevada make Tesla-type deals to all manufacturers? Reason 1 is the
shortage of water, especially in water-starved Las Vegas. Reason 2 is the
dearth of skilled labor when robots can't do the jobs. Nevada has very high
unemployment, but most of the unemployed are low in advanced skills. There are
lots of high-tech workers in California who are probably not ecstatic over
"advanced manufacturing."
"Stiglitz vs. Krugman on Scotland," by Mike Shedloc, Townhall,
September 15, 2014 ---
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/mikeshedlock/2014/09/15/stiglitz-vs-krugman-on-scotland-n1891731?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
"Education Officials Flunk Statistics 101: 'Big data' analysis
provides insights into everything from school attendance to the progress of
talented students," by Harold O. Levy, The Wall Street Journal,
September 11, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/articles/harold-o-levy-education-officials-flunk-statistics-101-1410729084?tesla=y&mod=djemMER_h&mg=reno64-wsj
As students return to school this fall, some basic
math may come as a surprise: The data that officials employ to judge
students and schools is misunderstood, ignored and or misused, particularly
when measuring the performance of low-income students.
There is, however, reason for optimism. New "big
data" methods for better analyzing more information are improving education
research, forcing administrators, teachers, students and parents to question
long-held assumptions.
Consider truancy. Nearly all school districts
proudly report around 90% average daily attendance. That statistic is
misleading. It might seem like only one-in-ten students is out on any given
day, but that is not really the case. Some students always show up; others
miss the bell often. A school district could report 90% average attendance
and still have 40% of its students chronically absent, as a 2012 report by
Johns Hopkins researchers Robert Balfanz and Vaughan Brynes showed.
A closer look at the numbers reveals that truant
children miss about a month of class every year. As they advance from one
grade to the next, their learning gaps eventually become so pronounced that
they can't keep up. These children run a much greater risk of dropping out,
eliminating opportunities for the rest of their lives. The situation is
worst in low-income and minority neighborhoods. In California,
African-American students were truant last year at a rate more than 2.5
times their white counterparts, according to a report released on Friday by
the state's Attorney General Kamala Harris.
Call it the "broken window" theory of student
performance. Just as crime went down when cops realized that addressing
minor infractions such as broken windows prevented bigger crimes like
muggings, so too education officials could help children stay in school as
teenagers if they made attendance a bigger priority earlier.
Another area where education officials flunk Stats
101 is how we treat high-performing, low-income students.
A study by the
organization I run, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, used Education
Department data to track talented students. Only 59% of smart children—those
who scored in the top 25% on standardized tests—from low-income households
graduate from college. But 77% of similarly bright children from wealthy
families finish an undergraduate degree. By one measure, high-achieving
students from low-income backgrounds graduate from college at about the same
rate as low-scoring students from affluent families.
Yet school leaders and politicians have done
nothing to help these high-achievers prepare to continue their success in
college, although their performance is all the more impressive considering
the challenges they face. The federal government's only program supporting
gifted students—the Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education
Act—was appropriated a grand total of $5 million in 2014 and nothing in the
previous three years.
Arguably the most prominent example is the movement
to hold students back if they fail to meet state standards. When around 2000
the "no social promotion" policy, as advocates such as
Rudy Giuliani called
it, gathered momentum, it sounded reasonable. Today, six states have enacted
or are about to adopt this "tough love" policy.
Here's the problem: No independent academic study
suggests it works. Repeated studies have shown that being held back destroys
a student's confidence, and once left back that student is far more likely
to drop out than a similar student who was promoted. Those who have been
held back are twice as likely as comparable peers to repeat a grade for a
second time, according to a 1996 study by the Texas Education Agency.
New studies using innovative analytical techniques
have told us even more. Research on summer school, for instance, has in the
past shown that the extra weeks did little to improve student performance.
But in 2007 Cornell University economist Jordan Matsudaira used data to
create a "synthetic control group" composed of thousands of statistically
identical students, those who came from the same socioeconomic background
with the same test scores.
