Category Archives: The State

Life In The Oink Sector Revisited

Free Markets, Government, Private Property, South-Africa, The State

“Life In The Oink Sector” detailed the cost to the private economy of the ever-growing public sector, likening the public-private sector relationship to that of “parasite vs. host. The first is sucking the lifeblood of the second. The larger the parasite gets, the weaker the host will grow.”

Now John Stossel takes on the public sector “bankrupting America”:

“NY Transit Union boss, John Samuelsen argues, we are the richest country in the world and can afford it. Really?

Here are some of the facts;

Public pensions have unfunded liability of $1 trillion [1] to $3.5 trillion [2]

Federal workers take home twice pay and benefits [3] as private workers. Local and state workers also make more [4].

Total Pay Benefits

Private $59,909 $50,028 $9,881

Local/state $67,812 $52,051 $15,761

Federal $119,982 $79,197 $40,785

— Average TWU union worker makes $60K without overtime or benefits.

— 25% took 15 or more sick days. Average was 8 sick days.

— Fox average 3 sick days (same for men and women)

— No FOX employee took 15 days

Relative Danger of Jobs (Deaths per 100,000 workers)

— Fishing 128.9

–Logging 115.7

–Iron workers 46.4

–Farmers 39.5

–Firemen 3.8

–Transit workers 1.4

(Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, except Transit worker death, that is from interview with TWU Local100 President)

Some people argue that there’s no alternative to the government monopoly on municipal work, but Sandy Springs, Georgia, privatized most of it’s jobs in 2005. Now the city pays about ½ of what it used to pay. It enjoys a $14 million surplus, in addition to funding a $20 million reserve.”

[SNIP]

Incidentally, the most dangerous job—even more hazardous than fishing—is farming in South Africa. The mortality rate (due to murder) among Boers stands at 300 per 100,000.

It’s in my upcoming book (now lingering with the publisher).

Collapse Of The Child-Only Healthcare Market

Barack Obama, Healthcare, Regulation, Socialism, The State

Here is yet another unhappy installment in a BAB series of posts on the effects of the Obama healthscare, as these percolate throughout the economy.

This time it is “the collapse of the child-only market.” Reports the Wall Street Journal:

This week Democrats threw a six-month birthday party for ObamaCare—and the timing was only appropriate since it occurred at the same moment their reform annihilated a corner of the U.S. insurance market.

Democrats were celebrating the arrival of ObamaCare’s first regulatory wave, which was designed to land weeks before the election. These include mandated benefits like “free” preventive care (i.e., the cost is built into the premiums). Democrats think these “consumer protections” poll well, even though they’re already raising consumer rates across the country. But the most immediately destructive item turned out to be new rules governing private health coverage for children.

This week, almost every big insurance company in America—including Aetna, Cigna, UnitedHealth Group, WellPoint, Humana, Coventry, some Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliates and others—stopped writing “child-only” policies in the individual market. This is a niche product that parents typically buy when their employer health plan doesn’t cover dependents. The exact plans vary company to company and state to state, and the insurers will still offer family policies and make good on the child-only policies that they’ve already sold. But most won’t be writing new ones.

In other words, for-profit businesses are refusing to sell products that consumers want to buy. Exact data aren’t available, but the child-only market covers roughly a million kids a year.

The reason is a regulation that President Obama mentions every time he talks about health care, as he did recently in Falls Church, Virginia: “Children who have pre-existing conditions are going to be covered.” Insurers are now required to cover everyone under 19 when their parents apply for coverage, regardless of health status. The problem with this kind of “guaranteed issue” is that it encourages people, in this case parents, to wait until their kids are sick before seeking coverage.

This drives up premiums for the healthy, encouraging consumers in turn to drop coverage, and eventually it leads to what’s known as a “death spiral,” the industry term for an insurer with rapidly increasing costs as a result of population changes in its coverage pool. The child-only market is a particular death-spiral risk because it is so small and unstable, which explains why so many insurers left in a stroke.

MORE.

If we are to believe a new AP poll—and my thesis in “Statism Starts With YOU!”—Americans “who think the law should have done more outnumber those who think the government should stay out of health care by 2-to-1.”

The fatter the feds the happier Americans are.

UPDATE II: Images From The WorldNetDaily 2010 Conference (& Snapshots From The Journey)

Capitalism, Etiquette, Family, Homeland Security, Ilana Mercer, IlanaMercer.com, Multiculturalism, Pop-Culture, The State

After nine years with WND, it was time to meet the people who have been brave enough to showcase my column for that duration; the people who patiently field my (weekly) pedant’s requests for this or the other editorial correction.

Unfortunately, I was unable to stay for the duration of the WorldNetDaily 2010 Conference, which was held at the Doral Golf Resort & Spa, in Miami. This was the case because my mother is visiting with us from The Netherlands, and was home birdie-sitting all alone on Yom Kippur.

