So. Earlier today I wrote that “after a nap I hope to return and post on the now prevalent progressive talking point that cancellation of ‘substandard’ (read: not egalitarian plans written by social engineers and progressive Utopians) plans is actually a good thing. It’s just that the bulk of Americans who aren’t them [progressives and ACA boosters] are too stupid to recognize it, and too ill-equipped even to pretend to make those decisions for themselves in the first place.”
We heard echoes of this the other day from Matt Lauer during his interview with Sarah Palin — if it turns out that those who lost their care wind up with better (subsidized) care under ObamaCare, Lauer asked, wouldn’t they in some ways owe Obama a debt of gratitude for his deceit? That is, shouldn’t they then acknowledge that he had to lie to them in order to save them from themselves?
It was repulsive to hear then, but in other venues, the more wonkish progressive mouthpieces have taken up the challenge of making such a smug, elitist, and anti-individualist argument more compelling and palatable, taking the rough rhetorical edges off a narrative in which Obama’s willlingness to sacrifice his short-term credibility for our long-term interests (in the political equivalent of, say, the crucifixion!) may just turn out super swell for all the dull doubters and mewling masses currently uncovered and panicking. Two such writers, Matt Yglesias in Slate and Joshua Something Something Something Jingleheimer Schmidt Marshall of TPM fame, have attempted to apply a compelling frame around this exercise in stuffing a broken-down Volkswagon Beetle with as many clownish tropes as they can with the hope that we’ll focus on the achievement of the spectacle rather than the fact that, when all is said and done, all they’ve managed to do is cram a bunch of clowns into a a vehicle that can no longer work as designed.
First, here’s Yglesias, “It’s Good That You Can’t Keep Your Insurance Plan”:
The Affordable Care Act certainly didn’t include any provisions that prevented insurance companies from deciding to no longer offer certain insurance products. House Republican legislative trolling aside, a law that actually prevented insurance companies from ever withdrawing an insurance product from the market would be extreme regulatory overreach. How would it even work? If insurers were prevented from dropping services from their plans, then they would have no leverage in negotiating with health care providers. Any hospital could demand outrageous reimbursement rates from insurers, safe in the knowledge that it would be illegal for insurers to drop the hospital from their plans. The high costs would swiftly drive the insurance companies out of business; with the insurance companies bankrupted, the goal of preventing people from losing coverage would be vitiated.
— Here we agree. As I noted in my earlier post, the Upton Plan is not a move back toward individual liberty, but rather a political maneuver whose actual legal precedent would signal the end of private property rights and free markets. But then, the Upton Plan is merely to take up Democrat Mary Landrieu’s Senate proposal, so Mr Yglesias should be careful of blame shifting. (The earlier Ron Johnson plan was meant to derail the system; this plan is meant to “save it” through a variety of piecemeal reform).
But then Yglesias goes off the rails:
Rather than (foolishly) try to ensure that nobody could ever lose their insurance, the actual Affordable Care Act accelerated the demise of a certain class of plan. Politically, that’s now an embarrassment for the White House. Substantively, it’s a huge achievement.
[my emphasis] Yglesias goes on to talk about “insurance rescission, ” asserting that it “was famously difficult on the old market for people with ‘pre-existing conditions’ to get coverage.” For Yglesias,
that’s because insurance companies don’t want to cover people who are actually sick. Even healthy people generally want health insurance coverage because they might get sick. But an insurance company has no desire to actually foot the bill for a seriously ill person’s medical treatment. Hence, in the individual market the standard practice was to earn a profit selling peace of mind to healthy people, only to pivot as quickly as possible toward cancellation of the plan as soon as major bills started coming in. The ACA, rightly, puts a stop to this scam.
But of course, Yglesias easily conflates insurance with health care welfare — making the implied argument that insurance is in fact necessary as a precondition for receiving treatment rather than a hedge against the possibility of being hit with large medical bills. People with pre-existing conditions can of course be covered under group plans or certain state risk pools where the financial output is spread enough so that the insurance company can provide the coverage and still make a profit. This, to Yglesias, is a devious practice — mostly because he is bravely willing to dictate when profit is moral and when it is not, and so when a company should be allowed to profit and when it should exist as an altruistic endeavor whose money and profit he should be free to determine.
