[PassedOut]

 y66, on 2012-April-04, 03:45, said:

What is ALEC? Scary.

Quote

But shining a light on ALEC and its supporters — a roster that includes many companies, from AT&T and Coca-Cola to UPS, that have so far managed to avoid being publicly associated with the hard-right agenda — is one good way to highlight what’s going on. And that kind of knowledge is what we need to start taking our country back.

Going to have to dump some shares!

[y66]

 PassedOut, on 2012-April-04, 07:19, said:

Going to have to dump some shares!

Right on bro!

[luke warm]

 PassedOut, on 2012-April-04, 07:19, said:

Going to have to dump some shares!

that'll show 'em by gum

[kenberg]

I voted yesterday. And learned something.

There was some re-redistricting a while back. This was controlled by the Dems, so in an effort to oust the Republican Roscoe Bartlett (he is much in need of ousting) I got redefined to be in Congressional District 6. Or so I thought. Apparently Bill Clinton and (MD Gov.) Martin O'Malley thought so also since I received robo-calls from each of them telling me who to vote for there. When I arrived, I found that I have instead been mapped into District 8. My confusion is one of those what else is new events. But I thought Clinton and O'Malley were supposed to know about these things.


Anyway, I suppose we are now fully into the Etch-A-Sketch portion of the campaign? Romney will favor Health Care?

For anyone who missed it (probably quite a few) here is a column I found amusing:
http://www.washingto...iytS_story.html

[Cthulhu D]

 kenberg, on 2012-April-02, 05:57, said:

Wouldn't that be 600 billion? 300 million times 2 thousand? But I take your point.

I struggle with counting to 13, so this shouldn't be surprising haha.

Whoops. Do note that the government could never harvest most of those savings, but returning money to the citizens is good too!

[kenberg]

Well, whatever the arithmetic, I think everyone agrees that a lot of money could be saved. Since most agree that money could be saved, the question arises as to why it isn't done. I have thought some about this.

Some thoughts:

A. My health is important to me.

B. Money is important, but not as important as health.

C. The system pretty much works for me as it is. Yes, I know money is being thrown away in some cases, but if it is being thrown away and I stay healthy, I don't mind all that much.


An example from a few years ago. I woke about 3 am with intense pain above my waist, below my neck, more or less everywhere in that region. I woke my wife, we called the doc, I went to the emergency room. Of course they examined my heart. The pain receded after a while but they kept me there examinng my heart in every which way. As the pain receded I was able to identify it as from my back more than from my chest. They still referred to it as chest pain, I assume for insurance reasons. Sunday they decided I should go to another hospital on Monday for further tests. Fine, I'll check out now and drive in. NO! What was I thinking! Of course I had to stay in the hospital and read something,and then be taken by ambulance the next day.

OK, I have found that I have some mild issue in my vertabrae and somehow it just grabbed me wrong causing the pain. But, as a result, I now have the most thoroughly examined heart in a twenty mile radius. Very little direct cost to me, I have good insurance.

Do I mind? In theory, yes. Certainly the last couple of tests were unnecessary. In practice, I don't mind all that much. It's my health, they did a good job of watching out for me.

And so we keep the system we have. And someone has to pick up the tab. In the long run, that would be me I imagine.

There are other issues. Some docs are better than others. A lot better. Half the docs finished in the bottom half of their class, as they say. Someone has to get stuck with those guys, I don't want it to be me. Perhaps this freedom of choice of docs can be preserved. It's high on my list of priorities.

As much as possible I would like to see these issues get resolved on practical grounds rather than ideology. This is a very ideological country, and it is becoming more so.

[billw55]

 Cthulhu D, on 2012-April-04, 19:49, said:

Whoops. Do note that the government could never harvest most of those savings, but returning money to the citizens is good too!

I wouldn't count on it. Harvesting money is high on government's priority list and they have proven most ingenious when it comes to new and unexpected methods.

[blackshoe]

Some years ago, I was at a friend's birthday party when I had a similar problem to Ken's - pain which seemed to originate in my chest. My friends insisted I needed to go to the ER, so after the party, I did. Drove myself. They put me in a bed, somebody came in and took an EKG, I went to sleep. About four hours later, a nurse woke me up and asked me what the doctor had said. I told her I hadn't seen a doctor. Twenty minutes after that, a doctor (or hell, maybe it was an orderly, I didn't ask) stuck his head in the door, told me there was nothing wrong with my heart, that I had had "muscle spasms" in my back, and I should go home. So I did. Turned out that the problem was that my waterbed mattress had lost enough water that it wasn't supporting me properly. Interestingly, the hospital concerned has the reputation of being one of the best, if not the best, in the region.

[luke warm]

 blackshoe, on 2012-April-05, 08:27, said:

Turned out that the problem was that my waterbed mattress had lost enough water that it wasn't supporting me properly.

hippie

[mike777]

I had a water bed and hated it....worst purchase I ever made.

thing is I loved the bedframe, solid oak with huge posters and all matching dressers and amorie(sp)

[blackshoe]

 luke warm, on 2012-April-05, 15:45, said:

hippie

Nope.

 mike777, on 2012-April-05, 19:40, said:

I had a water bed and hated it....worst purchase I ever made.

thing is I loved the bedframe, solid oak with huge posters and all matching dressers and amorie(sp)

I can relate to that.

Now I have a Sealy Posturpedic.

[mike777]

 blackshoe, on 2012-April-05, 23:03, said:

Nope.

I can relate to that.

Now I have a Sealy Posturpedic.

If i was at the convention in 68, chicago can I count myself as a young hippie?

granted by the time I was 16, later, it seemed the hippie thing was to get blasted on booze and any drugs someonewould give us.


Even George Harrison hated the whole Sf scene...