“WND And Me” sums up the role of WND in my career, such as it is.

Never, “in all my years with WND.com, the Internets leading, largest independent website,” have I so much as been censored—not even when, in July of 2003, I likened Bush’s ‘Bring ’em on grin’ to the grimace ‘on the face of a demented patient with end-stage syphilis.'”

WND’s intrepid editors have fielded many a missive demanding I be dropped. ‘Guys,’ complained one devotee, “I am about to boycott your splendid website…Ilana’s views are just too … out of sync with other contributors on your site [when it comes to the invasion of Iraq].” What the reader failed to comprehend was that WND was not looking for conformity—at least not from me. And for that I am grateful. I am temperamentally not suited to obedience, not when truth is at stake.

Here I am with the gifted Albert Thompson (already a dear friend), who practically ran the event, and WND’s lovely young book editor, Megan Byrd:

With Joseph Farah at the WND cocktail party.

With the one-and-only Erik Rush, who, I discovered, is also a gifted musician

Jerome Corsi and former Assistant Secretary of State, Alan Keyes.

Dining out with Sean.

UPDATE I (Sept. 19): Snapshots From The Journey.

I am giving in to hyperbole, but when the large African-American woman—employed by the American taxpayer to torment the same subjects at the airport—summoned me with a crooked finger for a pat down, I thought of the film “Midnight Express.” And in particular, the scene where Billy Hayes’ far-from-delightful Turkish jailer schemes to enjoy some time alone with the young American.

America’s airports are ugly places, where statism interfaces with the squalor of mass society. The workforce at the nation’s airports is, mostly, a malicious, affirmatively appointed contingent of minorities, mainly imported. All speaking Pidgin English, and each one singularly focused on exacting revenge on thinner, richer, paler, perceived oppressors.

The poor are first to complain about capitalism, but it has given them cheap travel (and cheap everything else). Once-upon-a-time a trip was a special occasion. You dressed in your finest for it. Now, every tom, dick and harry can afford to fly. Thus the airport’s often-inhospitable waiting lounges are filled with the detritus of humanity; slack-jawed youths talking at the top of their voices, or texting feverishly, mouths agape. Or shamelessly scenting the ether with the orificial end product of nasty food. (Yes, I kid you not.)

Everywhere apparent are “women lost to shame,” to use Edmund Burke’s description of the new breed of woman loosed upon humanity by the Jacobin forces of the Revolution in France. I refer to the kind that spills out of her hot pants and blouses and carries on like a harlot.

A tea shirt popular at the Miami International Airport was one that read, “Miami Bitch.” Many women had voluntarily donned this thing, and it was the cause of much guffawing among them. In “Idiocracy” mode, a semantic trick achieved with vowels elicited a lot of laughter.

Of course, one does see the odd lady among the feral females.

Miami: From the little I saw of it, Miami is a hellishly hot, flat, hellhole. I can see why Tom Tancredo called Miami a Third World place. English is not a first language there. The word that encapsulates that spot’s work ethic is “mañana”: tomorrow.

What can one add about those unpleasant, ugly, old flight attendants? That profession too was once the preserve of females young, pretty and single, who got the opportunity to see the world. By the looks of it, youth and pulchritude are exclusionary criteria; banished, except, I am told, on airplanes flown by China, Singapore and Dubai.

When we emigrated from South Africa to Israel I was a little girl. I remember being awed by the beauty and gentility of the El Al airhostesses. These days, a look from the Delta flight attendants, all in their dotage, is enough to unsettle the most seasoned traveler.

UPDATE II (Sept. 21): These images have now been added to the gallery.

The Blair Third-Way Blur

Britain, Conservatism, Economy, Europe, Republicans, Socialism, The State

How serious are Republican boosters about liberty? Tony Blair serious. Sean Hannity interviews Mr. Blair, and tries to get this consummate Third-Way politician to repeat the Hannity inanities, among which are the following catch phrases: We want a small government (translation: you call the state behemoth small when a Republican is at the helm), and a strong national defense (translated: defend the indefensible invasions so long as they are started by Republicans).

Republican economics: condemn the Keynesian voodoo, as you grope obscenely for the “stimulus packages,” and while rudely wanking your business buddies in full view of disgusted onlookers.

Blair is way cleverer. He re-branded “the Keynesian model” as a Third Way sort of kosher statism about which your host (support her, please!) wrote way back in … 2000, in the Calgary Herald column, “Third Way is Socialism’s New Bandwagon.”

To the request that he make a token grumble against Sean Hannity’s ostensible peeve, Blair replied:

“I happen to think in this case there’s a third way, which is a state that is strategic and empowering, where your welfare and public service policies are reformed and modernized from the 1940s.”

What a sweet molester is our Uncle Sam and his cousin across the pond.