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Posted by Andrew Branca on February 06, 2014 5 Comments
The Florida "loud music" murder trial begins at Noon today. As you'll recall, 47-year-old Michael Dunn is charged with 1st degree murder (FL Statute 782.04) in the shooting death of 17-year-old Jordan Davis, and the attempted murder of three of Davis' companions, all of whom were also struck by bullets.  Dunn claims that he fired in self-defense.  The State argues that Dunn killed only because he objected to the youths' loud music. State Attorney Angela Corey (pictured above) will be leading the prosecution in the court room, along with Assistant State Attorney John Guy.  The defense counsel is Attorney Cory Strolla. [caption id="attachment_77831" align="alignnone" width="450"]Attorney Michael Dunn, speaking to defendant Michael Dunn in "loud music" murder trial (Attorney Cory Strolla, speaking to defendant Michael Dunn)[/caption] The jury selection process was completed yesterday, with 16 jurors empaneled.  Although no video or audio was broadcast during voir dire (in sharp contrast to the Zimmerman trial), thanks to the excellent on-location work of journalist Stephanie Brown of WOKV, we enjoy some understand of the jurors' profiles and possible perspectives. Juror J7 Juror J10 Juror J12

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Posted by Mandy Nagy on February 06, 2014 7 Comments

An early morning report from Reuters on Thursday indicated that Ukraine’s parliament has agreed to try and work on a joint bill on constitutional amendments. The parties in Ukraine's deadlocked parliament agreed on Thursday to try to draft a joint bill on constitutional amendments that could...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on February 05, 2014 25 Comments
Former American Idol star Clay Aiken has officially announced his bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in the second district of North Carolina. The seat is currently held by Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers.  (Some may remember the videotaped message that Ellmers made in 2010 for readers of Legal Insurrection). In a video posted at his campaign website, Aiken talks about his background outside of just American Idol.  He recounts his personal story of childhood affected by domestic violence, and discusses his time teaching special education students, then going on to work with groups like UNICEF. Aiken claims he realized that people will need to work together to solve our problems. "I'm a Democrat," Aiken said on the video.  "But it was when I was appointed by President Bush to serve on a special presidential commission to address the educational challenges of children with special needs. That was when I first realized that our problems won't be solved by only one party or the other. But instead, it's going to require all of us." And then, Aiken promptly took aim at Ellmers.

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Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 05, 2014 11 Comments
Yesterday we covered the CBO Report on loss of labor provided by workers as a result of Obamacare subsidies,  CBO confirms Obamacare subsidies create disincentive to work harder. It's all about how the implicit marginal tax rate -- taxes plus loss of benefits -- creates a disincentive to work hard because for each dollar you earn, you lose a huge percentage, sometimes more than 100%, of that earned dollar through higher taxes and loss of government benefits. It is economically rational, in this circumstance, not to work harder.  It has nothing to do with laziness, but with government creating an incentive not to work. Here's the testimony today from Doug Elmendorf, head of the Congressional Budget Office, via National Review:
“By providing heavily subsidized health insurance to people with very low income, and then withdrawing those subsidies as income rises, the act creates a disincentive for people to work relative to what would have been the case in the absence of that act,” Douglas Elmendorf told the House Budget Committee on Wednesday. “By providing a subsidy, these people are better off, but they do have less of an incentive to work.”
None of this is new. Here's Elmendorf's testimony from February 2011 regarding the same effect, although at that time the projection was only 800,000 jobs:

Posted by Mandy Nagy on February 05, 2014 20 Comments
Some patients in California are finding out that once they’ve managed to sign up for a health insurance plan through the state exchange, it still may be difficult to determine whether or not a doctor actually accepts their insurance plan. From the LA Times:
After overcoming website glitches and long waits to get Obamacare, some patients are now running into frustrating new roadblocks at the doctor's office. A month into the most sweeping changes to healthcare in half a century, people are having trouble finding doctors at all, getting faulty information on which ones are covered and receiving little help from insurers swamped by new business. Experts have warned for months that the logjam was inevitable. But the extent of the problems is taking by surprise many patients — and even doctors — as frustrations mount. Aliso Viejo resident Danielle Nelson said Anthem Blue Cross promised half a dozen times that her oncologists would be covered under her new policy. She was diagnosed last year with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and discovered a suspicious lump near her jaw in early January. But when she went to her oncologist's office, she promptly encountered a bright orange sign saying that Covered California plans are not accepted. "I'm a complete fan of the Affordable Care Act, but now I can't sleep at night," Nelson said. "I can't imagine this is how President Obama wanted it to happen."
Nelson received a temporary extension from her new insurer through March 31 after numerous complaints to the company and public officials, but says she will look into other policies before the close of open enrollment, according to the LA Times.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 04, 2014 44 Comments

Files paperwork to run for Congress...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 04, 2014 10 Comments
This all was predicted. Obamacare subsidies decrease the incentive to work harder because as one's income increases, the subsidies vanish. It's what we call the implicit marginal rate which takes into account not only tax marginal rates, but also loss of government benefits. In the key 30-50,000 range, the implicit marginal rate has exceeded 100% even before Obamacare (see Featured Image above) -- meaning that it is economically irrational to earn an extra dollar because you will lose more than one dollar through taxes and loss of benefits. Obamacare makes that problem even worse because of the high cost of Obamacare health insurance which depends on subsidies to render it even somewhat "affordable." Lose those subsidies and the cost of mandatory health insurance becomes onerous. The CBO is predicting a loss of 1-2% of employee hours because workers choose not to lose the subsidies, as reported by Reuters (h/t Bryan Preston)(full report embedded at bottom of post):
A historically high number of people will be locked out of the workforce by 2021, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday. President Barack Obama's signature health-care law will contribute to this phenomenon, the CBO said, citing new estimates that the Affordable Care Act will cause a larger than-expected reduction in working hours—eliminating the equivalent of about 2.3 million workers in 2021 versus a previous estimate of an 800,000 decline. "CBO estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 to 2 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor—given the new taxes and other incentives they will face and the financial benefits some will receive," said the report.
The CBO Report states (in Appendix C):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 03, 2014 25 Comments
Jerry Seinfeld was interviewed for Buzzfeed Brew, and gave a perfectly sensible answer about "diversity" in comedy, namely that if you're funny, you're funny, and comedy is not a census designed to look like the pie chart of America. It's perfectly sensible, except to Gawker, which is trying to inspire 2-minutes of Seinfeld hate:

Jerry Seinfeld, the most successful comedian in the world and maker of comedy for and about white people, isn't interested in trying to include non-white anything in his work.

When asked why he featured so many white men in his web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee during a Buzzfeed interview on CBS This Morning, Seinfeld seemed offended by the very question. "It really pisses me off," he said. "People think [comedy] is the census or something, it's gotta represent the actual pie chart of America. Who cares?"

BuzzFeed Business Editor Peter Lauria seemed hesitant to pursue the frank answer, but the comedian continued on anyway. "Funny is the world that I live in. You're funny, I'm interested. You're not funny, I'm not interested," he said. "I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that." He seems to suggest that any comedian who is not a white male is also not funny, though he's also likely fed up with the amount of bad comedy he's been forced to sit through in his (waning) career.

Which is too bad, because Seinfeld is downplaying the work of everyone from Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby to Aziz Ansari, Mindy Kaling, and Eddie Huang, who are all in various stages of their own sitcoms that just might turn out to be the next Seinfeld....

In conclusion: Yes, comedy should represent the entire pie chart of America, and the glorious, multicolored diversity pie should be thrown directly at Jerry Seinfeld's face.

No, you fool, Seinfeld isn't denigrating anyone.  He's saying that we should judge comedians by the quality of their comedy, not the color of their skin.

Where did I hear something similar to that before?  Definitely not at Gawker.

Someone saw this coming from a mile away:
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