Mr. Matsudaira found that students who attended
summer school performed better and were less likely to drop out. It had a
similar effect as cutting class size down by a third. In fact, the
researchers concluded that summer programs are among the most cost-effective
intervention strategies for the lowest performing students.
But this finding has not prompted a resurgence of
summer programs, just as the compelling data on the lower college-graduation
rates of high-achieving students from poor backgrounds has not led to
helpful policy changes. It's rare to find a school administrator who is
comfortable parsing statistics or stays ahead of the academic literature. So
these insights go undeveloped, and students who could be saved are not.
Perhaps teachers, administrators and bureaucrats
will pay attention as new data in education proliferates, but today's
struggling students can't wait that long. The lag between what we already
know and how we teach is robbing children of their future, and undermining
the idea that America is a meritocracy.
Mr. Levy, executive director of Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which
provides scholarships to exceptionally high-achieving students from
low-income families, was New York City schools chancellor in 2000-02.
Question
As Atlantic City sinks into the sea will Las Vegas sink into the sand?
"A Gloom Has Taken Over The Biggest Gambling Center On The Planet."
Lynette Lopez, Business Insider, September 16, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/macau-slowing-continues-after-summer-slump-2014-9#ixzz3DUngbBeS
Jensen Comment
And to add pain to misery, Las Vegas is running out of water and possibly
electric power from Hoover Dam.
From Forbes in 2014
Best Nations for Doing Business (taxation, regulation, credit policy and
other matters) ---
http://www.forbes.com/pictures/fgdi45eflkk/best-places-to-do-business-3/
- Singapore (Rank 1 out of 183 nations)
- Hong Kong (Rank 2)
- New Zealand (Rank 3)
- USA (Rank 4)
- Denmark (Rank 5)
- Norway (Rank 6)
- United Kingdom (Rank 7)
- South Korean (Rank 8
- Iceland (Rank 9
- Ireland (Rank 10 out of 183 nations)
Jensen Comment
I think this is a useless ranking because "doing business" can be defined in so
many ways from production to sales to financing to the personal lives, numbers,
and skills of local workers. Uncertainty for the future must also be
factored in when "doing business" entails capital investment and relocation of
key workers.
For example the second-highest-ranked nation above, Hong Kong, is also the
most uncertain nation given the conflicts that erupted in 2014 between Hong Kong
and its parent mainland China. Investment and relocation decisions are much more
risky in Hong Kong's changed business climate.
New Zealand, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland may be good sales markets but these
high-welfare nations are not noted for motivated or skilled labor. Also
relocation costs can be very high in terms of personal income taxes and real
estate prices in these nations.
Ireland carries the baggage of being in the Eruozone. Both the United Kingdom
and Ireland carry the advantages and disadvantages of being in the troubled
European Union --- troubles ranging from immigration unrest to carrying of high
unemployment nations like Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. The EU is
threatening to take some of the tax advantages of Ireland out of the picture.
There are also business uncertainties for USA companies doing business amidst an
unfriendly EU attitude to USA companies. Exhibit A comprises the huge fines of
high tech companies (e.g., Google and Microsoft) for anti-trust "violations."
The United Kingdom more than any other European Nation is troubled with
Jihadist unrest and terrorism threats that could become more focused on
businesses. South Korea faces the faces enormous problems of bordering an insane
nuclear-armed North Korea.
The USA has the highest corporate tax rates and the most complicated system
for avoiding taxes. The sales markets are great in the USA, but many
corporations are seeking to reduce USA tax obligations and labor costs with
relocations of production in other places like Mexico and Asia. The USA also is
probably the most litigious nation with over 80% of the tort lawyers of the
world.
About all that can be said for the top 10 nations above is that they are more
politically stable and enforce contracts better than most of the other 183
nations, particularly the many nations having civil strife, massive corruption,
violent gangs, revolution, and very militant labor unions that scare the
bejeebers out of companies thinking about production investments. Exhibit
A is Venezuela. Exhibit B is Bolivia.
