Heard on my clock radio this morning. A UNH study claims that we don't need to bring down the NH electric rate in order to grow business. They made the further claim that NH electric rates were no worse than the national average. And we didn't need more pipelines to bring in natural gas.
The greenies love this kind of "stuff".
Pure poppycock. My residential electric rate is 25 cents a kilowatt-hour, the nation average is 10 cents a kilowatt hour. Lack of gas pipeline capacity causes radical prices spikes in the cost of natural gas. Which in addition to ripping off those who heat with natural gas, causes price spikes in electric rates, because most electricity is generated by natural gas. When natural gas prices go crazy in a cold January, the electric rates do the same.
Did UNH actually run this study? Or did NHPR misquote them? Who knows? Both groups have enough greenies in them, to support any amount of greenie propaganda.
But that was this morning's news on FM radio.
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
I taped over the camera on my laptop
I did it a year ago or more. After seeing posts about some PA school that was spying the their students, via school supplied laptops, I put a square of masking tape on the camera lens of my laptop. If I was really serious about it, I would find the microphone and tape that over too.
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
The "replace" plan is out this morning.
It's ONLY 120 pages, which makes it possible to read, unlike the thousand pages of Obamacare. I haven't read it myself, so what I am writing here I get off the TV. The bill keeps the ban on preexisting conditions, and kids up to 26 years old can stay on there parents insurance.
It offers "Tax Credits", presumably for buying insurance, possibly for paying medical bills. If I remember my IRS form 1040, tax credits are better than deductions. A deduction reduces your taxable income (adjusted gross income) whereas a credit reduces your tax. For example, a $100 deduction reduces your tax bill by your tax rate times the deduction, usually amounting to $20-$30. A $100 credit reduces your tax bill by $100. This is a good idea. It levels the playing field between most of us, who get our health insurance tax free thru our employers, and the self employed who get no kind of tax break at all.
On the other hand, half the population of the country is so low on the economic ladder that they owe no income tax at all. Tax credits don't do you any good if you don't owe any income tax.
The plan fails to allow sale of health insurance across state lines, a measure that would increase competition
and lower costs. Everybody except the insurance companies is in favor of interstate sale. Failing to put it in is a squishy soft cave in to the insurance companies. Insurance companies don't vote, nobody likes them much, but they have a lot of money to buy Congressmen with. Looks like they bought themselves a lot of Congressmen on this one. Congressmen go for cheap this year.
The bill also fails to require Medicare and Medicaid to bargain with big pharma over drug prices. Again everybody (even insurance companies) thinks this is a good idea. Nobody likes big pharma much and they don't have the vote. But big pharma does have money, same general amount as the insurance companies, and they have bought themselves plenty of low priced Congressmen.
The bill fails to do anything to reduce the cost of health care, like clamping down on malpractice suits (lawyers like malpractice and nearly all Congressmen are lawyers). It doesn't allow duty free import of drugs from any reasonable first world country, which would do a lot to lower drug prices. It doesn't rein in the ever growing FDA requirements for more and more testing of new drugs. It does nothing to rein in the outrageous marketing expenditures by big pharma.
It offers "Tax Credits", presumably for buying insurance, possibly for paying medical bills. If I remember my IRS form 1040, tax credits are better than deductions. A deduction reduces your taxable income (adjusted gross income) whereas a credit reduces your tax. For example, a $100 deduction reduces your tax bill by your tax rate times the deduction, usually amounting to $20-$30. A $100 credit reduces your tax bill by $100. This is a good idea. It levels the playing field between most of us, who get our health insurance tax free thru our employers, and the self employed who get no kind of tax break at all.
On the other hand, half the population of the country is so low on the economic ladder that they owe no income tax at all. Tax credits don't do you any good if you don't owe any income tax.
The plan fails to allow sale of health insurance across state lines, a measure that would increase competition
and lower costs. Everybody except the insurance companies is in favor of interstate sale. Failing to put it in is a squishy soft cave in to the insurance companies. Insurance companies don't vote, nobody likes them much, but they have a lot of money to buy Congressmen with. Looks like they bought themselves a lot of Congressmen on this one. Congressmen go for cheap this year.
