For Investors Only; Individual Mandate Going By The Wayside (Along With Corporate Mandate); Closed My Target Account

Updates

December 27, 2013: despite earlier, steadfast denials, Target now admits hackers got the PINs.

Original Post

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Dividends/distributions: three companies announce an increase; CVS announces a big increase.

Summit Midstream Partners' general partner to Acquire Interest in Utica Shale Gathering System in Southeastern Ohio from Blackhawk Midstream: Summit Midstream Partners, LLC, the privately held company that owns and controls the general partner of SMLP announced that it has executed a definitive agreement with Blackhawk Midstream, to acquire its equity interest in two entities, Ohio Gathering Company, L.L.C. and Ohio Condensate Company, L.L.C.. Ohio Gathering owns, operates and is developing significant midstream infrastructure in southeastern Ohio consisting of a liquids-rich natural gas gathering system, a dry natural gas gathering system and a condensate transportation, storage and stabilization facility in the core of the Utica Shale play.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on anything you read here or think you may have read here. 

The Wall Street Journal

Gold set for annual loss. Buying opportunity?

President O'Bama issues veto threat on Iran bill. I'm not sure why he is even using the threat of vetoes any more when executive orders are so much more effective.

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Last-minute health-site enrollment proves a very tough sell.

Insurers pressing for last-minute enrollees under the health-care law say they are running into a worrisome trend: Customers who were put off by the insurance marketplaces' early troubles are proving hard sells.

Many people thwarted by the technical problems of HealthCare.gov are reluctant to try again, citing frustration with the federal site, web-security concerns and the pressure of the holidays, several insurers say.

While enrollment has risen this month after a series of fixes to the site, problems bringing customers back to the site could stanch those gains. With only days before the Monday deadline to sign up for coverage that starts Jan. 1, insurers are facing a much smaller, and sicker, pool of customers than hoped for.

Not to worry: we've seen this phenomenon before (in the new car sales market where extensions of deadlines and rebates are now the norm). The Obamacare deadlines have all been extended; some Obamacare "stuff" has been declared exempt by the president; and, today, another exemption was announced by the president. Actually that was yesterday, but I believe is being reported today for the first time over at Bloomberg.

Again, one can become confused by all the ankle biting stories regarding Obamacare. These are the big ones to track:

• the genie cannot be put back in the bottle
• folks are tracking the wrong metric
• largest act of civil disobedience
• the insurers are on the hook for unlimited liability, a singularly unique situation for any sector

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I just completed my "first reading" of a biography of T. E. Lawrence yesterday. I will re-read it later. T. E. Lawrence and Arabia put into perspective President O'bama's pick for ambassador to China: Max Baucus.

A  story on John Goodman. For those interested. I"m not sure I am. I haven't read it yet. Ever since I saw him kill a frog on screen, I have trouble watching him. First saw him in a Coen Brothers film.

 The Los Angeles Times

For newbies, there are three components of Obamacare:

• corporate mandate (delayed one year0
• individual mandate (limited exemptions; announced December 20, 2013)
• taxes on medical devices (who cares)

Another exemption to Obamacare.

The Obama administration has opened a small, but potentially important, hole in a key requirement of the new healthcare law, letting some people who have had insurance policies cancelled avoid the requirement to buy coverage next year.

The change, announced Thursday night in a letter that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent to a group of senators, marks the first exception the administration has allowed to the law's so-called individual mandate.

Under the new policy, people who have received notices that their health plans are being canceled would qualify for hardship exemptions allowed by the law. Under those exemptions, they could buy low-cost catastrophic health plans or skip buying health coverage altogether. [These are exactly the type of policies Obamacare was designed to abort.]

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The Target credit card theft story is incredible.

As millions of bargain-crazed customers swarmed through Target stores on Black Friday, one of the most audacious heists in retail history was quietly underway.

A band of cyberthieves pilfered credit and debit card information from the giant retailer's customers with pinpoint efficiency as shoppers bought discounted sweaters and electronic gear on the unofficial launch of the holiday shopping season.

By the time the scheme was discovered, the unidentified hackers had made off with financial data of 40 million Target customers over a 21/2-week period. It ranks as one of the nation's biggest retail cybercrimes on record.

Target disclosed the security breach Thursday, saying the thieves had purloined customer names, card numbers and a security code encrypted in the magnetic strip. The theft enables the culprits to make phony credit cards, make fraudulent purchases or siphon money from bank accounts.

This is (also) what is not being reported: Target's response: Consumers: you are on your own. Target's advice to the 40 million folks who had their account numbers stolen: check your account "frequently."

Not me. I closed it. I was "on hold" for about an hour yesterday when calling Target.

Couldn't get through. "Experiencing a heavier-than-normal" call rate was the recording, or something like that. One can't close a Target account at a Target store. One has to call in. The Target website was down all morning yesterday (or at least I couldn't access it). Let's check now: I found the "Manage my REDcard" tag at Target....it's now "connecting ....."...... taking much longer than usual....still not in.... very, very interesting...seriously, is it still down? Oh, there it is. Let's see if my account is still here. I canceled it yesterday by phone. Taking forever. This is not a good sign. Not a good sign at all. My hunch: the Target story will have "legs." By the way, this was the #1 conversation here at Starbucks this morning. No, it appears I cannot log in .... still "connecting....."

Nope, can't get in.   

Target

1000 Nicollet Mall
Minneapolis, MN 55403
Phone: 612-304-6073
Fax: 612-696-5400  

The scary part: I have no idea what is on the magnetic strip. I canceled my Target account, but what other information was on the encrypted magnetic strip? Very, very scary. When I get back home, I will report all my credit cards "lost" and have "them" reissued with new account numbers.  

I generally do that every few years anyway.  A bit of inconvenience. But solves a few other problems also. 

By the way, talking to employees at the neighborhood Target store yesterday revealed that most employees were unaware of the credit card account number heist. Supposedly "they" were going to have a store meeting on the issue "today." No signs were posted. The only way folks knew about this heist was through the press (and a lot of folks don't read newspapers these days). I received no e-mail alert from Target.

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Janet Rowley dies at 88; scientist pinpointed genetic cause of leukemia Dr. Janet Rowley's research, which linked a chromosomal rearrangement to chronic myeloid leukemia, extended the lives of countless cancer patients. Her work at the University of Chicago earned her the National Medal of Science. Hers is an incredible story, similar to those of many, many other women in science:

Back home, a University of Chicago colleague gave Rowley some laboratory space, a microscope and a salary of $5,000 a year and encouraged her to study the chromosomes of leukemia patients.

Rowley's pivotal discovery came during one of her "off days" in 1972, while poring through images of chromosomes that she had spread out on the family dinner table.
At the time, scientists were befuddled by the relationship between genes and cancer, unsure why patients with a particular leukemia displayed one abnormally short chromosome — a threadlike structure that carries genetic information.

Rowley realized that the truncated chromosome was not just missing genetic material but had, in fact, swapped material with another chromosome. It was that rearrangement that led to a deadly chain of events ending in chronic myeloid leukemia, an uncommon disease that affects about 5,000 people annually in the United States.

Tenacity and perseverance.