07:50 – I just read a disgusting article in the morning paper. A local woman was just sentenced for starving her little dog to death. She left it in a crate, with a bag of dog food inches away, and just didn’t bother to feed it. The autopsy said the dog had literally starved to death, ultimately digesting its own bone marrow. What’s particularly horrifying is that the woman obviously had been giving the dog water because otherwise it would have died much sooner. She just didn’t bother to feed it. Although such animal abuse has been a felony in North Carolina since 2010, the judge sentenced her to community service and suspended all but 30 days of the jail sentence for the felony. He even let her serve just nine days in jail now, with the other 21 days to be served at her convenience over the coming months. If I’d been the judge, I’d probably have sentenced her to 30 days in jail to be served consecutively. Oh, yeah. She could have all the water she wanted, but no food for 30 days.
10:14 – Can Obamacare survive an enraged middle class?
I’ll tell ya, there’s a dog a couple doors down whose neck I would gladly wring. I know it’s not the dog’s fault, and I should be directing my anger to the owners, but the dog barks constantly, day and night. Neighbors have complained to the authorities, but in the final analysis, they say the owners are not violating any law or regulation. So most hours when sitting at my desk, which is against the wall closest to the dog (and I cannot really change that), it’s bark, bark, bark, bark, yelp, yelp, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark—like now. Worst is when it is about 25°F out and it barks continuously right through the night. How the owners are immune to it, I have no idea. There are about 9 people living in that house, and you would think one of them feels like me. Apparently, they never let the dog inside the house. He’s obviously a healthy dog with a good set of lungs.
“If Obamacare is ever repealed, it will be because the American middle class finally stands up for itself.” (from the link)
Yeah, when elephants fly and pigs learn to whistle.
I still think nothing much will happen until real hurt spreads far and wide, such as Peak Oil consequences, the Grid going down more or less permanently, and store shelves becoming empty. We will probably see various smaller episodes of these sorts of things over the next few years; reports are that the food stamp recipients are gonna be angry next week and the week after when they discover they’ve been substantially cut. Health insurance consumers are already upset and angry as the article dwells on, but it doesn’t appear they’re ready to hit the streets over it; most will simply pay or go without. We also are supposedly going to see a Grid-down drill and some kind of exercise/drill involving the banking system. And various police and “law enforcement” agencies have been conducting “civil disturbance” drills and exercises all along and playing with their shiny new Homeland Insecurity toyz.
My view is that we have a 15-20-year hiatus/window before the you-know-what really hits the fan; most of us here will be that much older and I know as it is right now for me, I mighta been hot stuff forty years ago working for Uncle but I’m in no shape to be be-bopping all over the landscape in some kind of guerrilla warfare scenario. We’ll just have to do the best we can right here; que sera, sera.
“TO SPEAK TO A NIGERIAN PRINCE ABOUT YOUR HEALTH CARE, PRESS ‘1’ NOW”
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2013-11-13.html
“In 2012, Medicare’s crack investigators noticed that more than a billion dollars in home health care payments for 2008 had gone to one single county in Florida — more than all such payments made to the rest of the entire country.”
“Do you think it would take five years for a private insurer to figure out it had been scammed out of $1 billion by a few health care professionals in one county? Anyone else would notice being stolen from, but not the government. It’s not their money.”
It is funny until you start crying. One gets the feeling that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
I had a friend at church last night tell me that his individual medical insurance went from $550/month to $1190/month. The ironic thing is that he is a Farmers insurance agent and just turned 60. His medical insurance is a quasi-group plan sponsored by Farmers using Aetna. He has hurriedly jumped off the Farmers group insurance and found something at $600/month. He is very unhappy that he had to do this.
Here’s Obrainless telling us, once again, you can keep your plan, because *he’s* allowing it! It’s a loophole you see, another glitch. He also throws in “your substandard plan” that is. Does he really think rates won’t change on *your substandard plan* even if you want to keep that piece of crap? What kind of fucking law is this when Obraindead can just change it when he sees fit? He’s lucky there are so many dumb people in this country.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/14/obama-enforcement-discretion-obamacare-changes/
Here’s another take on Obraindeads *fix*.
“No, instead the White House is saying that it will use “enforcement discretion” to allow illegal health insurance plans to be able to still be sold.”
