No Wonder Politicians Are So Confused by the Health Care Crisis

ABC News has just written an interesting piece about the sort of medical care Congressmen, Senators and senior government officials receive. It shouldn't surprise anyone that they get really good care. They can walk in without an appointment and be seen immediately. Their doctors, unlike ours, have plenty of time to spend with them, explain things and ponder their cases. To add insult to injury, our politicians pay about $503 per YEAR to insure themselves and their families. If you and I purchased the same level of care we could expect to pay upwards of $3,000 per month. For just the insurance, not for the visits.

Services offered by the Office of the Attending Physician include physicals and routine examinations, on-site X-rays and lab work, physical therapy and referrals to medical specialists from military hospitals and private medical practices. According to congressional budget records, the office is staffed by at least four Navy doctors as well as at least a dozen medical and X-ray technicians, nurses and a pharmacist.

Sources said when specialists are needed, they are brought to the Capitol, often at no charge to members of Congress.

"If you had, for example, prostate cancer, you would go to one of the centers of excellence for the country, which would be Johns Hopkins. If you had coronary artery disease, we would engage specialists at the Cleveland Clinic. You would go to the best care in the country. And, for the most part, nobody asked what your insurance was," Balbona said.

In addition to Balbona, several former staff members and private physicians who have consulted at the OAP as recently as last year agreed to talk to ABC News on background. They described a culture centered on meeting the needs and whims of members of Congress, with almost no concern for cost.

It is no surprise, then, that so many of these politicians are totally confused about what all the fuss is about when they go home to their town meetings and everybody is upset. What's all the fuss about? America has the best medical care in the world? Wrong! Our politicians have the best medical care in the world. We, the citizens, have health care ranked about 37th, just above third world status.

I am constantly wondering how long all this ridiculous bickering in Washington would continue if, tonight at midnight, all the politicians were directed to their local Blue Cross doctor or Free Clinic. I would guess we would have a decent equitable and affordable universal health care in about two weeks.

But, that would be dreaming, wouldn't it. So, the nightmare continues for over 50 Million fellow citizens. Will the madness never end?

Read ABC's entire article here

Meg Whitman for Governor - I Think Not!

Meg Whitman for Governor? Why on Earth? Give me even one reason. Another bored greedy executive with a radically inflated sense of their own talents throwing just a splash of the billions they made fleecing the public at another game they think, unwisely, they just may be good at. I will be writing more, much more, about this in the future.

But, let's just start with her experience. Basically, she ran eBay from a small friendly little auction house into to a very large loosely supervised, customer ignored and vicious Big Company.

Her biggest single accomplishment was to buy Skype for 3 billion, spend hundreds of millions to develop it only to see it sold as a disaster by the management who replaced her. Her second biggest deal was to buy a minority interest in Craigs List, through a dirty little back room transaction, where eBays involvement was unwanted, destructive and, finally, abandoned.

She did, in her favor, make the decision to buy PayPal. However, the developer of eBay, after spending time inside the eBay inferno, got disgusted and decided to take his most valuable commodity, creativity, with him. He is now selling the much sought after fast and electric Tessla cars he dreamed up, designed, built and is now selling faster than he can produce.
I wonder what eBay might have been like if he had been encouraged to stay and contribute under Whitman.

Whitman was so popular with eBay users that two years ago they canceled, and have never rescheduled their very popular and heavily attended annual conference/convention. The reason for the permanent cancellation? Too many eBayers were so upset with Whitman, the eBay "Community" of computers, and the general environment of "screw the users" that there were almost open riots when the users actually got to speak to a real person from eBay.

For a flavor of what I am talking about, just visit the eBay forums and see if you can go back as far as Whitmans' time and get a feel for the really pissed off customers in the eBay Community. Or you could just post a question asking about Whitman, at least you could before eBay hired some people to delete any negative comments from the forums.

It might not have been necessary to start deleting comments if, instead, they had hired some real people earlier on to talk to users instead of requiring all input to be in the form of messages that were subsequently read, interpreted and responded to by eBay computers....which is why the answers never really seemed to fit the original question. Or how about the quality control questionaires.."tell us how we are doing"....that were multiple choice with no place for negative comments or notations.

I can only dream what California might turn into if Whitman has her say. I can only dream bad dreams. Very bad dreams. Maybe the Terminator couldn't make much of a dent on California, but anybody that could create a wicked, vicious culture out of something as neat as the eBay concept probably can also do some serious damage to California. The only hope for California might turn out to be the Do Nothing political bureaucracy that has so frustrated the current governor and manages to stymie change at every turn.

