Thursday Morning News, Links, And Views -- Part I -- There Will Be A Part II

Scary numbers: President O'Bama's economy approval slips to 35%. This mirrors his overall approval. Wait until folks see their new health care premiums for 2014, especially in Indiana, Florida, elsewhere. By the way, the President plans to have the FCC add $5/year to your cell phone fees to pay for fast internet for schools across the country. Congress has been slow to act, so the President will do this unilaterally. I assume "ObamaPhones" will be exempt, or the fees will be provided by the providers (e.g., ATT, Verizon, Sprint).

Global warming:

• Lots of stories the past few days how unusually cool it has been. Here's another one, this time in Washington, DC. Yesterday, August 14, 2013, there was frost in Minnesota.

Global energy picture changing:

• Five-fold increase in natural gas exports in Australia:

Ten liquefied natural gas projects across Australia -- three of which are operating and seven under construction -- will boost budget revenues by $10 billion a year from 2015 to 2025, according to estimates compiled by McKinsey & Co. Inc. The projects will add 2.6 percent to Australia’s gross domestic product, or A$5,500 per household each year and support 180,000 jobs, the New York-based consultancy forecast.

Australia’s LNG export earnings are projected to increase fivefold to $60 billion through June 2018, according to the government’s Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics. BG Group Plc’s venture on the coast of Queensland state is due to begin in 2014, and Chevron Corp.’s $50 billion Gorgon project on Barrow Island off northwest Australia, the largest resources development in the nation’s history, is scheduled to start delivering cargoes in early 2015.

Chinese rural wages up --> more cars --> more energy. Bloomberg is reporting:

Cheap rice may be a thing of the past as production costs climb, driven by rising wages in Asia and higher fertilizer and diesel costs, the U.K.’s Overseas Development Institute said. 

And, yes, Japan will burn more coal and more natural gas. The radiation leak is a story that just won't quit for the Japanese. Bloomberg is reporting:

The most ambitious radiation clean-up ever attempted has proved costly, complex and time-consuming since the Japanese government began it more than two years in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. It may also fail.

Doubts are mounting that the effort to decontaminate hotspots in an area the size of Connecticut will succeed in its ultimate aim - luring more than 100,000 nuclear evacuees back home. 

If thousands of former residents cannot or will not return, parts of the farming and fishing region could remain an abandoned wilderness for decades. 

In many areas, radiation remains well above targeted levels because of bureaucratic delays and ineffective work on the ground. As a result, some experts fears the $15 billion allocated to the scheme so far will be largely squandered.

Oklahoma's lawsuit against O'BamaCare is allowed to proceed. One starts to get the feeling that the tide is turning. The courts, too, can a) read the polls; and, b) see the wheels coming off this train. Bloomberg is again reporting:

Oklahoma won court approval to proceed with a federal lawsuit challenging tax aspects of President Barack Obama’s 2010 health-care legislation.

U.S. District Judge Ronald A. White in Muskogee, Oklahoma, yesterday denied the federal government’s request for complete dismissal of a lawsuit first filed in 2011 over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. 

While White tossed claims that the act’s mandatory minimum-coverage provision exceeded Congress’ powers and that a related Internal Revenue Service rule is unconstitutional as applied to Oklahoma employees, he said the U.S. must defend three counts arising from that same IRS rule. 

It seems like a very small piece of the whole story, but the program is being dismantled piece by piece. Health care insurers will increase premiums based on projections that won't come true for years. I doubt the health care insurers will decrease their premiums. Watch for huge earnings reports by the health care industry a year from now. This is not rocket science. AARP will do particularly well.