Today in 1953, Victor Borge’s “Comedy in Music” opened on Broadway, closing 849 performances later. (Pop.)
Today in 1960, Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs released “Stay,” which would become the shortest number one single of all time:
The number one single today in 1965:
With enrollment for ObamaCare beginning today, Reason lists eight potential problems with ObamaCare, including …
1) When more people have health insurance, it could be harder to see primary care physicians: There’s already a shortage of primary care physicians relative to national demand. Increasing the number of people who have health insurance tends to increase the demand for physicians’ services. As the Associated Press reported this week, “A shortage of primary care physicians in some parts of the country is expected to worsen as millions of newly insured Americans gain coverage under the federal health care law next year. Doctors could face a backlog, and patients could find it difficult to get quick appointments.”
2) Health insurers will limit doctor networks in order to keep prices down: When California’s insurance regulators first released information on health premiums through the state’s insurance exchange, they touted lower than expected rates. But the comparison was misleading, stacking the exchange’s individual premiums up against small business rates. And there was something else they didn’t say either: Many of the state’s health insurers held down prices by strictly limiting the available providers. “To hold down premiums,” the L.A. Times reported this week, “major insurers in California have sharply limited the number of doctors and hospitals available to patients in the state’s new health insurance market opening Oct. 1.”
3) Employers will cut hours for workers. Jed Graham of Investor’s Business Daily has put together a list of more than 300 employers who have already reduced hours or full-time employment in order to avoid potential requirements under Obamacare. Labor leader Richard Trumka, who supported the law, has said that employers are now cutting hours to avoid the law’s mandates. And this is with the employer mandate delayed for a year. …
5) The online exchange technology won’t be ready — or won’t work as well as its supposed to. The state of Oregon, one of the states that has been most enthusiastic about implementing the law, has already said that online enrollment will not be available on October 1. Health officials working on the law, meanwhile, have begun to view the beginning of enrollment in October as a “soft launch,” according to The Washington Post. And independent health care investment analysts are warning that when the exchanges are launched that “technical glitches and functional issues” are “probable.”
6) Employers could move many more workers than expected onto the exchanges, and increase the price of the law as a result. Small changes in household premium contributions for workers in employer sponsored insurance could make the exchanges much more attractive to millions of people, according to a recent study in Health Affairs. “As household premium contributions rise,” the study explains, “people are increasingly eligible and motivated to participate in the exchange, because they will receive a federal premium subsidy and an effective wage increase (to compensate for leaving employer-provided insurance).” Adjusting the average national premium contribution by just $100 could push 2.2 million people to move into the exchange, the study warns, and, thanks to greater reliance on public subsidies for coverage, increase the law’s federal price tag by $6.7 billion.
Contrary to what ObamaCare cheerleader U.S. Rep. Ron Kind (D–La Crosse) claims, number three is already happening. You’d think Kind would be embarrassed to find out, at a forum he sponsored to cheerlead for ObamaCare, that at least two major employers in the southern part of his Third Congressional District cut employee hours months before ObamaCare became law. Number six is already happening now as well, because health insurance has been increasing in cost far faster than ObamaCare’s cheerleaders thought. Oops.
Bloomberg adds 11 bits of conventional ObamaCare wisdom about which you should think otherwise, including …
1. Once Obamacare goes into effect, it will be impossible to substantially cut it back. Both sides seem convinced of this — Republicans in terror, Democrats in glee. Funny thing, though — the other day, my father mentioned casually that many of his classmates at the Syracuse’s Maxwell School of Public Policy in the mid-to-late 1960s had been on Medicaid. And then, suddenly, they weren’t.
It turns out that in 1965, when Medicaid passed, the State of New York had a great idea: shower a bounty of federal money on New Yorkers by setting the income eligibility limits much higher than other states. They financed this by requiring the local government to kick in 25 percent of the cost. The Feds matched state + local dollars, so that for each dollar New York State spent, it got one local and two federal dollars to go along with it. At the income levels they set, a third of the state was eligible.
Then, the Federal government noticed that it was spending many multiples of what had been projected, with a lot of those dollars going to New York. New York cut back the program sharply, turning Medicaid into what it is today — a shoestring program for low-income families, rather than the comprehensive middle-income safety net that New York State had envisioned.
This drama has played out in other states, most recently in Tennessee, where a large Medicaid expansion into more middle-class populations had to be rolled back when the state could no longer fund it. Entitlements are hard to roll back, but it is clearly not impossible, because it’s been done.
2. Accountable Care Organizations are certain to bring down overall health spending . Here’s another interesting observation I heard the other day, this time from a participant in the recent Brookings’ papers: it’s not clear that ACOs are going to save money. The idea behind ACOs is that they will help us move away from fee-for-service medicine, in which doctors are paid for doing stuff, and toward a system where doctors are paid by the patient, a system usually rendered in the popular lexicon as “paying for health, not treatment.” The unspoken underlying assumption being that this means “paying less for health.”
