Florida State Seminoles

[hedge]

Go back and look at the 1992 debates, that's exactly what Perot was saying almost 25 years ago. People have been saying all of that for at least 50 years, probably longer, and here we still sit...

[Bklyn]

The thing I really don't understand, with all the railing against Obamacare, is what do you do with those who need insurance? You put them on Medicare, Medicaid or leave them to fend for themselves. It's still an unsustainable model, either economically or ethically.

Also, take a look at the elderly poverty and mortality rates before Social Security or Medicaid/care. I really can't see paring things back without the ensuing pictures of pan handling grannies and destitute, emaciated granddads hitting all over the internet. We can't maintain our thin, false veneer of exceptionalism if the optics show how badly our most vulnerable have it.

I say all of this to say, what do we actually do? What nets can be put into place to handle these obvious issues that will arise if these social programs are not in place? In essence, SSI, healthcare and other social programs cannot go away. So, the issue should not be arguing about their existence, it should be arguing for what is needed and feasible to keep these nets in place, personally.

[eCat]

The thing I really don't understand, with all the railing against Obamacare, is what do you do with those who need insurance? You put them on Medicare, Medicaid or leave them to fend for themselves. It's still an unsustainable model, either economically or ethically.

Also, take a look at the elderly poverty and mortality rates before Social Security or Medicaid/care. I really can't see paring things back without the ensuing pictures of pan handling grannies and destitute, emaciated granddads hitting all over the internet. We can't maintain our thin, false veneer of exceptionalism if the optics show how badly our most vulnerable have it.

I say all of this to say, what do we actually do? What nets can be put into place to handle these obvious issues that will arise if these social programs are not in place? In essence, SSI, healthcare and other social programs cannot go away. So, the issue should not be arguing about their existence, it should be arguing for what is needed and feasible to keep these nets in place, personally.

my position is you don't add a bunch more immigrants to fill service sector jobs and keep the wages low. That genie might be out of the bottle but still, lets shut it down. I will never understand why we aren't outraged at Mexico for not addressing the obligation it has to its own people and instead it literally pushes them to become American citizens and if they can't do that, illegally reside here. Its surreal.

Minimum wage wouldn't be an issue if you didn't keep flooding the market with low wage earners. I get they do jobs that people won't do, can't do - and location is part of it. Inner city youth aren't going to pick fruit in the valleys of southern California, but there would be a supply and demand effect for people to fill the gap - and if they buy robotics or whatever to replace them , then all the better. There will still be jobs in an expanding economy and the shit jobs would be automated. Get people on a living wage and a larger percentage will be able to afford or contribute to health care. Yes we would pay more for goods and services, but it wouldn't be a tax - we'd have a choice.

Once the impoverished latch on to the idea of basic income and you get a Hillary or a Bernie type politician promising it to get elected its all over anyways. I want to be an artist so I want basic income and a free education to pursue a job that doesn't directly contribute to the GDP of this nation.

The biggest issue with health care is that the consumer isn't informed about costs and can't shop around. There is no incentive. You go to a provider that is covered by your insurance, you pay the deductible and then you just live with the negotiated cost by the insurance company. How can you have one end of the marketplace that is forced to buy into it - either subsidized or out of pocket - and the other end of the marketplace that is just jacking up costs without competition? That is an unsustainable model.

[hedge]

"Inner city youth aren't going to pick fruit in the valleys of southern California"

Look at eCat trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored...

[Bklyn]

I never researched all the details, but I do agree that the healthcare monopoly is a problem. It feels to me like a lobbyist/Washington giveaway issue.

I am not so sure that a choking off of Mexican/Central American immigrant migration really addresses our stagnation problem, though.

[eCat]

I never researched all the details, but I do agree that the healthcare monopoly is a problem. It feels to me like a lobbyist/Washington giveaway issue.

I am not so sure that a choking off of Mexican/Central American immigrant migration really addresses our stagnation problem, though.

that isn't a big part of it, but any policy that keeps wages low isn't going to help the lower end of the economic scale - and that's the ones who are getting hit the hardest with this health care.

