Megan McArdle on a bogus report concerning bankruptcies due to inadequate medical coverage:
Yet even so, their own work shows medical bankruptcies falling in the years between 2001 and 2007, which would seem to invalidate, not support, the claim that half of all bankruptcies in 2001 were driven by medical events beyond the household’s control.
Elementary googling reveals that the two doctors who co-authored this study are prominent spokespeople for Physicians for a National Health Program, and thus have an obvious agenda, one that Elizabeth Warren has not been shy about sharing. The American Journal of Medicine, which published this study, seems to have flunked Peer Review 101–I sure hope they’re more careful about controlling for background conditions when they’re talking about cures for cancer Also wearing duncecaps are the journalists who are already uncritically parroting it.
There is, of course, a large amount of terrible advocacy masquerading of social science out there, and too many journals and journalists abet it. But this is particularly troubling because Elizabeth Warren is now in charge of overseeing the TARP program for Congress. What other inconvenient facts is she shielding us from?
Considering the ongoing mismanagement of TARP, this augurs well, eh?
Via Karl, cryptozoologists concede that Crunchberrybeast may be fictional character.
White House set to appoint “Pay Czar“, with many links to left organizations.
Ridiculoso: Spanish a language without adjectives. Imagine how deprived. Truly, Sotomayor is the Clarissa Pinkola Estes of the Berobed. Fausta on her thesis and related.
The Crunchberry Beast IS real, and I have his carcass in my freezer to prove it. Watch for the press conference.
Caught him on my property eating the fruit from my crunchberry bush.
muy ridÃculo.
What!
Another effin Czar..?
For a bunch of communists, O! & Co. sure loves them some Czars…
You’d think they’d just use the term commissar…
Here’s the lunatic fringe’s dream, the beginning of the return to wage controls; or at least an attempt at that…
Since the UAW is essentially getting TARP cash, will Gettlefinger and the boys have their salaries scrutinized as well..?
Or the SEIU crew..?
These are some good questions…
I have to wonder … Obama keeps appointing this and that person. Creating new banks of federal employees. Couldn’t he merely shift some of these folks around? Gads. I had to see how many people he’s adding to the overall size of government.
Not as if we’d ever be told of that number. I mean, that would require a media that was interested.
Bob, those are good questions. And as soon as the MSM is done investigating how and why Michelle always looks so fabulous, they’ll try to answer ’em.
Now, can’t we just talk about the Victory Garden?
I would be interested to see how my Swiss employer would react to a White House official telling them how much they can or cannot pay people. I don’t remember enough Swiss/Zurich Canton dialect to recall the exact terms they would use. But they would be amusing.
I don’t remember any Swiss companies accepting TARP money.
Isn’t one of Obama’s Car Boys building a multimillion dollar mansion?
Turbo Tax Tim wasn’t talking about only TARP recipients when he started mumbling about setting pay in the financial sector, all ab initio.
Zurich Financial Services might look like a fat, rich target for a “pay czar” Swiss Re might look like they need some restrictions on all that “pay what we think people are worth” nonsense…
From the WSJ link:
“The government is also pursuing a separate revamping of financial-sector rules that could change industry compensation practices more broadly.”
and, following that:
“Mr. Feinberg will report to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, but he is expected to have wide discretion on how the rules should be interpreted. Firms likely won’t be able to appeal decisions that Mr. Feinberg makes to Mr. Geithner, according to people familiar with the matter.”
What could possibly be wrong with that?
It’s a 15 million dollar SUMMER home, SBP.
AIG, LTC, is not hard to spell and even easier to remember, just feel your wallet-pocket for the large hole.
The Boom is coming down on policy peddler’s heads (furtive pun embed).
Maybe “dacha” would be a better word, Carin.
Being a Hero of the Proletariat seems to pay pretty well, doesn’t it?
[…] Dan) Category: Leftward ho!, Near-Naked Propaganda ♦ […]
That’s so cool how you get a fishing pole.
Sotomayor is a lot impressive as a potential justice I think cause of how she’s equal parts ethnic and betitted. She was a real find.
Hey. That Crunchberry beastie looks a lot like Prince Harry! Prince Harry can pop balloons!
With his ass!!!
Just wait until I appoint an Internet Czar to shut you bitches down!
Bonuses are nobody’s damn business, least of all the government’s? Is that what you’re arguing?