California, as bad as it already is, does not need Meg Whitman. Thanks, Meg, but just take your Billions you earned off fleecing eBay users and go find another place to entertain yourself. Oh, and you might want to think about actually exercising your responsibility as a citizen to vote.

MAD Architects Use Solar Eco-Skin on Taiwanese Convention Center

Now this is an interesting development. Movable solar panels make for a really interesting concept.

We here at PopSci enjoy our green dreams for future buildings as much as any other geek. So imagine the excitement when Beijing-based MAD Ltd. unveiled its solar eco-skin design for the Taichung Convention Center in Taiwan.

The landmark building design aims to meld future tech with natural shapes that evoke mountains dotted with crater-like openings. We can only hope that a recovering post-apocalyptic landscape would look so pleasing.

See article in Popular Science here.

Can Nobody Stop This Madness?

In my opinion the biggest culprit in events leading to the recent economic collapse were the rating services who, in spite of growing evidence to the contrary, continued to issue positive reports on clearly sinking credit default swaps and other dicey vehicles. They did it in exchange for very large fees. Had, instead, they issued more cautionary ratings, the whole situation might not have been averted but alarms would have been raised earlier and the landing a lot softer.

You'd think they'd stop, or if not, somebody would stop them. But, not according to former Moody's analyst Eric Kolchinsky in todays Wall Street Journal

Here's more from Reuters:

"With nearly $3 trillion of rated bonds, the insurance industry is the largest sector of the U.S. financial services industry to rely on capital ratings, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC).

The three leading ratings firms -- Moody's, Fitch and Standard & Poor's -- have been criticized for fueling the financial crisis by assigning and maintaining high ratings on mortgage-backed securities, even as concerns about the health of the U.S. home market grew.

The NAIC, which represents state insurance regulators, wants to lessen its reliance on the ratings firms, according to a March report. The group has also held discussions over whether to launch its own system for assigning ratings."

Can nobody put a stop to this?

Read the entire article in Wall Street Journal here

Or, read a summary of this in Huffington Post here

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/23/eric-kolchinsky-moodys-wh_n_295789.html

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/23/eric-kolchinsky-moodys-wh_n_295789.html

Backwards Truck Paint Job Would Make Anyone Slow Down

This would wake you up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

From Jalopnik. See the original here.

What the.......................... ???????

Amazing, just when you think you're pretty much up on all the new trends.

If you're already getting bored of traditional football this season then there's an alternative that is uniformed in "lingerie". Yes, lingerie football. Denver has a team, LA has a team, Seattle has a team, San Diego has a team... the list goes on and on. On Friday night the Denver Dream played the Los Angeles Temptation in Denver. Despite the altitude advantage for the Denver Dream the ladies were defeated 26-19 by the Temptation. Below is a slideshow showing some game highlights. If you want to read more about the game then go here. Click on!

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/21/lingerie-football-photos_n_293247.html

SEE MORE HERE

The Funniest Protest Signs of 2009, or Maybe Not So Funny

See the rest of the signs here, on Huffington Post

The New McCarthyism

Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are paving the way for a return of McCarthyism with their hysterical and shrill denunciations of President Obama and his administration as secret Communists and Marxists and Fascists who actually hate America and are trying to destroy it from the inside. Crooks and Liars highlights this well-done video juxtaposing the conspiracy theorists on the right with the disgraced Senator Joseph McCarthy. The result is pretty revealing.

See the Video here

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/21/the-return-of-mccarthyism_n_293451.html

Welcome Toy Zone! 15 Bizarre Motorcycle Sidecars

I just added Toy Zone to our RSS fees because of their great list of 15 Bizarre Motorcycle Side Cars.
Toy Zone Feed can be found on the right down by Gadgets. Check out some of their other great lists....

Welcome, People of Walmart!

I've added a new RSS Feed from PeopleofWalmart.com It can be found on the lower right between the feeds from People Magazine and Jalopnik. Thanks to Jalopnik who located this site through their collection of The Cars of Walmart.

9 Most Unusual Pets

You can always rely on Oddee.com to come up with the most unusual lists.
Check out their 9 Most Unusual Pets list here.

The Best Way to Get Around the Frankfurt Auto Show

See More at Jalopnik, obsessed with the cult of cars here

See the original article in Discover Magazine here.

France or America, Who is Calling Who Socialist?

Roger Cohen, who I gather spends a lot of time in France, wrote an interesting article in the New York Times a couple days ago. By his accurate perspective, the US and France actually are more similar than dissimilar.

Most (French) would be shocked to hear about American social security, let alone Medicare and Medicaid, the government-run health care systems for the elderly and the poor that together form one of the largest publicly financed health systems in the world.

