Bits & Pieces (TGIF)

Posted on September 23, 2011 by lmsinca

George Bush, Queen Elizabeth, and Vladimir Putin all die and go to hell. While there, they spy a red phone and ask what the phone is for. The devil tells them it is for calling back to Earth.

Putin asks to call Russia and talks for 5 minutes. When he is finished the devil informs him that the cost is a million dollars, so Putin writes him a check.

Next Queen Elizabeth calls England and talks for 30 minutes. When she is finished the devil informs her that the cost is 6 million dollars, so she writes him a check.

Finally George Bush gets his turn and talks for 4 hours. When he is finished the devil informs him that the cost is $5.00.

When Putin hears this he goes ballistic and asks the devil why Bush got to call the USA so cheaply. The devil smiles and replies: “Since Obama took over, the country has gone to hell, so it’s a local call.”

Filed under: jokes, political cartoons | Tagged: , | 43 Comments »

You’re Kidding Me Right? A Health Insurance Story

Posted on September 23, 2011 by lmsinca

Background

We bought the business my husband worked for the 23 years prior in 2001. We moved it from Huntington Beach to Riverside, CA, brought one employee with us and hired two more. I quickly became a payroll, tax, insurance, quick books, import/export, and photo shop expert of sorts. One of my trickiest jobs though was maneuvering through the maze of health insurance issues. We slogged along for about four years in this manner approaching retirement age. About six years ago we decided to move the business to our back yard and built a warehouse, transformed two bedrooms into offices, brought in three more phone lines with an elaborate phone and intercom system and set up a wired network for the computers etc. and voila we’ve been working from home since 2006. Our employees had drifted off one by one and we kept downsizing as necessary due to both our interest in slowing down and the business climate, so the move ended up being fortuitous. One of the expenses that always caused the most consternation, other than lease agreements of course, was the cost of health insurance.

Small Group Insurance

We originally planned to be semi-retired by this year and in many ways we’re close. When we built the warehouse and moved the business home, according to city ordinance, we are not allowed to have employees unless they live in the home. Obviously, before making this kind of commitment and the expense of building a warehouse, I needed to verify that with just the two of us we could maintain an employer provided health insurance plan. Luckily, any business with between two and twenty employees qualifies for small group insurance. Here in CA you’re required to submit tax returns and DE6 verification as proof, and sole proprietorship plus one employee qualifies. Otherwise, we’d be stuck searching the individual market, and at our age it would probably be priced exorbitantly or nearly impossible to qualify, even though we are quite healthy still. Honestly, we already feel we’re paying exorbitant prices so it’s difficult to imagine anything higher.

In addition to the yearly increases, based on some formula I’ll never be able to decipher, rates increase every five years on your birthday. In other words, when a person turns 60 their rate jumps up compared to someone who is 55. Since 2005 our rates increased substantially and by 2008 we were paying $1600/mo for the two of us for what is comparatively a modest plan with lots of cost sharing. I began looking around for a change on our renewal date of Nov. 1 and managed to switch from Health Net to Blue Shield and we saved about $3000 in 2009, but of course the real savings came with even more cost sharing. Last year I turned 60 (yippee), and so of course we faced another big increase, and by Nov. of 2010 we were looking at $1700 per month. The obvious thing was to begin looking around again. By this time I had taken over the job and no longer used an agent, so I’m pretty familiar with the ins and outs. I have learned that it’s much easier to make changes if you stay within the same company umbrella rather than change carriers.

A local access HMO 30 saved our bacon and we managed to lower our monthly cost to $1500 and keep our doctors group, local hospital and network of specialists that we’re somewhat familiar with. We received our new cards and put them in our wallets.

