Enforced Conformity In The Climate Alarmist Community

My piece a few days ago titled "The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time -- Part VI" attracted a large number of comments.  Most were friendly, but at least a couple suggested that I must be accusing the climate alarmist community of some kind of great "conspiracy."  After all, how else could they present to the world a front of such seeming unanimity?

But actually I have never made a charge that there is a grand conspiracy.  Rather, I have contended that there is a grand groupthink.  In fact, here's a post I wrote just a few months ago in April 2015 called "How Groupthink Works," specifically discussing the mechanisms of groupthink enforcement against anyone who dares to engage in climate apostasy.  The particular subject of the post was constitutional law scholar Larry Tribe, who had then recently taken an assignment from Peabody Coal to argue a challenge in the D.C. Circuit to the constitutional legitimacy of the EPA's Clean Power Plan.  (That's the massive set of EPA regulations currently working their way through the process, that threaten to shut down the entire coal-power business in the United States.)

As early as March and April, Tribe's then-new apostasy had already earned him some good heapings of ridicule and shaming from his erstwhile co-icons of the lefty law tribe, published of course in Pravda where all members of the tribe would see them -- and would see what would happen to themselves should they dare to stray even momentarily from official orthodoxy.  For example, on March 26 the Times published an op-ed by recent ex-NYU Law Dean Ricky Revesz titled "An Obama Friend Turns Foe on Coal."     The op-ed stated that "To many Democrats and professors at Harvard, Mr. Tribe is a traitor."  The Revesz op-ed also cites two of Tribe's co-Harvard Law professors as calling his constitutional law arguments on behalf of Peabody "ridiculous."  (Of course, the op-ed did not actually attempt to deal with Tribe's constitutional arguments on their merits.  Hey, they're "ridiculous" -- isn't that enough?)

And the ridicule and shaming of Tribe continue.  The current (July 28) issue of New York Magazine has a long article on his ongoing ostracism.  The title is "Et Tu, Tribe."  The article begins by describing an interview given by Tribe on NPR on June 18.  NPR -- they're an official member of the tribe.  Surely their job is to save any difficult questions for conservatives, and pose only softballs to a liberal icon such as Tribe.  Well, not any more.  Suddenly the questioning turned hostile:

“Can a scholar take a client like that [Peabody] and maintain an appearance of independence?”

“Well, I’ve been doing this kind of thing for decades,” Tribe replied, the ice creeping into his voice. “And I’m just not for sale.” He had the urge to hang up the phone then and there. But he fought it off and handled another 90 seconds of questioning with superficial aplomb. “I have had a career that I’m proud of. I’ve represented causes that I believe in,” he said. . . .  Inside, though, Tribe was churning. “It was an inexcusable ambush,” he wrote immediately afterward, an “awful caricature.” He was flummoxed that people involved with a friendly NPR show would prove to be “such venomous snakes.”

And then, as the article continues, there are multiple examples of former friends and colleagues turning on poor Mr. Tribe.  For example:

“For most environmental-law scholars, climate change is the challenge of our lifetime, it is an existential threat to life as we know it,” says the UCLA law professor Ann Carlson, who has written that Tribe is “destroying his reputation” as a constitutional theorist. “I think the question is, how can Larry Tribe be attacking the president’s climate-change policy in this way?”

Really, it's not very different from how the Catholic Church enforced orthodoxy by the Inquisition, or how the Muslims enforce it today.  Or even from the way a political party rallies around a presidential candidate about whom many members have misgivings.  The misgivings are put aside for the sake of supporting the team and defeating the other guys.  No need to advance any kind of conspiracy theory to understand this process.  It's just basic Politics 101.

The Fight To Bring "Fair Housing" To Westchester Turns Humorous

Of all federal agencies, probably the most destructive dollar for dollar is the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  Its business is creating and perpetuating poverty traps.  The idea is to take people currently poor and offer them a deal with the devil whereby they can have an in-kind gift of a subsidized apartment for life, the highly-illiquid value of which does not count in income, in return for accepting a set of incentives that makes it almost impossible for them to rise up the income ladder.  And thus we have the HUD-supported New York City Housing Authority, supposedly started as a means for the poor to begin to escape poverty,  eighty years later reporting a poverty rate of residents of 51% and a turnover rate of 3%.  Motto:  "We warehouse poor people for life!"

