With the news coming out of the Europe the past few days and the president appearing tired, and his options severely limited, the tea leaves suggest the whole response to Putin's actions in the Crimean could spiral out of control for both the world, and for President Obama. I'm an inveterate optimist, but the "stuff" coming out of the G-7 meeting should have us worried. I hope one year from now, the collective "we" isn't asking, "why didn't we just let Putin take Kiev?" -- 9:23 p.m. central time, March 26, 2014; to be posted in the a.m.
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I don't know whether to laugh or cry. This guy is so far behind the curve, one wonders...ah, yes, another nominee for the Geico Rock Award. I can't believe this guy wrote the book, and I can't believe The New York Times published the story. The lede:
Here’s a prediction: By 2025, “fewer than 20 percent of workers in the private sector will receive traditional employer-sponsored health insurance.” The source of this claim? Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, in his just-published book, “Reinventing American Health Care.”
Dr. Emanuel is an accomplished oncologist, medical ethicist and academic (and contributing opinion writer to The New York Times). And, of course, he’s no stranger to politics: He helped craft the Affordable Care Act as a health policy adviser to the Obama administration, when his brother, Rahm, now the mayor of Chicago, was chief of staff. The book is a full-throated defense of the law (its subtitle: “How the Affordable Care Act Will Improve Our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System”).
In it, Mr. Emanuel argues that in the next two or three years, “a few big, blue-chip companies will announce their intention to stop providing health insurance. Instead, they will raise salaries substantially or offer large, defined contributions to their workers. Then the floodgates will open.” He says that few small businesses will join the SHOP exchanges set up for them and that most of those that offer coverage are even more likely than big companies to drop it, since those who employ fewer than 50 workers face no mandate to offer it in the first place, which Mr. Emanuel thinks is fine.
"....in the next
two or three years, “a few big, blue-chip companies will announce their
intention to stop providing health insurance...." Say what? I've been posting this since, like, forever. Those "few small companies"? Here's a partial list: IBM, GE, Trader Joe's, UPS, cities and states.
"Mr Emanuel thinks is fine." Hypocrite.
ObamaCare: saved Corporate America.
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Random Update Of Cape Wind
Look at all the foreign investors. Cable will start being laid by the end of this year; turbine construction next year; and on-line, 2016. Some of the investors:
- French bank Natixis
- Netherlands-based financial services provider Rabobank
- The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ
- Danish Export Credit Agency, also known as EKF
- PensionDanmark
