Mafia's New Enterprise: Medicare Fraud

It sure beats selling drugs, loan sharking, or running an illegal sports book.

A Medicare scammer could easily net at least $25,000 a day while risking a relatively modest 10 years in prison if convicted on a single count. A cocaine dealer could take weeks to make that amount while risking up to life in prison.

"Building a Medicare fraud scam is far safer than dealing in crack or dealing in stolen cars, and it's far more lucrative," said Lewis Morris, lead attorney at the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general's office.

Wow $25,000 a day if way better (and less dangerous) than just about any criminal enterprise that I can think of. I guess this will be Tony Soprano's new line of work. Medicare Supplier sounds much better then Garbage Union Representative any day.

Medicare Fraud? Fuggedaboutit!

Even Cash for Clunkers was a Dismal Failure?

You have to be kidding me. The government can't get anything right.

Burton Abrams and George Parsons of the University of Delaware added up the total benefits from reduced gas consumption, environmental improvements and the benefit to car buyers and companies, minus the overall cost of cash for clunkers, and found a net cost of roughly $2,000 per vehicle. Rather than stimulating the economy, the program made the nation as a whole $1.4 billion poorer.

Why McChrystal Needs More Troops in Afghanistan

I think this is required reading by Obama, Biden and whoever else thinks that we can win in Afghanistan without adding more troops to the mix.

To rescue Afghanistan's security forces through partnering and advising, the U.S. unquestionably needs the extra 30,000 or 40,000 troops that Gen. McChrystal wants. That many troops are required to put American officers—commissioned and noncommissioned—with Afghan soldiers and policemen at all levels and at all times.

Without them, poorly led Afghan security forces will continue to abuse the citizenry more than they abuse the insurgents. And current rhetoric about "protecting the population" and "engaging the tribes" will end up with the millions of other words that never leapt from the strategy documents to the field.

These extra troops are needs so that the Afghan security forces can eventually take over for us some time in the future. Instead they will be poorly led and eventually be replaced by the Taliban.

It is a surge so we can eventually leave something decent behind. If we betray Afghanistan twice in a row and leave a mess in our wake then no amount of genuflecting in the Middle East will ever get our credibility back. It's Obama's war to win or lose and he needs to make that decision soon or the failure will be his alone.

The Broken Window Fallacy Explained

It seems that when government spends a bunch of money to "stimulate" the economy it usually results in dismal failure. As you know that as soon as the government cash goes away so does the demand. This is the case with cash for clunkers. But this article points out what is called the "broken window fallacy" of government spending.

This fallacy should have been laid to rest once and for all by Frederick Bastiat, the 19th-century French classical liberal economist and legal theorist, who described it as the "broken window fallacy." The story goes: A naughty boy breaks a store window with a rock, and an observer says this will help boost the economy, since the shopkeeper now needs to buy a new window, so the windowmaker will have money to buy new shoes, so the shoemaker will have more money to buy what he wants, and so the effect of the window destruction will ultimately be wealth creation.

This ignores, however, what the shopkeeper would have done with the money had his window not been broken. He could have bought something else, and he'd still have his window. Bastiat stressed that an economist's role was to understand not just what was seen in economic life, but what was unseen.

Yes this unseen costs are very important to the whole idea of stimulus. In this case you have a window that wasn't broken in the first place and maybe the window repair money will instead go to hiring some guy to help make shoes. Suddenly the shoemaker doubles his production and the economy grows.

So if the shoemaker is paying hefty taxes to the government (to fix broken windows) he is prevented from growing and has to make shoes all by himself. It would be all good if the government was efficient at fixing windows but they are notoriously poor at just about everything it does.

So when the government taxes at a high rate and is allowed to carry a huge deficit we have the idea that growth can only happen as long as the Red Chinese are willing to buy our debt. If the Chinese money stops so does our government growth economy.

Roubini Says we are In for a U-Shaped Recovery

Hmm, this is the guy that called the last market free fall so he might know what he is talking about.

“The real economy is barely recovering while markets are going this way,” Roubini said. “I see the risk of a correction, especially when the markets now realize that the recovery is not rapid and V-shaped, but more like U-shaped. That might be in the fourth quarter or the first quarter of next year.

I think he might be referring to the "head-fake" recovery where things are pumped up due to stimulus and are now overvalued. When the stimulus runs out then the artificial growth rug will be pulled out from under the market. Roubini also talks about new asset bubbles forming.