This is the holy grail of health care economists, and perhaps it is finally upon us. But we should be cautious. The obvious reason is that “health” is hard to measure, so what you often end up is “paying for the condition of the patient.” That is, you give doctors a certain fee for all patients with moderate heart disease, diabetes and a thyroid condition. Since they get the same fee no matter what they do, you end the incentives for overtreatment. Cynics have observed, however, that you then create incentives for undertreatment. The cynics are right.
The un-obvious reason that we shouldn’t be too confident in the ACO revolution is that bundling payments this way encourages — in fact, nearly requires — doctors to band together in much larger practice groups. A small practitioner with a few hundred patients is extremely vulnerable to the possibility that some of those patients will end up requiring much more treatment than their health status classification would predict. A few of those, and you’ve lost money for the year. And what if those patients are also extra-expensive next year? Bankruptcy court looms. So you need a very large practice to make the financials work, so that you can be sure that the extra-expensive patients are balanced out by some extra-cheap ones. This also makes it easier to manage a patient’s entire set of health problems within a single practice.
But as the participant pointed out, consolidation is one of the things that is known to drive up prices in health care markets. When you’re an insurer negotiating with 2,500 individual doctors, you have a fair amount of leverage to keep their fees down. When you’re negotiating with four large practice groups, suddenly you’re not so powerful, because you might lose customers if your policy excludes a quarter of the doctors in town. So it’s not yet clear whether ACOs are actually going to lower costs — or even work at all. …
6. Breaking the link between health insurance and employment will spur entrepreneurship. There’s a decent amount of evidence suggesting that access to health insurance outside of your job reduces what economists call “job lock” — people who stay tied to a job when they’d rather be elsewhere. This has led a lot of observers suggest that we might be on the verge of turbocharging our economy by unleashing a wave of entrepreneurs who are currently tied to their job for the insurance.
It’s a compelling, and entirely plausible, story. But at this point, it’s just a story. For a lengthy discussion of the various studies, and why we might or might not believe them, you can read the piece I wrote this summer. The TL;DR version is that people who have a chronic illness end up tied to their jobs for lots of reasons — you don’t want to take many risks if you, or a loved one, might have a medical emergency at any moment, so it’s not clear how much health insurance, rather than the steady paycheck, accounts for the job lock. And while ending job lock may unleash entrepreneurship, it may also encourage people to exit the labor force earlier than they otherwise would, creating a net drag on the economy.
You also have to consider the fact that the new health care law raises the cost of expanding your company — suddenly, when you hit that 50th employee, you either have to buy them all health insurance, or pay a big penalty. (At least, assuming the employer mandate actually eventually takes effect.) On the other hand, it might lower the costs of growing a small company, since you don’t have to buy your employees health insurance to tempt them away from a larger company. It’s all very complicated. Which is why this should be classified as “speculative” rather than “conventional wisdom.” …
9. People with pre-existing conditions will be able to buy insurance in the private market for the first time. I used to believe that I was uninsurable in the private market, because I have a (fairly boring) autoimmune disease. My colleague Virginia Postrel, a breast cancer survivor who buys insurance in the private market, set me straight. Since the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act passed in 1996, people with pre-existing conditions can still be covered as long as they maintain health coverage. It’s only if your coverage lapses that you run into trouble.
Obviously, not everyone maintains coverage — when you’ve lost a job, health insurance is often one of the first things that gets cut, and some people never had coverage in the first place. But it isn’t true that no one with pre-existing conditions could get health insurance before Obamacare came along and fixed everything.
This is, by the way, one more reason to be skeptical of predictions that we’re about to unlock a massive untapped well of entrepreneurship.
“Skeptical”? I’m not skeptical at all. It is absolutely ludicrous to assume that ObamaCare is going to “unlock a massive untapped well” of anything except ObamaCare disaster stories.
Right Wisconsin passes on this:
According to the College Fix, University of Wisconsin Madison graduate student Jason Morgan bucked the administration last week when he refused to attend a mandatory “diversity training” class for Teaching Assistants (TA).
The reason? Morgan objected to the Left-wing indoctrination and was called a “racist” for his objections.
The College Fix adds:
The letter, sent by email Sept. 22, states all new TAs in the university’s history department are required to attend one orientation session, two training sessions, and two diversity sessions. Morgan, in his letter, called the first of the two diversity sessions, held Friday, “an avalanche of insinuations, outright accusations, and suffocating political indoctrination (or, as some of the worksheets revealingly put it, ‘re-education’) entirely unbecoming a university of our stature.”
Morgan’s email begins with …
In keeping with the spirit of the Wisconsin Idea, I am also blind-copying on this e-mail several journalistic outlets and state government officials, because the taxpayers who support this university deserve to know how their money is being spent.
