” As Americans shop in the health insurance marketplace for a second year, President Obama is depending more than ever on the insurance companies that five years ago he accused of padding profits and canceling coverage for the sick.
Those same insurers have long viewed government as an unreliable business partner that imposed taxes, fees and countless regulations and had the power to cut payment rates and cap profit margins.
But since the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, the relationship between the Obama administration and insurers has evolved into a powerful, mutually beneficial partnership that has been a boon to the nation’s largest private health plans and led to a profitable surge in their Medicaid enrollment.
The insurers in turn have provided crucial support to Mr. Obama in court battles over the health care law, including a case now before the Supreme Court challenging the federal subsidies paid to insurance companies on behalf of low- and moderate-income consumers. Last fall, a unit of one of the nation’s largest insurers, UnitedHealth Group, helped the administration repair the HealthCare.gov website after it crashed in the opening days of enrollment.”
It’s all about the cronyism with this administration . Read the rest at NY Times
” Americans really like the online service they currently have and strongly oppose so-called “net neutrality” efforts that would allow the federal government to regulate the Internet.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 26% of American Adults agree the Federal Communications Commission should regulate the Internet like it does radio and television. Sixty-one percent (61%) disagree and think the Internet should remain open without regulation and censorship. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Only 19% believe more government regulation is the best way to protect those who use the Internet. Fifty-six percent (56%) feel more free market competition is the best protection. Twenty-five percent (25%) are undecided.
Seventy-six percent (76%) of Americans who regularly go online rate the quality of their Internet service as good or excellent. Only five percent (5%) consider their service poor.
Americans remain suspicious of the motives of those who want government regulation of the Internet. Sixty-eight percent (68%) are concerned that if the FCC does gain regulatory control over the Internet, it will lead to government efforts to control online content or promote a political agenda, with 44% who are Very Concerned. Twenty-seven percent (27%) don’t share this concern about possible government abuse, but that includes only eight percent (8%) who are Not At All Concerned. “
With over three quarters of customers being perfectly happy with their internet service is it any wonder that the people are suspicious of the State’s motives in attempting to fix something that is not broken ?
” Comprehensive immigration reform — rarely has a catchphrase been so widely invoked and yet so little defined. Why?
If proponents of so-called reform detailed exactly what they wanted, American voters would never support their self-interested agendas.
Most Americans insist that existing federal immigration laws be enforced. They are adamant that the border be shut tight to all unlawful entry. And they prefer legal immigration to reflect merit, diversity and ethnically blind criteria.
If those protocols were first established, half the public might also consider a pathway for legal residence for millions of foreign nationals already living in the United States without legal authority — but only if they could prove that they were without criminal records, not on public support, and have resided here for some duration.
Unfortunately those classically liberal ideals are not driving Barack Obama’s promise to grant blanket amnesties through executive order after the midterm elections. His planned gambit is an admission that he has neither public support nor congressional sanction nor the force of settled law nor a logical or ethic argument. The effort is instead fueled by an agenda of perpetual big government and a concern to expand future constituencies, allay the anger of Latino activists, and accommodate wealthy business donors.”
” Okay, ever since our big Net Neutrality Crowdfunding, we’ve had some new readers who aren’t as familiar with the details and issues — yet we’ve been mostly writing as if everyone is informed of the basics. So, we figured it only made sense to take a step back and do a bit of an explainer about net neutrality.
What is net neutrality?
This is not an easy answer, actually, which, at times, is a part of the problem. The phrase, first coined by law professor Tim Wu, referred originally to the concept of the end-to-end principle of the internet, in that anyone online could request a webpage or information from any online service, and the internet access provider (usually called internet service providers or ISPs) in the middle would deliver that information. At the time, the ISPs were starting to make noises about how they wanted to “charge” service providers to reach end users, effectively setting up toll booths on the internet. This kicked off in earnest in October of 2005, when SBC (which became AT&T) CEO Ed Whitacre declared that internet companies were using “his pipes for free.”
The phrase has been warped and twisted in various directions over the years, but the simplest way to think about it is basically whether or not your ISP — the company you pay for your internet access (usually cable, DSL or fiber, but also wireless, satellite and a few others) — can pick winners and losers by requiring certain companies to pay the ISP more just to be available to you (or available to you in a “better” way). John Oliver probably summarized it best by arguing that it’s about “preventing cable company fuckery” (though, to be clear, it goes beyond just cable companies).
The internet access providers claim that service providers, like Netflix and Google, are getting a “free ride” on their network, since those services are popular with their users, and they’d like to get those (very successful) companies to pay.
Wait, so internet companies don’t pay for bandwidth?
