Testing out Windows 8 Word Press app

This is a testing, seeing how this would work. Testing 1 2 3

What if Tunguska happened in Berlin?

Saw a thing the other day about the Tunguska Event, which was a massive explosion in 1908 caused by what many believe to be an asteroid hitting Siberia. The blast was akin to 30 megaton nuclear weapon (the largest atomic weapon explosion on Earth was the Tsar Bomba by the USSR at 50 megatons). The butterfly effect is when something minor changes causing a ripple throughout everything else eventually. Watching this program, it dawned on me…how would have history have turned out if the asteroid had hit Berlin or St. Petersburg or London in 1908 instead of Siberia?

Will we even have a real market in broadband?

Comcast, the nations #1 Cable television/Cable Internet provider, is set to buy TimeWarner Cable, the nations #2 Cable television/Cable Internet provider. Given that there really is no cable television and internet markets (AT&T and Verizon both froze their roll out in Comcast and TimeWarner’s territories..hrmm). Satellite maybe national, but here too only 2 providers with almost similar pricing for television to each other and neither offers a serious internet package (ClearWire, despite their claims is not available everywhere). There is no real national broadband competitor, if there were we would see pricing similar to say Korea or parts of Europe.

The two largest cable providers along with the the two largest mobile phone providers (actually mainly Verizon) have for the past 5 years managed to get through local legislation barring local competition, especially from any public initiatives (think municipal wifi), Hell, they even managed to kick Google’s ass in several attempts to get Google Fiber going. If the DOJ and FCC approve this (Comcast does have clout), then I fear that any chance in a real market for broadband and television will be severely curtailed.

Price controls hit Venezuela…this will not end well!

Law Limiting Costs, Prices and Profits Comes into Force in Venezuela

By EWAN ROBERTSON

TAGS

economic war

Price Controls

Mérida, 24th January 2013 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – A law limiting costs, prices and profit margins across the Venezuelan economy came into effect yesterday.

The law is designed to prevent over-pricing, speculation and other abuses against consumer rights which have been occurring in the South American country.

It was drawn up by President Nicolas Maduro after problems with Venezuela’s currency control system and what officials argue is an “economic war” being waged by anti-government business sectors have created economic imbalances for consumers such as high inflation and shortages in some basic products.

via Law Limiting Costs, Prices and Profits Comes into Force in Venezuela | venezuelanalysis.com.

This….will not end well.

Many years ago I got to become friends with a young man from Caracas at one of my father’s BBQs. This was about a year before Chavez became President. He came from a well to do family who was in tool and die making. Anyways, he worked in retail before coming here and I learned a thing or two about how it is down there. Essentially, you had over the decades something akin to how our health insurance companies operated here, were a select few manage to consolidate and get the state to give its blessing. The state allowed and aided a select few to dominate at the expense of a real free market in retail.

Well..fast forward to today and you have the end result of state meddling/crony capitalism with a cabal of business interests. One hand helping the other. But instead of breaking up these retail combines and allowing the formation of a real free market for retail, we get something worse. Very rare does command economies and their price control schemes work out well. The fundamental forces of Supply & Demand ultimately will win out in one form or another. Incentives will be shifted, shortages will begin, oh the list goes on and on. We have seen this time and time again, be it here in the US or Cuba or the USSR or wherever, it almost always fails.

This, unfortunately for the average Venezuelan, in the end…will not end well.

L’Isle-Verte

My heart goes out to those surviving seniors and the families of the victims of the great tragedy in L’Isle-Verte, Quebec. What a horrible way to go. I think of my 88 year old father and others in my family of similar ages when I see the story of L’Isle-Verte. For the uninitiated here in the US, there was a major fire in an old folks home where virtually every one, except for a small few, had perished. Between the blazing fire that quickly spread to the death-inducing freezing hitting North America, that had almost little to no chance. Once again, my heart goes out to those who survived and the families of the victims.

The Return of the Automat?

I’m going to make a prediction here, starting either this year or next, you will start to see self-checkout systems at fast food joints. Now I wasn’t alive when these were big, but many decades ago they used to have these places called Automats, where one picked an item plunked down some change in a machine and you got a fresh meal. Think sorta like a room with vending machines and tables and a microwave today, only back then it was a hot meal already made.

An automat from 1904

I think you could start to see that again where one goes into a Burger King (for example), play with a touch screen and up comes your food. This isn’t a slam on raising the minimum wage, but you have to consider the laws of economics (especially with incentives and cost substitution). As would a consumer pick a viable substitute item if their first choice was beyond their budget, so would a business owner seek to do the same if there was a viable labor substitute.

Another move step closer in me losing love of Obamacare

Accenture replaces CGI for troubled Obamacare site

Thursday, January 16, 2014

CGI Federal has been replaced as the lead contractor for the Obamacare enrollment website by Accenture after a series of setbacks.

The Accenture contract which will replace CGI Federal’s contract after it is scheduled to end on the28th February, has been valued at £58 million.

The HealthCare.gov portal which failed to function after becoming overloaded by visitors, provides enrolment services to the public, as part of the U.S. government’s nation healthcare reform plans.

Accenture Federal Services chief executive David Moskovitz, said: “Accenture will bring deep healthcare industry insight as well as proven experience in building large-scale, public-facing websites to continue improving HealthCare.gov.”

