MERRY CHRISTMAS, AMERICA

This is the end of 2014 one of the most dangerous years in American History.  The country is divided into the so-called Progressive Left and the Conservative Right.  The bottom line of the conflict is power.  Raw power over the lives of Americans and the world, since America is the strongest world power ever known to such world.  The Left believes it's a negative power and the Right, positive.  Whoever is reading this has been forced into one side or the other.

The Civil War divided our country for the same reason: POWER.  Then it was the southern states which needed or thought they needed slaves to enable commerce and prosperity in our country and the other states who believed or at least argued that slavery itself was horribly wrong and against the freedom promised to Americans by the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.

Around 600,000 mostly young American men died in the bloody, dirty civil war that came.

Some wars are "worth it." That one was.  But the divide continued.  Some believe that it continues today.

The question for 2015 is: How will this divide play out?  The Left expresses disdain or worse for the Constitution. At its core it believes that unfairness as they define it monetarily exists because of capitalism.  The Right argues that capitalism and free enterprise, while not perfect, has allowed billions of human beings to be brought out of hand-to-mouth poverty, and our country to possess the highest prosperity, the most freedom of speech and action than ever experienced by human beings.

The divide is strictly about POWER, every argument is simply a constituent part of the desire for power.

Few, if any, of those in power voluntarily give up their power.  The question for 2015 to me includes the possibility that the Left if further taken from power by elections will renounce such elections as being invalid because of white entitlement and that rich white men nearly 150 years ago invented this political and economic system to benefit themselves.

THE VERY FOUNDATION AND VALIDITY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS UNDER ATTACK!

GET OUT THE FAINTING COUCHES

IT OVERWHELMS ME THAT ON ONE HAND WOMEN ARE POWERFUL, INDEPENDENT AND AS GOOD AS MEN.  ON THE OTHER HAND THEY ARE TO WEAK TO READ THE WORD, "VIOLATE" SINCE IT MIGHT CAUSE DISTRESS.  

DISTRESS, discomfort, stress, hurt feelings, DISRESPECT, AND ON AND ON ARE EMOTIONS TOO POWERFUL FOR WOMEN TO BE ABLE TO HANDLE AND SO EVERY WORD THAT MIGHT "TRIGGER" SUCH A OPPRESSIVE EMOTION NEEDS TO BE BANNED FROM THE VOCABULARY OF EVERY AMERICAN.

NOTABLE & QUOTABLE

Notable & Quotable

Harvard Law Prof. Jeannie Suk on students too sensitive to discuss the law of sexual violence.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Dec. 23, 2014 6:13 p.m. ET

Harvard Law Prof. Jeannie Suk writing at newyorker.com, Dec. 15:

Students seem more anxious about classroom discussion, and about approaching the law of sexual violence in particular, than they have ever been in my eight years as a law professor. Student organizations representing women’s interests now routinely advise students that they should not feel pressured to attend or participate in class sessions that focus on the law of sexual violence, and which might therefore be traumatic. These organizations also ask criminal-law teachers to warn their classes that the rape-law unit might “trigger” traumatic memories. Individual students often ask teachers not to include the law of rape on exams for fear that the material would cause them to perform less well. One teacher I know was recently asked by a student not to use the word “violate” in class—as in “Does this conduct violate the law?”—because the word was triggering. Some students have even suggested that rape law should not be taught because of its potential to cause distress.

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To add to this ALL LAW STUDENTS are too shaken up by the events of Ferguson and Staton Island, where law breakers died at the hands of sworn policemen, to be able to take their end of term or mid-term examinations.  Too shaken up.   So some law schools delay such examinations for fear of...   

WALL STREET JOURNAL

OPINION (Published December 10, 2014, page A16)

·                                  

LETTERS

Federal Government Policies Encourage Short-Termism

Never before has the incentive been so stark to make short-term business decisions at the expense of the long term.

