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The "Obamacare Shock" - One California Employer's Terrifying True Story
From a Zero Hedge reader:
My company, based in California, employs 600. We used to insure about 250 of our employees. The rest opted out. The company paid 50% of their premiums for about $750,000/yr.
Under obamacare, none can opt out without penalty, and the rates are double or triple, depending upon the plan. Our 750k for 250 employees is going to $2 million per year for 600 employees.
By mandate, we have to pay 91.5% of the premium or more up from the 50% we used to pay.
Our employees share of the premium goes from $7/week for the cheapest plan to $30/week. 95% of my employees were on that plan. Remember, we used to pay 50% now we pay 91.5% and the premiums still go up that much!!
The cheapest plan now has a deductible of $6350! Before it was $150. Employees making $9 to $10/hr, have to pay $30/wk and have a $6350 deductible!!! What!!!!
They can't afford that to be sure. Obamacare will kill their propensity to seek medical care. More money for less care? How does that help them?
Here is the craziest part. Employees who qualify for mediCAL (the California version of Medicare), which is most of my employees, will automatically be enrolled in the Federal SNAP program. They cannot opt out. They cannot decline. They will be automatically enrolled in the Federal food stamp program based upon their level of Obamacare qualification. Remember, these people work full time, living in a small town in California. They are not seeking assistance. It all seems like a joke. How can this be the new system?
Pelosi, pass the bill to find out what's in it? Surprise! You've annihilated the working class.
Q.E.D.
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"This is such a sick and nasty society we live in."
Sorry, not Obama sorry, but you should have written, "This is such a sick and nasty POLICE-STATE we live in."
Of course I could be wrong, I'll check with Kelly Thomas and see what he says.
Thay wasn't rape, it was a Obamacare mandated exam.
If you like the lack of stigma associated with not having to resort to food stamps, you can keep the lack of..."
Uhhh, never mind.
The ripple effects from the UNaffordable Care Act have only begun to be felt across the broader economy.
The real fun will be quite something to behold when it kicks in all its splendid glory, my fellow Amerikans.
If you like your dignity, you can keep your dignity. Just kidding, you can't.
^^ This is hilarious. I am going to steal that.
If you like being ass-raped, you can keep being ass-raped.
There fixed it for you.
"If you like your anal rape now, you'll be able to keep getting anally raped, but deeper."
#big-gov-fisting.com
Anal and/or oral. Obummer gives you freedom of choice.
If you like your Dicktator, you can keep your Dicktator.
Stigma? What's that? Wait a second.........I think I've got it. Stigma is that thing associated with working really hard, underconsuming, having values/morals, and not being a member of a protected class.
Stigma, smegma, it's all the same.
Hard to tell in a dark bathhouse.
Things are getting totally insane. I was shocked to hear radio advertisements for SNAP. Forcing people onto SNAP leaves me speechless.
Forward (over the cliff)!
I'm sick of all the PSA's, especially the anti-bullying. I president, I ban them with executive fiat.
"Forcing people onto SNAP leaves me speechless"
Good on ya BA.
Yes, the banksters are slick. Get the entire country on the snap jp morgue cards. Like junkies hooked on the shit of hell. Then, they pull the plug on everyone to create the chaos they lovingly want so bad so the American people, mixed with lots of tax payer paid lawless mercenaries and military from all over the world all annihilate each other. After the dust clears in a few years, they can come in from china with the newly formed globalist babylonic commicoinbit.com and all will have to have the mark of the beast to do business with the new digital money-god system of command and control. Pretty darn crafty, if you see it as the simple plan it is.
What they do not realize is, the American people will all stand together in COMMUNITY against ANY invaders that come to take their rights and freedoms away. Even if these criminals bring on another grid down false flag event, or nurse a real event, it will not matter. The people will stand together against the common enemies in ANY uniform. The house cleaning of the criminals will be first, and then cleaning up the assorted rats and minion slime bucket lickers will be a snap after that.
