Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Whacko Politics

Unaffordable Care Act

Chart -2015 to 2018

My former company’s retirement plan is conducting their annual enrollment period for healthcare insurance this month. The retirees, their spouses and dependents may select one of several plans during the open enrollment period.

I went on the website to make our selections for the coming year and, much to my annoyance, the premiums are going up yet again. I decided to look at the recent history of the rates and came up with the chart above. The image has neither legends nor scales, but I am going to explain them.

The four vertical cubes represent 2015 through 2018 and the height of each shows the relative amount for the premiums. I limited it to these four years since that is the period when the Obummercare mess has screwed up the system for everyone, not just ACA exchange subscribers.

The chart applies only to Damsel’s insurance premiums that we pay monthly. I did not do the complex analysis of my Medicare and Medigap (for the 20% that the .gov doesn’t pay) which I may do one of these times. Below are the results according to the chart above:

  • Increase from 2015 to 2016 – 10%
  • Increase from 2016 to 2017 – 30%
  • Increase from 2017 to 2018 – 12%

That’s a whopping total of 52% increase over a period during which we realized NO additional cost of living compensation. We are on virtually a fixed income. The last Social Security cost of living increase was exactly canceled out by an increase in my Medicare part B premiums.

This is yet another example of how the Government screws us up by trying to “help” us.

31 Oct 2017 by Arizona Medix Money and Business Whacko Politics

The Climate Change “Consensus” Lie

globull-warming.jpg

Old NFO posted the image above the other day. I stole it from there.

I found a good item via The Patriot Post that completely debunks the claim that an overwhelming number of scientists agree that Global Climate Change (can’t call it “warming” anymore) is due to anthropogenic activity. The article “Debunking the ‘97% of Climate Scientists Agree’ Claim” contains the following damning passage:

It appears that Cook et al. decided to compare only those scientists who had strong opinions. If that is the case, the first two categories represent scientists who believe man is causing all or most of the warming (986), while those in categories 6 and 7 believe man is causing none or almost none (24). This ratio is about 97%. But the most important result of this study is that almost 8,000 had no opinion or were uncertain. So much for the 97%.

Why were there only 24 papers published by skeptics? We found out in 2009, when 22,000 email exchanges between senior meteorologists in the U.S. and Europe were released. Many of the emails were published by Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller in “Climategate: The Crutape Letters” (nQuire Services, 2010). We learned the following things from this scandal:

Those promoting man-made global warming:

Controlled the meteorology and climatology journals in the U.S.;
Controlled non-meteorological science publication (Nature, Science, etc.);
Controlled Wikipedia;
Manipulated data;
Demonized skeptics.

Those of us who have studied, albeit casually, have determined the whole climate bugaboo is a hoax. It is only intended to cripple freedom and prosperity in the west and nothing more. There is a special warm place awaiting those who knowingly promote these falsehoods.

11 Jun 2017 by Environment Global Warming Greenbats Whacko Politics

UNEXIT

UNEXIT

As you drive southeast on US 60 going toward Phoenix, you will pass the sign seen above just as you are leaving Wickenburg. This sign is the replacement for another message recently seen at this same location.

Now that there has been a change in the direction of our country’s leadership, perhaps there will be enough collective wisdom to move in the direction of defunding and kicking the UN out of Turtle Bay. Send it off to Geneva where it will hopefully wither and die. The UN has only been a drain on our resources and has provided nothing in the way of benefit to the United States. Actually, its actions have been continually detrimental to our view of how the world should be.

Why we have put up with the UN for so many years is beyond my comprehension. It is a malignant growth and a cancer should be cut out of a body to begin healing and recovery.

10 Feb 2017 by United Nations Whacko Politics

Global Warming Lies Exposed (Again)

bullsh1t.jpgIn an effort to refute findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that backed off of the anthropogenic climate change claims, sources now tell us that our own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) flat-out lied about earlier findings in a report. A retired NOAA scientist recently came out to expose that the NOAA report was “doctored” to give the impression that the earlier IPCC findings were in error and should be disregarded.

Now that the Trump administration is in charge, Texas Congressman Lamar Smith justifiably has launched an investigation into the false report. Without the previous administration and it’s biased #fakenews climate change agenda, perhaps Congressman Smith’s effort can gain some traction.

From Thomas Gallatin writing for The Patriot Post:

In 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledged what some in the climate science community had begun calling a “hiatus” in global warming — that “the rate of warming over the past 15 years … is smaller than the rate calculated since 1951.” This acknowledgement by the IPCC threatened to derail the alarmist narrative of human activity being the primary cause of global warming espoused by many on the Left. And indeed it was, as skeptics of anthropogenic global warming used the IPCC’s admission as further evidence to support their questioning of the politically correct narrative.

Fast forward two years to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) release of a report, known as the “Karl study,” which stated flatly, “There is no discernable (statistical or otherwise) decrease in the rate of warming between the second half of the 20th century and the first 15 years of the 21st century.” The report further asserted that IPCC’s conclusion about a “climate warming hiatus” was “no longer valid.” This report conveniently supported Barack Obama’s climate alarmist agenda and his dubious claims of the science being “settled,” even though at the time there were several government scientists who raised objections over the reliability of the report, claiming the data was cooked.

This prompted Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee to launch an inquiry into the claims of manipulation of climate data and records by officials at NOAA. However, much of the committee’s efforts were frustrated over Obama’s last year in office due to NOAA officials’ refusal to comply with records requests even upon the issuance of subpoenas.

Over the weekend, a recently retired top scientist from NOAA, Dr. John Bates, alleged that the Karl study report applied questionable data in order “to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush[ed] to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.” Rep. Smith responded to the latest revelation by saying that it “justified” the committee’s investigation into the matter. He added that, under the Trump administration, he trusts they will be able to get to the bottom of the matter.

[More]

08 Feb 2017 by Environment Global Warming Whacko Politics

The Degeneration of Scientific Processes

science.jpg

I found this graphic over at Ace of Spades the other day. Sadly it depicts yet another degeneration in processes as a result of being constantly under attack by progressives and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself).

I do remember from 8th grade science the process for advancing a hypothesis through observation, experimentation and finalizing a theory and then retesting the theory via modifications to the original hypothesis. Those fundamentals have, sadly, been abandoned by many of those in the scientific community in favor of political payoffs in the form of grants to obfuscate facts and formulate fake results.

The graphic above is signed @BiffSpackle, who, as far as I can tell, is on the correct side of the political spectrum according to the linked Twitter® feed.

23 Jan 2017 by Environment Global Warming Greenbats Science Whacko Politics

Global Warming Wealth Redistribution

bucks.pngIncreased CO2 in the atmosphere has never been proven to cause anything other than enhanced benefits for life, both flora and fauna. The drumbeat from the warmists is steady and their support from the media makes the feeble-minded proletariat all the more convinced that glaciers will melt and coastal cities will be destroyed. You know, the sky is falling, the end is near, etc.

What the climate change believers don’t know is that the whole climate change scenario is not now and never was intended to save the planet. Simply put, it is global wealth redistribution from rich countries to poor ones, while lining the pockets of UN and other bureaucrats. In fact, an IPCC official, Ottmar Edenhofer, a co-chair of the IPCC, admitted it is about wealth and not climate in his own words:

The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. … First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

I read this quote in a short article by E. Calvin Beisner entitled “Climate Change’s Great Legacy: International Wealth Redistribution,” available from The Patriot Post.

19 Oct 2015 by Global Warming Whacko Politics

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