Whereas to the rest of us? It is the very definition of insurance — which under the progressives has now morphed into a health care right that we are all required to pay for.
Leaving aside the uncomfortable fact that Medicare turned down more claims than private insurers — which suggests that the noble government Yglesias pines to put in control of our health care decisions is perhaps not quite so compassionate as they set themselves up to be — and even leaving aside the fact that people left uncovered by private individual plans had a number of state remedies (or if they didn’t — like, say, they weren’t eligible for Medicaid — then a simple expansion of that program to include the very small percentage of people affected by this coalescing of events would have remedied that problem without a complete government-centric overhaul), what I want to concentrate on here is Yglesias’s claim, being echoed elsewhere (though not by vulnerable Democrats so much these days, quelle surprise), that ObamaCare’s achievement is that it does away with the kinds of substandard plans that progressives argue weren’t really plans at all, or at the very least, would drop you from your plan once you were sick.
This class of substandard coverage — being the scam that Yglesias argues it has been — is scuttled by ObamaCare’s more serious — if falsely sold — plan, in which one can presumably never be dropped from their insurance plan. Which is the equivalent I should think of having multiple accidents for which one was responsible as a driver and then telling the car insurance company that they can’t cancel the policy because you have a right to have them keep paying for your fuck ups.
This argument is picked up by Josh Marshall, who tells us who the “free riders” really are:
[…] It’s generally understood that people who simply don’t carry any insurance, if they have the financial means to buy it, are basically free-riders on the rest of the system, on everyone else. A central premise behind Romneycare and Obamacare is that people who have junk policies with little or no actual coverage are basically doing the same thing.
Like Yglesias, Marshall wants us to believe that, as he notes,
[…] the number of people in the victim category is being blown wildly out of proportion and inflated by a policy challenged press. And if the exchange mechanism can be improved soon, I doubt the political repercussions will be great. Actually, the reverse. This is mainly a crisis of confidence. But it can spill over into a genuine policy crisis. So Democrats need to make a choice. And the President does too. It may not be an easy one if they can’t get the exchanges in motion rapidly and get the ‘plus’ sides in motion and visible.
So you see? Cancellations are being blown out of proportion, we haven’t yet seen the glorious upside of government-run health care, and all of this is leading not to actual pain inflicted on individual Americans, but rather a kind of manufactured wilding, a “crisis of confidence.” Once the plan is implemented fully — presumably in that glorious future where those presuming to make our personal health decisions for us can manage to get a fucking web site running — the “free rider” problem will be rectified by doing away with the kinds of substandard, bogus plans that were what was actually draining the system.
And this will happen by heavily subsidizing people, while reducing the costs of policies, and increasing the amount and the quality of care. Because that’s just how unicorn economics rolls.
Here’s the problem with this argument, however. Reality. Which like the conservative extremist bastard it is keeps smacking these wonks and theoreticians and social engineers right into their presumptuous pinched faces:
On Tuesday, two prominent media personalities who support President Barack Obama’s overhaul of America’s health care system took to the airwaves to vent about their insurance plans which have been cancelled as a direct result of the Affordable Care Act.
In an appearance on Special Report on Tuesday, Fox News Channel contributor and Daily Beast editorial writer Kirsten Powers lashed out at the White House – and, by extension, her Democratic cohorts – for implying that her consumer choices were poorly informed and insufficiently focused on the collective good.
“My blood pressure goes up every time they say that they’re protecting us from substandard health insurance plans,” Powers told Bret Baier. “There is nothing to support what they’re saying.”
“I have talked to about how I’m losing my health insurance,” she continued. “If I want to keep the same health insurance, it’s going to cost twice as much. There’s nothing substandard about my plan.”
“All of the things they say that are not in my plan are in my plan,” Powers lamented. “All of the things they have listed — there’s no explanation for doubling my premiums other than the fact that it’s subsidizing other people. They need to be honest about that.”
Powers, a committed Democrat, once supported the aims of the ACA, if not every mean designed to achieve a noble end. Today, it would seem, she is wavering on the virtue of that end as well.