Perhaps the greatest advantage of Singapore is its stability and near-absence
of corruption. But it's too small to be compared to a potential sales market
like China and India. China could become the business center of the world if it
could rid itself of massive corruption. The same can be said about India. If the
BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) could become less corrupt than
the USA, Canada, Australia, and the EU the world of commerce would become almost
totally dominated by the BRICs.
But the BRICs will flounder as long as they continue to be inflicted to
massive corruption. None of the BRICs made the 2014 top 10 list shown above.
Cadillac Health Insurance Plans and Taxation ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_insurance_plan
"ObamaCare hits George Washington University," by Spencer Irvine,
Accuracy in Academia, September 24, 2014 ---
http://www.academia.org/obamacare-hits-geoge-washington-university/
The faculty at George Washington University made
substantial contributions to President Obama when he was seeking that
office. They are about to contribute heavily towards their own medical care
now that his Obamacare is the law of the land.
George Washington University’s student newspaper,
The GW Hatchet, reports that the university has “traded in a more expensive
employee health care plan to avoid paying nearly $1 million in additional
taxes.” The article noted that GWU will offer “a cheaper plan to ease
faculty concerns about rising costs.”
The new plan offered by the university is a
high-deductible plan, meaning it will
help cut down how much families will pay out-of-pocket. The university’s
Vice President for Human Resources, Sabrina Ellis, told the Faculty Senate
that the Affordable Care Act’s “Cadillac Tax” will start in 2018 and force
the university to pay almost $1 million due to their “high-end plans.”
Ellis said, “The goal is to take steps now, in
anticipation of the excise tax, to use our benefit dollars wisely in keeping
the plans affordable.”
According to the student newspaper, the new option
was the result of a year of lobbying by the faculty to start lower insurance
payments. “Between 2012 and 2014, employee out-of-pocket costs grew by 30.5
percentage points. Out-of-pocket costs for employees rose about 3 percent
this year.”
Continued in article
Bob
Jensen's universal health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
California's Proposition 45: Will ObamaCare price fixing work in
California?
"California's ObamaCare Fight," by Allysia Finley, The Wall Street
Journal, September 15, 2014 ---
http://online.wsj.com/articles/political-diary-californias-obamacare-fight-1410807906?tesla=y&mod=djemMER_h&mg=reno64-wsj
One of the most expensive and contentious
initiative campaigns in California this year pits progressive Democrats
against the state's ObamaCare exchange. The progressives want to give the
state insurance commissioner veto power over health-insurance rates while
the exchange backers want to prevent ObamaCare from imploding.
State Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones decided to
go to voters after unsuccessfully lobbying the legislature to give him
authority to reject health insurance rate hikes. Backing him are progressive
groups and San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer, who say consumers need more
protection from money-grubbing health-insurance companies.
Assisting insurers in their fight against the
initiative, Proposition 45, are regulators for the state exchange Covered
California. "It's going to end up hurting Californians, hurting consumers,
increasing costs," declared Democratic exchange board member Susan Kennedy
at a meeting last month. "And it will damage health-care reform, perhaps
permanently, perhaps fatally, in California and I think perhaps nationally."
"I don't think this is the right law at the right
time," added Diana Dooley, who is Gov. Jerry Brown's secretary of health and
human services. "I feel very mother-bearish on protecting the investment we
have made in implementing the Affordable Care Act."
They're afraid Prop. 45 will induce insurers to
narrow their provider networks to minimize rate increases. The larger danger
is that some insurers might drop out of the exchange if they can't raise
rates enough to cover their costs. This would erode choice and quality of
health insurance, and the collateral damage might incite a public backlash.
So to ensure ObamaCare's promise of lower health costs, progressives may
wind up sabotaging the country's best-run state exchange.
Note that the ObamaCare benefit mandates are mainly
to blame for driving up individual health premiums by as much as 88% this
year. While campaigning for Prop. 45, Mr. Jones has flogged the rate spikes
and accused insurers of curtailing their rate increases this year in order
to undercut the initiative.