As you are probably aware, all new TAs in the History Department are required to attend one orientation session, two TA training sessions, and two diversity sessions. Yesterday (Friday, September 20th), we new TAs attended the first of the diversity sessions. To be quite blunt, I was appalled. What we were given, under the rubric of “diversity,” was an avalanche of insinuations, outright accusations, and suffocating political indoctrination (or, as some of the worksheets revealingly put it, “re-education”) entirely unbecoming a university of our stature.
Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and students at probably every other public institution of higher education in this country, have long since grown accustomed to incessant leftism. It is in the very air that we breathe. Bascom Hill, for example, is roped off and the university is shut down so that Barack Obama (D), Mark Pocan (D), and Tammy Baldwin (D) can deliver campaign speeches before election day. (The university kindly helped direct student traffic to these campaign events by sending out a mass e-mail encouraging the student body to go to the Barack Obama for President website and click “I’m In for Barack!” in order to attend.) Marxist diatribes denouncing Christianity, Christians, the United States, and conservatives (I am happy to provide as many examples of this as might be required) are assigned as serious scholarship in seminars. The Teaching Assistants Association (TAA)–which sent out mass e-mails, using History Department list-servs, during the attempt to recall Governor Scott Walker, accusing Gov. Walker of, among other things, being “Nero”–is allowed to address TA and graduate student sessions as a “non-partisan organization”. The History Department sponsors a leftist political rally, along with the Socialist Party of Wisconsin, and advertises for the rally via a departmental e-mail (sent, one presumes, using state computers by employees drawing salaries from a state institution). In short, this university finds it convenient to pretend that it is an apolitical entity, but one need not be particularly astute to perceive that the Madison campus is little more than a think tank for the hard left. Even those who wholeheartedly support this political agenda might in all candor admit that the contours of the leftism here are somewhat less than subtle.At the “diversity” training yesterday, though, even this fig leaf of apoliticism was discarded. In an utterly unprofessional way, the overriding presumption of the session was that the people whom the History Department has chosen to employ as teaching assistants are probably racists. In true “diversity” style, the language in which the presentation was couched was marbled with words like “inclusive”, “respect”, and “justice”. But the tone was unmistakably accusatory and radical. Our facilitator spoke openly of politicizing her classrooms in order to right (take revenge for?) past wrongs. We opened the session with chapter-and-verse quotes from diversity theorists who rehearsed the same tired “power and privilege” cant that so dominates seminar readings and official university hand-wringing over unmet race quotas. Indeed, one mild-mannered Korean woman yesterday felt compelled to insist that she wasn’t a racist. I never imagined that she was, but the atmosphere of the meeting had been so poisoned that even we traditional quarries of the diversity Furies were forced to share our collective guilt with those from continents far across the wine-dark sea.
It is hardly surprising that any of us hectorees would feel thusly. For example, in one of the handouts that our facilitator asked us to read (“Detour-Spotting: for white anti-racists,” by joan olsson [sic]), we learned things like, “As white infants we were fed a pabulum of racist propaganda,” “…there was no escaping the daily racist propaganda,” and, perhaps most even-handed of all, “Racism continues in the name of all white people.” Perhaps the Korean woman did not read carefully enough to realize that only white people (all of them, in fact) are racist. Nevertheless, in a manner stunningly redolent of “self-criticism” during the Cultural Revolution in communist China, the implication of the entire session was that everyone was suspect, and everyone had some explaining to do.
You have always been very kind to me, Prof. Kantrowitz, so it pains me to ask you this, but is this really what the History Department thinks of me? Is this what you think of me? I am not sure who selected the readings or crafted the itinerary for the diversity session, but, as they must have done so with the full sanction of the History Department, one can only conclude that the Department agrees with such wild accusations, and supports them. Am I to understand that this is how the white people who work in this Department are viewed? If so, I cannot help but wonder why in the world the Department hired any of us in the first place. Would not anyone be better?
There is one further issue. At the end of yesterday’s diversity “re-education,” we were told that our next session would include a presentation on “Trans Students”. At that coming session, according to the handout we were given, we will learn how to let students ‘choose their own pronouns’, how to correct other students who mistakenly use the wrong pronouns, and how to ask people which pronouns they prefer (“I use the pronouns he/him/his. I want to make sure I address you correctly. What pronouns do you use?”). Also on the agenda for next week are “important trans struggles, as well as those of the intersexed and other gender-variant communities,” “stand[ing] up to the rules of gender,” and a very helpful glossary of related terms and acronyms, to wit: “Trans”: for those who “identify along the gender-variant spectrum,” and “Genderqueer”: “for those who consider their gender outside the binary gender system”. I hasten to reiterate that I am quoting from diversity handouts; I am not making any of this up.Please allow me to be quite frank. My job, which I love, is to teach students Japanese history. This week, for example, I have been busy explaining the intricacies of the Genpei War (1180-1185), during which time Japan underwent a transition from an earlier, imperial-rule system under regents and cloistered emperors to a medieval, feudal system run by warriors and estate managers. It is an honor and a great joy to teach students the history of Japan. I take my job very seriously, and I look forward to coming to work each day.