Wall Street Journal Dec. 1, 2014

That “‘Shareholder Value’ Is Hurting Workers” (Politics & Ideas, Dec. 10) there should be no doubt, as William Galston writes. To any rational observer, the abundant money showered on the world by the Federal Reserve at near-zero interest rates is too appealing to private equity and hedge-fund operators. They easily borrow massive amounts of it and buy some or all of the equity in companies, and force the directors and managements to do what they think right for short-term payoffs. Included is slashing employment for “efficiency”—hurting workers but bringing greater profits. Some of those additional profits are used to pay fees and expenses of the new investor/owners and make dividend distributions or buy back outstanding company stock. That money paid or “returned” to the investment funds creates billions of dollars of performance fees for the partners of the investment funds.

The outlooks of the companies become shorter and shorter as the fund managers seek more of those performance fees for their own enrichment. While company managers and directors must always balance the long term against the short term, never before has the incentive been so stark to make short-term decisions at the expense of the long term.

The ultimate enabler of this practice is the government. If it really wanted corporations to make longer-term decisions—hiring and training more employees for the future—it would raise interest rates, rein in the money supply and tax the incentive compensation for private-equity managers at ordinary rates. Also long-term capital gains should be taxed according to holding periods, with a lower tax the longer the holding period.

Theodore M. Wight

Seattle

The piece that this Letter was discussing:

‘Shareholder Value’ Is Hurting Workers

Financiers fixated on the short-term are forcing CEOs into decisions that are bad for the country.

By 

WILLIAM A. GALSTON

Dec. 10, 2014

Buried in the positive employment report for last month was a small fact that points to a larger reality: Between November 2013 and November 2014, the U.S. labor force grew by 0.7%. If that strikes you as a small number, you’re right. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force grew annually by 1.7% during the 1960s, 2.6% during the 1970s, 1.6% during the 1980s and 1.2% during the 1990s, before slowing to 0.7% during the first decade of the 21st century. Between now and 2022, the rate of increase is expected to slow still further, to only 0.5% annually.

The surge of women into the paid labor force peaked in the late 1990s, and baby boomers—all of whom were in their prime working years in 2000—are leaving the labor force in droves. Youthful immigrants are replenishing the workforce from below, but not nearly fast enough to counterbalance the aging of the native-born population.

When Bill Clinton left office, every baby boomer was in what is considered to be the prime working-age category, between 25 and 54. By the end of 2018, none of them will be. By 2021, more than half of the boomers will be over age 65, participating in Medicare and—in most cases—Social Security.

In 1992, 100 workers supported 92 nonworkers—mainly the young, the elderly and those with disabilities. By 2012, 100 workers were supporting 102 nonworkers, a number that is projected to rise to 107 by 2022.

These dry statistics have real-world consequences. For example, just about everyone believes that we need to accelerate the pace of economic growth and sustain that higher level. This is harder to do when the expansion of the labor force—a major source of economic growth—slows to a crawl. It means that during the next decade, growth will depend more on increased capital investment, faster technological innovation and improvements in the quality of the workforce, than during the past generation. And that means that firms will have to change the way they think.

Few investments will produce high returns as fast as shareholders (especially activist investors) have come to demand. That is why businesses are hoarding so much capital—and using a record-high share of their earnings to buy back their own stock. And businesses have become more reluctant to invest in training their rank-and-file workers, in part out of fear that valuable workers will move and take their human capital with them, and in part in the belief that workforce training is the responsibility of the education system.

An article by Nelson Schwartz in the Dec. 7 New York Times offers a vivid example of what is driving current business behavior. In the name of “unlocking value,” Relational Investors, a firm that manages pension funds, forced the Timken Corp. to split into two firms, one making steel, the other bearings. In the aftermath, the new bearing company slashed its pension-fund contributions to near zero and cut capital investment in half, while quadrupling the share of cash flow dedicated to share buybacks. In place of an integrated, low-debt firm whose stable but less-profitable bearing lines could help cushion swings in the more-profitable but more-volatile steel business, the split left two firms that will be pressured to assume as much as $1 billion in new debt.