Powers is in good company. On CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday, former Daily Beast columnist David Frum hijacked a conversation about President Bill Clinton’s shocking admonition of President Barack Obama to discuss his own cancelled health plan.
“I’m pulling rank,” Frum informed his fellow panel guests, “because I’m one of those who has had his plan canceled.”
“I still have, but will not very much longer have, a plan in the District of Columbia, covered my wife and my children, which is canceled,” he reported. “I can buy on the exchange a plan that will cost $200 a month more and have a higher deductible. I can’t get back my old plan unless, as Ron [Brownstein] says, the administration drops the element of the law that requires the coverage of everybody.”
“That’s why my coverage went up is because every insurer must now cover everybody,” Frum continued. “I think President Clinton should have the honesty to defend that.”
Frum has spent the better part of the last two years arguing in print for ways which would make the ACA more palatable to Republicans because, in his estimation, the law as it was written was going to be an intractable feature of modern life.
Now of course, it’s easy to engage in a bit of schadenfreude with respect to starry-eyed morons like Powers and Frum, who bemoan their fate after having been gullible enough to buy into the law’s economic impossibilities from the outset. But the fact is, neither of them, I suspect, carried the kind of substandard insurance we’re told is being canceled by ObamaCare’s improved coverage mandates, nor were they likely the kinds of people who were “free riders” in the sense that Marshall tries to paint those who are being affected by ObamaCare’s kindly-yet-stern insistence on real medical coverage. The kind that requires ninety-year old men to pay for contraception or maternity leave, the kind that promises you greater care, better coverage, and a more affordable price — all despite the entirely new bureaucracy growing up around the law, all despite the enforcement mechanisms required, and all despite the premise that, for the law to work, eager young people will forego money for, say, start up businesses or a car or their own apartment in order to pay for health care plans they don’t really need and that many won’t be able to afford.
The bottom line is this: there is no reforming this law. It is as we said it would be, and people like Frum and Powers should probably have spent less time reading the likes of Yglesias and Marshall and more time listening to common-sense concerns raised by people with more than a simple (and often tragically flawed) academic understanding of economics.
True, that would have meant listening to odious TEA party types — and Frum would probably just as soon pay the extra few grand a year than have to wipe that kind of mess off his Beltway loafers — but let’s not pretend the American people weren’t told precisely how this would turn out.
What we are witnessing is not, as Marshall would have it, a “crisis of confidence.” Instead, we are witnessing the abject failure of an attempt to centralize power through a health care system that has proven too complex and too unwieldy for a faculty lounge President and the progressive ideologues he surrounded himself with to run at all, much less with any kind of efficiency or even base competency.
The winds are blowing the way of repeal. Pace Marshall, then, it’s time for a GOP gut check: are they answerable to their constituencies or to their corporate cronies, who find a way to work the system so as to make money of nearly any government program…?
We’ll soon find out.
(h/t and thanks to Terry H)
Heh. The Dems are on teevee talking about how there is no way they are voting for the Keep your own HC Plan(s).
BOOM! Thanks guys!
– Somebodies been talking to actuaries that actually know the insurance business, and its left them even more scared than they were.
– As I said on another thread – at this point we’re just shuffling seating arrangements at dinner on the Titanic.
– I don’t know Jeff. You look at people like Frum and Powers, and maybe the “can’t find their asses with both hands” meme applies to Progressives as a group, and the rest of us are just the unfortunate benefactors of their obsessive need to project.
But, an architect of O-care says that “genetic lottery winners” have been paying “artificially low” prices. Are their policies “substandard,” merely because they don’t use them? Or are they “drains on the system,” because they don’t use them?
The whole premise behind this law is false. That’s being made apparent daily, to the point where there are or will be more uninsured than before the damn law was passed. Repeal, don’t “fix.”
I wonder about that as well, Sherm. I pay for my own healthcare. How is that problematic?
leadership
McConnell: The Only ‘Fix’ Is Full Repeal – Boehner: Unless It’s Our Fix
The “free rider” problem was more easily remedied by setting up free or low-cost clinics in poor neighborhoods and adjacent to emergency rooms, where the primary draw was not the free care but the fact that they could just walk in whenever needed instead of having to schedule an appointment.
