Another Obamacare postponement

The New Neo Posted on by

We figured something like this was coming again from President Penphone. Congress? Deadlines? Who needs ’em?

Here’s more about the latest postponement of the enforcement of Obamacare’s mandates:

Under the new Treasury rule, firms with 50 to 99 full-time workers are free from the mandate until 2016. And firms with 100 or more workers now also only need cover 70% of full-time workers in 2015 and 95% in 2016 and after, not the 100% specified in the law.

The new rule also relaxes the mandate for certain occupations and industries that were at particular risk for disruption, like volunteer firefighters, teachers, adjunct faculty members and seasonal employees. Oh, and the Treasury also notes that, “As these limited transition rules take effect, we will consider whether it is necessary to further extend any of them beyond 2015.” So the law may be suspended indefinitely if the White House feels like it.

Even some of Obamacare’s defenders are getting a bit fed up:

Advocates for a strong executive branch, including me, have given the White House a pass on its rule-making authority, because implementing such a complicated law requires flexibility. But the law may be getting stretched to the point of breaking. Think of the ACA as a game of Jenga: Adjust one piece and the rest are affected; adjust too many and it falls.

If not illegal, the changes are fueling suspicion among Obama-loathing conservatives, and confusion among the rest of us. Even the law’s most fervent supporters are frustrated.

Ron Pollack, executive director of the consumer lobby Families USA and an ally of the White House, told The Washington Post he was “very surprised” by the latest delays. For workers at large companies that don’t provide coverage, he said, “It’s very unfortunate ”¦ that they don’t have a guarantee it will be extended to them for quite some time.”

Put me in the frustrated category. I want the ACA to work because I want health insurance provided to the millions without it, for both the moral and economic benefits. I want the ACA to work because, as Charles Lane wrote for The Washington Post, the link between work and insurance needs to be broken. I want the ACA to work because the GOP has not offered a serious alternative that can pass Congress.

Unfortunately, the president and his team are making their good intentions almost indefensible.

Obviously, not quite fed up enough, and not quite indefensible enough. Fournier (the author of the piece) seems to believe that good intentions could and should have somehow made this all work. And he buys the fact that Obama’s intentions were good. He swallows the line (or perhaps he just pretends to swallow the line?) that the GOP has not offered a serious alternative. And what’s this “that can pass Congress” bit? Does the GOP have to appeal to the Democratic-run Senate—in other words, offer a bill even more liberal than Obamacare—to qualify as a serious alternative with him?

In fact, Republicans have offered many bills over the years that do the things Fournier says he wants: provide insurance to many millions who didn’t have it, and break the link between work and insurance. Intrastate portability would have been another advantage of some Republican bills, as well as equalization of tax breaks, two things he doesn’t even mention.

This sort of executive overreach—otherwise known as tyranny—will continue, and spread, until Democrats unite with Republicans to stop it. It sets a very bad precedent for either party, because their opponents might come to power one day and do the same thing. But Democrats either can’t think that far ahead, or believe that what they are doing now will keep Republicans from ever coming to power.

RIP: Shirley Temple Black

The New Neo Posted on by

By the time Shirley Temple Black died at 85 last night we had come to take her extraordinary life for granted.

Child star? How about: the most popular and unquestionably talented child star ever, who made people happy during the Depression, and managed to grow up sane despite her mega-popularity?

Sane? How about: happily married for 54 years (after one quick first marriage at age 17), three kids and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren who loved her?

Not enough? How about: diplomat and UN representative, ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia, Chief of Protocol, conservative Republican?

And then there’s: one of the first breast cancer survivors to publicize that fact for the purposes of public education.

Not cute as a button—much, much cuter—she was known not only for her incredibly precocious singing and dancing (some people were initially convinced she was a midget) but for her relentless good cheer. That good cheer seems to have stood her in good stead for the rest of her long and fruitful life.

No tribute to Shirley Temple Black could possibly be complete without at least one film clip. Which to choose? You almost can’t go wrong, but I’ll put up this one because it’s a sampler (beginning when Shirley was around 3, I believe):

[NOTE: I wrote about Shirley Temple’s hair recently, here.]

