Saturday Notes Continued, Part III -- August 29, 2015

I've really covered most of the news in Part I and Part II, but my contract requires a certain amount of blogging each week. To meet contract obligations, the notes continue. That does not mean you have to read them. I only have to post them. The contract only says I have to mention the Bakken; the contract does not say I have to blog about the Bakken.

The definition of "is," is?

I've mentioned the Bakken (three times now) but I doubt there will be anything in this post about the Bakken (ka-ching, #4). If you came here looking for the Bakken (ka-ching, #5), I apologize. Scroll up or down, or go to the sidebar and you will come across sme Bakken (ka-ching, #6).

My favorite: William Herbert Hunt is a billionaire once again. Hunt became a billionaire by selling some of his Bakken (ka-ching, #7) acreage to Halcon back in 2012. The story begs the question: could William Herbert Hunt buy back his acres from Halcon?

After the Bakken (ka-ching, #8) and energy related issues, my favorite subject is ObamaCare. So many stories came out this past week about ObamaCare co-ops failing (and being compared to Solyndra) and ObamaCare premiums increasing 20, 30, 40 and dare we say 50%? Probably not 50%. CNBC reported this story Friday afternoon when most reporters had already called it a week, and had already left for the bars, so none of you probably saw it until now (send a thank you note to Don):

Bigger might be better, but it can also be pricier—at least when it comes to Obamacare.
A new analysis found that the largest insurer in each of the states served by HealthCare.gov raised their prices in 2015 much more sharply—by an average of 10 full percentage points—than smaller competitors on that federal Obamacare marketplace.

Those steeper price hikes for monthly premiums didn't seem warranted by the level of health claims made by customers of those bigger plan.

They also stand in contrast to the belief that economies of scale will result in lower prices.

"On average, the largest issuers raised rates by 23.9 percent, while the other issuers only raised rates by 13.7 percent," the authors wrote.

That means the largest issuer in each state had, on average, a 75 percent higher premium increase compared to other insurers in the same state, the report found. 

It's a pretty lame story, but it sort of rounds out a sort of lousy week.

The unemployed in St Louis are about to welcome some new members. KMOV is reporting:

St. Louis' governing board has approved a compromise measure that raises the city's minimum wage to $11 by 2018. 

Every study in the history of the world says raising the minimum wage in St Louis will result in more unemployment. I guess that's why the call-sign for that particular news station is "KMOV" -- folks are MOVing out as fast as they can. Especially after Ferguson. My hunch is that the discussion to raise the minimum wage revolved around Ferguson to a great extent. A lot of guilt assuaged. (That's the first time I've ever used that word on this blog.)

By the way, speaking of which, I mentioned the other day I was reading a very, very long article on a failed high school in Queens, NYC. I was hoping to come away from that article with some pithy comments on what it all meant, but all I came away with was a real feeling of depression. I guess I can say this: money is not the answer. Nor are Harvard-trained social scientists who thought up the whole busing thing.

Quick! What city is the most segregated school system in the US?

• Birmingham, AL
• Montgomery, AL
• Selma, Al
• Jackson, MS

That was a trick question. Actually the question was not a trick. The given answers were a trick. The answer was not given. From the linked article in The New Yorker:

Last year (2014), a study by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA found that New York City has the most segregated school system in the country, a reflection of the persistence of the housing patterns that Arthur Levitt talked about in 1954 but also of the failure of the integrationist ideal that was intended to address it.

So there you have it. And I thought it was Montgomery, AL, all these years.