THE MUFTIC FORUM

Winter Park, CO 80482
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feliciamuftic@mufticforum.com

SELECTED PAST BLOG POSTINGS

August 14, 2009: Control issues worry opponents of health insurance reform; opponents have some other ideas:

Listening to broadcasts of town hall meetings held by congressmen and the President and attending one held by Sen. Michael Bennet in Frisco Aug 14, I noticed opponents to health insurance reform had two underlying themes:

1)the issue of who is to control what kind of health care they will get if health care reform is passed 2) can’t we fix our broken system some other way than what the Democrats are proposing

Control is the key issue to those opposed to reform: There is deep seated distrust by many of government controlling what decisions are made. Aside from the wacko and extensively discredited claims that Obama wants to pull the plug on grandma or some death panel will ration care, there is legitimate unease among some that big brother will be dictating what care doctors deliver to patients.

Strange. Many seem to fear government making those decisions much more than they fear what their private insurers are doing to them already. Right now your private insurer tells doctors what kinds of drugs they can prescribe, approve or deny what procedures a doctor can perform, and can drop you from their plan if your illness becomes too expensive for them to cover.

To illustrate their points, some cite horror stories of Canadian waiting lines and

United Kingdom

coverage denials. Since proposals are coming out of Congress are none of those, those stories are irrelevant.

Canada

has one insurance plan: the government’s. That is called a single payer system. It sets rates and compensation.

does permit some competition of their government plan with private insurers, but most prefer the cheapness of government coverage regardless of complaints.

What Obama proposes is different: a public plan of some sort that is a part of a menu including private plans you can choose from. The public portion is very similar to Medicare and Veterans Administration plans. No one complains that either makes decisions that get between you and your doctor.

What is likely to be proposed by the Senate is a non-profit co-op plan, similar to my credit union or even Mountain Parks Electric, where the users/consumers choose the governance by voting on the directors. Ability to choose between a publicly funded plan and private plans would probably be included in a co-op. This would put the control of what is offered more in the hands of consumers.

What about other solutions? The Republicans have refused to come up with one, though some individual Senators and others have proposed some sketchy ideas with no promises to do anything if the Democrats’ proposals fail. One floating around would be $5 thousand dollar credit or voucher toward a $12 000 policy…an underinsurance policy with a virtual $7000 annual deductable, sending most covered by the plan to the ER for non major medical health care.

Another “sound good” panacea is tort reform. A reason given for the high cost of health care is that too many unnecessary tests are prescribed because doctors are trying to cover their tails in case they are sued. Some wild jury awards cause hefty malpractice insurance bills for hospitals and doctors. No one has defined tort reform. Does it mean banning your ability to sue in case of mal practice? Or would you be prohibited from suing for punitive damages? Obama has made it clear: tort reform will not be included because of its anti-consumer/ patient implications. He also proposes to reduce unnecessary tests by changing compensation based on results in treatment from the current system which pays providers for the number of tests and procedures.

What about allowing us to buy insurance in other states, thus providing competition to drive down premiums. A nice idea, but it ignores reality: nationwide there is already domination by a few insurers whose state affiliates dominate individual states. Proponents of cross state insurance purchase should be careful what they wish for. It would result in a loss of state control of insurance because a state insurance regulator like

Colorado

’s could not prosecute a company with headquarters in another state. Any control over unsound financial practices, inability to cover claims, and refusals by private insurers to live up to their contracts with patients would cease to exist.

None of these alternative ideas do much to reduce the cost of health insurance or provide health insurance for those who are currently uninsured. If health insurance reform is defeated, we will continue to pay as much as $1000 extra for our premiums a year to cover the uninsured who seek care in the emergency room. We will continue to pay private insurers at least an extra 13% for their inflated premiums to cover high salaries and commissions, advertising, lobbying, and excessive profits and the costs of our premiums will increase by 70% in the next few years.

Posted in order of date; most recent first. Beginning May 15, 2009, any blog postings regarding the economy, banking and bailouts will be found on the Economy, finance, Ted Muftic's insights page. The rest will be found here. You should also check James Frasche on Afghanistan for background blog postings on Afghanistan.

Posted by Ted Muftic on Memorial Day, May 25, 2009:.."strikes me that Cheney, in trying to protect this country, put us closer at any time to the kind of authoritarian government that so many americans have fought and died to defeat. Is this the kind of America we want our kids and grandkids to inherit? An America that is corrupt to its core and, like many corrupt societies before it where law and power are selectively applied for the benefit of a few, rotten and ready for demise... Shame on him..shame, that in his personal fears and paranoia, he would ruin us and our country. And shame on all our institutions both public and private, that we would allow him to get away with it."

