When A Plan Comes Together

Well, we’ve been seeing Obamacare’s effects on the health care industry playing out just as many commentators predicted and just as the liberals planned. By forcing insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions, the cost of insurance had to go up. It had to. There was no mathematical way it could not.

Insurance companies derive their rates from actuarial tables assuming a health population to begin with. Then the odds and occurrence rates of various conditions occurring within the original healthy population are calculated. The cost for treating X number of cases of the various types predicted are factored in and then divided among the subscribers. An overhead rate is determined and added to the cost and then a percentage profit for the investors is added and thus the insurance cost is determined. When the equation is changed by the forced addition of people with pre-existing conditions, the burden for the “extra” cost is shared among all subscribers and thus increased insurance rates.

You wouldn’t expect to not have paid auto insurance and wreck your car then be able to go to an auto insurance company and buy insurance to pay for the wreck you’ve already had. Why would you expect to be able to do that very same thing with health insurance? Yet that is exactly what Obamacare demands of insurance companies. So to cover this added cost, of course their premiums go up.

As premiums predictably go up, fewer and fewer people and companies can afford to participate in private health insurance, thus forcing more and more folks into the government provided healthcare system. Which I believe was the end game of the liberals from the get go.

A headline I read today proves my point. McDonalds is thinking of dropping healthcare for their employees. Unless the government makes concessions to the plan they foisted upon us, it will not be financially wise for McDonalds, employer of over 30,000, to continue to supply healthcare to their employees. The per person fine for not offering health care will be less than the cost of paying for health care. What would you do if it was your money? I’m willing to bet you would pay the fine and let folks be part of the government system. Exactly what the liberals had in mind to begin with.

The PotUS, Pelosi, Reed, et.al. told us “they” weren’t going to force anyone into the government system, and if you parse words like a former D PotUS, technically “they” the government won’t. They have just rigged the game so that the employer will do their dirty work for them. And for a certain significant portion of the population, that’s exactly how they will see it. The company will be the black hat, but thank heavens for big government, here it comes to “save” us. Never mind the fact that they set it up to happen in the first place.

Liberals…..Bah!....Humbug!

And before I go, do you know how employer supplied healthcare came to be? It was a recruiting tool devised in the 1940’s as companies competed for employees. It wasn’t the business’ duty to supply health care, that’s an individual’s responsibility. It was just one company trying to get an edge to draw the best employees. Now it has been around so long without people realizing its true origins that they have come to view it as a “right” when in reality it’s a privilege to get.

Just FYI.

Jumping The Shark

I just read the following this morning in the Neal Boortz “Nealz Nuze”:

While we are talking about unions ... let's move on to the United Auto Workers. A months-long battle to save a General Motors plant in Indianapolis came to an end yesterday. The union at this GM plant was given a choice: accept pay cuts to bring your salaries in line with industry standards or the plant will be closed. The union voted and their decision was that they would rather have the plant close and all workers will lose their jobs then to allow their union wages to be cut.

and it got me thinking. Just how long ago was it that unions jumped the shark? When was it that unions went past improving working conditions to become entities out for themselves? When did they become competitors to successful business?

I remember back in the summer of 1968 I went to work for Safeway’s grocery warehouse filling store orders. Of course I was new and so I wasn’t very efficient to begin with and I felt I was behind on filling orders. When the break bell sounded, I kept working to try and catch up. This happened for the first couple of breaks and on the third day that this happened, a couple of other union guys (it was a closed shop and you had to be a member of the teamsters union to work there) came over and told me I was not to do that anymore. They felt it would give management undue expectations (that’s not the way they worded it). It was at that moment that I realized I wasn’t union material. That they weren’t really interested in the company getting what it was paying for, a day’s worth of work for a day’s worth of pay.

I believe it was a couple of years later I remember watching in the news as a union, I don’t remember which one, struck one of the best tractor/implement companies in the world, International Harvester. It and John Deere were the two biggest at the time, as I recall. They wanted a drastic increase in wages and IH didn’t feel it was in their best interest to pay that high of a salary. The strike drug on for close to a year and a half with IH losing lots of sales and market share to the other companies. No new equipment to sell and parts became hard to find. Finally IH buckled and agreed to the union’s demands for the higher salary, believing it was that or close up shop.

