Hilarious: New Jersey's middle finger to Obamacare

The poor, pathetic Democrats trying to defend Obamacare have adopted the talking point that there is "pent-up demand" for "affordable" (i.e., subsidized by other people) health care insurance. The citizens of the Garden State have just flipped the bird on  this argument. From John Fund at NRO:

I live in New Jersey, where Internet gambling has just been legalized. Each of Atlantic City's twelve casinos can operate up to five gambling websites so long as they screen out customers from out of state. Peggy Holloway, senior credit officer for Moody's Investors Service, says the new sites will "appeal to a younger, more Internet-savvy demographic that might lack the discretionary budget to travel to one of Atlantic City's 12 casinos." And indeed, fifty thousand people signed up online for New Jersey's gambling sites in the first week. That compares with 741 who signed up for Obamacare during all of October. Yes, the Obamacare website has been plagued with problems, but the disparity between the two programs is still eye-popping.

Dr. Jeff Singer, a surgeon and scholar at the Cato Institute, told Fox News that the gambling boom shows "younger and healthier people are making the decision - rightly or wrongly - that they are getting a better value by using some of their money, for example, in a gambling site than they are for buying health insurance which is covering things that they don't need."

Via: American Thinker
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Black Friday sales up just 2.3%

And that's with Thanksgiving day added to Friday's blowout.

How "black" retailers books are going to look is the real question. Prior to Black Friday, most big box retailers were bemoaning the fact that in order to get people in the stores, they used deeply discounted items. Typically, shoppers cherry pick the sale items and ignore the rest, reducing margins.

Bloomberg:

Retailers offered more and steeper deals on merchandise from flat-screen televisions to crockpots that, while luring shoppers, may ultimately hurt fourth-quarter earnings. Many consumers showed up prepared to zero in on their favored items while shunning the impulse buys that help retailers' profits.

"You could get the same deals online as you could get in the store, and yet there were still a ton of people out there," Charles O'Shea, a senior analyst at Moody's Investors Service in New York, said in an interview. Going out to stores, "is part of the experience," he said.

About 97 million people planned to shop online or in stores on Friday, with about 140 million intending to do so Thanksgiving through Sunday, the National Retail Federation said. That's down from 147 million last year.

Via: American Thinker

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RAHM TO RAISE CHICAGO CITY TAX ON CABLE TV TO PAY FOR MOVIES IN THE PARK

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to raise the city amusement tax for cable television customers. The tax hike will go toward enhanced cultural programming and to make a minuscule dent in the city’s whopping $369 million operating deficit, according to CBS Chicago.

CBS also reports, “At least some of the money will be used to bolster ‘Night Out in the Park,’ which brings concerts, circuses, movies, and dance programs to Chicago’s neighborhood parks.”

The city has a two-tiered amusement tax. Mid-sized venues are charged five percent and large sporting events are charged nine percent. Cable customers currently receive a five percent exemption, which will now be cut to three percent, increasing the amusement tax they pay from four percent to six percent, for an estimated $9 million in revenue.

City Hall insists the increase on taxpayers’ cable bills will only be a few dollars a month, according to the Sun-Times.

Chicago faces a $1 billion dollar deficit by the year 2015, and the city’s bond rating received an unprecedented triple downgrade from Moody’s S&P over the summer.

Over 2,400 city employees are paid more than $100,000 annually, totaling $276,097,550 of the city’s overall $2.4 billion payroll (not including teachers). The city is currently installing over 650 miles of protected bike lanes for $91 million and unveiled a new “Divvy” bike-share program this summer at a cost of $22 million to taxpayers.

The city of Chicago closed 50 public schools in mostly black neighborhoods earlier this year which it “could not afford” to keep open.

Via: Breitbart

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Obamatude Ahead

It will be foolish to rush into a debt ceiling deal that fails to curb spending.

Polls show the nation growing impatient. The public wants Washington politicians to get a deal done now to raise the debt ceiling and open the government. Rushing is a mistake. The urgency of the debt ceiling is exaggerated, while the drastic consequences of a deal that fails to curb spending are being ignored.

Here are three reasons not to rush a settlement:

1. The U.S. will not default on its debt this week or anytime soon.

On October 7, Moody’s rating agency circulated a memo on Capitol Hill explaining that “there is no direct connection between the debt limit (actually the exhaustion of the Treasury’s extraordinary measures to raise funds) and a default.” First of all, “there are no interest payments until the end of the month…. Thus, a Treasury based default is not technically possible until that date.”

What’s more, “the government is very likely to prioritize interest payments,” meaning servicing the debt before paying other bills.

Backing up Moody’s analysis, Fitch rating service called default “a low risk.”

Yet Rep. Peter T. King, Republican of New York, said “We’re now backed into a corner. We have to do this by Thursday. We have to make it work, but it’s not going to be perfect.” 

No one expects perfection in politics, but Republicans should be fighting to keep the “savings” they gained in 2011, in exchange for agreeing to the largest debt ceiling hike in history.

Via: The Spectator

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MOODY'S: MORE CALIF. CITIES AT RISK OF BANKRUPTCY

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- One of the nation's top credit rating agencies said Friday that it expects more municipal bankruptcies and defaults in California, the nation's largest issuer of municipal bonds.

Moody's Investors Service said in a report that the growing fiscal distress in many California cities was putting bondholders at risk.

The service announced that it will undertake a wide-ranging review of municipal finances in the nation's most populous state because of what it sees as a growing threat of insolvency.

The report has both investors and government leaders worried.

Three California cities - Stockton, San Bernardino and Mammoth Lakes - have filed for bankruptcy so far this year. They are not likely to be the last, Moody's said.

Moody's reports that some cities are turning bankruptcy as a new strategy to take on budget deficits and avoid obligations to bondholders, an emerging dynamic that could have ripple effects throughout the investment community.

The municipal bond market has long been characterized by low default rates and relatively stable finances, Moody's said, but that outlook is beginning to change as bankruptcy becomes a tool for cash-strapped cities.

As a result, the agency will reassess the financial position of all cities in California, which issues about 20 percent of the municipal bond volume nationwide, "to reflect the new fiscal realities and the governmental practices."

Via: Associated Press

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