Cancer Clinics Turning Away Medicare Patients

You didn't get the message when the White House tours were cancelled, so maybe this will get you to pay up, sucker:

Cancer clinics across the country have begun turning away thousands of Medicare patients, blaming the sequester budget cuts.

Oncologists say the reduced funding, which took effect for Medicare on April 1, makes it impossible to administer expensive chemotherapy drugs while staying afloat financially

Patients at these clinics would need to seek treatment elsewhere, such as at hospitals that might not have the capacity to accommodate them.

 “If we treated the patients receiving the most expensive drugs, we’d be out of business in six months to a year,” said Jeff Vacirca, chief executive of North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates in New York. “The drugs we’re going to lose money on we’re not going to administer right now.”

The sequester cuts of $85 billion this year, amount to around 2.4% of the federal budget. Meanwhile, the General Accounting Office has found over $400 billion wasted every year on duplicative, fragmented and inefficient programs that could be eliminated tomorrow without a second thought. That's almost 11% of the same budget. And that's just for starters, since no business or government can say there aren't at least 10% of inefficiencies to cut everywhere, especially this government. American businesses have done just that and more over the last five years, since they can't print money or take it at the point of a gun when times are tough.

But instead of firing some thumb sitting bureaucrats, or curbing the massive fraud and abuse throughout the system, oncologists and their patients are going to take it in the shorts, even though these doctors are barely breaking even on Medicare as it is. This is extortion, pure and simple. The government beast will be fed or you will suffer, and possibly die. The government can never do with one penny less than the ever increasing amounts it demands. That message will be sent in the most emotional and painful way possible.   

Lead House Gun Control Sponsor Doesn't Know What She's Banning

I guess it's too much to ask that when a legislator wants to ban something, they at least know what the hell it is they're banning:

Asked how a ban on magazines holding more than 15 rounds would be effective in reducing gun violence, DeGette said:
“I will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available.”

 Ms. DeGette's claim is tantamount to saying that running out of gas requires the purchase of a new gas tank.. Perhaps the source of her confusion apparently stems from the belief that magazines are bullets, or something. And I'm not even going to quibble over the fact that a magazines hold cartridges and the gun shoots bullets.

But we're just manipulative nit-pickers, according to her office:

“The Congresswoman has been working on a high-capacity assault magazine ban for years, and has been deeply involved in the issue; she simply misspoke in referring to ‘magazines’ when she should have referred to ‘clips,’ which cannot be reused because they don’t have a feeding mechanism,” Johnson said. “Quite frankly, this is just another example of opponents of common-sense gun violence prevention trying to manipulate the facts to distract from the critical issue of keeping our children safe and keeping killing machines out of the hands of disturbed individuals. It’s more political gamesmanship that stands in the way of responsible solutions.”

First Rule of Holes: When you're in one, stop digging.  Clips are most certainly reused. For the uninitiated, a clip is used to quickly load the magazine, while the magazine is the device that loads the ammo into the gun's chamber. Tutorial here.  But DeGette has been working on this issue 'for years', (BTW - What the hell is an Assault Magazine?) so one would think she's become an expert on the matter by now. But knowledge isn't necessary when your true motive is to effectively ban all guns incrementally and make their purchase and ownership so burdensome as to render the Second Amendment meaningless. Learning about guns might expose one to inconvenient facts. Degette and her allies would repeal the Second Amendment if they could, and no, that's not paranoia.  Ask a gun control advocate. If they're honest, that's what they'll tell you.

Obama Administration Pushing Banks to Make Subprime Loans

Yes, this is really happening:

"The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place."

Skeptics? How about anyone with an ounce of common sense? If you wanted even more proof that government meddling caused the real estate bubble and near destruction of the financial system, look no further. The central planners never learn from the past because someone else always suffers the consequences for their arrogance and stupidity.

  " In response, administration officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs — including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration — that insure home loans against default."

 That would be the same FHA that's essentially insolvent now that it has taken back and expanded its role as the insurer of loans no one else will touch. When Fannie and Freddie were buying loans to anyone who could fog a mirror, FHA had a lot less business. Meant originally for low income borrowers who could only afford small down payments, FHA now insures - largely at taxpayer risk - loans up to $730,000.

It's also important to note that with a few restrictions, FHA loans are fully assumable. You will never get that on a fully private loan, and with rates as low as they are now,  those fixed rate mortgages will have a lot of value when interest rates spike. And they're going to. Big time.
  

"The FHA, in coordination with the White House, is working to develop new policies to make clear to banks that they will not lose their guarantees or face other legal action if loans that conform to the program’s standards later default. Officials hope the FHA’s actions will then spur Fannie and Freddie to do the same.

The effort requires sign-on by the Justice Department and the inspector general of Department of Housing and Urban Development, agencies that investigate wrongdoing in mortgage lending."

Once burned, twice shy I suppose. Using a series of carrots and sticks, starting in the nineties and throughout the government induced bubble, banks were cajoled, intimidated and enticed to make, buy and sell loans given to objectively unqualified buyers. The pressure came from HUD, Fannie and Freddie, Congress, community groups (ACORN) and others, including the Department of Justice. The Jenet Reno DoJ threatened civil and criminal  prosecutions under civil rights law if lending standards didn't lead to the right amount of loans to the right kind of people.

So when the shit hit the fan and everything melted down in 2008 the lenders were vilified by the same people who mandated they make these toxic loans. I don't necessarily feel bad for them since they made out pretty good themselves. DoJ stopped short of criminal prosecution, most likely because the defendants would then have every reason to pull the covers on the whole thing and expose the rot under the public pronouncements.

