Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Politics

Obamacare is a Disaster

In contrast to what you’ve probably heard, some actual data:

Overall, HHS estimates that 20 million nonelderly adults have gained health insurance since 2013. …

The chart on the bottom shows the overall uninsured rate using a variety of measures. The story is pretty much the same no matter whose numbers you use: there are way more Americans with health insurance today than there were three years ago. What’s more, premiums have stayed steady and the total program cost is under budget. If this is a disaster, we could use a few more disasters like it.

March 3, 2016
Oklahoma, the Musical

I was reading an article online about some extreme anti-homosexual laws being proposed in Oklahoma. Then I read this in the comments:

If Oklahoma wants to seem less gay, it should not have it’s own Broadway musical, I think

I busted out laughing…

January 28, 2016
2015 Photos in Review

Like or hate Obama, appreciate the great photography (mostly by Pete Souza).

January 4, 2016
Going to Hell in a Handbasket

Or not…

December 29, 2015
Cow Economics

Read the whole post, each one is amusing:

December 21, 2015
Um, Math? Numbers? Bueller?

From a political web site that I won’t link to:

Trump’s favorability has also grown. He’s rated at 51 percent favorable, 37 unfavorable; an improvement over his 51-37 split in November.

December 18, 2015
Welcoming Refugees

Canada has a slightly different approach:

Welcome to Canada.

Ahlan wa sahlan.

You’re with family now.

And your presence among us makes our Christmas season of peace and joy just that much brighter.

And while you’ll find plenty of folks who speak Arabic, we have our own dialect that you may hear on the streets. Our city, Toronto, is pronounced Tronna. The hockey team is the Leafs (or Buds), not the Maple Leaves. The Red Rocket is our transit system. The local term for a loser is hoser. We’re cheezed when someone annoys us. We make aTimmy’s run to buy a coffee. And we end every sentence with, eh.

So that’s pretty much it for now, eh.

Welcome home.

I just want to know how the guy got an Indiana University sweatshirt. Go IU…

December 10, 2015
Gambling Hypocrites

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/664220329867403264

November 10, 2015
Come for the poor performance, stay for the excessive fees

Via Barry Ritholtz, an analysis of why pension funds invested in hedge funds and whether it was a good idea (answers being politics and no, respectively).

Other than a few hedge funds, performance is sub par. So why do pension funds invest?

This is because the higher the expected return, the lower the capital contributions required of some obligated public entity.

Here is the punchline: Those expected returns are a myth.

So that’s it. Say you have an expected return of 9% and you don’t have to contribute as much to the fund, meaning you don’t have to raise taxes or cut benefits.

Win/win unless you are in the actual pension fund.

November 9, 2015
F for Security but A+ for Spying

Via Wired (a while back), that would be the recently passed CISA security bill.

It’s not hard to figure this stuff out. If the big telecom companies are in favor and Twitter, Yelp, Salesforce, Wikipedia, Apple, Reddit, Dropbox, Mozilla, Yahoo, Adobe, Amazon, Dell, Ebay, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, and Oracle are all against, it’s probably a bad idea.

October 27, 2015