The Right Coast

Individuals can't afford ObamaCare | Las Vegas Review-Journal

The rates won’t be finalized until Sept. 1, and those who purchase coverage through the exchange can qualify for tax credits to offset some of those costs. But for those working part-time and temporary jobs to get by, and for the young and healthy, even subsidized premiums will be unaffordable. They’ll pay the penalty tax and remain uninsured.

Last month, researchers from Harvard University and the City University of New York estimated that about 300,000 Nevadans will remain uninsured after ObamaCare takes effect, a figure that matches the state’s own projections. Nationally, the researchers estimate that about 30 million Americans will decline coverage.

Such a lack of participation would send premiums even higher and collapse the exchanges. This design flaw is one reason why the federal government is spending $700 million marketing ObamaCare to persuade Americans to sign up. It won’t work. There’s no sweetening this lemon.

via www.reviewjournal.com

The Insiders: Does the White House think no one will notice the Obamacare hypocrisy?

Every part of Obamacare is a growing political burden on the Democrats. But it’s the hypocrisy that will fuel resentment among voters and drive turnout in November 2014. It will be interesting to see what August brings, and what vulnerable Democratic members of Congress, particularly those in the Senate, will witness for themselves in town hall meetings during recess, as victims of the calamity that is Obamacare begin to show up and vocalize their disapproval. Will they follow Obama’s lead and adopt the president’s “remain oblivious” strategy, or will they begin to demand some political relief?  For the Democrats on the ballot in 2014, it’s only going to get worse.

via www.washingtonpost.com

Here's hoping. --ts

US economy grows at 1.7 pct. pace in 2nd quarter

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy grew from April through June at a modest seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.7 percent, as businesses spent more and the federal government cut less.

via bigstory.ap.org

At first I thought this said 1.7 percent/quarter. I thought, Whoa! Then I saw the headline on the main page. Oh well. Just another day in the new normal, sadly torporous, new Amerika. -ts

Choosing the Next Fed Leader - NYTimes.com

Despite a campaign from allies both inside and outside the White House, the recent drive to install Lawrence Summers as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve seems to be faltering — and with good reason: He is not the best person for the job, as a group of Democratic senators made clear in a letter to President Obama last week calling for the nomination of Janet Yellen, the vice chairwoman of the Fed’s board of governors.

via www.nytimes.com

Well, I guess I should be for Yellen. I'm yellin' for Yellen! She's crazy soft on QE and inflation would help my main depreciated asset, casa Smith. Everybody else, I'm not so sure. -ts

So monogamy works for some animals. Doesn't mean it's 'natural' for us | Meg Barker | Comment is free | theguardian.com

There has been a good deal of press coverage surrounding a research study that addressed the question of how human monogamy came about, from an evolutionary perspective. This suggested that males in monogamous mammal species remain with female partners to protect their families from other males, who would otherwise kill the young and mate with the females.

via www.theguardian.com

Maybe it's just not natural for Meg. -ts

Lo Hsing Han | The Economist

MEN in his line of work rarely reach old age. They die in a hail of bullets from police sharpshooters or a rival gang, and are buried fast in shallow jungle graves. Not Lo Hsing Han. At his funeral a cavalcade of cars, some carrying his portrait garlanded with flowers, processed through the streets of Yangon, Myanmar’s capital, to his high-walled villa, right by the 16th tee of the city golf club. Crowds of villagers attended from his native region, in the Golden Triangle of Myanmar’s north-east. They rubbed shoulders with former generals, two cabinet ministers and the cream of Yangon society.

via www.economist.com

The gray beyond: A family copes after tragedy - The Washington Post

TC’s aphasia — his struggle to speak — resulted from a brutal assault on Capitol Hill last August. His intellect is largely intact. But his brain labors to command his mouth to say what he wants to say.

As the first anniversary of the attack approaches, TC, now 30, and his family are still putting their lives back together.

via www.washingtonpost.com

In case you're feeling sorry for yourself. -ts

Kyle Smith: Liberals say they care about the poor but drive up their cost of living. - NYPOST.com

Also, you can get it in 14,000 locations in the US and it usually costs $1. Presenting one of the unsung wonders of modern life, the McDonald’s McDouble cheeseburger.

via www.nypost.com

Going for Bolingbroke - NYTimes.com

Bolingbroke is largely forgotten today, but his skepticism about the ways that money and power intertwine went on to influence the American Revolution and practically every populist movement in our nation’s history. And it’s his civic republican ideas, repurposed for a new era, that you hear in the rhetoric of new-guard Republican politicians like Rand Paul and Mike Lee, in right-wing critiques of our incestuous “ruling class,” and from pundits touting a “libertarian populism” instead.

Theirs is not just the usual conservative critique of big government, though that’s obviously part of it. It’s a more thoroughgoing attack on the way Americans are ruled today, encompassing Wall Street and corporate America, the media and the national-security state.

As theories go, it’s well suited to the times. The story of the last decade in American life is, indeed, a story of consolidation and self-dealing at the top. There really is a kind of “court party” in American politics, whose shared interests and assumptions — interventionist, corporatist, globalist — have stamped the last two presidencies and shaped just about every major piece of Obama-era legislation. There really is a disconnect between this elite’s priorities and those of the country as a whole. There really is a sense in which the ruling class — in Washington, especially — has grown fat at the expense of the nation it governs.

via www.nytimes.com

I have been thinking this for a year or two. Rand Paul et al. really do represent a country party alternative to our modern court party. -ts

Krugman on Detroit Tom Smith

Herr Doktor Professor Krugman has made the point that Detroit is just one of those things that happen in an ever changing economy. It's an example of bad capitalism, the creative destruction or maybe just the destruction that some people just keep nattering on about. He has a point. Ever since we started commuting with personal jet packs and helicopters, the days of the personal automobile have been numbered anyway. That and the network of supersleek highspeed trains which knit together our paradisical surroundings. Yep, that must be it.