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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


2016 Obamacare premiums to skyrocket 20%

Finding out what’s in it: Health insurance premiums in 2016 will rise more than 20%, three times more than predicted by Obama officials.

The discrepancy is because the government excluded price data for three of the four Obamacare health insurance plans when the officials issued their recent forecast claiming enrollees would face only a 7.5 percent average rate increase in 2016. When data for all four plans are included, premium costs will actually rise on average 20.3 percent next year.

In other words, Obama administration officials purposely manipulated the numbers to hide the actual rate increase. Then, not surprisingly, “The mainstream media was quick to embrace the 7.5 percent number, claiming it reflected the real-world experience of most Obamacare customers,” when it truth the number was a lie.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • Edward

    Hah!

    What a crock of [stuff]. Even at 7.5%, the rate of increase is worse than it was before Obamacare (BO), and that rate of increase was seen as too expensive for many people — a basic reason for implementing this expensive, hideous, abominable behemoth. Even the sugar coated 7.5% version of the annual rate of increase leaves a bad taste.

    Does the media compare even the sugar coated rate with the BO rate? Of course not. That would emphasize the failure of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in its title purpose: to make healthcare affordable (what the patients are supposed to be protected against is a mystery that may never be solved).

    It does not matter what “metal” these plans are, each is still a turd. That they cost more and increase at a greater rate than our free market plans did BO shows how [turdlike] each of these plans is.

    This “affordable” healthcare law keeps making healthcare less and less affordable each passing year. It is just like most government programs, exacerbating rather than mitigating the problems they are intended to solve (similar to what MikeP recently noted elsewhere: http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/another-obamacare-co-op-the-largest-collapses/#comment-821105 ).

  • Cotour

    I do not have Obamacare but I have to report what I just received in the mail from my healthcare provider Oxford.
    My monthly rate is going down by $72.00 and my out of network deductible has gone up from $6000.00 to $7,000.00.

    I will interpret this as good news.

  • Edward

    It looks like you save money, so long as you don’t have to use more than $6,862 of deductible. On the other hand, you’re maximum extra cost is $138, so unless you are unlucky you seem to have come out better than most. This year. Congratulations on choosing a good insurer.

    Unless your premiums were too high for this year, explaining the lowered premium for next year, in which case I offer you condolences for the extra that you paid.

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