Saturday Morning Obamacare Schadenfreude

Yesterday's promised storm front arrived, as previously advertised, on time, at just about 4 PM, turning the Tiki Bar opening into a wet T-shirt contest.  As is commonly the case, the after the front is clear and nice, though the wind is forecast sharply later.  We'll see.  Hopefully we'll get to the beach before that gets going.

Now, about that schadenfreude:

Obamacare delay sparks new mandate fight

Once again, it’s employers who are getting a break from their Obamacare mandate – and that’s sure to increase the pressure on the Obama administration to delay the mandate for individuals, too.

Regulations announced by the Obama administration Monday give two levels of delay to employers who would have had to cover their workers next year. Some businesses will get an extra year – until 2016. And the bigger businesses that do have to worry about the mandate will have it phased in over two years.

It’s the second round of delays to the employer mandate, which will require all businesses with 50 or more full-time workers to provide health coverage or pay a fine. The mandate was originally supposed to start this year – until, under pressure from business groups, it got pushed back until 2015.

Under the new rule, the Treasury Department said businesses with fewer than 100 workers would not be required to cover their workers in 2015 or face a fine. It gave bigger businesses with more than 100 workers extra time to ramp up coverage.

That's because they spent so much time thinking about the consequences of the law, before they passed it so we could see what was in it.

Also Obamacare online glitches: 25 great quotes.  A sample:

“A thousand Social Security numbers being sent to the wrong people is not a glitch!” — CNBC contributor Carol Roth on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Oct. 12

Virginians growing oddly less fond of Medicaid expansion under McAuliffe’s leadership

. . .In Virginia, Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe used Medicaid expansion as a centerpiece of his election campaign last year, and he has been trying to make the White House’s case about the seriously-almost-practically-free virtues of expanding Medicaid since he took office earlier this year. Funnily enough, McAuliffe is not only failing to convince the commonwealth’s Republican legislators on the matter — Virginia voters are actually shifting away from the idea in rapid fashion.

The Wason Center at Christopher Newport University poll found that 53 percent of the state’s voters oppose enrolling more Virginians in the federal-state health program for the poor, a sharp reversal from February, when the center found that 56 percent backed expansion.
McAuliffe (D) and a slim majority of the evenly divided state Senate have pushed this year to expand Medicaid under the federal Affordable Care Act, saying it would provide insurance to up to 400,000 needy Virginians and boost the economy. The Republican-dominated House has opposed expansion, raising doubts about the federal government’s ability to pay most of the $2 billion-a-year cost and stressing the need to first rein in the existing Medicaid program.
“Democrats are losing the debate on expanding Medicaid in Virginia,” Quentin Kidd, director of the Wason Center, said in a written statement. “This is mostly because they are not convincing Independents that it’s a good idea. But even in the usually friendly territory of Northern Virginia, the debate is not going their way.”

The Medicaid debate has stalled out the passage of Virginia’s two-year budget, and worries are already circulating that if the stalemate isn’t solved by the time Virginia’s fiscal year begins on July 1st, the commonwealth could be looking at a shutdown situation. I find this singularly and painfully hilarious, because McAuliffe actually campaigned on being the guy who wouldn’t bring Washington, D.C.-style brinkmanship to Virginia. You can’t make this stuff up.

The Washington Post has taken another victory lap with:  Few have sought exemption from health-care mandate that they have insurance or pay fine

The government left the door wide open for millions of Americans to be excused from the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that most people must carry health insurance or pay a fine, but so far relatively few have asked for such a pardon.

About 77,000 families and individuals have requested exemptions from the health-care law’s so-called individual mandate, according to internal government documents obtained by The Washington Post. As of April 20, officials had approved tens of thousands of exemption requests and rejected none.

The rest are on hold or in the process of being vetted. Even so, the numbers are relatively small compared with the 8 million who have enrolled in private coverage on the state and federal marketplaces — a sign that people taking action as a result of the health-care law are by and large choosing to comply with the mandate, long the most unpopular aspect of the program.

Republicans have been sharply critical not only of the mandate but also of the many ways a person can skirt it. Various categories of people, including those belonging to certain religious groups, Native Americans and illegal immigrants, may request an exemption. There are also 14 “hardship” categories, some of them rather broad.

My guess is that the kind of people that don't have health insurance from their work, won't pay, or can't pay for it though the Obamacare exchanges, even when subsidized to the the point of being near free, aren't the sort of people who read the papers, know about the "pardon", and are capable of exploiting it.  Mostly they're just poor, unthinking, folk huddling up, and hoping the wave of Obamacare washes over them with as little trouble as possible.

Rule 5 Saturday - Caprice - Not Your Mommy's Chevy

 Another very basic Rule 5 post.  A woman, some pictures.

Caprice Bourret (born October 24, 1971) is an American-born businesswoman, model, actress and television personality. She lives in London where she runs her company, By Caprice Lingerie, LTD.

Bourret has appeared on more than 250 magazine covers which have included Vogue, GQ, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Maxim, FHM and the Swimsuit Issue of Sports Illustrated.She was named the world's sexiest woman by the News of the World, GQs Woman of the Year and Maxims International Woman of the Year for three consecutive years.

Sexiest woman of the world?  I post, you decide.

She's also done a nominal amount of light film work, and seems to have an enormous post career career in reality TV.

But Does It Actually Cut It?

World's Fastest Lawnmower

Maryland Yields to Osprey Extortion

A few days ago I reported on the dispute between the state of Maryland and a pair of Ospreys over a piece of the Bay Bridge overlooking the traffic below.  As I predicted, the Ospreys proved to be more stubborn patient than the state, and they have been rewarded with a nice new platform nearby to relocate their nest to:

Ospreys accept state's relocation offer

The battle between birds and bureaucrats is over — and both sides won.

