Posts Made By: James C Chandler Jr

In addition to the IRS issues, I don't like the central repository of electronic medical records. Now that could never become a security issue, could it? Such things are never hacked...

Does anyone know if it is possible to opt-out of central electronic medical records? How could such a thing be constitutional sans an opt-out provision?

Am not against electronic records. Am against central storage. Lemme keep the only copy of my records on an encrypted USB stick. I'll tote the USB stick to each doctor appt. If I lose the stick, its my own fault.

It just gets my goat on general principles. If central storage is implemented and I can't opt out, I'll just lie to the doctor whenever possible. Just on general principle.

Yes, BHO is being cunning and he is only pretending to be "whacking at geese with a rake."

The lobbyist thang is freedom of speech. If you force out 'special interest groups' from negotiating for policy via lobbyist representation, the congress critters are free to do whatever idiocy comes to mind 'in a vacuum'.

During Clinton's reign, lobbyists from Planned Parenthood or Brady Center were public-minded generous representatives of all the millions of concerned citizens sending their little checks to those special interests. It was cool for democrats to soak up that money.

But the NRA was an Evil Gun Lobby, though the NRA funding also comes from little checks sent by millions of concerned citizens, just like the 'noble' Planned Parenthood.

Just leave it alone and let em all duke it out.

Odds are that the highest expertise in Oil tech, is in the Oil industry. Odds are that the highest expertise in Drug tech, is in the Drug industry. Odds are that the highest expertise in Doctoring comes from doctors. If the current King's expertise only consists of community organizing and teleprompter reading, I'm guessing the Drug industry can probably offer more workable solutions than the King.

Paul Kammueller said:

Submitted for debate and amusement:

The case for inflation
1) M1 growth 17% last 12 months, M2 up 9%
2) Price of gold still showing strength
3) Deficits, bailouts and so forth

The case for disinflation
1) Shrinking consumer and mortgage credit
2) Collapse in commodity prices from last year (but for gold)
3) Baltic Dry Index chart showing signs of decay

Do they even out to some kind of 'middling' path? If not, which horse are you betting on?

Hi Paul

I revived this thread to ask a question about something you said earlier this summer--

"The money aggregates tell the story. M1 is growing furiously, especially paper currency itself (which is unusual in recent history) but M2 is going nowhere. Flooding the street with money is ultimately just a way to try to keep the wheels on the wagon and allow a historically high consumer debt load to slowly unwind. "

Wikipedia appears to classify cash as M0:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply

"M0: Notes and coins (currency) in circulation and in bank vaults, plus reserves which commercial banks hold in their accounts with the central bank (minimum reserves and excess reserves)."

OK, what are practical or psychological factors that would spur a recent increase of paper currency?

I can only think of one unimaginative explanation:

Simple accidents such as satellite failure or network crash can break credit cards for days or longer. I've experienced credit cards outages due to network crash. In addition, banks still routinely fail, and it is not inconceivable that even now we could have localized bank runs or bank holidays.

Long time wisdom of the paranoid: Stock at least a month's supply of food, water, fuel, and cash.

For years I've been dependent on the convenience of the debit card and would be lucky to find three bucks in the wallet. Recently began stocking a few $20 bills 'just in case'. Bank interest rates are a joke and therefore money in the mattress evaporates only marginally faster than money in a bank account-- And you can access cash in the mattress 24/7 even during internet outages or natural disaster.

However that seems too 'paranoid' reasoning to go mainstream? This doesn't seem adequate to explain a big growth of M0? Seems unlikely that a lot of citizens would spontaneously decide to stuff some cash in the mattress?

Surely there are more likely explanations for M0 growth?

Great shot, Lee.

Hope that was a telephoto shot . Down at the Redneck Riviera, the park ranger said those guys can move real fast if they get a mind to...

HillaryCare plan relied heavily on HMO concept. If Hillary had got her way, you would be stuck with it, and it would have been illegal to buy the test out of your own pocket. If the HMO disallowed the test, you couldn't get the test except on the black market.

You can sue an HMO or other insurance company. You can't usually sue the govt. With govt healthcare, if they don't do what you like you will be SOL.

Doctors have to fill out lots of forms and wait long time for Medicare. Car dealers were promised clunker payment in 10 days, and now they have to wait til end of Sept. Yeah, payments will be so much slicker if the govt handles it!

Rod Kaufman said:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/09/obama.speech/index.html
I liked his proposal on a market place interchange for healthcare insurance, quite innovative and ought to appeal to both Republicans and Democrats.