Pelosi: voodoo doll, GOP squidjuice, and Jesse Ventura on torture

Posted by themufticforum at 5/15/2009 10:19 AM MDT on skyhidailynews.com

Nancy Pelosi: and the voodoo doll strategy
In the voodoo culture, one way to try to kill your enemy without ever actually doing it is to stick pins in a doll representing the person you would like to eliminate. The popularity of the President is so overwhelming that the GOP is having a hard time with any frontal attacks. Instead Pelosi has become the stand in voodoo doll for Obama. If the GOP can destroy her "credibility" and ability to lead House dems, they have weakened the leadership of the Democrats and their ability to get Obama's agenda passed. Actually, since Obama has been sworn in, the attacks on Pelosi personally and politically by the GOP have been relentless
This has an upside for the Democrats and a downside, as well. The upside is that Obama appears as the good cop and Pelosi becomes the bad cop. It takes the pressure off of Obama, he appears to be the moderate and the good guy, and Pelosi is the barracuda with lipstick pushing through a liberal agenda. Obama owes Pelosi one. (or two or three or more).

The downside is squidjuice: the waters are so muddied, you probably forgot that the GOP has no alternative to health care reform, to consumer ire over credit cards, to any other problem that is on the top burner of voter's daily life concerns. I'll bet you even forgot that the Republicans controlled the White House and Congress during the decisions made about torture and while Pelosi was a ranking member, she was not the one calling the shots. She was also sworn not to reveal any discussions that went on in the committee, including what the CIA told her or did not tell her, and she has only broken that silence because of the GOP attacks made, with others disclosing confidential testimony first.

The best comment on waterboarding as torture (which it appears the purpose was to get captured Iraqi's to admit to a non extistent relationship with Al Qaeda; not to save us from an attack) was made by former Governor and world class wrestler Jesse Ventura(I think on CNN, but repeated on MSNBC this AM) "Give me Dick Cheney and a waterboard for two hours and I will have him confess to the Sharon Tate murder".

If non conforming GOPers are RINOS, are non conforming Dems DINO's?
Posted by themufticforum at 5/15/2009 7:29 AM MDT on skyhidailynews.com

If Republicans who do not conform on every conservative litmus tests are RINOs (Republicans in name only)as Columnist William Hamilton calls them (social liberals and those who voted for the stimulus), does that make Democrats DINOs who support Obama's shift to the right on Iraq, Afghanistan, torture pictures, and tribunals, or who are pro life, pro 2nd amendment? Obviously, the Democrats are smarter than that: they do tolerate diversity of opinions on many issues; thus they won the last elections..and won't go the way of the Dinosaur any time soon. Republicans keep shrinking their base to only those that pass their narrow litmus tests. That is the major difference between the two parties: one drums out the non conformers; the other tolerates them better. However, the Democrats have got to be careful not to get into conformity wars and the liberal pressure groups need to temper their attacks on Obama.

The following is a copy of an earlier blog I posted because it is so relevant to the the above paragraph I wrote today.
I am constantly amused by those from the far right consider anyone slightly left of center a socialist or extremely left; I do not think they would recognize the center if they saw it. It is even funnier when a writer claims that our freedoms and rights are best protected by the conservatives. Never have our rights been trounced on more that illegal wiretaps of its own citizens by the Bush administration. Short of the illegal rights infringements, the spoken attitude was that every criticism of the war in Iraq was met by the right as "unAmerican". Our failure to apply even international standards of rights has harmed us in the eyes of the world. We conducted torture, and did not extend Geneva convention rights to our captives. I wrote a column about that earlier which said in effect that those on the right have no idea what socialism or communism is about and that our family had experienced them all. The worst characteristic of communism is the denial of our basic rights and that is what we need to fear so much in this country. What is ironic above all is the right wing infringement on our rights whenever it suits their paranoic goals or when they can rationalize it by drumming of fear.
The defection of Sen. Arlan Specter to the Democrats and the Democrats trying to bump him to the ranks of a junior Senator, claiming that he will not be a "loyal Democrat" and Rush Limbaugh taking it on himself to purge Gen. Colin Powell, or any other socially liberal Republican from the Republican ranks is another example of how polarized we have become. In the view of both the extreme left and the extreme right, anyone in the middle is a heretic. Neither understand what a moderate is or even the center. I have even had bloggers tell me that the middle is dangerous because they can be the dupes of the communists. When you are on the far right, anyone to the left is a dangerous socialist; when you are on the far right, fiscal conservatives, social liberals are suspect. Loose canons and independent thinkers do not need to apply to either party. The peril is that the middle gave Obama his victory; and their registration did not go to the Democrats, either. To ignore the middle will be the death of either party.
Felicia

Geithner plan on stress test=fingers crossed

Posted by themufticforum at 5/4/2009 6:02 AM MDT on skyhidailynews.com

The stress test has gone public. The banks are going to have to raise $75 billion from investors in the next month or more bailout money will be needed help them reach that goal. There is adequate money left over from the $400 billion approved and allocated last October to do this, so no banks of the 19 will fail. What was interesting to me was the meaning of the stress test. Current viability and assets marked to current value on the market were not the standard. It was...could they survive another economic downturn...higher unemployment, another market crash worse than now., and a decline in asset value..so the standards were based on worse case scenarios, not current viability or playing games with asset valuation.. The plan was leaked out slowly over the past week and the following is how it seemed to be unfolding before the evening of May 7, when the report was released. The exercise can be claimed a success if capital flows from investors into the banks to keep government loans to the minimum, if banks start lending again, and potential busines and consumer borrowers can qualify or have enough confidence in the future to even apply for a loan.