The bill also fails to require Medicare and Medicaid to bargain with big pharma over drug prices. Again everybody (even insurance companies) thinks this is a good idea. Nobody likes big pharma much and they don't have the vote. But big pharma does have money, same general amount as the insurance companies, and they have bought themselves plenty of low priced Congressmen.
The bill fails to do anything to reduce the cost of health care, like clamping down on malpractice suits (lawyers like malpractice and nearly all Congressmen are lawyers). It doesn't allow duty free import of drugs from any reasonable first world country, which would do a lot to lower drug prices. It doesn't rein in the ever growing FDA requirements for more and more testing of new drugs. It does nothing to rein in the outrageous marketing expenditures by big pharma.
Monday, March 6, 2017
The buck stops here
So Obama is claiming that HE never authorized a tap on Trump's phone. He failed to say that Trump's phone was never tapped, he just said he didn't do it. Old Harry Truman would not have seen it that way. If any government agency tapped Trump's phone, then Obambi is responsible, at least as long as he was in office. There is a report out on TV saying that the rubber stamp FISA court DID issue a warrant to tap Trump's phone. Nobody has denied that report, yet. If the report is true, then Trump's charge of wiretapping is true. And Obambi is doing a weasel. As usual.
TV is doing a long song and dance about the FISA court and what it can or cannot do, aimed to showing that the court won't do a wiretap on just the president's sayso. Since the court meets in secret, the justices are secret, and the records are secret, it can do anything it wants. And probably has.
TV is doing a long song and dance about the FISA court and what it can or cannot do, aimed to showing that the court won't do a wiretap on just the president's sayso. Since the court meets in secret, the justices are secret, and the records are secret, it can do anything it wants. And probably has.
Why the Republicans haven't announced a "replace" plan.
It's due out this morning according to the TV. Democrats have been sniping at it, claiming that the Republicans should have a replace plan already.
I'm pretty sure that actually the Republicans have a plan. In fact they must have a dozen plans. Problem is, they cannot get everyone (or even 51%) to agree on WHICH plan they are going to support. Health care is a gravy train for patients, doctors, big pharma, insurance companies, hospitals, medical device makers, ambulance drivers, ambulance chasers, state governments. Health care is 19% of the US GNP, that's a huge amount of money. With that much gravy the spread around, no wonder everyone wants their fair share, and more if they can get it.
To pass anything at all, the Republicans need nearly every single Republican vote. The Republican margin is thin, and in the Senate, a mere three defectors could sink anything. I'm thinking that they won't keep their party in line, or even attract a few Democratic defectors, without president Trump getting behind ONE replace option and pushing it hard. Which he hasn't done yet.
I'm pretty sure that actually the Republicans have a plan. In fact they must have a dozen plans. Problem is, they cannot get everyone (or even 51%) to agree on WHICH plan they are going to support. Health care is a gravy train for patients, doctors, big pharma, insurance companies, hospitals, medical device makers, ambulance drivers, ambulance chasers, state governments. Health care is 19% of the US GNP, that's a huge amount of money. With that much gravy the spread around, no wonder everyone wants their fair share, and more if they can get it.
To pass anything at all, the Republicans need nearly every single Republican vote. The Republican margin is thin, and in the Senate, a mere three defectors could sink anything. I'm thinking that they won't keep their party in line, or even attract a few Democratic defectors, without president Trump getting behind ONE replace option and pushing it hard. Which he hasn't done yet.
Sunday, March 5, 2017
Who knows what a Gryf is?
Good question. The Economist compared the EU to a triceratops, a big, extinct, dinosaur, generally believed to be a plant eater along the lines of the dinosaurian rhinoceros. Only with more horns up front. Then they went on to call for conversion of the triceratops into a gryf.