Hi Rod

A marketplace interchange-- How exactly would that be different than looking under "Insurance" in the yellow pages, which anyone can do nowadays? Hmm, what about letting folks buy health insurance across state lines, over the internet?

About the only thing I agree is about pre-existing conditions. That itself would drive up the price of insurance rather drastically, but seems necessary in some form.

The idea of imposing minimum requirements on insurance policies, will drive prices sky-high. Much worse than simply negating pre-existing conditions. Every required test and checkup will ding up the minimum practical premium prices. If the insurance company is REQUIRED to pay for routine checkups or routine colonoscopies, then they have to charge for it so they can pay it back to the customers. All the extra required coverage is what drives up your insurance costs in CA.

I wonder if the psychological factor of folks who want really elaborate insurance, is that a lot of folks expect insurance ought to pay back more than they expect to pay in premiums? Not everybody can get higher benefits than they pay for. For each person who gets more insurance than he paid for, other folks must pay more premiums than benefits. Thats just how insurance works and otherwise it ain't gonna be solvent.

In fact, since the majority of health expense is incurred by only about 5 or 10 percent of really sick folks, more than 9 out of 10 folks must pay more than they receive or it ain't gonna be solvent. So a marvelous wonderful insurance policy that pays a healthy guy's routine healthcare for a few thousand a year, and also can afford to pay for all the seriously ill-- Dang the healthy guy is gonna get a heck of an insurance bill.

Another way to look at it-- Currently healthcare is 1/6 of the economy. The economy (gross domestic product) is roughly equivalent to everybody's aggregate income. Various aspects are measured with slightly different rules, but aggregate income is roughly equivalent to GDP.

Divide aggregate income by number of folks and the current Average Salary is about $50,000 (check CIA Fact Book). Some folks make billions and others make nothing, and it averages to $50,000.

So if the healthcare is 1/6 of the economy, in order to pay his 'fair share', each guy needs to pay 0.167 * salary. The average guy with the $50,000 salary has a 'fair share' medical obligation of $8,333 per year. Even if that guy never goes to the doctor that year.

If you make $100,000, your fair share is $16,667 per year.

If you make insurance companies pay for more stuff, folks will get more of that 'free' stuff, and eventually the healthcare will grow to become 1/5 of the economy, then 1/4, then 1/3, etc.

The above apply regardless if individuals pay, or government pays (after taxing you for the money), or employers pay (by under-paying employees in order to pay the insurance). Regardless of who writes the check to the doctor, it ultimately comes out of your own pocket.

david elosser said:

Health care reform is a VERY important issue, is it not? I think it is. However...

"Viewership to last night’s [joint] address [to Congress] was down 38.6% from President Obama’s first address to a joint session of Congress on February 24, which aired from approximately 9:00PM to 10:30PM."

Looks like roughly one in ten Americans thought his joint address to Congress about health care reform was important enough to watch.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/31-8-million-watch-president-obamas-health-care-address-to-congress-on-tv/

David E

If we were still back in the 1950's with three TV channels, the public would be in open rebellion from all these commandeered speeches, especially folk below the age of 21. All the big 3 ditched regular (popular) programming for yet another presidential ego trip.

BHO should be relieved that folk now have sufficient channels to side-step his propaganda. Otherwise, he would already be one of the most unpopular folks in the USA, just by ruining the TV evenings of so many americans.

I'm not at all a serious nerdy astronomer, just like seeing pretty stuff in the sky. GOTO is nice but my yard is so obscured by trees that an 'uneducated' GOTO is much more likely to aim at a tree than sky.

Often I like just manually scanning the narrow strip of sky available, lookin around at what there is to see. The nice thing about the GOTO is that once aligned, it tracks anything I manually point to.

The SCT's might be 'less wiggly' on any particular class of mount, compared to newts or refractors, because SCT's are stubby and will have a lower moment of torsion than longer scopes on the same mount. The long scopes are more likely to become 'oscillating pendulums' at high magnification, because of the bigger moment of torsion.

Many SCT's don't want to display much more than about 1 degree max of sky (FOV). It is easy to piggyback a small refractor to solve that problem.

$8.5 billion stimulus money to ACORN. Your tax money at work. We're from the govt and we're here to help you.

Rod, that is insufficient dehumanization of political opponents. Alinsky would be ashamed of such ham-handed effort.

Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

You need to implement much better-quality ridicule. This ridicule is laughably ineffective. But one must keep in mind rule 7--

Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag.