Real reasons to question the Obama plan

Okay, we've seen the crazies talk about health care.

But what about people who have read the bills and actually know something about health care?

Here's Marcy Wheeler questioning what kind of health insurance will get sold to the uninsured:

How would you feel about this insurance plan: a $500 deductible; a 50% co-pay, and a maximum of $4,200 out-of-pocket cost. Using a highly simplified model from the CBO, this plan has an actuarial value of about 66%. The premium for an individual would be $3,290 plus the administrative costs, which range from 7% to 30%. The high end is for individual and small firm policies, so let’s say 25%, for total premiums of at least $4,112.50.

Under this plan, if you had medical costs of $8,725, or more, you would get back more than you paid in, that is, your premiums plus your co-pay plus your deductible would equal your costs. If you had $5,000 in expenses, maybe the cost of falling and breaking an arm (you'd be amazed how hard it is to find the cost for a medical procedure), you’d be out your premium and $2,750, a total of $6,862.50 that year. That is going to be a real problem for someone making $35,000 per year.

I’d call that a pretty good definition of junk insurance. 

And here's Trudy Lieberman:

By now, it should be obvious to everyone that the Massachusetts model was the president’s health reform endgame all along...

...recent Census Bureau statistics show that, in 2008, some 352,000 Massachusetts residents did not have coverage, even though the law requires that they do. That’s about 5.5 percent of the state’s population; up from the 2.6 percent who were uninsured in the years after reform took effect....

...It’s no secret that Massachusetts’ lack of cost controls, deliberately avoided when reform passed, threatens to undo the law. Ultimately, if the state has no way of paying for subsidies to cover insurance premiums, the law is doomed. Same goes for national reform. Most cost control measures under consideration by Congress and the president are weak or predicated on squeezing savings out of the existing health care order—savings that may or may not materialize.

Massachusetts has now crafted a plan to reduce medical spending by at least $50 billion over the next decade, mostly by scrapping fee-for-service payments to providers in favor of global payments that provide a set amount to cover the cost of care for patients. Aside from sounding like the HMO’s capitation payments of old, draft proposals would give providers five whole years to shift to the new payment methods. What happens in the meantime? The state is looking at interim options, like a set fee for certain procedures.

Here's to Barry

Barry Ritholz spends some time riffing with US News & World Reports about the bailouts and there are some choice details in there worth reading.

Like this bit:

[Q:] It‘s conventional wisdom on Wall Street that the government made a mistake in letting Lehman Brothers collapse last September. But some people think the real mistake was rescuing Bear Stearns a few months earlier, since that led Lehman to expect a rescue.

[A:] Bear Stearns was an organized collapse. They could have just let Bear Stearns go down. JPMorgan supposedly had 40 percent of the $9 trillion in Bear’s derivatives exposure, so why not let JPMorgan deal with it? After the Fed saved Bear, Dick Fuld [CEO of Lehman Brothers] sees Warren Buffett come in with a bunch of billions. That’s supposedly how much he offered: “A bunch of billions.” At a pretty good rate. And Fuld turns him down! He must have been thinking he’d get a better deal from the government. Classic moral hazard! So now it’s September, the night before bankruptcy, and Fuld is meeting with the Fed and the Treasury. Boy, would I have liked to be a fly on the wall. You can just imagine Paulson and Bernanke saying, “You turned Buffett down? You made the mistake of turning Warren Buffett down? And now you want money from us?” No wonder they didn’t want to bail out Lehman—even if they could have.

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True story...

A lovely fall day...

 

Blue sky, green fields... 

 

  

Wait, what's that in the grass?  

  

A sign..? What the *#((@! is a sign doing
in the middle of a-

 

Oh fer cryin' out loud...

Living the (hacker) dream

There's an awful lot of ink about rings of hackers stealing customer data - presumably so they can commit massive fraud. There's a lot of hype.

Well, it ain't all hype:

Albert Gonzalez, a former federal government informant and the alleged ringleader of one of the largest known identity theft cases in U.S. history, pleaded guilty (as expected) to 19 counts of conspiracy, computer fraud, wire fraud, access device fraud, and aggravated identity theft related to theft of credit and debit card data from TJX Companies (owner of T.J. Maxx), BJ's Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, among other retailers.

Gonzalez, along with 10 others from the U.S., Eastern Europe, and China, were accused in August 2008 of breaking into retail credit card payment systems using wardriving (searching for unsecured wireless networks while driving by with a laptop), and installing sniffer programs to capture data.

...

As for restitution, Gonzalez has agreed to forfeit his Miami condo, a 2006 BMW 330i, a Tiffany diamond ring, Rolex watches, and more than $1 million in cash that was buried in his back yard.

I have a copy of Stealing the Network: How to Own a Continent and it was easy to wonder why (if all these tactics were possible) why no one did it.

Well, someone did.

Jumpers

That this should happen at all is unacceptable.

That among its victims were those who sought only to help others makes it even worse.

All our endeavor is based on our belief that even in the depths of barbarism, mankind retains a fundamental minimum of humanity. Events such as this can make it very hard to maintain that belief.

But if abandon it, we must admit there is no difference between man and beast.

And this we will not admit.

We will build and we will rebuild - if only to prove to ourselves and our posterity that the common causes of progress and simple human charity do not end here.

CA Rep. Michael Duvall sets a new standard in political self destruction

(Via TPM)

A married state rep is caught in an affair.

Seen it before.

But wait - he's a "family values" Republican

*yawn*

-and he was caught because he bragged about the affair to a colleage

So?

-in open session

So?

-into a hot mic

Uh...

-and there's video

Bww...wha...

-where he graphicly describes his adultery

aaah....

-and that he engaged in two affairs at the same time

but....

-with women who were also married

a....

-and both of the women are lobbyists

wha..?

-for the industry that is regulated by the state rep's committee.

Okay, I give...

Yes... I think we have a new record holder.

Congratulations to (former) State Rep. Duvall. You've set an awfully high bar.

Collateralized Death Obligations

(H/t to trainreq, Felix Salmon - and to Blossom for the CDO label)

Ah, the innovation of Wall Street: they've found a way to buy and sell your own grandma.

You've heard of lump sum payments? That's where a person is due a series of payments and a vendor offers to buy all their future payments for a fraction of their total value. Person is going to get 100,000 over ten years, but would be willing to take 50,000 right now.

Turns out you can do this with life insurance. A person entitled to a 200,000 payout on their life policy might be willing to take 75,000 right now. Especially since the normal order of things has them dying before they get paid.

This isn't new - wasn't so long ago aids victims were cashing in their life policies to pay for treatment. In some of those cases, this turned out to be win-win.

The new wrinkle is securitization. The NYT points out that now these life polices can be bought up and turned into securities by "packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. [Banks] will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die."

The idea is still in the planning stages. But already “our phones have been ringing off the hook with inquiries,” says Kathleen Tillwitz, a senior vice president at DBRS, which gives risk ratings to investments and is reviewing nine proposals for life-insurance securitizations from private investors and financial firms, including Credit Suisse.

...

what is good for Wall Street could be bad for the insurance industry, and perhaps for customers, too. That is because policyholders often let their life insurance lapse before they die, for a variety of reasons — their children grow up and no longer need the financial protection, or the premiums become too expensive. When that happens, the insurer does not have to make a payout.

But if a policy is purchased and packaged into a security, investors will keep paying the premiums that might have been abandoned; as a result, more policies will stay in force, ensuring more payouts over time and less money for the insurance companies.

...

Undeterred, Wall Street is racing ahead for a simple reason: With $26 trillion of life insurance policies in force in the United States, the market could be huge.

Naturally, Goldmann Sachs is involved (because $26 trillion smells like money) - and the credit rating agencies are making noises like this time they will be careful. Last year's $8.3 trillion dollar adjustment has inspired them.

The next time an investment bank comes to them with an investment product (and its corresponding fee), they will think long and hard before they reflexively cash the check and deliver a AAA rating.

So now we know - the next bubble will be old people.

Get yours while prices are low.

Baltic Pirates = Mossad operation?

Okay - there's not a lot of hard facts in this but remember that whole Russian mystery ship hijack?

Here's one version:

The Arctic Sea, carrying 15 Russian crew, left Finland on 23 July bound for the Algerian port of Bejaia.

A day later, in the Baltic Sea, the ship was reportedly boarded by masked men who claimed to be Swedish anti-drugs police. They tied up the crew and searched the vessel, apparently leaving about 12 hours later.

Then there was the arrest of Estonian hijackers - and the internment of the ship's crew.

Now you have a Russian journalist claiming that the ship's cargo was illicit weapons - and subsequently fleeing the country.

And the Sunday Times is quoting sources that say the cargo was S-300 anti-air weapons bound for the middle east. The BBC is speculating that the initial hijacking may have been a Mossad operation.

You wonder if the press will keep digging - if only to prove that there really are no pirates in the Baltic.

Too weird.

Public option - illustrated

Great video arguing in favor of a public option - A few points illustrated in ways I simply hadn't though of before:


(H/t to Planet Money)

Proof that opera is universal

...is the flawless operatic skewering of Alberto Gonzales in The Gonzales Cantata.



The words are directly from the hearing transcripts - and the music is just marvelous.

Proof positive that the highest form of cruelty is to expose people to their own actions.

Hell, skip the satire and just spool it up for background sound. It's plenty good just as musical entertainment.

(H/t to Ms. Maddow)

Employees are good at…

…the things the boss checks on.

I was sort of blowing past the recent Kabul guard scandal (where tax-funded security personnel engaged in deviant behavior, rather than doing their jobs) because it wasn't like they massacred civilians, or gang raped a coworker. The bar has been set pretty high, after all.

But I was struck by the part where reports of this behavior had been filtering in for years and still, STILL these companies get their contracts renewed.

There’s a certain insanity to taking the lowest bidder for site security contracts and not enforcing basic performance criteria.

I’d been reading back through some of the Free Range International posts and noticed he’s talking about the same issue – back in May.

[The officers who hire contractors]… have a very hard job. They can earn no glory, they do not receive praise, the best thing that can happen to them on a tour in Afghanistan is to return home with their rank and reputation. To avoid the temptation or appearance of fraud or favoritism they write requests for proposals which make little to no sense and award contracts based exclusively on the lowest bid submitted. What is the price for disconnecting contracting from performance? You get security guards hired to protect bases who actually murder American soldiers. I know of three such incidents and there are more. I had a friend show up at the Taj who was asked to stand up a guard force as soon as he could to replace an outfit named “Golden State.” There is no company by that name on the Afghan list of 37 authorized security companies. It was a rogue outfit run by some Afghans who spent time in America and their bid for these guard jobs was less than half what the reputable firms bid. They won, they sucked, they were fired and shot at their Army employers on the way out the door but, being typical Afghans, they did not hit anyone. I asked my buddy if the Army had finally figured out their guard forces needed international supervision and of course the answer was no. Too expensive don’t you see. Our Army will spend 2 million dollars each on ground penetrating radars to mount on the front of the hundreds of multimillion dollar MRAPs despite the fact that they HAVE NEVER DETECTED A MINE IN AFGHANISTAN. But spending money on proper guard forces to watch over our troops on a base – oh no, that is just too expensive.

His whole post The Dutch Boy Dilemma is worth reading, sort of a rant against risk-averse deployment of the military in general. But it points at a trend we've seen in other US deployments.

What is our mission in Afghanistan? I have been here four years and I don’t have a clue. If it is to prevent the return of the Taliban and al Qaeda, that mission was accomplished years ago. They will never be back in any kind of force regardless of when and how we leave. Is it to stand up a central government to allow the people of Afghanistan to join the rest of the functioning core of nation states? That is a noble mission and one I often used to explain why we are here years ago when I first started talking to local leaders in Shrua’s. But our actions on the ground do not remotely correspond to that mission (if that is why we are here.) How can you mentor Afghans if all your diplomats stay completely isolated from them inside a posh embassy throwing endless rounds of parties for each other? Look at the Afghan government. It is judged by all international observers to be in the top three nation sates for official corruption and you can see where all the billions we have spent has gone.

This guy and Rachel Maddow are on opposite poles of the political world - yet they have the same view of our involvement in Afghanistan.

It's clear that Afghanistan was the necessary war. We know why we went. But it's been over seven years now. It is unclear what we plan to do as we stay.

Makes you wonder.

Freedom of information, provided you can pay for it

Balkinization has a great post about the ACLU's role in prying documents out of the government.

The torture story is one of the most important examples of American journalism in the last decade. But it was not revealed through traditional investigative reporting alone. Instead, a non-profit organization-- the ACLU--worked in coordination with journalistic efforts to mount a long-term litigation campaign to gain access to important government information. The ACLU then provided the information to the general public on the Internet, and journalists wrote stories based on the revelations, which led to further ACLU requests and more litigation, producing further revelations, and so on.

It is unlikely that many newspapers today--strapped as they are for cash--would have been able to mount a litigation campaign of many years as expensive or as effective as the ACLU did in order to obtain information for a story.

Four years gone

Where does this mean world cast it's cold eye?
Who's left to suffer long about you?
Is your soul cast about like an old paper bag
past empty lots and early graves
of those like you who lost their way
murdered by the hand of fate
while the red bells rang like thunder?

I'd said before I'd get used to things being like they are.

Wrong again.

Word from the front

One of the nice side effects of the internet is rapid access to the commentary of troops in the field. The military is grappling with issues of operational security - but there are plenty of contractors and hangers on who are free to blog.

I've been following Free Range International for awhile now, and it's a trip. You learn things.