High leverage may make sense in some sectors, but not in industries whose competitiveness depends on large investments and longtime horizons. Timken survived the deep recession of the 1980s, which drove many American manufacturers out of business, only because it made massive investments in state-of-the-art production facilities that meant, says Mr. Schwartz, “lower profits in the short term and less capital to return to shareholders.” Because of this patient approach, Timken was able to dominate the global market in specialized steel while providing good wages to workers and contributing to schools and public institutions in its hometown of Canton, Ohio.

It is often argued that managements, such as Timken’s once was, are violating their fiduciary responsibility to “maximize shareholder value.” But Washington Post economics writer Steven Pearlstein argues that there is no such duty, and UCLA law professor Stephen Bainbridge, past chairman of the Federalist Society’s corporate-group executive committee, backs him up. In practice, Mr. Bainbridge has written, courts “generally will not substitute their judgment for that of the board of directors [and] directors who consider nonshareholder interests in making corporate decisions . . . will be insulated from liability.”

The Timken episode has nothing to do with legal fiduciary responsibility. It is a microcosm of the struggle between a financial sector fixated on short-term returns and corporate managements who are trying to run profitable businesses while sharing some of the gains with their workers and communities.

If we continue down this road, we won’t have the long-term investments in workers and innovation that we need to sustain a higher rate of growth. And that would be bad news for the country.

Terrible Heartless TORTURE

There you go again, LiberalProgressiveDemocrats, "Let's get back at the Republicans for Benghazi,"
But nothing happened wayyyyyyy back in Bushtime then other than some Killers-of-Americans got water poured on them and other "threatening" non-dangerous stuff done to get them to squeal on their cohorts.  If they were corporate people LiberalProgressiveDemocrats would characterize it as "whistleblowing." And they certainly blew the whistle on Osama (whose name was changed because of its confusion with Obama I suppose) or Usama bin Laden who got his just rewards thanks to Lou Pancetta's prodding of the President of the United States.

So now the so-called rational Republicans are arguing with the Left about whether anyone was hurt, about whether there was any information divulged (really, Usama!), that there were NO Republicans on the Democratic Senate's "investigatory" body and that it cost taxpayers $50,000,000  and other emotional considerations.  The Republicans are once again on the prototypical defense and losing the "narrative" thrown out by the Left and its media supporters.  Let's turn away from President Obama's losing administration, and it is a loss to America; let's cloud America's mind of the Republican victory in November -- and lurch to..."torture."  With the RACE CARD just in back -- it all is working. The spotlight is now on police departments and the Bush-Cheney administration, not a clueless president.

America has now forgotten what a indecisive president Obama is, how mismanaged the U. S. is now -- three Veterans Administration hospitals are over budget by billions and construction has stopped.  Dead.  The projects were 1) mismanaged 2) unbudgeted 3) under construction with no plans and 4) insane.  The ultimate "manager" is President Barack Obama.  Where in the popular media of the New York and Seattle Times and the other stringees or ABCBSNBCPBS are these insane outrages discussed?  NOWHERE.  Why?  Their president Barack Obama's lack of capability and incompetency would to front and center.  So: nothing.

Let's pivot to sworn police officers killing every unarmed black kid they can find and now how cold -hearted Republicans torture innocent Muslims just for the thrill of it. (I never understand why it is acceptable for the president to arbitrarily kill by drone those he thinks "guilty" along with scores of completely innocent people, including many kids.)

IT ALWAYS WORKS!

(Republicans won in November's mid-term election because even the Far-left media couldn't obfuscate the brilliantly-publicized beheadings of Americans by ISIS, the blame for which ultimately came down on the Obama administration.)

Human-Caused Climate Change perspective

4.5 billion years ago give or take a half a billion (4,500,000,000) the earth started to be.

4.1 million years ago give or take the first humans became present in the world.

215 years ago give or take forty or so years the Industrial Revolution began.