With a helping hand from a state carpenter, an osprey couple finally got a home with a view of the water on the eastern end of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

And the Maryland Transportation Authority, which manages the toll facility, finally got the pesky birds to stop nesting in front of cameras that keep an eye on traffic on busy U.S. 50 below.

If You Hear Wingbeats, Think Zebras

Zebra Swallowtails that is:

This one hung around the yard a while yesterday afternoon, before I went fishing.

It's been a good week for butterflies as the weather warms up. In addition to the Tiger Swallowtail I posted a couple of days ago, I've seen Clouded Sulfurs, Falcate Orangetips, Common Sootywing, and passels of Spring Azures and Henry's Elfins.

The Spring Azures are tough to get pictures of the top surface, as they rarely spread their wings when alit, and they rarely slow down long enough to get a decent picture from above in flight. While not a great photos, these two will give you an idea of how they look.

A Henry's Elfin, on the apple tree in our back yard.

IRS Scandal: NYT Blames Republican Budget Cuts

Try to follow the reasoning on this one from  "Continuing Op-Ed Writer" Thomas Edsall:

Scandals Republicans Like

. . .But what if the truth is more pedestrian: that the I.R.S. is simply not adequately funded to do its job and that Republicans are the ones who have kept the agency underfunded?

Republican zeal for reducing the size of government, particularly its tax collecting apparatus, has left the I.R.S. ill-equipped to perform its functions, one of which is to review applications for tax-exempt status from groups claiming to be “social welfare” organizations under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Transcripts of hearings and witness interviews with committee staff that are available on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee website show that beginning in 2010, the I.R.S. bureaucracy, faced with a surge of requests for tax-exempt status, was hard pressed to discern potentially suspect applications. Under intense pressure to meet I.R.S. production targets, civil servants — including registered Republicans — adopted the practice of flagging phrases like “tea party” to speed identification of applications requiring careful examination.

So, according to the New York Times, it is a proper role of government, when faced with what they regard as insufficient funds for the job, to spend the money they do have specifically targeting the political groups they hold responsible for their perceived budget issues.

I don't see anything there about the tax exempt group in particular being underfunded, just that they couldn't come up with a valid reason for doing what they obviously wanted to do, and were being screamed at by various democratic politicians; crack down on politically conservative 501(c)(4) groups.

Not to mention, there are other problems with the argument.  The budget cuts at the IRS came in a time when the Democratically controlled Senate under Sen Hairy (Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire) Reid was systematically failing to produce a new budget annually, forcing continuing resolutions, culminating in the "Sequester" Reign of Pain, a plan which originated in the White House.

Time for my "Modest Proposal" to be instituted at the IRS.  Full "affirmative action" (or whatever the current euphemism is for quotas).  Fire half the current IRS employees (largely Democratic hacks and activists), and hire certified Republicans in their place, and let those with opposing politics enforce political fairness.

And Yet More Obamacare Schadenfreude

Ah, another morning and yet more Obamacare Schadenfreude. It's shaping up to be a nice day here again, although the weather forecasters are calling for a line of thunderstorms about time for the evening commute.  Glad I won't have to put up with that.

Now, about that Obamacare Schadenfreude:

Great news: Another wave of health-plan cancellations on the way?

A new report on ObamaCare would tend to distract from the White House victory lap earlier in the month, and might even – gasp! — “re-open” the debate that Barack Obama insisted was closed. Don’t look for this information on the right-wing blogs, though. Vox’s Sarah Kliff, formerly at the Washington Post, warns that another class of policies will get canceled due to coverage mandates, and that will put some lower-income Americans in a fiscal bind:

The Obama administration is quietly trying to stamp out some of the skimpiest health plans, a decision that industry officials say could trigger yet another wave of cancellation notices.
The administration is targeting a type of coverage called fixed benefit or indemnity insurance, which give patients a fixed sum of money whenever they visit the doctor or land in a hospital.
These plans are less expensive than regular medical insurance because they are less robust. And new federal regulations would make it illegal for insurers to sell these plans as stand-alone insurance coverage. Instead, the Obama administration only wants to allow people to buy fixed-benefit plans as supplemental insurance to a more comprehensive medical plan.

So why cancel these plans? Well, for one thing, they don’t meet the coverage mandates of the ACA. For another, as Kliff reports, “consumer advocates” who know better than the consumers themselves want this provision enforced on fixed-benefit plans. That’s going to create yet another wave of consumers who will find out the hard way that the Lie of the Year for 2013 just keeps on chugging along. . .

And the employer mandates have been delayed until after the 2014 elections and some until after 2016.  Does anyone expect health insurance for those covered by their employers to get cheaper or easier after they take effect?

‘Access shock’ prompts WA bureaucrats to ban narrow insurance networks

Get ready: The Affordable Care Act is about to become even more unaffordable:

The practice of offering relatively inexpensive health plans with bare-bones provider networks has created tension between making health care affordable and keeping it accessible. It’s set to come to a head this week in Olympia.
The growth of “narrow networks” in Washington comes as the Affordable Care Act limits the ability of insurance companies to control their costs. That’s made it harder to offer plans at a range of prices — something the companies want to do as they compete for comparison shoppers on the health exchanges.

What this means is that “access shock” is starting to pinch people, and the politicians are getting worried. Commit this next paragraph to memory — it sums up the history of liberalism.

Many companies figured out they could sell cheaper plans that offer consumers fewer choices of where to get care. That caught some consumers, and Washington’s insurance commissioner, by surprise.

