BloggeRhythms 10/18/2013

Fully realizing that politicians as a group contain very few Mensa members , probably none,  I nonetheless hope that Republicans understand what they’ve accomplished due to the government shutdown.

 

Tuning into the news, reading posts on the web and in general conversation, I see supposed “experts” treating the shutdown as if it was some kind of contest wherein the winner was whoever prevailed in the end. However, that isn’t truly what happened at all.

 

As  a practical matter, Democrats control two-thirds of government at present. Aside from that, the incumbent has veto power just about guaranteeing him getting his way. Consequently, it's quite remarkable that Speaker Boehner and Senator Cruz pushed the issues as far as they did.

 

But now, what did the Democrats really “win?”

 

I mentioned this yesterday, but think its worth repeating.

 

Democrats have now unquestionably saddled themselves as owners and supporters of a health care tax that will almost certainly implode. The more people that learn, especially young folks, about this burden placed on their backs, the more they realize that government now requires them to support elders. Despite the fact that they can’t even support themselves. This is taking the “American Dream” and turning into a socialist nightmare.

 

And if that isn’t enough, the incumbent and his loyal cohorts are now admitting once again that they can’t get the economy working as it should, requiring a raise in the limit on debt. While policy after policy, regulation upon regulation, and law upon law strangle the economy, these anti-business, anti-growth zealots simply want to spend all they can beg, borrow or steal without a care or concern about how, or when, or by whom it will ever be paid back. So long as it’s not them.

 

So, the key for Republicans is to simply sit back and patiently wait.

 

The clock keeps ticking, and one things for absolutely sure. Be they politicians, pundits, pollsters or any other kind of self-appointed expert there is, basic fundamentals don’t change because of rhetoric, they’re functional realities. Consequently, flawed, unmanageable legislation will deconstruct on its own, while a house built on debt alone will collapse without significant income growth to support it.

 

And, unfortunately for Democrats, none are financially sophisticated enough to grasp the inevitable outcome. Therefore, Republicans are going to prevail in the end, whether they even know it or not. All they really need do is have patience. 

 

Along those lines, here’s another nail in the health care tax coffin I found this morning on Drudge by Christopher Weaver and Louise Radnofsky of MarketWatch. 

 

“Insurers say the federal health-care marketplace is generating flawed data that is straining their ability to handle even the trickle of enrollees who have gotten through so far, in a sign that technological problems extend further than the website traffic and software issues already identified."

 

Emerging errors include duplicate enrollments, spouses reported as children, missing data fields and suspect eligibility determinations, say executives at more than a dozen health plans. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Nebraska said it had to hire temporary workers to contact new customers directly to resolve inaccuracies in submissions. Medical Mutual of Ohio said one customer had successfully signed up for three of its plans.”

 

So, if practically nobody has even signed up yet, what’s going to happen if these incompetent providers actually get significant numbers of applicants, or even worse, what does someone do who actually gets sick? 

 

That's it for today folks.

 

Adios

BloggeRhythms 10/17/2013

Early start today, there’s a lot to consider.

 

First and foremost, of course, is the incumbent’s “win” in the debt increase. While that was no surprise, just another extension of the game that’s played every time the debt clock runs out, what has he really “won?”

 

According to Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner; “The U.S. debt, which has jumped 55 percent under President Obama, is now so high that if working Americans had to pay their full share, the bill would be over $123,000, according to a new Harvard University Institute of Politics study of the nation’s empty bank accounts.

 

The school's fiscal 2012 Annual Report of the USA, which examines the federal budget, put the total debt at $16.7 trillion. But that's such a big number that the student authors tried to put it in perspective.

For example, that $16.7 trillion, which would go up under Obama’s debt ceiling plan the House and Senate are considering, is equal to: About $53,000 per every inhabitant of the United States, including children and the unemployed.”

Now, if this administration was a business, no prudent lender would lend it a quarter. Because knowledgeable financiers understand debt should be paid back from earnings and growth. It’s only operations that can’t pay their bills on their own that continually have to borrow to stay alive. And, if you stop to think about it, that makes absolute sense. Because sooner or later, if all you can do economically to survive is borrow, you’ll eventually be buried in debt you can’t ever pay back. Consequently, insatiable borrowing’s a sign of total management failure, as is the current administration. 