OK, you're an HUD bureaucrat and you want more funding to grow your agency.  How to deflect attention from this obvious disaster and try to claim the moral high ground?  Easy!  Here's the official narrative: the poor are kept poor not by your own programs that intentionally trap them in poverty, but rather by evil discriminating towns in rich areas that have excluded the poor.  If only the poor could live in someplace fancy like, say, some upscale New York suburbs, they'd quickly be on the road to success!

And thus we have HUD, with the aid of Southern District of New York prosecutor Preet Bharara, currently turning its sights on Westchester County -- the mostly upscale area immediately North of New York City -- with accusations that it is dragging its feet in building some new subsidized units that somehow this time are going to succeed in helping the poor escape poverty.  Howard Husock of the Manhattan Institute has a report today on the National Review site.  It seems that Westchester County agreed with HUD to build some subsidized housing, but it's not getting built fast enough to satisfy the bureaucrats, so they are threatening fines and sanctions:

The Justice Department (specifically, the office of the nation's currently most prominent U.S. attorney, Preet Bharara of New York's Southern District) last week threatened to fine the county $60,000 a month and to force it to put more than $1 million in escrow against potential future fines. It's all the result of a lawsuit filed in 2006 by a New York City-based nonprofit called the Anti-Discrimination Center. . . .  To resolve the suit, Westchester pledged to use $50 million of its own funds, along with HUD money it receives, to build some 750 units of new subsidized housing . . . .

Now it's not like Westchester is some lily-white hotbed of racial exclusion.  According to Husock's article, in a county of about a million residents, Westchester has some 131,000 African Americans and 144,000 Hispanics, both figures rather closely in line with the percentages of those groups in the overall U.S. population.  And, Husock points out, some of those members of minority groups reside in "even the wealthiest enclaves."  But not enough to satisfy HUD!

So we come to the best part: a particular project in a particular wealthy enclave has become the focus of the prosecutor's ire.  That project is in a town with a median family income of $180,000.  Yes, it's none other than Chappaqua, home to Bill and Hillary Clinton.  (For that matter, Chappaqua is also part of the Town of New Castle, in which also lives New York Governor and former HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo.)  It seems like Chappaqua has actually agreed to have the units built, but the project is stalled over issues of zoning variances and exactly where the projects will be located.

So a few days ago, County Executive Rob Astorino took the occasion to hold a brief news conference outside the Clinton's mansion.  Madame Hillary was actually home, so Astorino asked the nice Secret Service lady if he could go in to see the occupant, but of course he was refused.  Here's a clip of a part of the festivities.  Astorino posed a series of questions for HIllary, the key one of which was "Does she think that her town is discriminatory?"  No answer was forthcoming, but of course that's far from the only question that Hillary has not been answering lately.

Meanwhile, might somebody point out that Manhattan is the wealthiest county in the country by per capita income, and also right there next to all those rich people it has the highest concentration of subsidized housing, and yet somehow none of those poor people ever get out of poverty?  If the theory that merely living next to rich people ended poverty were right, New York City would not have a poverty rate 5 plus points above the national average.  The fact is that these subsidized housing projects intentionally perpetuate poverty, and this one in Chappaqua, if and when it gets built, will be no different.

Stamford's, And Connecticut's, Losing Strategy

In case you missed it (and you probably did -- who reads Pravda any more?), the lead story in the Sunday Business section of the New York Times this week had the headline "In Connecticut, the Twilight of a Trading Hub."  This long article (about 3000 words) chronicles the rapid recent shrinkage of employment at a few large international banks that had located their trading floors, and thousands of employees, in downtown Stamford, Connecticut.  These were not just any jobs, but plum, super-high-paying jobs on the big, exciting trading floors.  Now the trading jobs are rapidly drying up, and the big downtown office buildings near the train station are emptying out.

Why is this happening now to poor Stamford?  If you believe the Pravda narrative, the main reason would be "bad luck":

Stamford had the bad luck of housing the American headquarters of two European banks, which are facing particular challenges as the Continent has struggled to cope with several debt crises. RBS, or Royal Bank of Scotland . . . recently announced plans to reduce its work force in Connecticut, which was once 2,400 people, to fewer than a thousand, making its gleaming building far too large a home. The number of UBS employees in Stamford fell to 2,000 last year, from 4,400 before the crisis, and more cuts are likely. HSBC and Deutsche Bank are the most recent banks to announce major global overhauls.  The financial crisis in Greece is the latest headwind likely to challenge any recovery at European banks.

