– I love Seattle’s dedication to fair play. But maybe we give less time to Sacramento media on Hansen.
– The free market isn’t always the best way to make health care decisions.
– At least it’s a bit more transparent now.
– Bicyclists are helpful to bicyclists.
– This piece on swear words was interesting.
– Congrats to Thomas Friedman on being beyond satire.
I couldn’t agree more with the point about the ‘Free Market’ and health care decision making.
I’ve always said that people do not, seemingly can not, apply the same logic to buying a refrigerator or a car that they do when buying health care.
Moreover, ‘do everything’, as I often hear from the children of critically ill 80-something-year-olds whose bodies are quitting irreparably, is a surrogate for ‘I love them’. It’s a chance also to choose/demand something with absolutely no regard to price, and thus it’s very empowering, particularly in a deeply economically segregated society in which vast numbers of people have some degree of economic anxiety/insecurity.
We need medical care to not be a luxury item, to be universally accessible, and to be accessed wisely – that is, early prevention and health maintenance (diet, exercise, relaxation) needs to be a big priority, and people need to understand that we’re all going to die, and that when you’re 86 or 72 or 93 with diabetes and heart disease and kidney failure and dementia, the Intensive Care Unit needs to be the LAST place you want to end up.
Speaking of bikes – I ride ’em I love ’em – but I spend much more time in my car – I was driving home from Ballard to QA the other night, about 8:15 – still light, but twilight – and I was STUNNED at the number of cyclists WITHOUT LIGHTS – at least half a dozen on that short ride, and more with really dim, essentially useless ones.
Utterly utterly STOOOPID.
On that same drive home, I was turning from eastbound 56th (small st) to southbound 24 (big st), stopped at the sign, started to go, and stopped short – a cyclist was whizzing down the 24th bike lane – from my vantage he couldn’t been seen due to the parked cares on my left until he was right on me – and had an incredibly dim light. I stopped, he whizzed by wagging his finger at me like I’d committed a crime.
I think we absolutely need to encourage more cycling, and safe road-sharing, but I find the toxic combination of recklessness and haughtiness from a significant segment of the cycling community to be a BIG IMPEDIMENT to actually making the roads safer for all cyclists.
Every time a right wing fool says that the free market is best for health care, I ask the simple question:
How much research on prices do you do before you call 911 to go to the hospital?
I have yet to find anyone who does any research. When they say that they researched the “cheapest” or the “best” hospitals already – I simply ask if they have done the research for all possible procedures and they keep a current list in their pocket or mobile device and think to use it before directing the ambulance.
Of course, we are just now getting lists of hospital costs – so anyone who says they did it beofer is lying. Also, the lists on the costs do not also list the efficacy of the treatments – so there is bacically no available data to judge performance and price.
Helath care ain’t like buying a refrigerator and looking up the features and costs on Consumer Reports – and anyone who says it is the same is either ignorant or lying.
About 20 years ago, I cut my finger on a table saw. I had insurance and went to the closest emergency room, which was Swedish in Ballard. Later the insurance company started quibbling about payment as I hadn’t “shopped around”.
All this in-network crap needs to be shut down on anti-trust grounds. What is needed is universal health insurance. You buy insurance, you get a card that is good at any hospital or clinic in the country.
@2 Here’s another “toxic combination of recklessness and haughtiness”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgLYz-pix70
@4 It’ll happen when enough people get fed up with libertarian health care.
In business news, we have two more examples today of how greed has utterly preempted ethics in the business world.
Item #1: In a case reminiscent of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid empire, Bloomberg has been caught giving its financial reporters access to private client information on the terminals it leases to banks, brokers, and traders — a practice in place for decades. The revelation threatens to sink New York billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg’s business empire.
Item #2: Retailer Wet Seal has been caught systematically discriminating against black employees because the company wanted to promote an image of blue-eyed-blonde Aryaness for its stores, which cater to blue-eyed-blonde suburban Aryans. The company paid a $7.5 million settlement to the first three ex-employees who sued.
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Lawyers never cease to be amazed by how many people still don’t realize the first thing lawyers ask for in discovery is the company’s e-mails. You wouldn’t believe what people who’d take the Fifth Amendment during a traffic stop write in their e-mails.
Interesting commentary from the Daily Kos, about the catalyst for today’s vote in the Minnesota State Senate on marriage equality. It pretty much thanks the opposition, wouldn’t have come this far without the failed attempt to constitutionally ban it. Not only galvanized pro-marriage equality groups, but gave them the momentum.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....nt-Too-Far
Another rightwing sex offender is going to jail.