As memory serves, it wasn’t more than about six or eight months before the bottom fell out of the farm industry and farmers weren’t buying new tractors or equipment. There IH was, stuck with a huge contract and nobody buying what they were selling. IH went bankrupt and was bought by Case or somebody (don’t remember just who).

While the name International Harvester is still around, it’s not the company it was. Who knows? Without the union being so greedy, everyone might be talking about IH instead of John Deere, or maybe they would be still competing head to head and we the public would have two great companies to choose between, not just big Green.

The GM plant closing is just another example of unions having lost sight of what is really best for all. They were willing to get NO money as opposed to a percentage of some money. How many workers and how many families will suffer needlessly because of their greed? Not only will the plant workers and their families suffer, but so will all of the ancillary companies and workers who supplied the factory.

The unions are so out of touch that they are hurting themselves. Not only are these plant workers being harmed, but thanks to Big Brother taking over GM and giving the unions part ownership, their strike was hurting a company that they were part owners in. What Were They Thinking???????

Unions were a great thing back in Upton Sinclair’s day, when they were needed to improve the working conditions. In my opinion, they have long since outlived their value to the society. In general, unions have harmed our society over the past 40 or 50 years. Yes union members may have benefited in several cases, but in the long run they have lost, just like the Indianapolis workers have lost. The unions have made companies in the US non-competitive in the world market place. To make things using American union labor causes the price to be so high as to make it unmarketable.

Or at least that’s the way an old farmboy sees it.

Is It Just Me

OK, I just read a new headline about a high possibility of a new large coordinated terrorist attack over several European countries and possibly the US. And yet we, and by we I mean nearly all of the civilized world, continue to worry about making the islamic radicals mad at us. We won't tell them "Hell No you can't build a mosque in the shadow of ground zero!" We won't tell them emphatically that we will not tolerate sharia law in our countries. We won't tell them they have to remove their veils for drivers license photos. All because we don't want to make them mad or they might riot, or they might want to commit a terrorist act against us.

As Steve Martin used to say.....Wellllll Exxxccccuuussseee Meee!!!

They seem to be doing that quite well without our doing anything, so why do we care. I say if they want to be in our countries then they can darn well fit into our societies. If I go to Saudi Arabia, I'm expected to live by their rules or I can expect to get my head chopped off. Why don't we expect the same from them?

Every other immigrant group (not invaders) have come to this country and worked hard to assimilate into our culture. Those who come to this country with the express purpose of changing us need to have another think. We welcome all races, creeds, colors and religions. All we ask is that you adhere to our way of life. It is very easy to leave this country if you don't want to follow this simple precept. No one forced them to come here as happened to the blacks during slavery times. Assimilate or leave.

I think it's time this country stopped bending over backwards for groups who want to do us harm. It has been proven throughout history that appeasement leads to nothing but greater demands by those you try to appease.

It's about time this country put it's big boy pants back on and started acting like the great nation we are, or at least were.

One Leads To Two

Well, I read two side by side headlines this morning. The first read “Obama new low in RealClear Poll Average”, the second read “President to hold biggest political rally since 2008 on Wednesday”. I had to look deeper.

The Real Clear Politics Average takes several of the various national polls and averages them to come up with a composite score. The most recent of which has the President at his lowest level to date. 44.7% of Americans approve of the job he is doing vs. 51.1% who disapprove leaving 4.2% undecided. This is 23.3% below his high water mark of 68% approval during the first days of his administration.

This 68% approval rating came before he was able to do anything as President. Since he has begun “ruling” (members of his administrations term, not mine) our country and the American public has gotten a chance to look past the “hopey, changey” façade to his real agenda, his numbers have steadily declined.

To use a car analogy, many Americans bought a car off of the advertisements. They didn’t do the research to look past the Madison Avenue glitz to see how little there was there. And what was there was distinctly European Social Democratic at best. Once we finally got behind the wheel, reality didn’t approach the advertising and our satisfaction with the purchase has been dropping like a Yugo owners.

Next we see PresBO is holding a 2008 style rally in an attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle. I have to give him points on his choice of location. The University of Wisconsin at Madison is about as inviting a location as he could find outside of UC Berkley, Hollywood, or the now defunct Antioch College.

