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Here's a good starting point: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/toyota_engine.html

It's disingenuous to single out Toyota when so many other major car makers habve a similar track record.

Here's a primer to help anyone who thinks that the arrogance of car manufacturers is limted to Toyota.

Of note, check out numbers 1&2 on the list... exploding Fords again (albeit just spitting a spark plug, not a fuel tank explosion).

>>>pedal and floormat "problems" were simply a smokescreen to hide the actual cause of the problem

Yes it's been Toyota's modus operandi since about 2000 - blame the customer not Toyota:
- "My car accelerated out of control, even when I shifted to neutral!". - It was your fault, not ours. - TOYOTA.
- "My car's engine (times about 100,000 other engines) died after only 20,000 miles. It's under warranty and would like a new one." No. It is the fault of the customer for not changing oil. - TOYOTA. "But my dealer did the oil changes. They have records and said they will back me up." No it is the fault of the customer. Warranty denied. - TOYOTA

- "My Prius battery died after only 50,000. Warranty entitles me to a new one upto 100,000 miles." No. Not our problem because our tests show Prius batteries will last 200,000 miles. You abused the battery, so it's your fault. - TOYOTA.

.

Yes Toyota did eventually go back and fix all these problems. They extended Prius battery warranty to 150,000 miles. They replaced or reimbursed customers for their damaged engines. They recalled the cars and reprogrammed the ECU so it would not ignore the brake or neutral commands..... .....AFTER the U.S. DOJ stepped in. Toyota of the 2000s acted like Ford of the 1970s. (Remember the exploding Fords?) Every company screws up, but to deny warranty to innocent customers, and force them to spend $7000 replacing new engines, shows the height of arrogance. What's the point of having a warranty if the corporation can randomly refuse to honor the damn thing?

Source -

I've been following the Toyota mess for almost a decade now, so I have a lot of sources. Here's a good starting point: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/toyota_engine.html

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/03/fda_hearing_aids.html

http://community.livinglakecountry.com/blogs/hears_to_life/archive/2009/05/13/fda-regulations-on-hearing-aids.aspx

So not only do these things have to go through FDA testing but the FDA can also push around manufacturers at will.

It's so odd to me that the same people who bash the government on a daily basis are so willing to fold and blame "Big [Whatever]" at the drop of a pin when so many of these institutions are directly tied to government regulations. Don't you people see the real common thread here?

The way it is supposed to work is that technically responsible people write requirements that when followed correctly lead to acceptable results. This is what ISO-9001 is all about. It does not mandate "you must do procedure X"; it mandates that you must have a system that defines what processes you employ, and how you verify that they have been followed. In theory, your process could be throwing darts at paper target, and by retaining the target as an "artifact" you can show you followed your process. In the real world there are "best practices", and a lot of meetings and reviews and "artifacts".

The organizational issue is having a group of people who understand the processes and independently evaluate the results. If the the results are not acceptable they say so, and the problems are fixed. This requires:

1. Technical domain competence

2. Independence

3. Authority

Obviously, the evaluators are at odds with the people doing the project, because there job is to stop things from being completed. They are the spoilers.

When the evaluators are part of the organization, it is easier for them to be underfunded and ignored. It is also hard to get the best people to do this work, because it tends to be low status and also tends to pay less.

The best solution is to have an independently funded group with a separate chain of command that reports outside the regular channels: like the NTSB being outside the FAA. Their major weakness is lack of authority, because the FAA can, and does, ignore them. Typically it takes a spectacular high fatality preventable accident for change to occur.

An example in a different area is public prosecutors in our legal system. They are (supposedly) independent and follow the law, not the dictates of any particular group. (In practice, not so much. At the local level then are aligned with law enforcement, which is why cops are almost never caught or conviced of crimes.)

Now some real world failures from today's news. Literally today.

Toyota They used pressure tactics and out maneuvered the regulators. This whole discussion is about the failure to have technical expertise on the part of the regulator.

Nuclear Regulatory Commision In Vermont it was just revealed that tritium leaks were unreported starting in 2005, although leaks were also reported later. The plant operator lied. The NRC has a relative small number of inspectors, and they count on operators to follow all the rules and self report. I guess they also believe in the Tooth Fairy.

FDA The diabetes drug Avandia is responsible for hundred of heart attacks per month. This has been systematically under reported in the medical press and critics have been pressured and given the run around. The FDA knows about it, and had a review/whitewash session last year. During the Bush years the revolving door and payments from drug companies to "independent" research groups became a lucrative way of life. So hundreds of people die every month http://www.examiner.com/x-32805-Norfolk-Healthy-Living-Examiner~y2010m2d23-Major-Medical-Alert-Diabetes-drug-Avandia-responsible-for-monthly-heart-attacks-and-heart-failures. Who cares when Big Pharma is raking in the cash.

