Author: bill

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2 Corinthians 11 KJV – YouVersion.com

YouVersion is celebrating the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible by creating an event where to read this version in 400 seconds. With the help of a lot of volunteers starting at the same time it will be done. My part is 2 Corinthians Chapter 11.

1 Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me.2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.4 For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him. 5 For I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles.6 But though I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge; but we have been throughly made manifest among you in all things.7 Have I committed an offence in abasing myself that ye might be exalted, because I have preached to you the gospel of God freely?8 I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do you service.9 And when I was present with you, and wanted, I was chargeable to no man: for that which was lacking to me the brethren which came from Macedonia supplied: and in all things I have kept myself from being burdensome unto you, and so will I keep myself. 10 As the truth of Christ is in me, no man shall stop me of this boasting in the regions of Achaia.11 Wherefore? because I love you not? God knoweth.12 But what I do, that I will do, that I may cut off occasion from them which desire occasion; that wherein they glory, they may be found even as we.13 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.15 Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

16 I say again, Let no man think me a fool; if otherwise, yet as a fool receive me, that I may boast myself a little.17 That which I speak, I speak it not after the Lord, but as it were foolishly, in this confidence of boasting.18 Seeing that many glory after the flesh, I will glory also.19 For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.20 For ye suffer, if a man bring you into bondage, if a man devour you, if a man take of you, if a man exalt himself, if a man smite you on the face.21 I speak as concerning reproach, as though we had been weak. Howbeit whereinsoever any is bold, (I speak foolishly,) I am bold also.22 Are they Hebrews? so am I. Are they Israelites? so am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? so am I.23 Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft.24 Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one.25 Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep;26 In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren;27 In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.28 Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not?30 If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities.31 The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not.32 In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the Damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me:33 And through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands.

2 Corinthians 11 KJV – YouVersion.com

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Roast Rack of Lamb

I saw Chef Allison Fishman preparing this meal on the Early Show. Last night I prepared the Roast Rack of Lamb and Moroccan Carrots and it was quite nice if I say so. The combination of searing the lamb on the stove and finishing the lamb in the oven added a lot of flavor. I bought a one pound frenched rack of lamb for about $10. This meal combines two trends in my cooking, smaller portion size and reasonable cost.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 2 1-pound racks of lamb
  • Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 4 slices good quality stale white bread, torn into large pieces
  • 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint
  • 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley
  • 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh chives
  • 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

METHOD:

  1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
  2. Heat the oil in large ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Season the lamb with salt and freshly ground black pepper and place the lamb fat-side down in the skillet and cook on all sides until golden, about 6 minutes total.
  3. Place the lamb in the oven, fat-side up, and cook until the center of the lamb registers 125 degrees F on a meat thermometer, approximately 10 minutes.
  4. Place bread in a food processor and process until crumby. Add the herbs and pulse to just combine.
  5. Remove the skillet from the oven, remove the lamb from the skillet, and smear the top and sides of the lamb with mustard. Cover the mustard with the breadcrumb mixture. Return the coated lamb to oven and cook until the crumbs are lightly toasted and the thickest part of the lamb registers 130-to-135 degrees F on a meat thermometer for medium-rare, about 5 minutes.
  6. Allow the lamb to rest for 10 minutes before carving. Carve and serve.

Super, healthy Easter dinner, on a shoestring! – The Early Show – CBS News

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Some Employers Already Sending Workers To Exchanges to Buy Health Insurance

 

Entrepreneurs create new private marketplaces ”“ years ahead of similar exchanges called for in the health law ”“ in a move that could save employers money but continue to shift cost and responsibility to employees.

Here’s the quote that got my attention since it is an issue no one seems to be talking about but is a core piece of the healthy person insurance rate.

"Most companies are over-insuring their employees right now. We want to right-size that," says Curtiss Butler, chief marketing officer at Liazon, which also operates a private exchange.

Some Employers Already Sending Workers To Exchanges to Buy Health Insurance
Fri, 29 Apr 2011 04:31:00 GMT

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Roast Chicken with Vegetables

One of our favorite mid-week dishes is roast chicken with vegetables. I can pick up a four pound bird at about 99 cents per pound. The recipe is simple. Cut up a bunch of your favorite vegetables and put them in the bottom of your dish with about a half cup of water. I used cauliflower, carrots, red potatoes, and shallots in the picture below. Put a little vegetable oil, salt, and pepper on the bird and stick it on a vertical roaster. I cook the bird for an hour and a half at 350° and then start measuring the temperature with an instant thermometer. I pull it out of the oven when the temperature goes above 160° and let the bird sit on a cutting board for a five minutes while I stir the vegetables with the broth in the dish. We really like the broth and vegetables. I am not sure which part of this meal we like better, the chicken or the vegetables, although we normally do not have leftover vegetables.

IMG_20110414_183613

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The government is not a household, and shouldn’t be run like one – Ezra Klein – The Washington Post

 

When economic times are good, households should spend and invest more, while government should spend and invest less. When they’re bad, households need to cut back, and the government needs to step in.