Obamacare and high-risk pools: what gives?

The New Neo Posted on by

There have been a spate of articles about how wonderful it is that this person or that person was able to quit a nasty job (or not take on a nasty job they thought they’d have to get) because of Obamacare lifting the burden of health insurance from their shoulders.

Here’s one, for example, from Diana Reese. She lives in Kansas, and writes:

Had the ACA not become law, I would have considered a job as a “lunch lady” in one of the nearby elementary schools ”” just to get health insurance.

My inspiration was an out-of-work accountant I met at a social event a couple of years ago. When asked what he did for a living, he laughed and said, “lunch lady.” Then he explained that he’d been laid off during the recession, and though his wife worked at a job she loved, she had no benefits. So he took a job at his children’s school, working a few hours a day to qualify for health insurance for his family…

Because of my own pre-existing condition, I couldn’t buy health insurance ”” at any price ”” before the ACA.

She goes on to add that, actually, her husband had been employed and she was covered under his health insurance, but that they knew it would end soon because it was a contract position. Therefore, since she was uninsurable any other way, she was considering the lunch lady route.

Only thing is, Kansas had a high-risk pool even prior to Obamacare, as did most states. And in Kansas it seems to have been a pretty good one. The following is taken from a piece on the subject that appeared in April of 2010 and describes the high-risk pool situation in Kansas right around the time Obamacare was passed, before Obamacare’s provisions had ever been implemented:

Kansas is among about 35 states that already have a high-risk pool and Sebelius signaled that her agency would work with existing programs rather than force upon them a new federal plan, though the law allows or requires the national government to create high-risk pools in states that don’t have or develop them in accordance with the new law’s provisions.

High-risk pools provide health insurance for people whose medical history makes it difficult or impossible for them to otherwise find affordable coverage.

In Kansas, about 1,800 people are enrolled in the state’s existing plan, which is managed by the Kansas Health Insurance Association.

Nationally, existing state high-risk pools cover about 200,000 people…

Kansas law governing the existing high-risk pool here allows for premiums up 150 percent the cost of a standard, non-group policy, though that has been held to 128 percent by decision of the risk-pool’s governing board.

So there was a high-risk pool that covered people with pre-existing conditions. It was somewhat more expensive than regular insurance, to be sure, but not so very very much more expensive. Most high-risk pools (which existed prior to Obamacare in most states) also provided subsidies for those with low incomes.

So, if Diana Reese had lived in Kansas when all of her insurance woes (or prospective insurance woes; it seems that Obamacare passed before her husband’s job ended) occurred—and the focus on Kansas in the article implies that she did—then she absolutely could have purchased insurance, and the price would not have been so very much higher either.

If you look at the chart in the middle of this page you’ll see that 35 states ran high-risk pools prior to Obamacare, and most had been in operation for many many years (Kansas had started its high-risk pool in 1993). The 15 states that didn’t have them didn’t necessarily leave their high-risk individual health insurance customers in the lurch, either. Some were guaranteed issue states, which meant pre-existing conditions could not be excluded at all: New Jersey, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont had straight guaranteed issue, with Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Idaho having guaranteed issue with some restrictions involving previous continuous coverage.

There were some states where people were in a situation much like Reese describes, but it would appear that Reese (if she lived in Kansas immediately prior to Obamacare) could not have been considered one of those people, even potentially.

How do I know this sort of thing? I was in a high-risk pool for quite a few years. It was far from perfect—I paid about the same as I would have if I hadn’t had a pre-existing condition, and my deductibles were significantly higher—but I could certainly get insurance.

So I really, really wonder what Reese is talking about.

If you don’t like pié±a colada

The New Neo Posted on by

Sana Klaric and husband Adnan poured their hearts out to each other over their marriage troubles.

Using the names ”˜Sweetie’ and ”˜Prince of Joy’ in a online chatroom, the pair thought they had found a soulmate with whom to spend the rest of their lives.

