Tidbits Political Quotations
To Accompany the May 25, 2017 edition of Tidbits
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2017/tidbits052517.htm          
Bob Jensen at
Trinity University




USA Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ubl

How Your Federal Tax Dollars are Spent ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c4eab53ef01b7c8ee6392970b-popup

To Whom Does the USA Federal Government Owe Money (the booked obligation of $19+ trillion) ---
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/politicalcalculations/2016/05/25/spring-2016-to-whom-does-the-us-government-owe-money-n2168161?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
The US Debt Clock in Real Time --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 
Remember the Jane Fonda Movie called "Rollover" --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollover_(film)
One worry is that nations holding trillions of dollars invested in USA debt are dependent upon sales of oil and gas to sustain those investments.

To Whom Does the USA Federal Government Owe Money (the unbooked obligation of $100 trillion and unknown more in contracted entitlements) ---
http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/15/news/economy/entitlement-benefits/
The biggest worry of the entitlements obligations is enormous obligation for the future under the Medicare and Medicaid programs that are now deemed totally unsustainable ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm

 

Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side because it's been fertilized with more bullshit.
Anonomous

 

Shoot for the space in between, because that's where the real mystery lies.
Vera Rubin
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/12/28/remebering-vera-rubin/?utm_source=Brain+Pickings&utm_campaign=f053a9c4e2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_01_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_179ffa2629-f053a9c4e2-234390133

 

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T.S. Eliot

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen

Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.
Margaret Wheatley
Even conversations that are not politically correct.

Why, we grow rusty and you catch us at the very point of decadence --- by this time tomorrow we may have forgotten everything we ever knew. That's a thought isn't it? We'd be back to where we started --- improvising.
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Act I)

It's hard to beat a person who never gives up.

Babe Ruth, Historic Home Run Hitter
What's sad is to witness what Syria has become because nobody will give up.

And "because they're nonstate actors, it's hard for us to get the satisfaction of [Gen.] MacArthur and the [Japanese] Emperor [Hirohito] meeting and the war officially being over," Obama observed, referencing the end of World War II. 
President Barack Obama when asked if the USA of the future will be perpetually engaged in war.
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-on-americans-being-resigned-to-live-in-a-perpetual-war-2016-7

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

If you don't know where you're going, you might not get there.
Yogi Berra

Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.
Henry David Thoreau

In 2015, India’s GDP growth rate overtook China’s. By 2022 its population will be greater. But its rise has been much more haphazard. Maxwell Carter reviews “Superfast Primetime Ultimate Nation: The Relentless Invention of Modern India” by Adam Roberts ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/india-steps-on-the-stage-1494795792?mod=djemMER

U.S. Crackdown on Fraudulent For-Profit Schools Is Said to Go Idle ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/business/education-department-for-profit-schools.html?elqTrackId=ac9840b1f7a84800a6bcdaaa806c6a9d&elq=8314fc8dcf554e22811100d5e69b74f8&elqaid=13920&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=5805&_r=0
Jensen Comment
Except for outright diploma mills most of these marginal "schools" are ripping off taxpayers with substandard education and training programs for Veterans, poor people, and folks otherwise not equipped to compete in legitimate schools.
The Obama Administration shocked the world by shutting down the huge and fraudulent ITT Technical Institute. There's doubt that this would've happened under President Trump.

Every day, your mom wasted 90 minutes of her life on you, so today get her a present.
Nate Silver's 5:38 Blog on Mothers Day
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/jennifervanlaar/2017/05/14/five-thirty-eights-mothers-day-graphic-isnt-polling-well-n2326679?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=
The above tweet did not go over well.

Four Things to Know About North Versus South Korea ---
https://theconversation.com/4-things-to-know-about-north-and-south-korea-77441

The Atlantic:  A Special Prosecutor Is Not the Answer ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/a-special-prosecutor-is-not-the-answer/526662/

Video on Sixty Minutes, May 14, 2017
"The Bin Laden Documents" (this video shows how Al-Qaeda exploded in numbers after Bin Laden was killed --- but it is no longer using the name Al-Qaeda
http://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/video/Sle1xJpjJQUUSZHvXLUMaMpb_mbabtzr/james-comey-the-bin-laden-documents-curiosity/

Is The House GOP's Border Adjustment Tax Unconstitutional? ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2017/05/is-the-house-gops-border-adjustment-tax-unconstitutional.html

Boundries of Conservatism
William F. Buckley
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/books/review/a-man-and-his-presidents-william-f-buckley-jr-alvin-s-felzenberg-.html?_r=0

Critics Calling President Trump is a sociopath like Stephen Colbert on CBS and Steve Kolowich in the Chronicle of Higher Education are not only making unqualified medical diagnoses they are probably creating a deeper schism between the media and higher education and Trump's supporters and apologists ---
http://www.chronicle.com/article/What-Is-Seth-Abramson-Trying/240071?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=0294a260cad84435b42264bbd978c374&elq=0b701eb515cc45e4bcbac44a892204e0&elqaid=13948&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=5818
The Chronicle of Higher Education loses my academic respect by not allowing subscribers to comment on the various Quack Kolowich posts. So much for political neutrality of the Chronicle and Quack Kolowich.