Americans obsess less about France than vice-versa but when they do they tend to suffer from equally delusional ideas. The French — like many Europeans — loom as a feckless multitude coddled by a nanny state that’s so big it must be socialist.

In fact, ever since President Mitterrand tried broad nationalizations in the early 1980s with catastrophic results, France, like most of Europe, has been on a steady march toward freer markets, trade and competition. In its way, it has been Americanizing.

Both we and the French really know very little about the other, although ignorance doesn't seem to get in the way of our loudly voiced opionions of the other. The two countries actually have more in common than not.

Read the entire article here.

Carving TOO BIG TO FAIL down to "too small to care."

Neither the Republicans or Democrats, left or right, are representing the common citizen, only their own self-interests, which are not coincidentally, the self-interests of the rich and powerful. I hold up as an example the total lack of controls or restructuring we were promised on Wall Street so this could not happen again. Bernanke, Paulson and Geitner have given them them the tools, but the politicians refuse to use them.

Fairly easy to fix, I think.

1) Establish a consumer financial protection agency.

2) Closer regulation of the credit rating agencies.

3) Initiate laws that protect the system from banks that are "too big to fail.". Personally, I think breaking up the companies into smaller components would be an idea worth considering.

4) Put some teeth back in Shareholders Rights so stockholders can actually have some say in who runs their company and how much they get paid. The government should not be involved in this decision.

5) Devise some way to make it more painful to foreclose on responsible qualified homeowners than to re-negotiate an equitable loan

6) Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act.

7) And to keep all the Rats from gnawing through the baseboards, and around new legislation, implement real campaign finance reform so politicians do not need to raise massive amounts of money just to stay in their jobs. Then lobbyists will have nothing to offer a politician except a point of view.


From Today's News on the Same Subject.

Robert Reich, Pat Buchanan Agree: We Should Have Let Some Big Banks Fail (VIDEO)

Reich: “You know it's interesting Pat Buchanan, I start worrying about my own convictions when I hear you repeating back to me exactly what I believe. We ought to have either had kind of a restructuring of all of these big banks based upon something like Chapter 11, or we should have had a kind of temporary receivership, but we have the worst of both worlds. Taxpayers bailed them out so right now they know they were going to get a bailout next time. Before they didn't even know they were going to get a bailout, now they're making these wild trades they're doing the same risky stuff they were doing before, and now they know that if they get in trouble the government is going to bail them out because they are, quote, "too big to fail." Nothing in capitalism, no entity should be too big to fail.”

Stiglitz Says Banking Problems Are Now Bigger Than Pre-Lehman

“In the U.S. and many other countries, the too-big-to-fail banks have become even bigger,” Stiglitz said in an interview today in Paris. “The problems are worse than they were in 2007 before the crisis.”

Stiglitz’s views echo those of former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who has advised President Barack Obama’sStanley Fischer, who suggested last month that governments may want to discourage financial institutions from growing “excessively.”

Elizabeth Warren: "Until We Have A Credible Liquidation Threat, We Don't Have Capitalism In America" (VIDEO)

TARP watchog Elizabeth Warren has been critical of how the bank bailouts have been handled, but in an interview with MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan Monday morning she praised Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner for some of his recent testimony before Congress:

The question of regulatory reform is really on the table now. He was saying, in effect, if we don't change the rules going forward... we're not going to be able to get ourselves out of this crisis without some risk of falling right back into it. That was a very strong and very different message from the one he delivered last time we were talking.

She concluded with three things she would like to see implemented:

1) a consumer financial protection agency.

2) regulation of the credit rating agencies.

3) new laws that protect the system from banks that are "too big to fail."

Warren told Ratigan: "Until we have a credible liquidation threat, we don't have capitalism in America. It just doesn't work without that."

Arianna Huffington: Why Obama Won't Be Able to Reform Wall Street

There was a moment in the president's speech today that spoke volumes about the high hurdle financial reform is facing. The White House had sent a copy of the president's remarks to reporters and I was underlining key parts of it as he spoke. In the speech as written, he was supposed to call on Wall Street "to embrace serious financial reform, not fight it." But when the president actually delivered the line, he edited it, saying instead that Wall Street should "embrace serious reform, not resist it." That one-word change says everything you need to know about why all the president's well-intentioned pronouncements won't actually lead to fundamental reform. Because he's utterly misreading the opponents of reform. They are not passively resisting; they are aggressively fighting against reform with every weapon they have in their extremely well-funded arsenal.