Like - how not to meet with Afghan leaders and deliver food and medicine:

The [US] force rolls into the town on MRAP’s with full battle kit, a bunch of “H[umanitarian] A[id]” aid bags full of tea packets, soccer balls and school supplies, two terps [interpreters], some medical staff, and no plan.  For those of you who have never been to Afghanistan let me clue you into a fact – the last thing in the world these people need is tea.  They have plenty and they hate Lipton tea bags because they suck – that is like rolling into a Mexican border town and giving the locals packets of cocaine and boxes of 5.56 ammo – they have enough of that shit … although the thought counts for something I guess.

The [meeting with the town leader] doesn’t go well.  The locals bum rush the supplies, the medics have no female terp and are also getting overwhelmed to the point of panic by people who no doubt have a ton of problems such as infected sores, intestinal parasites, malaria etc.. which the Americans could easily treat if they had the time, patience and a clue.  They see a young man snapping pictures with a cell phone – something Afghans do all the time – and interpret this as possibly hostile activity so they scan him with the BATS (Biometric Automated Tool Set)  and erase his cell phone.  Of what possible relevance these cell phone pics could be remains a mystery to me.    Young Afghans taking cell phone pictures is what one expects to see and is therefore not a “rule of opposites” scenario.

...

Let me provide the yellow.  In order to do [Key Leader Engagements] you need to engage the “key leaders” in a manner consistent with your objectives.  If your objective is to provide aid and make new friends how should the company commander present himself?  I vote for he drives in with his terp in an unarmored SUV; sits down with the local elders and asks permission to come in with his company and also for their help distributing some supplies. You ask him to provide male and female interpreters as well as supervisors to assist with the distribution of aid and you agree to the rate for these folks.  You both agree exactly how the MEDCAP will go and pay for supervisors – both male and female to do that too.  Leave the security outside the village and walk in without all the body armor – side arms or slung rifles are  no big deal they are a fact of life in this country.  The visit is supposed to be about trust and you can only show trust with actions …. not words.  If the elders do not hold up their end of the bargain you leave.  It is that simple – Pashtunwali cuts both ways and if they won’t play ball they should get the stick … or just be ignored.

You also learn about defending fixed locations:

[We] are looking at a ridge line some 600 meters away which is the attack point for...gunmen who fire on this post regularly.  There are four [Afghan National Army] soldiers and four [Afghan National Police] policemen manning this position and they have a Hummer mounted M60 machinegun, and RPK machinegun and their rifles for defense.  Apparently the bad guys tend to attack  in the evening when the ANP re-supply truck arrives with chow and they have wounded at least two ANP policemen this month.

What is frustrating to guys like [us] is the fact that we could easily sort out this threat with a good machinegun squad and a mortar – manned by proper infantry.  An American squad with a sharp squad leader would be perfect for a job like this.  The reason why American infantry is so effective is that their machineguns come with tripods and T&E’s which are traversing and elevation mechanisms.  Machineguns are deadly in the defense because you can dial them in using a map, range finders, a little math and test firing.  There are five different firing spots on the ridge across from this position and each of them should be dialed in on range cards so that the leader calls out a target designator when he wants to shift fire.  The machinegunner than dials that target in on his T&E and he can rock and roll.  A mortar which has been placed in properly can do exactly the same thing – register the targets allowing for first round hits which saves ammo and pumps up the troops.

You also get cross links to blogs like Afghan Quest - which write about how the army hasn't changed much. The guys that do stuff get hassled by the guys who don't.

Public option of Damacles

Marc Ambinder claims Dems are floating a trigger for a public option to be enacted - should private insurance fail to meet certain criteria.

Hmmmm....

Bad UI in Star Wars

(H/t to thorn)

What if there usability reviews in the Star Wars universe? SciFi Scanner tells you:

Lightsabers
Yes, I know, I want one too. But I tell you what: I want one with a hand guard. Otherwise every lightsaber battle would consist of sabers clashing and then their owners sliding as quickly as possible down the shaft to lop off their opponent's fingers. You say: Lightsabers can slice through anything but another lightsaber, so what are you going to make a hand guard out of? I say: Dude, if you have the technology to make a lightsaber, you have the technology to make a light hand guard.

School drop off

It's the first day of the new school routine
Dropping the boy at before school care, dropping the girl at day care and going to work.

And I have an 8:30 meeting.

I pull out of the driveway at 7:30 am with both kids strapped in and munching a Gosselin breakfast. I have the boy’s backpack, the backpack has the boy’s lunch. We’re good.

School drop off is a total mystery, I made a mental note of the street to take – I’ll park near where I was when we dropped the boy off.

I’m expecting bedlam, and the street is deserted. No people walking around and ample parking.

Odd.

I know I’m supposed to take the boy to the cafeteria – those were my instructions. I start heading for the door closest to the familiar, box-like appendage sticking out of the west side of the school.

The boy tells me we are headed to the wrong door. I figure, he’s done this before – so I follow his lead. We go down the stairs towards the door on the east side of the school. We get to the door, and it’s locked.

On the other side of the door, I see a teacher walking by who stops and gives us inaudible directions. My confused expression makes it clear I’m not getting what she’s saying.

Exasperated, she points with her arm to the west end of the school and repeats her inaudible directions.

The visual message gets through. We turn and head west.

---Bit of a comment here.

The school starts after 8am. This conflicts with virtually all work schedules known to man. If the school started classes at 7:45 or 7:30 a lot of lives would be simplified. Plus, I would not have to pay someone to watch my child for a half an hour before school every day.

That’s a systemic issue – not really the point – I’m concerned with execution here. The before school care is not run by the school. This is made clear by every school staffer you speak to.

“We don’t have anything to do with that.”

Now, I get that the school staff is not affiliated with the before school care people. I get that they don’t want to assume the responsibilities or liabilities that go along with caring for children in the hours before and after school.

But here’s the thing: Don’t act as if being asked about this care is somehow a burden to you. Don’t pretend that there is anything unreasonable in a person asking a school staffer about this service.
And for crying out loud – stop acting as if this service has nothing to do with the school.

No, you don’t have anything to do with this service – you only

• Receive my children from this service before school
• Deliver my children to this service after school
• Allow this service to take place at your facility

I mean, why the hell would anyone at the school know the slightest thing about it?

More to the point – this service benefits enormously from the school lending it an air of respectability. If this was child care in an offsite facility I’d have all kinds of other concerns:

• Is the facility safe?
• How will they handle transportation?
• What kind of security exists?

The fact that this care takes place in a school means those concerns are at least minimized. I know a school will not have power tools, rabid dogs, or circus carnies on the grounds. I know that if the child care person was showing R rated movies or passing out needles, there would be a high probability that someone would notice.

This service is leaps and bounds more acceptable in my sight simply because it occurs on school grounds. The school helped sell this service to me.

So - enough with the “Not my job” attitude, eh?

--where was I?

Ah yes. The three of us (with little e still carrying her cup of cereal) once again traverse the length of the school and walk up to another unlabeled, closed door and take a guess.

The door opens. Hooray. I’m at least at the right end.
We walk in. The instructions I had were “it’s by the principal’s office.”