Really?  Let me ask you a question:  Might high taxes and/or a gigantic overhang from unfunded government employee pensions have anything to do with Stamford's loss of high-paying jobs?  Get this:  In about 3000 words on why Stamford is losing high-paying jobs, the Times doesn't mention one single word about either high taxes or the pension overhang.  Well, then I guess "bad luck" must be the only explanation!

So perhaps the Manhattan Contrarian should provide a little context to Stamford's "bad luck."  Until 1992, Connecticut had no state income tax.  The income tax began that year at a rate of 1.5%.  Today the top rate is 6.7%.  Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy was elected in 2010 on a promise not to raise taxes, and promptly raised them.  He was re-elected in 2014 on another promise not to raise taxes and has promptly raised them again.  The Tax Foundation in its most recent ranking of the states puts Connecticut 42nd of 50 for tax burden.  The most recent (June 2015) state budget included individual income tax increases (by eliminating some credits) as well as an extension of a 20% surcharge on the corporate profits tax that put a bullseye right on the heads of the biggest corporate employers.  From Rex Sinquefield in Forbes on June 16:

One of the budget’s most egregious inclusions is a $700 million increase in taxes on businesses, including extending the state’s 20 percent surcharge on the corporate profits tax. Not surprisingly, the hikes are prompting corporations headquartered in Connecticut to seek friendlier economic climates in order to maintain their competitive advantage. Last week, House Republican Leader Themis Klarides equated the newly passed budget to “holding up a sign at the border to businesses and saying get out.”  Indeed, multinational companies are reading that sign and looking for an exit. Jeff Immelt, the Chief Executive Officer of General Electric, announced to his thousands of Connecticut-based employees he’s built a team tasked with evaluating a move to a state “with a more pro-business environment.” Insurance giant Aetna, currently headquartered in Hartford, already pays $65 million a year in state and local taxes; under this new budget, Aetna’s tax burden goes up by another 27 percent.

According to data here from the Connecticut Department of Labor, Connecticut had 1,640,000 jobs in 1990 and 1,690,000 jobs in May 2015, or just about 3% growth in 25 years.  Or you could call it about 0.1% growth per year over that period.  It's almost perfect stagnation for two and a half decades.

Could it be just coincidence that two and a half decades of complete stagnation started right when the income tax came in?  If it helps you in considering that question, I can remember from personal observation that Stamford was having a boom back in the 70s and 80s.  New office buildings were going up everywhere.  In the late 70s New York's top income tax rate for combined state and city reached 19%.  Connecticut had no income tax at the time and its suburbs closest to the City boomed.  From the late 70s through the 80s New York State cut its top rate from about 15% to 7%.  And then Connecticut instituted its income tax in 1992.  Draw your own conclusions.

After putting in its income tax in 1992, Connecticut adopted an extreme form of job-buying crony capitalism to make its economy seem better than it was.  This is the ultimate game for suckers.  The job-buying crony capitalism is how Stamford got the big bank trading floors in the first place.  The New York Times article linked above actually has a pretty good list of the huge handouts that Connecticut has paid over the years to attract these bank jobs.  It started right there in the early 90s.  Examples:

Stamford began its bid to capitalize on Wall Street’s expansion in 1994, when it offered $145 million in tax credits, and a free parcel of land, to what was then Swiss Bank to build its American headquarters in the city.

RBS came substantially later in 2005:

RBS . . . agreed to build its American headquarters in Stamford in 2005 after the state promised incentives worth $100 million in exchange for 1,150 new jobs in the state.

And the great thing about blackmail is that you can keep going back to the marks and hitting them up for more money.  For example, in 2011 UBS threatened to move its trading operation back to Manhattan, and hit up Connecticut for a big subsidized loan:

In 2011, Connecticut’s governor, Dannel P. Malloy, the former mayor of Stamford, gave UBS a $20 million loan to keep employees in the state. Last year, Mr. Malloy, despite criticism, extended the loan to 2021.

And now they're saying that they are going to move the trading operation back to Manhattan anyway, and scatter an equivalent number of (much lower paying) stockbroker jobs around the state to fulfill their jobs commitment.  Hahahahahahahahaha.