The country will go back to the very basics. Imagine living like your grandparents did 100 years ago. Prepare for it. Simple things like the Constitutional Law of the Land, and Ten Basic Commandments will prevail. It was all meant to be that simple in the beginning. As it was then, so shall it be then. All babylon has to do, is fire the first shot. THAT TREE...is mighty thirsty.
"Things are getting totally insane. I was shocked to hear radio advertisements for SNAP."
I'm waiting to see Alex Trends or the Sham-Wow! Guy pushing SNAP/EBT on late night infomercials, in between the Ear Wax Vac commercials, with th guy sticking a q-tip in his ear and then in a totally Oscar Winning performance screaming "Ouch!!!"
As bad as the problem with not being able to obtain insurance is, wait until people realize their current preferred doctor and hospital have opted out of the new "plans". These so-called policies are so narrow in scope that they are truly a waste of time and money. Instead, get concerige care service for a fixed cash fee paid directly to the doctor. This is the only way to obtain quality, competent health care. You'll pay between $300-500/month for unlimited service while the doctor will limit his clientale to 200-300 families (compared to the typical 2000 patients in insurance based "plans") No more 15 minute long appointments with 30-60 minutes waits due to deliberate overbooking. You'll have as much face time as you need to truly understand your problem. And you'll have access to tests and diagnostics at the true cost. The doctors motivation is to keep you as healthy as possible since then you won't be bothering him very much. A good motivation for both parties. Without insurance claims to file and dispute, the docs can actually answer their own phones and still have spare time. Oh, and house calls are also available in many cases. So, its back to the 50s for real health care!
Enjoy it while you can. The next step will make it illegal to opt out for doctors or patients. This is the case in every country with government health care.
Yep, in France the govt dictates where they must live, the prices they can charge, who they must serve. See, the government education monopoly, therefore the taxpayers, paid for their education. The doctors didn't build that. The state did.
So, this story didn't cover how many employees were layed off to recoup costs, or if everyone was switched to 29.5 hours or less. Inquiring minds would like to know.
This employer will soon discover the option to get rid of his company sponsored health plan all together, dump all his 600 employees onto the exchanges, and pay the employer mandate fine of $2000 per employee for a cost of $1.2 million - far, far less than his cost to provide coverage. Or, as you say, push all his employees under 30 hours and pay zero.
What's to consider? Cut all full timers to 29.5 hours and then hire a proportional number of other part timers to offset the loss in productivity. Call it a day done and done.
There you go...unemployment rate goes down. Obama is creating jobs. (sarc)
Naw. They sign up for underemployment over at the unemployment office, and unemployment goes up.
Hire mexicans and don't pay shit at all noproblemo. He would be a racist to ask for documents dontcha know.
True story: Home Depot "waiters" won't take on day labor here for less than $20. An hour. Cash. Paid in advance.
.
I met with my insurance agent today. I have the option of seeing my premiums for my small business multiply by 2x or 3x my pre-ACA premiums.
It's going to be a rude awakening for my FT'ers, because they were so pro-ACA. They aren't going to be happy when I tell them their hours are being cut in half thanks to Obamacare.
"They aren't going to be happy when I tell them their hours are being cut in half thanks to Obamacare."
CHANGE!!!
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Sorry JBJ...it must be hard to be in such a position to say, I told ya so. It will be harder for those who drank the kool-aid. Now, and more and more, we may hear sad, and even sadder stories like this. Kinda ludicrous considering this is being allowed to effect so many people that voted for the lying puppet in the first place, when we all told the nation that Ron Paul was the last chance to save it. They laughed and drank the kool-aid of the lying snakes.
Yes, compassion allows for understanding because they just did not know any better, for the lack of real knowledge and education. The evil of a nation that allows the lame stream media weapon of mass-distraction to go on day after day deceiving and lying to them, may actually deserve the effects of the lies, since the blatant acceptance of this evil was known by any third grader.
"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children" Hosea 4:6.