His audience will be filled with altruistic college students who don’t know the difference between “come here” and “sic’um” about the way the world works, and a bunch of graying  60’s radicals. The perfect audience for our PotUS, who wants nothing more than to transform the US into a European style social democratic nation. One where big government plans and controls everything, from the trans-fat in our diets to the light bulbs in our lamps.

This setting will give him the large adoring crowd that the MSM can use to start ginning up another Madison Ave blitz they hope will fool us again.

Hopefully those who voted for him the first time will fall back on the old adage “Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice....."

Tell-Tail?

Just read something today. Could it be a tell-tail of a sea change coming?

I read that the University of Illinois voted not to give Bill Ayers Professor Emeritus status at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1987. You need to understand that a Professor Emeritus costs the University virtually nothing. It's an honorary position that let's them have library rights and that's about it. The fact that a university board would deny someone this status, is quite extraordinary. Couple this with the fact that the University of Illinois in general and University of Illinois at Chicago campus in particular are historically quite liberal institutions, is this a sea change of things to come on university campuses?

Let's hope so. For far to long university campuses have been havens of liberal thought. Where supposedly free exchanges of ideas were to be encouraged in the students by the staff. Instead they have become intolerant of ideas that do not jibe with their liberal/progressive/socialist/marxist view.

Try being a conservative on a college campus today. Conservatives are marginalized, subjected to name calling that would never be allowed in the opposite direction, refused funding in many cases, refused access to state their positions. In general, the liberals do to the conservatives all the things they claim conservatives do to other people. It reminds me of a line in a song by Todd Snider where he talks about pointing a finger at someone else because when you do no one looks at you. (I'm quite sure Todd would not approve of my using him to make my point about liberals as he seems to be an outspoken one himself. But I do love his music.)

But back to my point. Could this be the tell-tail of a changing political sea at the university level? Is it possible that things have gotten so far out of hand on the liberal side that even they can see that things need to be reeled back in?

Common everyday folks can look at the scenarios where liberals have been in charge for extended periods. Where they have tried to socially engineer their segments of society. California, New York, the universities, unions, one and all have tried to legislate/mandate equality, and in virtually every case it has been an unmitigated disaster.

As any lover of freedom can tell you, in a just society, you earn what you get. You can not bestow these things on people. They must be earned or they are not valued.

Let's hope this is a sign of things to come and not just a passing gust of wind.

What Are We Coming To?

Who, in their right mind invites an apparent WASP comedian to testify before congress about immigration? This is a serious subject being considered by a supposedly serious body. But then again, this is the same body that allowed another comedian to continue manufacturing votes until he finally won, then quickly ratified the election and seated him.

While I disagree with a full 80% of the positions taken by Stephen Colbert, he is able to do some very clever takes on what is happening in the world. My problem with this is, by having him testify before congress it reinforces the misconception held by many of the left's supporters, that his comedy is factual news. Yes there are nuggets of fact that he builds his comic stances around, but he is NOT dispensing factual news. It is not even dressed up in the guise of commentary. And yet, so many of the warm and fuzzy "it's not FAIR" crowd treat his and John Stewart's comedy as fact. So much so that I believe Stewart is actually starting to believe it himself.

An educated public is a thing of beauty. One that is not easily duped into things that clearly are not in their best interest. An intentionally mis-educated public can be easily led down a primrose path to their own demise.

By propping up a clearly partisan popular comedic figure as some type of authority seems to be a clear and blatant attempt to mislead that segment of the public. I believe this is being done so they will support a position that will not be to the betterment of the nation in the long run.

But then again, what do I know? I'm just an old farm boy. I'm no more (or less) an authority than Colbert.

American Vichy

When the majority of a society decides it is better to back away from evil rather than to confront it, that is the moment the society has found the precipice and decided to jump. When a capable society such as ours decides to ignore evil rather than engage it to make positive change, that society is lost.  France didn’t just lose its backbone when the Germans invaded and they set up the government of collaborators called the Vichy French. That loss started long before.
 
