WELCOME TO OPINIONS BASED ON FACTS (OBOF)
&
THINGS
YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)
YEAR ONE
YEAR TWO
YEAR THREE
YEAR FOUR
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OBOF YEAR FOUR INDEX
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-01
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Jan. 02, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-02
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Jan. 09, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-03
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Jan. 15, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-04
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Jan. 24, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-05
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JAN 30, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-06
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Feb. 06, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-06 EXTRA
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Feb. 09, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-07
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Feb. 13, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-08
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Feb. 21, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-09
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Feb. 27, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-10
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Mar. 08, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-11
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Mar. 13, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-11 EXTRA
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Mar. 15, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-12
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Mar. 21, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-13
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Mar. 29, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-14
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Apr. 03, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-15
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Apr. 12, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-16
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Apr. 19, 2014
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Agenda
1. For what it may be worth.
3. Obamacare Enrollment Hits 8 Million.
FOR WHAT IT
MAY BE WORTH
FROM FLOYD
I have been, and am,
literally reading hundreds of articles, news reports from all over the media
and from all this information, good, bad, and ridiculous the sky is falling in and
the world will disappear at any minute.
Honestly! Folks, all of the
above is being laid at the door of Barack Obama. One resource is now saying that the President
know what has happened to flight 370 and won't tell. Everything is his fault. A poll was taken as to how many think the
President knows what happened to flight 370.
It showed that 82% believes he knows and 18 % thinks he doesn't.
Now, I have been a
strong support of the President, but I have been very disappointed in many of
the things he is doing and supporting, but he isn't the most dangerous
President we have ever had, as was in one article I read this week.
Probably like you, I
get a lot of campaign mail. Ninety per
cent is from Republicans. That by itself
shows what the Koch Brothers money is doing.
More importantly though, is the statements that are included in these
mailing. They are mostly, what I call,
generic. In other words they are just
negative statements, mainly about the President, that wouldn't hold as much
water as a pail of water with shot gun holes in it.
For example, I
recently received a letter asking me to fill out a survey and send money back
with my completed survey. It was from
the Heritage Foundation which is known to be one of the elite operations of the
Koch Brothers. This letter is four pages
long and some of the statements are good examples of what I mean about generic
statements. They are the kind that many
people eat up.
"If
you've been open about you conservative beliefs, you may have been targeted by
the IRS. You may have been unfairly
audited." "If you're a Tea
Party or small government group, the IRS may have tried to put you out of
business."
"If
you own a business, you might be damaged by any number of government actions -
forced to downsize because of the crushing burdens mandated by ObamaCare ...
raided by dozens of heavily armed federal agents because you were suspected of
violating an ambiguous law ... or shut down by EPA regulations whose benefits
have not been proven."
I counted eleven such
statements in this letter. People turn
these kinds of statements into reality that they are happening when there is
not claim at all that it is happening.
It is all conjecture, but it gets votes if it isn't countered. This is what we are up against if we want to
win this years elections.
Antitrust in the New
Gilded Age
Robert Reich
NationofChange
/ Op-Ed
Published: Friday 18 April 2014
We’re in a new gilded age
of wealth and power similar to the first gilded age when the nation’s antitrust
laws were enacted. Those laws should
prevent or bust up concentrations of economic power that not only harm
consumers but also undermine our democracy — such as the pending Comcast
acquisition of Time-Warner.
In 1890, when Republican Senator John Sherman of Ohio
urged his congressional colleagues to act against the centralized industrial
powers that threatened America
Shortly thereafter, the Sherman Antitrust Act was
passed by the Senate 52 to 1, and moved quickly through the House without
dissent. President Harrison signed it
into law July 2, 1890.
In many respects America
Seen in this light, Comcast’s proposed acquisition of
Time-Warner for $45 billion is especially troublesome — and not just because it
may be bad for consumers. Comcast is the
nation’s biggest provider of cable television and high-speed Internet service;
Time Warner is the second biggest.
Last week, Comcast’s
executives descended on Washington
Opponents argue the
combination will give consumers fewer choices, resulting in higher cable and
Internet bills. And any company relying
on Comcast’s pipes to get its content to consumers (think Netflix, Amazon,
YouTube, or any distributor competing with Comcast’s own television network,
NBCUniversal) also will have to pay more — charges that will also be passed on
to consumers.
I think the opponents have
the better argument. Internet service
providers in America
Some argue that the
broadband market already has been carved up into a cartel, so blocking the
acquisition would do little to bring down prices. One response would be for the Federal
Communications Commission to declare broadband service a public utility and
regulate prices.
But Washington
We haven’t needed to ask
this question for more than a century because America
But were Senator John Sherman were alive today he’d note that Comcast is
already is a huge political player, contributing $1,822,395 so far in the
2013-2014 election cycle, according to data collected by the Center for Responsive
Politics — ranking it 18th of all 13,457 corporations
and organizations that have donated to campaigns since the cycle began.
