Month: August 2016

Colin Kaepernick Refuses to Stand For Blood Spangled Banner

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Go Colin Kaepernick! I love football. The NFL YouTube channel is one of my favorites. I watch the highlights of every game. Their athleticism is absolutely insane.

But the NFL has serious Statist problems. Buddied up with the military, sometimes there are F16 flyovers at stadiums, there are often commercials, at least I remember them from years ago, of the NFL encouraging enlistment into the ranks of government trained killers, etc.

Kaepernick is the starting quarterback for the 49ers. I’m a Miami Dolphins fan, but as long as Kaepernick is playing for the 49ers, I am a 49ers fan first now, and Dolphins second.

I realize that it is not perfectly principled to be a consumer of NFL content when I also say the league is tainted with Super Statism. What can you do.

I also realize that not all the reasons Kaepernick refuses to stand during the Blood Spangled Banner are great. Something about Black Lives Matter and other stuff that doesn’t really get to the point. But he did criticize both Hitlery Clinton and Donald Duck, and in correct ways, so he does get something:

CK: You have Hillary who has called black teens or black kids super predators, you have Donald Trump who’s openly racist. We have a presidential candidate who has deleted emails and done things illegally and is a presidential candidate. That doesn’t make sense to me because if that was any other person you’d be in prison. So, what is this country really standing for?

Regardless of his reasons, it takes real guts to sit during the Blood Spangled Banner, especially in an Uber Statist league like the NFL. He’s risking his very career. It is very possible the 49ers will sideline him so as not to upset their fans, and no other team would pick him up for the risk of being tainted.

We should show him our support and root for the 49ers!

Fox News ran this stupid segment on some paraplegic government trained killer who is upset with Kaepernick for not standing during the song as Kaepernick has legs. Johnny Jones, this guy who got his legs blown off after trying to kill people in some far off land, is upset.

I have a message for Johnny Jones. The fact that you don’t have legs is your own fault. If you want to keep whatever limbs you have left, stop trying to kill people.

Cowards like Jones invade other countries who have not attacked first. Jones will collect his welfare check until the government runs out of Kaepernick’s money to give him for having his legs blown off.

Brave men like Kaepernick risk their livelihoods and reputations to sit down for what they believe in.

 

Model Portfolio Update

rafifarber Stock Trading

I think gold is ready for another leg up after reacting positively to Janet Yellen’s inane speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Adding a 5% position in leveraged junior gold fund JNUG at $22.83 a share.

Reminder I am not a legal financial adviser according to the government, so I’m not actually saying anything or recommending anything and I’m warning anyone considering not to listen to anything I say about investment.

The Caveman Minimum Wage Argument

rafifarber Economics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Here’s an original approach to debunking wage minima.

Imagine that in 10,000 BCE, when humanity was just beginning to learn how to farm crops, that the minimum wage was $15 an hour in today’s value numbers.

Would there be a human race today?

The surprising answer is yes, because whatever government that may have existed back then would not have had the resources to enforce a minimum wage.

How much resources does it consume to enforce a minimum wage? How much money is minimum wage enforcement erasing from the incomes of the earners of minimum wage, e.g. those with skills JUST high enough to make it over the employment high-jump?

“Minimum Wage, so stupid, even a caveman wouldn’t do it.”

Aetna Fights Back Against Antitrust Goons, Threatens to Drop Obamacare

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

It’s always nice to see companies fighting back against the Feds. Aetna’s got some guts and some ammo doing this, because the government is going to go after them hard now, looking for all kinds of regulations that it “violates”. Aetna is threatening to drop out of Obamacare, which is already reeling from other major pullouts. Soon there will be no insurers left.

It is basically telling the Justice Department to leave it alone in its business plans to merge with Humana, which needs to be done to save the companies after Obamacare is draining the entire system by subsidizing high cost patients with money that doesn’t exist because younger people aren’t signing up, amazingly.

The Justice Department is in charge of deciding which mergers are a “trust” and which are fine, which they do totally arbitrarily because there is no objective definition of what a “trust” is. From the letter written by Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna, to some guy named Ryan, an antitrust lawyer working for The Man:

Our analysis to date makes clear that if the deal were challenged and/or blocked we would need to take immediate actions to mitigate public exchange and ACA small group losses. Specifically, if the DOJ sues to enjoin the transaction, we will immediately take action to reduce our 2017 exchange footprint…

Unfortunately, a challenge by the DOJ to that acquisition and/or the DOJ successfully blocking the transaction would have a negative financial impact on Aetna and would impair Aetna’s ability to continue its support, leaving Aetna with no choice but to take actions to steward its financial health. These contemplated actions would include the actions discussed below.

Although we remain supportive of the Administration’s efforts to expand coverage, we must also face market realities. Our customers expect us to keep their insurance products affordable and continually improving, and our shareholders expect that we will generate a market return on invested capital for them. We have been operating on the public exchanges since the beginning of 2014 at a substantial loss…

Finally, based on our analysis to date, we believe it is very likely that we would need to leave the public exchange business entirely and plan for additional business efficiencies should our deal ultimately be blocked.