I also enjoy how “not incurring HUGE medical expenses while not being insured” is deemed a type of free-ridership, given that you’re not contributing to the pool that others must draw from.
It IS true that needing medical care isn’t quite the same as needing auto repair — medical needs tend to hit us regardless of our choices — but still…
Stop treating medical insurance as a prepayment plan. Stop covering the sniffles and the effing birth-control pills. Just cover catastrophe.
There. Fixed it.
Ya know, ever since Breitbart died I really don’t read over there much anymore.
I think most of them commenters are from FreeRepublic, judging by content.
You see, the problem with your insurance is that it only kicks in when you get in an accident, or have a major mechanical breakdown. Under our new glorious revolutionary workers insurance, you will be covered for every fill of your gas tank and every oil change and wiper blade! And no matter how much drunk driving you do, you can never lose your wonderful insurance!
(Okay, so your gas will be $8.25 a gallon because of all the paperwork and the fact that we have to hire a Teamster for every gas nozzle, but that’s a small price to pay for giving everybody the ability to access the petroleum distribution system any time they need to.)
– Poor San Fran, things are getting complicated, which for her means she has to find some way to utilize both brain cells at once. She simply doesn’t know who to felate these days so shes keeping her options open with two lists and floor knee pads on both sides of her desk.
– And if that mental image ruins sex for you as you’ve know it, thems the breaks bunky.
leadership
Pelosi Starts Giggling Uncontrollably Over O-Care “Fix” During Presser (Video)
I have more money in my checking account right now than any insurance company has ever paid out to take care of my adult healthcare. 32 years as an adult and I do not even recall going to a doctor more that once or twice.
I am not unique and I know young people can not be as stupid as the Obamabots hope/think they are.
Ken Klukowski: Obama’s Insurance ‘Fix’ Is Unconstitutional
Of course we knew that.
It’s Pambasileias ClownDisaster who is in need of instruction. Whatever you do, though, don’t contact your Congressmen and Senators to demand they serve it to him by impeachment. Wouldn’t be kosher. And besides — the Borman Six girl has got to have soul.
In Matt Y.’s honor I propose a new label for people exhibiting his level of intellect: ygnoramus.
It’s because you’re not also paying for Julia’s, and Trayvonita’s, and Sandra Fluke’s.
Hater.
And their plural? ygnorami? or ygnoramusses?
The Four Charges in Holder’s Articles of Impeachment
Ygnorati.
Funny thing about insurance, I take three maintenance prescriptions. If I pay the copay through the insurance it’s $15 per, if I pay cash it’s $16 total. I also have blood work done every three months. Cash price $80, submitted through the insurance company $200 copay. This is a Cadillac teachers union plan too.
As it should be. Education is also a right in a civilized society. First responders too. We pay taxes, and receive services, and those services should be available to all.
And then the bullshit just rolls out. 40 million people without insurance is not a very small percentage. It’s a huge number that was growing larger annually. Oh, and insurance rates were going up 10-14% per year.
And no, before you spout it, more people won’t end up uninsured because of Obamacare, and they won’t, on average, end up paying more. More people will be covered, and will pay less.
We spend far more than other countries and get worse outcomes for it. But you think the old way was still better because it was free-er-ish (as in freedom, not as in beer).
Because spending more and getting less is just MATH, and changing the dynamics is unicorn economics.
Surprise!
“You see, I never wanted it to pass, and I supported all 40 something plans to repeal it, and I was in favor of shutting down the government to get rid of it, and then I was in favor of defaulting on our obligations to repeal it, but now, based on these new articles by these pundits, I’ve taken a fresh look at it and I’ve reached the conclusion it should be repealed. I guess that makes me a RACIST! So be it. And I should probably call someone a liar, and say something about slave of the state, and the overarching plan keel haul us into the spinning prop of single payer.”
OUTLAW!
You could have just skipped all the words and said:
Stardate 20131114: I still want it gone.