The anti-Prop. 45 campaign is just gearing up—it
has spent $1.7 million of its $36.7 million war chest—but it seems that all
the kvetching has raised public skepticism of the initiative. A Field Poll
last week showed 41% of voters favoring the initiative, down from 69% in
early July. A third of voters remain undecided, which is twice as many as
two months ago. Ballot measures typically need to be polling above 50% to
stand a chance of passing.
Jensen Comment
Voters should look to the empty supermarkets in Venezuela before going to the
polls in California to vote for price fixing.
Voters should also remember that hospitals, medical clinics, and doctors are
not obligated to serve patients having ACA-exchange insurance. In New Hampshire
nearly half the hospitals in the state refuse to honor ACA-exchange medical
insurance. This is partly due to reimbursement rates as well as having to cover
up to 60 days of free medical care for deadbeats who are bad debts in terms of
ACA insurance premiums.
Price controls ala Proposition 45 in California may result greatly reduced
quantity and quality of medical care for patients insured by California's ACA-exchanges.
One state to watch in this regard is Vermont.
Vermont is in the midst of trying to start up a state-funded insurance plan that
will force all private sector medical insurance companies out of the current
Vermont ACA exchanges. This is probably the closest movement toward a
Canadian-styled public sector health insurance plan. In Canada the province
taxpayers fund healthcare insurance, and coverage varies somewhat between
provinces.
One problem in Vermont is that a state with only 500,000 people (counting
babies) cannot figure out how to raise $1 billion in capital needed to get the
state-exchange plan started. I do hope that Vermont will figure out a way in
this regard. Another problem is that much of Vermont's taxpayer dollars for
state-funded medical care will go out of state since Vermont is so dependent on
specialist services from the bigger medical service providers in surrounding
states such as the Hitchcock-Dartmouth Medical Center and the large medical
centers in Boston.
Bob
Jensen's universal health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
"Doctors Get Stuck with Bills for Deadbeat Obamacare Patients," by
J.D. Tuccille, Reason Magazine, September 16, 2014 ---
http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/16/doctors-get-stuck-with-bills-for-deadbea
Last year I
wrote that Obamacare could leave doctors holding the bag
for claims for patients who don't pay their insurance
premiums. That's because the law includes a three-month grace period during
which health insurers must continue to cover patients who sign up, but don't
pay the price of their insurance. If the patients eventually make good,
there's no problem. But if patients don't pay the owed premiums, the
insurance company has to cover the cost of claims filed during the first
month. Providers are stuck with the tab for any claims filed during months
two and three.
The piece I wrote last July was theoretical. The
notification letter I'm holding in my hand, addressed to my wife's pediatric
practice, is reality. And reality costs, in this case, over $600. That's the
outstanding balance owed the practice by a patient insured by BlueCross
BlueShield of Arizona. It's a balance that my wife might have to eat, or
else try to collect herself.
Here's the letter, from which my wife redacted all
identifying information before showing it to me.
Dear Practitioner:
Under the Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act (PPACA), if an individual purchases health insurance through
the Individual Marketplace and receives a subsidy to assist with
premiums, there is a three month grace period in which the individual
can make premium payments. During this period, insurance companies may
not disenroll members, issuers must notify providers as soon as
practicable when an enrollee enters the grace period and, during the
second and third months of the grace period, they are required to notify
providers that claims incurred in the second and third months may deny
if the premium is not paid.
The member referenced above purchased health
insurance through the Marketplace and currently receives a subsidy to
assist with premiums. This letter is a courtesy notification to make you
aware that this member and any covered dependents are currently in the
3rd month of their grace period.
What this means to you
- This claim was incurred during the second
or third month of the member's grace period and was pended. All
individual claims under this contract are also in the second or
third month of their grace period.
- Any additional claims incurred during the
second and third month of the grace period may be pended until the
full premium due is paid by the member.
- If the premium is paid in full by the end
of the grace period, and pended claims will be processed in
accordance with the terms of the contract.
- If premium is not paid in full by the end
of the grace period, any claims incurred in the second and third
months may be denied. If claims incurred in the second and third
month are denied due to non-payment of premium, you may seek
reimbursement directly from the member.