So I asked son Ted (Harvard MBA and chief investment officer for a private equity group) what he thought about the stress test. After all, one of our local bank branches figured prominently in the findings, Wells Fargo. After reassuring me that he thought Wells Fargo would be oK, here are his comments: "This is exactly the banks’ strategy. Right now the yield curve is very steep. i.e. short term rates are much lower than long term rates. Even for their best credit worthy customers, the bank are lending at rates that are substantially higher than where they can borrow due to Gov’t subsidized low ‘borrowing” rates. So they are generating healthy profits that then flow to good earnings and to their capital base. They then are playing as if time is on their side. Not selling bad assets, keeping their marks unreasonably high, not facing up to the hole in their balance sheets and not helping the economy to grow. As a result the economy will grow at lower than potential, the holes will only grow bigger and the “deniability” game will grow worse and worse. Then..when low rates go back up (which the Fed will have to do if inflation picks up)…guess what…the hole gets exposed again leading to another financial panic – maybe in two to three years or so… A flat or inverted yield curve will kill them again (like it did to the S&Ls in the late 80s)….

More of the same head/sand/chicken etc."

Ted would like you to take a look at the thoughts of Dr. Doom as expressed on CNBC. The gist is that the stress test should make obvious which banks are in relatively bad shape and that they probably should be allowed to fail.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/30625247/site/14081545
Comments just prior to release of the stress test:

Ted Muftic believes there is some smoke and mirrors in the Geithner plan to address stressed banks and he refers you to the following web site and article:

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/240605/Geithner's-New-Bank-Fix-Is-Bogus-Too?tickers=xlf,c,bac,dji,spy?
,
Some problems I see are that no one is buying the banks toxic assets in spite of the pot sweetening the feds offered through TALF. There is plenty of capital waiting on the sidelines for the economy to improve, but there is still so much uncertainty, that is not yet flowing into the banks so that the banks are still not lending. In short, the credit markets have not been unfrozen and banks are still in zombie form. What the stress test release this Thursday will show is yet to be seen. The impact may be more psychological than real; that in itself may have value. We will just have to wait and see. The banks have got to get healthy before the economy improves so that this is really an important hump that has to be gotten over or else the recovery will be severely stunted. Keep your fingers crossed. The only cheery assessment was made last night in a CNN interview with the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, who thinks Obama is on the right track to revive the economy. Felicia
Additional comments: 5/7/09...What it looks like to me and to Ted is that one of the reasons banks have not lent money and the credit markets have been frozen is that the bankers have been waiting to see just how much money they will get from the fed bailout pot.They wanted their balance sheets to look as spiffy as they could. Shame on them. They have been gaming the system. Another issue is that the toxic asst program which  where the Feds guarantee the toxic assets to attract the private sector investors. Instead, until the release of the stress test based bailout, they were just keeping those toxic assets on their books. If all of this is true, the details of the stress test release to the public and the amount of bailout money banks receive will have more than a psychological impact...it may get the banks to risse from their zombie coffins and start doing what banks ought to be doing...i.e. loaning money, collecting interest and fees, and increasing their capital infusion from investors on their own steam(the capital infusion pump primer will be the bailout TARP funds).
What came as a surprise to both Ted and me was that Wells Fargo (whose bank branch is prominent in Winter Park) was one of the three banks needing a bailout. Perhaps the purchase of Wachovia with all of their toxic mortgage assets contributed to this need...because otherwise Wells Fargo has appeared to be one of the more healthy.
Their stock rose this week, anyway, perhaps because the bailout might help them recover from the toxic shock of Wachovia....and perhaps Warren Buffett gave them his vote of confidence this week.
   The balance sheet game is really a game since the mark to market rules were relaxed and now banks could claim that the assets they held could be valued at whatever they thought they could be sold for in the future instead of what they could be sold for now in a down economy.
    It could be, too, that the health of a bank like Wells Fargo is not based on today's health, but could be a generous amount they need to have in reserve in case the economy tanks again.
     What also is very important is the ability for banks receiving TARP to pay the feds (and taxpayers) back. Tarp funds are not grants; they are loans. Tarp fund are meant to be paid back. A bankrupt bank cannot pay back their loans to the treasury and our national debt would take a hit if they couldn't. We'll (taxpayers; federal treasury) probably never get all of the funds back; we may rake in their interest payments. The healthier condition we get the banks in shape, the more likely we will get paid back in a bigger amount.
I've asked Ted for his reaction to the stress test release. He will have a critical take on it, no doubt.   Felicia

ARE YOU ONE OF THE 47 MILLION WITHOUT HEALTH INSURANCE AND DID YOU CHOOSE TO GO WITHOUT INSURANCE OR DID IT COST TOO MUCH?

