Heard an interesting story on Michigan Radio this morning, and alarm bells went ringing:

"A state House committee has approved major changes to Michigan’s no-fault auto insurance. The legislation would cap medical fees and restrict the kind of care people who are badly hurt in car accidents could get. As it is now, if someone is catastrophically injured in a car accident, no-fault Personal Injury Protection pays for all necessary medical and rehabilitation expenses.  It’s unlimited, lifetime benefits if necessary. This new bill would limit medical fees, and it would give motorists the choice to purchase $500,000, $1 million, or $5 million worth of coverage.  After that, you’re on your own."

Who's pushing this bill through? Republican Representative Pete Lund, with some help from our friend, Kevin Clinton: 

From the "deliberations":

'Clinton: “It is extremely difficult to predict these costs.”

Hovey-Wright: “Then how can we impose a cap?” Clinton: “Well, I think the current system is unsustainable.  I just don’t think it can work.”

'So, it’s extremely difficult to predict what the fund needs, but the insurance industry is certain it’s unsustainable.'

'Gov. Rick Snyder said in a statement that Clinton’s “first priority is to make sure consumers are protected by making sure financial institutions are sound.”' (I'm not sure I can repeat that sentence without either laughing and crying hysterically, or taking a brick to a bank.)

Michigan Insurance Coalition was kind enough to call Clinton a "consumer financial advocate" when he was appointed - apparently he can't do math that well, though.  Not that "unsustainable" shouldn't be considered a quantity. (Hell, it sure isn't when the argument for renewable energy sources is made.)

So what do you do if the new, crappy insurance doesn't cover all your costs, according to this "consumer advocate"? "You can go to your health insurance [if you've got any], You can go to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security. You can sue people. That’s the way it operates in 49 other states,” said Clinton. "  I never want to forget that response so long as Rick Snyder and his appointees are tearing through Michgian Legislation.  Never: Medicaid. Medicare. Social Security. Use the courts.  What a staunch party line our Michigan Republicans run.  Who are the "Socialists" now?  (To find out by how much and why Kevin Clinton exceeds the standards for scum-sucker of the day, read his comissioner bio, and tell me if you see any glaring conflicts-of-interest inherent in his advice that consumers "go to their health insurance" http://www.naic.org/members_bios/michigan.htm, SPOILER ALERT: as seems to be the standard is this country, the guy's regulating the companies and organizations he used to run.)

And in a last attempt to convince anyone who doesn't already believe what a crock Republicans in this country try to sell (and most of their constituents buy), let's take a look at how Republicans - so dedicated to the transparency of government, demanding that bills be read and reviewed for applicability and accuracy - treated the vote on this half-assed piece of legislation:

"Democratic members of the Insurance Committee asked for more time to study the last minute changes to the bill. Represenative Pete Lund (R-Shelby Township), who sponsored the bill, moved ahead with the vote," which they passed yesterday.

Truly amazing, this nation's GOP. And by amazing, I mean in the Special Olympian kind of way - the "how do they make it through the day," kind of way.

 

That TEA Partiers and #Occupywallstreet supporters are calling each other names and poking fun at one another is proof that we are being fed our preferences and ideas by a mass-media controlled by the Elite. They're the same movement, the same complaint, the same principle - and together, they would be unstoppable. Hence the threat is neutralized by making sure we square-off instead of unify. #wearescrewed

Just watched "G20: Exposed", which opens with a few cases in Canada where police have publicly admitted to planting officers in crowds of peaceful protesters, dressed as, say Black Bloc members (black bandanas over their faces, spray painted hair, etc.)  The idea - filmed in one instance - is to get a few officers dressed as punk kids, carrying rocks, smashing the riot shields of their buddies so as to incite violence in the protest and excuse the police for "having to" disperse an otherwise peaceful crowd. 

There is now at least 2.5 hours worth of video (below) assembled that suggests, on what seems to be facts and solid assumptions, the Black Bloc may have been one such force of around 200 police officers. (Remember, there were 16k of them at the height of the "riot".)  The police were, in fact, given "do not engage" orders concerning the Bloc (?!).  This would seem to answer how and why the Bloc were so able to quickly move between and around the locations of the police "protecting" the G20 Summit (I believe that police function is pronounced "Papiere bitte, Juden!").

As is going on in London and Birmingham now, we're told these people are hurting small business owners; it seems to be the store fronts of the news, bank, and Starbuck's industries in almost all instances.

So anyway, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxkAn-g4Xo

You know what is the most fascinating part of all this mess? How quickly people condemn(ed) the youths for their anonymous violence, hidden behind nameless masks and murky sunglasses.  The irony of it - the truth of it, really - doesn't seem to occur to anyone: that we're afraid and powerless against the increasing strength of a militarized State, and so we project that plussed-up frustration onto the "rioters," the kids in the streets you can punish with hand cuffs, hard time, and, if they ask for it, a bullet.  I think we're horrified of the true strength of that leviathan we think we have any sort of real appeal to.  Just look at Benton Harbor, MI: "Elected officials? city council? Pfft - you get two minutes a piece *because I said so.* Aaaaaand go."

How can anyone's first reaction to this be to condemn the -citizenry- of abject violence and anonymity?? Shouldn't the primary concern be the anonymous and excessive (orchestrated, coordinated) violence of the State?

I think those that support the reaction the protesters, and protests in general, get from police must think the situation totally hopeless - better to defend the actions of the side that is going to win in the end, anyway, sort of mentality.

