Nor is today's with not much in it.
‘‘Manufacturing crises to extract massive concessions isn’t how our democracy works, and we have to stop it,’’ the president said in his weekly radio and Internet address."
That is all this government knows, from the FBI-instigated patsy plots to the false flag inside jobs to the staged and scripted hoaxes, and even down to the political s***-fooley of a shutdown, is manufactured crises. When it comes to a real crisis they are massive failures as the Gulf Gusher, Katrina, and Sandy have proven.
Related:
Grand Canyon, other sites reopen after states dig up funds
Debt ceiling maneuvering threatens economy, analysts say
And, by the way, our government is totally broke!
An inspiration for fiscal responsibility
EBT problems caused by software issue, unrelated to federal shutdown
Speaking of software troubles:
"Health care portal showed signs of trouble from the start; Some see flaws as fiscal threat to benefits initiative" by Robert Pear and Sharon LaFraniere | New York Times, October 13, 2013
WASHINGTON — In March, Henry Chao, the chief digital architect for the Obama administration’s new online insurance marketplace, told industry executives that he was deeply worried about the website’s debut. “Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience,” he told them.
Two weeks after the rollout, few would say his hopes were realized.
For the past 12 days, a system costing more than $400 million and billed as a one-stop, click-and-go hub for citizens seeking health insurance has thwarted the efforts of millions to simply log in. The growing national outcry has deeply embarrassed the White House, which has refused to say how many people have enrolled through the federal exchange.
Because it's so low.
Even some supporters of the Affordable Care Act worry that the flaws in the system, if not quickly fixed, could threaten the fiscal health of the insurance initiative, which depends on throngs of customers to spread the risk and keep prices low.
And fatten the bottom lines of the in$urance bu$ine$$.
“These are not glitches,” said an insurance executive who has participated in many conference calls on the federal exchange. Like many people interviewed for this article, the executive spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not wish to alienate federal officials with whom he works. “The extent of the problems is pretty enormous. At the end of our calls, people say, ‘It’s awful, just awful.’ ”
Interviews with two dozen contractors, current and former government officials, insurance executives, and consumer advocates, as well as examination of confidential administration documents, point to a series of missteps — financial, technical, managerial — that led to the troubles.
Dr. Donald M. Berwick, the administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2010 and 2011, said the time and budgetary pressures were a constant worry. “The staff was heroic and dedicated, but we did not have enough money and we all knew that,” he said in an interview Friday.
They got over $400 million and didn't have enough money to set up a website?
Administration officials have said there is plenty of time to resolve the problems before the mid-December deadline to sign up for coverage that begins Jan. 1 and a March 31 deadline for coverage that starts later. A round-the-clock effort is underway, with the government leaning more heavily on the major contractors, including the US subsidiary of the Montreal-based CGI Group and Booz Allen Hamilton.
Who will be getting a plum payment, I'm sure.
One person familiar with the system’s development said that the project was now roughly 70 percent of the way toward operating properly, but that predictions varied on when the remaining 30 percent would be done. “I’ve heard as little as two weeks or as much as a couple of months,” that person said. Others warned that the fixes themselves were creating new problems, and said that the full extent of the problems might not be known because so many consumers had been stymied at the first step in the application process.
Confidential progress reports from the Health and Human Services Department show that senior officials repeatedly expressed doubts that the computer systems for the federal exchange would be ready on time, blaming delayed regulations, a lack of resources, and other factors.
But they had to roll it out anyway even thought they have suspended or delayed several other provisions.
Yeah, it really is looking like that. Government wants a pot of loot they can count on for future outlays and debt payments.
Deadline after deadline was missed. The biggest contractor, CGI Federal, was awarded its $94 million contract in December 2011. But the government was so slow in issuing specifications that the firm did not start writing software code until this spring, according to people familiar with the process.
As late as the last week of September, officials were still changing features of the website, healthcare.gov, and debating whether consumers should be required to register and create password-protected accounts before they could shop for health plans.
One highly unusual decision, reached early in the project, proved critical: The Medicare and Medicaid agency assumed the role of project quarterback, responsible for making sure each separately designed database and piece of software worked with the others, instead of assigning that task to a lead contractor.
Some people intimately involved in the project seriously doubted the agency had the in-house capability to handle such a mammoth technical task of software engineering while simultaneously supervising 55 contractors. An internal government progress report in September 2011 identified a lack of employees “to manage the multiple activities and contractors happening concurrently” as a “major risk” to the whole project.
By early this year, people inside and outside the federal bureaucracy were raising red flags.
But no one was listening. Better get that hearing checked.
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NEXT DAY UPDATE: Obamacare flunks first test
And it is not just healthcare that is the problem.