The nation that chooses to live in ignorance and evil lies, could possibly be the receiver of said energy from those who manipulate it all, just to do that. Keep them all ignorant, and well fed with lies.
Go figure?
Or....
Sell the company and leave the USA (while it's still possible to get your capital out).
Trouble is, who would buy it?
Or move the company across the border into Mexico. The US governments believes that every company in the country is morally obligated to contribute to the whole, which is patently insane. When the political, regulatory and financial climates are as toxic as they are in the US right, the smart thing to do is shut it down and move it offshore.
Yes, Key. Before the business mandate was pushed back a year, the constant meme/slogan was "shared responsibilty" as in it was a 'moral obligation' to provide mandatory health insurance. Scariest aspect of all this stuff to me is these people are true, true believers.
If it were my company, and the government added this last straw to my back, I would let all my employees go, and burn my business to the ground.
Wyatt's Torch.
Who is John Galt? Moreover, who the fuck is Valerie Jarrett?
Sell it, if you can, take the money, find a remote island and renounce your servitude (citizenship) to the Amerikan State.
"If it were my company, and the government added this last straw to my back, I would let all my employees go, and burn my business to the ground."
Accidentally of course.
depending on what his company does, those may not be workable options.
And it doesn't really work that way, anyway. Despite all the stories about 29.5 hour employees. The ACA calculates Full Time Equivalnent (FTE) employees. So two half time people count as one FTE. Two quarter time employees count as one half time employee, and so on.
An employer with more than 50 FTEs, whether it is 50 full timers or 200 quarter timers, faces the same rule.
The only thing that gets them off the hook is getting the staff below 50 FTEs. And you better belive that the IRS is on the look out for a sudden spike in the use of contractors.
well there ya go.
1099 da bitchez
Problem is, once govt. has its boot in your ass, it never takes it out.
Now that govt. forced a PRIVATE buisness to unconstitutionally fund something for its workers, it can always rewrite the rules later, that foot is now permanently wedged into the glutes and they can take it out at will and strap on spiked heels any time they want and re-insert it.
Once the provision is set, they can change, manipulate and restructure things to suit them.
The fact is, the employer has been saddled with so much bullshit like this for so long that nobody even mentions the obvious fact that the govt. has no right at all to force businesses to do any of this shit, including matching the payroll taxes.
SDI is a perfect example. We need the goobermint to help people with disabwillitwees.
UI. We need the goober-trons to help people out of work.
SS tax. We need the goober-slobs to help us live in geezer town.
And now we need the goober-slices to help us go to the dwoktor.
Well said, Wyatt. Once you establish the principle and right to use force on employer and employee that door is forever open. Over time more stuff walks through that door until we find ourselves in the typical dysfunctional autocratic state.
The math in this article doesn't make sense. If he's paying $2 mil for 91.5% of 600 employees' plans, then the employees themselves would be paying $26.00 a month in premiums as the other 8.5%, not $30 a week.
So....you are saying the government uses real math?
... or real money?
...or real data?
(inflation, unemployment, GDP, etc.)
Maobama and his sycophants have cast what perhaps could be the final blow to our economy with "ObamaCare". It WILL be a profound impact as more jobs....wait, a black helicopter is hovering outside my window....not me, not me!
It is all falling apart - Cloward Piven = this is all being done by design by O and the Democrats plus some help from the RINOs.
DON'T JUST SIT ON YOUR ASSES AND MAKE SNARKY COMMENTS. DO SOMETHING!!
Two thousand architects and engineers agree that all three buildings were brought down by Controlled Demolition! The dumbass American public is on the verge of waking up. We need to TAKE ACTION NOW. DO SOMETHING to support the AE911 movement, if only to donate to it.
http://www.ae911truth.org
The real nightmare is yet to come: all your employees' most private data sets, consolidated not only from the information you supplied but also key private and public sources, is now in the hands of who the hell knows.
I got bad news for you. Insurance companies have given their data with the state for a LOOOONG time. If it exists in electronic form, there is a conduit to some gov't database.