There are several things wrong with his complaints about comparing households to governments. When we look at a longer time scale we see the government continues to spend more in good and bad times. Historically the last time the government cut back in good times was after World War II. Over the last 100 years government spending chases revenues because it is a politically easy thing to do because it maintains a sense of status quo between tax revenues and expenses. When we have a recession this status quo is disrupted. There are several options available to us. The Keynesian strategy is to strike a bargain with the devil and step up special, short term spending to stimulate the economy. The hope is that it will result in sustainable, long term growth which can pay for the debt. It is hard to find times in history that this strategy actually worked but history has shown that it is politically suicide to do nothing. The good news is that our economy has been blessed with continuous growth and prosperity regardless of our economic strategy.

For most people there is nothing special or unique about special, short term spending plans whether it is used by the government or an individual. There is no “free lunch” for government spending. The household analogy to stimulus spending in a recession is an unemployed person using their credit card or a personal loan from a relative to pay for job search expenses. In some cases this strategy results in a job that the person can use to not only maintain their style of living but also to repay the loan. This strategy probably works best with people whose career opportunities are expanding. For people later in their career or in declining businesses this strategy probably does not work. These people will have to adjust to a life with lower income, lower expenses, and possible loan defaults. If we follow the household analogy to its logical conclusion we are confronted with the same core questions for both governments and households, “Have we peaked and what can we do about it?” Most people understand these questions and their consequences. In this case the household analogy is a particularly appropriate tool for explaining the difficulties and consequences of spending decisions.

The government is not a household, and shouldn’t be run like one – Ezra Klein – The Washington Post

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Response to The high-deductible plans in the Affordable Care Act

I posted this as a comment to Ezra Klein’s post, The high-deductible plans in the Affordable Care Act. My complaint with his post is that although high-deductible plans are in the Affordable Care Act, they made them very expensive when compared to existing high-deductible plans. If this is reform, I want no part of it. The changes to high-deductible plans are bad public policy if we expect individual responsibility and market forces to reduce future health cost increases.

 

As a person with "skin in the game" I did a price check on high deductible plans in Ohio and Massachusetts and found that high deductible plans appear to be an Affordable Care Act victim. I chose Massachusetts since it is our best example of Affordable Care Act in action. The price for the lowest price high deductible plan in Ohio would cost me $305 per month and the lowest cost Bronze plan in Massachusetts would cost me $1,296 per month. That is a 425% cost increase. As a healthy family we would be paying an additional $11,892 per year. My family’s 35 years of health care expenses excluding insurance premiums is just slightly larger than one year’s insurance premium in Massachusetts and a large percentage of that amount was paid out of my annual deductible. People like me should be a health insurance company’s dream customer but evidently not in Massachusetts. So despite the fact that Massachusetts is offering a low cost, high deductible plan it is a really bad deal when compared to Ohio. If Massachusetts cannot provide health insurance at competitive rates to Ohio, it is highly unlikely that the Affordable Care Act will provide competitive rates either. As a country we spend twice what the rest of the developed countries spend on health care and we get the same health outcomes. Massachusetts spends over twice what the rest of the developed countries spend on health care. There is something fundamentally wrong about the way spend money on health care and it appears to be institutionalized in Massachusetts and in the Affordable Care Act. Affordable health care are words that were lost in translation when they wrote the Affordable Care Act.

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oftwominds: The Devolution of the Consumer Economy, Part II: Rising Costs, Declining Wages

I have been thinking along these same lines for several months now although I worded a little bit differently. I agree that the average American worker is increasing living as a debt serf. Increasingly they live from one paycheck to the next. This makes job changes and increased wage demands a risky career choice. It follows that the average American worker must rebalance both their spending habits and the debt portion of their assets. This implies that the consumer driven economy must decline and a manufacturing or export driven economy must pick up the slack. It also implies that there is a bubble in financial market driven by the derivative/insurance instruments. Unlike the stock and bond markets the securitization market appears to be very inefficient market as demonstrated by the collapse of the mortgage securitization market. Until these “derivative” markets are recognized as risky and containing many poor performing investments, investing in businesses that make “stuff that people want” will be a low priority.
The key feature of financialization is that the outsized profits and opportunities come not from producing goods and services but from leveraging, borrowing, obscuring risk and gaming widely ignored regulations. Banks made money not from prudent loans but from taking $1 in deposits and originating $50 of risk-laden loans from that paltry capital. Wall Street reaped billions by packaging high-risk mortgages as “low-risk” investments.

The housing bubble offered the ambitious debt serf a rare opportunity to lie and leverage just like Wall Street. Anyone with sufficient chutzpah could buy a number of houses with no-document “liar loans” with option-adjustable rate loans at super-low rates of interest, hold the homes for a few months and then flip them for profits.
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Romneycare a big bust – BostonHerald.com

Ouch!

As a health care plan, Romneycare is an unmitigated fiasco. It has caused costs to skyrocket, insurance premiums to soar and nonprofit providers like Blue Cross to suffer hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

But as a political policy, Romneycare is nearly unparalleled in Republican history. It has destroyed one front-runner’s presidential hopes (Romney’s) and helped undermine an entire presidency. For, as Barack Obama’s supporters keep reminding us, Romneycare was the precursor to Obamacare.

Romneycare a big bust – BostonHerald.com