45 years ago give or take what was first called "global cooling" was noticed.

0 years ago is today.


4,500,000,000
4,100,000
215
45
0

Forty-five years ago came the first Malthusian Alarm bells of what was dubbed Global Cooling, then after the cooling warmed, it became Global Warming, then after warming cooled, the name was changed into the all-purpose and unarguable Climate Change. That we humans have "caused" climate change is a non-debatable given by so-called environmental activists, and of course "science" itself agrees as do all "reputable" (meaning believers) scientists.

For about 3,099,955 years human activity had no influence on the climate.  Apparently Mother Nature -- as we named "natural forces" -- did.

Then 3,099,785 years after humans came aboard they they started the Industrial Revolution.  Took'em quite a time.

From that dark moment -- dark, at least to billionaire environmental activists -- humans began destroying the world.  "The power of mankind is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to survive it..." Oh wait, that was not a billionaire environmentalist saying that, it was a reverend, Thomas Robert Malthus, who lived right around the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.  He actually said that the power of population -- not dirty air -- would be greater than the earth could provide subsistence for man.

In 1800 the world population was about one billion.  "Science" knew then that populations would die off in the near future for lack of enough food.  And sure enough, by 2014 the population was 7 billion and hadn't died off.  Why?  The resourcefulness of humans.

But now science is serious, then, it must have been kidding.

Democrats want us to believe -- and many of you do believe -- that in 45 years or even 215 years out of 4, 100,000, that's .005% of the time humans have been human, they have killed the environment, or soon will.

But what about human ingenuity?  Nah, that apparently doesn't count any more!

YOU GOTTA BELIEVE

FERGUSON, STATON ISLAND AND A PIVOT TO RACISM

After a Missouri grand jury declined to indict sworn police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of African American Michael Brown, a New York grand jury decided not to indict an NYPD officer, Daniel Pantaleo, who was primarily involved in the death of Eric Garner, a very large black petty criminal suffering from asthma and a heart condition on Staton Island.  A number of police officers physically "took him down" after he refused to be arrested for suspicion of selling illegal cigarettes.

The liberal media became outraged, especially after Al Sharpton began his denunciation of police officers in general for killing many black teenagers. Mothers are afraid for their black kids going out of the house. Kids can't walk streets or drive cars without being hassled by the police. Rampant racism by predominantly white state and local police departments is hinted at or blatantly advertised in headlines and television news features all around the country. After the media and Sharpton, later joined by Jesse Jackson, Sr., began, the president of the United States and his attorney general, Eric Holder, along with the mayor of New York City piled on blaming racism "for centuries." They add poor training and rules and a lack of police officers mirroring the racial makeup of each jurisdiction. President Obama announced a Justice Department investigation of both incidents. They didn't like the grand jury decisions and apparently felt the white officers were guilty or, at a minimum, should be tried by a jury of his peers regardless of local and state laws.

Begging the question of states rights, double jeopardy and process of the Rule of Law, I wonder.

Is all this commotion nothing more than a pivot to their default-argument race card by the LiberalProgressiveDemocrats?  Is this a brilliant political maneuver by David Plouffe and/or David Axelrod, former senior advisors to President Obama? And have they been visiting or communicating with the White House? Or was it Valerie Jarrett? With approval ratings in the tank, a Republican rout of Democrats in Congress in the recent mid-term elections, and disruption all around the world from a lower respect for the United States from its unsure and equivocal at best, confused at worst, president, President President Obama and his comrades need to change the subject.  

"Never let a good crisis go to waste" and they aren't! 

It is breathtaking how the country is suddenly fixated on race, specifically the supposed random killings of innocent black teens by monster policemen.  The abject failures of Obamacare, American foreign policy and the U. S. economy to grow and Obama's scraping at the the bottom drippings in the pan for a legacy are now all out the window.  Obama's legacy will eclipse that of Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson.  The first true-African American president, who arguably has done nothing for black Americans -- still with unemployment double the national figures, poverty right up there and his support for teachers unions against black parents' freedom to choose better schools -- will go down in history as the racial savior of America!