Helen Keller Writes a Letter to Nazi Students Before They Burn Her Book: “History Has Taught You Nothing If You Think You Can Kill Ideas” (1933) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2017/05/helen-keller-writes-a-letter-to-nazi-students-before-they-burn-her-book-history-has-taught-you-nothing-if-you-think-you-can-kill-ideas-1933.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Gallup released a poll Tuesday finding that “the Democratic Party's ratings slipped to 40% -- from 45% last November -- while the Republican Party's image is essentially unchanged at 39% --- 
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/laurettabrown/2017/05/16/gallup-democratic-party-favorability-rating-has-dipped-since-november-n2327711?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad= 

Bernie Sanders Has Yet to Disclose (as promised) His 2016 Finances ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-has-yet-to-disclose-his-2016-finances-2017-5

Speaking about Hillary Clinton's surprise November defeat to Donald Trump, Biden said, "I never thought she was a great candidate. I thought I was a great candidate
Joe Biden,  who's bids failed in 1988 and 2008 and his almost-run in 2016
http://www.businessinsider.com/joe-biden-stunning-admission-hillary-clinton-obama-2017-5

Is anybody surprised by the findings of this research?
Harvard study: Media Biased against Trump ---
https://www.academia.org/harvard-report-president-trump-received-unsparing-coverage-by-the-media-mostly-negative/

 

They say that patriotism is the last refuge
To which a scoundrel clings.
Steal a little and they throw you in jail,
Steal a lot and they make you king.
There's only one step down from here, baby,
It's called the land of permanent bliss. 
What's a sweetheart like you doin' in a dump like this?

Bob Dylan

Well, the rifleman’s stalking the sick and the lame
Preacherman seeks the same, who’ll get there first is uncertain
Nightsticks and water cannons, tear gas, padlocks
Molotov cocktails and rocks behind every curtain
False-hearted judges dying in the webs that they spin
Only a matter of time ’til night comes steppin’ in

Bob Dylan

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son
And what did you see, my darling young one
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin'
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin'
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Bob Dylan

Patti Smith Sings Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rains Gonna Fall” at Nobel Prize Ceremony & Gets a Case of the Nerves ---
http://www.openculture.com/2016/12/patti-smith-sings-bob-dylans-a-hard-rains-gonna-fall-at-nobel-prize-ceremony-gets-a-case-of-the-nerves.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

USA Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ubl




 


Stanford:  Can the GOP Fix the Corporate Income Tax?
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/can-gop-fix-corporate-income-tax?utm_source=Stanford+Business&utm_campaign=79e2a76402-Stanford-Business-Issue-112-5-14-2017&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b5214e34b-79e2a76402-70265733&ct=t(Stanford-Business-Issue-112-5-14-2017)

. . .

Will Trump address the root of the problem?
I think he really wants to end the lock-out of foreign profits once and for all, but it’s hard to tell if he’s settled on an approach. During the campaign Trump seemed to favor an end to deferral on foreign earnings. In other words, going forward, corporations would have to pay tax immediately on all their income worldwide, so there’d be no reason to hold cash overseas. And then you make that palatable by lowering the tax rate.

By the way, that’s what Obama tried to do, and it’s still the approach favored by Democrats. But Obama would only have lowered the rate to 28%. Trump wants to cut the tax rate to 15%, which is pretty low by world standards.

In his latest proposal — which is still just a page of bullet points — the president seems to have adopted an idea from Paul Ryan’s House plan: He now says he wants to move away from our system of global taxation to what’s called territorial taxation, where firms are taxed only on U.S. income. So instead of taxing offshore profits at once, he’d stop taxing them altogether.

Which is how most countries do it.
Right. And of course U.S. multinationals have been clamoring for this for years. They talk about “abolishing the repatriation tax,” which makes it sound like there’s a separate, unfair tax on foreign income. It’s just the ordinary income tax that companies have deferred for so long that they sort of stop thinking of it as a liability they already owe.

Why hasn’t the U.S. adopted a territorial tax system?
There are real risks. If you say foreign earnings aren’t taxable, you’re incentivizing companies to shift more of their operations offshore. And if you try to counteract that with a low tax rate like 15% — and at the same time, you’re shrinking the tax base by excluding foreign profits — you could be looking at significant revenue losses. It might really increase the federal deficit.

Continued in articl

 


Political Correctness --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness

James Watson (molecular biologist whose analytics determined that DNA had a double helix structure) ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson

Political Correctness in Action in May 2017
Nobel Laureate's "Narrowly Focused Scientific Talk" Called Off Over His Racist Comments U of Illinois research institute agreed to host James Watson. But it called off the event after faculty members cited his comments on race, intelligence and geography.---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/05/17/u-illinois-calls-james-watson-lecture-over-his-racist-comments?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=6d2e37e537-DNU20170517&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-6d2e37e537-197565045&mc_cid=6d2e37e537&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

A research institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign agreed to host James Watson, a Nobel laureate whose work is credited with discovering the structure of DNA, to give a lecture there. But the event was quickly called off amid faculty concerns about whether it was appropriate to host someone like Watson, whose statements have been widely condemned as racist.

Watson has made numerous controversial comments over the years and also has been condemned for sexist and homophobic statements.

But his comments on race have led many to say he should be shunned.

In a 2007 interview, he said that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really.” Further, he said that while people hope that all groups are equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.” (He also said that some black people are smart, and has apologized, although many question the sincerity of his apology.)

Since then, many groups have stayed away from Watson.

The Carl Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois, however, announced that it would host a talk by Watson next month.

Gene Robinson, director of the institute, told The News-Gazette that Watson had reached out to the center and then agreed to deliver a "narrowly focused scientific talk" about his cancer research, and that institute researchers reached out to colleagues because they were aware of Watson's reputation on issues of race.

But the institute backed away from the plans after a number of faculty members took to social media to condemn the plans to have Watson speak on campus.

Jensen Comment
This is an example how politically correct censors have taken over college campuses.
Top leaders in academic disciplines are no longer allowed on campus even when they narrowly confine their talks to their primary area of expertise.

This is the banning of all messages on campus from PC-Scarlet Letter  researchers and scholars even when their messages are politically correct

This is one more example of the "Closing of the Academic Minds" on USA campuses in the name of politically correctness.