I'm not talking about the state.
I've said from day one that the thing that will undo 0zer0care is the lawsuits. There is so much damage being done to individuals and corporations that it's inevitable that individual, corporate, and class action lawsuits are going to be filed. Lots of lawsuits were denied previously because the 0zer0care wasn't implemented and so the plaintiffs lacked standing. That all changed as of Oct 1. Just wait until people believe they have HC through a govt exchange, then find out their plans were garbeled and are not covered for treatment they received. That's when the real lawsuits will be filed "fast and furious". This will make the robo signing of mortgage documents look like a picnic. What's ironic is that lawyers are the biggest supporters of the dumbcrats, and it will be lawyers that ultimately destroy the dumbcrats signaure legislation. Lie with dogs and get fleas.
Sue...the federal government?
It's out there operating without any decent restraint. Totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct
Terminate...the colonel? Where will get combo buckets of extra crunchy and original conveniently if we do that?
+1 for the quote.
"I love the smell of burning rainforest in the morning"...
Me
Probably Al CIAda and the Taliban
"Roger" from Bangalore...
But it's for your own good...
The ski industry is toast. If you're on the hook for $6-13K for a bad fall, it isn't worth it.
Just sit in front of the TV, rock back and forth, and say "I can't get sick, I can't get hurt, I'm not leaving the house anymore. Obmacare is good".
Bingo! That's exactly what I've been thinking as well. And in fact, I'm hearing from a number of people in the ski business they are fearing much the same thing.
Same thing goes for other activities where even a minor injury is possible.
Don't be surprised if school and little league sports lose a lot of kids because of this insanity.
I expect that even riding bicycles will soon be a bye-gone activity for kids as well!
And whoa! WHAT'S WITH THE 10 YEAR TREASURY YIELD SPIKE?
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/bond/10_year
Think of all the accidents that Pelosi's face has gone through.
Pelosi is Putin in a body suit.
naw, I trust putin.
Putin is way smarter.
Excellent point man, maybe this is how they effectively ban football.
This all begs the question, what exactly is the size of the economic subsidy via health care that the skiing industry has received?
Smaller than the subsidies to the sugar and junk food industries, or the tobacco industry back in the day m
Dude, not only the ski industry, try every industry where your hazard pay is not bullet proofed or carried by the site operator. If you are hurt on a oil rig deck, the pro insurance and risk policy covers it, same in forestry and mines. In retail or commercial ? Not so much.
Cash contractors ? Climbing guides ? Private pilots/air cab companies not screwed by the FAA private strip shutdown ? heh. Goodluck with those new premiums.
SCOTUS was right, a 8% GST would have made more sense than this pigou tax.
Ambulance chasers will have a field day with this. Look for lots and lots of little law suites to cover deductibles.
Heh, I'm recovering from a really bad broken leg. Totally blew up the bones right above my left ankle. It took 5 hours for the surgeon to put it back together with a couple of pounds of assorted hardware. All this took place six weeks ago and I have not received one bill or insurance statement yet. I have pretty good insurance through my job and looking at our plan it looks like the most it will cost me is 3K. I have the cash but I may just take a loan out on my 401K, won't be there in 15 years anyway.
I'm sorry to hear about your accident Rob, and hope your recovery is a smooth one. It sounds incredibly painful. My sympathies.
I posted this in one of WB's Obamacare threads and am reposting it here. On a much smaller scale a couple of weeks ago I took a bad fall and broke my arm. I treated it at home with pain patches over which I wrapped an Ace bandage, then cut the toes off of a sock and pulled it over everything else. As the pain was not subsiding I went to see my doctor. She took an x-ray and told me I had a break in my ulna and a possible fractured wrist. She gave me a splint to put over the Ace bandage and pain patches, and told me I did a very good job of taking care of it. I see her again next week to make sure there was no permanent muscle/tendon/nerve damage.
