2010 archive
The Candidates Debate (Updated) 0
2nd District Virginia House of Representatives. The preliminaries and introductions take the first ten minutes or so.
There was a story in today’s paper about it, but it doesn’t seem to be the website as I draft this. Found it.
Via Vivian Paige.
Addendum:
Vivian Paige analyzes the debate.
The Fee Hand of the Market 0
In the old days, it would be called a “Trust.” Bloomberg analyses the effects of overpowering market share in health care:
It turns out that Logsdon didn’t know something that his insurance company does: Sutter Health Co., the nonprofit that owns Sutter Davis, has market power that commands prices 40 to 70 percent higher than its rivals per typical procedure — and pacts with insurers that keep those prices secret.
Sutter can charge these prices because it has acquired more than a third of the market in the San Francisco-to-Sacramento region through more than 20 hospital takeovers in the last 30 years, according to executives of Aetna Inc., Health Net Inc. and Blue Shield of California, who asked not to be named because their agreements with Sutter ban disclosure of prices.
Read the whole thing.
Rand Illusions 0
Roy Edroso dissects right-wing worship of Ayn Rand, prophetess of greed.
QOTD 0
Bernard Baruch, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
There is something about inside information which seems to paralyse a man’s reasoning powers.
Afterthought:
This accounts for much of the Washington punditocracy’s fascination with itself.
Lawn Ranger 0
Coming soon on Speeders:
In Boulder, Colorado, riding a lawn mower on a street or bike path is illegal. When citizens called to complain about a speeding lawn mower running wild on the streets, police were obligated to respond:
Police caught up with the mower – a black Yard Machines unit with a 21 horsepower engine – at the intersection of Harvard Lane and Auburn Street.
Reichenbach said the driver told officers that he was trying to donate the lawn equipment to Fairview High School and was riding it to the school to drop off.
. . . officers chose not to ticket the man because he wasn’t causing a problem.
“He was trying to be a good guy,” Reichenbach said. “We think his heart was certainly in the right place.”
They told him to park it and arrange for a truck.
Prospects 0
Bloomberg News takes a look at Glenn Nye’s and Tom Perriello’s reelection prospects.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Back up to half a mil.
We don’t need no stinkin’ stimulus:
Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast claims slipping to 476,000 from the previously reported 484,000 the prior week, which was revised up to 488,000 in Thursday’s report.
The New Dominoes 0
Chalmers Johnson considers the parallels between contemporary American foreign policy orthodoxy and the Domino Theory used to support the Viet Namese War, and tries to peer into the future. A nugget:
Would 9/11-type attacks accelerate? It seems far likelier to me that, as our overseas profile shrank, the possibility of such attacks would shrink with it.
Worth a read.
Foreclosed, then Re-Possessed 1
“Sovereign citizens,” members of an anarchist branch of extreme wingnuttery (I know that sounds redundant), are moving into foreclosed houses and filing false deeds claiming ownership of them. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
They call themselves “sovereign citizens” and believe they are immune to state and federal laws. They assert, among other things, that banks can’t own land and that any home owned by a bank – including the thousands throughout Georgia – is free for the taking.
Police and prosecutors take a different view. The FBI has listed them on the domestic terrorist list, saying their crime of choice is paper terrorism and attempting to disrupt the U.S. economy.
Rich Cordoban Lather, III 0
Report from the Field.
A Surplus . . . of Trickery 0
Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a surplus out of my–er–hat!
Shhhhh. We won’t talk about stiffin’ that there pension fund.
Via VB Progressives.
Rich Cordoban Lather, Reprise 0
Some people understand civil liberties; if they are for some, but not for others, they are not liberties. From TPM (emphasis added):
A follow-up question asked: “Regardless of whether you personally support or oppose the proposal to build the Cordoba House, do you believe the developers of the Cordoba House have a Constitutional right to proceed with the construction of the mosque and Muslim cultural center or not?” Here the answer is 64% yes, to only 28% no. Indeed, the internals of the poll show that even a majority of people who didn’t support the center in the previous question still affirm the right of the organizers to construct it, by a 51%-42% margin within that sub-group.
Ted Olson, also via TPM.
(There is a graphic in it which illustrates how far the structure is from the World Trade Center site. In Manhattan, crossing a street can take you to a whole nother world. From the sidewalk in front of the Southgate Hotel at 7th and 31st, you cannot see the Empire State Building at 5th and 33rd.)
I also commend this column in the Denver Post to your attention; the writer attempts to look at the situation rationally and reasonably. I had a nit to pick with it, which is too small to mention here, emailed the author, and received a prompt and courteous response.
Also, listen to this.
Facebook Frolics II 0
(Link fixed.)
Check those privacy settings.
(snip)
Talvitie-Siple told the Patriot-Ledger that she did not realize the page was a public one.
Spill Here, Spill Now 0
This is good news:
That means an end, at least for now, to the kind of exemptions that allowed BP to drill its blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico with little scrutiny.
“Clone Me, Dr. Memory” 0
Then, again . . . .
But a study published in the journal PLoS Biology has dashed that hope.
Dr Dilara Ally and her team at the University of British Columbia, Canada, found that the fertility of clones declines with age.