I’m not a master historian, but I would posit that France crested in 1831 when the Foreign Legion was established. It was at that point the French decided that it was better to spill foreigner’s blood in France’s name rather than their own. This is not unique to the French. The old Roman Empire, in its later stages, opted to use mercenaries rather than spill Roman blood. We know how well that worked out.
 
The Vichy French represented the logical extension of a society that was not willing to spill French blood. It was better to submit to a foreign power than to fight, thus not losing any life. Instead, they lost so much more…dignity, self respect, and the right to self determination. All gone because of the belief that not to fight is peace and peace is the penultimate.
 
I see Pelosi, Reid, Obama, Sheehan, Boxer, et. al., as preemptive American Vichy. They are not the cause, but the extension of the belief that anything is better than war. The belief that not one drop of American blood should ever be shed to support US interests.
 
This movement seems to be the outgrowth of, I hate to say, my generation’s anti-war movement during the 60’s. Many of us were “useful idiots” of the world-wide socialist movement. We were sold a bill of goods about the war being an “unjust” war, when in fact, those doing the selling were supporters of our enemies. By getting us to undermine the resolve of the country, they had us supporting our enemies. They were having us destroy our nation, not with a giant stroke, but with millions of tiny cuts. The cuts continue to this day.
 
Many of these 60’s socialists grew older without growing up. They found refuge in protected environments like universities, community activist organizations, etc. and continued their activities and beliefs. They spent their time pushing ideas like “social justice” and “graduated taxes”, which were merely restatements of Marx’s “from each according to his ability to each according to his need”.
 
When we were attacked on September 11, 2001, they burst forth again under the guise of Code Pink, ANSWER, The World Can’t Wait, and other such organizations. All citing the US as the problem, as if we were the attackers instead of the attacked.
 
The American Vichy want us to “talk” with those who want to kill us and destroy our way of life. Believing that a nice discussion will show them the error of their thinking, and they will abandon beliefs they have held for over a thousand years. Muhammad himself said that those who do not believe in Allah must be converted, subjugated and taxed, or killed.
 
The Israelis have tried this. They’ve tried land for peace. It doesn’t work! It only encourages more aggression.
 
The only possible out come of appeasement is the same now as it has always been. To appease an aggressor places you in an even less defensible position in the future.  And make no mistake about it, there will be a future where the bully demands even more.
 
The actions of the American Vichy are only going to make it harder, at best, or impossible to maintain our nation.
 
We need to decide if we are going to continue as a nation that revels in our independence and the right of self determination, or one that falls to submission to the will of others, and slowly cease to be the nation our forefathers fought and died for.
 
 

Rats and Sinking Ships

As I look over the headlines this morning, I'm reminded of rats abandoning a sinking ship. Every headline coming out of DC is about Democrats trying to create distance between themselves and the PotUS. Every one of the Dems who is not 100% secure is running as hard and as fast as they can away from the positions they took a year ago as they stole our freedoms and rammed bigger government down our throats.

Even Bob Woodward,famous/infamous lefty jurno/author, seems to be dissing the PotUS. As I read his blurbs, he is describing a man who is in over his head and floundering to find a way to get what he wants despite the will of the nation. But as he flounders he keeps heading for deeper waters. He refuses to turn to shore, that is, a more traditionally American position. One that emphasizes the individual and their rights. Instead he continues to flounder towards European socialist positions. Positions that even many Europeans are turning away from.

Elections have consequences. We are paying a heavy price for so many Americans voting their emotions over good sense in '08. We can start to turn the ship around in November if we have enough people with the gumption to do so.

? Don't They Hear Themselves ?

Today I heard a sound bite from a woman supporting our duly elected President. She was talking about the difficult hand the PotUS was dealt and how well he was doing. She talked about 2 unfunded wars and unfunded tax cuts.

Now I'm just an old Iowa farm boy, but I seem to remember the PotUS voting for the wars when he was a senator. Am I now supposed to believe that he shouldn't be held accountable as President for something he supported and voted for as a Senator?

But even more breath taking to me is the comment about "unfunded tax cuts"!

The only "tax cuts" that must be funded by the government are the "tax cuts" given to those not paying taxes in the first place, at which point they are not tax cuts but in reality they are handouts! Tax cuts to those who actually pay taxes do not need to be "funded"! You just don't take as much from them in the first darn place!