The American Medical Association (AMA) has more
information about the grace period
here, though the letter above covers the high
points. Given the potentially high costs providers can face when the
insurance coverage they process for patient care turns out to be more of a
conditional suggestion than a firm guarantee, the AMA also offers
physicians guidance, and urges them to
enter into financial agreements with patients who
receive subsidized care. The idea is to get them to promise to pay their own
bills if they stiff the insurance company.
Of course, those patients promised to pay their
insurance companies, too.
"Doctors Get Stuck with Bills for Deadbeat Obamacare Patients," by
J.D. Tuccille, Reason Magazine, September 16, 2014 ---
http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/16/doctors-get-stuck-with-bills-for-deadbea
Last year I
wrote that Obamacare could leave doctors holding the bag
for claims for patients who don't pay their insurance
premiums. That's because the law includes a three-month grace period during
which health insurers must continue to cover patients who sign up, but don't
pay the price of their insurance. If the patients eventually make good,
there's no problem. But if patients don't pay the owed premiums, the
insurance company has to cover the cost of claims filed during the first
month. Providers are stuck with the tab for any claims filed during months
two and three.
The piece I wrote last July was theoretical. The
notification letter I'm holding in my hand, addressed to my wife's pediatric
practice, is reality. And reality costs, in this case, over $600. That's the
outstanding balance owed the practice by a patient insured by BlueCross
BlueShield of Arizona. It's a balance that my wife might have to eat, or
else try to collect herself.
Here's the letter, from which my wife redacted all
identifying information before showing it to me.
Dear Practitioner:
Under the Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act (PPACA), if an individual purchases health insurance through
the Individual Marketplace and receives a subsidy to assist with
premiums, there is a three month grace period in which the individual
can make premium payments. During this period, insurance companies may
not disenroll members, issuers must notify providers as soon as
practicable when an enrollee enters the grace period and, during the
second and third months of the grace period, they are required to notify
providers that claims incurred in the second and third months may deny
if the premium is not paid.
The member referenced above purchased health
insurance through the Marketplace and currently receives a subsidy to
assist with premiums. This letter is a courtesy notification to make you
aware that this member and any covered dependents are currently in the
3rd month of their grace period.
What this means to you
- This claim was incurred during the second
or third month of the member's grace period and was pended. All
individual claims under this contract are also in the second or
third month of their grace period.
- Any additional claims incurred during the
second and third month of the grace period may be pended until the
full premium due is paid by the member.
- If the premium is paid in full by the end
of the grace period, and pended claims will be processed in
accordance with the terms of the contract.
- If premium is not paid in full by the end
of the grace period, any claims incurred in the second and third
months may be denied. If claims incurred in the second and third
month are denied due to non-payment of premium, you may seek
reimbursement directly from the member.
The American Medical Association (AMA) has more
information about the grace period
here, though the letter above covers the high
points. Given the potentially high costs providers can face when the
insurance coverage they process for patient care turns out to be more of a
conditional suggestion than a firm guarantee, the AMA also offers
physicians guidance, and urges them to
enter into financial agreements with patients who
receive subsidized care. The idea is to get them to promise to pay their own
bills if they stiff the insurance company.
Of course, those patients promised to pay their
insurance companies, too.
Bob
Jensen's universal health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
"Big (60%) Minnesota insurer leaves Obamacare site," by Dan Mangan
(CNBC), Yahoo Finance, September 16, 2014 ---
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-minnesota-insurer-leaves-obamacare-185046511.html
The "Blue Ox"
of Minnesota Obamacare is calling it quits.
PreferredOne,
the insurer that sold nearly 60 percent of all private health plans on
Minnesota's Obamacare exchange, on Tuesday said it would leave that
marketplace. PreferredOne's plans were the lowest-cost options on that
exchange, known as
MNSure.
PreferredOne cited the costs of doing business on
MNSure as the reason for its surprising decision, saying that selling plans
is "not administratively and financially sustainable going forward,"
according to KSTP.com, the website of that
Minnesota TV News network.
