Don’t Blame Staples

Kevin Williamson, National Review Online:

San Francisco is raising its minimum wage from $11.05/hour to $15/hour, and the owners of Borderlands, who already were barely able to make the shop a going concern, announced that they would have to close. The minimum-wage hike meant that the store was going to go from making a princely $3,000 a year to losing $25,000 a year. Of course, you’ll still be able to get your sci-fi and fantasy novels – from Amazon, or from another similar operation without the labor costs involved with running a conventional bookstore. Which is great if you’re Jeff Bezos, but kind of stinks if you’re the sort of sad character (ahem) who likes to lurk around in bookstores. I’m perfectly happy to see every Staples clerk replaced by something sold to Staples CEO Ronald Sargent by Jawas offering a deep corporate discount. But, damn it all, I like bookstores. (And if San Francisco continues raising its minimum wage, the robots are ready.)

In San Francisco, the people who were bemoaning the impending closure of Borderlands admitted sheepishly that they’d voted for the minimum-wage hike. “It’s not something that I thought would affect certain specific small businesses,” one customer said. “I feel sad.”

Yeah, Adam Smith feels sad, too, you dope.

"A generation of Democrats lost in the Obama era..."

At Hot Air, Noah Rothman demonstrates a lack of understanding of the long game vs. the short game, and the difference between transient change and structural change.

When Barack Obama took office, he was hailed as a liberal savior. His presidency, it was believed, would usher in a new era of progressive dominance not seen since Roosevelt. Instead, Republicans have been restored to a position of power across the country they had not known since Al Smith lost 40 states to Herbert Hoover. Far from revitalizing it, Obama has erased generations of the Democratic Party’s progress.

Wow, is that ever short-sighted. Obama instituted the greatest leap forward in Progressive politics since Social Security. Electoral control of the branches of government tends to be cyclical and temporary - massive government entitlement programs are forever. Did the Democrats lose some temporary political power as a result? Hey, you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs...

Seriously, his administration has been a complete and utter disaster for America, and the fact that the Republicans will control Congress for the next two years, and have a lot more state-level representation than they did six years ago, does not change that.

Washington Post's Milbank plays race card. Again...

The Daily Caller: WaPo's Milbank suggests GOP toned down Sebelius attacks due to race:

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank suggested Thursday night that the GOP didn’t go after outgoing HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius with the same zeal as Attorney General Eric Holder because — unlike Holder — Sebelius is white.

Milbank made the insinuation during an interview on MSNBC’s “Politics Nation with Al Sharpton,” after the Reverend ran a segment alleging that Republican opposition to Holder, including his contempt citation, is race-based.

“Well, here’s an interesting thought experiment,” Milbank said. “So let’s compare Holder to Kathleen Sebelius, who has presided over Obamacare – which is the thing that has most antagonized the right and Republicans over all these years. You’re not seeing calls for her impeachment. You’re not seeing the same level of personal vitriol.”

“So I think that why, again, it’s fair to ask the question and let every individual say why it is they have that particular antipathy towards this attorney general, towards this president,” Milbank said, “and why not, say, towards Kathleen Sebelius, who they’re obviously much more at odds with.”

Old TRUTH:  The Republicans were unreasonably tough on Sibelius because they are sexists and she's a woman.
New TRUTH:  The Republicans went easy on Sibelius because they are racists and she's white.

The left has two suits in its deck.  Apparently, for this hand, the Race Card is now trumps, as opposed to the WarOnWomen card.

So when the Republicans were lambasting Sibelius all fall during the disastrous Affordable Care Act roll-out, trumps were WarOnWomen, and they were beating up on her because she was a woman (and you can't hit the girl, because that makes you a sexist [as does saying that you can't hit the girl, which makes for a really interesting and difficult to follow set of moral standards]) but now, in retrospect, they were going easy on her because she's white.

Yeah, that's all perfectly sensible and coherent...

Oh, and Dana, if you're capable of understanding it, here's a significant difference between Holder and Sibelius, totally unrelated to either race or gender:  Holder has presided over a corrupt, politicized Department of Justice, while Sibelius presided over a grossly mismanaged government program rollout.  Malfeasance and corruption, which have led to cries for Holder's impeachment, are different from gross incompetence, which led to cries for Sibelius' resignation. 