 

A further thought on the “win” came from Tim Stanley’s US politics in London’s Telegraph who asks,”What has Obama really won? He keeps his precious healthcare reform and he gets government open again – but tomorrow morning he'll still have the same gridlocked political system that he had the night before. The shutdown is a rare example of him winning, but remember that this lame duck president has not only had a very simple (and, frankly, inoffensive) gun control bill killed in the Senate but was so spooked by bad poll numbers that he tried to dump responsibility for military action in Syria onto the Congress – before quietly dropping the idea altogether. Any thought that the shutdown payoff will be that he can sail an immigration reform package comfortably through Congress is pure fantasy. This is a broken presidency living out its last few years either holding off Republican attacks or lazily cruising the country on some pointless, endless, fatuous campaign trail. Obama's administration is politically bankrupt.”

Mr. Stanley’s thoughts have similarly been confirmed by the latest Rasmussen poll which they also introduced by asking “What has he won? Just 13% of Likely U.S. Voters now say the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey for the week ending October 13. That's down from 17% the week before and the lowest finding since the week of October 20-26, 2008, when George W. Bush was still president.  

 

Confidence in the country's direction has fallen 15 points since the government shutdown began two weeks ago and is down from a high of 43% the week before Election Day last fall.”

So, now that the debt farce is over, and the incumbent’s “won”, where are we really? Debt’s at its highest in history, the health care tax is still going to strangle the entire economy, thirty hours have become the new work-week, part-time employees are becoming the standard, we still depend greatly on foreign oil, the Keystone pipeline’s still stifled, foreign policy’s being run by others including Russia, and GDP is now likely to shrink.

Therefore, if this is what Dem’s think is “winning,” I can’t even begin to imagine what losing looks like, but it probably has something to do with with being blown up by a nuclear explosion, which isn’t all that far from where they’ve taken us now.

In closing, I found an article on Drudge that sums our economic situation up nicely and is a very accurate precursor of the fiscal train wreck to come: Ice cream plant SHUTTING DOWN because of Obamacare.

That’s it for today folks

Adios

BloggeRhythms 10/16/2013

Something I learned long ago in business, was to never overreact when facing competitive offerings sounding too good to be true.

 

Although the premise sounds entirely logical, for salespeople, patience isn’t generally their long suit, most often prodding them to respond immediately with a counterproposal of their own.

 

However, by stepping back, letting reality take its course, unrealistic competition will generally disqualify itself by being unable to perform as promised. And once that occurs, that same completion not only loses transactions at hand, but most often doesn’t ever recover regarding those they initially misled.

 

I mention this because it’s the same situation Republicans find themselves in right now, regarding the incumbent’s heath care tax.

 

As I’ve suggested quite frequently recently, the odds are that the tax will destruct by itself, and take slews of Democrat politicians with it.

 

In that regard, CNBC's Dan Mangan interviewed  Mark Bertolini, Aetna's CEO who “gave a harshly critical review Monday of the federal government's Obamacare marketplace, saying, "There's so much wrong, you just don't know what's broken until you get a lot more of it fixed."

 

Asked if he would have delayed the launch of the exchange given its earlier problems, Bertolini said, "I would have, if I'd been in their seat." But, he added, "the politics got in the way of a good business decision."

 

However, Bertolini also said, "it's the law of the land, number one. Number two, public exchanges are going to be here to stay, so we need to make them work somehow. ... The question is: How do we get from here to there?" 

 

He then said "it could take three years or so before the marketplace's problems are fully sorted out.”

 

So, if Mr. Bertolini’s right, and he probably is, for the next three years the program will be saddled with considerable problems. Which suggests to me that during that time, since politicians will be still be deeply involved, the program has no chance of ever working properly, more than likely destructing by itself.

 

A further real world observation strongly confirms that assumption.

 

According to Fox news, “The CEO of a major American fast-food corporation says President Obama was “wrong” when he claimed that the costs of ObamaCare are not hurting job creation in the U.S.”

 

Appearing with Megyn Kelly on “The Kelly File” on Fox, “Andy Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants Inc. parent company of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, told  her that "his company and others will choose to hire part-time employees instead of full-time employees because of increased costs from the health care law.”

 

His rationale was, “It’s very simple if you increase the cost of something businesses will use less of it. If you decrease the cost they will use more of it. So if you increase the cost of full time employment, there will be less full time employees. If you decrease the cost of part time employment, you’ll have more part time employment.”