I love how your plan is “illegal” but he’ll allow it. Just like smoking dope, dude.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/fairy-tale-continues-obama-proposes-extralegal-obamacare-fix_767089.html
It just keeps coming folks. You have to pass the plan to see what’s in it. More taxes. You won’t be able to get ahead anymore in this country.
http://www.my9nj.com/story/23967715/njs-rich-funding-obamacare
I still think nothing much will happen until real hurt spreads far and wide, such as Peak Oil consequences
Peak Oil for the world is now over 100 years away. Maybe 200 years. The shale oil and gas fracking technology has opened up new reservoirs approximately equal to those of all reservoirs drained to date in the USA. I just cannot emphasize this enough. These three new reservoirs in the USA are huge and are either giants or super giants. They are currently looking to be super giants as each of them now has over a trillion barrels of oil estimated in them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale_reserves
It is totally amazing to live in this time of great opportunities here in the USA and outside. Employment in the oil patch is the one shining star in the USA and is fast approaching 10% of the jobs in the USA.
The downside is government regulators want to shutdown the fracking technology and study it for a decade or two. Already, New York State and Pennsylvania have forbidden fracking in their states and other states are considering bans of their own. Europe has forbidden fracking and the Asian countries are desperately trying it out as their economies are starting to crater due to high energy prices.
http://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/Article/3278465/Latest-News/Asian-LNG-prices-climb-toward-record-high-as-demand-far-exceeds-supply.html
However, we in the USA need to be moving to natural gas as quickly as possible. Natural gas is the fuel of the future as we may have 1,000 years of supply here. But, the cost to install a compressed natural gas system in a half ton truck costs $8,000. And the cost to install a LNG system in a 18 wheeler tractor is about $65K. The tanks cost the most and are about 75% of the total cost. High pressure and cryogenic temperatures are expensive to contain and the tank costs reflect this. But, the cost equivalent of compressed natural gas / LNG is about $1.50/gallon and looks to stay at this price for a decade or more.
@Chuck: That’s tough with the dog. I assume the neighbors aren’t the type you can talk to? If they have a dog like that, they probably aren’t.
As I understand it, dogs usually get into that kind of pattern when they are alone, bored and no one pays them any attention. Like with kids, any attention is better than no attention – barking at least gets them yelled at once in a while. It’s a pattern that is very difficult to break; probably only possible with a change of owners.
If you can’t talk to the neighbors, I can imagine two possible legal routes. One is noise as a nuisance: just like you can’t play loud music 24 hours a day, you can’t let your dog bark 24 hours a day. The other is animal cruelty. If the authorities are unwilling to pursue the nuisance claim, you might consider contacting animal organizations like the SPCA in your area and seeing if any of them might be willing to get involved.
Failing that, it sounds like earphones or earplugs…
Eh? I’d have estimated at least 1,000 years and more likely 10,000.
I cannot find current figures, but at about the turn of the century, somebody calculated that if all the oil extracted from the Earth from the first back in the 1800’s in Pennsylvania—worldwide from then until 2000,—and were poured into Lake Tahoe near Reno, it would not even half fill that lake. It is inconceivable to me that there is not a quantum amount more of oil in the Earth than there is water in relatively tiny Lake Tahoe.
Yep. Vegetation has been growing, dying, and being compressed under sediments for a long, long time now, and the process continues today. I suspect that we’ve found only a tiny, tiny fraction of 1% of what’s actually down there.
And only a small fraction of what’s known or strongly suspected to be down there is “recoverable”. I can’t begin to remember how many times I’ve read about large new finds with estimates that only 10% (or whatever) is “recoverable”. Well, sure, if you’re counting only what we’re capable of now. I always think about a petroleum geologist watching Indians back in the 19th century soaking blankets in oil pools and squeezing them out. He might say he estimates that there’s a trillion barrels down there, but only four barrels are recoverable with current technology.
Today’s reservoirs are highly managed pieces of work. The amount of recoverable oil in a conventional reservoir is approaching 70% using secondary and tertiary technology consisting of water injection, steam injection, natural gas reinjection (north slope is the biggest of this) and co2 injection. There is a proposed quaternary recovery method using heating of the subsurface (electrodes, conventional bombs, nuclear bombs) but that has not played out due to immense energy requirements (100+ nuclear power plants) and/or anti-nuke sentiments.