Democrats Go 'Nuclear,' Eliminate Filibusters on Most Nominees

In an attempt to distract attention away from Obamacare and pack the DC circuit court, the Democratic Majority in the US Senate has gone 'nuclear,' today:

Senate Democrats succeeded Thursday in deploying the “nuclear option” to make the most fundamental change to floor operations in almost four decades, ending the minority’s ability to kill most presidential nominations by filibuster.

The Senate voted, 52-48, to effectively change the rules by rejecting the opinion of the presiding officer that a supermajority is required to limit debate, or invoke cloture, on executive branch nominees and those for seats on federal courts short of the Supreme Court.

A couple of things are worth noting.

1. When this came up in 2005, parties reversed, I said that [I]f the Republicans don't change the rules, the Democrats will, as soon as it becomes in their best interest to do so. They felt it in their best interest today, so there we go.
2. When the Democrats in the majority propose this, the New York Times supports it.  When Republicans in the majority propose it, it's a dangerous proposition that must be stopped.  I suspect that the Times editorial tomorrow won't condemn Harry Reid for actually doing what it would have strongly condemned Bill Frist for doing.   "Because it's not about principle. Never has been, never will be. The Times, despite its pretense to being a non-partisan purveyor of the news, is a partisan political actor. They are pro-Democrat, anti-Republican, leftist progressives and, to the extent that there's ever a "principle" behind their positions, that's the extent of it."
3. Unlike the New York Times, I'm not going to switch my position based on whose ox is being gored.  When the Democrats were filibustering Bush nominees, I said that nominees should get an up-or-down vote from the Senate.  That was my position then; that's my position today.

Oops...

Boeing 747 Mistakenly Lands At Tiny Kansas Airport

A Boeing Co. BA +0.11% 747 jumbo jet used to haul parts of 787 Dreamliner jets around the world landed at the wrong Kansas Airport Wednesday evening.

Photos from a Wichita, Kan. local CBS affiliate show the heavily-modified 235 foot long jumbo jet on the ground at Jabara Airport, a small area airport, about 8 miles north of the jet's intended destination of McConnell Air Force Base.

Jabara Airport in northeast Wichita has a short 6,101-foot long runway, significantly shorter than those typically used by a 747, raising questions about whether or not the jumbo can take off.

Not a great job by the flight crew. But better performance from them than anyone involved in Obamacare implementation.

As an Obamacare metaphor, you could do worse than a jumbo plane failing to deliver by landing in the wrong place, and then being unable to take off again...

Obama Breaks the Health Law to Save It

How many times will this administration break the law before people start thinking in terms of "high crimes and misdemeanors"?

This is not the first time the administration has suggested that it's going to go against the plain text of the law, either. Why is the administration taking such a careless attitude toward a law it spent a year crafting?

It’s hard to come up with a reason that bodes well. Lawsuits seem inevitable, and unwinnable. At best, the White House is buying some time to try to get things up and working; at worst, it hasn't even thought that far ahead.

Foreseeable. Foreseen...

As we watch the Obamacare meltdown (which is still going to get worse before it gets better), and the continued erosion of support for not just this plan, but government meddling in the health-care arena altogether, it's important to remember that none of what we've seen was unforeseeable, or even unforeseen. I've written relatively little about anything over the last several years, but it's easy to find comments even from me calling this out.


September 16, 2009

This is a lie that may technically be true: "Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have." For some people, it's technically true that nothing requires them to change plans. There is a whole lot in the plan, however, that will change the plans themselves, and with any changes, the plan does require people to go through the government coordinated insurance exchange. The bottom line on this is, no matter how happy you are with your current coverage, doctor, or plan, the plans being debated, and which Obama hopes to sign, are overwhelmingly likely to radically change, or even eliminate, what you currently have.

I'll finish with this - I think I've said it before, but let me say it again. What Barack Obama says, when he stands in front of the country, is this: My plan will give more people more and better care while cutting costs for everyone. That's obviously nonsense, economics from fantasy land. It's wishful thinking masquerading as public policy, and I don't see how anyone could possibly believe it.

June 6, 2012

Can liberals cure stupidity? Not until they can stop producing fantasyland analyses like this one and recognize that some options are mutually exclusive. The idea that because, for example, people like many of the individual components of Obamacare, they should like the whole thing, and it must be a communications failure that they don't is delusional. It assumes that you can have all of the good things you want at no cost and with no trade-offs, and that there won't be any negative repercussions as a result. The world doesn't work that way. Most people recognize that.

