Category: Business

Clinton’s Reinventing Government Initiative Failure in One Corrupt Failure

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Remember when President Clinton put forward the idea of “Reinventing Government”?

It was all about how by unleashing “private sector efficiency” on government functions, with the inevitable result being better government for less money.

Leaving aside the historically dismal performance of such efforts ***cough*** Halliburton ***cough***, but one could make the argument that providing logistical service to the military, but when the part of the Office of Personnel Management responsible for security clearance investigations was spun off as a private firm, USIS, that was a core function.

It really doesn’t get any more “core” than preserving state secrets.

And now we see how “private sector efficiency” has allowed the security clearance process to descend into a morass of corruption and incompetence:

The company that conducted a background investigation on the contractor Edward J. Snowden fraudulently signed off on hundreds of thousands of incomplete security checks in recent years, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

The government said the company, U.S. Investigations Services, defrauded the government of millions of dollars by submitting more than 650,000 investigations that had not been completed. The government uses those reports to help make hiring decisions and decide who gets access to national security secrets.

In addition to Mr. Snowden, the company performed the background check for Aaron Alexis, a 34-year-old military contractor who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard last year. Mr. Alexis, who died in a shootout with the police, left behind documents saying the government had been tormenting him with low-frequency radio waves.

The accusations highlight not just how reliant the government is on contractors to perform national security functions, but also how screening those contractors requires even more contractors. U.S. Investigations Service, now known as USIS, is the largest outside investigator for government security clearances. It is one of many companies that has found lucrative government work during the expansion of national security in the last decade.

From 2008 to 2012, about 40 percent of the company’s investigations were fraudulently submitted, the Justice Department said.

(emphasis mine)

It doesn’t save money.  All it does is increase the looting, and gives the looters more money to lobby for more looting.

This is disastrous for both our government and our society.

AT&T is Evil, but Thankfully, they are also Stupid

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There must be something about their heritage as “Ma Bell” that leads them overplay their hand.

The FCC gave a space for wireless providers, and AT&T jumped full in with a pay for play Internet:

Today, AT&T announced a “Sponsored Data” plan that would put it in a position to pick winners and losers online. This plan would require that Internet services pay to make sure customers are able to view their content by exempting it from data caps. Service providers that can’t meet the price tag that AT&T sets could be left behind.

 The following can be attributed to Michael Weinberg, Acting Co-President:

“The FCC needs to protect consumers and creators from internet service providers (ISPs) who want to pick winners and losers online. This is but the latest example of how data caps are increasingly becoming used to threaten the open internet. As AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson announced in May, data caps are all about forcing content creators to pay and are no longer about any sort of network congestion. In December, Stephenson admitted to investors that they had addressed the network capacity issues that were used to justify data caps in the first place. It is time for the FCC to heed Public Knowledge’s over two year old call to investigate data caps and gather basic information about their use. It is impossible for the FCC to examine the impact of today’s announcement on net neutrality until it develops an understanding of data caps.

“When it was reported in May that ESPN was in negotiations with a major carrier to pay to be exempt from data caps, Public Knowledge highlighted that this was an obvious violation of net neutrality. The company that connects you to the internet should not be in a position to control what you do on the internet. AT&T’s announcement positions itself to do just that.

“In addition to being a ripoff for both consumers and content creators, AT&T’s plan erects a massive barrier in front of anyone hoping to be the next big thing online.”

In addition to the more general philosophical concerns addressed above by Public Knowledge, the Daily Beast observes AT&T’s new business model is primarily an attempt to stop investing in improving its network and start shaking down content providers:

AT&T has proudly moved past the days when the iPhone crashed its network for millions of excited subscribers.  In May of last year CEO Randall Stephenson told investors that AT&T anticipated reducing expenditures on its network and that data caps were really about charging content providers He repeated his confidence in AT&T’s network in December.

 The sponsored data plan itself further highlights AT&T’s confidence in its network: if the network truly was fragile AT&T probably would not be inviting creators to dump a lot more content onto it.  Any problems in the network that exist going forward should be traced back to the fact that AT&T is investing in its special paid access lanes instead of the parts of the network available to everyone else.

Furthermore, even if AT&T is painting an overly rosy picture to investors and deluding itself about its network capacity, monthly data caps are an incredibly inefficient way to deal with momentary network congestion.

 But they are a great way to gouge content creators.