“In the short run we need monetary and fiscal stimulus to avoid another tipping point and to avoid deflation, but now this easy money has already started to create asset bubbles in equities, commodities, credit and emerging markets,” Roubini said. “For the sake of achieving growth stability again and avoiding deflation, we may be planting the seeds of the next cycle of financial instability.”

I am already short gold UltraShort Gold ProShares (GLL) because I don't think Chinese demand can prop up a $1000 per ounce price forever. Also deflation would be the exact opposite of what gold is supposed to protect against. Plus I get bubble vibes when I see there are over 126,000 hits for a Google Search of Gold at $10,000 an ounce. Some even peg the gold price at $30,000 an ounce.

I might get short emerging markets as well after I do some research on a bubble forming there. The ETF to do it is ProShares UltraShort Emerging Mrkt (EEV) I mean Emerging Markets are up 67% which is a record one year move. If it is a U-shaped recovery it will take even longer for these companies to recover them some people currently think.

People are Happy Chicago Dodged the Olympics

Those people might not include the President the First Lady and Oprah but it seems to be a blessing in disguise.

Getting the games means a city sacrifices considerable control over its financial future. If your vacation turns out to be more expensive than you planned, you can always cut it short and go home. But if the Olympics run over budget, you don't have the option of bailing out. You spend what you have to spend, whether you have the funds or not.

Olympics do run over budget, as a rule. Montreal, which hosted the 1976 summer games, just paid off the last bills in 2006. Athens, the 2004 site, spent three times as much as it had planned.

Montreal just paid off the bills 30 years later? Now that is one expensive event. I hope Rio can handle to big costs. I would really like to hear what they will be doing about the Flavelas. The thought of a cross country track with the backdrop of shanty towns wouldn't be something Brazil would want to show off.

Malawian Teen Saves Africa?

Now this is the kind of initiative that will save Africa in the coming decades.

Now 22, Kamkwamba wants to build windmills across Malawi and perhaps beyond. Next summer he also plans to construct a drilling machine to bore 40-meter holes for water and pumps. His aim is to help Africans become self-sufficient and resolve their problems without reliance on foreign aid.

This kid hand built a windmill after reading 2 US text books - Explaining Physics and Using Energy at a rural library. All it takes is a few windmills and suddenly these Malawian farmers are living a much better life. Just having lights at night so people can read and learn things after farming all day will make things better for everyone.

I think kids like Kawkwamba and cell phone banking are going to transform Africa from a land of corrupt Marxist kleptocracies where people can barely survive into the next world economic engine. If you can increase the billion people of Africa's living wage even a few dollars the world GDP will improve by trillions. My prediction is that it will only take 20 years and Africa will be spoken of in the same way as Brazil is now.

Obama Sits Down With McChrystal on Air Force One

At last Obama is getting the skinny strait from the source. I will be willing to be that McChrystal will pull no punches and tell Obama exactly what he needs to hear.

The 25-minute meeting with Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, aboard Air Force One as it waited to carry the president home from Denmark, gave Obama a chance to step outside the circle of advisers he has convened to study the problem of Afghanistan.

I hope this won't be the last of these one-on-one assessments. I have to hand it to Obama since he is actually talking to the commander and hopefully will get the unvarnished truth. Now the proof will be if Obama commits another 40,000 troops and see if we can hold Afghanistan together until their army can take over.

How the Stimulus Failed in One Easy to Read Graphic

Whenever some leftist says that the stimulus was a resounding success show them this chart. That light blue line was if we didn't pass the stimulus bill. The red line is the actual estimates.

Whatever economists the White House are employing need to be fired at once and replaced with Seers with Crystal Balls. They might do a better job of forecasting.

Why Did Sakozy Get Mad About Obama?

If this is true then Obama has a lot of growing up to do on the world stage.

Unknown to the world, Obama had in his pocket explosive revelations about an illegal uranium-enrichment facility that the Iranians had been hiding near Qom. The French and the British were urging him to use this most dramatic of settings to stun the world with the revelation and to call for immediate action.

Obama refused. Not only did he say nothing about it, but, reports Le Monde, Sarkozy was forced to scrap the Qom section of his speech. Obama held the news until a day later — in Pittsburgh. I’ve got nothing against Pittsburgh (site of the G-20 summit), but a stacked-with-world-leaders Security Council chamber, it is not.