Consider transportation. You can ask people if they want a stylish new car. You can ask if they want good gas mileage, lots of seating and cargo space, good performance on the highway, strong and safe construction, and a low price. Guess what - the answer to all of those will be "yes" from a strong majority. But they can't have them, because some of those things are mutually exclusive. The same thing is true of the health care bill.

In the real world, people recognize that those trade-offs exist. In the cocoon of progressive fantasyland, it's just a communication problem.

Questions for Senate Dems who voted for Obamacare

Washington Post blogger Jen Rubin has a series of (good) questions that the media should be asking Democratic Senators¹:

• Did President Obama mislead you about whether people could keep their insurance?

• Did you foresee that many people would be shifted from full-time work to part-time work as a result of Obamacare?

• Did you ever demand an oversight hearing on the progress of the Obamacare rollout?

• Did you expect millions of Americans to have their insurance canceled?

• Did you ever demand assurances that HealthCare.gov would be fully tested and secure from cyber-attacks?

• Did you understand some people would be dropped from coverage and find their only option to be more expensive insurance with poorer coverage?

• Did you expect millions more to have their insurance canceled than to have purchased insurance?

My comment is this: Never mind four years ago - two MONTHS ago every Democrat in the Senate was willing to shut down the government to prevent a one-year delay in implementation. Two months ago, they lacked the foresight to see what was obvious from the start, and they were willing to be, if I recall the phrasing correctly, "economic terrorists" and shut down the government, all just to avoid the one-year delay that they're begging for now.



¹ - They won't, of course, but they should. If Republicans had created something that was this much of a mess, they would be...

What a difference a couple of months makes...

Remember back, in the far distant past, in the murky mists of time - September, 2013 - when the Republicans were excoriated, pilloried and condemned for suggesting a one-year delay in the enforcement of the (hilariously-named) "Affordable Care Act"? How they were deemed to be "economic terrorists"?

Yeah, well, look who's an "economic terrorist" now...

White House to Allow Insurers to Continue Canceled Health Plans

The White House on Thursday will announce a plan for allowing insurance companies to continue offering existing individual insurance policies even if they fall short of the coverage standards set by the 2010 health-care law, a Democratic official briefed on the plan said.

And again, as he did with the employer mandate, the President, charged with enforcing the law of the land, is going to unilaterally, by fiat (and therefore, both illegally and unconstitutionally) change that which, as we've been continually informed by its supporters, is the "settled law of the land."

One would think that those who promoted this disaster might apologize, or at least cut back on the moralistic hectoring about the virtues of this great plan, but I expect no such happy result any time soon...

Congressman-D - I won't say he lied, but it clearly wasn't true...

So, one of the things that's fun to watch right now is Democratic elected officials playing "choose a euphemism for lying" in order to discuss the President's patently untrue Obamacare sales pitch.

I think the president was grossly misleading to the American public. I know right away as a veterinarian, I have my own business, that my policies got cancelled even before the Affordable Care Act. I know that I would change policies on a regular basis, trying to find the best deal for myself and my employees. But a lot of Americans, a lot of Oregonians, have stayed with the same policy for a number of years and are shocked that their policy got cancelled.

- Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Oregon

No, Congressman - the President lied. Period.

Of course, as it was obviously a lie right from the start, the only people who were "misled" were people who believed him. Everyone was lied to; only about half were "misled."

This can not be over-emphasized...

The Democrats in Congress and the White House were willing to shut down the Federal Government in order to avoid a one-year delay in the Obamacare kick-off.

We can now see how unprepared for the kick-off the Federal Government was, and the end result is almost certain to be more uninsured a year from now than there are now, and the Democrats in Congress and the White House were willing to shut down the Federal Government in order to avoid a one-year delay.

The Republicans weren't trying to repeal it, not the last time, just delay, for one year, the kick-off of a program which was clearly not ready to kick-off, and the Democrats in Congress and the White House were willing to shut down the Federal Government in order to avoid a one-year delay.


The website was not ready to be operational, the Federal Exchanges aren't fully set up and the Democrats in Congress and the White House were willing to shut down the Federal Government in order to avoid a one-year delay.

The company building the website warned that "the threat and risk potential (to the system) is limitless," with deadlines of mid-2014 and early 2015 to address those risks, and the Democrats in Congress and the White House were willing to shut down the Federal Government in order to avoid a one-year delay


Just sayin'...

