Mike Pence: "Who cares?" pic.twitter.com/n8nQbANpXQ
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) September 17, 2019
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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In the News
Current headline story @ Politico.com by Holly Otterbein & Trent Spiner, Sept. 17, 3:30 pm
A staff shakeup and loss of an endorsement to Elizabeth Warren has allies warning of deeper problems.
Short video has a lot more of interest than just the interview with the American guy, not the least of which that they allowed the female reporter:
A huge fire at a... facility in Australia has caused thousands of dollars in damage after at least 100 cylinders containing... semen were destroyed
The administration’s moves to weaken the Affordable Care Act have taken hold, and companies are cashing in.........The Trump administration, thwarted in its attempts to overturn the ACA, has widened that loophole by stretching the definition of “short-term” from three months to a year, with the option of renewing for as long as three years......(Florida temporary insurance broker Dorfman) swindled tens of thousands of people out of more than $100 million by passing off “sham” insurance policies as comprehensive health insurance, spending the profits on private jet flights, a white Lamborghini Aventador, a black Rolls-Royce Wraith, and a $300,000 wedding in Bal Harbour, Fla.........Dorfman’s operation fielded as many as 3,000 complaints a day.......
It allowed a maximum of $250 per emergency room visit and $5,000 per surgery.......the listed maximum total payout of $750,000 was misleading: It didn’t mean the Diazes’ bills would be covered up to that amount after they paid the deductible; it just meant that if Marisia underwent, say, 150 surgeries, she could get $5,000 for each, leaving her to cover millions of dollars in additional bills......On June 14, Trump held a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden to announce a new policy that lets employers steer as much as $1,800 in tax-exempt funds to their employees instead of offering them comprehensive health plans. The move will likely create many more customers for HIIQ’s industry. “We’re putting the people back in charge with more choice for better care at a far lower cost—and other people will not be paying for their health care,” Trump said......
Immigration, taxes, and health care matter, but a foreign-policy issue has taken center stage.
By Jonathan Blitzer @ NewYorker.com, Sept. 16 online and in the Sept. 23 print issue
[....] There are more than two hundred thousand Venezuelans in Florida, more than anywhere else in the country, and the majority live in the Doral area. Many of them are recent arrivals—some four million people have left Venezuela in the past four years, ten per cent of the country’s population. The exodus began after Maduro was elected, in 2013, when, in response to dwindling oil prices and economic mismanagement, the government tried to stave off collapse by printing more money. [....] Condemnation of Maduro has been widespread in the U.S. and other countries, but no one has denounced the regime as aggressively as Trump has. In Doral, Rafael said, “you were a pariah if you didn’t support Trump.” [....]
Only a small percentage of the recently arrived Venezuelans are eligible to vote, but many Latin Americans in Florida see the Venezuelan government as the nexus of the region’s worst problems. The repressive socialist leaders in Cuba and Nicaragua depend on Venezuela for oil and for political support. Colombia, which borders Venezuela, has taken in more than a million refugees. “If you solve the Venezuela problem, you get three for the price of one,” a state Republican operative told me. “You’ll make the Colombians, Nicaraguans, and Cubans in Florida very happy.”
In every Presidential election since 1992, the winner of Florida has gone on to the White House [....]
Biden buzz seems to be trending today for some reason, including this:
The link given overrides the WSJ paywall! The author is Spencer Jakab, Editor of the Heard on the Street. He previously wrote Ahead of the Tape for the Journal and the Lex Column for the Financial Times. He was an analyst and later a director of emerging markets equity research at Credit Suisse and is the author of "Heads I Win, Tails I Win: Why Smart Investors Fail and How to Tilt the Odds in Your Favor."
This is exactly what I had posted from the book The Half has Never Been Told, by historian Edward Baptist.
"Their location was also prime, perched so they could collect enslaved people from plantations across Virginia and Maryland and sending them on forced marches — in groups of several hundred known as “coffles” — or on tightly packed ships along the Atlantic Coast to the Deep South. While their business strategy was not especially innovative, it was conducted on a scale “bigger and better than anyone else,” Rothman said. Franklin and Armfield transported an estimated 10,000 enslaved people over the course of their careers, according to Rothman"