"Our MNsure individual product membership is only a
small percentage of the entire PreferredOne enrollment but is taking a
significant amount of our resources to support administratively,"
a company statement obtained by KSTP said. "We
feel continuing on MNsure was not sustainable and believe this is an
important step to best serve all PreferredOne members."
The insurer's surprising move came just two months
before the start of open enrollment in Obamacare plans for 2015 and a month
before insurers are expected to release their plan rates for next year.
Read More
CEO prescription for health care
PreferredOne's
decision is likely to have significant effect not only on its current
Obamacare enrollees, but also on people who will be shopping for plans for
next year on the exchange, which is now left with just four insurers. The
remaining players on the exchange are Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Health
Partners, Medica and UCare.
PreferredOne's relatively low-priced plans on
MNSure for the 2014 enrollment season were a big reason why 59 percent of
the 47,902 people who bought health coverage on the exchange by mid-April
selected the insurer.
Those customers now face the prospects of higher
rates if they want to remain in those same plans next year, as is their
option, while existing customers of other insurers and new customers in the
market will have fewer price options from which to choose.
In a statement released Tuesday, MNSure noted that
"all consumers currently enrolled through Preferred One will have continued
coverage through their existing plan for the rest of 2014."
And the statement said that under state law,
customers have the right to renew their current coverage for 2015, but "this
mandate does not require it to be offered at the same price."
Read More
115K could lose Obamacare coverage
In a joint statement, MNsure's CEO, Scott Leitz,
and Preferred One CEO Marcus Merz said, "Today Preferred One made the
decision to not offer health plans through the health insurance exchange in
2015. Simply put, both organizations understand that MNsure is still an
evolving partnership. This decision impacts 2015 enrollment."
"Consumers
still have at least four, well-known, Minnesota-based carriers who are
committed to providing important health coverage to Minnesotans through
MNsure, including people who qualify for tax credits and public programs,"
the CEOs said.
Read More
How to save on health care in retirement
"MNsure and
Preferred One will work closely to minimize impact to current enrollees in a
Preferred One Plan through MNsure."
PreferredOne
is owned jointly by
three medical providers in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
The insurer is Minnesota's fifth largest by revenue,
and will continue selling health plans outside of the Obamacare exchange.
-By
CNBC's Dan Mangan.
Jensen Comment
I don't think the ACA is sustainable until state or federal government insurance
exchanges replace those of the private sector. Keep tuned into Vermont where a
serious effort is underway to opt out of private sector medical insurance for
ACA exchanges.
Bob
Jensen's universal health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
"US Census Data: Uninsured Rate…Increased in 2014?," by Guy Benson,
Townhall, September 22, 2014 ---
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2014/09/22/us-census-bureau-number-of-uninsured-americansincreased-in-2014-n1894992?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
Wait, what? We've expressed a healthy
skepticism of the administration's "official"
enrollment numbers, and for good
reason -- but even I must admit to being a bit
flummoxed by the United States Census Bureau's new findings that America's
uninsured population increased in 2014 over 2013. That
data, via Phil Kerpen:
Continued in article
"GAO: Where did ObamaCare’s $3.7B go?" by Sarah Ferris, The Hill,
September 22, 2014 ----
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/218628-gao-where-did-obamacares-37b-go
The Obama administration has spent at least $3.7
billion to build and promote online marketplaces under the Affordable Care
Act, but it can’t prove exactly where it all went, according to an audit
released Monday.
Federal investigators said the Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services (CMS) does not properly track certain data that public
officials need in order to determine whether the healthcare law is working.
The government tracks its healthcare spending in an
outdated records system that cannot easily respond to data requests such as
salaries or public relations contracts in certain departments. Instead,
officials rely on manually prepared spreadsheets that can take months to
produce. Out of that data, “we
were not able to determine the reliability of most of the information,”
according to the
report by the independent Government
Accountability Office (GAO).