The only super super giant oil field in the world, Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, has been producing ten million barrels of oil per day for the last 50 years or so. It is also producing 100 million barrels of salt water per day since they use sea water to maintain the reservoir pressure above 3000 psia. If they let the pressure drop then the oil (which is a very sweet (no sulfur) light oil) will turn into natural gas. They have 83 operating GOSP (gas oil separation plants) to separate the oil from water and reinject the water back into the reservoir. Not cheap and very energy intensive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghawar_Field
You may be right. We may have 1,000 years of oil. Maybe by then we will either have controlled fusion reactors or be 100 million wandering nomadic hunter gatherers.
The one thing that has not changed is the continual increase in the amount of energy required to produce a barrel of oil. In the early 1900s, we could produce 100 barrels for 1 barrel of oil. We hit 20 barrels production per barrel of oil in 1980 or so and we will probably hit 10 barrels production per barrel of oil in 2020. Or earlier. All of the easy to produce oil has been found and produced. For instance, the Canadian tar sands produce 2.5 barrels of oil for every barrel that they use.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/14/obama-enforcement-discretion-obamacare-changes/
Barrack Hussein “Hugo Chavez” Obama.
A tyranny.
Can Obamacare survive an enraged middle class?
I am wondering if we will have Single Payer Health Insurance here in the USA by June of 2014. I thought it was 4 to 8 years away but the current furor is just going to get higher. And when the people start screaming, Congress goes into action. For better or for worse.
After all, we do have a working single payer plan called Medicare. Most seniors that I know are very happy with it. And, it is very efficient, only 6% overhead. Except for the fraud …
And, I am predicting that the Medicare tax, which will fund Medicare for All ™, will be raised to 8% for employees and 8% for employers. And, the new CO2 tax will be dedicated to healthcare costs. Do it for the Children!
I won’t believe that until I’ve gone through their books. There’s lies, damned lies, and accounting.
I’ve mentioned here before, I think, that I’ve worked on the accounting systems of quite a few not for profits. I’m not an accountant, I’m a computer guy who was fixing their databases, getting systems running, converting from one system to another, and so on, but I couldn’t help seeing things as I was working with their numbers. And a) you can’t believe a word they say about amount spent on overhead, amount going directly to programs, and such. And b) I’ve been asked by some bosses to help “make the numbers come out right” in reports and especially graphs. Nothing illegal, oh, no. It’s just that the accounting numbers don’t show how things really are — we haven’t had time to put the rest of the data in, or we changed a couple of categories around — and we don’t want the board/the regulators/the auditors to waste their time focusing on the wrong thing.
My universal distrust is only increased by the fact that this is a government program. So far as I know (and I dug into this a few years ago) Medicare (and Medicaid and Social Security) have never opened their books to the public. If they really were doing as well as they claim, they’d be looking to get one up on the doubters by showing that, indeed, they need only 6% off the top to run it all. Especially in this administration, which has so few successes that they squeeze every bit of whey out of every one.
If you can’t talk to the neighbors, I can imagine two possible legal routes.
Or somebody just putting the dog out of its misery, thereby stopping the misery for everybody else.
Neighbors have already done all they can. It is a crazy family that lives in there—may be more than one, actually. Several over 40 adults, and at least 6 kids ranging from 4 to about 19. They are out-of-control anyway, with their kids screaming through the neighborhood as late as 22 and 23:00. There is no legal way out of the problem that is going to get the city lawyer’s help—which is the key before the city will do anything. Neighbors have already talked to him. Fortunately, I am not home all that much—except for this week.
The dog is relatively quiet when it rains. Weekend is supposed to be nothing but rain, so maybe there will be silence.
I have actually witnessed dramatic changes in dog behavior from a couple people who used the shock collar. Even seems to have changed the personality of the dogs in question. But that probably takes owners with more intelligence than we are dealing with here.
At a past job, I wound up trying to help a pain management practice in Texas. Half of their patients had Medicare. Medicare was evidently getting a lot more claims than they anticipated. Medicare came up with an efficient solution. Pay less for services. Their Medicare payments were typically 10 to 25 cents for every dollar billed. In other words, this practice was paying more for medications than Medicare was reimbursing them. The doctor eventually figured out how to solve this problem. He retired.