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_.....arges?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I hope she was worth it, asshole.
http://tinyurl.com/ccfn2zd
The scandal that isn’t:
“The IRS’ Friday admission that it disproportionately scrutinized groups with the words ‘tea party’ or ‘patriot’ in their applications for tax-exempt status has led some politicians to lay the blame on the Obama administration. However, a report in the Wall Street Journal Sunday said that a forthcoming Treasury Department inspector general report would show that no one outside IRS developed the criteria. … The report bolsters what Lois Lerner, the IRS director of exempt organizations, said Friday — that the practice was ‘absolutely not’ influenced by the administration.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....65387.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This will make the Wall Street Journal an official member of “the liberal-biased media.”
Before our troll gets here, just saw on HLN’s Facebook page, Gosnell was found guilty. Although the pro-lifers pro-lifers that wanted to politicize this, this guy was a back alley abortionist, which people thought went away with the decision they want to overturn.
@2
I saw a kid in a car blow right through a red light this morning.
While I agree that cyclists like the one you mentioned are a big problem, I think the over all % of people being stupid on bikes and the % of people being stupid in cars is about the same. I also think that if you put that badly behaving bicyclist behind the wheel of a car he/she would be a badly behaving motorist. They can do much less damage on bikes, so let’s keep them on bikes.
I think we notice badly behaving cyclists more than motorists because there’s fewer cyclists on the road and there’s a greater sense of danger in what the badly behaving cyclist is doing.
Meanwhile, in a pro-life country, they are having a fight over clarifying what constitutes protecting the life of the mother, and that is going to be a tough one. The only reason they are having this debate going on in Dublin is the outrage over the death of a woman in the hospital.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl.....enda-kenny
In Ireland, with the Church’s influence in the country, the Taeshoech(I am rusty on Gaelic, but that is the title for the PM in Ireland) is taking a big risk on this minor rule change. He could be taking his party down. Ireland rarely allows free votes on legislation of conscience, and the ruling party is going to do the same on this one.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news.....JY.twitter
Ireland uses the voting system the British imposed on their way out. IT’S a preferential proportional system, voters have the final say how the candidates are ranked, and elected.
Up in British Columbia, looks like the BC Liberals are getting desperate. Leaking the results of a NDP brainstorming session 3years ago to taint them as far left. It is a fight to the finish, could be the status quo or change in Victoria by the end of the week.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/.....eport.html
Regarding the ongoing tale of the “Sonics”:
Some wags on the radio this morning were arguing that if Stern and the NBA turn down the new offer from the Hansen group, then it would amount to an antitrust violation.
But I’m not putting any faith in that. Antitrust cases are notoriously hard to defend, and if they allow the sale but dissalow the move they might skirt around it. More importantly, there are enough Califorinia Congressmen and Senators who would be willing to fight for an exemption for the NBA from the Sherman Antitrust Act.
16)Good point, even though the bulk of California’s 53 congressmembers and both Senators are Democrats, there are many teams in Red States. Also, the owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, includes former Senator Herb Kohl.
One antitrust case not mentioned much, the breakup of the Pullman Company. Pullman built and operated the sleepers, and did not want to operate another’s produvt. They forced the Burlington and the Santa Fe to buy from them or else. The rival manufacturer had the better product, but Pullman knew the two railroads could not run their own sleeper cars. The railroads gave in, for a few years, in 1944, the courts ruled Pullman a monopoly. The railroads formed a company to take over the operations, and Pullman stayed on the manufacturing side.
@16:
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the only thing Seattle should be doing with the NBA is a public trial and execution of Darth Stern, Clayboy & The Redneck Mafia, and Howard the Schmuck for crimes against the people, with said execution to be a public stoning held in Pioneer Square.
Correction @ # 16: “…difficult to defend….” should instead be “…difficult to prosecute….”
Update from Minnesota, looks like Minnesota is on it’s way to being the 12th. I thought that Minnesota should wait, since control of the State legislature could swing back, but Minnesota has a wild card, a third party that could split the vote. It’s how Governor Dayton got elected in 2010, the Independence Party candidate ran the pro-business but socially liberal campaign, it split enough votes. The Minnesota GOP made a couple former governors who endorsed the third party, persona non grata for that.
http://www.theuptake.org/2013/.....-marriage/
@7 Item #3 The guy who runs Ambercrombie & Fitch (or as my kids refer to it, “Pimpercrombie & Bitch”) has been whining in public about what a chore it is to make sure his stores are patronized almost exclusively by the well-heeled and (especially) pretty. Ironic, being as he himself is about as ugly as death taking a shit.