Even a top researcher like James Watson must wear a scarlet letter wherever he speaks in North America.

"The 10 articles in this collection give an overview of how college leaders, and their campus communities, reacted to controversial speakers," Chronicle of Higher Education, May 15, 2017 ---
http://www.chronicle.com/resource/dealing-with-controversial-spe/6314/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=105654f55f064700b1af275d69595da9&elq=3a8a40dc1440424c96b769e74cfdcc6d&elqaid=13969&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=5829

 

Jensen Comment
You can read about these other incidents and more references at my history of political correctness versus academic freedom site ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#PoliticalCorrectness
Go to the above site for links and quotations


It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
Yogi Berra

Dynamic Scoring --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_scoring

This congressional accounting trick is part of the reason Washington is so divided ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-dynamic-scoring-2017-5

Jensen Comment
This or something very similar is common in other types of forecasting, such as in ensemble weather forecasting. This is one of the reasons long-range forecasts are less predictive than short-range forecasts where some of the dynamic elements are more in place. This is one of the reasons hurricane tracking forecasters give multiple possible tracks ---  when predicting the most likely track is very tenuous. This is why pre-season rankings of sports teams are often way off the mark as dynamic factors (especially unpredictable  injuries) come come into play.

In mathematics, statistics, and business the common term for something like dynamic scoring is "sensitivity analysis." ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_analysis
One of the most popular sensitivity analysis tools is Monte Carlo Simulation in Finance ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_methods_in_finance

An emerging tools is the Dynamic Baysian Network ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Bayesian_network

There is no Swiss Army knife when making predictions about complicated systems. The problem is that government and business firms must at some point reduce dynamic forecasts into a single operating budge that entails resource allocations. That's when politics takes control away from the technical forecasters --- when conflicting forecasts must be reduced to a consensus forecast.


Political Correctness Offends Me 
John Cleese Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klu1SCueDow 

Updates on Politically Correct Language Trends ---
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2017/05/20/in-seattle-police-can-no-longer-report-suspects-they-have-to-say-community-members-n2329542?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=

In Seattle, police can no longer use the term “suspect” for use of force reports. Instead, they have to write “community member.” Alas, we have political correctness now infesting law enforcement. Also, this isn’t new. KIRO 7 reported that the Washington’s Department of Corrections no longer calls prisoners inmates; they call them students.

Jensen Comment
Becoming a "student" is now punishment for crime convictions. Bernie Madoff is a lifetime "student."

One of the problems of the new PC language is that words can no longer be partitioned into different meanings.

A "student" in the State of Washington can be enrolled at the University of Washington or incarcerated for life at the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla.

A "community member" may be a victim or a suspect (who knows which?)

The word "they" is now singular and must be used for both a "he" or a "she"
For example"  "They had a hysterectomy" and "They's prostate was removed."

Lake Superior State University's 41st Annual List of Banished Words --- 
http://www.lssu.edu/banished/ 
Jensen Comment
Much depends upon context. Motivational speakers make millions of dollars beating socially incorrect words to death. Rappers make millions beating politically incorrect words to death.

Book Reviews
1-Free Thought Under Siege?
2-What's Happened To The University? A Sociological Exploration Of Its Infantilisation (read that microaggressions and political correctness)
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/11/whats-happened-to-the-university-a-sociological-exploration-of-its-infantilisation.html

Political Correctness Graduation Speech
Forwarded by a Good Friend on the AECM
Leave Your Safe Spaces: The 2017 Commencement Address at Hampden-Sydney College ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/opinion/leave-your-safe-spaces-the-2017-commencement-address-at-hampden-sydney-college.html?_r=0

. . .

Across the country, hundreds of thousands of your peers are also celebrating their commencements, receiving their diplomas, starting out in the world. But not all of their educations have been liberal in the truest sense of the word.

Instead of being educated to a cultured skepticism, too many have been educated to a fervent certitude. Instead of embracing, or at least respecting, heterodox or unsettling ideas, they prefer to retreat into settled convictions. Instead of wanting to engage controversial discussions, they’d just as soon shut them down.

And instead of wanting to emerge at last from the cocoons of their “safe spaces,” they want to extend the domain of those spaces into the next stages of their lives.

Now, don’t get me wrong: The “they” in those sentences consists, for the most part, of nice, well-intentioned, intelligent, hard-working and often high-achieving people.

They just happen to know that truth and virtue are on their side. They are convinced that any difference of opinion on matters they hold dear isn’t simply an error of reasoning but an affront to human decency. They believe they are entitled to denounce the people with whom they disagree as knavish ignoramuses. And they believe that it is imperative to keep a very safe distance between themselves and the ideas that so disturb them.

Today, we live in a world that makes it easy to continue inhabiting these safe spaces, above all when it comes to politics, public policy and ideology.

On social media, you follow, share, “like” and retweet the people you agree with — while you ignore, unfriend, remove or block those you don’t.

If you’re a conservative news junkie, Fox News is your safe space, even if you’d probably never call it that. You can watch it for days — indeed, weeks, months and years — on end without ever encountering a persuasively contrary opinion, at least one that isn’t instantly derided as unworthy of serious consideration. If you’re a liberal, it’s the same story on MSNBC.

When you open the op-ed pages of a newspaper, you’ll turn first to the columnist with whom you already know you’re likely to agree, so that you can see your already-correct opinions repeated and ratified once more. As for the writers with whom you disagree — whether it’s Krugman or Stephens, Kristof or Krauthammer — you’ve already concluded that they’re idiots or liars, so you’ll either skip over them or read them with smirking disdain.

And so it goes. We all believe that the system of checks and balances is a good idea for a well-functioning and prudent government. But where are the checks and balances in our own thinking — the check that whispers, “You could be wrong”; the balance that suggests, “There’s another way of thinking about it”?