May 4, 2009: With 47 million without any health insurance in the US and another 20 million underinsured, do you really think that 67 million choose to be uninsured or underinsured, as William Hamiliton posits in an April 30 column? "Most of the 40 million uninsured are younger people who choose not to buy health insurance"If you could afford it, and you have no health insurance, would you want to pay for health insurance? According to the University of Colorado dean of the Health Sciences Center, Dr. Joel Levine, who spoke to the International Leadership Council yesterday in Denver, only those working in a large group are insured these days. Of the rest, only 12% can afford individual insurance which ranges for a family from $1000 per month to $1600 per month. Most small businesses nowadays cannot afford to provide insurance. By the year 2017, the cost of health insurance if a person were to pay for it individually, it would take 41% of the take home pay.

The chance of premature death doubles if you are uninsured. Of the major markers in the health of the industrialized nations we are the worst in nearly every category except for the age group of 80 to 90 years old. Yet we spend a greater percentage, of gross domestic product than any of those countries by a long shot: The US spends 17% of GDP on health care which is 30% more than the nearest expensive country, Switzerland. France spends 8.98%. We spend 25% more on administrative costs than the other countries as well.

No one anywhere is happy with their health insurance, but the Canadian system has something no one else in any country has: it forbids any private outside insurance; you cannot go out and buy a medigap or coverage to supplement the government single payer insurance...to cover heroic medicine or more experimental medicine and treatment.

From what I have seen so far, the Obama marching orders are fairly vague and will be coming from the special commission he set up...but choice, ability to keep your own private insurance if you want...are some of the citeria he spoke about in the campaign and in his comissioning the group coming up with the proposal. In the campaign, he also said that everyone should have access to the same kind of medical plan Congress has. The other bottom line: there must be some element of government participation.

Before we jump to conclusions, let us see what comes out of the Commission. Felicia

Posted by Tanya Muftic Streicher, April 26, 2009: Ignorance of Communism and fear

"I remember being held at the East Berlin checkpoint for 3 hours while my fellow American students waited for me to be searched and interrogated. My crime? I had an address book of relatives and friends in various European countries. I spoke flawless German and Croatian. I had a list of Russian titled books I wanted to purchase for my brother. That was communism in Eastern Germany in 1983. I was let go and had a STAZI agent who followed my every move while I tried to take in all that East Berlin had to offer.

The closest we have ever come to that in the US was under the Bush presidency and previously during the McCarthy period. Our greatest threat to US democracy isour homegrown ignorance. Most Americans do not have a clue what Communism entails. Once again, it is a lack of intellectual thought which has promoted a culture of fear in this country."

John McCain, Missing in Action

Posted by themufticforum at 4/21/2009 3:04 AM MDT on skyhidailynews.com

There were a few policy issues John McCain and Barack Obama agreed upon in the 2008 campaign. One was that the US should stop torture and close Gitmo. McCain's reasoning: he went through torture and if we do it, our enemies will do it to our prisoners. What happened to that argument? McCain is no profile in courage as he failed to follow through with his convictions in the fallout from Obama's decision.

We are still waiting to hear what information torture extracted from high value captives. Cheney claims he has the information and one can assume Obama has the same access to that information. I do not understand why this infornation has not been shared with the public or at least with the Senate Intelligence Committee.Some details were included in what was shared with the public already and what was disclosed were not specific enough to be helpful in saving thousands of lives, as Cheney contends. Conclusion: the fruits of interrogation by torture must have been underwhelming or at least not helpful enough to offset the moral and propaganda factors also contributing to Obama's decision. Someday we may have more clarity regarding this, as President Obama commented today. He has not precluded prosecution of those who ordered or wrote the legal memos justifying torture nor has the Senate determined how far they will take their hearings and investigations. Obama has taken prosecution off the table for those who tortured prisoners, but who did it after seeking approval from the higher ups. Cheney could be one of the higher ups. In any case, I do look at Cheney's claims with a sceptical view since he seems to be trying to justify a foreign policy he influenced and that is under intense criticism at this time.

What this does show is that the US is lacking in human intel and judgment. It was not the lack of the use of torture that failed us in stopping the 9/11 perps. It was failure to take warnings from our own FBI underlings who spotted the suspicious pilot training going on.This was a inexcuseable: The World Trade Center had already been a target once before and it was well known that Al Qaeda operatives were trying to hijack airplanes in Asia. We virtually had no Arab speakers then in our intelligence services or infiltration of terrorist organizations. Hopefully all of that has changed and the change has accounted for the fact we have not been attacked. To rest the claim that the Bush policies were a success on the fact we used torture ignores many of the other measures the Bush administration took at the same time, and for which they deserve credit.

Whether more is to be gained by taking the moral highground or by keeping the dirty secret that we do torture is a false argument. That we did torture and how we do it was no secret at all. Books have been written on it. So who are we kidding.

The second part of the issue is forebearing torture in the future. If it proved to be a marginal tool to get information from our enemies, are we loosing that much of an effective tool? There are other psychological techniques one can use in interrogating prisoners that do not fall into the definition of torture and we should use them....the next time we ever happen on a high value member of Al Qaeda.