Minnesota becomes the 12th state to tell people to butt the hell out of other people’s lives. Yay!
# 21: A & F already got hit with at least one lawsuit, saying it kept people with “darker colors” in the back, stocking and folding clothes, so it’s blond, blue-eyed sales people would be the only ones out front.
And there was the problem identified by a friend of my daughter when she was in High School. The managers required employees wear only A$F clothing, purchased by the employee (there was a small employee discount). But any sale or clearance item was prohibited, so they had to keep purchasing clothing to wear in the store every week – even those stuck in the baack. Since the sales clerks only made minimum wage, this was clarly an underpayment issue – her friend quit when he found out it was costing him more to work there than he was receiving in pay. He should have filed a lawsuit.
Next right wing cause, the subpoena of AP phone records during the investigation of the leak of classified info on a terror plot. Although the subpoena was too broad, but I think if the GOP had been in charge, they would have done the same, and gone further.
http://thinkprogress.org/justi.....?mobile=wp
23) Illinois could be the 13th, and his support of it, cost the head of the Illinois GOP his job.
@24 If Republicans were in charge, DoJ wouldn’t have told AP about it.
Speaking of Republicans in charge, the IRS shit happened under an IRS commissioner appointed by George W. Bush.
The AP Story on the case I mentioned@24, the AP Story mentions that details of a CIA Operation were disclosed, the Think Progress story said the AP had disclosed the CIA had an operative in the Al-Qaeda cell. An operative that may have been compromised, or worse.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article.....ords-probe
A day care found a loaded pistol in a 4-year-old’s clothing bag, apparently left there by his dad, a Responsible Gun Owner (TM) who reported the gun “stolen” last month. The parents are divorced and used the bag to carry the boy’s clothing when he was traded back and forth between the parents.
http://www.nbcnews.com/video/n...../#51866823
An Iowa turkey processor who exploited 32 mentally disabled men as factory slaves and forced them to live under abhorrent conditions in a company bunkhouse for decades will only have to pay the men two years of back pay and $50,000 of damages each, because of a federal statutory cap on the amount of damages the EEOC can award.
Here’s what a modern slavedriver looks like.
http://www.allgov.com/news/con.....ews=849924
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I’ll bet he’s a Republican, too.
Truckers vs. the Pioneer Square Pergola, again.
http://www.king5.com/news/loca.....#038;can=n
“Kenneth Henry, 72, of Proctor, Texas, also denied allegations that the workers — whom he repeatedly referred to as ‘the boys,’ although most were in their 40s, 50s and 60s — were routinely abused or neglected. …
“Over 40 years, Henry’s sent hundreds of disabled men from Texas to Iowa, where they worked in a West Liberty meat-processing plant for 41 cents an hour.
“The men were housed in a 100-year-old Atalissa school building that the company converted to a bunkhouse. …
“He testified that in the 1980s, one of the company’s disabled workers … wandered away from the bunkhouse during a winter storm. … The following spring, a local farmer found the man’s remains ‘in a fence rail,’ Henry testified. ‘He had frozen to death,’ Henry said. …
“He acknowledged that the men weren’t allowed to have their own cellphones and never were told how to report abuse, neglect or harassment to him or to anyone else.
“He said he was aware that the boiler in the bunkhouse hadn’t worked since 2002, but said that when he visited in 2007, the space heaters throughout the building seemed to have addressed the problem. ‘The bunkhouse was warm,’ he testified. ‘Everything seemed to be sufficient.’
“He testified that over the decades, Henry’s sent 1,500 mentally disabled men to labor camps in seven states …. Henry said he never had a company policy manual and no one at the company ever … had access to a computer to research support services available to the mentally disabled. … Henry never offered his disabled workers health insurance or signed them up for Medicaid. …
“Evidence produced during the trial indicates bunkhouse supervisor Randy Neubauer had one of the bunkhouse residents handcuffed to his bed at night …. [A] social worker testified that … some of the men were punished … by being taken to a garage next to the bunkhouse, where … they were hit, kicked and screamed at by their caretakers. …
“Henry’s decades-long practice of paying the men less than the minimum wage was well-known to the U.S. Department of Labor, which over 15 years repeatedly cited the company for wage violations but imposed no penalties. After the bunkhouse was shut down, the Labor Department pursued the matter and won a $1.76 million judgment against the company for federal labor law violations. … In a separate action, Iowa … imposed a $1.2 million civil fine against Henry’s for state labor law violations. Then, last year, the EEOC won the $1.3 million judgment for ADA wage violations. Court records indicate those state and federal penalties remain unpaid.”
http://www.desmoinesregister.c.....zing-death
Roger Rabbit Commentary: There is government complicity in this atrocity — laws that allowed employers to pay mentally disabled workers less than minimum wage, and federal and state agencies that turned a blind eye to what was going on. But somebody made a great deal of money by exploiting the virtual slave labor of these defenseless and unfortunate men, and whoever that was has the greatest moral culpability of all. Labor atrocities always occur because of the private greed of people who have no conscience. Government, even at its worst, only allows and enables them to do it. This kind of exploitation always originates in the private sector.
