State’s Obligations

Posted on 13 September 2017 by eehines

These are the flip side of the 10^th Amendment States Rights mantra that State government personnel are starting to tout. And that makes State governors’ and legislators’ objections to the Trump administration’s moves to clip the intrusive wings regarding investment advice to retail investors and who should be permitted/required to give it a bit ridiculous.

[T]he Obama Labor Department’s fiduciary rule requires brokers to act in the best interests of retirement savers rather than sell products that are merely suitable and potentially more lucrative for the brokers.

This is a preview of State’s Obligations. Read the full post (301 words, estimated 1:12 mins reading time)

Republicans and Obamacare

Posted on 5 September 2017 by eehines

Too many now are begging for surrender on repeal and replace.

[F]ew congressional Republicans have signaled they are ready to let the health-care market deteriorate while their constituents are still battling higher premiums and fewer insurers to choose from on the individual marketplace.

This means those Republicans are signaling that they don’t have the stomach to repeal Obamacare at all, which would be the ultimate deterioration of it.

This is a betrayal of their constituents along two dimensions: the cynical destruction of their promise to repeal and replace, and their decision to continue inflicting Obamacare with its steadily increasing premiums and fewer insurers to choose from on their constituents.

This is a preview of Republicans and Obamacare. Read the full post (266 words, estimated 1:04 mins reading time)

Yucca Mountain

Posted on 14 August 2017 by eehines

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 2-1 Tuesday to restart and resurrect the licensing process for the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site project.

The decision gives the go ahead for the “information gathering” stage that will eventually allow the Department of Energy to secure the license to build a nuclear waste facility more than 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Finally. We need a repository for our accumulating nuclear waste, and the bottom of a salt mine is one of the best places extant: given the easy solubility of salt, the existence of this much salt in one place strongly implies a geologically stable area that’s also stable over geologically long time periods.

This is a preview of Yucca Mountain. Read the full post (203 words, estimated 49 secs reading time)

Technology Theft

Posted on 11 August 2017 by eehines

In a piece on American CEOs’ (and Apple’s in particular) cowardice in their dealings with the People’s Republic of China’s government—censor your stuff or you can’t operate in the PRC, give up your technology to or you can’t operate in the PRC, and these worthies meekly comply—comes this reminder on the latter bit:

Just about everybody in the US capital is complaining about how China forces foreign companies to give up technology in return for market access.

In truth, the PRC isn’t alone in this: willing participants are those American CEOs who acquiesce in the name of short-term profit rather than long-term gain.

This is a preview of Technology Theft. Read the full post (332 words, estimated 1:20 mins reading time)

Gun Control

Posted on 8 August 2017 by eehines

A bill is making progress in Congress that would allow concealed carry license holders, whose license was issued in one State (their State of residence) to concealed carry their weapons in all States: the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017. The bill also would require such a carrier to abide by the laws of the State they’re visiting, including all of that State’s gun-free zone designations. In this way, the reciprocity law is similar to drivers license reciprocity, under which it’s legal to drive in any State so long as the driver both is licensed in his home State and obeys the driving laws of the State he’s visiting.

This is a preview of Gun Control. Read the full post (619 words, estimated 2:29 mins reading time)

Human Gene-Splicing

Posted on 7 August 2017 by eehines

Some scientists have successfully spliced some genes into a human embryo to correct a mutation that causes heart disease, proving the possibilities open to us and our health (and potentially eliminating health coverage provision as a Progressive-Democrat tool of welfare entrapment [/snark]).

Experts noted that the newly successful process could cure more than 10,000 genetic diseases, including some types of cancer and early-onset Alzheimer’s, sickle cell anemia, and cystic fibrosis.

“We have to be very delicate with how we use this because it’s very, very powerful,” Alice Benjamin, a clinical nurse specialist said on Fox & Friends.

This is a preview of Human Gene-Splicing. Read the full post (357 words, estimated 1:26 mins reading time)

Collapsing Obamacare

Posted on 5 August 2017 by eehines

These data are from the Kaiser Family Foundation. There was such hope by the health care coverage providers at the start; then the realities of the “market” place hit, and hit hard. Following the early expansion of coverage providers into ObamaMart, the drop-off in companies between 2016 and 2017, and the resulting collapse of choice—in too many counties, even of any availability at all—is stark. It’s expected to get worse in 2018 and 2019, too.

The State-by-State drop off is presented in the table below, constructed from KFF‘s table at the link. The average drop-off across all States is nearly 23%.

This is a preview of Collapsing Obamacare. Read the full post (508 words, estimated 2:02 mins reading time)

Rule of Law

Posted on 4 August 2017 by eehines

The DC Circuit Court stacked by President Barack Obama (D) seems to be iffy on the thing. In an appeal concerning whether the monies the Federal government pays to health care plan providers as subsidies so the plan providers will hold down premiums and deductibles can actually be paid—the funds never were appropriated by Congress, so the payments aren’t legitimate, ruled the trial court—the Circuit Court ruled in part:

The States have shown a substantial risk that an injunction requiring termination of the payments at issue here…would lead directly and imminently to an increase in insurance prices, which in turn will increase the number of uninsured individuals for whom the States will have to provide health care[.]

This is a preview of Rule of Law. Read the full post (281 words, estimated 1:07 mins reading time)

A Bit More on Health Care Coverage

Posted on 2 August 2017 by eehines

Senator Susan Collins (R, ME) is worried about health care plan availability to our poor, which she thinks would be endangered were President Donald Trump to act on his thoughts regarding cutting off the funds the Feds pay to health coverage plan providers to get them to charge (artificially) lower deductibles and copays from the poor.

It really would be detrimental to some of the most vulnerable citizens if those payments were cut off. They’re paid to the insurance companies, but the people that they benefit are people who make between 100% and 250% of the poverty rate.

This is a preview of A Bit More on Health Care Coverage. Read the full post (248 words, estimated 1:0 mins reading time)

Obamacare and Choice

Posted on 1 August 2017 by eehines

There are 3,142 counties and equivalents (Louisiana has parishes, Alaska has boroughs, three States each have an independent city, Virginia has 38 of them, and State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations does things entirely differently) in the US.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services expects that 40 of those counties will have no health care coverage plan providers at all in 2018, and 1,332 of those counties—over 40% of them—will have only one such provider.

This is a preview of Obamacare and Choice. Read the full post (478 words, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

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