Now, I don’t know if the cafeteria and the gym are the same thing. What is near the principal’s office is clearly a gym. And it’s packed with kids who are easily 12 years old.

As a parent of a five year old, I view 12 year olds like wildlife. On their own – they are perfectly pleasant. But I’m not leaving my son in room full of them.

I find no signs and no staff, so I start looking elsewhere. A few steps down the hall later, the boy tells me this is the wrong direction. We turn back towards the zoo and I go looking for a keeper.

While I’m doing this another parent streaks into view – dragging a child about the size of my son. I’m hopeful. Perhaps she knows where she is going.

She doesn’t. She is, however, at a higher level of frustration than I am and marches into the zoo. I hear her ask in a loud voice “Is this where before school care is?”

Now I see the keepers. They were inside the room just out of sight. This New Parent is talking to one of them. A balding middle-aged guy. Baldy shrugs and says something unhelpful. Behind him, another keeper says “I think they’ve moved to the teacher’s lounge.”

A third keeper shows solidarity with Baldy: they roll their eyes and say “It’s always something…”

New Parent is off like a shot and the boy and I try to follow. Little e is not in the mood to go fast. Anyway, she dropped a Cheerio and needs to pick it up.

Eventually we get to about the mid-point of the school when I see New Parent coming towards me, sans child. “They’re in the art room,” she says. “The middle school principle is kind of a…” she flops her hand around to imply: Dork.

I thank her.

We then go to the art room and there are a few kids sitting around a table with games and stuff. There’s a Nice Young Man who explains that when the school needs the gym the before school kids get booted into the art room. He shows me the sign up/sign out sheet and tells me he’s going to take the kids outside in a little while.

I tell him “It’s a good thing that the middle school thought to bump afterschool care on the second day. No chance of confusion there.”

He grins.

The boy gives me a hug and one of the kids tells him where to put his backpack. I leave.

Little e and I go to the nearest exit – the locked door we’d tried first. It opens to let us out and we walk back to the car.

It’s 8:05.

I’m twenty minutes from day care and day care is ten minutes from work. Parking is seven minutes from my desk. I call my team leader and tell them I’m going to be late. “Around 8:45” I say hopefully.

Usually, when I am late I start envisioning the forces of Murphy’s law sizing up my situation and deciding on tactics. It’s a delicate balancing act. Too few delays, I might show up on time. Too many, and their intervention becomes obvious (“Oh come on… a herd of cattle?”).

Today – their balance starts out pretty good. A train crossing. An ambulance delay. Traffic jam outside a school zone.

Then they get a bit greedy. A moving truck that backs out of a driveway blocking two lanes. It goes back and forth repeatedly because the driver is OCD and insists on having equal pavement on both sides of his truck when he parks.

The car in front of me stops to let pedestrians cross in front of them. These people are a half block away but this person is patient. “I’m in no hurry and I’m sure no one behind me is either…”

And then we’re at day care. Little e has (of course) taken off her shoes and socks, because its fun. So I re-shoe her and get her inside (where I then remove her shoes and put her in slippers). My watch says 8:30 and the day care administrator strikes up a conversation about web design.

Web design discussions… like crack… must resist….

I’m out the door by 8:35.

And realize I’m parked in. My day care, there is one driveway. You pull up to the house, somebody could park you in. Hasn’t happened to me in months.

Today’s the day.

So, I sit in my care for ten minutes. Because the parent who parked me in hasn’t tracked that they parked someone in. They’re in no hurry. I’m not mad at them. This is systemic, everybody gets a turn. Only way to avoid this is to park on a busy street which I hate –

But did it have to be today?

The parent comes out, apologizes and I’m off to work. Murphy’s done his damage, so the rest of the trip is without a hitch.

I hit my meeting at 9:05.

The room at the top of the stair

The milestones of childhood sneak up on you while you're watching them.

You have all the warning in the world - and it does you no good.

For weeks now, mom's been sending packages to the boy with school supplies - pencils, glue sticks, new clothes, a backpack. You figure I'd get get a clue there. I've been to the boy's school, met the teacher, took him to his new locker.

I can tell the boy is fretting over it. He grinds his teeth at night. He's been coming into our bed at night with some regularity. For him it's a huge change. Losing all his buddies from day care - losing his awesome teacher and having to start over.

I've never understood the whole kindergarten angst for parents, though. My mother has told me stories from her elementary school that seemed positively surreal.

The one I remember the most was about a mother of twins.

First off, she was incredibly tall. Taller, even than my mother which takes some doing. She was easily 6'4" and dressed in full corporate battle gear: power suit and all the accessories. She was dropping off her two boys for their first day of kindergarten.

After her boys had gone off down the hall, this imposing, seasoned professional lay prostrate in the middle of the hallway and sobbed her eyes out. Aware of the spectacle she was making, she crawled into my mom's office to recover.

It took awhile, my mom said. A long while.

I've never understood that. Her children were coming back to her in a few hours. All these books that purport to prepare your kids for going to kindergarten make some reference to crying parents. It makes no sense to me.

The kids are safe - they're coming back. I mean, sure - it's a change, but it's not like boarding school.

So, this morning we take the boy over to his new school. The whole family, because it's a big deal. We take pictures - and the boy is nonplussed by the whole thing. He wants us to carry his backpack. He's wondering when the bell will ring so he can line up to go inside. Total anti-climax.

I've been wondering if he'll freak out a bit when we start to go, but E's staying with him a bit. I'm leaving early because little e has to get to day care. I've got a meeting I need to get to. He gives me a bit of a wave and disappears into the throng of other kids and parents.

And then I literally go to pieces. Little e's tugging at my hand and we're headed to the car. I'm wishing I had a hat with a brim - I have to walk past a line of late arrivals and their parents. One of the neighborhood kids is here - Jesus, what if they see me? I'm a grown up for cryin' out loud.

The masochist centers in my brain dredge up the verses to a McCutcheon song that ruins any hope of regaining composure.
I always say since dad died, I'm all out of stoicism. I'm not sure if that's the excuse here - but I'm unable to stop or make sense of what is going on.

I'll see him this afternoon.

I get little e to the car and she's too delightful to notice that her dad's a wreck.

This makes no sense.

So I drive her to day care, searing myself with thoughts of work and my meeting. I'm good until I get to day care and drop off little e without her brother. The boy's teacher is there and I'm edging towards becoming spectacle. Little e runs off and behind me I hear some of the new parents coming.

I am not one of those people. You have no right to see me like this.

So I opt for the half door next to the classroom. It's never open and we're not supposed to use it, but its the quickest way out. I get through here, I can be gone before the new parents come down this way.

And the door's sticks - and I can't get it to close behind me. And there they are, the new parents - right in front of me.

And I'm a spectacle. Little e's teacher is great - she knows the score and gives me a hug. This only encourages my problem and I dash up the stairs, willfully ignoring the other parents.

Alone in the car, I still can't make it all make sense. The boy is fine. I should be fine. I'm not sure what the root of my problem is.