This is what I fear we are at risk of losing in America today. Too many of our schools are producing students who have never learned properly to engage, understand or accept an alternative point of view. Too many of our citizens want to hear only from the people whose views they already share, and who will never change their minds about a thing. And too many of our media outlets see no problem in catering exclusively to these increasingly narrow and illiberal tastes.

We worry a lot these days about political polarization, the unpleasant choices such polarization leaves us with at the ballot box, its effects on what used to be our common values, our shared sense of nationhood. What we fail to recognize is that this polarization is a result of us getting exactly what we want — only to rue the consequences.

A month ago, I chose to do my small part in trying to swim against this particular current. After 16 productive and happy years as a conservative writer with the staunchly conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, I decided to switch teams to the mostly liberal editorial page of The New York Times.

In case you’re wondering, my opinions are just as conservative, reactionary and antediluvian as they’ve always been. My salary is pretty much the same. And, no, I wasn’t pushed out of my last job.

But I did have a gnawing sense that it was time to stop talking to my own side, preaching to my own choir. I wanted to write for an audience that might not be wholly receptive — and might even be openly hostile — to what I have to say.

In short, I thought it was time to leave my own safe space: to take the gamble that I might be able to sway readers not always inclined to agree with me, and to accept the possibility that they, in turn, might sway me.

Has it been fun? Yes. Has it been rough? A bit. Has it been worth it? Ask me again in a few years. But I’m optimistic.

So here’s my advice to you: Get out of your own safe spaces. Define what your intellectual comfort zone is — and leave it. Enhance your tolerance for discordant voices. Narrow your criteria for what’s beyond the pale. Read the authors or watch the talking heads with whom you disagree. Treat those disagreements as a whetting stone to sharpen your own arguments. Resist the temptation to call people names.

By all means master the art of being pugnacious in argument — but as a pugnacious dialogian, not a petulant didact.

Go beyond that. Befriend your intellectual adversaries. Assume that they’re smart, that they’re motives are honorable and that they are your fellow travelers in a quest to better understand a common set of challenges. Master the civilized art of agreeable disagreement. Try to remember that words are not weapons, and that politics is not warfare, and debate is not a death sport. Learn that — in politics no less than in marriage — it’s a bad idea to go to bed angry with one another. Have an argument, then have a drink, together.

Members of the class of 2017: Do not close your ears to opposing points of view. Otherwise you cannot learn. Do not foreclose the possibility that you might change your mind. Otherwise you cannot grow. Do not lose sight of the fact that you are not in possession of the whole and only truth. Otherwise you will fail to notice your mistakes, and so suffer their consequences.

Above all, do not forget that the world would be a duller and darker place if everyone thought as you did, and if all our thoughts were safe ones, and if there were nothing to bestir our minds, and inflame our senses, and rouse our consciences, and churn the warm but too-placid waters in which we swim at our own peril.

Safe spaces, physical and intellectual, are for children. You are grown-ups now. If your diplomas mean anything, it’s that it is time you leave those spaces behind forever.

Bob Jensen's threads on political correctness ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#PoliticalCorrectness


Pressure Builds from Low Endowment Returns ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/05/22/pressure-builds-low-endowment-returns?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=cd4ec41b43-DNU20170522&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-cd4ec41b43-197565045&mc_cid=cd4ec41b43&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

. . .

That is changing as average endowment returns have fallen substantially below levels needed to keep up universities’ standard endowment spending rate, widely considered to be 5 percent. Over the last decade, endowments have posted an average annual return rate of 5 percent. After inflation is factored in, that would mean a 5 percent spending rate would create a shortfall of 2 percent to 2.5 percent, driving down endowment values over time, Moody’s said.

As a result of the crunch, universities could choose to reduce their annual spending levels. Some are gradually cutting spending to the 4.5 percent to 5 percent range, according to Moody’s. However, large reductions are unlikely in a current climate of political scrutiny that has included Congress making noise about taxing large endowments at colleges and universities that do not spend substantial amounts on student financial aid.

Colleges and universities could also choose to pursue strategies like moving to passive management to try to match market returns. Such a strategy would likely limit their possibility of outperforming the market, though.

Others might take on increasing risk. Some colleges and universities may turn to fund-raising and retained cash flow to shore up their long-term endowment returns.

As a result, the wealthiest universities would appear to have the most potential for future endowment health. Such universities tend to disproportionately benefit from fund-raising and cash flow because they have wealthy donors and strong brands commanding more money. They also tend to have the endowment size and flexibility required to invest in the alternative and riskier assets that could yield the highest returns.

Jensen Comment
The Fed's low interest rate policy helps maintain the National Debt while, at the same time, forces both people saving for retirement and colleges with endowments to both spend less and take on more investments having more financial risks. Doing so in recent years hit Harvard badly.

Harvard Endowment to Lay Off Half Its Staff The school fund will lay off half of its staff and ask outside funds to run its investments ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-to-outsource-management-of-its-35-7-billion-endowment-1485363650?mg=id-wsj

Harvard University’s endowment fund, which is the largest in the world, is planning to make big changes to its investment approach. Here’s why Harvard and many of its endowment peers are making similar moves.


"The 10 articles in this collection give an overview of how college leaders, and their campus communities, reacted to controversial speakers," Chronicle of Higher Education, May 15, 2017 ---
http://www.chronicle.com/resource/dealing-with-controversial-spe/6314/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=105654f55f064700b1af275d69595da9&elq=3a8a40dc1440424c96b769e74cfdcc6d&elqaid=13969&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=5829

 

Jensen Comment
You can read about these other incidents and more references at my history of political correctness versus academic freedom site ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#PoliticalCorrectness
Go to the above site for links and quotations

Political Correctness --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness

I think political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis where you don't address reality.
Juan William before he was fired after a distinguished career on NPR.