And let us not forget that it’s not just AT&T that is trying to junk copper, and replace it with overpriced and limited wireless. Remember how Verizon tried to foist Voice Link™ fixed wireless on the residents of Fire Island, NY?

What about people who don’t live in places like Owings Mills, MD?  People who not only cannot choose between Comcast Xfinity or FIOS?

What about poor neighborhoods, or rural neighborhoods, where the Telcos are systematically starving land line infrastructure?

The consumer is going to get F%$#ed over this.

Boeing And Saab Join Up for T-38 Replacement

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Unlike the competition, (shown) it appears that Saab/Boeing appears to be going with a clean sheet design:

Boeing and Saab have signed an agreement to jointly develop and build an all-new aircraft for the U.S. Air Force’s T-X trainer competition, aimed at a replacement for the service’s 540-plus T-38 trainers. Boeing will be the prime contractor, but both companies will invest in the new aircraft, which will compete with three candidates based on non-U.S. off-the-shelf aircraft: the BAE Systems Hawk, offered by partner Northrop Grumman; the Alenia M-346, with General Dynamics as the prime; and the Korean Aerospace Industries T-50, proposed by development partner Lockheed Martin.

 Although Boeing and Saab are giving no details of the design—which in any case is described as flexible, depending on an Air Force requirement that has yet to firm up—it will not be based on Saab’s Gripen, beyond incorporating “some Gripen DNA,” an industry source says. This shows that the two companies expect to offer a smaller and cheaper aircraft than the Gripen-sized T-50.

 On the other hand, Saab’s expertise is in high-performance aircraft, pointing toward a fast and agile trainer that can produce pilots ready to handle complex fighters with no two-seat versions, like the F-22, F-35 and (so far) the JAS 39E.

 Discussions between Saab and Boeing were reported in September but have been underway for “much longer,” a Saab source says. Saab’s demonstrated capability in designing aircraft for flexible, affordable production is the key to the agreement, says an industry source. At the Paris air show in June, Saab President/CEO Hakan Bushke said the company had reduced production costs on the Gripen C/D even while slowing annual production to 8-12 units from 28, and that the larger JAS 39E would be cheaper still. “Bushke has made no secret of the fact that Saab is highly profitable at such rates,” says a Saab official.

The fact that the expertise that the Swedes bring to the table is the ability to deliver on time and on budget is yet another case of the the almost 400 year fallout from the sinking of the Vasa.

While Saab is adamant that the trainer will not be a Gripen E derivative, I’ve always thought that if you took the base Gripen, pulled the afterburner off of the F-404 (Volvo RM-12), and pulled out the radar, and removed some hard-points, they could have a decent trainer, though the direct operating cost would almost certainly be more than the that of the Hawk, which has about ½ the installed thrust of the Gripen.

Looking the competitors, with installed thrust varying by almost a factor 3, one can not help but think that the requirements of the program are not clear to the bidders.

How Iron Maiden Got it Right, and Metallica Got it Wrong

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In the early days of P2P file sharing, it was Metallica to the first file sharing site, Napster, which was shutdown and eventually reemerged as a ……… (furiously Googling) ……… a link to Rhapsody.

Metallica earned a lot of enmity from its fans, and probably sold no more songs as a result.

Iron Maiden found a similar problem, they recently discovered a spike in file sharing in Latin America, and their response was to aggressively market there, and put on a concert tour:

Enter another U.K. company called Musicmetric, which specializes in analytics for the music industry by capturing everything from social media discussion to traffic on the BitTorrent network. It then offers this aggregated information to artists to decide how they want to react. Musicmetric noticed Iron Maiden’s placement and ran its own analytics for the band.

 “Having an accurate real time snapshop of key data streams is all about helping inform people’s decision making. If you know what drives engagement you can maximize the value of your fan base. Artists could say ‘we’re getting pirated here, let’s do something about it’, or ‘we’re popular here, let’s play a show’,” said Gregory Mead, CEO and co-founder of the London-based firm.

 In the case of Iron Maiden, still a top-drawing band in the U.S. and Europe after thirty years, it noted a surge in traffic in South America. Also, it saw that Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, and Chile were among the top 10 countries with the most Iron Maiden Twitter followers. There was also a huge amount of BitTorrent traffic in South America, particularly in Brazil.

 Rather than send in the lawyers, Maiden sent itself in. The band has focused extensively on South American tours in recent years, one of which was filmed for the documentary “Flight 666.” After all, fans can’t download a concert or t-shirts. The result was massive sellouts. The São Paolo show alone grossed £1.58 million (US$2.58 million) alone.

