CHARLES BLAHOUS: A Guide to the 2014 Medicare Trustees Report.
Archive for 2014
August 6, 2014
ELECTING DE BLASIO WAS CERTAINLY A MOVE IN THAT DIRECTION: Is New York the Next Detroit?
The core problem is that returns have not tracked with the city’s optimistic projections. In 2012, the city finally lowered its projected return to 7 percent from 8 percent, but after decades of excessive optimism, that left it with a giant hole; the payments had to be stretched out over more than two decades in order to minimize the fiscal hit. Yet this still may not be enough; it’s possible that 7 percent is still too rosy.
Like many state and local pension funds, the city has tried to make up the difference between its projections and what the market actually delivered by plunging into higher-risk investments. Those more complicated investments came with higher fees . . . and the possibility of big losses. The city seems to have taken at least one major bath, on a private equity fund that closed in 2011.
A lot of people would like the city to return to more conservative investments managed by in-house managers; former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg . . . oversaw an effort to move in that direction a few years back. But one major thing is standing in the way: politics. It’s not just the fiscal hit that the city would take from adopting a less risky, more realistic approach; it’s also opposition from unions. . . .
In New York, reports the Times, the unions don’t want to move to more conservative pension accounting, because if they do, the city will be required to put more money into the pot . . . and the taxpaying public might mobilize against the union workers who put them in this spot.
Of course, putting it off will ultimately just make the problem worse; the inexorable logic of compounding is just not very forgiving.
The Gods Of The Copybook Headings will not be denied. And the motto for this decade seems to be “something that can’t go on forever, won’t.”
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DESPERATION, thy name is Mark Udall (D-CO). “The public opinion surveys are only one metric that indicates that this race is competitive. Another is the incumbent’s behavior, and Udall’s camp is sending the signals that this race is too close for comfort. This pattern of behavior is best exemplified in this latest ad which resurrects 2012’s War on Women with all the grace and prudence of Dr. Victor Frankenstein.”
REMEMBER WHEN THEY WERE SELLING OBAMA ON THE BASIS OF COMPETENCE? $619 billion missed from federal transparency site.
A government website intended to make federal spending more transparent was missing at least $619 billion from 302 federal programs, a government audit has found.
And the data that does exist is wildly inaccurate, according to the Government Accountability Office, which looked at 2012 spending data. Only 2% to 7% of spending data on USASpending.gov is “fully consistent with agencies’ records,” according to the report.
Among the data missing from the 6-year-old federal website:
• The Department of Health and Human Services failed to report nearly $544 billion, mostly in direct assistance programs like Medicare. The department admitted that it should have reported aggregate numbers of spending on those programs.
• The Department of the Interior did not report spending for 163 of its 265 assistance programs because, the department said, its accounting systems were not compatible with the data formats required by USASpending.gov. The result: $5.3 billion in spending missing from the website.
• The White House itself failed to report any of the programs it’s directly responsible for. At the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which is part of the White House, officials said they thought HHS was responsible for reporting their spending.
For more than 22% of federal awards, the spending website literally doesn’t know where the money went. The “place of performance” of federal contracts was most likely to be wrong.
That’s a problem, said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.
Gee, do you think?
WELL, HE’S ONLY GOING TO PULL VOTES FROM CHARLIE CRIST IF HE CAN MANAGE TO APPEAL TO IDIOTS: Libertarian Poised to Be a Spoiler in Florida — But for Whom?
IF YOU WANT THE RATS TO STOP LEAVING, YOU NEED TO STOP THE SHIP FROM SINKING: U.S. policymakers gird for rash of corporate expatriations. “Washington policymakers are bracing for a wave of corporations to renounce their U.S. citizenship over the next few months, depriving the federal government of billions of dollars in tax revenue and stoking public outrage ahead of the Nov. 4 congressional elections.”
I guess if you want them to demonstrate “economic patriotism,” you need to get Obama to do so first.
MOVING THE GOALPOSTS: OUT: “Obamacare Will Lower Your Premiums!” IN: “Obamacare Won’t Raise Your Premiums THAT Much!” “That’s right. You wingnuts said the weekly chocolate ration would be reduced, but it actually increased from 30 grams to 25!”
LIZ PEEK: The Real Reason Obama Wants Amnesty For Illegals. “Obama’s standing has shriveled among Hispanics, and he’s desperate for a win with Latinos who do not reliably turn out for midterm elections. What could better drive Hispanics to vote for Democrat candidates in November than an amnesty gift from our embattled president?”
If the GOP — or donor groups — were smart, they’d be running ads on Hispanic media slamming Obama for deportations and for bad conditions among all the warehoused immigrants. If.
SEN. PAT ROBERTS BEAT MILT WOLF, though it was closer than some expected. But even an unsuccessful primary challenge has its value. One thing that helped Roberts, I think, is that he’s been strongly anti-amnesty all along, which took a big issue off the table for Wolf. Meanwhile, Justin Amash easily survived an establishment attempt to get rid of him.