The fact that this has “surprised” anyone is grounds for them to be removed from office for incompetence. If insurers can’t set dollar caps or offer plans that don’t cover absolutely everything (such as plans without maternity coverage for older folks), they have to raise prices. In an industry that’s lucky to enjoy at 4 percent profit margin, it’s as simple as that.  . . .

Democrats continue to face election problems because of Obamacare.  The new meme from the Hairy (Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire) Reid and the DNC is to call your constituents stupid if they complain of price increases, higher deductibles or poor coverage in Obamacare.

'A Lot of Misinformation' Defending ObamaCare, Sen. Shaheen gets defensive.

Jeanne Shaheen, the senior senator from New Hampshire, won her seat by defeating a Republican incumbent in 2008. She was thought to have a safe seat this year, and most polls and observers still give her an edge, if a tenuous one, over likely GOP challenger Scott Brown.

But she has a problem. Like every other Democrat who was in the Senate in 2009, she cast the deciding vote that caused the so-called Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to become law. The Granite State is nobody's idea of an ObamaCare success story. It is one of only two states (with West Virginia) in which only one insurance company sells medical policies on the ObamaCare exchange.
...
Blogger Jason Pye seems to have been the first to pick up on a Shaheen appearance last Friday "Good Morning With Dan Mitchell," a radio talk show that airs on WKBR in Keene. His post includes audio of Shaheen's exchange with an unidentified caller, which Pye says he obtained from America Rising, a conservative opposition-research group:

The caller told Shaheen that "President Obama's health care is not affordable."
"It's cost me more, my deductible has more than tripled and my monthly premium has doubled, so it's not affordable," he said. "And so, I'd rather have my old healthcare, my old system back."
Shaheen dismissed his concerns out of hand, telling him to leave his name with the host so her office could call him back "because that doesn't sound right to me." She chalked the caller's complaints up to "misinformation."
"It sounds, and there's a lot of misinformation about what's happening with the health care law," Shaheen told the caller, "so we'll get back in touch with you, we'll find out what's going on with your plan, and we'll help you sort that out because you shouldn't be paying that much more."

Now perhaps this was a Republican prank call, or maybe the guy actually is misinformed. Offering to help sort the matter out is obviously the wise political response, noncommittal in substance while demonstrating (or at least asserting) a commitment to constituent service.

But it was awfully impolitic for the senator to preface her promise with the prejudicial statement "there's a lot of misinformation." The customer may not always be right, but a smart salesman doesn't begin a transaction by saying he's probably wrong. . .

Reading on, you'll see that she often calls her constituents ignorant when they disagree with her on Obamacare. It part of the liberal talking points. How much do you want to bet that she never really had her staff check and get back to the caller?

Instapundit quips: "If we lie to the government, it’s a felony. If the government lies to us, it’s politics as usual."

2.7 Million ObamaCare Enrollees Still Unaccounted For

Affordable Care Act: President Obama has for a while been bragging that 8 million people have signed up for ObamaCare. But the administration still hasn't released the state-by-state numbers to back up that number.
You'd think that with such good news, the administration would want to put out as many details as possible, as soon as possible. But judging by previous months, the latest Health and Human Services enrollment report is now nearly two weeks behind schedule.

As a result, we still don't know where 2.7 million ObamaCare enrollees came from.

Here's what we do know. . .

A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you're talking about real people.

And, bummer, dude, Oregon is probably going to give up its state exchange and go with the federal one:

The Obama administration is poised to take over Oregon’s broken health insurance exchange, according to officials familiar with the decision who say that it reflects federal officials’ conclusion that several state-run marketplaces may be too dysfunctional to fix.

In public, the board overseeing Cover Oregon is scheduled to vote Friday whether to join the federal insurance marketplace that sells health plans in most of the country under the Affordable Care Act. Behind the scenes, the officials say, federal and Oregon officials already have agreed that closing down the state marketplace is the best path to rescue what has been the country’s only one to fail so spectacularly that no resident has been able to sign up for coverage online since it opened early last fall.

As Tom Lehrer said regarding the Folk Song Army.

Remember the war against Franco

That's the kind where each of us belongs

Though he may have won all the battles

We had all the good songs!

Context is Everything

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday and Pinup" linkfest. Wombat-socho is either a week behind or on time with this weeks massive two weeks worth "Rule 5 Sunday: The Portland Double-Dip Edition."

Your Friday Boy Scout Monkey Dacker

Ape builds fire and toasts marshmallows

Went Fishing

After some work in the garden this afternoon, the wind died nicely, and I took it as a sign I should go fishing.  I headed out around 4 and stayed until dusk.  "Location X" was nearly empty.  Only me and Ron "One Fish".

Fishing was pretty decent.  I caught 20 fish.  Not a single one made the trophy season size limit of 28 inches, but 2 came close, including this 27 inch fish, who got this trip on the deck because he had the hook pretty far down his gullet. I got it out without any obvious damage, except to my hands.

Why Can't We Go On as Three?

From Stacy McCain, the next frontier in marriage

Far Down the Slippery Slope: Lesbian Polygamy Emerges in Massachusetts

Left to right: Doll, Brynn and Kitten Young.

If two women can marry, why not three?

The world’s only ‘married’ lesbian threesome are expecting their first child.
Doll, Kitten and Brynn, from Massachusetts, were joined together in a marriage-style ceremony last August and are expecting a daughter in July.
Kitten, 27, is pregnant after undergoing IVF treatment using an anonymous sperm donor, and the trio eventually plan to have three children — one for each of them.
The plan at the moment is that Kitten will bear all the children — possibly using her wives’ eggs and donated sperm — but they are open to other options, such as adoption.
Brynn, 34, says: ‘The hope is to have three kids altogether. We always joke that the children should never outnumber the parents.’
Doll, Kitten and Brynn Young married in a ceremony in August 2013, when each of their fathers walked them down the aisle. All three women wore white wedding gowns and exchanged rings.
The so-called ‘throuple’ worked with a specialist family lawyer who drew up the paperwork and drafted the ceremony so that all three of them were obligated and bound to each other .
While Brynn and Kitten are legally married, Doll is handfasted to both so the threesome are as equally married to each other as legally possible.