Obamacare: Unfair to the young middle class, punished enough already

"For 'tis the sport to see the engineer
Hoist with his own petar..."

Today's chapter in the book of Obamacare comes from a young free-lance writer in California who is discovering that a) someone has to pay for free healthcare and b) apparently, he's someone.

Under my old plan, my maximum out-of-pocket expense was $4,900. Under the new plan, I’m on the hook for up to $6,350. Copays for my doctor visits will double. For urgent-care visits, they will quadruple. Though slightly cheaper plans exist if I decide to shop around on the exchange, I will lose my dental coverage should I switch.

Needless to say, I am not pleased.

Most young, middle-class Americans I know are happy that millions of previously uninsured people will receive free or heavily subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

We just didn’t realize that, unless we had health insurance at work, we’d be the ones paying for it.

My reaction?



You know, people tried to tell you this, but you didn't want to listen. No, you thought, only greedy people would be opposed to this. And besides, you aren't rich - it's not going to impact you. Someone else is going to pay for it!

And I'm reminded, as has happened so many times during this administration, of Atlas Shrugged. This time, the plan at the 20th Century Motor Factory...

There wasn't a man voting for it who didn't think that under a setup of this kind he'd muscle in on the profits of the men abler than himself. There wasn't a man rich and smart enough but that he didn't think that somebody was richer and smarter, and this plan would give him a share of his better's wealth and brain. But while he was thinking that he'd get unearned benefits from the men above, he forgot about all his ingeriors who'd rush to drain him just as he hped to drain his superiors. The worker who liked the idea that his need entitled him to a limousine like his boss's, forgot that every bum and beggar on earth would come howling that their need entitled them to an icebox like his own. That was our real motive when we voted - that was the the truth of it - but we didn't like to think it, so the less we liked it, the louder we yelled about our love for the common good.

Apparently, Matthew Fleischer's love for the common good last just until it started to cost him personally.

What was obviously a lie turns out to have been ... a lie

As even the mainstream press seems to be coming to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, the President oversold the "Affordable Care Act," I look back to what I wrote about it four years ago.

So they can put together a bill that's going to a) add 15 (or 30 or 47, depending on the President's mood, apparently) million people to the insurance rolls b) while providing improved care c) at lower cost for everyone d) and allowing everyone to keep the coverage they've already got if they want to e) and not increasing the budget deficit f) or increasing taxes¹, but they can't post that freakin' bill on the internet?...

It boggles my mind that anyone can watch any part of this process and think, "yes, this is how we're going to make the health care system better for everyone! What could possibly go wrong?"


¹ - Every time I write that out, I vacillate between giggling and rage. I giggle that the preposterousness of the suggestion, that there's somehow, some way that increased government intervention is going to lead to any one of those things happening, never mind all six simultaneously, and rage that the President of the United States actually thinks that the US citizens are stupid enough to buy it. He doesn't even have enough respect for the people of this country to try a plausible argument.

School for Scolds

Another great column from Thomas Sowell. Of course, when does he write one that isn't?

I suspect that even most conservatives would prefer to live in the kind of world conjured up in the liberals’ imagination rather than in the kind of world we are in fact stuck with.
 
...

Whether in housing, education, or innumerable other aspects of life, the key to busybody politics, and its endlessly imposed “solutions,” is that third parties pay no price for being wrong. This not only presents opportunities for the busybodies to engage in moral preening but also to flatter themselves that they know better what is good for other people than these other people know for themselves.

Right now, there are people inside and outside government who are proposing new restrictions on how you may or may not visit the national parks that your taxes support. Among their proposals is doing away with trash cans in these parks, so that visitors have to take their trash out with them. Just how they would enforce this, when millions of people visit places like Yosemite or Yellowstone, is something the busybodies need not bother to think through — much less pay the price when trash simply accumulates in these parks after trash cans are removed.

Obamacare is perhaps the ultimate in busybody politics. People who have never even run a drugstore, much less a hospital, blithely prescribe what must be done by the entire medical system, from doctors to hospitals to producers of pharmaceutical drugs to health-insurance companies.

Health insurance cancellation notices soar above Obamacare enrollment rates

Katie McHugh, The Daily Caller:

Hundreds of thousands of Americans who purchase their own health insurance have received cancellation notices since August because the plans do not meet Obamacare’s requirements.