 

So, here we have continuing proof that while the incumbent attempts to turn the nation into a socialist haven, those providing employment, creating wealth and paying the bills are doing business as usual. 

 

Because while he’s scrambling feverishly to redistribute wealth, those having it are reading his ground rules, finding ways to work around them, leaving the incumbent at the head of a growing group of unskilled, inept, incapable cadre of whining losers just like himself.

 

That’s it for today folks.

 

Adios

BloggeRhythms 10/15/2013

Here’s real proof illustrating how and why the new health care tax will fail miserably in time. Because, simply stated, the government simply doesn’t have anywhere near the expertise, talent, knowledge, ability, nor certainly the skilled personnel required to manage the tax competently. They've had three years to develop the program and can’t even get the administrative introduction right, so just imagine what will happen when people actually need medical care, help, support or advice. 

 

According to FoxNews.com, “Robert Gibbs, who served as White House Press Secretary from 2009-2011, said in an interview with MSNBC Monday the first two weeks of open enrollment for the president’s health care overhaul were “bungled badly” and called it “excruciatingly embarrassing for the White House and for the Department of Health and Human Services.”

 

He went on to say “he hopes some of those in charge of setting up the law’s website will be fired.”

 

Now, that’s a typical bureaucrat’s perspective, which hasn’t a shred of connection to the real world. Because, firing incompetent's accomplishes nothing toward the program’s effectiveness, it only creates job opportunities for equally inept replacements.

 

The real fault lies in the government’s misguided assumption that it has, or can obtain, personnel with the required skills, talents and capabilities to properly establish and manage a process that demands constantly changing state-of-the-art capabilities, coupled with in-depth hands-on industry knowledge and experience. 

 

And those kind of folks don’t work for bureaucracies, they build profit-making organizations themselves or work within them. An endeavor like this needs Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, not empty suits like Nancy Pelosi or Anthony Weiner.  

 

I know that if I got ill and needed medical help, I’d much prefer calling a doctor’s office or practice instead of some government clerk.

 

So, when all the smoke clears and the ashes of the heath care tax are eventually sifted through, the reason for its demise will be vividly apparent. The misguided colossal waste of effort and time will have failed primarily because the task itself is countless miles over the heads of those trying to implement it. And that’s something for which there’s simply no fix, nor will there ever be.

 

That's it for today folks.

 

Adios

BloggeRhythms 10/14/2013

As the incredibly boring budget battle goes on in Congress, the situation remains the same. The likelihood is that a last-minute deal will be struck, making the situation moot. Or it won’t.

 

Either way they’ll be finger-pointing distortions of fact, and politicizing of the issue, with very little regard from either side on what’s actually best for the nation’s people.

 

As for me, I hope a deal isn’t reached, causing the incumbent’s becoming the first POTUS in history to fail in this regard. He could have solved this issue long ago himself, but puts image over responsible governance every single time. And, sadly for him, history will cast his mistaken priorities forever in stone.

 

On another recurring matter, the Washington Examiner’s Byron York takes the same position as many other pundits as he “imagines what the past two months might have looked like had Republicans not been focused on bitter internal fighting: Instead of pounding Obama on the mandates, defects, false promises, and expense of Obamacare, Republicans ended up pounding themselves…Obamacare will still be a major, and for many unwelcome, factor in American life. But what an opportunity missed, at such a crucial time.”

 

However, as stated often during the health care tax ramrodding by the administration, I believe the Republicans have been indeed “pounding” the subject. And, as I’ve noted all along, when it self-destructs, they'll gain significantly by having been squarely on the side of the taxpaying public.  

 

A small but very important reflection of that reality can be seen by the results of Saturday's straw-poll of religious conservatives at the 2013 Value Voters Summit in Washington.

 

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican from Texas, won with  took 42 percent of the vote. Newcomer Dr. Ben Carson and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum got 13 percent. However, loud-mouthing Senators, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida scored a mere 6 percent and 5 percent respectively.

 

So, what these numbers indicate is that  since voters care considerably about the health tax issue, Cruz’s major cause, his message is getting through and the rest of the pack isn’t having much impact at all.

 

Now, I fully realize that this kind of poll really doesn’t indicate significant national trends. But, as I mention all the time, it’s best to remember that in virtually every aspect of life, pay close attention to the little things, because they always count.

 

That’s it for today folks.