It is most certainly not my job, though, to cheer along anyone, student or otherwise, in their psychological confusion. I am not in graduate school to learn how to encourage poor souls in their sexual experimentation, nor am I receiving generous stipends of taxpayer monies from the good people of the Great State of Wisconsin to play along with fantasies or accommodate public cross-dressing. To all and sundry alike I explicate, as best I can, such things as the clash between the Taira and the Minamoto, the rise of the Kamakura shogunate, and the decline of the imperial house in twelfth-century Japan. Everyone is welcome in my classroom, but, whether directly or indirectly, I will not implicate myself in my students’ fetishes, whatever those might be. What they do on their own time is their business; I will not be a party to it. I am exercising my right here to say, “Enough is enough.” One grows used to being thought a snarling racist–after all, others’ opinions are not my affair–but one draws the line at assisting students in their private proclivities. That is a bridge too far, and one that I, at least, will not cross.I regret that this leaves us in an awkward situation. After having been accused of virulent racism and, now, assured that I will next learn how to parse the taxonomy of “Genderqueers”, I am afraid that I will disappoint those who expect me to attend any further diversity sessions. When a Virginia-based research firm came to campus a couple of years ago to present findings from their study of campus diversity, then-Diversity Officer Damon Williams sent a gaggle of shouting, sign-waving undergraduates to the meeting, disrupting the proceedings so badly that the meeting was cancelled. In a final break with such so-called “diversity”, I will not be storming your office or shouting into a megaphone outside your window. Instead, I respectfully inform you hereby that I am disinclined to join in any more mandatory radicalism. I have, thank God, many more important things to do. I also request that diversity training be made optional for all TAs, effective immediately. In my humble opinion, neither the Department nor the university has any right to subject anyone to such intellectual tyranny.
Keep this in mind the next time you read complaints from the UW System generally or UW–Madison specifically that either doesn’t have enough taxpayer money. This is where your tax dollars are going … you racist.
I present the number one single today in 1977 to demonstrate that popularity and quality are not always synonymous:
The number one single today in 1983:
Today in 2004, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne officially opened AC/DC Lane, named for the band, to the bagpipes from …
Birthdays begin with actor Richard Harris, who “sang” …
As this is written, it’s not known whether Congress’ and Barack Obama’s inability to do the correct thing will result in the shutdown of the federal government.
Wisconsin Reporter provides a history of said shutdowns:
Since the previous shutdown was 18 years ago, people tend to think of it as a rare occurrence. Actually, government shutdowns — or “funding gaps,” as the government more accurately refers to them because it continues to fund “essential services”— used to be a regular event, even when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the White House.
According to the Congressional Research Service, there have been 17 federal shutdowns in U.S. history: six during Jimmy Carter’s four years; eight during Ronald Reagan’s eight years; one for George H.W. Bush; and two for Bill Clinton.
The shutdowns lasted much longer during the Carter years than the Reagan years, when he had a Democratic Congress. Carter’s longest shutdown was for 17 days, between September and October 1978, and his shortest — two of them — were eight days, both in 1977. Reagan’s were all between one and three days, with a shutdown every year except for 1985 and 1988.
Bush 41’s only shutdown lasted three days. And note, it was Democrats who ran both houses of Congress with a Republican president.
The longest shutdown in history was on Bill Clinton’s watch. It lasted 22 days — Dec. 16, 1995, to Jan. 6, 1996, during the scaled-down holiday season — and was widely perceived as a PR disaster for Republicans.
There is currently an effort to claim that Republicans actually benefited from that ’96 shutdown because they picked up some Senate seats that year. But no one at the time perceived it as a Republican win, which is why so many oppose a shutdown now.
It also is important to note that nearly all of the shutdowns took place around the government’s fiscal new year, Oct. 1, as a result of budget battles.
I was the editor of Marketplace Magazine during the 1995 shutdown. I opened my Marketplace of Ideas column in the last issue of 1995 by discussing watching the Monday Night Football game, which ended at 11:07 p.m. (12:07 a.m. Eastern), which made me realize that as of seven minutes earlier, the federal government had been shut down. “Anarchy! Chaos! Lawlessness!” was what I wrote, even though there obviously was none of that.
Before that, the Washington Post notes …
In 1973, when Richard Nixon was president, Democrats in the Senate, including Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. Walter Mondale (D-Minn.), sought to attach a campaign finance reform bill to the debt ceiling after the Watergate-era revelations about Nixon’s fundraising during the 1972 election. Their efforts were defeated by a filibuster, but it took days of debate and the lawmakers were criticized by commentators (and fellow lawmakers) for using “shotgun” tactics to try to hitch their pet cause to emergency must-pass legislation.