Editor's note: Finally, McCain released a statement coming out against prosecuting anyone in the Bush administration and wanting to move forward looking to the future 4/22/09.
I frankly have gone back and forth on the issue several times. I think that those who think water boarding is not torture are wrong. My understanding is that the US has prosecuted those who undertook such torture at Nuremberg and that the US does not observe the Geneva Convention. All of this, including waterboarding, is wrong, wrong, wrong.

My initial reaction was to call for a special prosecutor.
I have given that a second thought because it sets a dangerous precedent to prosecute someone for wrong doing for what they did in the prior adminstration and that the venom spewed in DC would be harmful for Obama in pursuing his agenda to rescue our economy because of the distraction it would cause. Since Republicans have chosen to stone wall everything Obama has done, it would be no more loss than it has been vote wise...so reaching across the aisle is not a factor either. It would just be loud and distracting from more immediately needed legislation.
So far as conducting foreign policy needed to win hearts and minds of the Arab world is concerned, it was sufficiently helpful to disavow torture in the future. However, I am not in favor of letting the decision makers off the hook entirely because sometime in the future in another administration someone will look back and see that there were no repercussions for conducting torture.
I think the best way to proceed is a commission with subpoena powers and to give immunity from criminal prosecution to all of the testifiers...with the thought of finding out what needs to be done in the future, including legislation. There should be sworn testimony and no immunity should be given for those testifying in the commission hearings who tell lies or are in contempt. The public exposure should provide enough political embarrassment to deter future perpetrators. The idea is to get the truth and nothing but the turth. I do think immoral is immoral regardless of the fruits of acting immorally and the ends do not justify the means...so that release of the entire documentation, that Cheney asks, is irrelevant. However, for historians, the release might be interesting and that should be part of the commission's work, if only for historical references, and to understand how such decisions were made. The point made above is that there are other ways to extract information during interrogation short of torture that can and should be utilized. Felicia

Felicia

Posted April 20, 2009.I am listening to the nostalgia of the advocates of the neo con days when Bush II's initial foreign policy approach "to offer a humble foreign policy" was over ruled by his neo con macho bully advisors. Here is where nastiness got us: Venezuela (one of our most important sources of oil) elected...yes, elected...Hugo Chavez...who envisions himself as a Castro successor. Colombia, who used to be our friend, became a close ally of Venezuela. Years of trying to oust Daniel Ortega resulted to his return to power in Nicaragua. Chile has a socialist goverrnment Brazil's president, with tongue in cheek, recently claimed blue eyed blonds of Wall Street were at fault for the world economic crisis. All rose to power on the backs of anti US sentiment of their own people. Like US relations around the world, it is difficult for leaders to stand on a platform of anti Americanism when the American is viewed as a good guy. Obama, once again, by virtue of his persona, is reaching out to the street. In the Chavez handshake, however, Obama did not initiate the contact. Chavez did. however, Chavez must have had a pretty good idea that Obama would be gracious to his advancement.

Are we conveying weakness? Good grief. Did we give up any thing of US power, military might, economic give aways with a smile? I have a belief that graciousness and confidence are a sign of power, not a sign of weakness. It is a way of saying you do not scare me. Why empower Ortega, a tin pot dictator of a banana republic, Maybe Obama should have figurtively taken off his shoe and banged it on the table like churlish Soviet leadeas and claim the US never did try to dominate Latin America economically or politically and that lecture them that they should honor human rights as we did in Gtmo and Abu Graib. Only those who are secure can look their opponent in the face and smile. That may be my Southern upbringing talking, where you can smile at someone you do not like, and slip a knife in the back later. A smile, a handshake, grace are viewed as a sign of strength there, not a sign of weakness.

How short our memories are: Nixon going to China, meeting with the Soviet and Russian leaders were never viewed as a sign of US weakness by anyone. Come, come.

Obama is closer to the Teddy Roosevelt model of foreign affairs...speak softly,, but carry a big stick. So far, Obama has shown no reluctance to carry a big stick. He is upping our military commitment to Afghanistan, reshaping the military to be able to fight Iraq and Afghanistan types of urban guerilla warfare, increasing the military budget by 4% and shown a willingness to order deadly force as the Somali pirate rescue illustrated.

I admit I am conditioned by Balkan history. The old, time honored tradition is once you have an enemy, keep them an enemy for the next 500 years. That got them World War I, a simultaneous civil war during World War II resulting in a Communist government, and the Balkan wars of the 1990's, setting each fracture country left over at least a decade behind in economic development, if not more. Then, following that historic model for how not to conduct foreign affairs, nothing ever happens to change course because each party refuses to budge or try to break the ice. It just isn't macho enough, right? Besides, Obama said he would talk with our enemies. The majority voted for that approach and so it is. Felicia

Has the Grand County economy bottomed yet?