"Problems plague the Common App; Colleges, students stymied by errors in online system" by Richard Pérez-Peña | New York Times, October 13, 2013
NEW YORK — With early admission deadlines looming for hundreds of thousands of students, the new version of the online Common Application shared by more than 500 colleges and universities has been plagued by numerous malfunctions, alarming students and parents and putting admissions offices weeks behind schedule.
“It’s been a nightmare,” said Jason C. Locke, associate vice provost for enrollment at Cornell University. “I’ve been a supporter of the Common App, but in this case, they’ve really fallen down.”
Colleges around the country have posted notices on their admissions websites, warning of potential problems in processing applications....
The problems have sown worry among students like Lily Geiger, a 12th-grader at the Rudolf Steiner School in New York. When she entered her essays into the application, what appeared on her computer screen was a garbled mess....
For the nonprofit company, also called the Common Application, that creates the form, it has been a summer and fall of frantic repair work, cataloged on its website, and frequent mea culpas.
Rob Killion, the executive director, acknowledged a wide range of failings. But he said they were being fixed and that the number of applications was up more than 20 percent from last year, indicating students were navigating the system.
Problems became evident as soon as the application was released in August, including some confusing wording that was later changed. Students who thought they had finished the application found that it was incomplete because questions had been added after its release. As changes were made, some who had started their applications early found themselves locked out of the system.
A function that allows students to preview applications and print them sometimes just shows blank pages — a problem that may be linked to which Web browsers they use. And, as Geiger discovered, the system often does not properly format essays that are copied and pasted from another program.
When a user pays an application fee with a credit card, the system produces a “signature page,” where the cardholder’s name must be typed to confirm the charge.
But that page can take a day or more to show up, leading some users to try to pay multiple times.
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Why is everything AmeriKan institutions offer such a piece of $hit?
$mells so bad I can't breathe.
"Tallying costs for a simple breath" by Elisabeth Rosenthal | New York Times, October 13, 2013
OAKLAND, Calif. — With its high prescription prices, the nation spends far more per capita on medicines than other developed countries. Drugs account for 10 percent of the country’s $2.7 trillion annual health bill, even though the average American takes fewer prescription drugs than those in France or Canada, said Gerard Anderson, who studies medical pricing at Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.
It's called boosting the bottom line profits of pharmaceutical companies.
While prescription drug spending fell slightly last year, it is expected to rise as the economy recovers and as Americans become insured under the Affordable Care Act, said Murray Aitken of IMS Health, a tracker of pharmaceutical trends.
For most patients, asthma medicines are life-changing, which keeps demand and prices high.
Dr. Dana Goldman, of Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California, said because inhalers are cheap to produce and so effective at keeping patients out of hospitals, most national health systems made sure they were free or inexpensive. But in America no generic asthma inhalers are available.
Generic inhalers are common in Europe, where health regulators have been more flexible about mixing drugs and devices, and where courts have been quicker to overturn drug patent protection.
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That will most likely be it for today, folks. I'll be back bright and early tomorrow morning to finish up today's Sunday Globe Specials.
NEXT DAY UPDATES:
"As Senate seeks deal, partisan fights continue" by Bryan Bender | Globe Staff, October 14, 2013
WASHINGTON — Financial markets braced for a potentially tumultuous week. Leaders at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank demanded Sunday that US leaders solve the debt ceiling impasse, with Christine Lagarde, managing director of the fund, warning on NBC’s “Meet the Press’’ that failure could create “massive disruption the world over.”
We've heard it before, Chicken Little.
And isn't she some sort of crook (who will never see jail, but....).
********************
As the members of Congress appeared on talk shows, another type of political theater was taking place on the grounds of the World War II Memorial, located on the National Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol.
That's why I no longer watch them.
The site has been closed to visitors because of the shutdown since Oct. 1, although some groups of veterans have been able to visit.
A group of protesters cut through the barriers blocking visitors. They heard speeches from a several Tea Party figures....
Also see:
"Sunday’s rally was more political. A protest by truckers converged with a rally by a group called the Million Vet March at the memorial. Participants cut the plastic links between metal barriers at the National Park Service site and pushed them aside.
Wow, they finally mentioned the truckers' strike in a middle-of-the-article sentence. Can't claim they didn't report it, right?
Later, some protesters carried metal barricades that look like bicycle racks from the memorial to the White House and stacked them up outside the gates, confronting police in riot gear. Some protesters carried signs reading ‘‘Impeach Obama.’’
It's the correct move legally speaking, but where does that lead and leave us? President Biden?
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Related:
"Polls show people long have been divided on just what the government’s role should be. An AP-GfK poll this month found that 60 percent of Americans favor a ‘‘smaller government providing fewer services’’ while 35 percent want a bigger government that does more.
Not much of a divide, almost two to one, but anyway.