I have to agree with Sarkozy. If Obama revealed that Iran was hiding illegal uranium enrichment facilities in Qom at the security council meeting it would have been a bombshell. Instead he said some mealy mouthed crap about nuclear disarmament knowing full well China, India, Russia, and Pakistan would never disavow themselves from the nuclear club.

He could have said this secret program shows Iranian duplicity and would be able to call for tough sanctions, an immediate end to enrichment, a call for a visit from the IAEA, etc. He could have put this information right in front of Russia and China and confronted them to their faces. Instead he sits on the information until the G20 when the impact if blunted. What an amateur. Actually this should have gotten Sarkozy riled up as well.

After all, just a day earlier in addressing the General Assembly, Obama actually said, “No one nation can . . . dominate another nation.” That adolescent mindlessness was followed with the declaration that “alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War” in fact “make no sense in an interconnected world.” NATO, our alliances with Japan and South Korea, our umbrella over Taiwan, are senseless? What do our allies think when they hear such nonsense?

That sounds just like something a college kid would say. Also Sarkozy knows full well that one nation can indeed dominate another nation. Sarkozy's nation was at one time dominated by Nazi Germany. And if not for the Allies they would still be dominated by another nation.

Also all these "long-gone Cold War alignments" still work because they are collections of nations with similar interests and all have thriving Democracies. It doesn't matter how interconnected the world is there will still be bad actors like Iran and virtual dictatorships like Russia to dominate the world stage.

We formed those alliances to fight the Soviet Union now we maintain them so that Iran doesn't launch nukes on Jerusalem. If you can't rely on allies of 50-60 years then who can you rely on? I guess Obama slept through those history classes at Harvard.

Garrison Keillor Wants Republicans to Die?

What a moron. Is that the real way for the Dems to get anything right? So Keillor can only see their agenda passed if all Republicans die off?

“Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the GOP, and if we cut off health care to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order,” Keillor wrote.

Thank you, Mr. Republicans Should Die, for raising the public debate to the level of a dung beetle. There is no bill. Read. Then write.

How can only 33% of the population slow down anything? Maybe Keillor should point his genocide machine at the moderate Dems. Those are the people that are holding up the public plan, the socialist plan, or the cryptocommunist plan or whatever Keillor wants.

Hopefully whatever Congress passes will pay for Keillors psychiatric evaluation and his anti-psychotic medication as well.

Rio Wins Olympics: Obama and Oprah weren't enough

Well now that this crap is out of the way Obama can concentrate on the way forward in Afghanistan.

Chicago was knocked out in the first round — in one of the most shocking defeats ever in International Olympic Committee voting. Even Tokyo, which had trailed throughout the race, did better — eliminated after Chicago in the second round.

I think the tepid support, where only 47% of the people living in Chicago, even wanted the thing in the first place is what sunk the whole thing. There was even a group called Chicagoans for Rio that wanted to send the Olympics there. The bad part is that Obama's flyby might have actually hurt the process.

Chicago had long been seen as a front-runner and got the highest possible level of support — from President Barack Obama himself. But he only spent a few hours in the Danish capital where the vote was held and left before the result was announced. Former IOC member Kai Holm said that the brevity of his appearance may have counted against him.

The short stopover was "too business-like," Holm said. "It can be that some IOC members see it as a lack of respect."

I think it might be Glenn Becks fault. The White House seems to agree with me.

White House Goes After Glenn Beck; Here's some advice: Turn off the Damn TV Already!

Now this is pretty low stuff even for this White House. They are going point-by-point against Glenn Beck to counter "lies."

Last night Fox News continued its disregard for the facts in an attempt to smear the Administration's efforts to win the Olympics for the United States. In the past, hosting the Olympics has been a source of pride and unity for the country, but once again Fox News' Glenn Beck program has shown that nothing is worthy of respect if it can be used as part of a partisan attack to boost ratings.

This is from the official White House blog to a news organization in the US. In other words the White House is personally going after a TV show for " spreading lies." They have to understand that their office is supposed to be far above such nonsense. This is the White House not the Berkeley City Council.

The sad part is they have just validated everything Beck stands for by personally attacking his so-called "disregard for facts." Are they so scared by some guy on a TV channel that they have to personally attack him on their official blog? Everyone knows that Beck is going to run with this story for days. If you hate the man so much why are they giving him such perfect ammo?