I can't stop it - which is infuriating. I'm ten minutes from work. I'll be in a meeting five minutes after I get there.

But that part that needs to keep suffering just won't give up.

Now I sit on the bed
As the memories rain down
There’s a hole in my heart
Where you’ll always be there

I still don't understand.

Make it stop.

How they do it over there

A good amount of ink has gone into rebutting domestic myths about our own health care system - leaving American myths about foreign health care unchallenged.

At last, WaPo's T.R. Reed steps up to slap down some of the sillier ones.

He wind's out with this:

In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really "foreign" to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them. For Native Americans or veterans, we're Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we're Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we're Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we're Burundi or Burma: In the world's poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can't pay stay sick or die.

(H/t CJR)

America's Minotaur debate

Once again, the foolishness of American political debate is best encapsulated by satire.

Witness - the torture debate, as rendered by The Onion:



(H/t to CJR)

Still takin' what they're givin'

Critics have been all over the Congressional plans for their expense, their lack of cost controls and a host of imaginary horrors.

I think the NYT's David Leonhardt highlights another weakness - choice.

Real choice is not part of the bills moving through the Democratic-led Congress; even if the much-debated government-run insurance plan was created, it would not be available to most people who already have coverage. Republicans, meanwhile, have shown no interest in making insurance choice part of a compromise they could accept. Both parties are protecting the insurers.

He points out that what is happening may be a step forward, but its a baby step.

Lest anyone confuse the current situation in health insurance with choice, the NYT offers a graph of the current regional monopolies in health coverage.
(H/t E)

Bloomberg beats the fed?

(Via CJR)

Bloomberg has won their FOIA case against the Board of the Federal Reserve System.

All that money the Fed has been pumping into the system and hasn't been telling us where it was going?

We might find out.

McCaughey v. Stewart: A knife to a gunfight

I like you, but I don’t understand how your brain works.
-Jon Stewart to Betsy McCaughey

There could be no better illustration of the difference between a political discussion and what occurs on a so-called news show than Jon Stewart's interview of Betsy McCaughey.

McCaughey is a health care advocate who launched the meme that has since become the “Death Panels” talking point. She is an experienced PR messenger who appears before national audiences on radio and TV and never goes off script.  That she’s even talking to Stewart (who opposes her viewpoint and has an audience that will support him on virtually anything) illustrates her confidence in her ability to get her message across.

And she gets bludgeoned.

Stewart mops the floor with her, in part because he is so well prepared, but largely because McCaughey is so good at her job.

Stewart is having a conversation – and McCaughey is reciting her talking points. In any Sunday talk show, McCaughey ‘s approach would have carried the day.

How many times have you seen this exchange before?

Interviewer: [Your boss has stayed silent on this issue, but you haven’t] And — and that, to your critics, is a sign of his statesmanship and your lack of it.

What do you make of that?

PR Messenger: Well, I — I don't pay a lot of attention to what the critics say, obviously.
From my standpoint, the notion that I should remain silent, while they go public, that I shouldn't say anything, while they threaten to disbar the lawyers who gave us the advice that was crucial in terms of this program, that I shouldn't say anything when they go out and release information that they believe is critical of the program and critical of our policies, but refuse to put out information that shows the results that we were able to achieve.

The bottom line is…

Most times, that’s the response. No follow up. A shorter version would be-

Interviewer: Give me your talking point.

PR Messenger: Here it is.

McCaughey is clearly prepared for that kind of interview.  She enters with a prop (a large binder containing part of a health care bill), and refers to it as she sits down. “I’ll put this down here.”

Tactic 1: She tries the charm.

McCaughey: Hello everybody…It is so nice to be here.  This is such a great show. It’s such a big show…”

Which is her attempt to assert control of the conversation. Sit back and let me praise you.

This goes nowhere, anyone trying to disarm Stewart on his show should know better.

Tactic 2: Distract the audience. She discusses her prop, the copy of the bill. She rolls her eyes at the size of the document, suggesting that its size means it is both bad and hard to understand (for us).

Stewart doesn’t take the bait. He immediately goes right at her assertion that health care reform will compel seniors to make end of life choices they don’t want. “The infamous page 425,” Stewart calls it.
McCaughey, in classic PR fashion shows no fear.

McCaughey: Let’s get right to it, this is my major concern...

 Tactic 3: But before we get to your question…

McCaughey: I really want to help cover the uninsured. Nobody should lose their home or their savings because they bet sick.

 I come in peace. Classic PR – answer a question you weren’t asked. Say something no one can have a problem with.  Then switch to-

Tactic 4: Hit your talking point:

McCaughey: …But this bill is dangerous..

Science of attention, classic pivot: I’m for good things, and this bill is bad.
The talking point continues:

McCaughey: Page 425 to page 430 outline advanced consultations, living wills, other end of life consultation issues. The government proscribes what must be covered in detail including foregoing nutrition and even antibiotics.

Twofold tactic here: Hit the talking point, get out the scary words “government proscribes” and “foregoing nutrition” – she’s also establishing her mastery of the subject: she cites page numbers.

Stewart counters-

Stewart: Although the language is ‘life sustaining procedures’, the language of the bill is..

 Tactic 5: Stay on message.

McCaughey: No, it includes hydration, nutrition...

 McCaughey is trying to get all her scary words out there. Stewart cuts her off-

Stewart: No no no, I understand that, but they also say – it’s so you can make that decision.

McCaughey: That’s right. But it does proscribe, the uh medical professional shall, not may, shall must include-

Stewart: Have the conversation. If they have the conversation with you.

McCaughey: That’s right.

 McCaughey’s faltering here – she’s agreed to something Stewart has said. Twice.

Stewart presses on and starts to do some damage-

Stewart: Now you have said that the conversation is mandatory.

McCaughey: It is.

Stewart: Now the bill, at least the way I read it, and again…

Tactic 6: Stall.

McCaughey: Did you only read section 1233?

Stewart: I may…

McCaughey: That’s the problem. Factcheck.org. Everybody reads factcheck.org. They’re really spot-check.org.

All this yammering does nothing to back up her assertion that the conversation is mandatory. It does put Stewart on the defensive (Did I read 1233? Well, I…) and give her time to fill airtime with yet another talking point: Don’t trust factcheck.org.

Stewart: Give me the part that says it is mandatory that you must.

McCaughey: 1233. It’s on page 432.

Stewart: Read it to me. I’d be happy to hear about...

Stewart asks her to back up her mandatory assertion. The whole point of the discussion is being insisted on. Read it out. If you have it, show it to me.

Can anyone picture this exchange happening on any Sunday “News” show? That a talking point would have to provide a citation which is then read aloud to the audience?

When push comes to shove – she cannot produce a citation that backs up what she has said here and in other places.

She does try a host of distractions:

• “Look! I wrote ‘disgusting’ on this page of the bill!” Why does that matter?
• “Listen to this story about…”  Your story is irrelevant.
• “This provision is so dangerous, the Senate has ripped it out of its draft” Only because you are freaking people out with misinformation.