President Obama said that GOP lawmakers now are trying to “extort” repeal of the health care law via the debt limit, but that’s also what Democrats wanted to do with President Nixon, who opposed the campaign-finance reforms.
… to which James Taranto adds:
Here is where the analogy to the Nixon years gets very interesting. The Republicans did not sneak into Congress to stage a surprise attack. They were duly elected in 2010 precisely because of widespread public opposition to ObamaCare. That law was enacted by the requisite majorities, if bare ones, in both houses of Congress. Yet while it was not illegitimate, it felt that way, and it would be fair to characterize its enactment as a failure of democratic governance. Had members of the House and Senate responded to their constituents’ wishes rather than presidential and partisan pressure, it would have gone down to defeat, probably overwhelmingly.
To be sure, backlash against ObamaCare did not prove sufficient to deny Obama a second term. His supporters claim that even if the 2010 election left the question of ObamaCare unsettled, the 2012 election resettled it. The morning after Election Day, it would have been hard to disagree.
Yet Obama is now in a position very much analogous to that of President Nixon in 1973. We now know that government corruption–namely IRS persecution of dissenters–was a factor in Obama’s re-election. To be sure, Obama himself has not, at least so far, been implicated in the IRS wrongdoing as Nixon ultimately was in Watergate. On the other hand, Nixon’s re-election victory was so overwhelming that no one could plausibly argue Watergate was a necessary condition for it. The idea that Obama could not have won without an abusive IRS is entirely plausible.
Hot Air reports the results of a Pepperdine University poll:
Down to the final days of the nation’s current spending plan, with negotiations over a new one at a standstill, nearly half of small business owners are in favor of shutting the government down, according to a new poll.
Researchers at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management conducted the survey, which found that 48 percent of business owners support at least a temporary government shutdown, compared to 42 percent who say policymakers should hurry up and strike a deal. Of the poll’s 1,387 respondents, more than 90 percent own businesses with no more than 200 workers.
Half of respondents said they could get behind a shutdown for up to a month, and nearly a third would support shuttering the government for up to three months.
Hot Air adds:
Almost nine in ten of respondents think that a shutdown of a single day will either have no impact (69%) or only a slightly negative impact (17%). After a week, that shifts to 44% and 29%, respectively, but still three-quarters thinking a shutdown will have a negligible impact on the economy, and at two weeks it’s 27% and 32%. At one month, though, it drops to 13% and 27%.
On the other hand, a longer period won’t result in job losses right away. It takes 2 months to get out to 20% of respondents considering staff reductions. Even at 6 or more months, only 39% of small businesses believe a government shutdown would force them to lay off employees — although for companies of $100 million in revenue or more, the 50% mark comes at 5 months.
Republicans have to be cheered by this finding, too:
What do small businesses want? According to the charts, 63% want a one-year delay in ObamaCare’s implementation, while only 27% want it to go into effect tomorrow as scheduled. Forty-seven percent want full repeal, while another 27% want revisions, for an overall opposition of 74%. Sixty percent expect the law to force health care costs to rise, while only 11% believe those costs will go down. Fifty-eight percent expect to reduce their benefits package, 49% expect to reduce bonuses, and 47% plan to pull back on future hiring as a result.
Small wonder they don’t mind a shutdown.
This has been known to happen in Wisconsin when there is disagreement between the governor and the Legislature around the start of a new budget cycle, July 1 of every odd-numbered year. Unlike the feds, though, if a state budget isn’t passed, the previous budget and its spending and tax levels remains in effect.
The reason the state is smart enough to figure that out but the feds aren’t is that, of course, there are perceived political gains to be had by a “shutdown.” The shutdown is actually the temporary closing of what the feds consider non-essential services. If a natural disaster occurs in the next few days, the feds will be there. If the Russians try to invade, the military will be there. For other federal services: Our federal budget deficits are now measured in 15 digits, and you can add another digit to our federal debt.
The other fiscal apocalypse taking place tonight is the expiration of the extension of the federal Farm Bill. Without a “new” Farm Bill (that is, an extension of the original Farm Bill that dates back to, believe it or don’t, 1949), the result, the radio said this morning, would be milk prices shooting up to $6 per gallon.
One of the cardinal rules of politics is that good fiscal policy is never the result of a “crisis.” If we need a Farm Bill at all, we do not need a Farm Bill that extends something put together when Harry Truman was president. We do need an actually balanced federal budget, and we’re not going to get one in any year beginning with a 2, because one party in Washington doesn’t believe in balanced budgets, and the other believes in them in theory but not in practice.
