Month: June 2013

QotD, Hollywood Can’t Figure Out How Obamacare Works, Either edition.

This being a family website, I am alas constrained from giving my full opinion on this sudden realization by Hollywood that they’re about to get messed up by Obamacare; but rest assured, said opinion is incredibly foul-mouthed of me, and includes references to marsupials.

Determining the exact nature of the new laws has been difficult, given that many ACA [Affordable Care Act] terms have yet to be worked out. Hollywood productions, for instance, might find it irksome simply trying to categorize employees as full- or part-time, seasonal or variable, and it’s important that they get the classifications right lest they face hefty fines. “ACA is thousands of pages, and it wasn’t written with this industry in mind,” says Belcher.

Ain’t that a shame.  But, hey, look on the bright side: at least Hollywood elected Barack Obama, right?  Brilliant move there, guys.  Brilliant.

Continue reading QotD, Hollywood Can’t Figure Out How Obamacare Works, Either edition.

IRS Agents keep taking the Fifth.

Not to distract from the Supreme Court wars, but there’s an ostensibly nonpartisan situation going on over at House Oversight:

A second IRS employee summoned to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee invoked the Fifth Amendment on Wednesday and refused to answer questions — a flashback to Lois Lerner, who did the same during a hearing on the agency’s scandal last month.

Gregory Roseman, who worked as a deputy director of acquisitions at the IRS, exercised his constitutional rights when Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) started interrogating him about panel findings that he helped a friend procure potentially $500 million worth of IRS contracts.

Continue reading IRS Agents keep taking the Fifth.

For the record: I do not like @RepDuckworth very much.

But DAMN.

Rep. Tammy Duckworth, for the record, is a combat veteran who lost both feet (and most of the use of her arm) to enemy action. Braulio Castillo is a reported crony capitalist who allegedly used his IRS buddy to get a half-billion dollar contract. Castillo also apparently used a prep school foot injury to claim disabled veteran status, which is why Duckworth was using the rhetorical equivalent of an autopsy saw on him like that. Continue reading For the record: I do not like @RepDuckworth very much.

Hey, guess who wanted leakers tortured? That’s *right*: Ed Snowden!

Welcome to the Fishbowl, Eddie.

Meanwhile, back at the story that will resume being front and center by Friday:

During a 2009 trip to Switzerland, National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden logged into an internet chat room he frequented to cure what was apparently a case of homesickness and general loneliness. According to a report in Ars Technica, which got a copy of the chat logs, Snowden riffed off a New York Times story about cyber-attacks in Iran designed to slow the nation’s acquisition of a nuclear bomb. Whoever leaked that story to the Times, Snowden opined, “should be shot in the balls.”

…well, I wouldn’t go that far.  But, yeah, I got a problem with people who, oh, deliberately reveal classified information for the express purpose of embarrassing the United States of America.  Guess Snowden stared into the abyss for just a little too long?

Moe Lane

So I pretty much called the #DOMA ruling.

Back in the day.

I suspect that Section 3 is going to be gone; and that the courts will resolutely decline to not address Section 2. I think that this means that we’ll end up with another state/federal headache where gay couples will be in this weird Schrodinger married/not married state, depending on who’s doing the paperwork – but then, nobody asked me to fix the situation for them**.

…and that’s what happened.  I do, however, no longer expect a Federal Marriage Amendment to be passed in reaction, and I will not lie to you: I’m fine with not seeing a FMA.  What I’m not really fine with will be all the endless legal battles on a state-by-state basis, but that’s what we get when we create a political system where court decisions are so insanely relevant.

You know what the REAL problem is with all of these Supreme Court decisions?

The fact that we wouldn’t have half of them if:

  • Congress would stop writing bad legislation;
  • Congress would stop writing ‘comprehensive’ legislation (yes, I’m making a distinction, here);
  • The government was generally not quite so large and unwieldy.

Doesn’t matter how the decisions go down today; the real problem is structural.  And largely the Democrats’ fault; they actually like big government on its own merit.  Republican legislators you at least have to seduce into it.

Gov. Scott Walker (R) calls for pay raises for Wisconsin state employees.

Apparently the budget can handle it now. Makes sense, now that all those bloated union contracts are receding into unfond memory:

Most state workers would get a 1% pay raise in each of the next two fiscal years under a plan by Gov. Scott Walker’s administration.

The general wage increase would be the first in four years for most rank-and-file employees and the first in five years for most managers, according to the administration.

The pay raise would cost more than $140 million over two years and apply to most state workers, including employees at University of Wisconsin System campuses. Employees making less than $15 an hour would see an additional increase of up to 25 cents an hour.

If you think that I’m laughing at this rather elegant in-your-face to Wisconsin progressives, you should read Ace of Spades HQ: they’re using the phrase “Pondering menacingly while relaxing upon his throne of skulls.” AoSHQ thinks that this is part and parcel of a general plan to build support for a hypothetical 2016 Presidential campaign; I personally want to get through the 2014 election cycle first, but it certainly won’t hurt Scott Walker if he’s demonstrating skill at turning states around.  Because God knows we’re going to need somebody to do that in 2016. Continue reading Gov. Scott Walker (R) calls for pay raises for Wisconsin state employees.