Political correctness is the "Closing of the American Minds"

Allan Bloom's 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind ---

 

Another Speech Shut Down
Protest outside event at Claremont McKenna prevents Heather Mac Donald event from having an in-person audience. Question period of appearance at UCLA is disrupted as well ---
 

"The Coddling of the American Mind:  In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health," by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic, September 2015 ---
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

 

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.

Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance. Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a microaggression to ask an Asian American or Latino American “Where were you born?,” because this implies that he or she is not a real American. Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response. For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse, so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might “trigger” a recurrence of past trauma.

Some recent campus actions border on the surreal. In April, at Brandeis University, the Asian American student association sought to raise awareness of microaggressions against Asians through an installation on the steps of an academic hall. The installation gave examples of microaggressions such as “Aren’t you supposed to be good at math?” and “I’m colorblind! I don’t see race.” But a backlash arose among other Asian American students, who felt that the display itself was a microaggression. The association removed the installation, and its president wrote an e-mail to the entire student body apologizing to anyone who was “triggered or hurt by the content of the microaggressions.”

This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. During the 2014–15 school year, for instance, the deans and department chairs at the 10 University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of microaggressions. The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job

The press has typically described these developments as a resurgence of political correctness. That’s partly right, although there are important differences between what’s happening now and what happened in the 1980s and ’90s. That movement sought to restrict speech (specifically hate speech aimed at marginalized groups), but it also challenged the literary, philosophical, and historical canon, seeking to widen it by including more-diverse perspectives. The current movement is largely about emotional well-being. More than the last, it presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psychological harm. The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable. And more than the last, this movement seeks to punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally. You might call this impulse vindictive protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse.

Continued in article

Walter E. Williams:  Sheer Lunacy on Campus ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2017/05/17/sheer-lunacy-on-campus-n2326969?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=


"The Academy’s Assault on Intellectual Diversity," by Robert Boyers, Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review, March 19, 2017 ---
 

 

Slavoj Žižek Calls Political Correctness a Form of “Modern Totalitarianism” ---
 

 

Washington Post:  If colleges keep killing academic freedom, civilization will die, too ---
 

 

Huffington Post:  The 10 Worst Colleges For Free Speech: 2017 ---
 

An Anti-Koch Meltdown at Wake Forest ---

 

Harvard and Princeton Leading Scholars Argue for "Truth Seeking"---

 

Debate on the Post-Election Reaction of the University of Michigan Campus and Its President ---

 

Protest outside event at Claremont McKenna prevents Heather Mac Donald event from having an in-person audience. Question period of appearance at UCLA is disrupted as well ---

 

"The Coddling of the American Mind:  In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health," by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic, September 2015 ---

 

U Chicago to Freshmen: Don't Expect (Politically Correct) Safe Spaces ---

University of Chicago Politically Correctness Professors Fire Back ---

 

University of New Haven Disinvites Sheriff David Clarke From Speaking ---

 

The (Political Correctness) Mob of Students at Middlebury

Harvard and Princeton Leading Scholars Protest the Middlebury Political Correctness Incident ---

 

A Syracuse University professor withdrew an invitation to a New York University professor, who is Israeli, to present his film at an academic conference, saying that his nationality would upset colleagues who favor a boycott of Israeli academe.

 

DePaul University has banned Shapiro from appearing on campus

 

Smith College Protesters Bar Journalists From Covering Sit-In Unless They Support the Cause ---

 

Ann Althouse:  About that Oregon law professor who wore blackface as part of a Halloween costume and provoked demands that she resign

 

The University of British Columbia Apologizes for Rescinding a Speaker's Invitation ---

 

President of Columbia University on Political Correctness
The No-Censorship Approach to Life ---

 

"Kansas Professor on Leave After Using Racial Slur in Class," Time Magazine, November 21, 2015 ---

 

Columbia Withdraws an Invitation to Ahmadinejad
Overruling a prominent dean, the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, yesterday withdrew an invitation to the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The dean of Columbia's school of international and public affairs, Lisa Anderson, had independently invited Mr. Ahmadinejad to speak at the World Leader's Forum, a year-long program that aims to unite "renowned intellectuals and cultural icons from many nations to examine global challenges and explore cultural perspectives." In a statement issued yesterday afternoon, Mr. Bollinger said he canceled Mr. Ahmadinejad's invitation because he couldn't be certain it would "reflect the academic values that are the hallmark of a University event such as our World Leaders Forum." He told Ms. Anderson that Mr. Ahmadinejad could speak at the school of international and public affairs, just not as a part of the university-wide leader's forum.
Iliana Johnson, "Columbia Withdraws an Invitation to Ahmadinejad," New York Sun, September 22, 2006 ---
http://www.nysun.com/article/40142

At another time when Ahmadinejad did speak at Columbia Lee Bolinger was openly hostile toward the speaker ---
http://snarkybehavior.com/2007/09/24/thoughts-on-ahmadinejad-at-columbia/

 

Princeton University's president, under pressure from African American student activists, said Thursday night that the school would begin a process to consider expunging the legacy of former President Woodrow Wilson from campus

 

Exterminating the Campus of Those Dreaded Conservatives
"Academia’s Rejection of Diversity," by Arthur C. Brooks, The New York Times, October 30, 2015 ---

 

How much power should we give to the politically correct police on campus"
Protesters Demand Firing Of Tenured Vanderbilt Law Professor Over Publication Of Op-Ed ---

 

Complimenting a Chinese student that she speaks English very well is an egregious microaggression.

 

Black-clad protesters gathered in front of Dartmouth Hall, forming a crowd roughly one hundred fifty strong.

