War: first one hopes to win: then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.
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At Monday’s White House briefing, a reporter challenged Press Secretary Jay Carney, “if you . . . hit the ‘login’ button . . . it does take you to that screen where you’re asked to leave an email and come back later. That seems to be coming up . . . all day long. . . . is that going to be acceptable if that’s the norm for a lot of people for an extended period of time?”
“What I think is important to note,” Carney responded (repeating himself and blathering a bit) “. . . is that we have a queuing system made for a better user experience so that individuals could get in that queue, could be notified when was the best time to return to healthcare.gov and enroll, if they so desired.”
Desired? We’ve been legally required to purchase insurance. Obamacare-supporting politicians keep talking about all the “demand,” but when folks are forced by law to buy a product, penalized for not, that’s hardly true demand.
After writing that “the functionality of the site does appear to have improved considerably,” the New Yorker’s John Cassidy admits, “However, I didn’t get the opportunity to submit an application, or even to choose a plan. After filling in forms and fiddling around for about forty minutes, I reached a screen that said, ‘You have started an application for health coverage, but our verification system is temporarily unavailable.’”
For those who somehow miraculously navigate the website, the Washington Post reports, “errors cumulatively have affected roughly one-third of the people who have signed up for health plans since Oct. 1. . . .”
Also revealed this week: security was not built into the site, and retrofitting it in could take years.
It turns out that Big Government 3.0 is no more advanced than Web 1.0.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.
On December 4, 1783, at Fraunces Tavern in New York City, General George Washington formally bade his officers farewell.
The obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people.
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December 03, end of Cold War
On December 3, 1989, the leaders of the two world superpowers, the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, declared an end to the Cold War, at a summit in Malta. A little over two years later not only had the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union was itself dissolved.
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Stop Digging
If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
When it comes to pension systems, the State of Illinois appears shovel in hand, digging to the bottom. The state’s five public employee retirement systems face a combined unfunded liability of $100 billion dollars; they have only 40 percent of what they need to pay the benefits politicians negotiated with public employee unions — the lowest funding level of any state.
The Daily Herald, a suburban Chicago-area paper, calls a spade a spade: “The shortfall is due largely to decades of legislators skipping or shorting the state’s pension payments — a practice that allowed them to spend that money elsewhere.”
Today, Illinois’ legislators will trudge into Springfield for an expected vote to fix the broken system.
“This deal was made by Speaker Madigan and other politicians behind closed doors,” charges Illinois Policy Institute CEO John Tillman, who fears it makes matters worse.
The bizarre attempt at a fix allows the Legislature to be sued before the Illinois Supreme Court if it fails to make its required ongoing contributions into the pension fund.
The legislation also contains a guarantee clause prioritizing pension payouts before most other state spending. As Tillman says, “Not caring for the poor. Not public safety. Not education.”
And a much ballyhooed option for employees to switch to a 401(k)-style plan turns out to allow only 5 percent of employees to so choose, blocking the rest.
Pay what was promised, but stop digging! Move new workers to 401(k) style plans they can own, with employer contributions handed over every pay period.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The good news? Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke is getting the boot. The bad news? His replacement looks no better.
Last Thursday, the Senate Banking committee voted to place Janet Yellen as head of the Federal Reserve. The full body of august solons is expected to confirm this nomination, electing her as head honcho and chief cook (kook?) at the nation’s quasi-private/quasi-public central bank.
I am sure there are folks who look on this passing of the baton with a sort of patriotic piety. I know there are Democrats who rejoice in a banker referred to by Reuters as “a monetary policy dove who puts more weight on driving down high unemployment than the risk this will ignite future inflation. . . .”
Of course, the Fed has already pumped trillions into the system. A burgeoning employment boom has not resulted. To say the least.
Reviewing the current situation, and the likely appointment, economist Gerarld P. O’Driscoll, Jr., reminds us of the big truth about those who push at the Veil of Money: “the Fed is not capable of stimulating job creation, at least not in a sustained way over time.” What the Fed has succeeded in doing, in recent years, is prop up our benighted federal government’s continuing crisis of over-spending: “Congress and the president have been spared a fiscal crisis, and thus repeatedly punted on fiscal reform.”
Problem is, no one really believes debt accumulation or monetary back-up make for a sustainable policy: at some point, O’Driscoll tells us, rising interest rates will “precipitate a crisis.”
I wouldn’t want to be in charge at the Fed when that happens.
So, some sympathy for Ms. Yellen.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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December 02, Monroe Doctrine
On December 2, 1823, U.S. President James Monroe delivered a speech establishing American neutrality in future European conflicts. The policy became known as the Monroe Doctrine.
In 1930 on this date, Gary Becker was born. An American economist, in 1992 he was awarded the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. His work on human capital, population theory, the theory of consumption, and much else put him at the top of the Chicago School in Economics.
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C. S. Lewis
Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.