SEC/Bank of America/Merrill Lynch The judge just approved a $150 million fine for B of A for lying to stockholders about their merger with Merrill Lynch. The judge called the settlement "paltry" and "half baked justice", but had to approve it under existing law. http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2010

1992 - 1995 Isuzu Trooper recall for accelerator cable stuck causing uncontrolled acceleration

2003 Ford Escape stuck throttle cables result in uncontrolled acceleration

2002 Ford Explorers investigated for stuck throttle cables in cold weather regions

1999 - 2004 Suzuki Grand Vitara, recalled due to fraying accelerator cables that result in uncontrolled acceleration and potential crash.

I guess we need to go back to the tried and true horse and buggy as these cable controls do not have a good history of reliability. But we may need to investigate the buggy brakes to ensure the can overpower the horses.

I'm not sure what happened in your bucking Bronco but O2 sensors do not control throttle position, worst case scenario would be an oscillating idle RPM as the computer adjusted fuel mixture from lean to rich. As long as your not touching the accelerator its not going to accelerate uncontrollably and will simply run like shit.

Except they initially misappropriated money from the 9/11 donations

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/rc_blinks.html

Try the clinton foundation. Bill is a sscumbag...err I mean politician, but I honeslty believe he cares about Haiti

Video Professor is a blah blah blah..."

Hey smart guy, how about reading the article before telling everybody what's what?

Video Professor hides (yes, hides) their $3000 "X of the month club" behind "Free*". That's the word "Free" with an asterisk. Oh, but "argumentum ad populum" and "well, that's what the man says is OK," right? Well since we're all abiding by the letter of the law according to your directives, it's legal to call something a scam even if it's legal.

By the by, here's 115 pages of complaints about everybody's favorite legal "X of the month club."

I also have Sprint, and my experience has been the same as yours, but Sprint is not without its customer service problems. At one level or another, all of the major providers seem to be running plays from the same book of dirty tricks. Fortunately for us, we haven't yet had to deal with such things from Sprint, but while I have no complaints to date, I'm not going to hold my breath.

Strange, this indicates that verizon got in trouble for this exact practice back in 2007 and was supposed to stop.

Can you imagine what would happen if other markets went the way of OSS and FSF ideals? You'd get a few finished products and a lot of half-baked, half-finished products. You'll have to supply your own containers when shopping for soup at the market, and provide your botulism test because the kitchen hadn't gotten around to it yet. You go to buy a car, but someone decided to break with convention and try a new brake design. He's delivered the car in a .5 Alpha and makes a small note that the brake fluid/master cylinder/wheel interface isn't ready yet.

Yeah... I'm so glad everything in today's world is all finished products. The version of Windows is final, never needs patches or fixes. Since everything is so nicely tested cars never have recalls for things like spontaneous fires or fuel leaking. I am so glad when you go shopping you can be 100% confident that the meat you just bought has no harmful gut bacteria since the slaughterhouse would surely not chop open the intestines of the animal while butchering it. The industry does such a good of regulating itself behind closed doors that if we saw how well they operate internally we couldn't possibly find a single way of improving it, because the system that a dozen infallible geniuses think up is a billion times better than what you and I and a billion other people could ever devise.

</sarcasm>

Wake up! THE MAN is as fallible as anybody else. Just because it's open doesn't mean it's unfinished or half-baked.

first link on google searching for "cause of bankruptcy in usa"

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/bankruptcy_study.html [consumeraffairs.com]

A few years back, the CC companies got to their Holy Grail -- they bought enough legislators to make CC debt non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.

They spent years trying to convince everyone that they were being taken advantage of by people who maxed out all their cards on extravagant living, then declared bankruptcy, leaving the poor, sniveling CC outfits holding the bag.

In fact, it was well established, but shouted down by the meretricious CC snakes, that medical expenses were the chief reason for bankruptcy.

When people have their lives saved or extended by medical treatment, they are grateful and tend to want their doctors or hospitals not to be stiffed for months on end. The medical establishments also took advantage of this loyalty by encouraging patients to roll their bills onto a CC.

In many cases, huge medical bills could have been negotiated down to something a person would have a chance of paying off -- it's well-known that there is a hell of a lot of air in the prices published for medical procedures and accomodations. But with a CC, just racking up a large balance in the first place automatically sets you up for predatorily high interest rates. Miss a single payment, even to another creditor, and it can only get worse.

first link on google searching for "cause of bankruptcy in usa"

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/bankruptcy_study.html

>>>If you didn't get your rebate, you're doing it wrong. I have NEVER not gotten a rebate.

Me too.

Until now.