 

"University of Minnesota Rejects 9/11 Remembrance Because it Might Incite Racism," by Christine Rousselle, Townhall, November 12, 2015

 

"The right to fright;  An obsession with safe spaces is not just bad for education: it also diminishes worthwhile campus protests," The Economist, November 14, 2015 ---

 

"Sociology and Other 'Meathead' Majors:  Archie Bunker was right to be skeptical of his son-in-law's opinions," by Harvard's Harvey Mansfield, The Wall Street Journal, May 31, 2011 ---

 

"Academic Rot," by Walter E. Williams, Townhall, April 23, 2011 ---

 

"FSU Professors to Koch Brothers: Take Your Green (Money) Back No one ever questions George Soros money, but apparently this $1.5 million gift violates academic freedom," by Donald D. Luskin, The Wall Street Journal, May 26, 2011 ---

 

"Have Canadian Law Schools Become 'Psychotic Kindergartens'?" Inside Higher Ed, June 7, 2010 ---

 

Congressman Tom Tancredo’s speech at UNC tonight was disrupted multiple times and from what I understand may have never even began. Several immature children who are students at the university ran up to the front of the room when Tancredo entered and held up a banner and began chanting over and over not allowing him to speak. A police officer eventually removed them and then several members of the audience began getting belligerent and shouting profanities at Tancredo. Ironically, they did all of this under the guise of free speech, claiming it was their First Amendment right to continue preventing Tancredo from speaking. Evidently free speech to them is only important when it’s speech they agree with and Tancredo’s First Amendment rights don’t matter. Don’t be surprised by this, however. Incidents like these go on all the time at college campuses.
Bane Windlow, "Leftist Activists Disrupt Tancredo Speech at UNC," Carolina Politics Online, April 14, 2009 ---

 

"Tough Love for the Humanities," by Serena Golden, Inside Higher Ed, May 22, 2009 ---

 

"The Two Languages of Academic Freedom," by Stanley Fish, The New York Times, February 8, 2009 ---

"An Authoritative Word on Academic Freedom," by Stanley Fish, The New York Times, November 23, 2008 ---

 

Penn State University training film on how to liberal faculty can deal with military veterans who refuse to be politically correct ---

 

"Academic Freedom in the Wired World," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, March 6, 2008 ---

 

"Intellectuals, Free speech, and Capitalism-Becker," by Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, The Becker-Posner Blog, October 7, 2007 ---

 

Political Bias in Undergraduate Education
In this month's Carnegie Perspectives, Tom Ehrlich and Anne Colby revisit the highly politicized Academic Bill of Rights legislation. Tom and Anne lead the Foundation's work on the importance of civic and political engagement among undergraduate students. In this piece, they argue for the necessity for college faculty members to become much more self-conscious of the variety of ways in which they communicate their political and social views to students. They provide recommendations and precautions for campus leaders who seek to create opportunities for teaching and inquiry that will encourage student learning around difficult issues.
Lee S. Shulman, President The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, March 29, 2006 ---

 

The Political Correctness Debate
"Halting the Race to the Bottom," by John Sexton, Inside Higher Ed, September 18, 2006

 

"Lindgren: The Most Under-Represented Groups in Law Teaching: Whites, Christians, Republicans, Males," by Paul Caron, TaxProf Blog, March 21, 2015 ---

 

There Goes the Neighborhood
"U. of Colorado Is in Search of a Scholar of Conservative Thought U. of Colorado Is in Search of a Scholar of Conservative Thought," by Sydni Dunn, Chronicle of Higher Education., February 26, 2013 ---

 

More at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#PoliticalCorrectness


Is anybody surprised by the findings of this research?
Harvard study: Media Biased against Trump ---
https://www.academia.org/harvard-report-president-trump-received-unsparing-coverage-by-the-media-mostly-negative/




Finding and Using Health Statistics --- http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/usestats/index.htm

Tapper:  Democrats' Obamacare Pitch Was Dishonest ---
Jake Tapper, CNN
http://freebeacon.com/issues/tapper-democrats-obamacare-dishonest/


Fact Checking Health-Care Hysteria:   It’s as if Democrats didn’t even bother reading the GOP bill before attacking it ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fact-checking-health-care-hysteria-1494455688?mod=djemMER

After the House voted last week to repeal and replace ObamaCare, Democrats quickly launched a barrage of false attacks. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi asserted that the bill would “gut” protections for patients with pre-existing conditions. Never one to shy away from melodrama, she added: “This is deadly. This is deadly.”

Apparently the GOP proposal is the second health-care bill Mrs. Pelosi didn’t read. The legislation makes clear: “Nothing in this Act shall be construed as permitting health insurance issuers to limit access to health coverage for individuals with preexisting conditions.”

On Fox News Sunday, the MIT economist Jonathan Gruber came from a different angle, alleging it was dangerous to grant states waivers from some ObamaCare requirements. He suggested insurers could now “literally say, just because the genes you were born with, you’re going to pay more for health insurance.”

Apparently Mr. Gruber is also averse to reading. States may seek waivers from some ObamaCare provisions, but the law explicitly prohibits waivers on pre-existing-condition protections. To receive a waiver insurers must prove it would lower or stabilize premiums, increase coverage, or expand the choice of health plans.

People in waiver states who never had insurance or let their policies lapse would be guaranteed coverage, but to keep them from gaming the system, insurers could take their health into account when determining premiums. After one year, premiums would drop to the standard rate. This rare occurrence is a long way from Mr. Gruber’s charge that people would pay “many, many multiples more.”