Unlike the progressive central planners in Washington, the private sector does learn from the past and wants assurances - for what their worth- that they wont be subject to public opprobrium when this fails again. 

AP Bans the Term Illegal Immigrant

Doublespeak is one of the favorite methods tyrants use to intimidate and ostracize dissenters. Turning the language on its head and shunning those who don't conform, also confuses an issue and conceals its inconvenient aspects and the ugly truth.

The latest entry is the Associated Press's decision to abuse its stature and tell us illegal Aliens - the term under the law - are not even illegal:

The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term “illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.illegal immigration ...Entering or residing in a country in violation of civil or criminal law. Except in direct quotes essential to the story, use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant. Acceptable variations include living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission.

Evidently, the dictionary will now have to change the word illegal from an adjective to a verb in order to conform with AP's declaration. Even the current politically correct term is unacceptable:

The discussions on this topic have been wide-ranging and include many people from many walks of life. (Earlier, they led us to reject descriptions such as “undocumented,” despite ardent support from some quarters, because it is not precise. A person may have plenty of documents, just not the ones required for legal residence.)

Hey, just because you don't have a passport, visa, or green card, it doesn't mean you're undocumented if you can produce a Sam's Club membership card.

Don't Believe in Man Made Global Warming? It's your Stone Age Brain

Religious fascists use all sorts of tactics and weird rationales to convince you of their righteousness. The true believers in the Church of Global Warming are no different. Sometimes they just come right out and condemn you to hell, or accuse you of racism, or something. But often they come at you with some high-minded gibberish from a "really smart person:" Here's an example from Helen Camakaris Ph.D.:

 Cognitive dissonance is that uncomfortable feeling we have when we know we should invest in solar panels but the 46″ wide screen TV wins out; we know we should catch the bus but we take the car anyway. It’s that sense of discord that arises when emotion and reason don’t get along. And unfortunately, it’s alive and well, sabotaging the climate change debate....We haven’t evolved to be successful in the modern world. Civilisation arose only 12,000 years ago; in evolutionary terms that’s just the blink of an eye. Ninety-nine per cent of human evolution occurred during the Stone Age, so our evolved instincts, personality traits, and even some of our cognitive “short-cuts” are much better suited to this Pleistocene world.

 Impressed? I know I am. It takes a lot of thought, such as it is, to come up with the notion that the blasphemers are evolutionary throwbacks. When she says 'we', she really means 'you' since Dr. Camakaris and her brethren have apparently raced ahead of us primitives who act and rely on ancient thought processes.

According to Ms. Camakaris, I am an unreasoning beast when I decide to buy a TV rather than 'invest' in a highly inefficient technology that no one - including her - would buy in the absence of government subsidies and force, and even then, it's still a white elephant.

Evidently, the mere questioning of  anyone's ability to predict the future behavior of an enormous and chaotic, non linear system, is to sabotage the debate, which wouldn't even be a debate if us skeptics were advanced enough to know what's good for us. Of course, the 'really smart people' are also immune from confirmation bias, greed, envy or any of the other faults and foibles of the mere stone age mortals who would disagree.

    We need to design a new kind of democracy where many government decisions are made cooperatively, with multi-party representation and the input of experts...Education must produce adults who can think critically and understand what’s at stake and why our judgement is flawed. To counter self-interest, the government should use incentives and disincentives to guide public behaviour. We need to encourage altruism by instituting reciprocal, incremental improvements, and by showing leadership.

So, now the definition of critical thinking is to not trust your own judgment and leave it all to the self-anointed, who will tell us what to think. And for those of you not fluent in fascist bullshit, when they call for cooperation, multi-party representation and the input of experts, it means SHUT UP!

Great News: Sugary Drinks Are Safe!

Well, that's not what the food police want you to believe, but it is what they're actually saying:

 New research presented at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism 2013 Scientific Sessions showed that 180,000 deaths worldwide are linked to sugary beverages.

Wow, 180,000! That's a lot, huh? Not so fast. Each year, approximately 60 million people die worldwide, so 180,000 deaths works out to around .03% of the total. Statistically speaking, that's essentially ZERO. Moreover, this propaganda doesn't even claim a causal relationship. That is, it doesn't account for any other contributing factors in these deaths, such as smoking, genetics, physical activity, or any other underlying conditions. And this meme is being pushed by the American Heart Association, no less.

 These agenda driven reports from 'experts',  aren't usually this obvious in their dishonesty, but it illustrates just how much contempt these elitist control freaks have for you. Remember, this is the stuff you need to believe if you don't want to be called anti-science.

NYT:Reconstruction Lifts Economy After Disasters

In a desperate attempt to fabricate any good economic news, The Times has put forth one of the oldest and easily refuted notions in economics. LINK:

The deadly tornadoes and widespread flooding that have left a trail of death and destruction throughout the South and the Midwest have also disrupted dozens of local economies just as the unsteady recovery seemed to be finding a foothold.

But a new phase is slowly beginning in some hard-hit areas: reconstruction, which past disasters show is typically accompanied by a burst of new, and different, economic activity. There is no silver lining to a funnel cloud, as anyone who survived the tornadoes can attest, but reconstruction can help rebuild local economies as well as neighborhoods.

Apparently neither the writer nor his editor have heard of the term Opportunity Cost or the Broken Window Fallacy.