The TikTok grand distraction. Fed’s playing with fire. Medicare Advantage scare-tactics.

It’s hype. TikTok is no more a danger than Facebook or Instagram. The Fed is not incompetent. It is evil. Lobbyists are trying to bribe politicians to keep us overpaying for their scams.

The TikTok grand distraction.

The TikTok grand distraction.

I am bewildered by the TikTok hoopla. It is clear the Congresspersons know absolutely nothing that they are talking about. As a software developer who has written TCPIP software and programmed microprocessors on the bit level, I can tell everyone in a clear fashion that we are wasting a lot of time on this issue on false premises. In the process, people who have built vertical businesses on this platform are likely panicking.

I find it ironic that we are quick to jump on foreign companies like TikTok but do not do so on foreign companies that truly cause Americans harm. One has to wonder if the ultimate goal is to remove a competitor that figured out how to build a more engaging app than most companies.

It would easy to create a TikTok knockoff that uses multiple American-based servers that transfers information to Chinese servers through transient servers virtually undetected. If we were serious about keeping people’s information private, we would make it illegal to collect the data in the first place, but most people voluntarily provide the data for convenience.

Brett Wilkins from Common Dreams wrote the following.

Civil and digital rights groups this week joined a trio of progressive U.S. lawmakers in opposing bipartisan proposals to ban the social media platform TikTok, arguing that such efforts are rooted in “anti-China” motives and do not adequately address the privacy concerns purportedly behind the legislation.

The ACLU argues that, if passed, legislation recently introduced in both the U.S. House and Senate “sets the stage for the government to ban TikTok,” which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance and is used by more than 1 in 3 Americans. The Senate bill would grant the U.S. Department of Commerce power to prohibit people in the United States from using apps and products made by companies “subject to the jurisdiction of China” and other “foreign adversaries.”

“The government shouldn’t be able to tell us what social media apps we can and can’t use,” the ACLU asserted via Twitter. “We have a right to free speech.”

In a Wednesday letter led by the free expression advocacy group PEN America, 16 organizations including the ACLU argued that “proposals to ban TikTok risk violating First Amendment rights and setting a dangerous global precedent for the restriction of speech.”

“More effective, rights-respecting solutions are available and provide a viable alternative to meet the serious concerns raised by TikTok,” the groups contended, pointing to a February proposal by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) to expedite a probe of the company by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States as a possible way “to mitigate security risks without denying users access to the platform.”

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) has emerged as the leading congressional voice against banning TikTok, saying Wednesday that he fears the platform is being singled out due in significant part to “xenophobic anti-China rhetoric.”

In his speech, Bowman noted that “TikTok as a platform has created a community and a space for free speech for 150 million Americans and counting,” and is a place where “5 million small businesses are selling their products and services and making a living… at a time when our economy is struggling in so many ways.”

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Fed playing with fire.

The Fed was at it again as they raised interest rates again this week. It is nearly certain they will lead us into an unnecessary recession.

Morris Pearl, a bank bailout expert, chair of Patriotic Millionaires, and former managing director at BlackRock, where his team was hired by the Federal Reserve, Treasury, and FDIC to structure and assess the cost of the Citibank bailout in 2008, issued the following statement in response:

“The Fed’s decision to keep pushing forward with rate hikes no matter the circumstances is a dangerous mistake. High interest rates are a blunt instrument that are not well suited to the economic realities the country now faces – and will inevitably end up doing more harm than good.

In our modern economy, high interest rates are simply not an effective way to fight inflation. Rate hikes have disproportionately hurt just a few sectors, like housing, automobiles, and some banks and investors, while leaving many of the nation’s largest employers  relatively unscathed.

Rising interest rates do nothing to address a major cause of inflation, corporate price-gouging, and actually make another long-term cause, lack of investment in new housing, worse. Instead, the Fed is betting that lowering employment and cooling wage growth is the best solution to inflation.

Higher interest rates may be a cure for inflation, but if they end up causing another banking crisis, or pushing the economy into a recession, the cure may be worse than the disease.”

Need we say more?

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Medicare Advantage scare tactics

The grand Medicare Advantage Scam continues. And even as Congress is contemplating attenuating their theft of Medicare taxpayer dollars as opposed to dismantling it altogether, their lobbyists are in full attack mode.

Common Dreams reported the following.

In the wake of numerous studies and investigations detailing the staggering level of fraud in the privately run Medicare Advantage program, the Biden administration proposed a new rule aimed at cracking down on upcoding—a common industry practice whereby plans describe patients as sicker than they actually are to reap larger payments from the federal government.

The rule, finalized by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) earlier this year, sparked a furious lobbying blitz that has only intensified in recent weeks, with the for-profit insurance industry’s most powerful players leading the fight against the proposal and other policy changes that they have falsely characterized as Medicare Advantage “cuts.”

The New York Timesreported Wednesday that insurance industry executives and lobbyists have been “flooding Capitol Hill” in an effort to protect their lucrative business model, which often leaves patients without necessary care.

“The largest insurers, including UnitedHealth Group and Humana, are among the most vocal, according to congressional staff, with UnitedHealth’s chief executive pressing his company’s case in person,” the Times reported. “Doctors’ groups, including the American Medical Association, have also voiced their opposition.”

The insurance industry has also taken to the media, using sponsored content to launch misleading attacks on the Biden administration’s reforms.

In addition to the proposed crackdown on Medicare Advantage upcoding and overbilling—an effort that federal health officials estimate will recover $4.7 billion in improper payments over the next decade—the Biden administration is pushing for technical changes to the formula used to calculate Medicare Advantage payments.

There is much to discuss here.

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