The number of cancellation notices greatly exceed the number of Obamacare enrollees.

What was that line, again?

Oh, yeah...

No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.

- Candidate Barack Obama

I'd feel abused and lied to if I'd ever believed it. Since what he was saying wasn't possible, there was never any reason for anyone to have believed it. Sadly, many did...

Extortion? Blackmail? Or the normal political process?

So, I've seen someone suggest that Harry Reid and the Democrats in the US Senate¹ are guilty of extortion or blackmail, because they won't agree to take up any government funding bills from the House that don't also completely fund the "Affordable Care Act."  I just want to say that, whether or not you agree with what they're doing, that characterization is obviously preposterous. 

Just as the House has the power of the purse, the Congress as a whole has to agree on all appropriations.  If Senate Democrats really think that immediate and full funding of that particular law, despite the fact that the infrastructure is clearly not ready for, and despite the fact that the President has already unilaterally (and almost certainly unconstitutionally) suspended parts of it for a year, is the way to go, they've got the right to use that as a negotiating position. 

And it is uncivil to call the Senate Democrats and their supporters, "economic terrorists" or "blackmailers" just because they are taking a position that they feel is in the best interest of the country, regardless of whether or not I agree with them.  Obviously, that goes for the President (against whom there has also been a lot of name-calling by people who simply have a different opinion on what the best course of action for the country is) as well.  (Of course, nothing he's said is really relevant yet anyway, because the Senate hasn't actually taken up any of the spending bills that the House has passed, so there's nothing for him to sign or veto yet.)




¹ - OK,  I'm pretty sure that this person was actually talking about the Republicans in the House.  Which changes exactly nothing, about this commentary, other than whose Ox is being gored...

Thanks for the insightful commentary, George...

This is the kind of nonsense that passes for insightful commentary on facebook. Someone posts it, and it gets hundreds or thousands of likes from like-minded readers, and they all take turns complimenting themselves and beating up on the Republicans who are too stupid or evil to "get it."

And the obvious response doesn't seem to occur to any of them.

"Dear George,

We did win an election. In fact, since (and arguably because) the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, we're two for two.

Sincerely,

John Boehner and the Republican Majority in the United States House of Representatives."

One of the points that I've seen made, over and over for the past couple of weeks, is that "hey, it's the law, and the Supreme Court says it's ok."  As if that means anything.  As if anyone's debating that.  As if the Republicans in the House of Representatives right now are not the current elected representatives of the citizens of this country, and entitled to attempt to make whatever changes in the law they deem necessary or appropriate.  As if the majority wasn't elected by running against the Affordable Care Act, and it weren't wildly unpopular.  As if it were handed down on stone tablets from atop Sinai, never to be challenged again for all eternity.

Wow. Just wow...

UPDATE: Ok, this was clearly a story that was too good to be true. Oh well...

Screwed something up at work recently? Missed something that you should have caught? Costing yourself and/or your company a little bit of time and money?

Be glad you're not the architect or project manager on this...

In what will surely go down in history as one the greatest architectural blunders, the town of Benidorm in Alicante, Spain, had almost completed its 47-story skyscraper when it realized it excluded plans for elevator shafts.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds notes that it's "kind of an architectural metaphor for Obamacare. Unfortunately...

Roofers union calls for Obamacare’s repeal

United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers International President Kinsey M. Robinson:

In the rush to achieve its passage, many of the Act’s provisions were not fully conceived, resulting in unintended consequences that are inconsistent with the promise that those who were satisfied with their employer sponsored coverage could keep it.

These provisions jeopardize our multi-employer health plans, have the potential to cause a loss of work for our members, create an unfair bidding advantage for those contractors who do not provide health coverage to their workers, and in the worst case, may cause our members and their families to lose the benefits they currently enjoy as participants in multi-employer health plans.

Who could have seen that coming?

Oh, yeah - millions of us.

Frankly, there's a certain amount of pleasure to be derived from watching those who worked to foist this monstrosity upon come to grips with the innumerable (and easily forseeable, and forseen) downsides. One just wishes that they hadn't had to take the rest of us along on this ride...

Quote for today...

... as I watch the frothing rage of those who can't believe that any business would have the unmitigated gall to raise prices or cut hours or, basically, respond in any way to the new burdens heaped upon them by Obamacare and the increased taxes that are coming.

Experience is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

- Edmund Burke

There's a lot of learning coming...