From the NYT:
For Rent: Fixer-Uppers in a National Park
The National Park Service put out an unusual for-rent sign last month: 35 historic buildings, including the genteel quarters of lieutenants and captains, at a wind-swept former Army base overlooking Sandy Hook Bay. The only catch: the structures are serious fixer-uppers.
The one-time military base, Fort Hancock, sits at the northern end of Sandy Hook, N.J., a peninsula that is part of the park service’s Gateway National Recreation Area and is better known for its miles of ocean beaches.
But when the federal government took over Sandy Hook in the early 1970s, it inherited dozens of yellow-brick buildings — not just officers’ homes, but also mess halls, barracks, a post office, a commissary and even an old stable for mules — that have mostly sat vacant and have slowly deteriorated.
In the past, proposals for what to do with the buildings varied with the tides, but the park service is now actively looking for tenants to invest in them and save them. During a tour of the properties on Friday, a wooden porch outside a former lieutenant’s home, built in 1899, listed perilously and, inside, chunks of ceiling plaster carpeted the floors.
“This is our last shot at keeping these buildings,” Pete McCarthy, coordinator of the park service’s Sandy Hook unit, said. “We’ve stabilized them as best we can, but if we don’t do something soon we’ll lose them.”
Under the park service’s plan, instead of paying a set rent, tenants would pay for repairs to the buildings and be given long-term use of them in exchange. The repairs generally include new electrical and heating systems; in many cases, tenants would have to fix or replace roofs, windows and porches as well.
…
Depending on the repair cost, a tenant who commits to footing the renovation bill might not have to pay rent for decades, park service officials said.While several nonprofit groups currently occupy some buildings at Fort Hancock, the recent “request for expressions of interest” that the park service issued extends the invitation to government agencies, companies and even private citizens. A person could sign up to a 60-year lease and, in effect, have a waterfront home inside a national park.
Magpies 1-0 at half v. Spurs. First, bitchez!!!!
Frist for mainstream society…..
It’s popular now to suggest that the staggering incompetence that gave us Obamacare is limited to a flawed website. If only that were true. In truth, Obamacare’s problems merely begin with the website, and will grow much worse assuming Heathcare.gov is ever fixed.
That is so because contrary to its billing as a market-based exchange, it’s nothing of the sort. Healthcare.gov at its core is a wealth redistribution scheme that promises to fail for it ignoring basic economics.
Indeed, basic economics dictates that there’s no such thing as a ‘free good.’ That’s a major problem because Obamacare not only promised healthcare for all, but it promised gold-plated access to healthcare at costs lower than had previously prevailed in the actual marketplace. To put it very plainly, any legislation that promises more of a market good at a below market price is by definition a very expensive lie.
Since it is, stories about people like Dianne Barrette suddenly losing health insurance plans that cost $54/month in return for plans that cost $591/month were inevitable. There’s once again no such thing as a free good, and unless federally mandated insurance plans offering everything – including maternity benefits for men – were going to be given away by insurance companies hurdling toward bankruptcy, it was inevitable that what Obama promised was going to be accompanied by a much larger price tag for individuals.
Beyond that, it can’t be stressed enough that what was being promised had nothing to do with insurance. Here Republicans are just as much at fault for mandating that insurance companies offer ‘insurance’ without regard to pre-existing conditions. Drivers of fancy cars would love such a luxury, but if this applied to car insurance, the cost of it would skyrocket for the safest drivers eschewing insurance until the day of the unforeseen accident.
There’s no affordable car insurance sans safe drivers paying into the pool, and healthcare is logically no different. Rather than pay for health insurance that will be there by government mandate no matter the condition, basic economic incentives tell us that the healthiest would eagerly embrace paying the fine for not buying health insurance until such a day when it’s truly needed.
In Obama’s case he promised satisfied Americans that they could keep their health plans if they preferred them, only to have basic economics come back to haunt him yet again. Many Americans, particularly the healthier ones, logically only want to insure for the truly unexpected and catastrophic, all the while paying out of pocket for routine doctor visits. The latter is the proper definition of health insurance, but going back to mandates that essentially promised the world, their insurance plans no longer pass muster in the mind of a president and Congress who almost never consider economics when they legislate. The obvious result is that many insured Americans will not be able to keep their plans, and will only be insured in the future if they’re willing to break the bank to do so. Lots of luck there; instead they’ll pay the fine for not buying insurance on the way to soaring costs, and then they’ll buy it when they need it.
