Big Government

Dick Bove: DC Wants the Dow to Fall 1000 Points

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Watching CNBC. Bove says that because the stock market isn’t in a major sell-off the pols can’t get away with the kind of bad deal (my interpretation) that they want. He warns investors: “The only good strategy at the moment is to get out of the way. The politicians will get the panic they seek.”

CNBC spins this as: lawmakers need a reason to act to avoid gridlock. What Bove is actually saying is that there is a conflict of interest between the pols, particularly the Democrats, who want to bust the sequester and force the full implementation of Obamacare as scheduled, and American taxpayers. This is why Obama says, “this time I think Wall Street should be concerned”. Nice stock market you’ve got here, pity if something were to happen to it.

It appears that Obama is trying to do with the markets the same thing that he did with the national parks: make the government shutdown costly for ordinary Americans, whom he hopes will then find new cause to support him. The media will keep trying to reframe this crass partisan shakedown as Obama working to prevent disaster, but what he’s really doing is transparent to anyone who pays attention.

Why the Obamacare site is not working.

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I hadn’t thought of this situation, only because I didn’t have enough imagination to see that politics trumps all with Obama.

A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.

This just didn’t occur to me. It should have. After all, what was Benghazi about ?

This political objective—masking the true underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans—far outweighed the operational objective of making the federal website work properly. Think about it the other way around. If the “Affordable Care Act” truly did make health insurance more affordable, there would be no need to hide these prices from the public.

It is just amazing that the politicians know so little about technology (this was the guy with the Blackberry who made fun of McCain) that they did not understand that saying something doesn’t make it happen.

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Normal legislative practice vs tea party terrorism

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Normal Legislative practice:
Vote for this must pass bill even though we’ve loaded it with pork barrel spending and changed a few bits of unrelated legislation into it. You’ll hurt the country worse if it doesn’t pass.

Tea Party terrorism:
Vote for this continuing resolution to fund the government while we change/defund the Affordable Care Act.

See the difference?

Me neither.

Cross posted on Flit-TM

The Shutdown

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Since I am a Department of Defense contractor, examining military recruits. I expected that we would not be called to come in after Monday but I worked Tuesday and was told they expect no slowdown. Of course, maybe they won’t pay us but that is still in the future.

UPDATE: Today is the 8th and I have been called again for tomorrow.

So far, the shutdown seems to be working with the assistance of Democrat verbal and active mistakes. I always thought Gingrich fumbled the ball in 1995. This time, the GOP strategy of passing small directed bills to fund popular programs, seems to be working. Certainly the Democrats like Harry Reid and the National Park Service are helping all they can.

Washington politicians may have the time to debate how to fund the government, now that their pig-headedness has shut it down, but the nation’s World War II veterans don’t.

“World War II veterans are dying by the hundreds every day,” says Fred Yanow, of Northbrook, Ill., who spent 1942-45 in the Pacific theater as an Army private. “It’s a shame that they don’t care about World War II veterans when so many of them are dying off.” The 16 million men and women who wore their nation’s uniform in the so-called “Good War,” from 1941 to 1945, are leaving for eternal R&R at the rate of 650 a day.

Which Washington politicians ?

Harry Reid ?

Claire McCaskill had some clever comments.

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DoD Back to Work Monday, Mostly

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Secretary of Defense Hagal has recalled most Department of Defense (DoD) civilians back to work Monday. The legal reasons why were in the NY Times Sunday 6 Oct 2013 edition this morning.

The following is the fine print behind the “Mostly” —

“I expect us to be able to significantly reduce — but not eliminate — civilian furloughs under this process,” Mr. Hagel said.
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Mr. Hagel warned that “many important activities remain curtailed while the shutdown goes on,” and he cited disruptions across the armed services.
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Late Saturday, the Defense Department comptroller, Robert F. Hale, said that Mr. Hagel’s order would recall Pentagon employees who work in health care, family programs, commissaries and training or maintenance.
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Additionally, the order will recall to work those civilian Pentagon employees whose jobs, if interrupted, would cause future problems for the military; those categories include contracting, logistics, supply and financial management.
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While the numbers have not been finalized, officials estimated that only 10 percent of the furloughed employees would not be recalled, including Defense Department civilian employees who work in auditing, some in legislative and public affairs, and Pentagon employees who service other government agencies.

Most of DCMA will be back to work Monday, as will DFAS, DCAA and DLA.

The DoD Inspector General (I.G.), civilians in the various uniformed Service I.G. offices and DoD civilians involved in things like planning DoD assistance to disaster relief efforts are still going to stay home.