Of that total, $1,346,410
has gone individual candidates, including John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and
Harry Reid; $323,000 to Leadership PACs; $278,235 to party organizations; and
$261,250 to super PACs.
Last year, Comcast also spent $18,810,000 on lobbying,
the seventh highest amount of any corporation or organization reporting
lobbying expenditures, as required by law.
Comcast is also one of the
nation’s biggest revolving doors. Of its 107 lobbyists, 86 worked in government
before lobbying for Comcast. Its
in-house lobbyists include several former chiefs of staff to Senate and
House Democrats and Republicans as well as a former commissioner of the Federal
Communications Commission.
Nor is Time-Warner a slouch when it comes to political donations,
lobbyists, and revolving doors. It
also ranks near the top.
When any large corporation
wields this degree of political influence it drowns out the voices of the rest
of us, including small businesses. The
danger is greater when such power is wielded by media giants because they can
potentially control the marketplace of ideas on which a democracy is based.
When two such media giants
merge, the threat is extreme. If
film-makers, television producers, directors, and news organizations have to
rely on Comcast to get their content to the public, Comcast is able to exercise
a stranglehold on what Americans see and hear.
Remember, this is occurring in America’s new gilded age — similar to the
first one in which a young Teddy Roosevelt castigated the “malefactors of great
wealth, who were “equally careless of the working men, whom
they oppress, and of the State, whose existence they imperil.”
It’s that same equal
carelessness toward average Americans and toward our democracy that ought to be
of primary concern to us now. Big money
that engulfs government makes government incapable of protecting the rest of us
against the further depredations of big money.
After becoming President
in 1901, Roosevelt used the Sherman
In this new gilded age, we
should remind ourselves of a central guiding purpose of America’s original
antitrust law, and use it no less boldly.
~~~
Obamacare Enrollment Hits 8 Million
Tara Culp- Ressler
Think Progress / News Investigation
Published: Friday 18 April 2014
President Obama
announced on Thursday that 8 million people have signed up for plans through
Obamacare’s new insurance exchanges. Although
March 31 was originally the final deadline to enroll in Obamacare,
administration officials extended the open enrollment period until
April 15 to accommodate the people who may have struggled to complete their
applications due to technological issues.
Just over two weeks
ago, the administration announced that Obamacare enrollment had reached 7.1 million — surpassing
expectations after HealthCare.gov’s rocky rollout in October. The nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) originally projected seven million
enrollments, and revised that figure down to six million after persistent
website glitches plagued the exchange websites in the fall. But sign-ups picked up steam as the end neared.
The 8 million figure includes 3.7 million sign-ups
between March 1 and April 15. This thing
is working,” Obama said.
The administration
has not yet released more detailed data about the people who have signed up for
new plans, so it’s unclear how many were previously uninsured and how many have
paid their first premium. Even without
further numbers from the White House, however, several recent outside reports suggest that the health
reform law is on solid footing.
Polling from Gallup
released this week found that Obamacare may be having an even bigger impact on the uninsurance rate
than initially expected, suggesting that about 12 million previously uninsured
Americans have gained coverage since the fall. That places the uninsurance rate at its lowest point since 2008. According to Gallup’s estimations, about half of the
Americans who have gained insurance for the first time this year say they got
their coverage through Obamacare’s marketplaces. Other people gaining coverage
could have gotten it through the expansion of the Medicaid program, or by signing up directly with an insurer.
And despite
concerns that Obamacare wouldn’t be able to recover from HealthCare.gov’s
disastrous rollout, several major insurers say they’re optimistic about the law, and eager to continue
offering plans on the new marketplaces during the next open enrollment period. Insurance companies like UnitedHealth Group,
Kaiser Permanente, Molina Healthcare, and Wellmark are interested in
maintaining their presences on the state-level exchanges, and some are
considering expanding, according to Politico.
Although there have
been some ominous predictions that Obamacare will cause health insurance
premiums to skyrocket, the statisticians working with
insurers to project next year’s insurance premium rates report that there won’t be double digit hikes. While there
will likely be variation in individual costs, officials from the Society of
Actuaries expect mostly modest premium increases, saying “the double-rate
increases we’ve been hearing are probably exaggerated.”
Some of the
concerns over rising premiums stemmed from the assumption that there won’t be
enough young and healthy people in the exchanges to balance out the older and
sicker enrollees. But those fears may be unfounded. Obama announced on Thursday
that 35 percent of enrollees are under the age of 35, and 28 percent are
between the ages of 18 and 34. Since previous estimates had skewed older, that
indicates a rush of younger people signed up at the last minute. Those numbers fall
in line with the experience that Massachusetts
However, not everyone is equally sharing in the gains
under Obamacare’s coverage expansion. The
president noted that, thanks to Republican governors’ continued resistance to
the optional Medicaid expansion, an estimated 5.7 million low-income people
will remain uninsured in 2016.
~~~
If the
good Lord is willing and the creek don't rise, I'll try to talk with you again
next week, hopefully a little earlier in the week.
God Bless You All
&
God Bless the United States of America
Floyd
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