New fans, new sales, a new market.

Interesting business plan, no?

Because, It’s Always a Good Time to Lampoon Tom Friedman

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First, we have the always amusing Charlie Pierce:

Back a few years, David Halberstam was supposed to speak at my son’s graduation from Brandeis, but Halberstam died a car wreck shortly before the ceremony so, scrambling, Brandeis went to the alumni bullpen and called in…Tom Friedman. This was the worst strategic move since Darrell Johnson brought in Burton for Willoughby in Game 7 of the 1975 Series. I don’t remember what Friedman said, but it was pretty damned banal. I have considered asking for all four years tuition back ever since.

While Pierce is good, Billmon wins the Internet today:

Friedman: “Reinventing the consignment shop on the web will save the U.S. economy. Also, PR pitches work with me.” http://t.co/9Nq06LLVhs
— billmon (@billmon1) December 22, 2013

One of these days, I hope to be able to write well enough to lampoon Tom Friedman on my own ……… Then again, if I were to lambaste what he writes, I would actually have to READ what he writes.

Maybe  I’m lucky just to quote people trashing him.

As Much as I Like Liz Warren, I Wish that Martha Coakley Had Beaten Scott Brown in the Senate Race in 2010

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She ran a truly horrible campaign, but her tenure as Massachusetts AG has generally been pretty positive.

Case in point, her most recent report showing that not-for-profits pay obscene remuneration to their top executives, and proposing changes in corporate governance:

Nonprofit groups in Massachusetts are paying their chief executives huge amounts of money and giving them lavish perks unavailable to most workers, according to a new report from Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office that calls for reform in the way groups disclose executive compensation.

The 92-page study, which covered 25 large charitable organizations in Massachusetts, mainly hospitals, insurers and colleges, found all of them paid their leaders at least a half-million dollars a year in total compensation. And many of the organizations offered their executives an assortment of other benefits, including bonuses, deferred compensation, auto allowances, financial planning, life insurance and other benefits that are more commonly associated with corporate leaders.

Even when executives retire, they often leave with hefty severance or consulting deals that allow them to earn millions more. The executives covered by the report each received between $487,000 and $8.8 million in total compensation each year between 2009 and 2011 — pay levels that Coakley’s office said should cause concern in some cases.

“It is not always clear that large compensation benefits packages are actually necessary to attract and retain talent,” the report argued.

Gee, you think?

Doubtless, there is some politics involved here, Coakley is looking to run for Governor, but when we are talking about tax-exempt organizations, there is a direct governmental interests, because it is the taxpayer who pays for these excesses.

Because It is too Expensive, and the Side Effects are too Extreme

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Over at “Even the Liberal” New Republic, Eric Sasson finds a new drug that reduces the chance of HIV transmission by nearly 99%.

He is perplexed ans surprised that there has been little in the way of publicity or action regarding the now FDA approved drug, Truvada.

The answer to this question is simple. In addition to nasty , potentially lethal blood chemistry changes, osteoporosis, liver problems, hepatitis B infections getting worse, Neausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, dizziness, joint pain, trouble sleeping, and back pain, this drug has an extremely high price, to the tune of over $1200 a month.

This is yet another example of how an over broad IP regime.

The retail price, set by the manufacturer by virtue of their monopoly rights under patent, is preventing it from having a meaningful impact on the AIDS epidemic

The solution here is to make patents, particularly those for drugs, less expansive (also, end evergreening), along with an aggressive regime of compulsory licensing.

This is an Expected Consequence of Obamacare

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I have repeatedly stated that the first problem with healthcare is not the price of healthcare, not the cost of healthcare.

Absent fiat regulation, it is more important to initiate price competition both in insurance and in medical services, which means that the pricing will be clear, and high price insurance will be eschewed by consumers, and high price medical services will be eschewed by the insurance companies.

Therefore, it comes of no surprise that insurance companies are cutting the big name providers who charge a premium:

Americans who are buying insurance plans over online exchanges, under what is known as Obamacare, will have limited access to some of the nation’s leading hospitals, including two world-renowned cancer centres.

Amid a drive by insurers to limit costs, the majority of insurance plans being sold on the new healthcare exchanges in New York, Texas, and California, for example, will not offer patients’ access to Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan or MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, two top cancer centres, or Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, one of the top research and teaching hospitals in the country.

This was not just foreseeable, it was the inevitable consequence of the Heritage Foundation designed plan.

