Waxie and Stupie

 

Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak have ordered Randall Stephenson, the Chairman, President and CEO of AT&T to appear before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce to explain why AT&T announced that they will take a $1 billion (that’s $1,000,000,000) charge against earnings to pay for their precious baby, Obamacare.

Now, whenever Waxman is involved, you can’t discount the likelihood that this is a veiled threat and an invitation for him to launch invective through his enormous, upturned nostrils at someone. 

 

But if you read the letter Waxie and Stupie sent, it almost reads like they are surprised at AT&T’s action.  Like they never thought this could happen.  It reads to me like they they never heard of the difference between static analysis and dynamic analysis; that is, static assumes that nothing else changes in the data set while dynamic attempts to account for all possibilities.  Or, as it is more commonly known, “The Law of Unintended Consequences”, a term that seems to have first occurred to these two dopes for the very first time in this letter.

Beginning with the third paragraph of this letter, let’s look at just how stupid these two are:

 

• That first sentence in the third paragraph is our first clue of their stupidity.  They talked themselves into believing this turd would lower costs for companies. 
• The second sentence is where they begin to question AT&T’s own analysis, disbelieving that AT&T knows its own numbers and how changes in the law will affect them.  Waxie and Stupie don’t name the independent analyses that they are referring to, but I’m betting none of those looked specifically at AT&T.  Probably just looked at a broad swath of fake numbers. 
• The third sentence points out that the CBO projects a 3% decrease in average premium costs by 2016, conveniently leaving out what will happen in the intervening five years and implying that AT&T should keep their costs artificially high in the interim while awaiting this earth-shattering savings that is headed their way.  I also would be willing to guess that, if the CBO projected a savings, they said that the decrease will be 3% less than it would have been without it.  That is, not 3% less than it is now but 3% less than the normally-expected increase would have been.  Waxie and Stupie aren’t thinking dynamically here, they are assuming that everything else stays the same, nor do they or the CBO have the slightest clue about what other business expenses AT&T anticipates coming their way.  For instance, AT&T is in a notoriously capital-intensive business, requiring a huge annual investment in upgrading their network to accommodate the Jesus Phone for the millions of hipsters who voted for Obama. 
• Finally, the last sentence in this paragraph points out that the Business Roundtable “asserted…that health care reform could reduce predicted health insurance cost trends…”.  Emphasis mine.  Woulda, coulda, shoulda, douchebags.  Ideology, meet the real world.  This statement also suggests that maybe the Business Roundtable was looking at the data dynamically when they used the c-word, but Waxie and Stupie chose to only take into account what they wanted to hear.  Had the Roundtable said that it would reduce costs, that would point to static analysis.  But they didn’t say that; they are business people and are well acquainted with the Law of Unintended Consequences.

The second page of the letter is where the threat is issued.  “Give us a data dump for our accountants to dive into and then send us everybody with a title above Vice President for all of your subsidiaries.”  This, too, displays the idiocy of these two morons.  AT&T has 281,000 employees and who knows how many subsidiaries.  I hope AT&T rounds up the hundreds of VPs that they must have and sends them all to this hearing.  It would be a great display of just how big the economy is and how little Waxie and Stupie understand about what they and the Dems are screwing around with.  But the business cost of doing that would be prohibitive, especially with the Dems yanking cash out of their company as fast as they can.

Powerline speculates that companies didn’t mention these repercussions sooner for fear of being retaliated against.  But companies are thinking dynamically, knowing that whatever Congress does they can adjust.  To a point.  It’s the dumbasses like the Dems who think that whatever they do doesn’t otherwise affect the economy.  When companies unload people over this, the CEOs will be vilified by the Left, but all they are doing is responding rationally, something the Left is entirely unable to do. 

My own opinion?  We will all soon be independent contractors and off the payroll.