No. Stewart smacks her down and then spells out what he’s asking for 

Stewart: But there is absolutely nothing in that reading that says this is a mandatory consultation-

McCaughey:  Well, you’re wrong.

Stewart: I’ve read it. Honestly.

McCaughey:  You’re wrong.

Stewart: Alright then show me where it says it.

And they go to commercial while she tries to find it.

They come back with Stewart reading a citation that is filled with bureaucrat-ese that sounds nothing like what McCaughey has described. He pronounces the last words with particular relish: “…adherence to orders for life-sustaining treatment.”

You can just feel the collective smirk from the audience.

Undaunted, McCaughey claims our health care is the best in the word. Which leads to:

Stewart: We’re 46th in life expectancy

McCaughey: Life expectancy. When you remove violent crime and car accidents, we are number 1.

The audience laughs.

Stewart: (smiling) Point taken.

McCaughey: So instead of fixing the health care system we could fix the highways.

Incredibly, she’s still trying to push her talking point – and so Stewart cuts her off at the knees.

Stewart: Maybe what we could do is this. After a car crash, ship people to countries that are really good at treating people who have been in car crashes.

Ow. That’s going to leave a mark.

Clearly rattled, McCaughey then tries to paint him as an elitist: Well Jon, you’re so rich, he’s got a big penthouse…


And Stewart judos her all over again.

• She discusses her plan – which Stewart has read and then crucifies.
• She brings up a testimonial letter – which Stewart exposes as the distraction it is.
• I’d give her credit for hanging in there, but that’s the very thing that ensures she looks like a total fool.

Watch all three segments. They are fricking beautiful from any angle. Ask yourself what journalist would be this prepared, or pin down a guest to this degree?

Part 1 (Via TPM)

Part 2 (Via Comedy Central)

Part 3 (Via Comedy Central)


Late update: PalMD has a great observation on Mccaughey's tortured logic as it applies to PQRI:

HR 3200 does add a PQRI clause to advanced directive counseling, which, it may be argued, incents physicians to have these conversations and document them.
[Mccaughey is suggesting that] if this is included in quality measures, then it will be included in incentive, therefore doctors will coerce patients from changing their minds about advanced directives, which might lose them credit for "adherence".

...

This can only be an intentional misreading of the bill and of reality itself. The PQRI system, for example, provides different codes for a measure. There is usually a code for "did it", and "didn't do it because it's not appropriate" and "didn't do it because patient doesn't want to". The doctor is not in any way pressured to "require" patients to do a damned thing. And if the family changes their mind and "chooses to live", as McC puts it, there is no reason any sane, non-religious-zealot doctor would stand in the way. While the specific PQRI coding isn't proposed in the bill, there is not reason "adherence" would stand in the way of "mind-changing", since then you've created a new advanced directive with which to adhere.

Chris Whalen to Jim Cramer: I’m calling you out

Chris Whalen has had his fill of Jim Cramer's mindless mouthing of whatever Goldmann Sachs and Tim Geithner say.

But he puts in far more entertaining terms:

Jim, next time the boys at GS or Tim Geithner call and ask you to take a shot a Sheila Bair and our colleagues at the FDIC on TheStreet or CNBC, just know that I will put you into the boards every time. And I am looking forward to it with the greatest anticipation.

Here’s a challenge to Jim Cramer. If you want to talk banks some evening on your show, I know the way to CNBC HQ and will be happy to talk to the flock anytime you say.

Cramer went willingly to Jon Stewart's woodshed once, you wonder if he'll be so eager to invite Whalen over...

Here's hoping.

(H/t trainreq)

He'd better die quick is all I have to say

Seriously.

Fire with Fire

Love, love, love this - Barney Frank beating the stuffing out of a town hall whackjob:



(H/t TPM)

Put it on my card: How black ops get it done

(Via Danger Room and the New York Post)

More than seven years ago a group of Americans traveled to Siberia to buy a pair of Russian Mi-17 helicopters for the CIA’s post-9/11 clandestine operations in Afghanistan. As with many “black” programs, the contract had elements of craziness: Contracting officials paid the multimillion-dollar contract on a credit card at a local El Paso bar and then used the credit card rebate to redecorate their office; the team traveled under the guise of being private contractors; and the charter crew transporting the group abandoned the team in Russia in the middle of the night.

Saw this on Docuticker...

 

  

  

Well, most of that was found on docuticker...

(H/t E)

Why are we confused about food?

In 2007, Kellog spent $32.8 Million just to advertise Cheez-Its.
-Marion Nestle

Marion Nestle giving a great speech on the food industry, food policy, our limited understanding of both - and how we got here.

Her theme isn't exactly a revelation - but then, when so much money is spent to distract us - it's almost thrilling to watch an informed and entertaining re-introduction to what would otherwise be obvious to all.

Great stuff.

She references a report by the IOM on the marketing of food to children. Also worth a look.

(H/t Good Experience)

Glancing contact with a current event

A while back I was contacted by my credit card company telling me they'd canceleld the card and were sending me a replacement.

Apparently, my card information was part of the Heartland heist, whose conspirators were just indicted.

As my credit card is issued by a classy company - they handled the problem so I didn't need to do anything. No muss no fuss...

...but I'm sure interested to see what happens to the guys who brought this about.

A gust of wind and a chance encounter

(Via Starts With A Bang, H/t to Phil)

Take a look at this rock:

There's all kinds of cool going into this photo:

For starters, it was taken by a robot on another planet.

Also, this robot
-was launched over six years ago, traveled over 34 million miles through space before landing on Mars.
-has spent the last five years driving around taking pictures until...

... it took this picture.

In part because of a gust of wind.

What they learned from that picture picture is cooler yet.

Farve, buddy... give it a rest

Farve reportedly to sign with Vikings.

The hypocrisy of the anti-government reflex

I remember reading the transcripts of Terry Nichols making an @ss out of himself telling a judge why he shouldn't have to pay income taxes.

It was that whole Freemen thing - where individuals are free to advocate for the destruction of the very government whose social programs are subsidizing their existence.

Fast forward to today when Medicare beneficiaries are vocally denouncing government involvement in health care.

And you just grope for the right words...

Fortunately, somebody has come up with some:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal Departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables, thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

(H/t to Mike)

The ice cold water of the bank failure rate

I realize I'm a reflexive counterpuncher, so stories that speak ill of the current "recovery" mindset are appealing to me.

But here's a rather bit of commentary, courtesy of The Big Picture:

What kind of recovery, we wonder, permits the sixth largest bank failure in U.S. history? Colonial BancGroup, the flailing Montgomery lender that had 346 branches spread across Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Nevada, and Texas, joined 77 other banks so far in 2009 to find their way into the big bank home in the sky.

...

Says Sheila Bair, chairman of the FDIC, “The past 18 months have been a very trying period in the financial services arena.”

Consider that a sizable understatement. Last year, during what was considered the height of bank failures, the agency set aside $25 billion to cover what they saw as potential future losses. Now, less than 12 months later, the number of banks on the FDIC’s “troubled” watch list has jumped from 90 to no less than 305. The combined asset value of those “problem” banks? $220 billion.