I don't think the issue is that I didn't do it right, but that rebate companies get paid to find excuses to reject rebates (like you didn't include your phone number, or you use a alternative card like Discove not a Visa or Mastercard). I don't have any idea what I could have done wrong since I filled-in every line on the fucking form, but I do know this - JCPenney still owes me a 50 dollar rebate, and I will get it back even if I have to file a credit card dispute to reverse that $50 charge.

You can read more about mail-in rebate scams here: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/ftc_compusa.html http://www.consumeraffairs.com/consumerism/rebate_madness01.html http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/04/rebate_maze.html

>>>If you didn't get your rebate, you're doing it wrong. I have NEVER not gotten a rebate.

Me too.

Until now.

I don't think the issue is that I didn't do it right, but that rebate companies get paid to find excuses to reject rebates (like you didn't include your phone number, or you use a alternative card like Discove not a Visa or Mastercard). I don't have any idea what I could have done wrong since I filled-in every line on the fucking form, but I do know this - JCPenney still owes me a 50 dollar rebate, and I will get it back even if I have to file a credit card dispute to reverse that $50 charge.

You can read more about mail-in rebate scams here: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/ftc_compusa.html http://www.consumeraffairs.com/consumerism/rebate_madness01.html http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/04/rebate_maze.html

>>>If you didn't get your rebate, you're doing it wrong. I have NEVER not gotten a rebate.

Me too.

Until now.

I don't think the issue is that I didn't do it right, but that rebate companies get paid to find excuses to reject rebates (like you didn't include your phone number, or you use a alternative card like Discove not a Visa or Mastercard). I don't have any idea what I could have done wrong since I filled-in every line on the fucking form, but I do know this - JCPenney still owes me a 50 dollar rebate, and I will get it back even if I have to file a credit card dispute to reverse that $50 charge.

You can read more about mail-in rebate scams here: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/ftc_compusa.html http://www.consumeraffairs.com/consumerism/rebate_madness01.html http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/04/rebate_maze.html

Tell Card Systems it doesn't matter...

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/cardsystems_sold.html

I've heard this misleading figure a number of times and I wonder why you use it. If 70% of the people like what they have which isn't my experience given that I just paid $400 for new glasses and contact lenses with an eye exam while having vision insurance then I don't think this would be the issue that it is.

You're number doesn't include the 40 million Americans that have no coverage at all along with the 10 million+ non-citizens taking into account the numbers are rising rapidly too. How do you discount 1/10th of the entire population of the country and make a statement that 70% like their insurance? Where does this number even come from? What was the question that was asked?

There is no reason that MRI machines cost millions at this point, everything in the healthcare industry is so overpriced because insurance companies pay it happily passing on the premium. There is no recourse so it pretty much has to be this way unless there are some fundamental rules changed which is what everyone is trying to do right now. The whole malpractice situation is retarded too and sue happy Americans are largely to blade for all the bureaucracy created to protect everyone from lawsuits. Hospitals need the machines which are overpriced and so they have to pass on the costs to insurance providers. Hospitals have to pay high salaries to practitioners because of malpractice insurance and all that leads to the person receiving the health-care who will go bankrupt without the right health-care. 60% of bankruptcy is caused by health problems.

A similar situation exists for all telecom. We gave them billions to setup infrastructure and they setup proprietary environments and squandered all of the money so we are left with a substandard deployment for all telephony and Internet to the curb. The problem is the lack of oversight in regards to this money. The companies grew irresponsibly and you can't expect them to just give all the money back as that would bankrupt the majority putting even more people out of jobs so you end up in a place where we pay $99/month for unlimited calling and texting (sort of) and some Internet which you can't use too much or you will be cut off. Bottom line is that for much of the 20th century America had most of the money and didn't use it properly so welcome to our new world where we have to compete with a rebuilt Europe, a China that understands a little capitalism goes a long way, and a crippling oil crisis on the horizon which you just happened to have based a large chunk of your economy with the basis of cheap gas.

I'm not blaming anyone for all of this except for perhaps our representatives in the house and senate combined with a voting populous that seems to like to vote for people that clearly don't support legislation that will help them out with the most responsibility being a short-sighted voting populous. I hope this changes in the future as a new generation grows up dealing with the problems created by the baby boomer generation. Of course new problems will emerge, hopefully we can hold on to our principles.

In the meantime, charging long distance rates and 40 cents per text without a plan will continue unabated for the foreseeable future. Regardless of costs being practically negligible at this point. On the plus side, I'll keep enjoying those chicks you mentioned, they sure are nice to look at. I don't think there will be any shortage of them either given what I see on a night out in Arizona.

I recall another major telephone and/or cable company that added this 'you must use arbitration' clause to their contracts, and then they were sued and the judge ruled it infringed the individuals rights. Here's one ruling I found using google:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/12/arbitration_challenges.html

And an interesting article on more recent 'arbitration' law:
http://consumer-law.lawyers.com/Consumer-Contracts-Mandatory-Arbitration-Clauses.html

I guess AT&T is hoping to get 'grandfathered' in...