Now at my age that sealy thing sounds great.....

[luke warm]

 mike777, on 2012-April-05, 23:15, said:

Now at my age that sealy thing sounds great.....

anything leading to or even hinting at a nap is great

[Cthulhu D]

 kenberg, on 2012-April-05, 07:26, said:

Well, whatever the arithmetic, I think everyone agrees that a lot of money could be saved. Since most agree that money could be saved, the question arises as to why it isn't done. I have thought some about this.

All the things you outline can be achieved in a public system - indeed, it has been demonstrated they can be delivered more effectively if you want to live in some of the colder parts of Europe. The reality is when you compare 'care delivered' against 'care recommended by the WHO' (as the only yardstick we have for 'what you should do') the NHS delivers roughly the same amount as the US. The FUNNY part is that that is only like 60% on average (topping out at like 70% in some categories, wooo). The different countries are also better at different things - the US delivers better cancer care than the NHS, but the NHS has got your back if you have chronic illnesses of different types. At the end of the day, your care experience is pretty similar.


The problems are really

A) It's REALLY HARD to get from A to B. Look at the political cost Obama paid for Obamacare, which is frankly weak. Full Finlandisation (bwahaha) would probably be impossible politically as well as purely from an implementation point of view.

B) It's not possible for the US government to implement something equivalent to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme due to the influence of lobbyists - or more frankly governmental corruption in both the GOP and Democrats. Collective bargining here is critical and no achievable for the US

C) It relies on other social structures outside of the healthcare system. Part of the huge cost savings that the UK and Finland can produce is a massive decrease in the cost of supply. This is because they spend a tiny part of their education budget on free training for doctors. Also, collective bargaining is more accepted, and they are willing to pressure big pharma.

Ultimately the US is tooling around a local maxima. Getting to the absolute maxima requires traversing a huge gulf that no-one has the willpower to do.

[y66]

From NYT editorial page

Quote

A year ago, few people outside the world of state legislatures had heard of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a four-decade-old organization run by right-wing activists and financed by business leaders. The group writes prototypes of state laws to promote corporate and conservative interests and spreads them from one state capital to another.

The council, known as ALEC, has since become better known, with news organizations alerting the public to the damage it has caused: voter ID laws that marginalize minorities and the elderly, antiunion bills that hurt the middle class and the dismantling of protective environmental regulations.

Now it’s clear that ALEC, along with the National Rifle Association, also played a big role in the passage of the “Stand Your Ground” self-defense laws around the country. The original statute, passed in Florida in 2005, was a factor in the local police’s failure to arrest the shooter of a Florida teenager named Trayvon Martin immediately after his killing in February.

That was apparently the last straw for several prominent corporations that had been financial supporters of ALEC. In recent weeks, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Intuit, Mars, Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have stopped supporting the group, responding to pressure from activists and consumers who have formed a grass-roots counterweight to corporate treasuries. That pressure is likely to continue as long as state lawmakers are more responsive to the needs of big donors than the public interest.

[kenberg]

Corporations are people, we are told. Some people have a dark side.

I have pretty much voted Democratic all of my life. I don't have the faith in large scale government action that some have, but I have always had a deep distrust of large corporations. If corporations are people, they are pretty bloodless people.

[y66]

Michael Lewis interviews himself at The Daily Beast.

Excerpt:

Quote

What was your first reaction to the Occupy movement?

Some blend of glee and relief. Glee because, by both temperament and occupation, I have a rooting interest in socially disruptive behavior. Relief because I had begun to think such protests might never happen. Given the provocation—intense and effective political pressure from Wall Street to codify two sets of economic rules, one for people who work at giant Wall Street firms, the other for people who don’t—I was surprised it has taken as long as it has for people to hit the streets. The chief cause of the financial crisis was what the government didn’t do (regulate) rather than what it did (subsidize homeownership), and so it seemed strange to me that, until now, the most potent political reaction to the financial crisis has been an antigovernment backlash. It was as if, after some infectious disease killed a million people, the only political reaction was a popular uprising to prevent the manufacture of antibiotics.

Have your feelings about the movement changed?

Yes.

How?

I think it is a bigger deal than I did when it first started. It’s true in many cities that the campsites are being broken up, and the protesters dispersed. But it’s pretty clear that they hit a nerve. People didn’t like them living on their streets, but they liked what they stood for.

I would probably reorganize the movement around a single, achievable goal: a financial boycott of the six “too big to fail” Wall Street firms.

[kenberg]

I suppose that I could boycott the big six wall street firms but
a. I don't know who they are and
b. I don't think that they would notice.

Michael Lewis knows a lot about finance. I don't. It seems to me that he could best help by exposing corrupt agreements, advocating government policies, explaining why proposed solutions are or are not viable. Of course it would only be his opinion. But my opinion is only my opinion, and he is a good deal better informed.

From time to time I think about how the Civil Rights demonstrations were different from many other later demonstrations. The morality was really clear. A guy has the money to buy dinner and the restaurant won't serve him because of his race. Once this fact was pushed in front of people, a great many people said this was wrong and had to be fixed. With the Occupy movement it is different, and I think this explains why they are not getting all that much success. I don't see it as immoral for a person to get rich. So what, exactly, is it that I want them to agree to? Stop screwing us over. Yeah, but it's a bit vague, And the Occupy movement is a bit vague.

[luke warm]

 kenberg, on 2012-April-19, 17:16, said:

~~~b. I don't think that they would notice.~~~

i'd join you, but they wouldn't notice me either... i already boycott yacht builders, firms that sell gold (not the stocks, just the bullion), and blood diamond importers... as far as i can tell, it hasn't hurt them

[blackshoe]

What is your objection to the buying and selling of gold? Or yachts, for that matter?