My broken arm cost me 34.00$ for the splint and 4$ for a squeezy ball to work the musles in my hand and wrist. My insurance covered everything else. Again, this is nowhere near the catastrophic accident you had, but I can only imagine what my bill would have been had I gone to the ER, where most likely they would have put a cast on it if only for liability issues.
Again, the best of luck and health to you Rob.
Thanks for the kind words RS. The crazy thing about my break is that it did not hurt at all. I basically landed with all of my weight on my left leg(I was playing air-soft with the kids and was making a run for the flag and misjudged a jump over rock wall) and the break happened in such a way that there was no soft tissue damage. I knew it was broken immediately from the sound but there was no pain. We slapped some ice on it and I took a couple of ibros but that was it. We were about 2 hours from the hospital so we just wrapped it up in an ace bandage and went to the hospital the next day. They gave me a nerve block on the leg before surgery and that lasted about 24 hours and that is when the pain hit. Now that was some spectacular pain, I was on 20mg of oxy when the block wore off and the pain just blew right threw it. It only lasted about 2 hours but wow it was some awesome pain. It was like my nerves had saved up every sensation that happened during the surgery and then transmitted it to my brain once the block wore off. I'm talking vice like pressure, blow torching, hot pokers, hammer blows ect. So know I'm on crutches for a total of 10 weeks, no cast, just a protective boot but I can't put any weight on it. I keep myself in good shape so being on crutches is no big deal but my leg has atrophied so much that it is going to be a while before I'm back to 100% even after I get off the crutches. I see lots of squats and lunges in my future to build the muscle back lol.
I have similar feelings of intense pressure like Hulk Hogan is constantly squeezing my arm and wrist as hard as he can. Oddly enough the feeling of pain from pressure subsides the more snug my bandage wrap and splint is.
It sounds like you went through hours of sheer hell. God, I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
Work the good leg more during your down time. You will notice that the bad one atrophies a lot less.
I thought it was bullshit myself, but found out otherwise when I had to do it personally.
One-legged squats, pistol jumps, curls, one-legged burpees...etc. Find things to do to work the good one and your body will try to keep the bad one in line.
Hope you feel better soon!
Pretty, fucking, scary. Seriously, it's a car crash. Or a train crash.
A Tesla crash..??
i'd say worse than 2 757's going into buildings in NYC.
A jetliner hitting the ground at supersonic speed. (Which actually happened once, a pilot committed suicide by going nose down from 25K feet. Not a single body part was found.)
But they did find Chris Dorner's driver's license.
Tunguska meteor strike.
It's an extinction-level event.
It's a big budget summer CGI-fest.
We haven't seen anything yet, wait till millions feel this "shock"
Try 93 million. That's the figure that the Justice Dept estimated would lose their EMPLOYEE sponsored HC that was recorded in the federal record during a lawsuit brought against Sebelius and HHS 0zer0care a couple of years ago. So 0zer0 has known from day one that his "keep you plan" pledge was just a lie. If the dumbcrats are freaking out over the shitstorm that has happened because 1 mil people have lost their private HC, just wait until that is multiplied almost 10x with employee plans. The dumbcrats have no clue how ugly this is going to get next year.
Obozo will have to spark the final market crash and impose Martial Law. Then there will be no more elections.
What I wonder is this: how will the Red team snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in light of the growing hatred of Obamacare?
By "fixing" it of course. The Blue team will be so desperate to make it work that they will sign on to a miniscule Red team proposal as a bribe for help in fixing 0zer0care with various reforms. I suspect the bribe will be tax reform. It won't be anything to do with welfare reform, entitlement reform, debt/budget reform. No, the Rinos are just as dependent on govt spending as the dumbcrats and want MOAR too. So it will be the tried and true "Taxes" issue. Tax reform that rolls back 0zer0's tax on the wealthy, and cuts corporate taxes is my guess. A token reform that the Rino's can claim as a victory, but will be ultimately spun by the lamestream media and libtards as being a bailout to the rich. Same as it ever was. There is no hope of the red team repealing 0zer0care. They had their chance and blew it. We are stuck with it, and all it's economy destroying glory.