They absolutely do pay for their bandwidth. And here’s the tricky part of this whole thing. Everyone already pays for their own bandwidth. You pay your access provider, and the big internet companies pay for their bandwidth as well. And what you pay for is your ability to reach all those sites on the internet. What the internet access providers are trying to do is to get everyone to pay twice. That is, you pay for your bandwidth, and then they want, say, Netflix, to pay again for the bandwidth you already paid for, so that Netflix can reach you. This is under the false belief that when you buy internet service from your internet access provider, you haven’t bought with it the ability to reach sites on the internet. The big telcos and cable companies want to pretend you’ve only bought access to the edge of their network, and then internet sites should have to pay extra to become available to you. In fact, they’ve been rather explicit about this. Back in 2006, AT&T’s Ed Whitacre stated it clearly: “I think the content providers should be paying for the use of the network – obviously not the piece for the customer to the network, which has already been paid for by the customer in internet access fees, but for accessing the so-called internet cloud.” In short, the broadband players would like to believe that when you pay your bandwidth, you’re only paying from your access point to their router. It’s a ridiculous view of the world, somewhat akin to pretending the earth is still flat and at the center of the universe, but in this case, the broadband players pretend that they’re at the center of the universe.”
Read the whole thing at TechDirtand arm yourselves with the facts .
” Business executives and politicians endlessly complain that there is a “shortage” of qualified Americans and that the U.S. must admit more high-skilled guest workers to fill jobs in STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and math. This claim is echoed by everyone from President Obama and Rupert Murdoch to Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates.
Yet within the past month, two odd things occurred: Census reported that only one in four STEM degree holders is in a STEM job, and Microsoft announced plans to downsize its workforce by 18,000 jobs. Even so, the House is considering legislation that, like the Senate immigration bill before it, would increase to unprecedented levels the supply of high-skill guest workers and automatic green cards to foreign STEM students.
As longtime researchers of the STEM workforce and immigration who have separately done in-depth analyses on these issues, and having no self-interest in the outcomes of the legislative debate, we feel compelled to report that none of us has been able to find any credible evidence to support the IT industry’s assertions of labor shortages.”
” Retired military officers deeply involved in the climate change movement — and some in companies positioned to profit from it — spearheaded an alarmist global warming report this month that calls on the Defense Department to ramp up spending on what it calls a man-made problem.
The report, which the Obama administration immediately hailed as a call to action, was issued not by a private advocacy group but by a Pentagon-financed think tank that trumpets “absolute objectivity.” The research was funded by a climate change group that is also one of the think tank’s main customers.
The May 13 report came from the military advisory board within CNA Corp., a nonprofit based in Alexandria, Virginia, that includes the Center for Naval Analyses, a Navy-financed group that also gets contracts from other Pentagon units. CNA also operates the Institute for Public Research.
CNA’s webpage states that it is not an advocacy group. It says it maintains “absolute objectivity. In our investigations, analyses and findings we test hypotheses, carefully guard against personal biases and preconceptions, challenge our own findings and are uninfluenced by what a client would like to hear.”
The Center for Naval Analyses’ motto is “high quality, impartial information.”
One of the CNA panel’s vice chairmen, retired Navy Vice Adm. Lee Gunn, is president of a private think tank, the American Security Project, whose prime issue is warning about climate change.
The other vice chairman, retired Army Brig. Gen. Gerald E. Galloway Jr., is a prominent adviser to the Center for Climate and Security, a climate change group.
In all, four CNA board members sit on the panel of advisers to the Center for Climate and Security, whose statements on climate change are similar to those found in the CNA report.”
” The 2014 tax season is finally over and whether or not you owe the IRS, the following news will not make you pleased:
” Twenty-five profitable Fortune 500 companies spent more on lobbying than they paid in federal taxes between 2008 and 2012,” according to a Public Campaign analysis of data from Citizens for Tax Justice and the Center for Responsive Politics.
This is yet another way our tax structure penalizes individuals and small businesses while supporting mega corporations. We must make tax reform a major issue in the 2014 and 2016 elections to even this out.
The analysis showed that over five years, these 25 corporations spent way more money influencing government than supporting it. They generated nearly $170 billion in profits and received $8.7 billion in tax rebates, all while paying their lobbyists $543 million, an average of nearly $300,000 a day, to advance their interests in Congress.”
The astute reader will note that all of these corporations had a negative tax obligation . What’s wrong with this picture ? Cronyism anyone ?
” Internet activists are hunkered down today, meeting with major tech companies, startups, venture capitalists, and organizations representing communities of color in preparation for a coordinated response to counter the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed new rules that could destroy net neutrality.
The proposed FCC regulations, first reported yesterday by the Wall Street Journal, would allow broadband providers to essentially act as gatekeepers and charge websites fees in order to reach customers through a data “fast lane.” This is the antithesis of net neutrality, which states that all traffic is to be treated equally. In short, net neutrality is an assurance that internet providers can’t favor one kind of traffic over another, or charge for access to certain parts of the internet. According to activists, yesterday’s reports signal a hard end to that practice as well as the open internet (FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler attacked the reports in a blog post, saying that “the allegation that it will result in anti-competitive price increases for consumers is also unfounded”).
The news has web activists are worried. And they’re mobilizing.
“ Net Neutrality is on life support,” Free Press’ Josh Levy wrote this afternoon in a joint Reddit AMA on the subject. As of this afternoon, it’s the top post on Reddit’s front page with over 5,000 upvotes, a signal that the news seems to have hit a nerve online and that frustration with the FCC is beginning to bleed into the mainstream.”