@31 I’ve seen truckers do amazing things with their rigs, backing up to loading docks I couldn’t get a U-Haul trailer into. This one must be a rookie.
33)Definitely, 1st Ave in that part of Pioneer Square is tricky. The Pergola in the old days was the terminal for the Yesler Way Cable Car line, one of two surviving pieces of it, in Pioneer Square.
Goldy once again doing Yeoman’s journalism
http://slog.thestranger.com/sl.....the-balanc
Whaddya know, government costs money after all. Give GOPers a budget surplus, and they spend it.
http://www.king5.com/news/business/207229361.html
Goldy’s typing finger has more bone than the whole Democratic caucus, so I’m not holding my breath, but it’s a fine idea. As for Tom and Sheldon, they can take a hike … permanently.
26) Right now it is the phone records, and no mention of whether wiretaps were involved. If we lost the informant because of the AP, how big of a setback for CIA operations against AQAP could that be? Now maybe we could use the specter of informants to get AQAP to turn on each other, it works with the Klan.
Won’t even need Brad Owen’s vote if some GOP senator gets busted for DUI and has to spend 30 days in the cooler.
First, I hope Senator Carroll rcovers. Second, can one trust Lt. Governor Owen? His opponent was backed by some Democratic leaning groups.
Now, it seems that the investigation was partly pushed by Congress.
It was later revealed that the “would-be bomber” was actually a U.S. spy planted in the Yemen-based group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. On May 18, U.S. and allied officials suggested to Reuters that the leak to the AP had forced the end of an “operation which they hoped could have continued for weeks or longer.”
In the months since those revelations, the Justice Department pushed hard to uncover the source of the leak, driven in part by demands from Republican lawmakers it had endangered national security. The DOJ’s campaign was heavily criticized by members of the media, who warned that it would have a chilling effect on the source-reporter relationship, and by civil liberties groups, who viewed it as an infringement on First Amendment rights
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....68932.html
@40 See #39.
42)Sorry, I missed that part. I surf a couple sites at once. was looking for what I posted at 41.
Something worse than the case out of Ireland that I mentioned earlier, and it’s aftermath. In El Salvador, there is a case where the life of the mother is at stake, and the court is taking their time. In El Salvador, it’s the Pro-Lifers dream, no exceptions, period, and anybody who does it faces 30 years in prison.
http://thinkprogress.org/healt.....-salvador/
Memphis up 3-1 now.
March 22. 2006, the BC Ferry MV Queen of the North, while making it’s regular run between Port Hardy and Prince Rupert, when it hit a rock and sank. 2 of the passengers were never found. After the investigations, charges were finally filed, and today, a conviction on the charge of Criminal Negligence causing death, against the Navigation Officer. He and the quartermaster were talking about something unrelated to the job, and they missed a key set of turns, and the ferry was off course.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/.....ml?cmp=rss
@44 Ah yes, El Salvador, paragon of conservative virtue.
http://morallowground.com/2010.....ath-squad/
This Wikipedia article describes an appalling atrocity committed by U.S.-sponsored Central American thugs and the disgusting coverup by the Reagan administration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Mozote_massacre
This article explains how the Heritage Foundation gamed its immigration “study” to come up with a $6.3 trillion lie.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....wine-Curve
47) I wonder if the 4 nuns, and the 6 Jesuit Priests murdered around 1989, could be considered martyrs, like some say Archbishop Romero is. If so, could make the path to Sainthood easier. Sometimes, we need to do a better check on who we aid, this is an example exampleof that.
Remember when we were told that Obama’s energy policies would cripple the US oil industry and that his limiting of drilling would put the nation in peril?
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22524597
Over the next five years, the US will account for a third of new oil supplies, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The US will change from the world’s leading importer of oil to a net exporter.”
Yeah, Republicans are full of it, aren’t they?
51) Very true. If the drilling is not occurring where they want, when they want, they will always say it’s the President’s policies for the higher gas prices. By the way, they are going up again.