John Thain a hero of yours? Thain niggled a huge bonus package for he and his cronies to be paid early and just months before the government (with your money) had to pitch $30-billion to BofA to sweeten a merger deal with the collapsing Merrill. Does that impress you? I mean as a taxpayer, sans the honorable trickiness of the legality? Most see that as basic fraud. Not you, eh?
Trucking $30-million per man out the back door right before the government has to come and bail out the place is the American way, what could possibly be wrong with that?
To be a con and to be worshiped, what a nice racket.
Ripping off our dirty socialist whore government is the future, Mr Stroke Hand! Barack Obama is one badass redistributey motherfucker like that. It’s very changey and you won’t be so complainy once him and his skeezey woman start shoveling some tasty gubmint health care your way I bet.
How do I get that Captain Crunch fishing reel?
Because give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but give him a Captain Crunch fising reel and he goes hungry and still can’t catch any fish.
Those finance industry fat-cats shouldn’t need Caesar to tell them how much, (or little), they should earn. They should follow the unselfish example of their congresspersons and senators who do their exacting and thankless tasks purely for the satisfaction of serving the people.
And before you start getting picky, our legislator’s, administrator’s and union leader’s use of luxury cars, business jets and regular trips to exotic locations for confrences and such, are purely in the service of the proletariat, and their remuneration for expenses thus incurred are small reward for their selflessness.
Dang, happy beat me to the fishing reel. He is probably the kid who woke up at 5 in the morning to fish the prizes out of the cereal boxes before his siblings.
How on earth did that woman, or any American under 50, make it out of childhood with eating a bowl of Cap’n Crunch Crunchberries?
–> without <–
Clearly, paying people what they’re worth is discriminatory and must end. Besides, congress can’t live on a $0.02/year salary.
But…Joey B says not to worry about the mismanagement of TARP…
“Comment by SBP on 6/5 @ 7:06 am #
Maybe “dacha†would be a better word, Carin.
Being a Hero of the Proletariat seems to pay pretty well, doesn’t it?”
It always did in the former Soviet Union SBP…
But then, you know, some people are simply more equal than other…
Kobe’s stroke hand…
or should I just say thor…
Whadda ya think; should Gettlefinger and the other UAW fat-cats get their salaries caspped too by the new finance CZAR..?
I mean, they’re recieving tarp monies, either directly or de facto by way of the funds use in the bailout connivane…
Or, as representatives of the glorius proletariat, are they among those who are more equal…
Jus’ curious…
So you see there is this mythical “conservative” who thinks that pay is a private concern between employer and employee and also thinks that the government “should” bailout failing companies. Hell of a load of straw there. Cartoons in the head again.
thor just wanted to cherry pick the worst example he could find and then say “see, you are in favor of that!!!!”. I just don’t want some czar to send a letter to Jim Shiro saying – sure you guys have been profitable 25 quarters in a row, but please see the attached schedule of your new compenstation levels. Oh, and the fact that we gave $185 billion or so to your biggest competitor – too bad. Oh, and we don’t care that you didn’t take any US Gov $, we want a “level playing field” [or some such half-refined Maoist flatulence].
First of all, it’s Mr. Stroke Hand to you, Mister! Secondly, yours isn’t an empty point entirely, save for the fact the unions didn’t fail, cause our economy to collapse and cost the American tax-payer a trillion-wad or two.
Gimme a terrorist fist bump. 40-points, 8-proletarian rebounds and 8-socialist assists, bitches.
Obama having implemented the worst ideas from all the worst Democratic Presidents of the 20th century is now reaching across the aisle to gather in the worst ideas from Republican Presidents also.
From the illustrious ideas of the Nixon administration comes the “wage controls”. Will he double down and do the “price controls” also? 40 years since the 1970s, which were 40 years from the 1930s.
Will there now be a new standard bearer for worst times evuh! Obama says “Yes We Can!”
Another hero of yours, Angelo, is in the news, but I could go Dick Fuld on down if you want the full monty.
They took all they could when the books were juiced up and then handed the losses to the tax-payer. That ain’t capitalism, fool, and that’s what the pay restructuring regulation hopes to fix. But go on, do the empty-headed political slant game with the others here who can’t figure out Bus. 101.
The Stroke Hand has been raised.
That’s droogies, now. Cronies just means longtime friends.
John is a friend of Angelo? John, what kind of interest rate did Angelo get you?