NEW MEDICARE RULES AIM TO REDUCE ABUSE

New Medicare Rules Aim to Reduce Abuse (Wall Street Journal, December 4, 2014, page A6,) [http://online.wsj.com/articles/new-medicare-rules-aim-to-reduce-abuse-1417653209?KEYWORDS=New+Medicare+Rules+Aim+to+Reduce+Abuse]


You need to read articles such as this to understand how confused, incomprehensible and unresponsive our Progressive-directed federal government really is.

I remember that a few years ago there were around 175,000 (one-hundred seventy-five thousand) pages of Medicare rules and regulations, and that at any particular time anyone -- anyone -- touching it could be found in violation of something.  Physicians, providers, institutions, patients, advisers, consultants, anyone except politicians apparently.

This article states that last year "Medicare issued $45.8 billion in IMPROPER PAYMENTS (forty-five billion, eight-hundred million dollars, $45,800,000,000)! THIRTEEN PERCENT OF ITS TOTAL SPENDING! (13%!) That calculates to $261,714 per page of laws, rules and regulations every year that is "improper."

Medicare cuts checks first, asks questions later. If something seems awry, the feds "undertake lengthy, expensive audits and claims reviews" then go after the possible perpetrator.  Mostly doctors, it seems, because they do the expensive billing.

President Barack (Obamacare) Obama newly dictated a "significant shift in how the government tackles waste in Medicare..." One rational human being might think that would consist of a review at the heart of the 175,000 pages to see why the greedy physicians cheat the system and how they get do it. BUT NO! The president's brilliant idea is TO ADD MORE PAGES OF RULES AND REGULATIONS (since he can't pass laws!)

NOW, apparently the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) can revoke the ability to bill of any doctor, medical equipment seller or any one else.  He, she or it must demonstrate a pattern -- and I am sure that term is exquisitely defined down to the placement of each dot and cross of each "t". If that "pattern" of billing is "inappropriate" as someone perhaps arbitrarily decides, or much more likely there had been article or feature in the media highlighting something some reporter deemed "inappropriate" then PRESTOCHANGO the targeted person or company will not get paid or able to bill Medicare. The Journal article then calls Medicare/Medicaid "a bureaucracy that historically has been slow to move and susceptible at times to POLITICAL PRESSURE." (Those capital letters were my doing.) No duh!

CSM can make such a revocation in the clear-cut case of suspected abuse, and I must say that is an arbitrary arbitrariness. If I work at CMS and I don't like some doctor (maybe he cheated with my wife) or company (it makes a profit), I can say I suspect something and I can bankrupt the provider. Does that seem "clear-cut?" It sounds like a clear-cut unconstitutional process. The person is guilty if only suspected.  SUSPECTED? GUILTY?

In the Obama administration assertions and suspecting is tantamount to guilty with the typical media coverage.  Banks, for example, have paid out tens of billions of dollars in fines with never being able to go to court. That seems to be the Progressive view of "fair."

Another contradictory issue.  The Obama administration is generally attempting to prohibit the use of criminal records in credit and hiring decisions.  But here in his CMS-land, providers cannot get into the MedicareMedicaid program if "they have had certain felony convictions." Contradictory or hypocritical, you decide.

The entire healthcare industry -- America's largest -- is the most expensive in the universe because of so much micromanagement of it by the government.  Providers must devote gigantic sums to get round the burdensome and incomprehensible rules in order to stay in business.

TRUST is at the core.  LiberalProgressiveDemocrats do not trust "We the People" and capitalism, so barriers must be erected to stop honest, hard-working healthcare workers from cheating.  As with every group of human beings, using the bell-shaped curve, some percentage of that group can be dishonest, but by far the greatest number never will be.  Democrats regulate as if all Americans are crooks.  It is unnecessary and expensive.