No wonder Putin thinks these clowns are a joke. No wonder the Iranians fired off a bunch of missiles in response Obama's "harsh words." No wonder North Korea tested another nuke. No wonder Sarkozy scoffs at Obama on pressuring Iran. No wonder the Israelis think they will have to go it alone against Iranian nuclear weapons. These people look like they care more about what is happening at Fox News instead of doing everything they can to prevent one UN member nation from wiping another off the face of the earth.

Here is a word of advice for every staffer at the White House. Change the channel already to CNN or MSNBC or some other sycophantic news source. I mean they are actually tingling for your boss on those channels.

Actually better yet turn off the damn TV and remember that you are sitting at the same desks of the people that preserved the Union and freed the slaves, that saved the entire free world from Nazism, and prevented a global thermal nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

Don't sully these desks with your asinine BS about some guy on some cable news channel. This office used to be above that. I guess they can no longer make that claim.

The EPA Just Raised Your Energy Bill

I just have to say if this move is even constitutional because I thought only Congress can amend something like their own Clean Air Act. In any case get ready for a bump in your energy bill just in time for winter.

The Environmental Protection Agency took steps Wednesday to control the emissions blamed for global warming from power plants, factories and refineries for the first time.

The EPA proposal would require polluters to reduce six greenhouse gases by installing the best available technology and improving energy efficiency whenever a facility is significantly changed or built. The rule applies to any industrial plant that emits at least 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year.

Of course the cost of the "the best available technology" will be passed right on to the poor who are still looking for jobs in the "worst recession since the Great Depression." Well at least it gives yet another incentive for power companies to start to roll out those 6 greenhouse gas free nuclear plants. I'm all for American power generation to be like Japan and France.

The Man that Could Destroy What is Left of John Edwards

Now this is one sad tale of a sycophantic aide that the pretty much gave his life to the Edwards and was repaid with scorn and ridicule.

When John Edwards returned to North Carolina in the course of his long quest for the presidency, Andrew Young always met him at the airport in Edwards’s big black Chevy Tahoe. Young drove, and Edwards rode shotgun, silently raising his left hand whenever he wanted a Diet Coke, which Young would wordlessly supply.

When Edwards and his family arrived home, Young had made sure there was fresh milk in the fridge, a neatly trimmed lawn and neatly folded dry cleaning. When he arranged their vacation to Disney World in 2004, he naturally booked himself a ticket. And when Edwards’s mistress became pregnant, Young — at the cost of his reputation, his wife’s and his minister father’s — stepped forward to say the child was his.

This guy even claimed to be the father of Edward's illegitimate child much to the consternation of his own wife and the humiliation of his kids. Then the Edwards' tossed him out like garbage after he didn't reassert his claim to paternity. Now this bombshell will change Edwards from one of the 10,000 cheating politicians into a nationwide laughingstock:

And Young, with all the fury of a spurned lover, may be holding out yet another threat to his old idol, if it comes to that: an explicit videotape, two people who have seen it said, of Edwards and Hunter together.

“It’s his hole card,” said the source.

I mean Edwards will join the ranks of Screech, Tommy Lee, and Paris Hilton on the bottom rung of celebrities hiding from an ill advised sex tape. He went from the Democratic Presidential contender to the porn shop in a few short years.

The New York Times Turns on Polanski

Wow, even the far-left New York Times has just turned on the convicted child molester.

But hold on a moment. After being indicted in 1977, didn’t Mr. Polanski, now 76, confess to having sex with a 13-year-old girl after plying her with Quaaludes and Champagne? Didn’t he flee the United States when the plea bargaining seemed to fall apart, raising the prospect of prison time? Isn’t there a warrant for his arrest?

Now if you lose the Times you lose the entire leftist establishment in the US. I wonder where Jon Stewart falls on this. He is the so-called "Leftist Decider" now.

Sarkozy Throws Obama Under the Bus on Iran

I am liking Sarkozy more and more now that he is now distancing himself from Obama on the subject of Iranian nukes. It seems that Sarkozy might have just thrown Obama under the bus on this whole subject.

The contempt with which the president of France regards the president of the United States was displayed in public last week.

Nicolas Sarkozy was furious with Barack Obama for his adolescent warbling about a world without nuclear weapons at a meeting Mr. Obama chaired of the United Nations Security Council last Thursday (9/24).