I'm sure the shit won't hit the fan until after the midterm elections.
Afterwords it sets up Clinton II, the Queen to fix the mess.
Americans are just too dense, and haven't a clue about what that "fix" for Omamacare will entail.
This is the true definition of sheeple hope and change: Baaaaa, we hope she changes Obamacare, we'll have to elect that Queen to see what her plan is.
There are no life rafts on this sinking ship.
Long term you are probably right about the Hildabeast. But short term this is going to go critical mass by mid 2014 for the dumbcrats. The economy is going to slow down early next year. The holiday sales is going to be abysmal, and the 0zer0care sticker shock is going to turn into real wallet shock when every person has to pay $100-$200 per month more for HC, plus double copays and deductibles. No way the economy on life support can sustain this. Businesses will be despearte to cut costs, and HC will be the biggest bang for the buck. Businesses will say Fuck 0zer0 and his delay on implementing the employer mandate and will decide they HAVE to cut their costs to survive next year. That means cutting their employee plans. This will go into business budget plans in the summer, and by October the cancellation notices will be going out to meet the 60 day notification deadline. All just before the 2014 mid terms. The dumbcrats have no idea the abosolute shit storm that is going to hit them next year.
Good analysis SDShack, the truth is exactly as you said that the Red Team will never do anything to straighten it out.
Exactly right, SD. I am here in Cali and have seen signs of businesses both big and small positioning themselves to ditch their employees' health insurance. They have no choice as the premiums are so high and they are one and all scrambling furiously to survive.
Spot on.
So what, Obama can't run again anyway. They were planning on handing the government back to the Republicans all the time.It's their turn for the next round of tyranny.
WTF? Hell my employees would love to eat steak every night too. SNAP for everyone!!!!
The mass subsidization of society's food will end as it always does.
hedge accordingly.
I bought a nice grill last year only to find I can no longer afford the steaks.
That can be fixed in a SNAP.
Grow your own.
Oh man I can't get enough of these food pics! Are you on instagram too?
Fuck "instagram", does he deliver?
HH --thank you for the pics--- you made my day.
That top picture --- those are working citizens after the full implementation of Obama(Don't)Care, right?
I hate hedgeless horseman. HATE him.
Hey! Where's the guy who blew his Depends out over the picture of dead rabbits? This is his lucky day: dead cows in the fire.
Those natural, antibiotic free, artificial hormone free steaks look really good.
I'm a total carnivore with a BMI of 22. Maybe there's something to the paleo diet & tons of physical exercise, after all.
Yo! I want a pizza and a couple of cannolis. Can he grow that? ;-)
Freddie, you need to lay off the pizza and cannabis. It grows man-tits on you.
Careful, HH! You'll upset VD!
Gee, I'd sure by upset if he didn't show his (bagged) face around here anymore.
"Grow your own" - Unless you are giving away arable land HH, it will be take your own soon enough. We are already have problems with theft in our orchards.
Who really knows what the future brings?
Today, we will continue to enjoy food we produce, and the good health that comes with it.
For my parents, siblings, and relatives that live the typical American lifestyle:
To a great extent, life is what you make it.
Likewise, so the only thing we have going for us is that we will be healthy enough to defend what we made ourselves HH.
Just be aware that the local petty dictators can ruin the best of plans. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/19/florida-city-uproots-couples-17-year-old-garden-over-new-ordinance/
Remember, you don't own your property. The government merely rents it to you and calls it a property tax.
awesome
Some lean looking grass fed steaks bro. Chock full of CLA
Yes, but chuck tastes so good when it is cooked over an open flame.
mmmmmmmm.....beef fat.
Roast Road Kill will be on the menu.
"Chuck over an open flame".....
Fine, as long as it's Chuck Shumer.
And Starbucks
"Hell my employees would love to eat steak every night too. SNAP for everyone!!!!"
Hey LOP.