>We spend far more than other countries and get worse outcomes for it<
industrial grade stupid slaphead
President Obama’s “Administrative Fix” Will Make the Problem Worse
ACA’s approval numbers plunge
As it should be.
Sure. I should be a bazillionaire, too.
It’s painful to have to keep company with Fascists.
well i hope some impeachment news would soften the pain
Education is also a right in a civilized society.
So you have a “right” to an education, and yet teachers demand payment? How dare they interfere with your rights! Make them accept lower wages in return for making education cover even those who don’t use it (like you and the folks over at HuffPo). And why is it only “civilized” societies? Why do you hate poor people, and determine that they don’t have a “right” to the education that might make it possible for them to improve their lot?
ProTip: There is no such thing as a “right” that requires the efforts and training of third parties, jackass. You have not a clue. Worse, you couldn’t get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance.
And no, before you spout it, more people won’t end up uninsured because of Obamacare, and they won’t, on average, end up paying more. More people will be covered, and will pay less.
And you have the data to actually back up this lie? Or should we just laugh (again) and move on?
Because spending more and getting less is just MATH
You mean like paying higher premiums and higher deductibles? Having policies that they were quite satisfied with, and covered everything they needed, and then being forced to pay for insurance that they could never use (like the 61yo male living alone who now has to pay for maternity care, and the grandparents who have to pay for maternity leave coverage)? Math doesn’t stop working just because you ignore it, Slappy.
Surprise!
Not a surprise to those of us who actually live here in reality. (You should try it sometime.) We knew from the very beginning that it would collapse, and the illegal and unconstitutional acts you are now defending simply puts you alongside Barcky in the “and domestic” category.
“And no, before you spout it, more people won’t end up uninsured because of Obamacare, and they won’t, on average, end up paying more.”
That is a lie and you are a liar.
“40 million people without insurance is not a very small percentage”
So far ZeroCare has (allegedly) signed up 100,000 people and resulted in 3 to 5 million policy cancellations.
You’re not very good at that “math” stuff, are you?
C’mon, Slappy, explain how “rates … will rise by 99 percent” = “won’t end up paying more”.
I could use a good laugh, and Baghdad Bob has long since retired.
I see steve’s mathematics skills are on par with his reading comprehension.
Obviously the product of an inferior public school education, sometime after the enactment of the Department of Education in 1976. Not 1776 or 1789 so not mentioned in any founding documents.
Obamacare Navigator Fraud Continues
NOV 14, 2013
You gotta wonder just how long Slaphead is going to stay in denial. Obama himself has more or less admitted what a clusterfuck it is. Everyone from Bill Clinton to Dianne Feinstein is rhetorically sticking Barky on an ice floe, giving him a shove, and waving bye-bye.
Slaphead, do you really intend to be the last sucker standing? You’re going to have to admit that Dear Leader failed you sooner or later. Why not now?
Concur. Haven’t we picked this one clean already? C’mon, Jeff. Do us a solid, would ya?
http://tinyurl.com/kwb4ars
C’mon, Slappy, explain how more people will be paying less… “Changing the dynamics”, indeed.
I know, MATH is hard!
Good thing it’s the law and Obama doesn’t have the constitutional authority to just re-write it on a whim, isn’t it? Oh, wait, you still haven’t explained how he can do that legally. (I know that you know that “he can’t” will lead to unpleasant truths, and we all know you can’t abide THAT, but still, I eagerly anticipate you defending the move when a Republican does it, as they certainly will…)(Precedent, donchaknow?)
“It’s generally understood that people who simply don’t carry any insurance, if they have the financial means to buy it, are basically free-riders on the rest of the system, on everyone else.”
This just doesn’t lose its sting, even after SCOTUS upheld the individual mandate. This tool thinks that others – he and the government – have the right to decide what people should spend their money on. Why didn’t they just compel those 40 million or so uninsured they used to sell this POS to buy insurance instead of dragging the rest of us into it (we know why). This is not America.
Oregon insurance commissioner says state won’t delay 2013 health coverage cancellations
Lotta racists up there in Oregon, apparently.