Sorry, Mister stroke hand…
But those same unions, and their ever increasing demands, unreasonable ones that led to compensation packages more than 150% those of their foriegn competitors an squeezed the domestic manufacturers profits, we a major factor in the bankruptcy of those companies…
Admittedly, the manufacturers agreed to these demands when they were all in high cotton-so to speak…
But what was their alternatives? They had none; the department of labor would have ordered binding arbitration had there been any serious, prolonged contract dispute accompanied by a strike…
By the way, congrats on your performance, making Kobe look great as usual!
But Kobe’s fist bumps ain’t the terrorist kind; he’s far too patriotic for that!
sorry folks, my spelling, typing, and grammer all are atrocious today…
of course, I blame Obama…
Gee, Bob, it makes you wonder why those foreign competitors also received bridge monies from their governments, you know, since they’re no unions on foreign soil.
All your cliches are crashing down like an Air France flight, Bob. Time to start looking at the real numbers and specifics, unless, of course, you believe it un-capitalistic to compete on equal footing with foreign government subsidized competitors. Don’t you think the irony a little thick when you hold up foreign union-dominated work forces as those to be admired all while you shit on ours.
You’ll get Economics one day, even the stripped of politics type, I have faith in you.
Kobe is a card carrying member of his players’ union and was born in the land of Italo Calvino, a freakin’ enemy Cuban Red motherfuckin’ Marxist.
Whatever you say, Mr. Stroke. Is that a reference to your hobby or the cause of your intellectual disability?
No, he’s not Cuban he would have a quarter of a clue now. AIG has nothing to do with union, you twit, it’s called international for a reason, C.V. Starr, got most of his start, in China, and then joined the OSS. No adjectives, in Spanish, huh, well it certainly doesn’t apply to some of the words I’m thinking up now. Honestly no one questioned her about this.
Temporary sanity overwhelmed you on the Penske thread, Pablo. Could it be something you ate?
Why are ya’ll arguing with another whor sockpuppet?
Mister Stroke Hand,
You mistake a bit of what I wrote. Indeed the foreign manufacturers deal with very strong unions in their home countries, that was a strong motivator to manufacturing here-in addition to avoiding the import taxes; and that they have no choice but to deal with their unions also is a matter of fact…
I had a unique insight in a European car company’s POV, since one of my former longtime girlfriends workerd for Daimler when they were building their first Mercedes factory in Alabama. At a party I attended near Stuttgart, where the Alabamians were being trained, I had the opportunity to ask an executive why they would undertake such an expense since,frankly, their government subsidized so many exports. His answer was revealing…
He mentioned the German equivalent of the UAW,, and their very strong position vis-a-vis the company. He noted that they were forced to provide unlimited sick leave, and as a result approxiamtely 20% of the total workforce was absent on any given day. He also mentioned the mandated minimum of 6 weeks vacation per year, which by law escalated with longevity. And, he mentioned the exceptional industrial productivity of the Americsn workers, along with the lucrative tax incentives that Alabama had offered…
In short, it was an offer that Daimler couldn’t refuse! And, although the UAW had rapacious demands, they were far less an influence on their bottom line than their German counterpart…
As far as subsidies; most foreign governments do it. But it’s like industrial crack, in my humble opinion. I think that industry is most innovative, when under financial pressure to be such; Ford is an excellent example of that today. They saw the crunch coming a couple years ago and sold everything extraneous and streamlined their operation so as to avoid the straight that GM and Chrysler found themselves in…
So, I don’t admire foreign union dominated work forces at all, nor their government’s prediliction to subsidize industries. I think that in all but the most rare circumstances, surrounding defense related industries, that corporate welfare, like most other types, is to be avoided at all costs.
You msy have the opinion that we should do it simply because the others do. But, I think our industries will be more innovative, flexible, and competitive if we don’t. And, we won’t have to bare all of the social entitlement burdens that those other societies do, and their concomitant exhorbitant tax rates…
So, I kinda think I get economics now, bereft of any idealistic sugarcoatings to boot!
Good luck Sunday, Mister stroke hand!
More of the same thor – see, these guys are your hereos!!11!.
Angelo deserves to be staked to an ant hill whilst smeared with honey – alongside a couple of Dem Senators too…
My whole point is the CZAR o’ Pay is already getting put out there as ‘maybe more than just TARP’. As Turbo Tax Tim has muttered about before. That is crap and shouldn’t happen.
