Next Viral Video – With No Apology

As good as “You Lie” but actually the truth and we won’t be seeing an apology on this one.

To add  a little more gravitas to Congressman Grayson, he is also a champion for Federal Reserve accountability.   He is quickly becoming the Democratic answer to Texas Republican Ron Paul.

Irony and Unintended Consequences

Tolstoy would say that Rep. Wilsons outburst (scroll down for video)was an inevitable result of this summer.   Ironic that Congressman Wilson may have uttered the one tipping remark that will save healthcare for the President.

Now onto the details.  Whatever is finally voted for, I don’t imagine the status quo is where we will end up.

How many of the 46 million uninsured have been postponing needed medical procedures??

Lets assume 10 percent of the newly insured require immediate outlay from whomever is the insurer.  Remember that a large portion of the uninsured are in this situation because they were dropped from the previous insurer due to recision or an exclusion based on a pre-existing condition.

Why don’t the private companies want the Government taking these high-risk, immediately cash negative, individuals?  My guess is that are making such an obscene amount of money that, rather then fearing an ultra competitive public plan, they actually fear what may be revealed by the open books of a public plan.

How many employees are held “Job” hostage at their current employer?  Are you?

The current plans seeming to be leaning at both healthcare transportability and eliminating the pre-existing exclusion for new enrollees.  My guess is somewhere between 5% and 25% of the corporate workforce is currently coerced by healthcare from changing jobs.  This outcome better be on the radar of large corporations like McDonalds and Starbucks.   Currently, they outcompete mom and pops for talent just because they offer healthcare.  At the least, employees will have removed one of the swords hanging over their heads at a crappy job.

Who loses if this passes, and haven’t we learned there’s no free lunch?

The stocks of Insurance Companies, Pharmacuticals, in fact, all healthcare related companies are up big time.  The doctors aren’t marching down fifth avenue so they must think they’ll get paid.  And, supposedly, this is all going to end with more people getting healthcare, and cheaper.

Some can argue that it’s because investors and doctors all think reform is doomed.  As an experienced investor and trader (and cynic), maybe the opposite is true.

Perhaps the doctors are getting squeezed now and they actually want reform.  Perhaps the stock investing class is running a classic pump and dump with the healthcare sector.

It won’t surprise me if we see healthcare reform as the scapegoat for a W recovery, no recovery, a re-test of the March ‘09 stock market lows, continued decline in housing or any other calamity.

Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy.

Be pessimistic when others are optimistic and optimistic when others are pessimistic.

— Tom Bergman

Our Walter (Winchell or Cronkite) Debates Healthcare

Stewart v. Kristol

Of course we all know that our troops don’t really get the best medical care.

Arizona Loves Them Some Banks

Not content to take just your house, Arizona is now letting banks go after former homeowners for money, even after the foreclosure is sold to a third party.

The way it used to be in Arizona: buy house for $80,000 grand, borrow $100,000, default and you lose the house.

The way it now is in Arizona: Buy house for $80,000 grand, borrow $100,000, default, bank takes house, sells house to real estate vulture for $40,000, bank can now chase former homeowner for $60,000, for the rest of their lives.

And we all know the banks and the vultures are probably the same people.

Old Test:  ”If you lend money to any of My people who are poor among you, you shall not be like a moneylender to him; you shall not charge him interest.”

New New Test:  ”If you lend money to people who are poor, make sure the law and the fed are on your side.”

A Good Time for Stereotypes

Catagory: “It’s funny because it’s true”

Now might be a good time for some Jewish cheapness. It might help Goldman’s image if they got a little cheap in the way they compensate their employees. Of course their only mission seems to be profits and pay so it’s not likely.

The recent arrests in NJ may be bad for the orthodox community’s image, but to have Goldman as the poster child for Wall Street excess while Main St. suffers hurts all Jews.

Iran – How Not to Rig an Election

Iran Election Video Update

————————–

There had been some pundits predicting that Friday’s Presidential Election in Iran would devolve into their Tiananmen Square.

Given the Anti-Iranian propaganda we hear in America, I figured the Iranian theocracy was a pretty tight ship and they would easily rig this election and insure a peacful acceptance of whatever result the Grand Mullahs desired.