Published on Apr 22, 2014 ” Open internet groups are expressing concern over regulations that may be implemented as part of the yet to be signed Trans-Pacific Partnership. President Barack Obama is traveling to Japan later this week to work with negotiators, who critics say have worked in secret to include restrictive language requiring internet service providers to monitor and censor internet traffic. Dealing with enforcement of intellectual property rights, the controversial sections have garnered a strong backlash from digital rights organizations. RT’s Lindsay France discusses the concerns of these groups with Steve Anderson, executive director of OpenMedIa.”
” Weeds and rubble cover 90 acres along Long Island Sound. A room with cinder-block walls sits locked in an empty in Brooklyn basement. And a gleaming industrial palace has failed to bring jobs to the banks of Ohio’s Mahoning River.
These are monuments to failed central planning. Eminent domain, state and local subsides, and federal-corporate partnerships have yielded these lifeless fruits, failing to deliver the rebirth, community benefits and jobs they promise — but succeeding in delivering profits to the companies that lobby for them.
The economic philosophy at work here isn’t capitalism or socialism. It’s corporatism: the belief that government and business should work together. You could describe corporatism as the view that profits provided by the market aren’t sufficient motivation for business, so government must put some icing on top. From another perspective, corporatism is government’s attempt to harness the profit motive for the goals of policymakers: let industry row the ship while politicians steer.
Often, the corporatist ship founders on the rocks of false promises.
Last decade, the New London Development Corporation — a quasi governmental body — crafted a plan for revitalizing the small Connecticut town. This plan involved a new Pfizer plant. The NLDC and local politicians sold the land to Pfizer for $10, gave the company tax breaks and pledged $26 million to clean up contamination and a local junkyard.”
” On Wednesday, the Dow hit a brand new record high, and Wall Street celebrated. Since the financial crisis of 2008, stocks have been on an unprecedented run. The top performers in the market have not just made millions of dollars – they have made billions of dollars. Luxury apartments in Manhattan and beachfront homes in the Hamptons are selling for absolutely astronomical prices, and it seems like life in the good parts of New York City is one gigantic endless party these days.
Meanwhile, life is quite good down in Washington D.C. as well. The wealth is spread more evenly, but on average the D.C. region actually has the highest standard of living of any major U.S. city. The reason for this is the obscene growth of the federal government. Over the past couple of decades, the U.S. government has ballooned in size and so have government salaries. During one recent year, the average federal employee living in the Washington D.C. area received total compensation worth more than $126,000.
If we truly did have a free market capitalist system, the entire country would be a land of opportunity and things would be getting better for everybody. Unfortunately, that is not the case at all. The following are 21 facts about “wealthy America” and “poor America” that are hard to believe…
#1 The lowest earning 23,303,064 Americans combined make 36 percent less than the highest earning 2,915 Americans do.
#2 40 percent of all American workers (39.6 percent to be precise) make less than $20,000 a year.
#3 According to the Pew Research Center, the top 7 percent of all U.S. households own 63 percent of all the wealth in the country.
#4 On average, households in the top 7 percent have 24 times as much wealth as households in the bottom 93 percent.
#5 According to numbers that were just released this week, 49.7 million Americans are living in poverty. That is a brand new all-time record high.
#7 Household incomes have actually been declining for five years in a row and total consumer credit has risen by a whopping 22 percent over the past three years.
#8 According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.
#9 The homeownership rate in the United States is at an 18 year low.
#10 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have as much wealth as the bottom one-third of all Americans combined.”
This is not about class warfare or breeding resentment or a rant against the rich … This is about a free market system that has been turned on it’s ear by corruption from our leadership and the crony capitalism which they nurture and facilitate with everything they do . We begrudge no one their riches , no one who earned them the honest way at least , but increasingly the rich become so through connections , legislation and graft , leaving the average citizens with one hand tied behind their backs struggling to stay above the rising crony tide that lifts only the connected few’s boats .
” Politico reported on Saturday that Doug Smith, the Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary, who exchanged a series of emails with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe about GreenTech Automotive, has landed a new job with MWW, a high powered Washington D.C. public relations firm headed up by a major donor to McAuliffe’s gubernatorial campaign.
According to Politico, Smith “is joining MWW public affairs as Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Washington office.” Acting DHS Secretary Rand Beers told Politico “Douglas has played a key role in leading DHS’s efforts in working with the private sector and strengthening the collaboration between the department and all of its private stakeholders from aviation security to intellectual property and all points in between.”
Smith has been heavily criticized by Republicans for playing an inappropriate role as McAuliffe’s advocate within the Department of Homeland Security. McAuliffe’s company, GreenTech Automotive, which he served as chairman from 2010 to 2012 and chairman emeritus since, is currently under investigation by the Inspector General’s Office of the DHS for inappropriate influence in the granting of temporary green cards and permanent visas within the DHS’s EB-5 foreign investors program.”
The revolving door between the federal bureaucracy and corporate America spins out of control and the average citizen gets screwed in the process . Whether it’s journalists on the White House staff or golden parachute jobs in the private sector for past helpful government bureaucrats , the old boy’s network takes care of their own .
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