So what's a gryf? Tarzan, on one of his adventures into darkest unexplored Africa, encountered them, and they looked like triceratops (Tarzan even recognize them as such in the book) but they were ferocious man eaters instead of herbivores. I happened to have read that very Tarzan book as a child. My summer camp library had a copy. The book (Tarzan the Terrible) was published back in the 1920's and I never saw it for sale anywhere. It's like really out of print.
Anyhow, an Economist writer read the long out of print Tarzan book, and thought the Edgar Rice Burroughs fictional monster would make a good simile or metaphor in 2017. Groovy.
So what's a gryf? Tarzan, on one of his adventures into darkest unexplored Africa, encountered them, and they looked like triceratops (Tarzan even recognize them as such in the book) but they were ferocious man eaters instead of herbivores. I happened to have read that very Tarzan book as a child. My summer camp library had a copy. The book (Tarzan the Terrible) was published back in the 1920's and I never saw it for sale anywhere. It's like really out of print.
Anyhow, an Economist writer read the long out of print Tarzan book, and thought the Edgar Rice Burroughs fictional monster would make a good simile or metaphor in 2017. Groovy.
Saturday, March 4, 2017
Drain the Pentagon Procurement Swamp
Disneyland East we used to call it. That humongous five sided office building from WWII times, filled with civilian bureaucrats, who soak up a good slice of the military budget themselves, and spend the rest of it. With a giant 100,000 page set of "procurement regs", containing paragraphs tailored to jack up the price of everything the services buy.
We could save a lot of money, at least 10%, maybe 50% of the cost of military procurement, by burning ALL those procurement regulations. And then fire all the civilian bureaucrats. For a military budget,of some $600 billion, we are talking saving anywhere between $60 billion and $300 billion.
Replace those 100,000 pages of cost jackup regs with just a few simple ones.
1. Always obtain THREE bids for anything, even super high tech weapons systems. If you cannot get three bidders, do without.
2. Never do "cost plus" contracts. Always push for "firm fixed fee" contracts. Settle for "cost plus fixed fee" contracts only when the product is badly needed and you cannot get firm fixed fee contracts..
3. Avoid gold plating the specifications. In all possible cases, procure standard commercial items, using the commercial specifications common to industry. Make the specifications public for review by possible bidders, bloggers, and the press. Make the requirements testable features of the completed product, not directives to use over priced mil-spec parts in manufacture.
4. And on the subjective side, qualify all bidders. For instance on an aircraft contract, clearly Lockheed, Boeing, Northrup, and Grumman, are qualified, they have track records of building aircraft going back to before WWII. Whereas AC/DC Power Supply and Storm Door Company is not qualified, they have never built so much as a toy aircraft, and nobody has ever heard of them. You cannot give a contract to an unqualified bidder, they will be unlikely to actually deliver the product, but they will most certainly, spend all the money.
We could save a lot of money, at least 10%, maybe 50% of the cost of military procurement, by burning ALL those procurement regulations. And then fire all the civilian bureaucrats. For a military budget,of some $600 billion, we are talking saving anywhere between $60 billion and $300 billion.
Replace those 100,000 pages of cost jackup regs with just a few simple ones.
1. Always obtain THREE bids for anything, even super high tech weapons systems. If you cannot get three bidders, do without.
2. Never do "cost plus" contracts. Always push for "firm fixed fee" contracts. Settle for "cost plus fixed fee" contracts only when the product is badly needed and you cannot get firm fixed fee contracts..
3. Avoid gold plating the specifications. In all possible cases, procure standard commercial items, using the commercial specifications common to industry. Make the specifications public for review by possible bidders, bloggers, and the press. Make the requirements testable features of the completed product, not directives to use over priced mil-spec parts in manufacture.
4. And on the subjective side, qualify all bidders. For instance on an aircraft contract, clearly Lockheed, Boeing, Northrup, and Grumman, are qualified, they have track records of building aircraft going back to before WWII. Whereas AC/DC Power Supply and Storm Door Company is not qualified, they have never built so much as a toy aircraft, and nobody has ever heard of them. You cannot give a contract to an unqualified bidder, they will be unlikely to actually deliver the product, but they will most certainly, spend all the money.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)