With ObamaCare beginning (or so it’s claimed) tomorrow, you must read Matt Walsh:
Man, I hate these stupid, crazy, tea bagging right wingers. So foolish, so uncivilized. They run around screaming like crazed anarchists about how they want to stop Obamacare. Damned idiots don’t realize that the government needs to be involved in our health care decisions; we’re too helpless and feeble to handle it ourselves — unless we’re making the “medical” choice to get an abortion, in which case, THIS IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, YOU GOVERNMENT PIGS. GET OUT! I mean, leave your wallet on the table, ’cause I’m gonna need you to pay for this, but then GET OUT, JERK.
There are many scare tactics being used by the tea baggers in an effort to discredit Obamacare. Personally, I hate scare tactics. You should never let anyone scare you away from supporting socialized medicine, mostly because without it every poor person in the country will get sick and die. Anyway, like I said, I disapprove of scare tactics.
They claim that Obamacare will raise taxes, but this has been PROVEN false so many times. You know it’s been proven because I capitalized “proven.” Sure, there might be a few minor billion dollar taxes, like the individual mandate tax and the employer mandate tax, the Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans, the Tax on Health Insurers, the Tax on Innovator Drug Companies, the High Medical Bills Tax, the Medicine Cabinet Tax, the Tax on Indoor Tanning Services, and the Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals. And, yeah, there might be a small number of multi-billion dollar tax hikes on things like the Medicare Payroll tax and the “black liquor” tax and the HSA Withdrawal tax. And, OK fine, we’ll even see some tax deduction eliminations, like the deduction for employer-provided retirement prescription drug coverage.
But besides, like, 20 new taxes and tax hikes totaling, like, hundreds of billions of dollars, there aren’t ANY tax increases attached to Obamacare. None. NONE. See? I did the capital letter thing again. Pretty convincing stuff.
The redneck Tea Party crazies have even gone so far as to completely LIE about the impact Obamacare will have on the workforce. They insist that businesses are actually being forced to cut hours and lay off employees just to comply with the “burdensome” Obamacare rules and regulations. Again, this is a fabrication. Businesses aren’t cutting hours. Besides Walmart, Regal Entertainment, Trader Joe’s, Subway, Firehouse Subs, Sea World, Lands End, Dave and Busters, White Castle, Burger King, Taco Bell, and Home Depot, and academic institutions like Philadelphia University, Sam Houston State University, Ball State University, Georgia Military College, Three Rivers College, Hillsborough Community College, and University of North Alabama, and county governments in Indiana, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Michigan, Maryland, and Virginia, as well as school districts like Middletown Township Public Schools in New Jersey, Millard School District in Utah, and Shelbyville Central School System in Indiana, along with over 280 other businesses, universities, school systems and town governments, literally NOBODY is losing work because of Obamacare. …
Obamacare is just so wonderful. It could have only come from the mind of a brilliant man like President Obama. Think about it: We had a problem in this nation because so many people couldn’t afford health insurance. So what’s Obama’s plan? Simply charge those folks money for not having enough money! Brilliant! Oh, but his master strategy doesn’t stop there. It used to be expensive to buy insurance on the individual-market — now it will be TWICE as expensive for men, and only almost twice as expensive for women!
Do you see how this works?
Problem: Insurance is expensive.
Solution: Make it more expensive, and then tax people for not buying it.
There are a few other objections to Obamacare that I often hear raised by moronic neanderthals, such as the 200 economists who lobbied Congress to repeal the law. Let these so-called “economists” pretend they know something about the economy. I’ll take Harry Reid’s word over theirs any day of the week. Some say that this massive tax and spending program can’t possibly be sustained by a nation that’s already over 16 trillion dollars in debt. That’s where they’re wrong. …
Finally, you often hear the myth that the US Constitution doesn’t grant the government the authority to force citizens to buy a product. They even say the government doesn’t have the legal power to seize total control of an entire sector of the free market economy. Luckily, I don’t have to engage this argument because the Supreme Court already ruled. If the Supreme Court says it’s in there — it’s in there. Period. If the Supreme Court says dragons exist and Big Foot is real, then dragons exist and Big Foot is real. End of discussion. The Supreme Court is never wrong, just ask Dred Scott. …
Despite all of the FACTS I just laid out, these maniacs still find a reason to oppose Obamacare. They’d even risk a short-term, temporary shutdown of government just to make their point. SHUTDOWN THE GOVERNMENT?! BUT HOW WOULD WE EAT OR BREATHE?! This is a warning to Ted Cruz and all his ilk: If the government stops operating for even one day — chaos and cannibalism will reign in the streets. Mark my words. Yeah, a government shutdown would only impact “non-essential” federal government functions. And, yeah, some might even argue that the government should only be doing the essential things in the first place. But that will be of little solace when you’re bleeding on the ground, being eaten alive by the starving masses. I can scarcely imagine the horror. If non-essential government agencies and departments are forced to close for a short period of time, that means we’ll have to find a way to go without the Administration on Aging, and the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, and the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. WHERE WILL I GET MY TRANSPORTATION STATISTICS?! You’re playing with fire, conservatives. Civilization is bound together by the strong, steady hand of bureaucracy. If you loosen its grasp, you risk plunging us all into a dark, perilous land of individual responsibility and liberty. Our Founders fought and died to rescue us from such a fate, and I’ll be damned if I sit here and let you undo their efforts.
