Williston just broke their Building permits record and it isn't even the end of the year. Calendar year 2012 was the largest on record at $470,101,124.00.
Today, the Williston City building department reports as of October 2014, Williston has permitted $475,941,353.63 in permits with 2 more months to go.
Do you think they will hit the half-billion mark?Yes.
How's that for a quick answer? Seriously, that truly is incredible. I don't know how to define a "boom." I suppose the answer is a lot like of other things: I can't define a boom but I recognize it when I see it.
Actually, this year's number is even more impressive when one compares it to last year (calendar year, 2013), less than $342 million for the year, again, compared with more than $475 million at this point.
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Note: do not read below this section. I am still behind in my blogging, but I have to post some things so I don't "lose" them. Anything below this item is non-Bakken-related. It is for my personal use and is not intended for others. Out-of-town family guests will start to depart tomorrow and once everyone has departed, I hope to be back to regular blogging about the Bakken.
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TrainWreck
Wall Street Journal is reporting:
Millions fewer people will enroll in private health plans under the Affordable Care Act next year than the Congressional Budget Office had predicted, the Obama administration said Monday.
The developments are the latest sign that the law, which Democrats passed in 2010 to provide near-universal health insurance, is struggling to reach that goal quickly. Attracting new enrollees to the health law’s insurance exchanges has proven more difficult than advocates had predicted, and a slice of those who do sign up for plans haven’t kept up with premiums.
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said the administration was aiming for 9.1 million paid-up enrollees by the end of 2015, though the range could extend to 9.9 million, according to a new analysis conducted by her agency.
The exchanges, which reopen Saturday for the law’s second year of insurance enrollment, were expected to have 13 million people enrolled in private health plans under the law in 2015, according to an April 2014 projection by the nonpartisan CBO.I've said for quite some time, the "slice" is actually getting quite big.
The slice will get bigger when they find out how high the deductibles are:
Obamacare’s second open enrollment begins this Saturday and consumers can already start window-shopping for health policies sold on the federal exchange, HealthCare.gov.
An earlier study from HealthPocket found that the average individual deductible for Obamacare’s bronze plan was $5,081 a year—42 percent higher than the average deductible of $3,589 for a comparable individually purchased plan.It appears that most folks with ObamaCare are getting: a) catastrophic health care insurance; b) birth control pills; and, c) annual physical exams with breast cancer screening (male and female).
And still another Yahoo!Finance story on how much ObamaCare is going to cost those with "gold-plated" health care plans (such as some union members have):
They might want to think about changing the name of Obamacare's "Cadillac Tax" to a "Ferrari Tax."
A new report that details the effects of a looming Obamacare excise tax on employer-sponsored health plans highlights the big bucks large companies will have to dole out starting in 2018 and how employees might end up getting stuck with much of the costs if bosses blanch at the tax bill.
The American Health Policy Institute analysis found that big companies subject to the tax will pay an average of $2.1 million per year from 2018 to 2024—equal to $2,700 per employee. And if companies adjust workers' wages to offset reductions in health benefits due to the tax, more than 12 million employees will face an average of $1,050 in higher payroll and income taxes per year.
"As these numbers show, this tax is going to impose real costs on both employees and employers alike," the group's report said.
The tax will start in 2018 and impose a 40 percent levy on the cost of individual health plans above $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for family coverage, with both employer and worker contributions included. Every dollar above those thresholds is taxed at that 40 percent rate, the tax is not deductible by the employer and the thresholds are indexed to inflation.
Again, one has to ask why they are posting this story now, in 2014 -- this tax does not take effect until 2018, four years from now. It's all about shining a bad light on ObamaCare, putting pressure on Obama, pushing him off-stage, to set up 2016 for Hillary or Pocahantas. Hillary will come out fighting, move to the center, and promise to take some of these new taxes off the table. Pocahantas won't make the same promise.
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Property Over Lives
I see the state of Missouri has decided that property is more important than lives in their state. The governor says the state will not tolerate violence, and that property will be protected. Starting to sound like Texans. This is / was from the radio and I am paraphrasing, but I think that's what was said.
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Ice Age Now
Polar Vortex
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Politics
Another example: CNBC -- squarely behind Obama for the past six years -- now says the "full housing recovery" is stalled, and won't happen until 2018. This story would never have been posted before the election (it wasn't) and if Obama were up for re-election, it never would have been posted at all.
Arctic air continued to surge into the central U.S. on Tuesday, while record-breaking snow buried portions of the upper Midwest.
Temperatures were only in the single digits, teens, and 20s across much of the north-central U.S. as of late Tuesday morning. Temperatures Tuesday are forecast to be 20 to 40 degrees below average for areas east of the Rockies into the Great Plains, the National Weather Service warned.
Wind chills were as cold as 20 below zero in portions of western Montana on Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, wind chills could bottom out at 35 below zero in some spots, which is enough to cause frostbite in as little as 10 minutes.
Significant snow fell across Minnesota to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan Monday and more snow was set for Tuesday, especially across Wisconsin and Michigan, where 6-12 additional inches of snow is likely, AccuWeather predicts.
Politics
I don't know if folks have noticed this, but the media is "dumping" (their word, not mine) a lot of negative-Obama stories over the past week. Here is one, from Fox News: Valerie Jarrett is now the scapegoat-in-chief. Valerie is the "face" of the Obama dynasty, and now it appears she is being thrown under the bus as the excuse for the recent shellacking.
Apparently all four networks (ABC, CBS, Fox News, and NBC) all had huge stories yesterday on the
future of ObamaCare and the picture was not pretty. One story: ObamaCare numbers for 2015 are going to "tank" (their words, not mine). But here is the story that was reported on all four networks yesterday, and has apparently gone viral: ObamaCare architect: the stupidity of the American voter led us to hide ObamaCare's true costs from the public -- Forbes.
Another example: CNBC -- squarely behind Obama for the past six years -- now says the "full housing recovery" is stalled, and won't happen until 2018. This story would never have been posted before the election (it wasn't) and if Obama were up for re-election, it never would have been posted at all.
The question is "why now?" The mainstream media did not turn conservative overnight.
This is what is going on. The media has not changed their liberal stance; the media is simply moving on. The media needs to move Obama off the stage before they can crown their next "nominee." It's not clear yet who that will be but right now it appears to be a toss-up between Hillary and Pocahontas.
Expect another six weeks to six months of truth about "the Obama story." Once the Obamas are off the stage, then the positive-stories start coming out, building up either H or P.
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