The US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which supervised the launch, said: ““As CMS moves forward in our efforts to help consumers access quality and affordable health coverage, we have selected Accenture to become the lead contractor for the HealthCare.gov portal, and to prepare for next year’s open enrolment period”.

via Accenture replaces CGI for troubled Obamacare site – News – outsourcing – sourcingfocus.com.

In the past few months I helped 4 people get plans. I dealt with their crap website. So far, only 1 person even was contacted by the insurance providers. When the Affordable Care Act passed, I approved the concept, having dealt with private insurers who have screwed me and family and friends in the past. I grudgingly approved of the mandate, which goes against my civil libertarian ideals  because I’ve seen a lot of people either unable to get insurance get financially burned using the ER or simply decided to not get insurance even if they could afford it and pass on the cost to others. As a disabled person, I approved of pre-existing conditions portion of the law. The law was based on Nixoncare, Romneycare and Swisscare and what the Heritage Foundation proposed; the Swiss had it for almost 20 years and from what I can tell is highly successful (it is still slightly different than Obamacare and Romneycare).

Saying all that, the legislation has a lot of problems. While I personally would have preferred a single payer system or a “public option” or at least some kind of system that had univesal coverage. But we didn’t get that, we got what conservatives proposed in the past. It is what it is. But, then I see here something like this, that our tax dollars are being used for firm who will outsource the labor overseas. The website may have been done this way as well. Look, if a private firm wants to outsource to an offshore location, hey it is their money. But when it comes to utilizing OUR tax dollars, I want the work kept inside our borders! Between the half ass follow through by insurers/system after signing up to now this, I most likely will have to re-think my support for Obamacare. It probably doesn’t matter what I think, not like it has any impact. But still man, it ain’t right that our tax dollars be sent overseas for work that could have been done here. And don’t even get me started on how even when it is done here, a lot of software firms are utilizing H1-B visas to bring in workers from India. How many coders here are looking for work? There are Americans who are easily as qualified who could have coded for that damn website. But no, American tax dollars for foreign workers. Madness..I tell you..pure madness.

Why God shouldn’t be on our money or in our pledges

They use God as a cheap political ploy, which if you think about on a theological level, goes against I think 2 Commandments. Now whether you believe in God or not, shoving some deity’s name in our faces all the time just isn’t right on so many levels. For those that believe in such, it is a slap in their face because first I think it cheapens their deity and secondly such affirmations are insincere at best.

For the rest of us, it is a weird phenomenon in a secular society that a segment in society within a political class is trying to prove something that everyone else knows that they aren’t exactly holding truth to. Simply ask yourself this one question, if you are a believer of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim God, given what US currency and oaths have gone to be used for, would such a deity approve that his name be used for such?

Best explanation for the Wizard of Oz EVER!!!!!

This has to be one of the most epic descriptions for the Wizard of Oz film that I have ever seen. LOL

A 20 Year-Old Got Appendicitis and This Was His Hospital Bill

A 20 year-old man came down with appendicitis in October of this year. He posted the bill on Reddit and it has gone viral. The US Health Care system is a topic of much debate, not only in the US but around the world. A lot of countries get ‘free’ health care, so needless to say, this has stirred up a lot of conversation.

via A 20 Year-Old Got Appendicitis and This Was His Hospital Bill.

As someone who is chronically ill and disabled, I’ve seen this situation more than once. Luckily I have Medicare, but that doesn’t mean my doctors won’t over charge. My mother suffered a heart attack back in 2007, and add to that unfortunate event was the fact that she was without insurance because her previous one had lapsed and we were desperately looking for one until she too could go on Medicare. Suffice it to say, even with a portion of the bill forgiven, it wasn’t enough and my parents were financially wiped out. My father, now 88, lost nearly 7 decades of savings in one fell swoop.

We like to rag on the insurance companies, and don’t get me wrong, they are in my eyes co-conspirators in the draining of this nation’s wealth. But we also have to look at the medical establishment. Yes, doctors and medical practices do face a lot of costs, especially malpractice insurance and other similar liabilities. But much, from what I’ve been told even by them, of the costs is peer-inflated. Basically, because X raised their prices, so must Y and thus one sees a chain reaction.

Besides doctors, you have hospitals and medical suppliers also charging crazy amounts. I get it, if you make a medical widget or a pill, you need to see a return on investment. But having owned stock in some medical supplier companies, and really you all should just download those freely available annual and quarterly reports these folks put out, they freely admit charging 10-to-100X the cost of something. Many pharma companies flagship products are based on research the public has already invested in.

 

The Cons and Libertarians like to talk about how we need a free market in medicine. That if the government “got out of the way,” we would see lower prices through competition. This is a major fallacy for one simple reason: the medical establishment does not believe in competition. The AMA alone controls the supply of doctors in the United States, and they are akin to an old medieval guild. In order to have a market one needs to have price transparency. You can easily find out the price on a grocery shelf for all products, and we can price compare many goods against other stores. There is no such price transparency in medicine. Hospitals only post some pricing and more often than not that information is hard to get. And of course, one cannot price shop while having a heart attack.

Maybe we do need a collapse of the medical system to rebuild it. We obviously do not have any political means of enforcing any real competition among medical providers. And we sure as heck do not have any political means of establishing something like the UK’s National Health Service, let alone Single-Payer.