Yes, I know everyone and there brother is already sharing this, but for those few readers who haven’t seen it, I present the Texas wonk:
.@jaketapper People want to vote for Hank Hills. Politics mostly gives us Dale Gribbles.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) October 25, 2016
From the Tuesday Morning Jolt:
Remember Democrats Lied to You About Lowering Your Insurance Premiums.
In a normal year, this news would doom the Democrats:
Insurers are raising the 2017 premiums for a popular and significant group of health plans sold through HealthCare.gov by an average of 25 percent, more than triple the increase for this year, according to new government figures.
The spike in average rates for the 38 states that rely on the federal marketplace created under the Affordable Care Act was announced by federal health officials on Monday. The figures serve broadly to confirm what has become evident piecemeal in recent months: Prompted by a burden of unexpectedly sick ACA customers, some insurers are dropping out while many remaining companies are struggling to cover their costs.
President Obama, June 6, 2009:
If you like the plan you have, you can keep it. If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor, too. The only change you’ll see are falling costs as our reforms take hold.
And in 2012, when the Supreme Court upheld the Consittutionality of the individual mandate:
If you’re one of the more than 250 million Americans who already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance — this law will only make it more secure and more affordable. Insurance companies can no longer impose lifetime limits on the amount of care you receive. They can no longer discriminate against children with preexisting conditions. They can no longer drop your coverage if you get sick. They can no longer jack up your premiums without reason.
Lie, lie, lie. If he had been honest – you can’t keep your plan, you can’t keep your doctor, and your premiums, deductibles, and copays will go up, way up in some cases – that bill ever would have passed. And if he had been honest on the campaign trail in 2012 – that by the end of his presidency, your premiums will be way higher than they were before the took office – he probably wouldn’t have been reelected, either.
The average premium for a family in an employer-sponsored plan in 2008 was $12,680. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, for 2016, annual premiums for an average family are now beyond $17,500.
“The president recently compared Obamacare to a Samsung Galaxy Note 7, and he’s right: this disastrous law is blowing up,” declared House Speaker Paul Ryan in a statement, offering the zinger of the week. “But at least you can return the phone. Families are stuck paying these higher premiums, and Democrats only want to double down on Obamacare. There is a better way. Republicans are offering a plan to repeal Obamacare, and replace it with real, patient-centered solutions that fit your needs and your budget. We don’t have to accept this kind of sticker shock.”
Today, I continue with my series on Bruce and Suzie Kovner. And I address a particular legend: Did Bruce drive a cab in New York? Did this master of the markets — did this future multi-billionaire — actually drive a cab, before he embarked on his trading career? He did. It’s true.
He worked the “graveyard shift,” as he says: 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Let me give you an excerpt from today’s installment.
“Did you learn things?” I ask. “Oh, yes,” Kovner answers. “It was so much fun. Every ride was an experience. There was always a saga in the backseat, some of them hilarious, some of them unrepeatable. And the places you wound up . . . I was apparently fearless. It was wonderful.”
Kovner continues, “I have to say, though this reflects very badly on my character, that I loved starting every evening with about $20 in change and having, at the end of my shift, three or four hundred dollars.” A nice wad. Bruce appreciated the money, of course. But just as much, he appreciated what he calls the “autonomy.” And this relates to his future career. “One of the things I loved about the financial markets is that they grant you total autonomy. I’m not an organization guy. I’ve never worked for a big organization, except momentarily. I felt very comfortable in the marketplace, because, if you do it well, it gives you autonomy in life.”
What Bruce wanted was “an activity in which my own intellectual work had an immediate outcome and freed me from the organizational constraints that I wasn’t ready to submit to.” And he found it.
I thought of Bruce Kovner the other day when I saw an ad on a bus. It said, “Drive with Uber: No Shifts, No Boss, No Limits.”
It’s not for everyone, obviously. But it’s for some. I apparently lack an entrepreneurial bent (as the record shows). But I hugely applaud it in others, and I know it benefits society as a whole.
My guest on this week’s Bookmonger podcast is D.H. Hart, author of Damning Words: The Life and Religious Times of H.L. Mencken. We discuss Mencken’s faith (or lack of it), why this acclaimed 20th-century journalist deserves a “religious biography,” and whether he is best understood as a conservative or a contrarian or a proto-libertarian or something else.
Project Veritas’s most recent undercover video sting has already resulted in firings (Scott Foval of Democracy Partners) and caused one of Hillary Clinton’s key operatives — Robert Creamer – to resign from the campaign. The videos show evidence that Democratic operatives worked directly with the DNC to incite violence at Donald Trump rallies this year.
“In the end, it was the candidate, Hillary Clinton, the future President of the United States, who wanted the ducks on the ground so, by god, we will get the ducks on the ground,” said Creamer, adding “don’t repeat that to anybody.”
The DNC, the Clinton campaign and Americans United for Change working together to get (and pay for) the Donald Ducks shows that campaign expenses were used illegally.
In regards to how all of this might reflect on Clinton’s people, one operative involved said, “[We're] all part of the old school method where it doesn’t matter what the legal and ethics people say, we need to win this motherfucker.”
Brad Woodhouse, of Americans United for Change, says (rather enthusiastically) in the video that he thinks the duck costumes will cause people at the rallies to become violent.
“Once they pull out these signs, Trump supporters literally start throwing punches at you,” said Foval.
The videos are proof that the Clinton campaign has engaged in illegal campaign activities — and that Hillary herself was the instigator of it all.
October 25 is the anniversary of 3 major battles: Agincourt, the charge of the Light Brigade and Leyte Gulf: history and brief documentaries.
The 30 Weirdest Horror Movies of the 1970s.
25 Easy DIY Halloween Costumes You Can Make Last Minute.
ICYMI, Friday’s links are here, and include a gallery of photos from the carving of Mount Rushmore (1927-1941), animals who look as if they had a few too many, the history of the pencil, and the anniversary of Trafalgar Day.
Charles Krauthammer explained how the insolvency problems in Obamacare have come from its structural problems, and that the Democrats will try to solve it with a public option and, eventually, a single-payer system:
That’s the rational thing to do is not to join [Obamacare]. It was constructed from the beginning as a way to transfer money from the healthy young to the older sick. With a promise that somehow it’s not going to cost anybody anything. The young have made the right decision, the rational decision of not joining in, which makes the risk pool, the ratio of the sick to the healthy completely out of whack, which was utterly predictable and predicted. As a result, it is becoming insolvent. As a result, the majority of the states the big insurers are pulling out because it is bankrupting them. When the Democrats talk about a fix, the essence of the fix is, you pour in tax money.
They’re going to have to increase the subsidies. They’re going to have to lower the level at which you receive the subsidies. This is all to make this a transition to a fully controlled, single-payer government system, which is what Obama and the others dreamed about at the beginning. Whether it was intended or not, that’s the only way to go, because it’s utterly insolvent and structurally contradictory. That’s what the Democrats are going to sell as a fix. And I don’t think anybody should buy it.
My new Q&A is not really a Q&A — I use the platform of this podcast to do a music program. This one relates to Halloween. To things that go bump in the night, musically. You have Tartini (“Devil’s Trill”). Gounod (the “golden calf” aria from Faust). Liszt (the Mephisto Waltz No. 1, though not his Totentanz). Berlioz (his “horse ride into hell,” as I call it). And so on. I end with a certain sorcerer, or rather with his apprentice, who’s in a world of hurt.
Hope you enjoy. Candy isn’t the only thing fun about Halloween. (Heath bars were my favorite. Don’t know whether they’re still made.)
The one and only.
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