Here's another thing I remember:  the cheerleading campaign of the New York Times editorial page back in 1992 pushing Connecticut to enact an income tax.  How has that worked out for you guys? 

Two More Federal Convictions Of New York State Senators -- For What?

If you read the tabloids here in New York, you can't help noticing the string of recent federal convictions of state pols.  Just the past few days have brought two new convictions of high-ranking members of the New York State Senate.  On Wednesday July 22 a federal jury in White Plains (Southern District of New York) convicted Senator Tom Libous, Republican of Binghamton, who had until recently been the Deputy Majority Leader of the State Senate.   (The recent Majority Leader, Dean Skelos, Republican of Nassau County, is also under indictment in the Southern District.)  On Friday July 24 another federal jury, this time in Brooklyn (Eastern District of New York), convicted John Sampson, Democrat of Brooklyn, who served from 2009 to 2012 as leader of the Democratic Conference of the same body.

So what were Libous and Sampson convicted of?  Turns out that in both cases the pols were convicted of obstructing an FBI investigation or lying to the FBI -- and of no underlying crime!  Really???  In the case of Sampson, it appears that at least there was a bona fide underlying crime under investigation, but the prosecutors blew the statute of limitations.  In the case of Libous, it is highly dubious that there was any underlying crime at all.

Here is the Libous indictment.  There is only one count, and it is for "making materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statements and representations" to the FBI, under 18 U.S.C. Section 1001.  What are the alleged false statements?  There is no allegation that any of the false statements were made under oath.  The basic idea is that Libous leaned on a small and struggling law firm to give his son a job, and in the process made a statement to the effect that the firm "would have to build a new wing" to accommodate all the business it would receive.  Then, when questioned by the FBI about the subject, Libous allegedly said things that included that "he could not recall how his son began work at Law Firm I," "no deals were made to get his son the job at Law Firm I," and "he never promised to refer work to Law Firm I." 

So it's not just that there was no charge or conviction of any underlying crime.  It's also that it doesn't appear that there ever was any underlying crime at all.  Yes, "deprivation of the intangible right to honest services" is a (completely phony) federal crime, never mentioned here, although the Supreme Court has said that that fake crime can only be prosecuted constitutionally when there is proof of a bribe or kickback.  Anyway, this indictment doesn't even mention the existence of that "crime."  Moreover, for a bribe or kickback there has to be consideration going to the pol, and the only consideration mentioned here is a job for the kid -- nothing is mentioned going to Libous himself.  And would the quid pro quo be this business about "hav[ing] to build a new wing" to accommodate the gusher of work?  If Libous actually used those words, would any sane person take it as anything other than pure puffery, stated with an obvious tone of humor in recognition that it could well not happen?  Libous was a State Senator -- he didn't have any ability to deliver New York State's legal work.  So maybe he could recommend this firm to some of his political supporters, and maybe some of them would hire the firm?  So????

The charges against Sampson stemmed from an investigation into whether he had embezzled some $500,000 from funds entrusted to him as court-appointed referee for foreclosed properties.  Here is a July 24 Daily News article discussion the charges and conviction.  But all the substantive charges against him were dismissed for failure to comply with the statute of limitations:

Last year, Federal Judge Dora Irizarry dismissed the embezzlement charges ruling that the statute of limitations had passed.

That means that we are not going to find out if Sampson actually committed the embezzlement.

I'm certainly not going to stand up for the overall honesty of the New York State Legislature.  But it is deeply troubling that the prosecutors constantly investigate all the legistors, find nothing to prosecute them for in their conduct of their job and life, but only accuse them of crimes arising out of their response to the investigation itself for essentially "dissing the prosecutors."  And this prosecutorial conduct is particularly troubling as to the New York State Senate, which hangs in precarious Republican control in this very blue state, and thus where prosecutions of Republican leadership or Republicans in swing districts could greatly affect the political balance.

Meanwhile the Southern District prosecutors got a superseding indictment a few days ago against the recent (Republican) Majority Leader, Dean Skelos.  I covered the previous indictment here.  As far as I can see, the new charges, like the old, all involve a job for Skelos's son, and no personal benefit to Skelos himself.  Well, at least there's an alleged underlying wrong, and not just dissing the FBI in the course of the investigation.  But it still sounds even thinner than the charges of which the next previous Senate Majority Leader, Republican Joe Bruno, was acquitted.  