The biggest insult to the American public is pushing this disaster onto them and calling it affordable.

Kinda like pushing spying on them and calling it Patriot.

[eCat]

Scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have discovered a chemical reaction to turn CO2 into ethanol, potentially creating a new technology to help avert climate change. Their findings were published in the journal ChemistrySelect.

The researchers were attempting to find a series of chemical reactions that could turn CO2 into a useful fuel, when they realized the first step in their process managed to do it all by itself. The reaction turns CO2 into ethanol, which could in turn be used to power generators and vehicles.

The tech involves a new combination of copper and carbon arranged into nanospikes on a silicon surface. The nanotechnology allows the reactions to be very precise, with very few contaminants.

"By using common materials, but arranging them with nanotechnology, we figured out how to limit the side reactions and end up with the one thing that we want," said Dr. Adam Rondinone.

[AlabamAlum]

Free booze!

[eCat]

I've been reading up on the fairness doctrine.

The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was — in the Commission's view — honest, equitable, and balanced.

The main agenda for the doctrine was to ensure that viewers were exposed to a diversity of viewpoints. In 1969 the United States Supreme Court upheld the FCC's general right to enforce the Fairness Doctrine where channels were limited. But the courts did not rule that the FCC was obliged to do so.[4] The courts reasoned that the scarcity of the broadcast spectrum, which limited the opportunity for access to the airwaves, created a need for the Doctrine. However, the proliferation of cable television, multiple channels within cable, public-access channels, and the Internet have eroded this argument, since there are plenty of places for ordinary individuals to make public comments on controversial issues at low or no cost at all.

The Fairness Doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented. The demise of this FCC rule has been considered by some to be a contributing factor for the rising level of party polarization in the United States

The FCC eliminated the Doctrine in 1987, and in August 2011 the FCC formally removed the language that implemented the Doctrine.

The abolition of The Fairness Doctrine had many opponents but they lost to the Reagan Revolution anti-regulatory extremists. Reagan’s new FCC chair, Mark S. Fowler, sneered at the principle that broadcasters bore special responsibilities to ensure democratic discourse. It was all nonsense, said Fowler. “The perception of broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced by a view of broadcasters as marketplace participants.”

----
interesting to me that they believed multiple channel sources would not result in fairness in reporting, but channels that offered opposing views

which is exactly what we have. Channels not dedicated to fairness, but simply providing an opposing viewpoint - with little regard for balance, neutrality and lately, integrity.

I think I'd like to see that reinstated.

[aTm]

Scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have discovered a chemical reaction to turn CO2 into ethanol, potentially creating a new technology to help avert climate change. Their findings were published in the journal ChemistrySelect.

The researchers were attempting to find a series of chemical reactions that could turn CO2 into a useful fuel, when they realized the first step in their process managed to do it all by itself. The reaction turns CO2 into ethanol, which could in turn be used to power generators and vehicles.

The tech involves a new combination of copper and carbon arranged into nanospikes on a silicon surface. The nanotechnology allows the reactions to be very precise, with very few contaminants.

"By using common materials, but arranging them with nanotechnology, we figured out how to limit the side reactions and end up with the one thing that we want," said Dr. Adam Rondinone.

Mmmm....the problem with the smell test on this as far as its actual usefulness is that this is essentially the same reaction we are already using to produce our energy but in reverse. Currently we are burning a fuel like ethanol (or similar organic compound) which produces CO2, water, and energy. That leads me to believe that it takes energy to put water and co2 back together to make ethanol. Energy that would be produced, how?

[eCat]

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science ... o-ethanol/

[bluetick]

Despite record-breaking profits year after year, health insurance company executives would like us to believe that Obama has been terrible for health insurers. UnitedHealth's CEO Stephen Hemsley, who made more than $66 million in 2014, said last November that the company might stop selling policies on the Obamacare exchanges in 2017 because financial results from that segment of its operations have so far been lower than executives had hoped. He said a few months ago that the company lost $720 million in 2015 on its individual health insurance business.