In other words, this three-way lesbian marriage is not legally recognized by state or federal law — yet. But it would be interesting to see any advocate of gay marriage make a legal argument against polygamous marriage. By the way, “handfasting” is a neo-pagan marriage ceremony, common among devotees of Wicca. (Once upon a time, witches were hanged in Massachusetts.) This story about Brynn, Doll and Kitten is so weird, I’m tempted to dismiss it as a publicity stunt or, perhaps, a desperate bid for a reality TV series contract, but who can doubt how far this fanatical devotion to Equality and Progress has gone?

Gay marriage isn't one of my great fears.  My own state, Maryland legalized it the right way, with a legislative act passed by the legislature, and a referendum approved by 52.4% of the voters.

 I think that society instituted marriage as a way to subsidize stable relationships that enable the raising of the next generation of tax payers, much the way society now seems to find it advantageous to give outrageous subsidies to wind power, the so called energy of the future.  These women are raising children, so they fill that need. I do find it interesting that they have a designated child bearer.  Even among supposed same sexes, the differentiation of sex roles arises.

The stable is another question.  The fact is that lesbian couples (in Sweden)  have about three times the divorce rate of comparable two sex couples.  Why?  Well, women institute the majority of divorces. Two women, twice the rate.  Three women? I guess we'll find out eventually. Kids have survived divorce before.

After the Supreme Court eventually gets around to fully mandating that states allow gay marriage, there are no arguments left to oppose polygamy, which has a much longer societal track record (not particularly good, for the most part) than gay marriage ever had. The only trick is how they manage to allow it to ex-hippies yuppies and Muslims while forbidding it to Mormons.

Nothing new here. Move along.

Just a Smidgen of Obamacareschadenfreude

Another cool, bright spring morning here in Slower Maryland. Not much Obamacareschadenfreude (don't you get to combine words in German when they get used together a lot?), but like the zombies of Walking Dead, it keeps popping up in the internets woods and dark places.

How the ACA Could Collapse

A long, article about how the Hobby Lobby case could be the death knell of Obamacare, using the case of how the Schecter's Chicken case, a Jewish chicken slaughtering firm in Brooklyn was the stake in the heart of the FDRs National Recovery Act back in the late 30s.  The Supreme Court decided for the Schechter's, effectively killing the NRA.

What was evident was that two large bodies of law were clashing. On the one hand was the elaborate and new NRA poultry code. On the other hand there was the code of the Jewish dietary law, based on the Bible itself. In a contest between NIRA (48 stat. 195) and Deuteronomy (14:21), perhaps Deuteronomy had more authority. The government had its health inspectors, but who were they to go up against Maimonides himself, who had proclaimed that Jews were forbidden to serve “unwholesome” food? As it turned out, the Schechters had not sold much, if any, bad meat — there was no actionable “sick chicken” in the Sick Chicken Case.

In the Supreme Court arguments, the standard jurisprudential challenges involving the Commerce Clause and delegation were standard. Violation of those principles turned the justices against the NRA. But what had also become clear to the justices and the public was that the Schechters were simple businesspeople. By now it was 1935, and recovery had commenced; the country understood that such businesses were needed if the recovery was to continue. When the Schechters’ lawyer, that same Heller, showed how ludicrous the regulations for chicken selection were, the justices and the whole room laughed. The same kind of slapstick humor that had worked against the butchers before now worked for them. Even the justices got in on the wordplay, writing in their 9–0 finding against the NRA that the Schechter case showed that not only the poultry code but also the entire NRA corpus must collapse, “bone and sinew.”

A nice history lesson. But we no longer have the court that FDR wanted to pack.

From the Department of "Do as I say, but not what I do": The administration has missed 44 of its own ObamaCare deadlines

I’m posting this report, not because I think anyone actually expected the Obama administration to abide by the requirements it set out for itself when devising this leviathan of a law (LOLz) — I mean, the thing is huge, and it would just be totally unreasonable to expect the administration to be able to churn out regulations and studies on time, every time, right? …Which is exactly my point. I’d just like to take this opportunity to once again highlight the practically unknowable degree to which Obama’s crowning legislative achievement is expanding our bureaucracy and its involvement in one-sixth of the United States’ economy, via the WFB:

The administration has failed to meet 44 statutory deadlines required under Obamacare, according to a new report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
The report, released on Monday, documents every provision with a specific deadline within the health care law and the administration’s actions taken as of April 15, 2014. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has missed more than half of the 83 deadlines mandated since March 2011. …
The secretary was one year and one month late in developing a plan to increase HHS’s Indian Health Service (IHS) by 500 positions. Due by June 21, 2010, HHS did not begin implementing a plan for a “skilled and culturally competent behavioral health workforce” for the agency until August 2011. …
The report details many lesser known provisions within Obamacare, including a required three year “Independence at Home demonstration” to test if “home-based care” can reduce hospital visits. HHS started the project four months past its deadline on Jan. 1, 2012. …
The report found six cases where it appears the administration has taken no action at all. The CRS could find “no public information” relating to a March 2012 mandate for health plans to “report on their efforts to improve health outcomes.”