The bill also includes $8 billion over five years to help states with waivers set up high-risk pools to cover people with expensive illnesses. Mr. Gruber dismissed this as “trivial.” Yet the Kaiser Family Foundation found in 2011—before ObamaCare kicked in—that 35 states had high-risk pools covering 226,000 people with $2.6 billion in claims. Some $1.4 billion was covered by the premiums these patients paid, and the states had to toss in only $1.2 billion. That’s $400 million less than would be available each year under the GOP bill. Even the New York Times reported that if states tapped all the bill’s available money for high-risk pools, it would total $138 billion. And who thinks 35 states will seek waivers?

This hardly exhausts Democratic complaints. Rep. Richard Neal (D., Mass.) said last week that Republicans had voted to impose an “age tax,” because the bill would allow premiums for older ObamaCare policyholders to be five times those of younger people. (Now insurers can charge older people only three times as much.) Yet the older age group’s health expenses are, on average, nearly five times as high. Today everyone under 50 on ObamaCare is paying higher premiums to subsidize the policies of those above 50.

So in reality, Republicans are repealing the “age tax” Democrats placed on the younger 80% of ObamaCare policyholders to subsidize the older 20%. This despite that older ObamaCare policyholders are in their prime earning years and likely have higher incomes, greater wealth and lower child-rearing expenses.

There is also Mr. Gruber’s startling claim that the Republican bill will cause 24 million people to lose their insurance. How can 24 million people lose ObamaCare coverage when only 11 million people bought the policies? The claim is a distortion of the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that abolishing ObamaCare’s individual mandate would lead 24 million people to forgo purchasing insurance in the future. Freed of ObamaCare’s penalty—a 3% tax on their income—people may decide to do something else with their money.

The CBO is notoriously bad at estimating the benefits, such as lower prices, that come from a consumer-driven system. The Republican bill would enable more competition, expand health savings accounts and promote inexpensive catastrophic coverage.

Mr. Gruber was similarly misleading in claiming “the House bill cuts Medicaid by $880 billion over the next 10 years,” hinting the program would wither away. Federal Medicaid spending this fiscal year is $389 billion. Under the GOP bill, it will be $469 billion in fiscal year 2027. The bill restrains future Medicaid growth. It doesn’t reduce spending.

From his academic bubble, Mr. Gruber said last year that ObamaCare is “working as designed” and “there’s no sense in which it needs to be fixed.” Yet since its passage, Americans have lost plans and doctors and watched as their premiums and deductibles skyrocketed.

Continued in article


The Australian Health Care System Sounds a Whole Lot like the German System of a Choice Between a National Health Care Plan or a Private Insurance Plan
Obviously the private plans would not survive unless there was value added when paying for private insurance

Is Australia's Health Care Plan Better Than Ours ---
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/05/is_australias_healthcare_better_than_ours.html

Jensen Comment
Since Australia has slightly over 30 million people with relatively few medical schools compared the USA with over 320 million people and many more medical schools, one has to question whether Australia can provide the highly specialized services (think neonatal care) available in the USA and India and other nations having many more medical schools for research and clinical service. For example, medical schools in the USA do a lion's share of the clinical testing of new drugs and devices for big pharmaceutical companies.

National health care systems, including the Australian system, handle malpractice claims more efficiently than in the USA where medical malpractice insurance alone can cost over $200,000 per year for some physicians.---
https://digital.lib.washington.edu/dspace-law/bitstream/handle/1773.1/689/13PacRimLPolyJ163.pdf?sequence=1

Canadian Malpractice Insurance Takes Profit Out Of Coverage," by Jane Akre, Injury Board, July 28, 2009 --- 
Click Here

The St. Petersburg Times takes a look at the cost of insurance in Canada for health care providers.

A neurosurgeon in Miami pays about $237,000 for medical malpractice insurance. The same professional in Toronto pays about $29,200, reports Susan Taylor Martin.

A Canadian orthopedic surgeon pays just over $10,000 for coverage that costs a Miami physician $140,000. An obstetrician in Canada pays $36,353 for insurance, while a Tampa Bay obstetrician pays $98,000 for medical malpractice insurance.

 

National health systems, including the Australian system, avoid much of the useless cost of keeping terminal patients hopelessly alive in near vegetative states.
On November 22, 2009 CBS Sixty Minutes aired a video featuring experts (including physicians) explaining how the single largest drain on the Medicare insurance fund is keeping dying people hopelessly alive who could otherwise be allowed to die quicker and painlessly without artificially prolonging life on ICU machines.
"The Cost of Dying," CBS Sixty Minutes Video, November 22, 2009 --- 
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-cost-of-dying-end-of-life-care/
As I read it its much more common to withhold life-sustaining treatments for terminally ill patients in Australia.

More on the comparisons of national health care systems ---
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3633404/

Bob Jensen's threads on health care ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm


Aetna CEO Says We Need to Have a Conversation About Single Payer. We've Been Having It For A Long Time --
http://reason.com/blog/2017/05/12/aetna-ceo-says-we-need-to-have-a-convers


For years I've been a proponent of a national healthcare plan supplemented with discretionary private insurance much like the system in Germany. Some other national healthcare plans are falling apart --- 
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm

Nationalized healthcare is not all it's cracked up to be ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/nationalized-healthcare-is-not-all-its-cracked-up-to-be-2016-9

. . .

Back home, though, Canadians seem far more critical of the system. If you follow the internal Canadian debate, you’ll hear the word “crisis.” In fact, many Canadian healthcare economists warn that their system is headed for a major collapse. The aging population has continued to stress an already fragile system. This is the same system that many proponents of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, pointed to as a model.

Another model of national health care cited by fans of the ACA is the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). Like the Canadian system, there seems to be one attitude for export and another for domestic consumption. You may recall the odd tribute to the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. The NHS was portrayed as a sea of Mary Poppins bliss. At home, though, Brits had reason to complain. The UK was rated as having the worst patient care and lowest cancer survival rates in the Western World.