Simple solution for reducing the costs of health care in three simple steps:
1. Tort reform. Make all medical malpractice lawsuits “loser pays”.
2. Open health insurance policies to interstate competition, across State lines.
3. Require pharmaceutical companies to charge the same price for its products to all customers. (This will force those companies to sell their pills to American drug companies at the same price as they do to foreign companies. This is one reason Canadians and others can claim to have lower costs for their medicine, since they don’t have to pay R&D costs but can extort lower prices from the companies who will pass along the unrecouped costs onto their unsuspecting American companies.)
Lower costs for providers, higher competition/lower costs for consumers, and somewhat lower prices for medicines as those increased costs will be spread out onto the entirety of the cutomer base, instead of just a subset. Win/win/win, but it would never happen, because it doesn’t require a government program, with bureaucrats to staff an office somewhere.
My policy got cancelled. The new one like it would cost twice as much. I’ve made other plans, so I won’t have to buy it.
>Lotta racists up there in Oregon, apparently.<
i see that and raise
Washington insurance commissioner says you can’t keep old plan
40 million people without insurance is not a very small percentage.
Who are/were these people? Not the elderly and disabled, because they have Medicare. Not the poor; they have Medicaid; not children because they have CHiPs. Not the rich, because they can pay for it. How many of the uninsured, just didn’t want to buy it? How many just preferred to spend their money on other things? How many of the so called “pre-existing condition” exceptions simply waited until something bad happened to try to get insurance? The fundamental flaw in your argument is that society has right to force me to assume a risk I would not ordinarily assume. I have to pay for your smoking, your obesity, your twelve martini lunches, because I was too stupid to not live it up in order to protect my health. Stated differently, your “rights” punish the frugal and responsible, just so you can feel like you’ve done something. Here’s the news flash: you don’t get karma points by ordering someone else to be charitable.
JeffG, Sept. 26, ’13: Obama: my signature legislation is here to stay
heh, except when it isn’t, by decree. What a shabby putz is our Pambasileias ClownDisaster. Poor fucker can’t keep his business straight from one day to the next he’s chasing so many lies.
Open health insurance policies to interstate competition, across State lines.
They’re not open across state lines because each state wants its own mandates about coverage, no?
So good luck wresting that away from them.
you don’t get karma points by ordering someone else to be charitable.
You must be new on this planet. For the Sophisticate, coercion is its own reward.
It’s amazing how many new rights are being proclaimed that can only be enjoyed as a result of forcing other people to shell out from the fruits of their own labor and risk-taking.
Somebody must have repealed the laws of thermodynamics. Or maybe the President just ordered federal agencies not to enforce them for a year.
>They’re not open across state lines because each state wants its own mandates about coverage, no?<
yep i think the commerce clause really deals with that
>Somebody must have repealed the laws of thermodynamics<
yet they yammer about the "inequity" of the "rich and the "poor".
So, when do the impeachment papers get drawn up?
Extortion surely must be an impeachable offense. Hell, impeach him just for being offensive. Period.
you had “equality” in the ussr. dead state. we be red state.
> when do the impeachment papers get drawn up? <
pointless exercise with the orangeman and mitchy and harry running the clowndisaster™
for the crony “capitalism”
Steely Dan – Your Gold Teeth
No it isn’t, nr. You keep saying that and it isn’t true.
>No it isn’t, nr. You keep saying that and it isn’t true.<
let's confuse things and go for it. orangeman gonna do it? surrrrre
johnny on the spot likes some edison bulbs. me too;)
As Margaret Thatcher said, “the problem with socialism is that at some point you run out of other people’s money.”
Obama has managed to teach a whole generation the lesson of Margaret Thatcher.
“The problem with Obamacare is that at some point you run out of other people’s money.”*
*with apologies to “The Iron Lady.”
let’s move
Got a feeling I’ve been here before
Won’t you let me help you find the door
All you got to do is use
Your silver shoes
A gift for the runaround
Use your knack darlin’
Take one step back darlin’
There ain’t nothing in Chicago
For a monkey woman to do
Do you throw out your gold teeth
Do you see how they roll
link
This can be disassembled several way such as the “we” which lumps together all individual choices into a mass to compare with some other nation’s government limited amount to be spent on all healthcare for their nation. Also the “worse outcomes which comes from studies which compare apples to pig feces. But leave that aside.