If they can do it on the extra 68.00 dollars a month they will get for the whole month to eat with, it might happen once. Steak for dinner.
Please down-vote this post if you enjoy taking it up the butt...
Okay. That made me laugh :-)
+1
Every once in awhile I have to step back and wonder how in the hell we got to this place. Its like these articles are talking about a foreign totalitarian fascist state and not America. I guess they are now one and the same. Disgusting.
Hillary will fix it.
If they don't kill O-care soon, the blue side of the one party will see a housecleaning that will make 1994 look like a walk in the park. You're already got dems jumping sides and asking O to not endorse or campaign for them.
If they leave ACA in place, anyone that wins the Republican primary will be president, if an election is even held. Given how fucked things are, it'll probably be a stroked-out McCain in a wheelchair serving the 2016-2020 term.
'a housecleaning that will make 1994 look like a WANK in the park' -- fixed it for you ...
Don't underestimate the power of the stupid party (Repugs) to sabotage their own. Already Ryan is caving on the debt ceiling. Rinos want MOAR too.
Redumbicans: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory since 1860.
Amen to that.
Unless it's Rand Paul it will make fuck all diffrence if the Republicans win.
Team Blue = Bailout the Corpatocracy through social programs (which fuck the proles).
Team Red = Bailout the Corpratocracy through military programs (which fuck the proles).
I have a lot of doubts about Rand. He strikes me as hardly the uncorruptable man his father is.
Yeah, and we thought evolution always trended uphill. There used to be a band called Devo, based on the concept of evolving downhill. They themselves were a pretty good demonstration of the principle, as I recall.
There are several fascinating aspects to the Obamacare fiasco.
Politics - overnight the landscape has changed and Demos are running for their lives from this albatross
Incompetence - we have a President telling us that buying insurance is hard and that the Feds do a poor job of IT. Really?
Economics - the effect of Obamacare is already being felt, check out business activity indexes etc. The anecdotal evidence of people reducing expenditures is huge and troubling.
Insurance - people are finally learning what it is, how it works and the massive costs associated with coverage. This is a good thing as a more educated populace will not fall for the free-lunch promises of Obamacare. We hope.
Painful to experience, but interesting to watch.
sschu
Gesundheit!
The teams are both shit - BUT - fuck O and his blue team. Not even Hildabeast could win, unless she campaigns to kill ACA.
Which she might since O fucked her over in the 2008 primaries. Payback is a bitch!
Let the Dems lose for another generation - then the Repubs can have at it to fuck us over in other ways (let's invest SS treasuries directly in the stock market!)
We already are investing treasuries into the stock market. That's the whole purpose of QE... to monetize the federal debt. That's why it is never going to end and is why Ryan and repugs are caving on the debt ceiling fight already. They want MOAR too.
I wonder how an epic market crash coupled with total bank system failure changes the political calculus on this one. If there is martial law, there might not even be a 2014 or 2016 election.
Revolution only happens when the people are starving in the streets, and we are a LONG way from that. Probably decades. Just saw Soylent Green last night for the upteenth time. That is probably a lot closer to reality then anyone could imagine and shows the depths to which people will sink and remain content so long as they get any type of food. Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs is sad but true.
The time frame for starvation goes from decades to months, then to 72 hours with a USD collapse and loss of reserve status.
I seriously doubt the USD is still the reserve currency in 10 years, so we're not that far away from this.
Once it isn't, all printing stays at home and we're in a hyperinflationary scenario. They'll keep printing to keep the masses happy, except once inflation starts hitting, the feedback loop starts, and that's when the revolution will appear. Except it likely won't be just one -- I strongly suspect we've got the leftist-fascist axis envisioning Soviet 2.0, and the right-leaning fascists envisioning some ongoing version of what we have now, Rome 2.0 -- meanwhile, there's the real revolution, the people staving in all the states, envisioning "fuck this shit 1.0."