It’s a little something I call “objectivity”, whor. You might want to look into it.
thor, don’t eat the crunchberries in your underwear…they are spoiled.
“Comment by Kobe’s Stroke Hand on 6/5 @ 6:39 am #
I don’t remember any Swiss companies accepting TARP money.”
Lots of Swiss banks are getting it via the UAW and SEIU.
Angelo was also on BHO’s Vice Presidential search & vetting team, until his “unique” knowledge proved to be too cumbersome.
You’ve got this part right, but the focus of your outrage is misplaced.
The opportunity for this should never have arisen. Because the Federal Government has no authority to be conducting these bailouts to begin with.
Not happy with teh deal you described? Sure–makes perfect sense. But the possibility of the deal could have been completely avoided if the government had remained in it’s own lane–yet you give that a pass.
They took all they could when the books were juiced up and then handed the losses to the tax-payer.
And your boy Barry was right there to cover their fucking tracks and bail them out.
That ain’t capitalism, fool…
Right. Exactly fucking right. Wonder of wonders, you finally got something right. But if you know it isn’t capitalism, why do you keep using these examples to indict capitalism?
Did you get that last bit, thor? Let me bold it for you:
If you know it isn’t capitalism, why do you keep using these examples to indict capitalism?
B Moe, if you know it’s whor, why are you arguing with it?
Damn, after Kobe’s Stroke Hand was raised in your direction you speak? Best you respect the Stroke Hand! Ask the Orlando Magic.
Your de-regulation Republican meme bullshit created the playing field that Bernie Madoff and AIG exploited, not to mention Enron. Only a friggin’ fool couldn’t/wouldn’t recognize the obviousness of that.
Yeah, John, if you’re in the insurance business or the financial services business you’re going to be regulated more. I don’t have the time right now to explain the trillion or two reasons why. Seems you could figure it out on your own, I mean, you’re not totally blinded by failed narratives of the past are ya? Dob’t you occasionally read the WSJ?
Spanish a language without adjectives.
So I spent five years of my life lying to Freshmen.
I can live with that.
Maybe because responding to you is like beating a Norwegian Blue on a counter top.
For a bunch of communists, O! & Co. sure loves them some Czars…
Did you get that from Glenn Beck? Because I saw his show last night at a movie theater, and I had me some good belly laughs. One of his lines was an observation on the irony of Pravda (the real one) criticizing the U.S. for rushing headlong into socialism while Obama keeps appointing czars (or tsars, depending on the crossword puzzle).
He also observed that Tim Geithner looks rather elvin, so he has to keep reminding himself that the elves were the good guys in LOTR.
Guess you had to be there.
So, my take away, thor’s attempted misdirection aside, is that he thinks the “Pay Czar” setting salaries in non-TARP receiving companies is fine.
If only he would just say so.
Capitalism isn’t whatever fraud one can get away with. To prevent fraud one regulates capitalist entities. This one’s pretty simple, folks.
If you want to see the encore performance of Glenn’s KC performance, you can get tix here. If you like Glenn, you’ll like this stage show.
No crying. Serious.
Genworth didn’t do its paperwork in time to get its TARP candy, MetLife chose not to participate in TARP, that doesn’t mean these two companies should be immune to blanket industry oversight that includes Exec pay caps or regs.
It’s not fair to tax-payers to have to line the pockets of a few when they’re ultimately on the hook when those few prove to be either entirely incompetent or fraudsters. In the end these CEOs are speculating with the tax-payers’ money.
Capitalism isn’t whatever fraud one can get away with. To prevent fraud one regulates capitalist entities. This one’s pretty simple, folks.
Bullshit. To prevent fraud, you pass laws making fraud illegal, then prosecute and punish offenders. All “regulations” do is provide loopholes and government co-conspirators for criminals to hide behind.
To prevent fraud one regulates capitalist entities. This one’s pretty simple, folks.
Not all regulations are created equal. If you’re talking about laws against fraud, theft, etc., then there’s no problem. None whatsoever.
But the more the gubmint tries to interfere with companies beyond that, the more those companies spend on lobbying in Washington. Microcrash and Wal-Mart used to not have lobbyists. Then after the lawsuit and the complaints from unions, both companies invested in lobbyists.
If you’re using the paradigm of capitalism as the uncontrolled nuclear reaction and gubmint as the control rods, that’s totally wrong. What we’ve got (and what we’ve been heading for) is corporatism, when Labor, Big Biz, gubmint, Special Interests, et al., sit at the table and decide what they’re going to do to the rest of us.