If you're feeling sad for Hemsley, know this: UnitedHealth Group reported a profit of $11 billion (on revenues of more than $157 billion) in 2015, up from $10.3 billion in 2014. When you consider those impressive results, it's obvious the company's Obamacare business is a tiny portion of its overall operations, but rather than trying to turn its Obamacare business around for the benefit of the country and it's healthcare enrollees, it is considering bailing out of the exchanges for the benefit of its shareholders. -Wendall Potter, healthinsurance.org 3/1/2016

Just since the intro of obamacare, healthcare giants like UHC Aetna Wellpoint(BCBS), Cigna, Humana etc have seen there stocks rise between 600 and 1100 percent. In order to keep those yearly double digit gains they cry about marketplace losses in BFE Kansas and threaten to pull out if they don't get 60% rate hikes. The only real problem is the feds let them get away with it.

Nobody wants to write coastal wind/hurricane coverage because it's a loser. Guess what - either they write that coverage, or they don't get to write any other coverage in those coastal states. It should be the exact goddam way with health insurance - companies don't want to write marketplace coverage in MN, then they don't get to write group insurance or Medicare Advantage. There's your easy fix.

[aTm]

Yeah, so if its as efficient as they make it sound might be a plus, but as I suspected it does takes electricity generated from another source to start the whole thing. I also don't buy it as a carbon reducer as described. They would have to produce ethanol and remove it from the carbon cycle (ie dont use it as fuel anymore, put it in barrels and store them underground). It could be part of a climate change solution to take clean energy and convert to a usable fuel so as to use carbon already in the atmosphere rather than trapped underground, but that would still require massive development to produce large amounts of electricity from a non CO2 producing source from the beginning.

[Bklyn]

True, @aTm. To me, though, the real question is not the use of energy...but how much energy? It's like electric cars. It still takes the use of fossil fuels to create the electricity that powers the cars, but (I'm guessing) the carbon usage is much less than what is used to run internal combustible engines.

[bluetick]

And if you think about it...health insurers have reaped a trillion or so dollars in profits the last couple of generations, yet in that time there haven't been any major advances in the field of health insurance. Or minor ones, for that matter.

[Bklyn]

Capitalism is sociopathic. Very rarely do you see organizations move in any manner that is not fully and totally beneficial to the shareholders. Blame Jack Welch.

On the CO2/ethanol issue, I recommend all manner of skepticism on any posts from aTm. If I go down the list of circumstantial evidence, he is from Texas. Oil country. He went to A&M, which has a vast and pre-eminent petroleum engineering program. Also, he's a nerd. Looking at all of these factors, I believe that he will move in his best interests to poo poo any technology or venture that threatens the fossil fuel industry. A wise man* once said "if you don't know the history of the author, you don't know what you're reading." I think I know enough history to discount this aTm character's feedback.

*that wise man is a rapper from the Bronx. Gotta keep a healthy diversification of influences

[aTm]

Capitalism is sociopathic. Very rarely do you see organizations move in any manner that is not fully and totally beneficial to the shareholders. Blame Jack Welch.

On the CO2/ethanol issue, I recommend all manner of skepticism on any posts from aTm. If I go down the list of circumstantial evidence, he is from Texas. Oil country. He went to A&M, which has a vast and pre-eminent petroleum engineering program. Also, he's a nerd. Looking at all of these factors, I believe that he will move in his best interests to poo poo any technology or venture that threatens the fossil fuel industry. A wise man* once said "if you don't know the history of the author, you don't know what you're reading." I think I know enough history to discount this aTm character's feedback.

*that wise man is a rapper from the Bronx. Gotta keep a healthy diversification of influences

[youtube]8ywTrOgEzKE[/youtube]

[crashcourse]

My inauguration, bitches

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arc ... de/237968/

I believe aTm might have his own agenda but bklyn's motives must be questioned based on his first ever post here energy questions and living in DC--could be some political advantage to squash the hopes of ecat's scientific find

[hedge]

"That leads me to believe that it takes energy to put water and co2 back together to make ethanol. Energy that would be produced, how?"

I'm sure Michael Crichton knows the answer to that...

[hedge]

aTm = the Batman of free energy