The Continuing Disaster of Wall Street, One Year Later, Robert Reich

Let's be clear: The Street today is up to the same tricks it was playing before its near-death experience. Derivatives, derivatives of derivatives, fancy-dance trading schemes, high-risk bets. "Our model really never changed, we've said very consistently that our business model remained the same," says Goldman Sach's chief financial officer.

The only difference now is that the Street's biggest banks know for sure they'll be bailed out by the federal government if their bets turn sour -- which means even bigger bets and bigger bucks."

Judge Overturns Bank Of America-SEC Settlement Over Merrill Bonuses

"U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff held up his approval of the settlement, however, and ordered the SEC last month to explain why it didn't pursue charges against specific executives at Bank of America over the accusations.

Rakoff, was concerned that Bank of America was paying the penalty with Shareholders money, when it was the shareholders who had suffered form the actions of Bank of America. In another recent case Rakoff ruled that the penalty, instead of going to the SEC, should go directly to the shareholders.

Rakoff, in his ruling, found that the settlement "suggests a rather cynical relationship between the parties: the SEC gets to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger, the bank's management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators. And all this is done at the expense, not only of the shareholders, but also of the truth."

Larry Flynt Proposes a NATIONAL STRIKE DAY - Count Me In!

Been a little too busy to post much the last few days. Sorry. However, I did post the following on the Newsreel Blog Porn Kingpin Larry Flynt Broadcasts Political Fantasies in HuffPo Debut

The above blog was in response to Larry Flynt's Huffington Post Posting, Common Sense 2009 As I say I don't know much about Larry Flynt's politics, except he supported the other guy for president, but I do agree with him that it is time to do something and this just might be a good start.

My comments were.

Whoa Nelly!

Are you folks actually saying that the rich and powerful do not have excessive influence over governement? That, in a world where a US Senator has to raise about $90,000 per day for re-election , he is more interested in what is right for his constituents and the country than raising money? Does anybody really believe Democrat and Republicans, no matter how sincere their original Intentions, have not been totally corrupted by the immense power and prestige they are afforded?

Can you really say this in a world where the Pentagon requests a single $64 Million Gulfstream and the oversight committee throws in another 3 Gulfstreams, over the protests of the Pentagon, all because Nancy Pelosi couldn't get a $5,000/hour Gulfstream to ride home last Christmas ? I don't know much about Larry Flynts politics and I don't care. I do know that civility and adult supervision is lacking in DC and it is our responsibility as citizens to do insert some controls since our representatives won't.

Immigrants. Hang them or give them $1 Million dollars and a passport, I am past caring. Nothing could be worse than this limbo of decision avoidance that goes on and on and on. Health Care, Social Security, Wall Street, Budget and the other serious issues of last 20 years...... Nothing ever gets done. Just make the tough decisions and get it behind us; It isn't going away. Lord of the Flies on Steroids. "Well, if the other guy hadn't .........." Bull! If Billy Jack, you remember Billy Jack?, were here he'd suggest hanging one at random and telling them that he was going to be back in 30 days to see how they were doing. That would get some bipartisanship action. The politicians have the ability. They don't have the will. We need to give them the will or they are going to keep sailing this Ship of State right into the iceberg field.

Count me in for any strike, march or other demonstration that lets them know how frustrated we are and we are not afraid to organize. This has nothing to do with left or right. It is about representative government. I will march shoulder to shoulder with the Devil, if necessary, on this. We can bicker later on how our representatives should represent us .....after they start actually doing so.

In the words of Mark Twain, I would have written a shorter letter but I didn't have the time.

Maybe Now is a Good Time to Talk About Afghanistan

AboutWe are supporting a corrupt government who does not have popular support and may only be winning the current election because of election fraud. Our soldiers are dying while their soldiers are steering clear of the dangerous action. We are spending a lot of money. Their politicians are getting rich off of corruption. Their culture is as alien to us as our is to them. We have no clear definition of what our goals are and how will define victory. Our military leaders are asking for more troops and more money.

Does this ring a familiar bell? It does to me. Sounds a lot like it to me. Before we get further involved, I think it is time for some sort of dialogue to, at a minimum, define what we want to accomplish, how we will measure our progress and what we will do if we start to fall short of our goals.

Goerge Will, in todays Washington Post, is recommending we withdraw,

U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000, to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.

I am not yet advocating withdrawal. But, it is time for our leaders explain clearly why we should be in Afghanistan, what we want to accomplish, how we will measure our success and how much it will cost in lives and money. Public support is already waning and will only get worse. We can not win a 10 year war without strong public support. And, if we can't win, why start? Or, at least, narrow our focus.