It’s what distinguishes fascism from socialism. Ask Thomas Sowell or Jonah Goldberg. They know.
Thomas Sowell and Jonah Goldberg are wrong.
But they have written books, thor! More books than Obama even.
The men are too big! The men are too strong!
Thomas Sowell and Jonah Goldberg are wrong.
Demonstrate.
You’re arguing capitalism, democracy and fraud co-exist because fraud can’t be stopped. Sort’a dumb on its face.
Educate yourself, that would require reading the counter arguments to Messrs Sowell and Goldberg. But no book reports, please.
Man-o-man, you so deserve the sting of the Stroke Hand for that O! blasphemy.
You’re arguing capitalism, democracy and fraud co-exist because fraud can’t be stopped. Sort’a dumb on its face.
No one is arguing that here but you.
The inference being that fraud cannot exist in totalitarian, socialist state is equally as silly.
Good news, thor, is that Steve Jobs is going back to work. The recession will be over in no time.
What OTT said. Any system is susceptible to fraud, what is important is keeping the policing agency as isolated from the economic system as possible. Intertwining government and business and then expecting the government to police itself is dumbest of all. What you are advocating, and what is happening now, is like putting the bookies in Vegas in charge of NBA refs.
“It’s not fair to tax-payers to have to line the pockets of a few ….”
Yeah, what hav union bosses ever done to deserve taxpayer money.
Other thatn break a few legs, I mean.
Right, whore?
How do you know when you’re eating in a union owned restaurant?
“Comment by Kobe’s Stroke Hand on 6/5 @ 2:08 pm #
Thomas Sowell and Jonah Goldberg are wrong.”
As if you’d know, whore.
“The inference being that fraud cannot exist in totalitarian, socialist state is equally as silly.”
Reactionary leftist socialism IS a fraud.
C’mon Sticky, time to wash up!
Back to the topic of this thread, as soon as I heard the reports regarding bankruptcy and medical bills, I knew it was prepping the battleground for nationalized health care.
Wouldn’t be the first time a political agenda was called “news.”
thor is suffering from the delusion that nothing can touch him. That because the site owner doesn’t have the time or the technical resources to track back through his fake IP’s, because he can switch aliases enough to evade Trollhammer, and is too much of a gaping asshole to respect the owner’s wishes and stop trespassing on Jeff’s intellectual property, all we can do is sit here and listen to his vile spewings. And that may be true for now. However, it will not be true forever. Bank on it.
Why are you people talking to whor?
Yes, knee deep in foul muck, I’m here in O’Brain’s head. This is where P’brain’s evil thoughts start and at this moment I’m pondering how his hideous mountain of shit in lieu of cortex came to be. During nine months of vaginal constipation, bowels must have burst and violated the embryonic sac. In French literary circles they might describe it as le manure absurd, and it looks like an oyster, an ugly sticky oyster-looking brown turd. The violation of the nostrils is unique, imagine the smell of a 50-year-old embalmed diarrhea. P’Brain’s brain smells worse; it smells, frankly, like a turd holocaust, like a million prostitutes squatting and shitting inside your snout.
I’ll report back later, I need a breath of air.
Like I said, why are you people talking to whor?
For that matter, why are whor’s comments allowed to remain on this site?
Have you read Musil’s A Man Without Qualities, hick-Rob? You need to.
Have you read Mitchell’s Joe Gould’s Secret, emotionally troubled pseudo-intellectual thor? You need to.
Hey Carin, you know that hearing I watched? Mr. Hall mentioned that the Fed is actually down something like 7000 people for May, but he didn’t consider that a massive change.
Yeah, I know I sometimes exaggerate the hickish nature of Republicans now that they’ve dwindled down to being viable only in the Confederacy. But not with SDN. With this one you just know he was born way to close to a backwoods latrine.
SDN, gee, now what could that stand for? Stupid, Dumb, Ni… nah, I can’t say that word. Sick, demented, ni… damn, hmm, again. Slimy, dickless, Ne… Jesus, I’m suffering from the limits of language.
too
It’s not a language boundary that you’re up against, thor.
the sting of the Stroke Hand
Gimp grip.
Trust me.
And yet you all keep giving him the attention he craves.
Do you need a hug and a cherry Blowpop, Rob?
I’m sorry but your list of who should be spoken to is, itself, being ignored. Be perceptive.