 

Adios

BloggeRhythms 10/13/2013

News-wise, things couldn't be much duller which I guess is a pretty good thing. There’s still no debt deal, and the health care tax continues to unravel in every imaginable way.

 

So for today I have only these simple suggestions for Republicans. Find some way to close a debt deal, keep government running, and leave the health tax alone for now.

 

However, in doing that, be absolutely certain to make clear that both issues are owned entirely, in every way measurable, by Dem’s who are responsible in full for both.

 

It’s a practical certainty that the nation will continue to struggle economically due to its overbearing debt. Furthermore, every attempt Republicans make to prevent fiscal calamity is thwarted from inception. Therefore, it makes the most sense to simply back off from the issue, leaving those responsible to bear the brunt of this failure solely.

 

Similarly, the consensus keeps growing that the health care tax will almost assuredly self-destruct. And since every effort to delay or deflect the inevitable is ignored, let the blame for this fiasco rest where it should.

 

In fact, it might even be best to subtly influence additional deficit spending and help increase health tax enrollment. Because as I’ve mentioned before, from a practical viewpoint, if one senses that competition is drowning, throwing them more water often works well.

 

That’s it for today folks.

 

Adios

BloggeRhythms 10/12/2013

I write about politics often because it consumes so much time and space in the news, having such an important effect on everyone’s lives. But, nonetheless, I really know very little about how and why folks vote like they do, often finding political preferences not only extremely confusing, but frequently completely baffling too.

 

In  that regard, an article today from newsbusters.org/blogs via Fox makes absolutely no sense to me about a Sean Hannity interview with Tavis Smiley, as follows:. 

 

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: My last question to you. You often do these seminars with the state of black America. I've watched them on C-Span and different channels, right?

 

TAVIS SMILEY: Right.

 

HANNITY: Are black Americans better off five years into the Obama presidency?

 

SMILEY: Let me answer your question very forthrightly. No, they are not. The data is going to indicate sadly that when the Obama administration is over, black people will have lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category. On that regard, the president ought to be held responsible.

 

But here's the other side. I respect the president. I will protect the president. And I will correct the president. He's right on this government shutdown. Republicans are thwarting the rule of law with the Constitution. If they let this debt go into default, they're trampling again on the Constitution.”

 

So, here’s a well-informed, responsible individual, readily admitting that the incumbent’s done a miserable job regarding an important segment of the population. Yet, he not only willingly continues to respect and protect him, he uses a misinterpretation of the Constitution to do so. 

 

Because the Construction clearly says that; “Congress is the body required by law to pass a budget annually and to submit the budget passed by both houses to the President for signature. Congressional decisions are governed by rules and legislation regarding the federal budget process. Budget committees set spending limits for the House and Senate committees and for Appropriations subcommittees, which then approve individual appropriations bills to allocate funding to various federal programs.”

 

Consequently, on key issues important to citizens Mr. Smiley admits a totally unacceptable jobs been done, while on another he pledges total support yet apparently doesn’t understand the facts at all. 

 

And that’s the part that completely confuses me. Because everywhere you look, people like Mr. Smiley, and whole segments of the population, are being abused financially, professionally and intellectually, yet they continue to deliver total support to one’s who don’t give a good GD about any of them which makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.     

 

On another recurring subject, yesterday Kathleen Sebelius appeared in Pittsburgh to tout the new health care tax.

 

According to triblive.com/business, she told an audience of about 100 people that Healthcare.gov was “open for business.” Continuing on with “Believe me, we had some early glitches. But it's getting better every day.”

 

However, the article goes on to report that “At the back of the room, it was a different story. About 20 people armed with laptops and certified by the government to sign up people for coverage were meeting with uninsured people, answering questions and fruitlessly trying to access the website. 

 

LaKesha Lowry, 41, came to the event to find out about her health insurance options. But the North Side resident said she was not able to access the site, even with the help of a certified application counselor.” 

 

“It said, ‘Try again later,' ” Lowry said. 

 

So, here’s another case where facts keep interfering with the administration’s sales pitch for their version of the Edsel, which Ford not only couldn’t sell but quickly closed the division down. But, that was Ford, a profit driven organization that has to support itself or disappear from the market.

 

The government though is a different story, running on taxpayer’s money. Which is why the health care debacle will stay in place up until there’s nothing left in the public’s pockets even though it’s the worst piece of legislation devised in the last 50 years by far. 

 

That’s it for today folks.

 

Adios