Posted by themufticforum at 4/16/2009 6:46 AM MDT on skyhidailynews.com

Has the Grand County economy reached the bottom? I have been collecting data for the past couple of months. We really do not know. There are no economists doing studies of Grand County. The best we can do is just ask around and collect information reported in the Sky Hi Daily News and from other sources.
Some restaurants are feeling the downturn more than others; some closed their doors before the season ended. Yet new up scale restaurants in Granby and Tabernash are doing well, drawing both locals and new second home owners. I noticed those who have built up a loyal local following over the past couple of years are weathering the storm better than others. Price range plays a major role with the locals, too. Those who have kept their prices at last year's levels have done better than those who hiked prices to compensate with the loss of traffic.
Gary DeFrange, CEO of Winter Park Resort, in a presentation before the Winter Park/Fraser Valley Rotary Club last week, said they did not feel a downturn until March...and that the snow conditions tended to be a big factor throughout the season. Late December snows brought skiiers out in droves. Warm weather in Denver had the opposite effect. However, with an eye to the economic projections over the next year, Winter Park has scaled back or put on hold many real estate projects and some slope improvement and amenity
projects.

Winter Park's operating company is Intrawest. Printed in the Sky Hi Daily News was an interview of the CEO of Intrawest. Bill Jensen (April 15, 2009). Bill Jensen charaterized Intrawest as being in a survival mode after skiier visits droped dramatically after President's Day throughout the resorts they own, including Copper andWinter Park, though "both performed well given current economic conditions". Intrawest's schtick is to vertically integrate commercial, ski slopes, and realestate into one investment package. In fact, real estate sales and development is the core, with the ski slopes being the marketing draw...much like developments around golf courses. In an email to Felicia Muftic, Gary Defrange emphasized that Winter Park is holding off on real estate projects, "not because we do not have the money, but because the market demand is not there at this time.It would be foolish to build at time when we do not think we an sell the units."
Fortress Investment Group, a hedge fund/private equity firm, owns all of the stock in Intrawest, Winter Park's operating company.Fortress has fallen on hard times because of the financial sector downturns.. Fortress did manage to avoid going under in October when it secured refinancing at the nth hour, according the the April 15 article, but it got hit again when it lost $125 in a Ponzi scheme. It is unclear at this time what the impact of Fortress going under would have on Winter Park.

    The health of Winter Park is very important to Grand County, with 60 of our economy one way or the other tied to the ski area, and it is our economic engine. There are many in the county who like to take pot shots at Winter Park, but the realpolitik of it, so much of our economic well being depends upon the health of Winter Park.

    Local realtors tell me that homes have lost 20% in value in the last year county wide. Grand Lake property is closer to 26%; Granby, 20%; 7% in Winter Park. We really will not have a handle on this until this summer, when most sales take place. According to a recent article in the Sky Hi Daily news, "with 173 foreclosures in 2008 and a growing list of 43 in 2009, Grand County is seeing record levels". National studies show that one foreclosure in a neighborhood lowers property values of the neighborhood by 9%.
    Locals cannot just snort that those foreclosures are mostly in second homes because loss of value impacts the entire health of the residential market, whether occupied by locals or part timers. 60% of residential property in Grand County have second home owners and the rest of the 40% owned by locals gets dragged down, too. This newspaper also reported that 60% of the jobs in Grand County depend on the second home market so that the impact of second home losses hurt us all.
    Also, so much of our second home market is dependent upon the front range economic health. We are not an island in the sky. Colorado has not been hit as hard as many other states, but nonetheless nearly 204,800 of our civilian workforce is unemployed, the worse since 1967. ..and forecasts it will get worse.The old timers here do remember what the 1988 recession and the savings and loan debacle did to a building boom. It went bust and it took over 10 years for Grand County to start another building boom. After all, the second home market here is a luxury market and those who fear layoffs are not inclined to buy a second home; instead they are more likely to save for the rainy day. In fact, nationwide, personal savings rate have risen from nearly 0 to 4% in the past year.The real downer will come later this spring when we compare the number of building permits issued with last year's data.
   Whether the stimulus will filter down to Grand County is yet to be seen. Applications are pending, but we are small fish, compared to urban areas. However, stimulus to the front range economy may eventually be felt in our second home market.
   The good news is that local community and commercial banks seem to be surviving and that our nationally affiliated branches belong to the more sound big banks. The other good news is that much of our work force is seasonal and often imported, so that permanent resident unemployment has been about 1 to 2% less than the front range. I have had business interests and part and full time residency in Grand County since 1967. I have seen the area boom and deflate and boom again several times. People hunker down in the tough times and complain that there is too much growth too fast in the good times. So it is now and so it will be in the future.
      What may help locals the most is the ability to refinance at the lower rates which are ranging between 4 and 5%.  This could result in some significant savings and are part of the Obama stimulus plans. Consult your mortgage company or go to www.makinghomeaffordable.gov to see if you qualify for any special relief. Second home owners will not qualify for government programs, nor will those who are extremely upside down on their mortgages, but if you are a little bit upsidedown (value of the home is less than the mortgage)....you may. Felicia