Yesterday

Every year in September my husband and I begin our yearly exams and let the doctors poke and prod us within reason. Neither of us has been to the doctor since we received our new insurance cards November of last year as we had a good year health wise. My appointment was yesterday morning and I showed up with bells on since I hadn’t been in the office since last year, and was chatting with the usual suspects (a couple of whom I’ve known for 30 years) and what not, when the gal at the desk called me up to speak with her. “I have good news and bad news”……………Oh no. “You’re covered but you need to go to Pomona to see your new doctor” and I quietly shrieked “You’re kidding me right?” Apparently, some wires were crossed last year and we were put into a local access group that’s about 40 miles away. So I flew home and called the insurance company and lo and behold our medical group doesn’t belong to a local access HMO and the nearest one is in Pomona, which apparently the card I’ve had in my wallet for the last 10 months clearly states.

You can switch health providers as long as they accept the insurance you have, but you can only switch health care plans once a year on your renewal date. So right now I have routine blood work and imaging referrals on hold until after Nov. 1, when we’ll switch to yet another plan. If anything happens to either of us in the meantime we get to go see a doctor we’ve never seen who’s 40 miles away. My husband told me yesterday, “No more horse back riding until after Nov. 1st for you young lady”.

Here’s the tricky part. In order to keep our premium in the $1600 range (OMG) we’re switching to an HMO 40 which, if you know anything at all about health insurance, just increased our cost sharing not incrementally but almost unaffordably. I’d say my horse back riding days are over. Another twist, as I had the one prescription I take without any renewals going forward, I went ahead and paid the cash customer fee to see my doctor. In the last 10 months we’ve paid $15,000 for health insurance with only a few prescription costs and I still had to spend $90 for a doctors appointment, sheesh.

I’m not really sure if people who have employer provided large group insurance understand the trials and tribulations or the cost of health insurance compared to the rest of us, so I’m curious what other experiences might be shared by our little group here.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 14 Comments »

Media Bias? I Report, You Decide

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Let the mutherfuker burn!

Byron York’s interesting comparison of Today Show interview of Suskind over his book critical of the Obama Administration versus their interview of him over his book critical of the Bush administration.

Troll-

Filed under: Obama | Tagged: , | 14 Comments »

On Libertarians and Faith

Posted on September 23, 2011 by novahockey

I was drafting a kind of “this is why NoVA is the way he is” post in response to a brief dialogue with 12Bars and Michigoose on the PL, but it could take weeks for me to sit down and actually write a complete essay with citations on balancing a catholic religious tradition and faith and the associated social responsibilities with a libertarian stance on economic and social issues. Then I realized that you could spend your whole career on such an exercise. So instead I’ll kind of hit the highlights, with the caveat that each of these points could be the subject of much more detail. I’ll also note that there’s a debate within the Church about this and each of my points has a legit counterpoint.

Subsidiarity — One of the facets of catholic social teaching is the idea that the smallest organization possible should be responsible any given activity. Pope John Paul II wrote in 1991 that ignoring this principle deprives society of its responsibility and this “leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending. In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbours to those in need.” Do note, however, that before making this point, the pope when into great detail on the role of the state in the economic sector. This is why I’m libertarian and and not anarcho-capitalist (although at times ….). See point 48 of John Paul II’s Centesimus annus here

Expanding on this, the more powerful and larger the state becomes, the less the need for charity. Instead, we create uncaring bureaucracies that will subsume and control those institutions that reflect our values. The state will not, and cannot, consider our values. You saw this in the health reform debate — under the goal of providing increased access to care, the bishops were shocked to learn of the requirements they will have carry out. They should not have been surprised.

Quoting from Taki’s Mag on this point: “In an American context, given our constitutional heritage and the large body of legal decisions solidifying its interpretation, on nearly any issue, Christians of any denomination should reject the assistance of the State. Our efforts to capture it, the courts have made it clear, will always fail. Any attempt to infuse the activity of the government with the moral content of a revealed religion will be rejected, in the end. Indeed, the more our own institutions cooperate with the government, the more they will be compromised; hospitals which take federal funds will be subject to secular ethics on issues like contraception, end-of-life, and even abortion. Religious colleges accepting federal grants will eventually be federalized, and so on.