It should have turned out like a real-life version of the 1979 Rupert Holmes song, Escape, where a couple meet through advert by someone ”˜who likes pina coladas and getting caught in the rain’.

But, unlike in the song, there was no happy ending after they turned up for a date and realised their mistake. Now the pair, from Zenica, Central Bosnia, are divorcing after accusing each other of being unfaithful.

Sana, 27, said: “I was suddenly in love. It was amazing, we seemed to be stuck in the same kind of miserable marriages. How right that turned out to be.”

But when it dawned on her what had happened, she said: “I felt so betrayed.”

Adnan, 32, said: ‘I still find it hard to believe that Sweetie, who wrote such wonderful things, is actually the same woman I married and who has not said a nice word to me for years.”

And so, Sana and Adnan did not go walking off into the sunset like the pair in the pié±a colada song (watch out, watch out, watch out for earworms if you so much as think of that song). Life doesn’t imitate art, at least not in Sana and Adnan’s case. But I wonder why they didn’t see that they were made for each other? They have so many things in common! Even their names have similar letters.

And one of the things they have in common, unfortunately, is a shared lack of imagination. If I had been their couples therapist, I’d have encouraged them to try dating under their new names—and new personae—and to keep talking about how awful their ex-spouses are, and how glad they are to have found each other instead.

You gotta be creative.

And here’s a question for extra credit: if you cheat on your spouse by romancing your own spouse, is that really cheating? Or are you caught in a Borges story?

Obama’s competence

The New Neo Posted on by

I absolutely agree with this piece about whether or not Obama is incompetent. It’s by Ray Hartwell, written in 2010, and the answer he gives is: competent, if you know what the goals are.

Unfortunately the sad occasion for my having been directed towards it now at Powerline is that Hartwell has died; RIP.

The only thing I’d add to his excellent article, written three and a half years ago, is that Obama has had some pockets of incompetence since. One involves the rollout; I don’t think that was planned to be so bad. I think the failure of Obamacare (and the segue to single payer) was supposed to come more slowly and in a way that didn’t reflect so clearly and unequivocally that government is incompetent to run an operation like that.

Another incompetence I perceive is that, although Obama’s “you can keep your doctor/hospital/health plan” promises were always meant to be lies that lulled people into supporting him in 2012, he did not expect those falsehoods to turn people off quite as forcibly as they have. After all, Obama has told many many lies and always weaseled out of them with hardly any consequences. I think he had boundless confidence these wouldn’t matter so much, either; that he could talk his way out of them and be forgiven. But it’s been more difficult than usual, although not nearly as difficult as it should have been. The lies do seem to matter in his current significantly lower approval rating.

But is it a mattering that really matters? In other words, will it have consequences? After all, he’s not going to be impeached. Congress isn’t going to get gutsier or more principled. The only real consequence might be that the 2014 Congressional elections might not go so well for the Democrats. But what does he care, if he can go around Congress with his mighty pen and trusty phone?

And meanwhile, Obama is still president. He gets to play a lot of golf and take a lot of vacations in nifty places. He gets to screw up foreign policy even more, in ways that might last and truly matter. He might even appoint a SCOTUS justice or two, and certainly many federal judges, influencing the course of the legal system for decades to come. And he has been instrumental in creating more massive dependency on the federal government, which people could be loathe to give up once they become accustomed to it.

All in all, very competent indeed.

Grammy glamour

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t watch the Grammys; I just don’t like the way popular music is going these days.

And what I just said about the music could go double for the fashions connected with the music. However, sometimes I click on a Grammy fashion link that ends up exerting a fascination that draws me in against my better judgment. And this year’s post-Grammy party fashion photos were no exceptions.

So without further ado, I share the most noteworthy of them with you (I don’t know who these people are, and I haven’t bothered to identify them, although the website does).