COMPETITION IN HEALTH CARE

posted 4/8/09

I read a letter to the editor entitled, "Obama ignores reality of competition in health care" and said that there was no need for expensive Obama government health insurance since free medical care was available at Walgreens and everyone could rely on catastrophic health insurance to make up the difference.
I am a breast cancer survivor who fortunately had a decent health plan provided by my employer. None of those "competing" services such as Walgreens provide mammograms which would cost me $300 every year if I did not have insurance. My total bill for life saving treatment, including surgery, radiation, and chemo was somewhere around $250,000.  The deductible I am still paying for was $20,000. With an income of $30,000 a year as a restaurant manager, you can imagine how long I will be paying for this. My husband, a mechanic, was laid off in September and only recently began earning income again. I can imagine what hardships those who have to rely on catastrophic insurance (if they could afford it) would have if they had more than a sore throat or a runny nose or if some tests came back requiring them to go to their own family doctor. I do not think that writer lives in the real world. "by Mariana Muftic Kindig
     Editor's note: 800,000 of Colorado citizens do not have health insurance of any kind. A recent poll showed that 40% of Americans put off seeking needed health care because of costs. The main cause of bankruptcy in the US is inability to pay health care bills. 7.5% of Colorado's civilian work force is unemployed with no income or employer provided health insurance. Mariana is one of the lucky ones. She is also lucky she has a job with benefits, even though she is underinsured.
     A single payer, State of Colorado benefits administration proposal is currently going through the Colorado legislature. It is expected that Gov. Ritter will not sign it. However, it does contain some elements that may be a prototype for others, including the provision of choice and the ultimiate administration by the private sector. Go to
www.healthcareforallcolorado.org for a summary of the legislation.
     Additional comments by Felicia Muftic follow:
     Obama is not ignoring competition at all. He is harnassing it. The proposal will not be finalized by the commission working on it until late summer, but there are some clues of what will be acceptable to him. He wants the government to offer a plan that is similar to what Congress has (as he stated during the campaign). However, it would be only one plan among many others offered by private sector providers. By doing that, implied is competition with the private sector and resulting in, theory goes, in lower rates. Another issue is that the insurance should be the biggest pool possible, since the more people participating in it spreads risk and would lower premiums. Required of all would probably be an actuarial table based on the entire population instead of skimming the cream of crop of low risk people, as some plans do when they exclude pre-existing provisions. Devil will be in the details because the current federal programs do not pay providers full cost of the service, which would be unfair competition, opponents worry. On the other hand, the point is to force providers to lower premiums and force health care cost reductions. It is not the purpose to cater to current high costs and maintain them. It is also not known to what extent some of these public or private plans wil lbe major medical instead of comprehensive. Most likely all plans will be required to provide preventive medicine, check ups, mammograms, PSA and other blood test screenings since
early detection is one of the greatest cost savings measures one could take. There also must be caution to low ball payments to providers requiring them to hike fees for services to others. A big advantage, though, is that it would reduce cost shifting which has been happening because the uninsured are using the extremely expensive emergency rooms as their urgent care solutions. There are, by the way, no Walgreens in Grand County and only 3
3 with walk in clinics (staffed by Nurse Practitioners) in the Denver area. Their services are not free, either...costing up to $70. In any case, the Obama has been emphasizing "affordable" health care, not free health care, so that free health care is not on the agenda.should not
be on the discussion agenda.
     One huge advantage is to take the cost of providing health care off the shoulders of business. That in itself should help the economy. Health care adds $2500 to every car GM produces which makes competition with imports nearly impossible.

From Eileen Waldow, a Grand County resident, posted on July 10, 2009

I know it is tempting to give up but if the Suffragettes had given up, we women won't be voting and if the people in the Civil Rights Movement had given up, the racial situation would be worse.

Yesterday another 350 experienced lobbyists started to work against Health Care Reform with an extra $1.4million/day budget!! That is money that is taken from the profit they make from our supposed health care.  And we are paying to have them fight us. Even if you don't have insurance, you are paying more with taxes or payments for teachers, local and national government workers, utility workers and some grocery employees because for-profit insurance costs 25% more. Lobbyists are in our representatives faces every day so we have to balance that.   Even if you emailed, called or faxed last week, make another point or tell another story today. I have gotten 2 emails from difference organizations today that they are trying to flood the phone lines today and tomorrow to make an impact. The number they gave was 866-210-3678. There are other methods listed below.

Some things that I have learned recently to counter the "testimony" from the other side:

The long waits: The chances of getting a same day appointment in France is 42%, the Netherlands is 60% while the US is 26%. ER waits >2 hours in the Netherlands is 9% while in the US, it is 31%.

Innovative medicine:  most of the new instruments are from Germany and the new medications are from Switzerland.   Funding for research at NIH is being cut severely.

Aetna found it worth their investment to implement a $20million program to search out 8 million people they wanted to cut from their coverage. Wall Street thought this was great.

At least 25% of insurance policies are cancelled within a year of a debilitating disease.

Best health system in the world: 50 people a day die for the lack of health care. And that is a very conservative number. What happened to "LIFE, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness"?

Numbers and info:

White House:   http://Whitehouse.gov
             comment line 202-456-1111 or 202-456-1414   9AM-5PM Eastern time.

Senate:   http://senate.gov     A toll free number for MarkUdall is 877-768-3255.
House: http://www.house.gov
   Here you put in your zip code and it gives you your congresspersons names and you can go to webpages to email.