Schoolyard tactics never get old, even if the children do.

 

"Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

"... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people PRESERVE THE SPIRIT OF RESISTANCE? LET THEM TAKE ARMS. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time,WITH THE BLOOD OF PATRIOTS AND TYRANTS. It is its natural manure." - Thomas Jefferson

"If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending, if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained: WE MUST FIGHT!" Patrick Henry

"(T)he foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality; ...the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained..." George Washington, First Inaugural

"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams "Political interest [can] never be separated in the long run from moral right." "Can the liberties of a nation be sure when we remove their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people, that these liberties are a gift from God? Thomas Jefferson

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the GOVERNMENT." Patrick Henry

"The citizens of the U.S. are responsible for the greatest trust ever confided to a political society" "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government." James Madison

"RESISTANCE TO TYRANTS IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD." Thomas Jefferson

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. IT IS FORCE. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." George Washington

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is argument of tyrants. IT IS THE CREED OF SLAVES." William Pitt in the House of Commons

"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and SHALL NOT TAKE FROM THE MOUTH OF LABOR THE BREAD IT HAS EARNED. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity." Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address.

The Founding Fathers: not just for Republicans anymore.

If anyone looks at the BLSs latest stats for the length of the work-week, denominated in hours per week, they'll see we are now well into the lower-30s.  This underscores a widely understated and misunderstood aspect of the labor market in the US: its main commodity (labor) is slowly being eroded by technology.  Take a look at what "technological unemployment" looks like on a graph:

I've got news for anyone who still has a positive outlook for this "debt-ceiling" fiasco in Washington: it doesn't matter how it ends, you're paying the bill.  

Let's take a step back and consider a pay-freeze.  When a company or government institutes a pay freeze, wages remain at their nominal rate for the duration of the freeze.  This means that any real interest rates over that time are forgone and any inflation rates play on those lost wages.  This is the same as saying: money not paid to me obviously can't be invested or spent.  That differential, between a regularly increasing wage (as should generally be the case) and the wage subject to the freeze, is taken prior to it being part of my wages; it's a functional tax! A pay freeze's tax function operates through the mechanism of inflation.  In this way if I keep a hundred dollars over a year subject to a 5% rate of inflation, I have lost $5 in that year.  If anyone thinks the loser of $5 cares by which hand the $5 is taken - through hiked taxes or through a pay freeze - I would be interested to hear how.  If you don't care between two choices, they are substitutes for one another; you are ambivalent.  

That was my proof for why tax hikes are the same as a pay freeze.  How is that related to social spending cuts?

Because any cuts to programs we are -all- using would impose the same type of costs: hidden costs which leave the majority of us with less money in our pocket than if we left the programs alone.  These costs may not be your typical type of costs in every instance, but they are nonetheless costs that have an effect on Main Street's bottom line.  Transaction costs, for example, include the time you have to spend shopping around for private services comparable or better than the public ones eliminated; the extra distance you have to pay for per liter divided by fuel efficiency when the number of post offices are halved; the increased cost of maintenance on our vehicles when funding for roads is axed; and most importantly, as I'm sure Russ Roberts would agree, the cost of not having the choice to decide what services - either public or private - we would prefer to exchange with, thereby letting a marketplace of supply and demand execute an outcome.  All of these costs add up, especially over time - which has its own, immutable price - to change so many of the numbers symbolically represented by phrases like "tax hikes" and "spending cuts."  

 What the absolute value of the net give-and-take between those two variables - in and out - compute to is a matter for accountants and lawmakers.  But for anyone concerned with the economics of it, the "do we get enough at the right price" of us: you should be aware that not all prices are reflected by the price tag.  It is our job, not as socially-pious lefties or profit-pondering righties, but responsible consumers, informed and voluntary in our exchanges, to understand the full implication of our decisions in the marketplaces we operate in.  

One wonders when the knock-out punch will come.  

 

"But genius, and even great talent, springs less from seeds of intellect and social refinement superior to those of other people than from the faculty of transforming and transposing them.  To heat a liquid with an electric lamp requires not the strongest lamp possible, but one of which the current can cease to illuminate, can be diverted so as to give heat instead of light.  To mount the skies it is not necessary to have the most powerful of motors, one must have a motor which, instead of continuing to run along the earth's surface, intersecting with a vertical line the horizontal which it began by following, is capable of converting its speed into lifting power.  Similarly, the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially, and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected."

- Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove

I've used almost every Google product so far, including Gmail back in beta, and yes, even Wave (a travesty). I installed the video chat while I was deployed to Iraq - every time I signed on - and I do homework on Documents and make calls with Voice.

So why wasn't I offered a + account as a "preferred customer?" It's strange that some businesses would reward the above behavior, and other businesses don't (or won't, or even can't). It makes me think about incentives and innovation...

"This was reflected most harshly by the former Saudi intelligence
chief and US ambassador, Turki al-Faisal. Writing in the Washington
Post he warned of "disastrous consequences" for US-Saudi relations if
Washington exercised its veto." Our chief supplier of economic
life-blood is offering to go to the mat; I think we might be stupid
enough to oblige them.  China and India will happily buy excess supply
of cheap oil, and an emboldened Arab democracy movement will absorb
any of the frictional lags in output as we try not to tap-out.

Of course, this is all assuming Israel doesn't start a fresh round of
petulant war crimes in an effort to demonstrate the "instability" of
co-existence prior to the vote - on the US taxpayer's dime, no less.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13939076