"We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth," President Obama said.

What infuriated President Sarkozy was that at the time Mr. Obama said those words, Mr. Obama knew the mullahs in Iran had a secret nuclear weapons development site, and he didn't call them on it.

‘President Obama dreams of a world without weapons...but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite," Mr. Sarkozy said.

I think Sarkozy is finally understanding that Obama is a community organizer that made it to the Presidency without proper vetting. Obama does not understand belligerent powers and what really motivates them. The people currently in charge of Iran want the Bomb so they can claim hegemony over the Middle East. It isn't a defensive weapon for them but a potentially offensive weapon.

Sarkozy knows that if the Iranians get the bomb the entire equation changes. The Saudis and maybe the Jordanians have to scramble to get nukes of their own in order to maintain detante. Israel might then get into a protracted air war with Iran and the entire place could become a sprawling battlefield.

So when Obama talks about a pollyannish "world without nuclear weapons" Sarkozy rightly calls him on the fact that he is saying a "world without OUR nuclear weapons" the Mullahs can go ahead and have theirs. I mean does Obama honestly think that the Israelis would relinquish their nukes if Iran is sneaking around and building centrifuges so they could bring the second Holocaust to life?

Obama's wishy-washyness of the foreign stage just goes to show you that the Dems should have stuck with Hillary. For some reason I would rather have her staring down the Mullahs then a guy that talks about a "world without nukes" while knowing full well that an unstable regime is trying to build them under the cloak of darkness.

France and America Agree that Polanski should Face Justice

It seems that Big Hollywood have closed ranks to defend a child molester. It is refreshing however that the French and the Americans are seeing eye to eye when it comes to making sure that talented movie directors that rape 13 year olds after drugging them serve prison time.

The mood was even more hostile in blogs and e-mails to newspapers and news magazines. Of the 30,000 participants in an online poll by the French daily Le Figaro, more than 70 percent said Mr. Polanski, 76, should face justice. And in the magazine Le Point, more than 400 letter writers were almost universal in their disdain for Mr. Polanski.

If You Want to "Drain the Swamp of Partisanship" Fire Pelosi

Well, if Obama is truly serious about bipartisanship in the Congress he should force out one annoying person and we may actually have it.

Pelosi has seemingly decided to be the liberal conscience of Congress and not the traditional speaker who represents the entire House. While she has raised some money for her more moderate colleagues, she has allowed Hoyer to be the principal point of contact for the Blue Dog Democrats. She has little to no contact with Republicans, and it is well-known that she simply refuses to meet individually with most Republican members.

She also killed ObamaCare deader than a doornail by sceduling a cap-and-tax vote right before there was even debate on Health Care reform. She even knew that the Senate wouldn't look at that piece of crap until next year at the soonest.

So she forced moderates to support it and probably imperiled their jobs for the sake of party ideology. There was no way these Blue Dogs would support yet another billion dollar tax hike for health care. It was a gamble that failed miserably and probably killed off ObamaCare in the same move.

The funny thing is that if these Blue Dogs lose their jobs then the Dems lose the House. There is no way some far leftist is going to suddenly be supported by people in Arkansas or North Carolina. If these Blue Dogs lose the 2010 election then their seats would go right back to the GOP.

I'm just so glad sometimes that there is a Senate with Dems like Baucus who have some sense and actually try to get people to support his plans. Pelosi should have resigned for accusing the CIA for lying to her and her various blunders just make the House look like a joke.

Senate Finance Committee Kills Public Option

It is good that someone is finally coming to the understanding that reducing costs and going into the insurance business have nothing to do with each other.

The 15-8 rejection marked a victory for Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the committee chairman, who is hoping to push his middle-of-the-road measure through the panel by week's end. It also kept alive the possibility that at least one Republican may yet swing behind the bill, a key goal of both Baucus and the White House.

I have to hand it the Baucus for standing up against the liberals in his own party. He wants to get a bill through that will get 60 votes and he knows he has to make compromises.

If these Dems are so worried about insurance companies denying coverage put some kind of grievance committee in place. Give them enforcement power to pull the insurance license of any insurer found to be denying coverage. The idea that they can't sell their product if they are screwing people over will stop those sorts of practices. In the words of Grand Moff Tarkin "Fear will keep them in line!"