Turns out I was wrong as Iran is indeed seeing widespread urban protests, disrupted communications and the ongoing expulsion of foreign reporters.  As the above video attests, the Iranians are bad at both rigging elections and suppressing reporting on rigging an election.

All this could have been easily avoided had Iran just followed America’s lead in rigging an election.

Imagine this scenario:

Following the closing of polling booths Friday, the government should have gone into delay mode.  Whether blaming tremendous voter turnout or a close election the government could have spent the next weeks and even months counting votes and rounding up overly vocal protestors.

If Iranian leaders had known recent American history they could have used the example of of our election of 2000 to learn the value of a cooling off period when stealing an election.  Imagine our protests had Bush been declared the winner on election night 2000 with a unthinkable 65% to 35% margin of victory.  Even our uneducated electorate could have smelled that stinky a fraud.

Combine the delaying tactic with the anti-protest tactics of NYC Mayor Bloomberg.  The weeks of delay  could have allowed the Iranian authorities the dual benefits of being able to round up protestors and inserting agent provactuers to sully the oppositions reputation.

Highly Illogical

A)  American’s don’t want a public healthcare plan.

B)  A public health care plan will force out private insurers.

So we don’t want a public option but if it’s offered we’ll all select it??

A)  American’s want their big SUV’s and not fuel-efficient econoboxes.

B)  GM went out of business because it was making cars American’s didn’t want.

So American’s want big SUV’s that GM made but won’t anymore.

A)  Bank of America is Too Big to Fail

B) Bank of America is forced to buy the biggest mortgage lender, Countrywide, and the biggest retail broker, Merrill Lynch.

So stress tests now prove that new bigger Bank of America will no longer fail nor need to be disassembled.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”  (guess the speaker)

Truth can be Violent, Vulgar and makes good Video

There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.
John Ruskin

WARNING: While full of truth and sorta funny, the following video does have some offensive language.   Please avoid if you don’t want to here some bad words or the truth about our “Green Shoots”

Ok, a lot of bad words  ;-)

Unions – The New Victims of Bigotry

The question by NY Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin at the end of this clip says it all: “”Name a Successful Unionized Company!”

I guess they all forget UPS, GE, all six major movie studios, AT&T, and many many others.   Like most in my generation, his job depends on his being uninformed, or appearing as such, about his area of expertise.

So much for the Times being a Liberal Rag

Here’s the email I sent to the Public Editor of the NY Times, Clark Hoyt:

Dear Mr. Hoyt,

One of your BUSINESS reporters, Andrew Ross Sorkin, while appearing on MSNBC as a New York Times representative, stated that he could not name one successful corporation with unionized employees.

Can your newspaper really be successful if it has reporters who lack such basic knowledge about their area of expertise?  His statement is so egregiously incorrect, I was surprised the unionized employees at the immensely successful General Electric, who were filming his segment on “Morning Joe”, didn’t just turn off the camera’s and lights.

I have yet to hear a correction from either Mr. Sorkin or the New York Times.

Hopefully the correction will be as prominent as Mr Sorkin’s asinine comment.

Sincerely,

Thomas Bergman
tbapple@yahoo.com

UK Healthcare – Too Simple for Our Feeble Brains

We all know the meme, “Government wants to take over health care and get between you and your doctor”, and we all know it’s not that simple.  In fact the UK system is quite simple.  They have guaranteed healthcare for all but you can still get health insurance if you are dissatisfied will the governments system.

Why Both?

In the United Kingdom, both emergency care and standard physician services are guaranteed for all.  Then why do they still have Health Insurance?

There is a grain of truth to the threats of long waiting times for medical procedures under government run health insurance and it typically doesn’t cover “elective” procedures.  This is where health insurance fills in for the governments deficiencies.

For example, an athletic sixty year-old might purchase insurance to cover procedures like hip replacement or optical laser surgery that might be neglected in a government insurance plan.  We can all be sure that the insurance companies will be quite adept at pointing out these gaps in coverage.

Why haven’t we heard this argument from the Dems?  Either they think its a nuance too complicated for our feeble brains to understand or (much worse) they think we might.