UPDATE: From the comments: “I notice that article pushes the lie that Todd Akin was a Tea Party candidate, when nothing could have been further from the truth. He got elected because the Democrats campaigned for him (as he was a weak opponent) and the conservative vote with split between someone Sarah Palin endorsed and a Tea Party candidate.” Good point.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Dan Riehl is not amused. “Only able to capture 48% of their own vote, the Republican establishment did not emerge energized and victorious out of Kansas last night – what it did was throw just enough money at Kansas to enable an aging, out of touch politician to cling to power for just a few more years.”
ROGER KIMBALL: From Apathy To Dependence. “I am writing from beautiful, dynamic Sydney, Australia, whose 4.5 million polyglot inhabitants are enjoying the no-nonsense good government of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who recently signaled his refreshing sanity by abolishing the country’s stupid “carbon tax,” aka, its tax on prosperity. There’s no hope that Barack Obama will ever proceed from his Romper Room of moralistic environmentalism to that state of enlightenment, but then we will not have Obama with us that much longer. May we hope that, at last, the American people are waking up to the economic nightmare that decades of fiscal incontinence have prepared for the country. Again, I offer free and for nothing the idea of a grass roots organization whose high purpose is summed up in its title ThrowTheBumsOut.Org.”
Plus:
By coincidence, a friend sent me this observation from a 19th-century Scottish professor of history:
In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of The Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior: “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover That they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.”
Tyler went on to suggest that democracies tended to go through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.I don’t agree that this process is necessary or inevitable. But seeing it laid out like that does make you sit up and take notice. “From apathy to dependence.” Sound familiar?
That’s pretty much the Democrats’ platform these days.
FLIP OR FLOP? Obama Was For Tax Inversions Before He Was Against Them.
WORRIED ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING? THEN HERE’S GOOD NEWS: Nuclear startup Transatomic Power scores seed funding from Founders Fund. “The Founders Fund is the firm behind some of the more successful Internet startups out there including Facebook, Yammer and Spotify, but also some science-focused companies such as Climate Corporation, Space-X and satellite startup Planet Labs. The fund, which was created by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and his partners, promotes this manifesto: ‘we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.'”
ROSS DOUTHAT ON OBAMA AND PRESIDENTIAL UNILATERALISM: “Imagine George W. Bush directing the IRS to add private accounts to Social Security after Congressional Democrats rejected entitlement reform.” The press would have treated it like the second coming of Hitler. If Obama unilaterally grants amnesty, the press will treat it like the second coming of FDR.
Just remember that FDR put a bunch of people behind barbed wire unilaterally, and they cheered that, too.
EVERYTHING’S SEXIST IF IT HURTS THE DEMOCRATS’ NARRATIVE, UNLESS IT’S RACIST. Telling Nancy Pelosi to do research is sexist, or something.
If you’re thinking about telling House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to do some research on an issue, you’re a sexist. How dare you.
At least, that’s what Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., thinks. That’s what she told MSNBC host Al Sharpton on “PoliticsNation” late Monday regarding a confrontation between Pelosi and Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., last Friday. Marino had told Pelosi to “do the research” on how she handled immigration as speaker, which made Pelosi cross the aisle to confront Marino.
Asked for her reaction to what she described as a personal attack on Pelosi, Schakowsky called Marino “sexist.”
“I would say that it’s sexist and that it was patronizing,” Schakowsky said. She then deepened her voice as if to mock Marino, and repeated his own words: “Do the research, Madame Leader.” . . .
Pelosi took the unusual step of literally crossing the aisle, finger wagging, to confront Marino and inform him that he was lying and that Democrats passed the Dream Act when they controlled Congress. It isn’t clear exactly what Pelosi said as she crossed, but Marino answered into the microphone.
“Yes it is true,” Marino told her. “I did the research on it. You might want to try it. You might want to try it, Madame Leader. Do the research on it. Do the research. I did it. That’s one thing that you don’t do.”
The day’s designated speaker, Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., informed Marino that he should address his comments to the House. Marino responded, “It works both ways” and urged Congress to pass the bill.
Pelosi reportedly told Marino he was “insignificant,” which caused him to respond on Twitter.
See, when she did that Pelosi was just being a Strong Fearless Woman.TM
DAVID HARSANYI: Have You Taken Your Obama Loyalty Oath? Or do you hate America?
UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF OUR “LIGHTWORKER” PRESIDENT: U.S. terrorism database doubled in recent years. “A vast government database, which serves as a repository for raw intelligence about terrorist suspects or their associates, has nearly doubled in the past five years to include 1.1 million people by the end of last year, according to data released by the National Counterterrorism Center. The same database, known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), contained about 560,000 names at the end of 2009, following the failed Christmas Day attempt to blow up a commercial airliner over Detroit.”
The new additions are probably all Tea Partiers.
LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: WSJ Poll: 76% of Americans Think Their Children’s Lives Will Be Worse.
Related: Millennials’ Jobs Getting Outsourced to Their Grandparents.
LAW ENFORCEMENT: Busted For Being A Good Driver. I suspect this is actually a problem with database field identification or something.
August 5, 2014
THIS IS UNFAIR. PAYING FOR SEX IS JUST THEIR SEXUAL PREFERENCE, BIGOTS! Cops Arrest 500 Johns in Sex Trade Crackdown. And, of course, there’s the hate-term “Johns.” When will we see this sordid discrimination stamped out?
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