When the requirements written into the law are so onerous it's impossible for the government that wrote and enforces those regulations can't abide by them, it's past time to reconsider whether the citizenry should be forced to similarly abide by them.  They need to start personally fine or fire a few of the bureaucrats who miss their deadlines.

AFP launches ObamaCare attacks on four vulnerable Senate Dems

Despite the unexpectedly gloomy news coming from the South in the NY Times/Kaiser poll earlier today — or perhaps because it’s difficult to consider credible — the latest push from Americans for Prosperity on ObamaCare mainly targets non-Southern races for the US Senate. New TV spots will go up in Michigan, Colorado, New Hampshire, and also in Louisiana. The latter spot features a Marine who returned from two tours in Iraq, only to find that he couldn’t keep the plan even though he liked it:

AFP’s ad in New Hampshire declares that it will be difficult to enjoy the “scenic drives” in the state while driving long distances to see the doctor, which the ad charges is likely under ObamaCare.

And in Michigan, a narrator declares that “Gary Peters said yes to ObamaCare — he’d do it to us again,” noting an estimated 225,000 Michigan residents that could lose their health care under the new law.

Americans for Progress is the Koch funded NGO.  Good for them

Democrat wants to reopen Obamacare enrollment

Arizona Democratic Rep. Krysten Sinema still wants the Obama administration to push back the deadline for exchange enrollment even further.

Sinema sent a letter to Obamacare administrator Marilyn Tavenner, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to argue for another delay several days after federally-run Obamacare exchanges had closed. She did not mention an end-date for her proposed deadline delay.

“As we approach the end of the extended enrollment period, I ask that you allow for additional flexibility for individuals who continue to face technical challenges enrolling and purchasing health insurance coverage,” Sinema wrote. The letter is dated April 18, three days after the enrollment period closed.

Keep those goal posts on wheels.

Bad Rap From the Russians

Wombat-socho is either a week behind or on time with this weeks massive two weeks worth "Rule 5 Sunday: The Portland Double-Dip Edition."

I doubt If I'd Have Figured This Out

But, then, I would probably just bust it open, or get my chainsaw.

I wonder if some form of the "Clever Hans" phenomenon is a work? That would still make the crow pretty damn smart, but not a mechanical genius.

Found at Theo's.

Most of What You Know About Diet and Cancer is Wrong

An Apple a Day, and Other Myths

A trip to almost any bookstore or a cruise around the Internet might leave the impression that avoiding cancer is mostly a matter of watching what you eat. One source after another promotes the protective powers of “superfoods,” rich in antioxidants and other phytochemicals, or advises readers to emulate the diets of Chinese peasants or Paleolithic cave dwellers.

But there is a yawning divide between this nutritional folklore and science. During the last two decades the connection between the foods we eat and the cellular anarchy called cancer has been unraveling string by string.

This month at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, a mammoth event that drew more than 18,500 researchers and other professionals here, the latest results about diet and cancer were relegated to a single poster session and a few scattered presentations. There were new hints that coffee may lower the risk of some cancers and more about the possible benefits of vitamin D. Beyond that there wasn’t much to say.
. . .
The situation seemed very different in 1997, when the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research published a report, thick as a phone book, concluding that diets loaded with fruits and vegetables might reduce the overall incidence of cancer by more than 20 percent.

After reviewing more than 4,000 studies, the authors were persuaded that green vegetables helped ward off lung and stomach cancer. Colon and thyroid cancer might be avoided with broccoli, cabbage and brussels sprouts. Onions, tomatoes, garlic, carrots and citrus fruits all seemed to play important roles.

In 2007, a major follow-up all but reversed the findings. While some kinds of produce might have subtle benefits, the authors concluded, “in no case now is the evidence of protection judged to be convincing.”

The reason for the change was more thorough epidemiology. The earlier studies tended to be “retrospective,” relying on people to remember dietary details from the distant past. These results were often upended by “prospective” protocols, in which the health of large populations was followed in real time.

The hypothesis that fatty foods are a direct cause of cancer has also been crumbling, along with the case for eating more fiber. The idea that red meat causes colon cancer is shrouded in ambiguity. Two meta-analyses published in 2011 reached conflicting conclusions — one finding a small effect and the other no clear link at all.

Eat what you want; die anyway.

Black Tiger

Swallowtail

Seen in the azalea yesterday.  We've seen a couple of the "plain old" yellow" Eastern Tiger Swallowtail at a distance, but this is the first black morph female we've seen.

The Left Hand of the Academic Bell Curve

Via Stacy McCain, Charles Murray, author of Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980, and The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life penned this open letter to the students of Azusa University upon being informed he was "disinvited" from speaking due to fears of "hurting faculty and students of color."

I was scheduled to speak to you tomorrow. I was going to talk about my new book, “The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead,” and was looking forward to it. But it has been “postponed.” Why? An email from your president, Jon Wallace, to my employer, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), said “Given the lateness of the semester and the full record of Dr. Murray’s scholarship, I realized we needed more time to prepare for a visit and postponed Wednesday’s conversation.” This, about an appearance that has been planned for months. I also understand from another faculty member that he and the provost were afraid of “hurting our faculty and students of color.”

You’re at college, right? Being at college is supposed to mean thinking for yourselves, right? Okay, then do it. Don’t be satisfied with links to websites that specialize in libeling people. Lose the secondary sources. Explore for yourself the “full range” of my scholarship and find out what it is that I’ve written or said that would hurt your faculty or students of color. It’s not hard. In fact, you can do it without moving from your chair if you’re in front of your computer.

You don’t have to buy my books. Instead, go to my web page at AEI. There you will find the full texts of dozens of articles I’ve written for the last quarter-century. Browse through them. Will you find anything that is controversial? That people disagree with? Yes, because (hang on to your hats) scholarship usually means writing about things on which people disagree.

