Archive for 2014

TECH OVERLORDS SUDDENLY CAST AS BAD GUYS: Anti-tech protesters target Google Ventures partner Kevin Rose.

Protesters stood with signs and handed out flyers outside of a Google Ventures partner and entrepreneur’s home in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood Sunday, calling him a “parasite” and a “leech.”

Flyers passed out at the protest said that Kevin Rose, 37, who founded Digg and several other web companies before joining Google Ventures, accelerates the growth of tech wealth in the city by investing in startups.

“Accelerates the growth of tech wealth in the city by investing in startups.” Quelle horreur! Two points: (1) Hero to villain and the election only a year ago; and (2) When Tea Party groups show up at lefties’ homes with pitchforks, I don’t want the national press to suddenly decide that this is something new, unprecedented, and horrible. Though, of course, that’s what they’ll do.

Okay, one more point: Anything successful, lefties will ultimately try to drag down. Because, at core, their politics are based on envy, resentment, and a wholly-earned sense of inferiority. Meanwhile, perhaps I’ll send some remedial reading to Mr. Rose. It may resonate differently now.

I FOUGHT THE LAW OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND, and the law won.

CARL CANNON: Mr. President, I have news for you.

When a president campaigns for his sweeping new law while claiming repeatedly that it won’t impact those who already have health insurance—and this turns out to be utterly false—that is news.

When the same president repeatedly assures voters who already have insurance that they can keep their doctors—and wins re-election while stressing this fallacious claim—that is news.

When it turns out that the federal government, despite a three-year rollout, isn’t competent enough to provide the service it is making people purchase – yes, that is news. If it keeps happening in the future, sorry, Mr. President, that is news.

When the president states that 7.1 million Americans signed up via the government-run health care exchanges because of his own selfless efforts and those of his allies—but his administration claims it has no idea how many of those people enrolled because their private sector plans were canceled—that is news.

When respected third party organizations estimate that between two-thirds and three-fourths of those who bought the government plan did so because their previous plan was canceled due to the Affordable Care Act—that is also news.

Anecdotal evidence is cited by advocates on both sides of Obamacare, and when those anecdotes are true, they are certainly relevant to the conversation. So when the president relates the accounts of Americans who consider this law a godsend, that shouldn’t be taken lightly. But those testimonials flow both ways. Obama took no questions from the press in the Rose Garden, despite modern journalism being a two-way conversation. And one veteran White House correspondent, RealClearPolitics’ Alexis Simendinger, received a terse tweet in response to her story about the president’s event.

“Yet I’m one of those signups and I think the law is terrible,” it read. “Cancelled. Premium up. Deductible up. Lost access to doctor.”

And, yes, that is news, too.

Indeed it is.