Yarg.

I know the FDIC isn't running out of money any time soon, but a climate where banks keep imploding cannot be a good thing.

Peter Schiff is fond of saying that the FDIC is bad because it shields investors from risk. Logic being, if banks tanked, we'd be more careful where we put our money.

Problem with that is people don't want to have to suss out which banks are healthy and which aren't. And if people have trouble divining which banks are and aren't healthy now, wait until they have to worry about deposits under $200K fleeing to safer harbors.

I'm sure Uncle Sam will keep kicking out the cash to cover these kinds of takeovers - but you wonder if the rate continues to increase like this... what kind of course corrections will have to follow?

Our crazy tree is blooming

(Via TPM)

Rick Perlstein writes a monster article about the current health care debate:

So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers -- these are "either" the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president -- too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters' signs -- too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.

...

Before the "black helicopters" of the 1990s, there were right-wingers claiming access to secret documents from the 1920s proving that the entire concept of a "civil rights movement" had been hatched in the Soviet Union; when the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act was introduced, one frequently read in the South that it would "enslave" whites. And back before there were Bolsheviks to blame, paranoids didn't lack for subversives -- anti-Catholic conspiracy theorists even had their own powerful political party in the 1840s and '50s.

Neil Cavuto tries to out-crazy Glenn Beck

Oh my god.

Watch this:



or just read the intro:

Neil Cavuto: Well all eight UK terrorist suspects were either doctors or worked in the health care system.
Is is because Britain's national health care system pays physicians such a low salary that they actually have a shortage of doctors, forcing the country then, to recruit from foreign countries?

Let's ask Jerry Bowyer, Jerry a columnist for the National Review Online.

Jerry do you think that could be the problem?

Jerry Bowyer: I think that's certainly a contributing factor, Neil. I looked at the statistics for foreign born physicians in countries that have state run health care enterprises like the United Kingdom, compared to private enterprise like us and what you find is far higher rates of importing physicians - and not just physicians, nurses from abroad. The united kingdom is the largest importer of medical personnel in the world. Feeding them into this huge bureaucratic system and that's going to create a certain amount of vulnerability.

Got that?

Mr. "I'm completely insane" Cavuto is suggesting a link between national health care and terrorism. National Review's Jerry Bowyer is agreeing with him.

You see, if you have a national health care system - doctors get paid less, ergo, less people will want those jobs, so foreigners will flock to your shores to snap up these comparatively low-paying jobs.

But, Neil  - you ask - why should I be afraid of immigrants? I mean lots of people come to America for work?

Because, Neal says, some of these immigrants will be....muslim:

Cavuto: Y'know the argument that the country has used for just the sheer increase of muslim doctors is the sheer increase in the muslim population. In for example Birmingham, England where a lot of these, uh, guys came from and where one of the attacks was first hatched- its up to 30% of the population. Maybe that's the problem?

Bowyer: Well, yeah. I think, I think that could certainly be a problem, but I think the biggest problem is the first thing you pointed out...

Let's boil down the conservative arguments against health care reform so far, shall we?

1. The government wants to kill off the largest pool of reliable voters. (The elderly)
2. Our health care is the best in the world. [Despite being ranked 37th in the world by the WHO, and dead last in number of preventable deaths)
   
   and now
   
   
3. Health care reform will bring Muslim terrorists to our shores.

Unbe f-ing lievable.

(H/t to Bad Science)

Warren Report

Time for another dose of economic clarity, courtesy of Elizabeth Warren:

You have to put up with Joe Scarborough being a total dork, but as ever - Warren shines.

I'm sure it's coincidental, but check out how fast the music comes up when Prof. Warren starts to second guess the necessity of Paulson's $700 billion.

Late Edit: CJR had this clip of Warren.



I love this woman.

Cancel my subscription

I'm on the phone, pulling the plug on my newspaper subscription when I run across Felix Salmon's post America's Doomed Small Newspapers.

He's talking about Bill Wyman's article Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing

The problem of the daily press in the U.S. is exclusively this: the collapse of its business model. That model used to be, plainly put, making money—a lot of money, oceans of money—delivering advertising on newsprint into peoples’ homes. Subscribers didn’t pay for news. Advertisers did.

-and it goes without saying that advertisers are pulling back.

And so am I. I almost never read my local paper. It piles up where I unthinkingly fling it: in the front hallway, the kitchen table, in the footwell of the car.

I've taken armloads of still-bagged newspapers and deposited them in the recycle bin in broad daylight - sure that somewhere the (now-resurgent) driveway fairy is looking at me with scorn.

Don't get me wrong - I love newspapers. Love them.

If you sprang a day off on me - no cash, just time - and turned me loose, odds are I'd end up at my favorite breakfast place with a copy of the NYT and spend as long as I dared there paging through it at length.

The time to savor reading the news - aaah the luxury.

But I don't have that time. And besides, newsprint has three unpardonable sins from my standpoint:

1. It costs money.
2. It's hard to navigate (pull out the advert/puff pieces...continued on page C7...etc)
3. I have to clean it up

Internet content obviously has none of these issues (so far) - so I'm a fool to have subscribed for so long.

Wyman's article starkly illustrates the dire straits newspapers find themselves in. It does not inspire hope.

The value the [newspaper] companies added to the print ads was their de facto hegemony over home delivery...that hegemony doesn’t exist online. And the value of that hegemony is gone forever.

He offers local newspapers a few bits of advice, but it's less than kind:

Serve the community. Don't publish crap. Tell folks stuff they might not want to hear. Grow a pair.

It makes you wonder what will come next.

...and more to the point - how it will be funded.

If it's selling, we will sell it (or something that looks like it)

It wasn't so long ago the nation was mad for Kona coffee. Grown on the slopes of Hawai'i's mountains, drawing flavor from the rich, volcanic soil.

Blah, blah, blah...

People loved the exotic mystic - and the flavor wasn't bad either. Demand soared, and supply followed. Suddenly, Kona coffee was everywhere.

And then someone did the math on how much coffee was getting sold as Kona coffee - and how much acreage actually grew Kona coffee. They came a rather obvious conclusion: 2,000 measly acres in Hawaii simply could not grow that much Kona coffee.

The suppliers saw what was selling, and rushed to sell product that looked like the real article.

They've been doin' it since forever.

According to WaPo's Jane Black, they've done it with heirloom tomatoes as well.

Call me persnickety, but someone needs to take a stand here: "Heirloom" is not synonymous with "good."

...

In a 2007 article in the journal Sociologia Ruralis, Jennifer Jordan examined the pressing question of why a growing number of consumers had acquired a taste for $7-a-pound "bug-eaten, calloused, mottled and splitting tomatoes that may or may not taste good."