The task of the scholar is to present a case for his or her position based on evidence and logic. Another task of the scholar is to do so in a way that invites everybody into the discussion rather than demonize those who disagree. Try to find anything under my name that is not written in that spirit. Try to find even a paragraph that is written in anger, takes a cheap shot, or attacks women, African Americans, Latinos, Asians, or anyone else.

But there’s another way to decide whether you would have been safe in my hands if I had spoken at Azusa Pacific. Go to YouTube and search “Charles Murray.” You will get links to dozens of lectures, panel discussions, and television interviews. You can watch Q&A sessions in which I field questions from students like you, including extremely hostile ones. Watch even for a few minutes. Ask yourself if I insult them or lash out. If I do anything except take their questions seriously and answer them accordingly. Ask yourself if I’m anything more dangerous than an earnest and nerdy old guy.

Azusa Pacific’s administration wants to protect you from earnest and nerdy old guys who have opinions that some of your faculty do not share. Ask if this is why you’re getting a college education.

Sincerely,

Charles Murray

I read the "Bell Curve" quite a while back, and I think it has some elements of truth, and some elements of, well, academic BS.  There is a long standing difference between the measured IQs of various races, with white outscoring blacks, and orientals out scoring whites on average (and you can't emphasize the average enough).  The difference persist, even as average scores of the groups drift with time.  I find that to be strong evidence that the difference are more likely cultural than genetic (with a little phenotype thrown in to account for differences in diet and health care, which again are largely cultural).

The idea that faculty and students at institutions are such hot house flowers that they cannot be exposed to the withering wind of contrary views is disgusting. But it is the way of the Academy, even more than ever.

Wednesday Morning Obamacare Schadenfreude

We had the passage of a weak storm front yesterday afternoon and evening, with a few drops of rain, a few rumbles of thunder.  As usual, they day after we find cooler (back down to the low 50s, compared to 75 yesterday afternoon), with cloudless blue skies, and 25 mph north winds.  Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

Now we know why Kathleen Sebelius hung on to her job as Secretary of HHS so long; she didn't want to get thrown into Obamacare: Sebelius stays on just long enough to get government benefits

When the embattled Kathleen Sebelius announced her intention to resign as secretary of Health and Human Services, she pledged to stay in President Barack Obama’s cabinet until her replacement was confirmed by the Senate. Turns out, there may be a financial incentive for the former Kansas governor to take her time getting out of Washington.

Next week, Sebelius becomes eligible to receive a government pension and continue certain taxpayer-funded health-care benefits when she hits her five-year employment mark with the federal government, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) policy indicates.

Under OPM rules, Sebelius, who was sworn into office on April 28, 2009, would be eligible to receive these benefits after completing five years of continuous service in the federal government.

While she announced her resignation on April 11, Sebelius does not mark her five-year anniversary with the federal government until April 28. Her successor is not expected to be sworn in until after that date. The Senate, which is on recess, comes back into session the same day Sebelius hits the five year mark.

As a private citizen, and presumably moving into some consulting job, it's quite likely that Kathleen would fall under Obamacare's individual mandate.  To be fair, she might also have some health benefits from her previous work as a Representative in the Kansas legislature, or as governor of Kansas, or from her husband, a federal judge.

Via Wombat-socho's "Live at 5: 04.22.14" , the White House is now implicated in a questionable scheme to raise money for friendly non profits to extort encourage enrollment: White House involved in soliciting money for pro-ObamaCare group, watchdog says

Until now, outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was the only official known to have solicited financial support for Enroll America, a nonprofit that promoted enrollment for the Affordable Care Act. But a Government Accountability Office report released Monday detailed not only the secretary's involvement but that of a White House adviser.

According to the report, though HHS officials said they were "not aware" of any federal government officials outside the agency soliciting funds for Enroll America, a representative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation told GAO "about a discussion" in 2012 between one of their staffers and the "Deputy Assistant to the President for Health Policy."

Though not named in the report, this would have been Jeanne Lambrew. The GAO said they were told the official nudged the foundation to give a "significant" contribution.

The report said: "According to RWJF, this official estimated that Enroll America or other similar national enrollment organizations would likely need about $30 million to finance a national outreach effort. RWJF told us that the official also indicated a hope that RWJF would provide a significant financial contribution to support such efforts, but did not make a specific funding request on behalf of Enroll America or any other outside entity."

Let's imagine the shoe on the other foot for a minute.  Image Secretary of Energy Sarah Palin soliciting the Koch brothers to give their $30 million to the Heartland Institute and Tea Party groups to fund a public relations campaign to support fracking development in the states which, like Maryland and New York, have resisted the urge to help their citizens get jobs by allowing fracking.  Can you doubt for a second that the "progressives" would be up in arms, and demanding "accountability" if not actual scalps?

Another sign of Sebelius "success": Looking at Costs and Risks, Many Skip Health Insurance

For every individual who did sign up, there were others who resembled Mr. Huber: people who have decided to stay uninsured for now, despite the law’s requirement that most Americans get coverage this year or pay an income tax penalty of $95 or more.

A common thread running through stories of the unenrolled is cost. Many people either do not qualify for federal subsidies or believe that the assistance is not enough to make insurance affordable, interviews with consumers and experts suggested. According to enrollment counselors in several states, people who have gone without health insurance or major illness for years can be especially resistant to investing in coverage.
. . .
But a New York Times/CBS News poll of uninsured people in December found that of those who did not plan to get coverage, half said that cost was the main reason. Nearly three in 10 said they objected to the government’s requiring it, while about one in 10 said they felt they did not need it.

