Category: News and Politics
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Where is small business health insurance headed?
This article was written for 2014 and then updated for 2017. Little has changed. These points are still not well understood or agreed upon by professionals in the small business health insurance field: Quality of information: Most of the information published in this field appears to comes from those with a vested economic interest and/or political…
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How to handle shock health insurance increases
Today’s Wall Street Journal brought the confirmation that most health insurance advisers already suspected. Medical care utilization under the new Obamacare policies is at record levels. The coming rate increases of high health insurance renewal rates for 2015 and 2016 will pose a financial shock to policyholders. But if you believe as I do that “We have to…
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Casey Gerald Speech
A great speech: I’m glad that I listened to Casey Gerald’s 17 minute commencement address at Harvard Business School on YouTube. He speaks about how he was influenced by a lawyer at Yale who say that if you want to change the world in the 21st century, get an MBA. I was moved by the comments about how we can…
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South Jersey economy predicted 5th worst in the U.S.
A study released last Friday by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and HIS Global Insight predicts that for the rest of this decade the Atlantic City/Hammonton region will have one of the slowest economic growth rates of the entire United States. The study did not include predictions for the more rural regions of southwest…
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Renewable energy report shows progress but overall weak prospects for U.S.
Despite the rosy captions in the “Renewables 2014 Global Status Report” the actual data about renewable energy in the U.S. is quite bleak. It was easy for me to conclude from this report that the U.S. is actually headed toward a nuclear energy future. This is not because nuclear is so superior to renewables but rather that…
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Whole life insurance revisited
One of the most maddening topics for me as an adviser has been whole life insurance for working class clients. It is clear that whole life insurance is the #1 financial vehicle of choice for the “top 5 percenters” in the wealth scale, often through the corporate entities that they control, but what about the…
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My favorite quotes from Maya Angelou
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” “My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try…
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R.I.P. Tony Novak
Updated 12/14/2017 to reflect another “Tony Novak”, a younger attorney with Larson King in Minnesota, occasionally appearing in searches, obviously not the attorney mentioned in my post below. I suppose that most of us have at least Googled our own name. Those of us who are involved in brand-building around a name as part of a…
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NFL players recite Declaration of Independence
glad to see NFL players recite excerpts from the Declaration of Independence. I am reminded of the strength of these words: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the…
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Spying on Amercians pays off with arrest of two Chesapeake watermen
Those who feared that expansion of surveillance for national security reasons would eventually cross legal boundaries and be used in other law enforcement now have tangible proof. CBS Baltimore reports that Homeland Security cameras and radar systems were used to arrest two oyster poachers in the Chesapeake Bay. It’s now only a short legal jump…