Take a picture of the dog and post it online with something to the effect of “Free to Good Home! Prospective owners must have the means to provide adequate nutrition and veterinary care as well as intend to let the dog sleep indoors and be a part of the family.” Then when someone calls, simply walk next door and get the dog and give it to the new owners.
I don’t advocate stealing dogs, but if they don’t intend to allow the dog to be a part of their family then they shouldn’t own a dog. That said, dog theft happens quite frequently. I’ve heard several stories of people who got a new puppy of whatever full-blooded breed and left it outside while they went to the store and came home and it was gone and never found. It only happens with pure breds (or ones that appear to be). Apparently, if you cannot afford to spend $2,000 on a puppy then you just go steal one. Must be heart-breaking for the children who come home and the new puppy is MIA.
At a past job, I wound up trying to help a pain management practice in Texas. Half of their patients had Medicare. Medicare was evidently getting a lot more claims than they anticipated. Medicare came up with an efficient solution. Pay less for services. Their Medicare payments were typically 10 to 25 cents for every dollar billed. In other words, this practice was paying more for medications than Medicare was reimbursing them. The doctor eventually figured out how to solve this problem. He retired.
This why we cannot have good things. They get ruined by the bureaucrats.
All doctors providing public services will eventually band together for protection. It is medieval.
There will be many others providing private, cash only services. They will exist as concierge services. Pournelle had a casual wrap up on his website yesterday of the different countries approach to health care. I liked the Singapore approach, the first time you get cancer, the treatment is on them. The second time, they will give you Morphine unless you have cash to treat yourself.
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=16205
So long as they give me *enough* morphine; adjusted for my size and tolerance factors, dammit.
As the late Murray Rothbard used to say: “The State is a band of thieves, writ large.”
We are about to see giant-scale evidence of that truth over this next couple of years.
I like what Pournelle says, “Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.”.
It is a tough message.
you said so time ago
It is just the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/11/euro-crisis?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/blamegermanyforfrankfurt
The southern tier has always had the power to put Germany in an untenable position, but national politics prevented them from doing so. Now we’re seeing the southern tier ganging up on Germany. As I’ve said, the euro cannot survive. The question is which of the eurozone nations will first abandon the euro and return to its national currency. I’ve suspected all along that Germany might be the first. Abandoning the euro would be painful and expensive, but not as painful and expensive as staying in. In fact, as I’ve also said, I suspect that Germany already has new D-marks printed and stockpiled for just such an event. Of course, it also wouldn’t surprise me if one of the southern tier, probably Italy, was the first to return to a national currency. Italy is in the best position of any of the southern tier to do so.
I’m waiting. And waiting.
Ain’t gonna happen any more than some US state seceding. Germany is not hurting. It is both rich enough and organized enough to ride it out. And as we see, Merkel is more talk than action these days.
You aren’t going to see anybody pull out of a monetary union unless the technology world crumbles and we actually do see a return to Stone Age barbarism, as Lynn and OFD foresee. There is a queue waiting to join the EU, and the UK is going to be forced—over the next couple of years—to either merge entirely or get out altogether. Nobody in the advanced economic world can go it alone anymore; any who try will pay an horrible price. Greece? Still in the union.
And the outcome I predicted of the US, Canada, and Mexico joining in a new union is ever closer as the the clock ticks away. Moreover, these days, I am not the only one predicting that.
There is no going back for Europe. Return is as impossible as leaving the Hotel California.
I don’t think either Lynn or I predict “Stone Age barbarism;” he’s actually fairly optimistic, at least as concerns energy futures, which is a major linchpin in whether or not industrial “civilization” crashes. I figure we’ll be lucky if we get knocked back to circa 1900 with not much violence or bloodshed.
As for Europe, I see the southern tier and Balkans collapsing, followed eventually by the northern tier of countries and the UK, over the next twenty years. A lot of folks from western and northern Europe are gonna be heading to Novacadia and Kanada.
I see a USA financial collapse in the next ten to twenty years. No energy problems though.
I just do not know how the USA will handle a financial collapse now. The previous USA financial collapses were shrugged off, new currency printed and the nation moved on to bigger and better things. However now, we have a very dependent underclass that is growing larger and more dependent on the government daily.
That dependent underclass will expect their goodies to continue through any financial collapse. I see this leading to civil war in the USA. I am probably horribly wrong though.
We hope we are wrong.