End game is anyone's guess, but I'd bet there's a couple blocs of states on the east coast taking sides on the first two, and "fuck this shit" takes a good chunk of the midwest and west, and the left coast decides to become a socialist paradise that devolves into a failed state/Somolia 2.0 in a few years.
Kind of crazy what really bad legislation might lead to, isn't it?
Respectifully disagree. TPTB will never allow a complete US Dollar Collapse. They have engineered the system for the continued devalution of all currencies to coincide with the US dollar drop. It's the best way to redistribute assets from the private masses to the elites across the entire world. Want proof? Just look at the Europe and Japan. TPTB are sociopaths and will do ANYTHING to protect their power. They will sacrifise any law, constitution, govt, company... even their friends and families to protect their system. When all fails. they will start WWIII to "save the world" in their twisted minds. The long slow collapse has been occuring for decades and will continue. Oh there will be crisis, like S&L collapse, Dot-Com collapse, Housing Collapse, but that is all part of the bigger plan. BTFD... Rinse & Repeat. But a never ending slog downward is what they want and is what they will get. Plan accordingly.
"...there might not even be a 2014 or 2016 election."
Yes Andrew.
You got it right on and yes, THIS is also in the works towards the new totaltarian state of the ussa.
I believe that's the plan Fonz. Obamacare destroys, Hillary rebuilds. Or so it would seem on the surface. After the charade is completed it will be more of the same.
"I'M SURROUNDED BY FRICKIN' IDIOTS!!!"
-Dr. Evil
I think it all started with FDR's "New Deal" plan but really took hold with LBJ's "Great Society" agenda which happened at the peak of America's industrial and economic peak in the mid 60's
The "peace dividend" after the USSR fell plus the information tech productivity gains and boomers hitting their peak spending in the 90's gave us a sense of prosperity which we believed would and should never end.
So here we are!
tu Mr Headbanger---accurate to a fault.
The protofascist Wilson administration was an appetizer. He was a former academic who derided the constitution royally. Big fan of statism. BIG. Wrote a whole tome on it called The State. Before Mussolini and Hitler got going American progressives were dreaming big and doing big things.
The protofascist Wilson administration was an appetizer. He was a former academic who derided the constitution royally. Big fan of statism. BIG. Wrote a whole tome on it called The State. Before Mussolini and Hitler got going American progressives were dreaming big and doing big things.
I call it 'The Silent Coup'.
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, is done these days in the name of its real agenda.
Lesson from Hitler. Hitler was too obvious.
Monsanto doesn't say "We're gonna get a rentier position and patent rights on all food. You'll have to pay us if you wanna eat." No, they say they're gonna increase yields and solve world hunger (wink). Blankfuck says "We're doing God's work." He doesn't say we're gonna rip off faces and wreck the US economy so he can have the best address in NYC. NSA, CIA, war on terror, same shit.
EVERYTHING IS LIES. This is the endgame of the 'age of advertising'.
In Jonathan Turley's latest talk he reminded us of an old Chinese saying: "Calling things by their real name is the beginning of wisdom".
This is one of my deepest question, too. Similar the change in my thinking that happened when I completely and totally, "balls to bone," understood that 9/11 was an inside job. What then really was the role of drowning Muslim men (waterboarding)? Holding people in Guantanamo Bay for years. Torturing them by forcing them to remain kneeling or standing for many hours (something whose only purpose is to cause pain)? Or firing missiles from drones into homes and schools and wedding parties. The terrorist attacks on NYC were initiated INSIDE the USA, so clearly, the purpose is NOT REALLY TO OBTAIN INFORMATION on terrorist attacks. What is the real purpose? I don't have any answers here. Just questions. And a deep suspicion that something else entirely is going on.
The widespread torture began after the Iraq invasion as an attempt to stop the guerrilla war, and continues to be used against any anti-colonial movement or groups that the empire encounters. It also makes a domestic police state much easier since the population is now inured to torture and seems to view it as necessary.
Vietnam and The Phoenix Program and beyond.
Check out Douglas Valentine.