The answer, Jordan concluded, was that heirloom tomatoes had evolved into a "marker of distinction." The lumpy, imperfect fruit had become a kind of mascot for the good-food movement that is against industrial agriculture's embrace of pesticides, against the development of genetically modified foods, in favor of preserving small farms and in support of local and seasonal food.

...

Heirlooms' popularity took a toll on their taste, however. As farmers and supermarkets realized they could extract high prices for heirlooms, they increased production. And, in some cases, quality fell; hence the gorgeous but mealy and bland heirloom I bought last week.

Black states that she's having a quiet revolt against heirlooms. I think that's a bit much - but it's good of her to point out that heirlooms can be mass-produced pieces of crap, too.

Like the chef in the article says "If a tomato tastes good, it's a good tomato. Nothing else matters."

Chevy: bad at math

Okay, all of a sudden there's this blitz of publicity surrounding the Chevy Volt and how it gets 230 miles per gallon.

I have two main reactions:

• How do you rate MPG for a car that is has an electric motor (with a combustion assist)?
• 230 MPG? What a load of crap.

The early pressers on the Volt stressed how its batteries had a 40 mile range. So, if your round trip under 20 miles, you don't use gas.

How does that translate to MPG? Unlimited?

The good folks over at Good Math, Bad Math take Chevy to task over this, but you wonder how even Rachel Maddow can get looped into this garbage. (To her credit, she questioned the figure and had an automotive expert on her show to discuss it - but the idiocy of using MPG for all electric usage was not given the beating it deserved).


The way I see it, they need a new rating standard.

MPG might as well be read as MPG(of gas).

It's a burn rate.

Up to the maximum range of the batteries, the Chevy Volt has no burn rate.

That's a stat.

It's all-electric range is 40 Miles.

It's time to recharge a fully depleted battery (using a standard plug) is another stat.

When the Volt runs out of batteries and engages the combustion engine - it has a burn rate like any other car.

That's a stat, too.

So if you're running a car like a volt - give me the

• All-electric range (40 miles)
  
• Recharge time (8-10 hours) and the
• combustion MPG

You might also throw in the average maximum distance the vehicle could drive at highway speeds if it started with batteries/gas tank that were filled to capacity.

Call that Crusing Range.

Then I have a picture of what I'm dealing with.

I'm excited about the Volt - I think it's great that they're trying this (I think it's stupid that they plan to sell the cars at a loss - once again GM's brain trust shows its quality)

But this made-for-PR BS that they are running with now, it's gotta stop.

We'll have to start drinking tap water

Tales of the recession... as told by the clueless elite.

Tough times are all around us - and nobody's suffering quite like the staff at Condé Nast

“That whole feeling of working here and it being cushy and other people loving it and being jealous? That’s kind of gone now”

...

“At the salad bar, you’re allowed one protein and generally they have five proteins listed,” said this source. “But the only proteins they have now are tofu and chicken! There’s no shrimp! I don’t think there’s any more shrimp there.”

...

“When I started, there was this little refrigerator, and it was stocked with amazing drinks,” said one ad-sales source. “Pellegrino, Orangina, Red Bull. And like the water wasn’t Poland Spring, it was like Fiji... But then in December...the drink supply emptied out. That Fiji water turned into Poland Spring. Worse, instead of the fridge, the water bottles were stowed in a warm closet.

And then: “I just found out today that we are on our last batch of Poland Spring,” said the source. “We won’t have any more after this. We have to start drinking tap water.”

The horror... the horror!

Late edit: Whoops, I whiffed on the H/t. It's CJR, of course.

Pirates in the Baltic?

(Via the BBC)

Russia's navy has been deployed to find a ship reportedly hijacked three weeks ago in the Baltic Sea.

Up to five vessels - reported to include nuclear submarines - will be involved in the search for the Maltese-flagged Arctic Sea, the navy confirmed.

It has a 15-strong Russian crew and was reportedly taking timber worth $1.5m (£900,000) from Finland to Algeria when it was boarded by gunmen on 24 July.

The BBC is quick to point out that this brand of piracy is very different from the Somalia infestation. This may in fact be a kind of commercial dispute gone bad - but still...

These guys seized control of the boat and sailed it through the English Channel.

Pirates! In Europe!

Obama's eight protections

CJR’s Trudy Lieberman summarizes the eight protections that the President assures us will reform health insurance.

A sample:

No discrimination for preexisting conditions. That’s a good thing, and insurers have agreed to eliminate health status as a factor for granting coverage in the individual market if every American is required to carry insurance one way or another. Right now, a few states restrict preexisting conditions clauses; the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), passed in 1996, gives people the right to buy a policy in the individual market without regard to health problems if they do so within sixty-three days of losing coverage and if they have used up all their COBRA benefits. HIPAA, though, didn’t say anything about premiums, and so insurers in most states charge higher rates to discourage people with preexisting medical needs from signing up.

What to watch for: Lobbyists inserting language that limits insurers’ risks, like the restrictions in the HIPAA law that still make it difficult for sick people to obtain coverage. President Obama has been silent on the question of age rating, which serves as a proxy for using health as a factor in charging higher rates. Older people are likely to present more health risks and cost the insurers money. “As long as they can rate people up for age, that’s a proxy for health rating,” Kofman says.

Good stuff.

Ms. Lieberman is one of those must-read columnists when it comes to health care. Complicated issues, spelled out in ways that make sense. I don’t always agree with her – but I’m always going to read her stuff.

She was on Bill Moyers Journal the other night along with Harvard’s Dr. Marcia Angell. It was one of those despair-inducing hours that illustrated the long odds against reform of the health care system.

BILL MOYERS: The President, as you were saying a moment ago, is saying to everybody who's not covered, we're going to mandate that you exercise that right. We're going to mandate that you buy some form--

MARCIA ANGELL: We're going to deliver the private insurance companies a captive market. That's right. And they love that.

BILL MOYERS: Say that again.

MARCIA ANGELL: They love that.

BILL MOYERS: The-- his policy does what? His program?

MARCIA ANGELL: Delivers to the private insurance industry a captive market.

BILL MOYERS: By the mandate.

MARCIA ANGELL: By the mandate.

BILL MOYERS: It says "Marcia Angell, you've got to--"

MARCIA ANGELL: For whatever price they want to charge. Right. And so, this will increase costs. And let me tell you what he's running into, and he'd like to be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat, but he won't be able to. If you leave this profit-oriented system in place, you can't both control costs and increase coverage. You inevitably, if you try to increase coverage, increase costs. The only answer, the only answer, and he said it at the beginning of his press conference, is a single payer system. In his first sentence, he said, that is the only way to cover everyone.

Gah.

No guarantees in health care

James Kwak has a marvelous essay called You do not have health insurance - about the difference between a health plan and what we usually think of as insurance.

Worth a read.

Also, if you haven't yet heard This American Life's episode called Fine Print, you really should. Act III has great stuff on health care, but the intro story (about Van Halen's M&Ms) seriously rocks, too.

Saturn WTF?

(Via Bad Astronomy)

Something's smashing through the rings of Saturn like the fist of an angry god.

Whooooa...