“CMS's
processes are inconsistent with certain federal accounting and internal
control standards,” the report states. To
improve the system, the GAO recommends that CMS staff create new procedures
to provide more timely and reliable information to the public. “Particularly
for programs subject to a significant degree of public and congressional
scrutiny,” the GAO reports.
The report marks the third time in two
weeks that a federal audit has criticized the rollout of ObamaCare.
The auditors pointed to one particularly
troublesome area within CMS — its Center
for Consumer Information & Insurance Oversight,
which works largely with state governments.
That agency could not verify its total
costs of staff salaries, travel, polling or total advertising spent on
ObamaCare.
The investigation was requested by Rep.
Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the outgoing chair of the House Ways and Means
Committee. Camp released a statement criticizing the administration's
financial tracking.
“After promising transparency and then
ignoring repeated requests from Congress, we now find out that the
administration is not even keeping track of how many taxpayer dollars are
going out the door,” he said. “Worse yet, the administration won’t even
account for how much it spent on public relations campaigns promoting their
unpopular law.”
The Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS), which oversees the other agencies, defended its financial
tracking system, which it described as “up-to-date.”
The department argued it relies on an
ad-hoc process only when responding to non-routine data requests, such as
those from the GAO or Congress.
HHS has endured heavy scrutiny from
lawmakers, particularly over the last year. Members of Congress and their
staff have sent hundreds of inquiries to HHS since the launch of ObamaCare.
As a result, department officials have testified at more than 50 hearings
and supplied 140,000 pages of documents.
Bob
Jensen's universal health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Obamacare's Bronz Plans are Lousy Plans for All Involved ---
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119609/underinsured-obamacare-bronze-plans-leave-high-out-pocket-expenses
"Underinsured ACA enrollees strain community health centers," by
Virgil Dickson, Modern Healtcare, September 25, 2014 ---
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20140925/NEWS/309259947/underinsured-aca-enrollees-strain-community-health-centers
Obamacare enrollees are straining the finances of
community health centers around the country, some
health center leaders say.
The issue is that many lower-income patients with insurance coverage through
the federal and state exchanges bought bronze-tier plans with lower premiums
but high deductibles, coinsurance and copayments and no federal cost-sharing
subsidies. When these patients face high out-of-pocket costs for care that
falls below the deductible, they can't afford it.
So the centers are subsidizing that care by offering them means-tested
sliding-scale fees. When the centers, which are not allowed to turn away
patients for inability to pay, try to get the insurers to pay, the claims
are usually denied, and the centers have to
write it off as
uncompensated care..
“People bought what they could afford and
healthcare centers are in effect subsidizing these policies,” said José
Camacho, executive director of the Texas Association of Community Health
Centers.
There had been uncertainty about whether community health centers, which
receive federal funding and serve 22 million Americans at 9,000 sites around
the country, were allowed to offer sliding-scale fees to patients with
private insurance plans. On Monday,
HHS released a guidance clarifying that the
centers can offer these reduced fees to patients with incomes under 200% of
the federal poverty level.
Of the 7.3 million people who purchased and paid for coverage on the federal
and states exchanges for 2014, about 20% selected bronze-tier plans, which
feature deductibles as high as $5,500 a person. Those plans lack a key
affordability feature of silver plans, which generally have higher premiums.
Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, people with incomes of
up to 250% of the federal poverty level who buy silver plans
qualify for cost-sharing subsidies that reduce
their out-of-pocket costs for care. Purchasers of bronze plans do not
qualify for those subsidies.
While all health plans that comply with Obamacare standards must cover a
range of primary-care and preventive services on a first-dollar basis,
deductibles and coinsurance apply when patients are diagnosed and treated
for sickness, injuries or chronic illness.
“With the Affordable Care Act, while the number of uninsured may be
dropping, there's a new challenge in that there is now a huge cadre of
underinsured people,” said Sara Rosenbaum, chair of the health policy
department at George Washington University.
Continued in article
Bob
Jensen's universal health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Penalty for Opting Out of the Affordable Care Act Is Large ($12,240) and
Growing ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2014/09/penalty-for-opting-out-of-affordable-care-act-.html