For her—hairy spider on top, spider webs on the bottom:

grammys

Hot pants are back. The top half speaks for itself, or tries to:

grammys2

I sometimes dress like this next one. But when I do, at least I have the decency to not leave the house:

grammys5

Memo to this next wearer—don’t wash in hot water, use coolest dryer setting (although it’s too late now):

grammys7

I actually kind of like this woman’s outfit. I once had a silk shantung suit a little like that; a pretty color. But where’d she pick up that guy? Or rather, his ensemble? He’s a very handsome man who would look quite elegant in a suit. But he’s not wearing a suit:

grammys8

Okay lady, how did you sneak in? You are not showing nearly enough skin, despite the fact that you are wearing a dress liner rather than a dress:

grammys9

A very large beetle imprinted itself on this fabric. Note also the strategic placement of the hands (the printed hands, not her hands), a sort of feminine codpiece:

grammys3

Understated and chic, a trifle Von Rothbart in Swan Lake:

grammys6

I could go on. But I will have mercy and stop here.

Woody Allen and Dylan Farrow: did he or didn’t he?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve avoided the latest Woody Allen sexual abuse furor so far, and this post isn’t going to be an exhaustive treatment of it. It’s one of those “he said, she said” arenas where what actually happened can be difficult to know for sure, and feelings are high (and angry) on both sides.

The allegations by Woody Allen’s now-grown adopted daughter Dylan that he sexually abused her when she was seven are not at all new; they were part of the custody trial that surfaced when the two adults split. They are also being spun by Allen—and accepted on many blogs and in many articles—as the fabrications of a vengeful woman (Mia Farrow) implanting thoughts into an impressionable child.

I want to firmly state that there is absolutely no question that some abuse charges are fabricated or “implanted” in children, and that accusations that surface in a divorce or custody trial for the first time must be looked at with particular suspicion.

However, I am astounded (although perhaps I shouldn’t be) at the amount of ignorance about this particular case shown by many people opining on it. Of course, how many people have willingly followed this sordid mess? But if you are interested, there are quite a few links I’d recommend for learning more details: this, and this, this.

Those are long, but they include the official court documents, and if you read them you will learn why the judge not only did not allow Woody Allen to have custody of Dylan, but also took away his visitation rights. But here are a few highlights of the case that might help in understanding what was going on:

(1) Farrow and Allen had never married, and they didn’t ever live together regularly, even at the beginning when their relationship was going well. By the time of the final split things had not been going well for years and the couple had already been quite estranged even before the Soon-Yi affair and the subsequent custody battle.

(2) The abuse allegations came prior to the custody battle. Allen sued for custody shortly after the abuse allegations, which were initially reported to a pediatrician, who was mandated to report the charges to the authorities.

(3) Even prior to the abuse allegations, Farrow had noticed Allen behaving inappropriately with their (Mia and Woody’s) adopted daughter Dylan. This behavior had been going on for years and had been reported years earlier, beginning when Dylan was two or three, and had been witnessed by other people, some of whom testified during the trial. Farrow and Allen had been in couple’s therapy for years in order to deal with the problem of his inappropriate behavior with Dylan. These allegations of inappropriate touching occurred years before the Soon-Yi affair was exposed, and the work of the couples therapy was to set limits on what was even then seen as an excess of physical affection of an inappropriate type (although not frank abuse such as was alleged to have later occurred).

(4) Farrow discovered Allen had been having an affair with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi because she discovered photos of Soon-Yi in Allen’s apartment. The photos are usually described as “nude,” but they were actually Hustler-type (spread-eagled) nude photos, and Allen had left them out in the open (if memory serves me, on the mantel) where he should have known Farrow would have a very good chance of noticing them in his otherwise spare and completely neat apartment.

(5) Allen’s behavior regarding Dylan is often equated with his behavior with Soon-Yi. But the latter might be called an example of ephebophilia, a technical term for attraction to late adolescents (although Soon-Yi was about twenty-one when the affair was discovered, it almost certainly began in her late teens). There is nothing criminal about that, and it doesn’t necessarily involve any sort of abuse. The common denominator between Allen and Soon-Yi and Allen and Dylan is that both were the daughters of his girlfriend or ex-girlfriend, and that Dylan was his own adopted daughter as well.