These “other countries,” the ones who demand that drugs, medical devices, not be sold for more than the cost of their manufacture plus some small profit. Countries that benefit from the medical innovation that takes place here where we will pay for the research and development costs. Not just the things that work but for the search through all those that don’t to find those gems that work and save lives.
Those National Healthcare bureaucratic monstrosities are the real healthcare “free riders.” Just as the entire world benefited from the USA being the global cop keeping things mostly peaceful around the world and making free trade possible and with the coming downsizing of that military now chaos is raising it’s bloody head again. So too the destruction of American medical innovation will bring poorer care to the world as a whole not just the US.
The death toll on the hands of this administration will make Mao look the piker and Pol Pot a footnote at the democide site.
Reading through the post and comments… I miss you guys.
They may even eclipse Rachel Carson.
Hi bh.
good luck with the food place
Hey guys.
> You keep saying that and it isn’t true.<
keep saying
-mr president rube
who screwed
you-
Here’s a fun new link.
“Today it is almost heresy to suggest that scientific knowledge is not the sum of all knowledge.”
Uh-oh.
“The reason for this is that the “data” from which the economic calculus starts are never for the whole society “given” to a single mind which could work out the implications and can never be so given.”
Wait… what?
“The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.”
That sounds suspect. Like with words and shit but also with a skeptic’s lack of historical determinism.
“We need to remember only how much we have to learn in any occupation after we have completed our theoretical training, how big a part of our working life we spend learning particular jobs, and how valuable an asset in all walks of life is knowledge of people, of local conditions, and of special circumstances.”
Pshaw.
Hey, did you guys know that Althouse posts pictures of cute dogs now?
“One reason why economists are increasingly apt to forget about the constant small changes which make up the whole economic picture is probably their growing preoccupation with statistical aggregates, which show a very much greater stability than the movements of the detail.”
You mean like the entire initial foothold of Keynesian-ism in the academy? I say this is unlikely, sir. Also, uncouth.
In summation:
“If we can agree that the economic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place, it would seem to follow that the ultimate decisions must be left to the people who are familiar with these circumstances, who know directly of the relevant changes and of the resources immediately available to meet them.”
What a racist. What a mouth-breathing war-on-women-er.
There are many issues here. First and foremost is the rule of law. It’s the very basis of everything. It’s not something to be tossed aside because of some in-the-moment thrust of tactical brilliance. No. Matter. How. Brilliant.
After that? We have to drum the very idea of distributed information into the heads of those without any. Without this kernel of truth planted here and there, we won’t win. We… can’t. This is their terrain, yes. There is no pivoting away from it. We have to win here on this cold, hard ground.
“It’s amazing how many new rights are being proclaimed that can only be enjoyed as a result of forcing other people to shell out from the fruits of their own labor and risk-taking.”
Maybe someone should assert sexual rights to Slaphead’s “little woman”. \
“We have to drum the very idea of distributed information into the heads of those without any.”
ZeroCare is going to do a wizard job of that, I think. Wait until all the tattooed hipster baristas out there find out that they, personally, are going to have to shell out for their ZeroCare. “Wait…. I thought that shit was supposed to be free?”
It seems that way to me as well, SBP. I can only hope they are capable of learning as compared to simply flinching from the hot stove like a simpleton might. They’re now blessed with the opportunity to show they’re capable of growing up. They’ve been blessed good and hard.
They’ve been blessed good and hard.
– Unfortunately they’ve already proven the only thing they do well is resist all attempts to inform. Sort of a living example of ignorance is bliss, of whom our resident ProgMole™ is the living poster child for.
– On that front there is no point in responding to the falsehoods being spewed by Slappy, other than it may make you feel better just to type the words. Settled science doesn’t exist for very long as it happens, which is why living by phoney perceptions is so temporary and unsatifying in the end.
– All the lies and shit will all end up in their laps eventually, and they will own it.