Read more: http://takimag.com/article/ron_paul_and_pius_ix#ixzz1Ymq0cWzK

I would add that I have no problem with this. I don’t expect the state to enforce my values. I think we’re foolish to think that it would.

Militarism — In the Beatitudes, Jesus tells us “blessed are the peacemakers.” Arms and violence should be a last resort. At this point in our history and for the foreseeable future, our leaders have turned this idea around. We are at perpetual war now. And the technology is advancing at such a rate where we can kill so easily and without risk to our own soldiers that the system is slowing becoming automated.

The idea that our leaders will even consider the catholic notion of a “just war” is hopelessly lost. We don’t even debate war anymore. This is simply incompatible with catholic teaching. And I don’t believe for a second that those who can callously order remote killings on one day can turn around and have any legitimacy on the next when they say we need to raise taxes because of the poor, or schools or any other “public good.” They’ve demonstrated repeatedly they care only about their own power. Respecting authority is a big part of catholic tradition, but respect these guys? The only solution to this is a smaller state.

And we are at this point, because as Lord Acton put it, power corrupts. We can spin our wheels trying to control this through ethics reforms or campaign finance reform. I contend that these efforts will fail and the only true solution is not to attempt to control or weed out the inevitable corruption, but to limit the power. So while we have reg after reg and law after law attempting to control vice, the greater threat is power. You can say we need to give the state power b/c x,y, or z. They will take your good will (and your money) and abuse it

This power, which they’ve used to control an ever larger part of society is a threat to our greatest gift, that of free will, a topic that needs it’s own post.

Thanks — and I’ll (try to) stay quiet in the comments and let everyone else poke holes in it.

Filed under: Libertarians | 11 Comments »

$16 Muffins!

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Kevin S. Willis

Looks like there is a brewing scandal at the Justice Department. They’ve been spending $16 for meeting muffins. I don’t mean meeting muffins in the 1940s slang way, in which case $16 would be a baragain. I mean muffins they eat at conferences. Because you can’t discuss justice without a tasty muffin.

While undoubtedly a blueberry-infested banana nut scandal, a little context doesn’t hurt. $350,000,000 could buy a lot of extra $16 muffins.

However, one nice thing about the $300+ million dollar F-22s and the $16 muffins is at least we know what they cost. The DoD budget, generally, remains largely opaque.

Background Music: Frank Zappa’s Muffin Man. I’m having to trust that Google is giving me a good link, as I can’t check it.

Filed under: budget, dod, doj | Tagged: , | 18 Comments »

Views on the Republican Debate

Posted on September 23, 2011 by ashot

Based on the comments here and the articles I’ve perused on the web, it seems like Romney was the clear winner last night.

According to Dan Balz and Perry Bacon Jr., Perry and Obama were the primary targets in last night’s debate.

Clizza saw last night as a clear win for Romney and a loss for Perry.

And in one of my favorite columns after any debate, the fact checker weighs in on the telling of fibs from last night.

Last but not least, we’ll give a Republican viewpoint with Jennifer Rubin saw Perry fade and Santorum get a big win.

Meanwhile, I liked okie’s point about what a contrast of Romney’s 0% capital gains tax with the Obama’s proposal. Does Romney explain somewhere how he proposes to pay for that tax cut?

Sorry that these are all from the WaPo, but work is too crazy for me to pull from too many sources and I’m trying to contribute to this great blog.

Filed under: Debates, Tea Party | 15 Comments »

Morning Trivia

Posted on September 23, 2011 by ScottC

No google…you are on your honor.

There have been four universities that have produced both a US president and a Super Bowl winning quarterback. Name the schools, the presidents, and the quarterbacks. (One school actually produced two Super Bowl winning qb’s.)

Filed under: Trivia | 30 Comments »

Bits & Pieces (Thursday Evening Open Mic)

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Kevin S. Willis
Liam Neeson crashes in a plane and punches a wolf with razor knuckles in The Grey. Dude just won’t stop working.