The number one song today in 1957:
Today in 1967, bowing down to popular music, the BBC began its Radio 1:
The number eight song today in 1958:
Today in 1967, the Beatles mixed “I Am the Walrus,” which combined three songs John Lennon had been writing. The song includes the sounds of a radio going up and down the dial, ending at a BBC presentation of William Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” Lennon had read that a teacher at his primary school was having his students analyze Beatles lyrics, Lennon reportedly added one nonsensical verse, although arguably none of the verses make much sense:
The number 33 single today in 1973 …
… 32 slots behind number one:
Proving that there is no accounting for taste, here is Britain’s number one single today in 1963:
Five years later, record buyers made a much better choice:
The number one U.S. album on the same day was “Time Peace: The Rascals Greatest Hits”:
Fans of brass rock should be interested in this news:
Relentless after 46 years, Chicago releases catchy new anthem, “America” [OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE]
Iconic mega-band Chicago returns to its musical roots with a soaring grass-roots anthem about restoring the American dream
Chicago, Illinois (MMD Newswire) September 24, 2013 – – Multi-platinum, Grammy ® Award winning rock/jazz fusion band Chicago has released a new song, “America,” a stirring challenge to “we the people” to save the American dream before it’s too late.
Set for official release on September 24, “America” is poised to “make waves” in musical, political, and even sports circles (the LA Dodgers are already playing the track during their home games). The new hit-in-the-making takes Chicago back to their roots of impeccable musicianship, blended with the political awareness that was so prevalent during the group’s early days.
Very few rock bands have survived through six consecutive decades, much less remained relevant and productive. Chicago is no “oldies” group resting on faded memories. They have sung and played their way from the era of AM radio straight into the Internet Age, continuing to produce fresh, original music, touring to sold-out houses, and never missing a concert date. Not only have they remained relevant, they have also paved new paths that inspired countless other bands.
Chicago has simply concentrated on producing consistently good music. “America,” a song that some are saying could be an anthem of the new century, is laden with a strong chorus, hooks, and horn riffs throughout.
“America is a song that has been waiting to be written for many years,” according to band co-founder, Lee Loughnane. The core message of “America is you and me”, intuitively resonates with people. Chicago’s grass-roots message, far from being polarizing, is crafted to inspire people of all political perspectives, who, though disagreeing vehemently on many points, still share common fears and hopes for the future of the nation – we are truly all in this together.”
With lyrics and music also written by founding member Lee Loughnane, and impassioned lead vocals by keyboardist Lou Pardini, “America” features the classic horns and rhythms that have captivated listeners for generations. The lyrics are intentionally straight forward and memorable, and the sound is pure Chicago. …
“Perhaps in some way, the message found in ‘America’ will remind people to think about how much more we can all do, especially in what we demand from OUR government,” says Lee Loughnane. “America can and should be an even better place… We must find new ways to work together to preserve this remarkable pursuit of happiness. To preserve a life of freedom for generations to come, we simply cannot — must not — fail.”
And with those signature horns, tight rhythms and iconic vocals egging us on, failure does not seem to be an option.
Before I comment about “America” (not to be confused with Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” or Neil Diamond’s “America“): This news release demonstrates what I despise about public relations, my line of work for seven years — hype. “Relentless after 46 years”? “Iconic mega-band”? “Soaring grass-roots anthem”?
“Inspired countless other bands”? Name them. “… a song that some are saying could be an anthem of the new century”? Who’s saying that? Two people in the office of MMD Newswire? “The core message of “America is you and me”, intuitively resonates with people”? According to whom?
This sort of writing drives me nuts. And I say that as, as you know, a huge fan of Chicago. Fans appreciate their recording new stuff, but go to a concert (and I’ve been to three of them), and that part about being “no ‘oldies’ group resting on faded memories” doesn’t really quite apply. More to the point: The quality of something either speaks for itself, or doesn’t, and our buzz-saturated media landscape needs less hype, not more. MMD’s Newswire has a page called “Writing Help.” Rather than giving writing advice, I’d say MMD needs writing advice.
As for the song itself, you can hear a preview of it here. Click there, and you will hear these words:
… By the people, for the people, everyone’s equal.
‘Cause this is America, America is free,
America, America, everyone’s free.
America, America is free,
America, America is you and me.