For more information, i.e., fax numbers and phone numbers or information on congresspeople other than your own:    http://votesmart.org

Senator Bernie Sanders wants stories: http://sanders.senate.gov

If you want to see what our decision makers have received as campaign contributions from Health Care Industry, go to   http://opensecrets.org
GINGRICH DROPS A BOMB

Posted by themufticforum at

4/7/2009 7:48 AM MDT on skyhidailynews.com

Newt Gingrich seems to be trying to grab the GOP reins from Rush Limbaugh by making some dramatic pronouncements that position him in the extreme right flank of American thought.
He advocated that the US should have been responding to the North Korean missile launch by shooting it down. Yes, indeedy, the neo con foreign policy is alive and well: Shoot first and destroy the possibility of taking other actions such as economic sanctions to punish the North Koreans. Talk about irresponsibility. The Bush foreign policy had one significant success: it set up the six party talks that resulted in North Korea's backing down on their nuclear development. It was successful because it involved China. China is critical to any economic tactics since it controls access to North

Korea and its energy and trading supplies. The US does not have any leverage. Our shooting down the missile without first consulting the six parties would have undermined the six party srategy and probably would have ended the only weapon we had short of war: China's cooperation.

Furthermore we are dealing with a rogue, mad state who could have used that provocation as an excuse to invade South Korea, with its major population centers 50 miles south of the the DMZ. Gingrich may be a loose cannon, but North Korea is even looser.

The North Koreans did achieve one objective in launching their failed rocket. They drove a wedge into unified support of US foreign policy and diverted some attention from Obama's triumphant European tour. Gingrich just played into their hands.
by Felicia Muftic

HOW FISCAL HAWKS ARE WRONG

(Fiscal Hawks claim Obama's plans are based on a 4% growth projection, which they say is unrealistic. Dr. Romer sets them straight.) Posted 4/8/09

Dr. Christina Romer, the president's

economic advisor appearing on MSNBC this AM, says that "the projected annual growth Obama administration bases ther size of debt projected ten yars from now is not 4% every year for the next 10 years as fiscal hawks claim, but for only a small part of that time".
So what? More boring economics? No. The fiscal hawks have tried to beat down the Obama economic plans by claiming that their projection of the ratio of debt to GDP is based on unrealistic growth projections of 4% every year so therefore our deficits will be a mountain of debt in 10 years. They are wrong...the Obama projections are not a steady annual 4% growth but a spike of 4% for a few years as the economy recovers followed by a realistic 2.5%. The end result might be a small hill of debt of 5 to 6% of the GDP, instead of a mountain. The key is the GDP number. The more it grows (i.e. the economy grows) the less the percentage of debt as a ratio to the GDP. GDP is the measure of the size of the economy: the total of all of the nation's production....gross domestic product. While the ratio of debt to GDP ideally should be 3%, it will be more like 5 to 6%, which, as Ted Muftic said in prior blogs "will not kill us". Projecting 10 years out is so problematic that it is not to be taken as the gospel, anyway. When you hear the shrill and hysterical cries of "Obama is driving us into a mountain of debt or a sea of red", take it with a grain of salt and be knowledgeable,
My definition of fiscal hawks: Those who put the goal of debt reduction above every other consideration. This includes those who oppose current stimulus spending to get growth going in thre short term and social spending over the long term. Not important to them are goals to resolve problems such as health care, education reform and environmental initiatives. By Felicia

COMMENTS AS RESPONSE TO COMMENTS THAT THE BLAME FOR UNEMPLOYMENT GOES TO OBAMA AND DEMOCRATS BEFORE

4/12/09 Posting

There is plenty of blame to go around for the mess...but to put the blame solely on Dodd and Frank ...and to blame Obama for the loss of jobs is most debatable and really unique, especially since Obama has been in office less than 100 days. Your failure to include the 8 years the White House was controlled by Republicans and the 6 years they controlled Congress must be due to a casse of amnesia. The GDP under Bush was built on the house of cards of debt...it was great so long as folks were borrowing and banks were lending with no regard to good sense. The following is per my Harvard MBA son (a Republican) and it appeared in a column a few weeks ago: The current lack of capital and credit in the market is a cruel reality, but it pre-dates the current administration and has its roots in the near total collapse of the financial system in the Crash of 2008 – the aftershocks of which continue to reverberate throughout the economy even today.

. Before the Crash, easy and plentiful credit fueled a boom in almost all asset classes following 9/11. The vast majority of Wall Street executives, hedge fund managers, mortgage bankers, homeowners and speculators all took advantage of this climate to place increasingly risky bets that, for all intents and purposes, were one way in nature that asset values would go up indefinitely. On top of that, the pay and incentive structures were designed essentially for massive short term rewards which only seemed to grow year after year. And finally there was little if any regulatory scrutiny. In one amazing case, there was actually regulatory complicity when the SEC changed its rules to allow investment banks (like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers) to increase the leverage on their balance sheets to an amazing 30:1., i.e. only three cents of equity supporting nearly one dollar in assets!

It did not take much of a downturn in asset values for this entire system to come un-glued.

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