The perhaps logical response is that since true insurance is once again for the unexpected and catastrophic, and as such is inexpensive, President Obama and Congress should go back to the drawing board and craft a way to subsidize its purchase for the truly needy. That sounds nice, but should be avoided. Indeed, as the Barrette example makes plain, health insurance when left to the markets is cheap. In that case, and as evidenced by the fact that cellphones are ubiquitous in the poorest locales of the United States, Americans should learn to prioritize, including buying insurance over former luxury items like cellphones.
Back to President Obama, his disdain for the private sector has come back to haunt him, and could possibly destroy his presidency. Had he worked for Goldman Sachs or another company like it he would have understood what horrors can be wrought by underlings lacking proper supervision. He’d have also understood that successful people in the private sector always manage expectations rather than make promises that are defied by basic economics.
Grim / anyone else,
I didn’t see a link or contact info in that article, did you?
#3 Chi
Any interest in the other side of that story?
Obamacare “victim” now says loss of previous health plan may be “a blessing in disguise”
Dianne Barrette was the media’s go-to example of an Obamacare victim — until she found out all of her options
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/04/obamacare_victim_now_says_loss_of_previous_health_plan_may_be_a_blessing_in_disguise/
Chi
Here is a little something to read while you whistle your fracking tune.
I’m not big into tinfoil conspiracy, but I always remember a HoJo of Rt 80 on the Ohio border. Four guys clime out of a pristine F350 come in and sit down for breakfast. Very clean cut, not a lot of conversation, just ate and left. It stuck with me as just a little off, that the guys didn’t look like regular gas crews or Pipe fitters. I put it down to middle management getting out of the office and didn’t think much more about it until I read this.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/7153:fracking-and-psychological-operations-empire-comes-home
Fabius,
So the cost/prices are correct, but someone else is paying it?
Once again, nothing to bring down the cost… pathetic.
Chifi,
I am looking at Obamacare coverage (still on Cobra, which ends in a couple of months). The gold plan with no deductible [but an HMO’ish] costs about 20% less than the Cobra plan [which is probably platinum++]. Of course, no subsidies, and more out of pocket costs per visit, and I cannot get a flexible spending plan [b@s**d staffing company keeps about 30k-40k per year for doing nothing and do not even offer an option to purchase health care, let alone a flex spending plan].
My extra cost will show up in the extra FICA-medicare tax, which will go into the pool of money that helps lower income people get subsidized insurance. Your extra medicare taxes will go to provide health care to people (instead of some needless war). Things aren’t that bad [and certainly not at the “wealth redistribution” scale you seem to indicate].
Joyce, don’t you think there will be reduction in number of emergency visits for things that should have been picked up much earlier [which didn’t because simple things cost a fortune for the uninsured]? I think it will reduce costs over time… And if there is a single-payer option, even better.
NJ is not a good example, because we are already half way to ACA in the first place. Also, unless you are single, healthy, and under 35, you are not the prime candidate to be phucked……
McDullard says:
November 10, 2013 at 2:23 pm
Chifi, I am looking at Obamacare coverage (still on Cobra, which ends in a couple of months). The gold plan with no deductible [but an HMO’ish] costs about 20% less than the Cobra plan [which is probably platinum++]. Of course, no subsidies, and more out of pocket costs per visit, and I cannot get a flexible spending plan [b@s**d staffing company keeps about 30k-40k per year for doing nothing and do not even offer an option to purchase health care, let alone a flex spending plan].
My extra cost will show up in the extra FICA-medicare tax, which will go into the pool of money that helps lower income people get subsidized insurance. Your extra medicare taxes will go to provide health care to people (instead of some needless war). Things aren’t that bad [and certainly not at the “wealth redistribution” scale you seem to indicate].
Mcdullard,
See my post from yesterday
If we remove the over 65 clause from the Medicare statute, that will do nothing to lower the price of anything. That’s where the discussion begins and ends, if you talk about coverage or anything else… its immaterial.
Not really sure what your point is other that reflexive pandering and idiocy #ad hominem; #Elite 140; #obstinate control freak
Fabius Maximus says:
November 10, 2013 at 1:02 pm
Chi Here is a little something to read while you whistle your fracking tune.
[1] spine,
A good day (not great, mackems took out City), punctuated by ManU and Van Persie denying the Gooners.
No worries for gluteus. He’s way ahead of the IRS right now.