Healthcare coverage so good and cheap they have to coerce you to buy it. And the public definitely is not buying it.  New poll confirms: Obamacare debate definitely not “over”

Obama’s central theme in the briefing room was that the national debate regarding Obamacare is now “over.” Because he says so. A new poll from Fox News indicates that voters disagree. Note well that this nationwide survey was conducted in mid-April, two weeks after Obama first began spiking the enrollment football and reaping thinly-disguised “Obamacare comeback!” headlines in the media. Winning streak:

Stasis. Another Obamacare-related question asked registered voters whether the law would be an significant factor in their 2014 voting decisions. Nearly one in five said it would be the single biggest factor, with an additional 54 percent calling it an “important factor.” Less than a quarter of respondents said Obamacare was either a small or non-factor to their vote. A recent USA Today poll revealed that the more a given voter cares about the new law, the more likely he or she is to oppose it.

Libs worry that distrust of Obama over Obamacare lies could derail immigration reform: Party Paranoia Could Destroy Hopes of Immigration Reform

It is increasingly likely that Republicans will do well in this year's midterm elections not because of who they are, but because of who they are not. They are not President Obama's party; they are not the party that passed the Affordable Care Act. Given that the Senate majority will largely be determined this year in states where association with Obama and his signature legislative achievement are the political kiss of death, it's both the map and the mood that are giving Democrats a tough time this year. In November, Republicans have the additional advantage of facing a smaller midterm electorate, one that is older, whiter, more conservative, and more Republican than the substantially larger and more diverse electorate that we often see in presidential years.
. . .
Although the Senate did pass comprehensive immigration reform last year, the chances of any kind of significant reform passing the House this year are low at best. Optimists hope that in June or July, after many Republican incumbents have their primaries behind them, or possibly in a lame-duck session after the election, the House will take up the issue. The smart money is against that happening.

First, the votes just don't seem to be there. Second, House Republican insiders, even those who privately would like to see a bill pass, are pessimistic because many in their ranks do not trust that Obama and the Democrats won't hang them out to dry. Their fear is that even if the House passed something, which would undoubtedly create enormous divisions and political problems in their conservative base, they have little confidence that Democrats wouldn't move the goalposts on them, leaving the GOP with no progress on immigration reform but having a badly divided party. Their suspicion, correct or not, is that Democrats would rather have a club to beat Republicans with than really address the immigration problem. Paranoid or not, this is an example of how the fundamental lack of trust between the leaders on each side gets in the way of solving problems.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Finally, just to show I can be even handed, Megan McArdle looks at the Obamacare enrollments with an analytical eye.

. . .The enrollment number wasn’t a surprise by the time it dropped -- that morning, I guessed it would come in at between 7.8 million and 8 million. But it was certainly a surprise compared with a month earlier. I think it’s safe to say that on March 1, few people, on the left or the right, had considered that nearly 50 percent of total signups would occur in the last month and a half. That’s a rate much higher than we saw in Massachusetts and is, as I recently noted, a stunning testimonial to the American powers of procrastination.

And whatever others might have thought, I certainly didn’t expect it to be that high; until relatively late in the month, I thought it would squeak in at around, or even under, 6 million. I was expecting a surge like in December, not the immense tsunami of applications we actually got.

The demographics were also a surprise to me, and a nasty one at that. You may recall that the administration originally forecast that almost 40 percent of exchange signups needed to be young adults in order to keep the insurance pool stable. A pool with too many old and sick people would drive up the price of insurance, perhaps driving more young and sick people out of the pool, leading to a price spiral.

By March, the percentage of young adults in the pool was hovering at around 25 percent. As I wrote back then, to get to the 38.5 percent that the administration was originally targeting, they needed for there to be a huge surge in enrollment -- and for that surge to be much, much younger than the previous waves of enrollees.

They certainly got the surge. And the surge was indeed somewhat younger than previous waves ... but not nearly sufficient to bring the demographics in line. . .

Death Spiral or Insurance Company Bailout. Take your pick.

Special IRS Issue

Of course, you know about the ongoing IRS scandal, with the IRS apparently under the direction of Lois Lerner, targeted conservative groups seeking 501(c)(4) tax exempt status for extra scrutiny, time consuming delays, and general harassment.  However, in the past several days some new juicy bits involving the IRS have come to light:

Do you think the IRS is screwing you?  IRS Targeting? How About Coerced Sex With IRS?

Vincent Burroughs vs. Dora Abrahamson

If you survived April 15, your idea of being ‘screwed by the IRS’ probably doesn’t mean too much. Even after an audit and getting an additional tax bill, if you utter these unfortunate words you probably just mean paying some money. But having sex with the IRS auditor? Surely that wouldn’t occur to you.

But Vincent Burroughs claims that his tax audit was hardly PG-13. In fact, he says the IRS auditor, Ms. Dora Abrahamson, flirted with him by phone and text, then sent him a selfie in her underwear. In Burroughs v. Abrahamson, he sued the IRS and the femme fatale IRS Agent claiming that she threatened penalties if he didn’t come across.

Although Ms. Abrahamson denied the allegations, Mr. Burroughs admitted that he gave in to her demands. But that was only when she came to his home “provocatively attired.” It was put up or shut up, the suit claims. Given her position of power, dollars were at stake, and stiff penalties too.

Ohh, he wrote "stiff" penalties...

The tit-for-tat lawsuit claims the IRS Agent would slap him with a 40% penalty if he stayed virtuous. The IRS Agent’s conduct caused him distress and violated his constitutional right to privacy, the suit claims. And it ruined his longtime relationship with his girlfriend.