In March of this year, Steve Gibson on Security Now (with Leo Laporte) discussed the anatomy of the Stuxnet worm. This is a lengthy commitment to listen to (over an hour–might skip the news at the top of the show), but Stuxnet was a virus (weaponized malware), designed by the Israeli’s to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program by reprogramming the industrial controllers on the centrifuges being used to enrich uranium for their “nuclear plant” (wink-wink, nudge-nudge). To do this would have involved the Israelis breaking into more than one American company, and purposely infecting more than one vendor who sold to, or vendors who sold to vendors who sold to, Iran.

That it worked is amazing and scary. Here is a lower quality MP3 version for folks who can’t do the video.

Anybody here remember Pianosaurus, the band from the late 80s that played everything on nothing but toy instruments? My favorite was always Something Funny Happened on the Way to the Toystore.

Don’t rent out your place out on AirBnB. Not unless you want it trashed. Because AirBnB will want you to take down your blog post complaining that your apartment trashed, but will refer to their ToS if you want them to do anything to help assist you with the criminals they sent to your apartment or house.

Nostalgic for time spent watching HBO’s Video Jukebox before the debut of MTV? Well, here ya go: Robert Palmer’s video for Johnny and Mary. I can’t get to YouTube, so I’m just hoping that’s the right one.

There are ghost writers for Twitter accounts for people who aren’t that particularly well known? How do I get a job like that?

It’s the end of the world as we know it! R.E.M. retires. What will the Furry, Happy Monsters do?

Remembering Braniff Airlines. Rest in peace, Big Orange!

Five million books spend more time talking about Texas than Tennessee. Or California. Put in any terms you want, and find out that “betwixt” and “thou” were more popular words, in books, in 1800 than in 2000. “Thou” much more than “betwixt”.

This post brought to you by you rebels out there. You know who you are. — KW

I know I harp on the middle class and jobs, probably too much for some of you, but without a thriving middle class I don’t think American business succeeds in the long run. Not to mention the misery of lost wages. Here’s a chart linking education to wages. Wow, even that Master’s Degree may not protect you in the future. I better have my daughter revisit that PhD scholarship.

CHART: Only Advanced Degree-Holders Saw Wage Gains In Last Decade The only group of Americans whose average wages increased over the last decade were the 3 percent with advanced college degrees (other than a master’s degree), according to data released by the Census Bureau. The 1.5 percent of Americans with an M.D., J.D., or M.B.A. saw wage gains of about 5 percent, while the 1.5 percent with a Ph.D saw gains of slightly more than 5 percent. Among those with a four-year college or master’s degree — more than a quarter of the American workforce — average wages dropped by about 7 percent, and wages dropped even more for those who haven’t completed college:

lmsinca……..click on chart link for a visual

Having seen and heard this suddenly famous video class-warfare rant by Elizabeth Warren several times, I boldly predict that, in addition to the ideological reaction she will provoke, she will turn off many, primarily men, with her persona, her voice, her body language. I’ve seen her and heard her in person, but on the stump she is going to be quite unappealing and indeed repellant to many.—QB

Senators are grilling Google over where certain things come up in search results. “You’re cooking the books!” Of course, it’s (a) mostly nonsense and (b) not really the frickin’ senate’s business, in my humble opinion, even if they knew what they were talking about when it comes to post-19th century technology, which they mostly do not appear to.

Franken railed against him, “We are trying to have hearing here about whether you favor your own stuff, and you admittedly don’t know the answer.”

I mean, called me crazy, but I would kind of expect Google to favor their own stuff. On their search engine, which they make available to the general public. For free. With no promises to never promote themselves in any way. Good grief. — KW

Filed under: Uncategorized | 65 Comments »

Republican Debate 09/22/2011

Posted on September 23, 2011 by okiegirl

Anybody watching? Or have comments after-the-fact?

Update: This is nothing more than okie solo live blog of first 30 minutes of the debate. (6 comments)

Filed under: Uncategorized | 11 Comments »