Well, it sounds like the FCC doesn’t think this makes sense either and it asking the courts to require the FCC app before they decide.

As the the merger itself. Emotionally I hate it. But the question is will T-Mobile go away even if there isn’t a merger?

Many workers in Connecticut need to brace for a one-two punch to their paychecks this August, when the state begins collecting not only more income taxes but applies the increases retroactively to Jan. 1

But our legislatures will be using over a million of the retroactive tax dollars as mandatory campaign contributions for themselves through what’s known as “constituent mailings”. As a Hartford Courant editorial says…

The mailers generally are devoid of useful information, sometimes attack the opposing party and show the given lawmakers in a flattering light — in other words, it’s one more piece of campaign literature in your mailbox. Only this one’s courtesy of the public, which is donating $1 million or more annually for the legislature’s public relations campaign.

That’s on top of the expense of those special license plates that let them flaunt the laws of the road.

Why is President Obama’s $70 million initiative to promote robotic development being promoted as:

…a vehicle to transform American lives and revitalize the American economy

I suppose unemployment will transform a life. Ok, I realize technology moves on and we need to adapt. But I find it ludicrous that this initiative is being promoted as a way to promote jobs. Although no one actually mentions that they’ll increase jobs. Maybe there will be a slight increase until the robots start building themselves (aka reproducing).

The tax on gold-plated insurance plans is the last vestige of most economists’ favorite idea, eliminating the tax exemption for employer plans. The finance bill would impose a 40 percent excise tax on insurance plans that cost more than $8,000 a year for an individual or $21,000 for a family.

The white house budget director referred to this tax when he said:

“A key priority now, is to make sure cost containment holds up as we move through the legislative process.”

They call it a tax on “gold-plated insurance plans as if only CEO’s get them. What gets conveniently overlooked is that some companies, such as Zappos, provide excellent health care to all their workers and would be considered “gold-plated”. Some of the labor unions have also negotiated “gold-plated” plans. Although some would prefer to simply exclude those plans from the tax. After all, labor is the democratic base.

Naturally the healthcare and insurance industries don’t mind since it will give them money. What they opposed were the provisions that would allow Medicare to negotiate pricing on prescriptions.

Only in Washington could a tax we pay be considered “cost containment”. If you feel the tax is a good idea at least call it what it is. This is what sends me over the edge in the healthcare “debate”. The politicians talk about controlling costs as if they are trying to lower them. What they really mean is they want to control who pays.

The New York Times article on the topic brings up an interesting point at the end:

Meanwhile, Representative Darrell Issa of California, the senior Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on Friday reiterated his call for a subpoena of mortgage records showing which lawmakers participated in the Countrywide V.I.P. program.

The subpoena would potentially cover mortgage records for the oversight committee chairman, Representative Edolphus Towns, Democrat of New York, who obtained two Countrywide loans for houses in Florida and Brooklyn. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Mr. Towns has resisted issuing the subpoena.

So, will we learn which of our other lawmakers received special treatment? Maybe those same ones who cleared Dodd? Hey at least now we have a precedent that there’s nothing wrong with being a “Friend of Angelo”.

I still don’t buy it that the Senator would have been a “Friend of Angelo” if he wasn’t a US Senator on a committee regulating the industry Countrywide was in. He was certainly made to feel he was getting special treatment, if he didn’t actually get special treatment it just means he was a sucker.

Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the Energy and Commerce committee, is ignoring the fiscally conservative democrats on his own committee and since he doesn’t have the votes to get the bill out of the committee without them he’s threatening to bypass the committee. And those Blue Dogs (fiscally conservative democrats) are threatening to turn the committee over to the republicans (according to Waxman).

I’ve always said out government is at it’s best when no party is in charge and they are forced to work  together or do nothing. Now there’s the added amusement of watching a party implode.

The big downside is that Mr. Waxman will get the bill he wants. The absurdity of this is apparent when you consider that Waxman is a rep. from California. A state that is essentially bankrupt and paying salaries and bills with IOU’s. Now Mr. Waxman wants to make the California excesses national and is ignoring the people trying to reign in costs. The democrats say they want this to be a bipartisan effort yet they can’t even come to an agreement among themselves and are threatening to propose a bill that did not get approved by the Committee.

You still think this will be real reform? I ask again, what’s changing except who pays and the (increased) amount of money going to the healthcare industry?

If the “reform” is supposed to lower health care costs then the following paragraph from the NY Times article needs to be explained:

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, has said he hopes to have a health care bill on the floor by July 27. That goal appears unrealistic, even though members of the Finance Committee said they had made progress in talks on how to pay for their bill, expected to cost at least $1 trillion over 10 years.

So a bill that costs $1 trillion will lower costs?  Sounds like an oxymoron to me. When they talk about lowering costs they just mean they’ll find new taxes to pay for it so the budget deficit won’t grow. Not all of that will come from taxes on personal income. Companies will get additional levies related to health insurance. Let’s lead the entire country down the path of the bankrupt automakers and the bankrupt California.

So, on top off all the deficit expanding bailouts and paying for the Iraq war we need to come up with another trillion bucks to add the insurance company and health care provider profits.

Why do we think we can control costs by forcing people to buy insurance but not limiting the profits of companies providing the services. Yes, a free market is better, but the reform bills kill the free market and are just a forced transfer of money. While I’m not a fan of government control, if you want to nationalize the payment system through taxes and forced payments by employers then nationalize the whole system (again, I think it’s a bad idea but it makes more sense to me than the current proposals). At best we’re removing any incentive for health care providers to lower costs and at worst we’re giving the health care an incentive to charge more.

And now the proponents of the bills are trying to ram them through before anybody has a chance to fully analyze them. Any law has unintended consequences, especially something this complex so even the best of intentions can lead to disaster. Yet we again have a government trying to push through their pet projects before they can be fully scrutinized. They care more about meeting a date on a calendar than coming up with comprehensive health care reform.

Out government is again failing to server the interests of the people it’s supposed to represent.