The trial court threw out the lawsuit, concluding that whatever happened, it occurred after hours at Mr. Burroughs’ home. That meant there was no liability. The IRS agent wasn’t performing any official duties, said the court. Yes, you may remember this story from last year, but now Mr. Burroughs is getting renewed hype and has appealed.

It really sounds like a badly plotted porno, or HBO.  But sometimes reality is even more bizarre than the movies.

He is even getting press in the UK, where the media loves a good story as much as the next voyeur. Oregon man left owing $69K after ‘IRS agent seduced him.’ As he told 20/20, after he had sex with IRS Agent Abrahamson, she withdrew from handling his case due to the perceived conflict of interest. That meant another IRS Agent was assigned, and that made it worse. Mr. Burroughs ended up owing the IRS $69,000.

The suit alleges that the government is liable for damages because IRS officials provided inadequate supervision. Although the suit was originally against Ms. Abrahamson and the IRS, he dropped Ms. Abrahamson from the suit. After all, she has virtually no assets to pursue, ABC News reported.

The government claims immunity in the suit. The IRS never waived its immunity for intentional acts of its employees that were committed outside the scope of their employment.

I would bet even money that the guy is making this up; but heck, it's a good story and it sound like he's sticking to it.  And for all you out there worried about this really happening, I have only one word: "video." If it's on tape they can't deny it.

Yet another IRS mini-scandal. A while back I reported how the IRS was getting performance bonuses again (now that the government sequester has been temporarily shelved).  So now they go out, and give bonuses to IRS workers who owe the IRS money  and those who have been disciplined in the last year.

The Internal Revenue Service has paid more than $2.8 million in bonuses to employees with recent disciplinary problems, including $1 million to workers who owed back taxes, a government investigator said Tuesday.

More than 2,800 workers got bonuses despite facing a disciplinary action in the previous year, including 1,150 who owed back taxes, said a report by J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. The bonuses were awarded from October 2010 through December 2012.

George's report said the bonus program doesn't violate federal regulations, but it's inconsistent with the IRS mission to enforce tax laws.

Because collecting taxes is hard work.  Look at how "hard" Ms. Abrahamson works to collect taxes...  I wonder if she got a bonus, besides the obvious.

On a more serious note, the IRS has decided that criticizing former Sen. and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is grounds for having their tax exempt status revoked:

The Internal Revenue Service has revoked the tax-exempt status of a conservative charity for making statements critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Kerry, according to a USA Today report.

The Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, based in Manassas, Va., “has shown a pattern of deliberate and consistent intervention in political campaigns” and made “repeated statements supporting or opposing various candidates by expressing its opinion of the respective candidate’s character and qualifications,” according to a written determination released Friday by the IRS.

The IRS said the center acted as an “action organization” by publishing alerts on its website for columns written by its president, former FBI agent Gary Aldrich, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

The IRS pointed out a column that appeared to be published by Townhall on April 2, 2004, in which Mr. Aldrich wrote, “if John Kerry promises otherwise ill-informed swing-voters lower gas prices at the pump, more than a few greedy, registered ignoramuses will follow him anywhere,” the Free Beacon reported.

Another article cited by the IRS was a 2005 piece titled “Stop Hillary Now!,” which rallied “Clinton haters” to inform voters of Hillary Clinton’s “atrocious conduct,” USA Today reported.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said in an interview with The Washington Post last week that the IRS and Treasury Department are likely to rewrite controversial draft guidelines to better define “candidate-related political activities.”

So essentially the IRS has ignored the complaints and evidence of their own political activity (paid for, not coincidentally, with tax dollars), and openly gone after more political activity by conservatives. Remember, the requirements for a 501(c)(4) is not a complete lack of political activity, but rather a balance between overt political work and work for the betterment of society.  I would argue that electioneering against Hillary is to the betterment of society.

No word that the IRS has any intention of investigating any political activity by many of the left-leaning 501(c)(4)s like OFA, Media Matters, the Tides Foundation Advocacy Fund.

One wonders if they would, or did take similar umbrage at attacks on Sarah Palin, or any other Republican for that matter.

As Glen Reynolds pointed out, (and I thought it before he posted), it's battlespace preparation for the Hillary campaign.

Wombat-socho is either a week behind or on time with this weeks massive two weeks worth "Rule 5 Sunday: The Portland Double-Dip Edition."

Ospreys Defy State of Maryland

The ongoing saga of the Ospreys that just want to raise a family... right in front of the webcam on top of the Bay Bridge: Bay Bridge ospreys' nest removed; birds rebuild

A pair of ospreys whose nest had been removed by state transportation workers because it was blocking a traffic camera rebuilt the nest, only to have it removed again.

The back-and-forth between the migratory birds and the Maryland Transportation Authority began Friday when the state agency tried to move the nest on a pole that holds a traffic camera on the Bay Bridge.

Agency spokesman John Sales said officials got permission to move the nest from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The nest did not contain eggs or young birds.

The transportation agency said workers tried to move the nest, but it fell apart. Sales told WTOP that on Monday, workers found that the birds had built a new nest on the same spot. Workers again removed it.

This could go on for quite a while.  Ospreys are notoriously fixated on their nesting sites, much to the regret of boater and owners of waterfront property.  You might think it would be cute having a pair of fish eating raptors and their progeny hanging around all the time, but in fact, it tends to be a bit messy and odiferous. And they squawk at you when you get too close, and may even take a shot at your head.

But if you want to see a pair of Ospreys go through the nesting and chick raising thing, here you go, a link to the Cape Henlopen Osprey Cam. It's even lighted at night for 24/7 Osprey voyeurism.

Oh, and the Washington Post had a nice article on the annual Osprey migration a few days ago.