In the long run, this is a good thing, because the consolidation of hospitals over the past few years has not been about efficiencies, but rather about the accumulation of pricing power.

You may not like that Sloan Kettering is not in your network, but in the long run, some for of price controls are essential to fixing our broken healthcare system,

This May be the Best Take on Too Big to Fail Ever

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Mark Roe at Harvard has concluded that in addition to everything else, to big to fail (2B2F) is a petri dish for incompetent insulated management:

Corporate governance incentives at too-big-to-fail financial firms deserve systematic examination. For industrial conglomerates that have grown too large, internal and external corporate structural pressures push to re-size the firm. External activists press it to restructure to raise its stock market value. Inside the firm, boards and managers see that the too-big firm can be more efficient and more profitable if restructured via spin-offs and sales. But for large, too-big-to-fail financial firms (1) if the value captured by being too-big-to-fail lowers the firms’ financing costs enough and (2) if a resized firm or the spun-off entities would lose that funding benefit, then a major constraint on industrial firm over-expansion breaks down for too-big-to-fail finance.

His insight is two fold.

First is the point made by plenty of economists that 2B2F institutions are able to borrow money at lower rates, because, notwithstanding the law, if they implode, their creditors expect to be the beneficiary of a government bailout, because the consequences of not doing so are perceived to be catastrophic.

The second point is far more interesting, and original. He believes that one of the constraints on executive behavior is the potential takeover by any of the many vultures out there (Icahn, Pickens, etc.), and that they are too big to be taking:

These lower financing costs from the too-big-to-fail subsidy are a shadow poison pill — the corporate governance defense that managers and boards have used to ward of unwanted takeovers in the industrial sector. Worse, the shadow financial pill impedes restructurings more strongly than a conventional poison pill. It impedes not just outsiders, as does the conventional pill, but insiders as well — a controlling shareholder where there is one, the board of directors and the CEO where there is no controlling shareholder — even if restructuring the firm would be operationally wise.

James Kwak further expands on this by noting that a corporate takeover is effectively impossible at this scale:

Not so with too-big-to-fail banks. For one thing, TBTF banks are impossible to acquire in one piece: no other bank could absorb JPMorgan, even if there weren’t the rule against a banking conglomerate having more than 10 percent of all U.S. deposits. The other option is to engineer a breakup, which is what all manner of shareholder advocates have been arguing for. But, Roe argues, if being too big to fail is your competitive advantage, that would kill the golden goose. Therefore, the market for control doesn’t work properly, and these behemoths continue bumbling along their way—not just threatening the financial, but doing a lousy job at their job of providing credit to the economy.

So, even if you believe that basic market forces serve to regulate corporate governance, (I don’t) the market breaks down at this scale, and government intervention is essential.

The Libertarian Paradise in Just One Story

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A couple in Utah was billed $3500.00 for a negative review of a vendor who never shipped what they ordered:

A Utah couple is facing an uphill legal battle after being slapped with a $3,500 fine by an online retailer for posting a negative review of the company years after it failed to ship the products they ordered.

 CNN reported on Friday that John and Jen Palmer’s problems with Klear Gear began in 2008, when John canceled a purchase he made through the company after it failed to deliver his order within 30 days. The Palmers then panned the company in a review on the consumer-complaint site Ripoff Review, saying, in part, that it was impossible to reach someone at Klear Gear by phone.

 But earlier this year, Klear Gear contacted the Palmers in writing, saying they violated the company’s “non-disparagement clause” and threatening them with the fine if they did not remove the negative review.

 “This is fraud,” Jen Palmer told KUTV-TV. “They’re blackmailing us for telling the truth.”

 KUTV also reported that the company’s terms of service stated, “To prevent the publishing of libelous content in any form, your acceptance of this sales contract prohibits you from taking any action that negatively impacts Kleargear.com, its reputation, products, services, management or employees.”

 However, Yahoo News reported that the clause seemingly only went into effect this year, only for the language to be removed from the website.

 When Ripoff Report refused to remove the review, Klear Gear contacted major credit agencies and listed the $3,500 fine as a “failure to pay,” hampering the couples’ credit rating. The company told KUTV via email that its request that the Palmers erase their negative comment was “a diligent effort to help them avoid the fine.”

So, first, the provision of the contract is illegal, second, it wasn’t in force at the time that they made an order, and all the private entities involved, Klear Gear, Ripoff Report (which demanded a large payment to pull the post), and the credit rating agencies (’nuff said), have decided to f%$# the customer.