The NHS is in even worse shape now, and complaints are growing louder. According to the committee that represents UK hospitals, the NHS is on the verge of collapse. The former health minister Paul Burstow warned of this outcome two years ago. At the time, increases in the NIH budget were limited to the rate of inflation. But that did not allow for the increased cost of a growing elderly population. The NIH effort to find £30 billion in “efficiency savings” was already putting enormous strains on the system.

When a healthcare system is overloaded, it’s not just the aged who suffer. A Lancashire man operated on himself when he was put on a long waitlist for a surgery that he badly needed. With waitlists growing, the Royal College of Surgeons reports that financially challenged clinical groups are denying services to patients who are obese or smoke. Often, delayed treatment will increase medical costs in the long run.  

So it shouldn’t be surprising that the Affordable Care Act, which was inspired by the Canadian and British systems, is in deep trouble. Though I predicted it, it is worrisome when the act’s biggest supporters, including The New York Times, admit the program’s flaws.

The growing aged population is a huge financial burden

Obamacare doesn’t deal with the real source of rising healthcare costs: the increase in age-related diseases due to a growing elderly population. It is mathematically impossible to cut societal medical costs while at the same time providing adequate healthcare to a growing and increasingly expensive older population.

This is not just a problem with health care. Social Security and pension funds are running deficits, which will also worsen. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, recently said that he has lost the optimism that he has long been known for. The reason is that “we have a 9 percent annual rate of increase in entitlements, which is mandated by law.  It has got nothing to do with the economy. It has got to do with age and health and the like.”

Greenspan points out that politicians refuse to deal with the “third rail” of entitlements. I agree, but I think there’s a solution. Politicians claim that voters won’t accept delayed retirement. But the evidence shows that most people would like to work longer and save more to pay their own way. Zoya Financial reports that almost two thirds of Americans have to retire earlier than planned, largely due to problems with their own health or a spouse’s.

Anti-aging biotechnologies are in labs right now that could lengthen health spans and working careers. This would allow us to save our entitlement systems. But economists and politicians still have no clue about the biotechnological progress that has marked the start of the 21st century. This will change because it must… but I hope it happens soon

Continued in article


OECD Health Statistics 2016 --- http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/health-data.htm


How to avoid getting ripped off at the hospital According to a doctor turned health care journalist ---
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/11/15210656/hospital-charges-elisabeth-rosenthal
Jensen Comment
It's been repeatedly shown that nearly all billing errors are in favor of the hospital and that most of those errors go undetected. Here's a scenario described by me recently with a neighbor-physician still lives near Boston and vacations up near us. He said that if Intensive Care beds are empty it's common practice for the emergency room to recommend a night or two in ICU when the very expensive ICU services are not necessary relative to a a lower-priced hospital room. This happened to my wife a couple of times under suspicious nights in ICU. Of course, there's the night she really had a heart attack in an ICU that probably saved her life.


From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on May 11, 2017

Aetna to pull out of Affordable Care Act exchanges
Aetna Inc.
said it would pull out of the Affordable Care Act exchanges in Delaware and Nebraska next year, confirming that the insurer will exit all of the marketplaces where it currently sells plans.

The Atlantic:  Why So Many Insurers Are Leaving Obamacare ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/05/why-so-many-insurers-are-leaving-obamacare/526137/
This article really does not get at the reasons why.


Nate Silver's 5:38 Blog:  Obamacare’s Struggles In Iowa Could Be A Preview Of What’s To Come ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/obamacares-struggles-in-iowa-could-be-a-preview-of-whats-to-come/

In an article last week looking at the health of the state insurance marketplaces set up by the Affordable Care Act, I wrote about why Iowa’s was in a dire situation. Three of its insurers recently said they may exit the Obamacare marketplaces, which threatens to leave tens of thousands of people with no way to buy the subsidized insurance promised by the law. The situation there is actually far more tenuous and could be a glimpse of what’s to come in other states. In 94 of Iowa’s 99 counties, insurers have said they may not sell new plans on the individual market at all, even outside the subsidized markets set up by the ACA.

This is a serious concern for people who buy insurance on the individual market, because as Congress debates how to repeal and replace the ACA, just about every policy scenario assumes that the individual markets will continue to exist through 2018. And although the markets were already in trouble in some places, the White House’s decision not to take actions that could stabilize them could continue to scare off insurers, resulting in more states facing a situation like Iowa’s.

People who don’t get health insurance from an employer or qualify for a public insurance program such as Medicaid or Medicare have long turned to the individual market to buy plans. Obamacare set up open marketplaces where these people could receive subsidies to buy insurance if they qualified based on income. But many insurers also sold individual plans outside of the ACA marketplace to people who didn’t qualify for subsidies.

Continued in article

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


2017 is shaping up to be the most profitable year ever for drug cartels peddling heroin ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-05-11/the-heroin-business-is-booming-in-america?cmpid=BBD051117_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=170511&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily




 

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

Bob Jensen's Tidbits Archives ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbitsdirectory.htm 

Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

Summary of Major Accounting Scandals --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_scandals

Bob Jensen's threads on such scandals:

Bob Jensen's threads on audit firm litigation and negligence ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm

Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

Enron --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudEnron.htm

Rotten to the Core --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm

American History of Fraud --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudAmericanHistory.htm

Bob Jensen's fraud conclusions ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on auditor professionalism and independence are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001c.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on corporate governance are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm#Governance 

 

Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

·     With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review (TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier

·     With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams

·     With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of Accountancy Ignores TAR

·     With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research into Undergraduate Accounting Courses

Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave  --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
By Bob Jensen

What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?  ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong

The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm

Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews

Bob Jensen's economic crisis messaging http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm

Bob Jensen's threads --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

Bob Jensen's Home Page --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/