Watch Out For Rule By The "Smart" -- Part II

A little over a year ago I wrote an article discussing the extent to which human intelligence is noticeably limited.  (Watch Out For Rule By The "Smart")  The amount that any one person can figure out in a lifetime is very small.  Meanwhile, what are seemingly the "smartest" people not only don't figure out important things, but regularly get taken in by some of the most preposterous scams and fallacies.  Worse, they come up with bad solutions to perceived societal problems and in their hubris (because they are so "smart") they seek to impose those solutions through coercion on everyone else.  The particular focus of last year's article was the so-called "Risky Business Coalition," consisting of Mike Bloomberg, Hank Paulson, and Tom Steyer, falling for the climate hoax and then seeking to have the government force everybody else to drastically cut carbon emissions (while for themselves, of course, they continue to move among multiple homes in fleets of private jets).

For today's example, consider Friday's column from Official Manhattan Contrarian Worst Economics Writer Paul Krugman.  The title is "The M.I.T. Gang."  Krugman points out that a remarkable number of the Grand Pooh-Bahs in the top economic policy positions in the world today were contemporaries of his in the economics Ph.D. program at M.I.T. in the late 1970s. Ph.D. in economics from M.I.T. -- now there's "smart"!  And today these brainiacs are running the world!  Surely we can trust them to come up with good policies.  Right?

Name a few names, Paul:

It’s actually surprising how little media attention has been given to the dominance of M.I.T.-trained economists in policy positions and policy discourse. But it’s quite remarkable. Ben Bernanke has an M.I.T. Ph.D.; so do Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, and Olivier Blanchard, the enormously influential chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. Mr. Blanchard is retiring, but his replacement, Maurice Obstfeld, is another M.I.T. guy — and another student of Stanley Fischer, who taught at M.I.T. for many years and is now the Fed’s vice chairman. 

Any others?

And yes, I’m part of the same gang.  

I like that part about Blanchard being the "enormously influential chief economist of the International Monetary Fund."  This is the guy who has spent the last seven years -- otherwise known as the period since the financial crisis -- advising governments in trouble because of overspending to never, ever cut government spending under any circumstances.  All of the European countries with government spending at 50% of GDP or more languish with stagnant economies, and Blanchard is so mesmerized by his Keynesian models that he can't recognize overspending as the problem.  Worse, he so completely believes the fake statistics that count government spending -- no matter how wasteful -- at 100 cents on the dollar in GDP, that he doesn't realize that these big spenders actually have declining economies.

Don't believe me?  Try this: When France (government spending 56% of GDP) had an economic contraction in 2013, here's what Blanchard had to say:

France's growth is forecast to be slightly negative in 2013, reflecting a combination of fiscal consolidation, poor export performance, and increasingly, so, low confidence.

"Fiscal consolidation," for those not among the cognoscenti, is IMF/MIT Ph.D.-speak for some combination of cutting government spending and raising taxes.  So if economic contraction is to be blamed on "fiscal consolidation," then the correct economic policy for a government is to borrow absolutely as much money as you can get your hands on and waste it as fast as possible.  These people actually believe that.  They are really, really, really "smart."

But don't worry, Blanchard is about to retire.  His replacement is Obstfeld, another M.I.T. Ph.D. guy from the same era.  Here is what Tyler Cowen has to say about the appointment of Obstfeld:

Overall I would say this reflects the continuing preeminence of MIT-style macroeconomics in the current policy community, his MIT Ph.d. is from 1979 and his work has been very much in that vein. 

I don't know why Tyler is being so circumspect in his verbiage.  As far as I know, saying that someone's "work has been very much in the vein" of an "M.I.T. Ph.D.  . . .  from 1979" is saying that he believes that the best economic policy for any country is borrowing as much as you can and wasting it as fast as possible.  So that's going to continue to be the official advice that the IMF offers to any country in financial trouble for the next God-knows-how-many years.

Here is Krugman's take on Blanchard's tenure at the IMF:

The I.M.F.’s research department, under Mr. Blanchard’s leadership, has done authoritative work on the effects of fiscal policy, demonstrating beyond any reasonable doubt that slashing spending in a depressed economy is a terrible mistake, and that attempts to reduce high levels of debt via austerity are self-defeating. But European politicians have slashed spending and demanded crippling austerity from debtors anyway.