This is what happens when the contracts achieve primacy over basic human rights.

My only suggestion to the Palmers would be four letters, RICO, but I am an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit!*

*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!

What? You Mean that Taxpayer Funded Stadiums Don’t Create Growth?

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Hoocoodanode:

Boosters of Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards, built at taxpayer cost of $210 million, promised the baseball stadium would lead an urban renaissance, revitalizing blighted neighborhoods and bringing jobs and tax revenue to the city’s struggling downtown.

More than two decades later, the pledge stands unfulfilled. Baltimore is burdened with 16,000 vacant properties and some of the highest taxes in Maryland. The neighborhoods around Camden Yards have fewer businesses than they did in 1998. And the ballpark and a National Football League stadium nearby will require state and local debt service of about $24 million in 2014.

Baltimore’s lesson is one that Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has taken to heart. He said Nov. 11 that Georgia’s capital city wouldn’t pay to build a new stadium for the Atlanta Braves — regardless of the team’s promises to bring thousands of jobs and pump tens of millions of dollars into the local economy. So the franchise said it would relocate to suburban Cobb County, which agreed to pay $300 million of the facility’s $672 million cost.

“It’s wrong to take money from taxpayers and hand it to millionaires and billionaires,” said Arthur Rolnick, a senior fellow at the University of Minnesota who has studied the public cost of professional sports stadiums. “If you try to justify it on economic development, the arguments dissolve pretty fast. The public would be much better off if they invested in things that would improve the quality of life, like roads and bridges, education and lowering crime.”

It ain’t just stadiums. It’s all the corporate welfare out there.

It is a losing proposition for governments.

Just wait until Cobb County gets hit with the real bill for the Braves’ ballpark.

Why the Saab Gripen is different From the JSF

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We don’t care, we don’t have to…we’re the phone company.

While the customers of the F-35 are being shut out of its software, and are unable to integrate their own weapons systems, Saab is using its willingness to incorporate outside systems to make the platform more attractive:

A focus on realistic requirements has helped Swedish industry and government teams integrate weapons on the Gripen faster and at lower cost than similar efforts elsewhere, Saab says.

 Two new weapons for the Gripen, the Raytheon GBU-49 Enhanced Paveway II laser-plus-GPS bomb and Diehl Iris-T infrared air-to-air missile (AAM), were successfully integrated in 2006-09, according to Gideon Singer, technical director for Gripen exports, and Lisa Abom, head of the Saab project office for engineering and weapons. Flight testing of the Thales Digital Joint Reconnaissance Pod for South Africa’s Gripens was completed in 2011 in “less than eight months,” they say.

 The Gripen was also selected as the test platform for the MBDA Meteor AAM. The first production firing took place this summer and qualification firings for full integration of the Gripen will be complete in 2014. Sweden will be the first air force to field the new missile, with the Gripen MS 20 package in 2015. That upgrade will also include the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb.

………

 Saab devotes 14% of integration costs to planning and coordination, Singer and Albom told the Defense IQ International Fighter Conference here this month. One lesson is to “reach early agreement,” they said. This means defining and clearly interpreting requirements, limitations and the approach to testing. “You need to avoid terms like ‘full envelope,’” Singer remarked. “If you ask, the operational pilot will often say that he doesn’t need to go supersonic with three tanks and all these bombs.”

The JSF is such a huge program that they don’t care, much like Ma Bell in the 1960s.

Lockheed, and the Pentagon, see the closed nature as a source of profit (for Lockheed), and as a way to preserve the industrial base and to freeze out foreign competition (for both), and as such, it will be an upgrade nightmare, even for the so-called “partners” in the program.

Yes, Arne Duncan is a Bigot

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We all are on some level, but his latest comment where he complains that white suburban moms complaining about Common Core testing shows that this attitude permeates his attitude on education:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan tried Monday to quell the outrage sparked by his comments that injected race and class into the debate about the Common Core academic standards taking root in classrooms across the country.

Duncan said Friday that he was fascinated by the fact that some opposition to the standards was coming from “white suburban moms” who fear that “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were.”

The remark lit up social-media sites, prompting pointed responses from bloggers, an open letter from a school superintendent, digital images of Duncan’s official federal portrait with the word “bigot” emblazoned across it, and one congressman’s call for Duncan’s firing.

Duncan, whose office declined interview requests Monday, posted a statement late in the day on his agency’s Web site.

