Sunday, December 15, 2013

The news since last time


Sunday, December 15, 2013


The same 2 stories discussed in the last blog continued to dominate the news.  To these were added the death of Mandela, and the freezing of most of the East Coast last week, and the Middle East this week.

1.       The continuing sage of Obama care.

2.       The continuing dance with the Iranians.

3.       The Cold spell

4.       The death of Mandela

Obama Care


I did not fully understand the reason for the Atomic Option.  Besides making it possible to nominate and appoint Obama appointees, the nuclear option clears the way to pack the DC Circuit Court of appeals which is defined as follows in the Wikipedia:

While it has the smallest geographic jurisdiction of any of the United States courts of appeals, the D.C. Circuit, with eleven active judgeships, is arguably the most important inferior appellate court. The court is given the responsibility of directly reviewing the decisions and rulemaking of many federal independent agencies of the United States government based in the national capital, often without prior hearing by a district court. Aside from the agencies whose statutes explicitly direct review by the D.C. Circuit, the court typically hears cases from other agencies under the more general jurisdiction granted to the Courts of Appeals under the Administrative Procedure Act. Given the broad areas over which federal agencies have power, this often gives the judges of the D.C. Circuit a central role in affecting national U.S. policy and law.[1]

It has been the path to the Supreme Court for Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Ginsburg and Kagan. Packing the court makes the appellate process for challenges to the Obama Care excesses so much more difficult. 

In the meantime, the Obama front end seems to have improved to the point of accepting information and probably storing it without too many errors.  Unfortunately, the back end (database management, searches through the various government departments for the status of an applicant in order to evaluate whether he/she receives government support) seem totally undeveloped, or developed so poorly that they have been uncoupled from the front end.

As a result, applications are not being routed to Insurance Companies electronically, and money is not being accepted to seal the deal with these companies.  On January 1st, millions will be out of insurance and the next and first serious crisis will occur as some start dying because of that law.

Cathleen Sibelius has asked the companies to permit late payments, permit use of doctors which are no longer under contract with the companies, and accept people who simply claim to have insurance.  We’ll see how that works out.

The continuing dance with the Iranians.


To be updated.

The Cold spell


To be updated.

The death of Mandela


To be updated.

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