If you put yourself in Mia Farrow’s place, it really must have been an astonishing shock to find those pornographic (not just nude) photos of Soon-Yi. It would be bad enough to discover that your long-term boyfriend (or sort-of boyfriend, or even boyfriend you’re having some difficulty with) is having an affair with another woman. Add to that the fact that said boyfriend is around fifty-six years old and the “other woman” is twenty-one. Then add the fact that the other woman is your daughter, and that the affair has been going on for years, probably since she turned eighteen. It is rather like betrayal squared, or perhaps cubed—a truly exponential effect.

To top it all off, the guy feigns puzzlement (or truly is puzzled) as to why anyone might disapprove of any of this:

“What was the scandal? I fell in love with this girl, married her. We have been married for almost 15 years now.”

He added, “There was no scandal, but people refer to it all the time as a scandal and I kind of like that in way because when I go I would like to say I had one real juicy scandal in my life.”

That doesn’t mean that same person showing such insensitivity is going to be sexually molesting a child. Not at all. But put the two together—the well-documented inappropriateness and boundary-crossing with Dylan prior to the Soon-Yi affair’s discovery by Mia, and the affair with Soon-Yi itself and the failure to acknowledge anything upsetting there—and it’s no stretch to think that Allen might have committed a crime of opportunity with Dylan and rationalized it to himself.

The latest rounds in this battle consist of Allen’s rejoinder in the Times and Dylan’s response.

And if you don’t much care about all of this, I wouldn’t blame you. My own interest in the case stems not from any special fascination I have with either Mia Farrow or Woody Allen, whose work (except for “Annie Hall”) I’ve never much cared for (both of them, that is). It’s the intersection of law, child abuse, the press, and public opinion that are the hooks for me.

I am shocked, shocked…

The New Neo Posted on by

…to find that gambling is going on here!

I thought that was the way local politics worked in New Jersey—and an awful lot of other places, too. Nor does Sokolich’s new statement shed any light on the question of how involved and/or aware Christie was of the bridge closings:

But when Sokolich did not volunteer his support, he says he was punished with paralyzing traffic jams on Fort Lee’s streets leading to the George Washington Bridge that were ordered by Christie’s appointees at the Port Authority during portions of five days last September.

Is Sokolich even telling the truth now? After all:

…[W]hile Sokolich said he was never told directly that Port Authority help was connected to Christie’s reelection, he said he came to see it as a quid pro quo after emails were made public last month indicating officials in the Christie office, the Port Authority and the governor’s campaign were disappointed with him…On Friday, the governor’s office attacked Sokolich’s new comments, citing a variety of previous statements by him in which he said he did not feel pressured and did not blame Christie for the gridlock that has since blossomed into a major scandal that is the focus of investigations by federal prosecutors and by a state legislative committee.

“What the mayor is now claiming, it’s a direct and absolute contradiction of his public comments up to this point,” said Kevin Roberts, a Christie spokesman.

Roberts also said Sokolich’s endorsement was never considered a priority and pointed to Christie’s previous comment that the mayor was “never on my radar screen.”

I wonder what sort of pressure is being places on Sokolich now, and by whom.

Here’s the movie line reference, though, in case you wanted a refresher:

Was this planned all along?

The New Neo Posted on by

Was all the Republican discussion about immigration reform the set up, and this the spike? Was the intention always to end up saying some version of “our hearts are in the right place, but Obama is just too untrustworthy to deal with?”

If this was the Republican strategy all along, then the entire undertaking was not as abysmally bad as it had initially appeared.

Am I giving GOP leaders too much credit? “Republican strategy”; is it an oxymoron? Could well be.

But as I wrote in an earlier post on the reasons for the recent Republican talk about bringing up an immigration bill, it was not outside the realm of possibility that they weren’t as stupid as they seemed. They might even have “some hidden Machiavellian but brilliant agenda (would that it were true).”

[*Strategy or tactics? This seems a little bigger than tactics but a little smaller than strategy.]