“I used some clumsy phrasing that I regret — particularly because it distracted from an important conversation about how to better prepare all of America’s students for success,” he wrote. “I want to encourage a difficult conversation and challenge the underlying assumption that when we talk about the need to improve our nation’s schools, we are talking only about poor minority students in inner cities. This is simply not true. Research demonstrates that as a country, every demographic group has room for improvement.”

The subtext here is profoundly racist, and I do not mean that it is “racist against whites”, as the clowns on the right are insisting.

Please follow what was clearly his line of reasoning on this. 

Basically he is saying, , “I understand how poor/minority/otherwise disadvantaged people can oppose my policies, after they are ill equipped (too stupid) to understand my brilliance, but white suburban moms, they are my peeps.  They are smart enough to know better.”

Duncan is very much a creature of the Wall Street entities who wish to create a for-profit educational industrial complex, and he simply cannot imagine that other “people like him” disagree with his goals.

Here is a clue:  Most suburban moms are not overpaid Harvard educated creatures of the finance industry.  They aren’t “people like you.”

Additionally, the push-back against NCLB and Race to the Top, is becoming increasingly stronger broader, and the opposition is moving up the socioeconomic pyramid.

No Child Left Behind is a failed program,which is no surprise, since the Bush adminiatration was at the heart of creating this legislation.

Once again, I am compelled to make the repeat the wisest thing that I’ve read this century:

But it does inspire in me the desire for a competition; can anyone, particularly the rather more Bush-friendly recent arrivals to the board, give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:

1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
2. It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
3. It wasn’t in some important way completely f#$@ed up during the execution.

How About F%$#ing Paying Your Employees a F%$#ing Decent Wage Instead?

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Walmart just held a food drive for its own employees:

The storage containers are attractively displayed at the Walmart on Atlantic Boulevard in Canton. The bins are lined up in alternating colors of purple and orange. Some sit on tables covered with golden yellow tablecloths. Others peer out from under the tables.

 This isn’t a merchandise display. It’s a food drive – not for the community, but for needy workers.

 “Please Donate Food Items Here, so Associates in Need Can Enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner,” read signs affixed to the tablecloths.

 The food drive tables are tucked away in an employees-only area. They are another element in the backdrop of the public debate about salaries for cashiers, stock clerks and other low-wage positions at Walmart, as workers in Cincinnati and Dayton are scheduled to go on strike Monday.

 Is the food drive proof the retailer pays so little that many employees can’t afford Thanksgiving dinner?

 Norma Mills of Canton, who lives near the store, saw the photo circulating showing the food drive bins, and felt both “outrage” and “anger.”

 “Then I went through the emotion of compassion for the employees, working for the largest food chain in America, making low wages, and who can’t afford to provide their families with a good Thanksgiving holiday,” said Mills, an organizer with Stand Up for Ohio, which is active in foreclosure issues in Canton. “That Walmart would have the audacity to ask low-wage workers to donate food to other low-wage workers — to me, it is a moral outrage.”

Gee, you think?

Don’t shop Walmart.

Well, This Explains a Lot

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Talking Points Memo has discovered that insurance companies are deceiving their customers in an attempt to extract higher premiums out of them:

Donna received the letter canceling her insurance plan on Sept. 16. Her insurance company, LifeWise of Washington, told her that they’d identified a new plan for her. If she did nothing, she’d be covered.

 A 56-year-old Seattle resident with a 57-year-old husband and 15-year-old daughter, Donna had been looking forward to the savings that the Affordable Care Act had to offer.

 But that’s not what she found. Instead, she’d be paying an additional $300 a month for coverage. The letter made no mention of the health insurance marketplace that would soon open in Washington, where she could shop for competitive plans, and only an oblique reference to financial help that she might qualify for, if she made the effort to call and find out.

 Otherwise, she’d be automatically rolled over to a new plan — and, as the letter said, “If you’re happy with this plan, do nothing.”

 If Donna had done nothing, she would have ended up spending about $1,000 more a month for insurance than she will now that she went to the marketplace, picked the best plan for her family and accessed tax credits at the heart of the health care reform law.

 “The info that we were sent by LifeWise was totally bogus. Why the heck did they try to screw us?” Donna said. “People who are afraid of the ACA should be much more afraid of the insurance companies who will exploit their fear and end up overcharging them.”

 Donna is not alone.

Why the heck are they trying to screw you?

Because they are Insurance Companies, theat’s why they are trying to screw you.

Like the scorpion said to the turtle,  “It’s my Nature.”