Yes, Blanchard's "definitive work" proves that borrowing as much as you can and wasting it as fast as possible is the best policy.  It's "beyond a reasonable doubt."  So who is the Manhattan Contrarian to be questioning these great M.I.T. Ph.D.s?  (Has anybody looked into whether it is all just an artifact of counting wasteful government spending at 100 cents on the dollar in GDP?  Not Blanchard or Obstfeld or Krugman.  They're too "smart" to have that kind of self-doubt.)  

Things You Will Not Read In The New York Times -- Income Down, Poverty Up For Blacks Under Obama

In an article today appearing in both Town Hall and Real Clear Politics, Larry Elder does a real service in compiling statistics about the economic condition of African Americans in the United States in the age of Obama.

Perhaps you might think that Obama's economic program has been "helping" blacks.  The big "stimulus" of 2009-11; Obamacare with its maze of subsidies for the low income; big increases in welfare and handout programs like TANF, SNAP, EITC, Obamaphones,  Medicaid and SSDI; increased support for labor unions; and so forth.  All these things at least are designed to sound like they are "helping" the poor and the little guy against the rich and/or powerful.  Surely that should mean that the economic position of African Americans would be improved.  Right?

But actually, anybody who understands our economic statistics would immediately realize that additional spending on such programs would harm the measured economic position of the supposed intended beneficiaries.  That's because the economic statistics measure things like "income" and "employment," which are not improved by subsidy and handout programs.  Most of the handout programs do not count at all in measured income; that's certainly true of Obamacare subsidies, Medicaid, Obamaphones, SNAP, and EITC, just for starters.  And then there are the negative incentives that all of these programs provide to keep incomes (or at least visible incomes) low so that the benefits will continue to flow.  Put those factors together and it is almost certain that measured income and employment will decline as the handouts increase.  And that is exactly what we see.

And I'm not saying that the decline in the economic condition of blacks is just an artifact of the statistics.  You could argue about whether the statistics as defined give an accurate picture of economic well-being, and I have certainly done that.  But I would still agree that "income" earned at a job is a fundamentally different thing from a government handout.  Handouts are very restricted and just not worth nearly as much to the recipients as cash from a job.  For example, New York spends some $10,000 per year per Medicaid beneficiary.  I'll bet not one in ten of the "beneficiaries" would take the Medicaid enrollment if given the choice between that and the $10,000 cash.

So with that introduction, here are some of Elder's findings about the changing economic condition of African Americans since 2009:

• Poverty.  "In 2009, when Obama took office, the black poverty rate was 25.8 percent. As of 2014, according to Pew Research Center, the black poverty rate was 27.2 percent."
• Income.   "CNNMoney says, 'Minority households' median income fell 9 percent between 2010 and 2013, compared to a drop of only 1 percent for whites.' The Financial Times wrote last October: 'Since 2009, median non-white household income has dropped by almost a 10th to $33,000 a year, according to the U.S. Federal Reserve's survey of consumer finances.'" 
• Unemployment.  Elder acknowledges that  "[i]n 2009, black unemployment was 12.7 percent, and by 2014, it had fallen to 10.1 percent," but points to a very different story told by labor force participation:   "The drop in labor force participation was sharpest for African Americans, who saw a decline . . . [under Obama] to 60.2 percent."   Another way of looking at this is that if black labor force participation were "normalized" to the overall U.S. rate of about 63%, they would have an unemployment rate of close to 15% today.
• Home ownership.  "According to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, the picture is ugly: 'Homeownership rates have fallen six percentage points among black households -- double that among white households. ... More than 25 percent of mortgage homeowners in both high-poverty and minority neighborhoods were underwater. . . .'" 

So to what extent has the decline in blacks' economic condition been driven by the explosion of government programs intended to "help"?  I'll let you draw your own conclusions, but it is clear that the government programs have indeed exploded.  HHS puts out an annual report called Welfare Indicators and Risk Factors.  The latest one I can find is about a year old from July 2014, and I can't find one for this year yet.  The information in the Report is somewhat dated depending on the category.  A few examples from various sources:  SNAP recipients from 27 million to 46 million; Obamaphone expenditures from $800 million to $2.2 billion; Medicaid expenditures from $375 billion (2009) to $449 billion (2013)(follow link to NHE Tables); SSDI from about $110 billion to about $160 billion (chart at the link); and so forth.