– “Mr President, if you liked your apology you can keep it” – Dennis Miller
“The death toll on the hands of this administration will make Mao look the piker and Pol Pot a footnote at the democide site.”
Well, if you look at Malaria deaths after DDT bans became nearly global you can lay a hell of a lot of deaths at Nixon’s door. And nobody has done shit to fix it since either. That was despite the thinning egg shells things being found to have no good scientific support.
Africa right now is energy starved because US and Euro environmentalists bride their leaders to keep them that way because they love the planet so much and don’t care about actual people.
It’s fucking sad.
bride their leaders-> bribe
First, here’s Yglesias, “It’s Good That You Can’t Keep Your Insurance Plan”:
Will he be sent to the cornfield if he says it?
er, doesn’t say it.
Thus …
Senate Dems are reportedly still planning to move Landrieu’s bill forward. Apparently they don’t believe in Dear Leader’s “fix” either.
Don’t worry, Barry. Slaphead will never abandon you. He’ll be writing “Mrs. Barack Hussein Obama” (with the i dotted with a little heart) on his Pee Chee folders for many years to come, I’ll warrant.
As far as impeachment goes, Weepy and the Brown Pants Gnomes in Congress think the articles against Holder are A Distraction. I have my own assessment.
“Historically black” Bowie State University cancels all student health insurance.
http://www.bowiestate.edu/campus-life/henry-wise-wellness-center/student-health-insurance-plan-/
I guess they didn’t really like their plans or something.
http://bulldogcollegian.com/how-obamacare-is-hurting-bowie-state-students/
Previous cost: $54/semester. New cost (before they decided to scrap coverage altogether): $950/semester.
Oh, but Slaphead has assured us that ZeroCare is cheaper. They must be lying. More “racist Tea Partiers”, I guess.
A bh sighting? And I missed it.
I miss you buddy!
My sons’ high-deductible plan was $100/month. Canceled. New one’s $200/month. Maternity coverage, doncha know. Plus the ponzi redistribution of wealth.
another great Founder’s applicable quote as read on Powerline this morning:
James Madison sized things up in Federalist #62:
The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?
Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many.
The Founding Fathers had an idea: severe limits on the concentration of power. You get a lot of liberty and prosperity from that, more than ever in the history of Man. But gradually the kleptocrats hoodwink you into believing that its a bad idea by appealing to your envy and sloth. And here we are.
Debbie Doubles Down
Good to see you, bh!
hey bh.
And remember, you can’t spell submarine sandwich without bh.
“There’s a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs in some cases and maybe even many cases because he’s stupider than a door knob and won’t take responsibility for anything while being a “smart ass.” There’s no question about that and it’s the kind of thing nobody ever says but everybody’s thinking it.”
I’ve been away, so has anybody mentioned yet that egalitarianism in the present context means subsidizing the sick* by punishing the healthy for their unfair competitive advantage of health?
*and by sick I mean those not so ill that maybe we just give them a pain pill**
**and by pain pill I mean an overdose of morphine
because life unworthy of living
don’chya know
Hell, why not go the full Hobbes and assert sexual rights Slaphead?
right before you eat his liver with fava beans and a nice chianti
The genetic lottery losers demand access to Jessica Biel on grounds of unfolding egalitarian right. She’s just going to have to put up with being handed around by government — for justice! (indeed, for justice she should celebrate being handed around) — and no one wants to hear a single peep out of Timberlake.
The phrase “ten foot pole” immediately springs to mind. (My allergy to stupidity is worse in person, and I would have to choke the shit out of him just to keep breathing…)
Better the pain pill rather than dying of thirst, as they do in the UK.
“C’mon, c’mon! Get on the ice floe, ya ol’ bag!”
“And no, before you spout it, more people won’t end up uninsured because of Obamacare, and they won’t, on average, end up paying more. More people will be covered, and will pay less.”
Keep f*cking that chicken, Steve.
newrouter says November 14, 2013 at 6:00 pm
well i hope some impeachment news would soften the pain
– See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=51963#comments
And then stevethelyingdouche shows up.
Maybe someday the left will send somebody with more than a double digit IQ
Above room temperature would be an improvement.
One that isn’t a college sophomore would be good too.