The Declaration tells us we’re all free and equal
No religion, no color, just people,
No one’s better, no one’s worse,
Everyone comes first.
I wouldn’t call it “a soaring grass-roots anthem” because rock anthems are usually higher-tempo and louder (in the sense of peaking all the bars, from earth-moving bass to soaring soprano, on a graphic equalizer display) than this. It does, however, fit into their early- to mid-’70s body of work, including “Saturday in the Park,” which I’d say it resembles the most in music. (Along with a little Santana.) You can hear the horns, which is a huge improvement over most of their work since the early ’80s. Of their most recent brass rock work, I’d say I prefer the sound of “Stone of Sisyphus” (for that matter, I prefer “Chicago Transit Authority” and “Chicago II,” specifically “Ballet for a Girl from Buckhannon“), but this isn’t bad at all, and certainly better than their sappier ballads.
It’s sort of an ironic song if you consider Chicago’s first work, including the entire last side of their first album, Chicago II’s “It Better End Soon,” on an album dedicated to “the revolution in all its forms.” It’s sort of a flashback to the last song on “Chicago II,” “Where Do We Go from Here,” written by former lead singer/bass player Peter Cetera (in his pre-sappy ballad era), or “Dialogue.” Though in the case of the former, I’m not sure if the words fit “America” or not:
Try to find a better place, but soon it’s all the same
What once you thought was a paradise is not just what it seems
The more I look around I find, the more I have to fear …
I know it’s hard for you to
Change your way of life
I know it’s hard for you to do
The world is full of people
Dying to be free
So if you don’t my friend
There’s no life for you, no world for me
Let’s all get together soon, before it is too late
Forget about the past and let your feelings fade away
If you do I’m sure you’ll see the end is not yet near
Arguably “Dialogue Part I,” a dialogue (get it?) between singers Terry Kath and Cetera …
TK: Are you optimistic ’bout the way that things are going?
PC: No, I never ever think of it at allTK: Don’t you ever worry
When you see what’s going down?
PC: Well, I try to mind my business, that is, no business at allTK: When it’s time to function as a feeling human being
Will your Bachelor of Arts help you get by?
PC: I hope to study further, a few more years or so
I also hope to keep a steady highTK: Will you try to change things
Use the power that you have, the power of a million new ideas?
PC: What is this power you speak of and this need for things to change?
I always thought that everything was fine, everything is fineTK: Don’t you feel repression just closing in around?
PC: No, the campus here is very, very freeTK: Don’t it make you angry the way war is dragging on?
PC: Well, I hope the President knows what he’s into, I don’t knowTK: Don’t you ever see the starvation in the city where you live
All the needless hunger, all the needless pain?
PC: I haven’t been there lately, the country is so fine
My neighbors don’t seem hungry ’cause they haven’t got the time, haven’t got the timeTK: Thank you for the talk, you know you really eased my mind
I was troubled by the shapes of things to come
PC: Well, if you had my outlook your feelings would be numb
You’d always think that everything was fine, everything was fine.
… applies less than “Dialogue Part II”:
We can make it happen
We can change the world now
We can save the children
We can make it better
We can make it happen
We can save the children
We can make it happen
(Some might say “Part I” sounds like a dialogue between the late ’60s or early ’70s (Kath) and the ’80s (Cetera). The more cynical might say the entire theme from ’60s and ’70s for those of college age, other than avoiding getting drafted, are in the words “I also hope to keep a steady high.”)
Regular readers know I am, to say the least, skeptical of politics in rock music. There is, however, something possibly interesting going on between the “Dialogue” Chicago and the “America” Chicago. It’s hard to say that the ’60s were really about dialogue; they were about getting your own way, whether or not the mainstream agreed with you. No one cared about being divisive.
Loughnane’s comment about “what we demand from OUR government” is interesting given the people who claim that we demand contradictory things from OUR government — namely, more services but less taxes — which could be said to be a direct result of Loughnane’s generation. (Everyone comes first, as they say.) You certainly can’t blame the band for thinking something is seriously wrong with this country, because something (or more one than something) is seriously wrong with this country. The problem is that Americans can’t agree on what is wrong, other (maybe) than the nasty, winner-take-all, destroy-the-opposition attitude of and toward politics, let alone what to do about it. I have an opinion of why that is that is nonpartisan but certainly ideological; others have a different opinion from me. If I were to talk to a diehard Barack Obama lover (based on some of my more odious experiences on Wisconsin Public Radio), I’m not sure we’d agree on the time of day, let alone, say, what “free” should mean.
It’s nice to see some sunny, we-can-make-it-happen optimism of the late ’60s. I’m pretty sure it’s not warranted as we careen toward the mid-2010s as divided as we have been since the Civil War, with no hope in sight. (Remember how united we were after 9/11? That didn’t last long, did it?) But maybe I’m reading too much into a song.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 