Still blaming Bush

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a depressing poll:

Five years into Obama’s presidency, only a third of the public believes that Obama and the Democrats are primarily responsible for the country’s current economic problems.

More Americans continue to blame former President Bush and the Republicans. But the number who say the GOP is more responsible – now at 44% – has dipped below the 50% mark for the first time since Bush left the White House. Fourteen percent blame both parties equally.

Mind-boggling, isn’t it, how few people blame Obama? Perhaps not, though; propaganda works, after all.

I was interested in seeing how the question was framed, and going to the study itself I found this:

13. Do you think the policies of Barack Obama and the Democrats or George W. Bush and the Republicans are more responsible for the country’s current economic problems?

Seems like a pretty straightforward way to phrase it.

If you look at change over time, however, you will find something interesting: the percentage blaming Obama and the Democrats has been very stable with little variation. In September 2010, 33% of those polled blamed Obama and the Democrats, and between then and now there were five other readings (seven in toto) taken at intervals. These are the figures: 33%, 30%, 29%, 32%, 29%, 35%, 34%. It’s almost as though the vast majority of people made up their minds years ago and that nothing could change it. To about two-thirds of them, Obama will never be responsible for the poor state of the economy no matter what he does or does not do (although perhaps they give him credit for whatever good happens?).

It’s curious. A lot of people on the right will say that this refusal to blame Obama has something to do with his status as the first black president. But I’m not sure this is all that important, although it certainly has some Teflon-ish effect. But I think it has more to do with the fact that most people really are impressionable, don’t think too deeply about things political, and are constantly fed the MSM line that Obama isn’t responsible for problems. Never, never underestimate the power of an incessant media and talking head barrage.

One encouraging thing is the fact that, although the percentage blaming Bush and the Republicans also held remarkably steady through six surveys (from September 2010 to September 2012), and even seemed to increase ever-so-slightly over time (going from oldest to newest in that 2-year period, the figures were 53%, 55%, 57%, 52%, 56%, 57%), in the seventeen months between the September 2012 survey and the current one that percentage has plummeted. It now stands at 44%. However, those who left the “blame Bush and the Republicans” camp did not go over to the “blame Obama and the Democrats” camp; they ended up in the “blame both equally” or “neither” columns.

Interesting, although I’m not sure what to make of it. Perhaps it just reflects the increasing distance in time of the Bush administration and the general waning of hatred against him.

[ADDENDUM: I just noticed this post by William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection. We certainly seem to agree about this.]

The case against orange juice

The New Neo Posted on by

If you’ve been reading this blog a long, long time you may remember that I hate juice. All juice. As I wrote in 2009:

To make matters worse, I don’t like fruit juice. Even orange juice. Or maybe especially orange juice.

So I don’t pretend to have been a disinterested observer when I saw this article debunking the popular notion that orange juice is so very very good for you:

Most commercial orange juice is so heavily processed that it would be undrinkable if not for the addition of something called flavor packs. This is the latest technological innovation in the industry’s perpetual quest to mimic the simplicity of fresh juice. Oils and essences are extracted from the oranges and then sold to a flavor manufacturer who concocts a carefully composed flavor pack customized to the company’s flavor specifications. The juice, which has been patiently sitting in storage sometimes for more than a year, is then pumped with these packs to restore its aroma and taste, which by this point have been thoroughly annihilated.

I’m not a good judge; I much prefer to eat any variety of fruit or vegetable rather than drinking it. But I have to say that the few times I’ve tasted commercial “all natural, not from concentrate” juice (the type described in the article), it didn’t taste right to me, not at all like the real fresh-squeezed stuff.

The article goes on to quote an expert as saying that orange juice is “straight sugar,” much like Coke. Poppycock; orange juice has a lot more nutrients (especially vitamins) than Coke, so it’s really not “straight” sugar. Also, its sugar isn’t added but is naturally occurring, unlike the sugar in Coke. So if you care about that sort of thing, that’s a big difference.

I don’t like Coke either. But of course, you already know that I’m a complete dud in the beverage department.