Free Republic

Maybe The Snowflakes Are Right? What if "Pajama Boy" is right? GDP came in pretty punky this morning, and a big part of it was consumption -- consumer spending. Much has been said, including by myself, about millennials and other young people on both sides of the millennial generation being less ambitious, living at home even well into their 20s, working part time or not at all. What if their decision is a purely logical one? What if those folks have decided that they're not into "rocket science" (e.g. high-grade math, computer programming, etc) and are not going to go...

So I'm 'Negative Nancy' Eh? Stop the inane folks. Seriously, stop it. (Snip) Health Care including VA (which I exclude in my current postings) was $850 billion in 2012. Last fiscal was $1,417 billion or nearly a double in five years. That's the same acceleration in spending that has been going on since the 1980s. This cannot continue. It must stop now. I have been writing on this incessantly since 2007 here in The Market Ticker, been raising hell about this since I was an Internet CEO in the 1990s and been doing presentations on it to so-called Conservative groups...

The Bill To Fix Health Care - Permanently Let's lay out the parameters for a bill, a fairly-modest update to my two previous missives on this point here and here (note the dates) and which can be easily turned into formal legislative language: All providers must post, in their offices and on a public web site without any requirement to sign in or otherwise identify oneself to access it, a full and complete price list which shall apply to every person. This instantly allows customers to compare pricing between providers for services and products in the medical realm. All customers...

Let me make a few observations. First, eight years ago, and again four years ago, America elected a President. Fully half, give or take a couple of percent, disagreed with the outcome. There were exactly zero riots, fires, "mass protests" and similar following that outcome despite the fact that half the population vehemently disagreed with it. This time around, not so much. Now I want you think very carefully about the following. Most of the land mass of this nation is owned and resided upon by people who are in "red" (that is, the winner this time) areas of the...

Last night there was somewhat of a ritualistic dinner held. It was the Al Smith dinner, a white-tie affair, and a ritual that Presidential candidates, very late in the game, have usually taken part in. This year was no different, with both Hillary and Trump sporting their white-tie best. But this is not your usual sort of passe' thing. No, it's a benefit, and as are many benefits in New York it was stuffed with priestly types and an extraordinary price tag -- but, as is frequently the case when there are so many with a priestly bent headlining the...

EmailGate is very, very bad. The mere presence of SAP material on her "private" email server is a federal offense -- and should be. Sometimes described as "above top secret" these programs are no-BS "need to know" and you must be read into each one individually, then you must access whatever material is involved in a secured facility from which that material may not leave. There is no such thing as "having access to them" on a general basis, no matter who you are. These programs typically deal with human intelligence of some form -- an agent on the ground...

"Donald Trump's Economic Plans Would Destroy the US Economy!" screams the headline in The Atlantic. Of course to go with the headline they find a very unflattering picture.... I do give The Atlantic one bit of credit: They didn't bury the lede. "I've borrowed knowing that you can pay back with discounts," he told CNBC. "I would borrow knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal.” "This policy would be so disastrous that even its suggestion is dangerous." Oh really? The article goes on to say that suggesting that one might haircut the debt would collapse markets...

Oh yes it is. "My parents were just vacationing in Europe (they go often so they're aware of how stuff works). My mom is diabetic and had a shortage of insulin while in France, they went to the drugstore and she showed the bottle of Humalog which is what she uses in the United States and the price in the United States is around $240 a bottle which is charged to her Medicare and insurance and can only be prescribed by her doctor." "The pharmacist recognized the bottle and without having to go to a doctor sold her a bottle...

Cruz is at it again. In two states over the weekend Cruz's "ground game" steamrolled state conventions following losses in those state primaries, putting overwhelming majorities of delegates on the state slate that support Ted. In Arizona, for example, Cruz lost by roughly half compared to Trump; 47% to 25% (Kascich got 10% and the rest went to candidates who have dropped out.) How does a political party manage to justify a delegate split that doesn't look like 47-25-10, roughly? Oh sure, such a result might be "legal" under the rules of the party, and further on the first ballot...

Ted Cruz failed to report two loans he received in 2012 for his Senatorial campaign. During the campaign itself he claimed he had liquidated his own personal family wealth to finance the campaign. That was a lie; he in fact got two loans; one from Goldman Sachs and the other from Citibank. His wife works for Goldman. At least one of these loans (the Goldman one) was "secured" by a brokerage account. Some of Cruz's excuses have included that this was allegedly his "retirement" money. Well, if that's true I have some more questions. You can borrow against a 401k...

Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Hillary, Sanders, Obama and Ted Cruz all want more of these people in the country. They are all "one world" folks who believe in no borders and no border security. They lie about their positions when these sort of events happen, but one need only follow the money, all of which leads straight back to places like Goldman Sachs that provided a nice, cushy loan for Cruz (which he failed to disclose as required during his senate campaign) and his wife has a direct connection there through employment. Serrano-Vitorino is accused of murdering four men late...

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231191

It's amusing to watch people latch onto something that they think is full of red meat and beat their heads against the wall pontificating on it, when there's just no "there" there. This is one of those times. Let's take the base argument: Trump University was a "per-se" fraud because it wasn't an accredited school. Ok, fair enough -- and the name was changed to the Trump Entrepreneurship Institute [TEI] following NY State having a hissy fit over the name. But folks -- that's a naming dispute, not a dispute over the substance of the material. Schneiderman has his own...

Who won last night's debate? Trump. And he wasn't there. Who lost? Fox News, which led the **debate** with a cheap shot at Trump. Megyn did herself no favors in that regard, and she had better hope that nothing ever disrupts the media oligopoly (a losing bet, IMHO) as if it does she is going to find her best and highest calling in Nevada somewhat outside of Clark County. The program Trump put together, with essentially zero notice, was very nice. It was the best political speechifying and rallying that I've seen since I have been sentient enough to pay...

The fear in both the GOP and Democratic party is visible at the surface when it comes to Trump, and it's not that he's any of what they've accused him of. No, it's really much simpler than that, and both Republican and Democrat parties, along with the mainstream media, are utterly terrified that you, the average American, is going to figure out what underlies all of these institutions in America. No, it's not that they're evil. It's worse, for evil frequently is recognized and fought back yet for decades America has not awakened to what has been going on in...

A MATHEMATICAL discovery by Perth-based electrical engineer Dr David Evans may change everything about the climate debate, on the eve of the UN climate change conference in Paris next month. A former climate modeller for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office, with six degrees in applied mathematics, Dr Evans has unpacked the architecture of the basic climate model which underpins all climate science. He has found that, while the underlying physics of the model is correct, it had been applied incorrectly. He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much...

C'mon folks, this isn't complicated. Hill used Indian government data on the cost of pharmaceutical ingredients and allowed for a 50-percent profit margin - but no money for investment in research - to work out the costs of producing certain drugs. On this basis, he found that Novartis' leukaemia drug Glivec actually cost $159 for a year's treatment, against the $106,000 charged in the United States. Roche's Tarceva for lung cancer cost $236, against a U.S. price of $79,000, and Novartis' Tykerb cost $4,000 against a price of $74,000. In all these cases the U.S. cost was far above that...

The amusement is strong from this one.... The economy has made great gains and is approaching an acceptable normal. Policy should shortly acknowledge this reality. The Fed took extraordinary policy measures in response to extraordinary economic conditions. Conditions are no longer extraordinary. Compared to earlier in the year, we know a lot more and can shelve some concerns. We appear to be past the most acute concerns of a spillover from Europe. I have more confidence in the resilience of the economy today compared to even a few months ago. I am much less concerned about a reversal of economic...

What? The Supreme Court’s recent blessing of Obamacare has precipitated a rush among the nation’s biggest health insurers to consolidate into two or three behemoths. The result will be good for their shareholders and executives, but bad for the rest of us – who will pay through the nose for the health insurance we need. .... Insurers are seeking rate hikes of 20 to 40 percent for next year because they think they already have enough economic and political clout to get them. ... The alternative is a government-run single payer system – such as is in place in almost...

I'm serious. Are you done yet? Are you ready to grab the wood, the nails, the hammer and the rope? Are you ready to demand that this crap -- all of it in the medical system -- be stopped? All of it -- not some of it, all of it. Monopolist practices, refusal to disclose prices before services are rendered, billing $157 worth of a nutritional supplement out for more than $44,000 and more? WHEN IS YOUR TOLERANCE LIMIT REACHED AMERICA? WHEN? Is it before or after you're financially and personally decimated? Why do you tolerate "Obamacare" or "Medicare" when...