A Gallup poll in early September found that 53 percent of Americans thought ‘‘the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses,’’ while 40 percent said the ‘‘government should do more to solve our country’s problems.’’
In other words, the public is with the Republicans despite all the noise coming from Democrat mouthpieces.
Also see:
Talking points: The home version
Why would anyone want to read what she says?
Obama’s vision of unity led only to a wider gap
Sorry, but I've really turned sour on the whole broken city charade.
What the important people are saying:
"Financial leaders concerned about US troubles" by Annie Lowrey and Nathaniel Popper | New York Times, October 14, 2013
WASHINGTON — Leaders at World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings on Sunday pleaded, warned, and cajoled: The United States must raise its debt ceiling and reopen its government or risk “massive disruption the world over,” as Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, put it.
That's a bit different than demanding, but whatever.
The US fiscal problems overshadowed the official agendas for the meetings, with representatives from dozens of countries — including two of Washington’s most important economic partners, Saudi Arabia and China — publicly expressing worries about what was happening on Capitol Hill and in the White House.
They hold a lot of Treasuries.
The leaders were in Washington to talk about the international recovery, Lagarde said on the NBC News program “Meet the Press.” “Then they found out that the debt ceiling was the issue,” she said. “They found out that the government had shut down and that there was no remedy in sight.”
“So it really completely transformed the meeting in the last few days,” Lagarde added.
I am so glad I do not watch those programs anymore.
With only three days left before a potential default, Senate leaders failed Sunday to agree on a plan to reopen the government and raise the debt limit.
Many leaders at the World Bank and IMF meetings said they believed the impasse would be resolved before Thursday, when the government would be at severe risk of not having enough money to pay all its bills.
But they pressed Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew and the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke — they were both at the IMF meeting — on the issue, predicting that even a near-default would lead to higher borrowing costs and a slowdown of the global economy.
“This cannot happen, and this shall not happen,” Baudouin Prot, chairman of the French banking BNP Paribas, said at a meeting of the Institute of International Finance, also being held in Washington. “The consequences of this would be absolutely disastrous.”
Lew acknowledged the threat. “Our work begins at home,” he said. “We recognize that the United States is the anchor of the international financial system. With the deepest and most liquid financial markets, when risk rises, the flight to safety and to quality brings investors to US markets. But the United States cannot take this hard-earned reputation for granted.”
Wall Street did, as did the private bankers you front for.
As for being the anchor, that is why the world is bailing on us and why so many wars are threatened against people. Dumping the dollar as reserve currency destroys the AmeriKan empire.
Lagarde said “that lack of certainty, that lack of trust in the US signature” would disrupt the world economy.
Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, issued his own urgent appeal. “The fiscal standoff has to be resolved without delay,” he said in a statement released by the IMF.
Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, painted a bleak picture of the days ahead if there is no resolution.
“As you get closer to it, the panic will set in and something will happen,” Dimon said. “I don’t personally know when that problem starts.”
Kinda cryptic, huh?
He added that JPMorgan had been “spending huge amounts of time and money and effort to be prepared.”
Dimon is also stepping down, so he knows something.
Many officials made open appeals to Congress, with warnings coming from many of Washington’s allies and creditors. Lagarde’s counterpart at the World Bank, US physician Jim Yong Kim, said the world was “days away from a very dangerous moment.”
“The closer we get to the deadline, the greater the impact will be for the developing world,” he said.
The developing world is already getting $crewed under your leadership.
Fahad Almubarak, governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, said “urgent political agreements on budget and debt issues are necessary to preserve and, indeed, reinforce the modest recovery.” Yi Gang, an official with China’s central bank, said the fiscal uncertainties “must be addressed promptly.”
I don't know if Saudi Arabians telling us what to do helps. Instinctive American backlash there.
Concern over the impasse has led to a slide in stocks — including the worst two-day dip in months.
Is that why they shutdown the government? Have something to blame for the inevitable collapse of the dollar as all have seen coming?
US economic confidence has taken the worst hit since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.
All the stimulus and all the regulation and all the court settlements have done nothing? We are right back where we were? In an age of record profits for banks and corporations?
And investors have dumped certain short-term Treasury debt because of fears the Treasury might not pay them back on time.
No one wants it anymore, meaning the Fed has to print up more money to buy the offerings from Treasury.
Markets ended last week with a burst of optimism, after House Republicans took the first steps toward a compromise. But that optimism faded over the weekend. On Sunday, with negotiations stalled, the value of the dollar was sliding.
I really do hat being right in my analysis.
When stock markets open Monday, all eyes will be on the negotiations in Congress. Big companies will announce quarterly financial results this week, normally a significant event. But that is likely to attract little attention until the political negotiations are settled.
I'll be looking for those profit statements in my Boston Globe bu$ine$$ section just as I looked for trucker strike stories.
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