Half of all bankruptcies involve medical bills. In countries without universal health care, not every citizen can afford the recent drugs, surgery, etc. to keep him alive and working.

Health or medical care costs so much because we do not have a free market in it. There is no free market in health insurance nor is there in medical practice. Nor drugs.

Falcon

It 1) Improved public perception of the safety of meat, increasing sales,

Forget perception. It improved the safety, and quality, of meat full stop.

I'm not so sure about that.

And I suppose the person with 50k in credit card debt and a house in foreclosure is also in that situation because they can't raise enough income?

Half of all bankruptcies involve medical bills. In countries without universal health care, not every citizen can afford the recent drugs, surgery, etc. to keep him alive and working.

The U.S. government is trying to add the flu to no fly lists.

No doubt. It is still the best deal out there. I have Blockbuster, my friends all seem to have Netflix. They also seem to whine about waiting for the mail, whereas I can goto the store, turn in my mailer flick and come home with one that day.

Netflix is like Google around here. Its virtues extolled by zealots what turn a blind eye to their shenanigans as it suits them.

That Verizon perhaps has already been doing this information sharing. They just want to stop getting penalized for various marketing activities they undertake.

And court rulings that affirm the new regulations requiring opt-in consent.

So the new regulations are finally making them take notice and be more forthcoming about when they share proprietary information??

Verizon might be on the hot seat right now, but, I won't be surprised if notices like Verizon's or similar agreements start being seen from other carriers.

My fathers Corolla was affected by the engine oil sludge problem. He purchased it new, had all of the scheduled oil changes and maintenance, and about 15k miles, the engine oil light came on. The dealer said the engine was ruined and said that Toyota wouldn't cover it because he had oil changes done by a mechanic instead of the dealer. He told Toyota what they could do with themselves and had the mechanic clean out the sludge. Since then he has been able to keep it from blowing up by using synthetic oil and changing it every 2500 miles.

My 9 year old Chevy S-10 does seem well engineered. 2 weeks after buying it, I hit black ice and was saved by the anti-lock brakes (standard on S-10s but not most other vehicles at the time). It also saved me recently when a garbage truck backed over it. :( I never had any major problems like the engine oil sludge. The biggest problem I had was a new head gasket ($600), and that was only last year. I have NEVER had any service on the engine other than Jiffy Lube.

Filing it in small claims doesn't waive your constitutional rights. You have a right to a trial by jury. What it does is change the default- in small claims it's assumed that you don't want a trial by jury, and you need to specifically request it (usually when filing the initial lawsuit (for the plaintiff) or answer (for the defendant)). It may also incur an additional court fee (25-100 dollars based on state, from what I see with quick googling). But you have a right to it even for small claims. Its just not really worth it for most cases- it takes more time and effort for the trial, pisses off the judge (if its a small case) and doesn't confer any real advantage unless its an issue where a normal set of 12 people may be biased for you.

Here's consumer affair's page for washington state's small claims court http://www.consumeraffairs.com/consumerism/small_wa.html. It specifically points out juries are allowed by request (technically they only have to for amounts over $20, realistically today if anyone actually sued for less than 20 you want it over and done with, not a prolonged jury trial.

There are some states where you can't do a jury trial in small claims- but in that case the defendant can ask for it to be transferred out of small claims. A special court like small claims needs to be mutually agreed to- just because the plaintiff wishes to use it does *NOT* remove the constitutional rights of the defendant. If he wants a trial by jury, he can always get a trial by jury, so long as the amount is greater than $20.

The FDA is an affront to medical freedom in the US. Like all regulatory agencies, it has formed a cartel with the businesses it was implemented to regulate. We are left with mainstream medical knowledge subject to lobbyists. The FDA pushes flawed studies as irrefutable science, dangerous drugs, and a diet not suited to humans.

Private, voluntary certification companies like Underwriters Laboratories have an incentive to be honest, because they will go out of business if discredited. Likewise, pharmaceutical companies need the certification of an outside party to gain and keep the trust of consumers. The FDA should not be that party. Unlike the UL, it is a government bureaucracy that does not need to maintain a good reputation to stay in power.

Yes.

And if Microsoft had ASKED, I would have said, "No thanks; please leave my Mozilla browser alone." But they didn't even give me the choice. They used a Negative Option where they signed me up automatically, and if I want to get unsigned, I have to do it myself. Negative Options are generally considered illegal. See: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/negative_option.html

"Today, with "negative option" marketing, commerce can be anything but simple, and consumers can end up being charged for products or services they never intended to purchase...... In 2001, the Federal Trade Commission cracked down on negative option abuses, suing nine companies for charging customers credit cards for products or services without gaining their express approval.

"Negative option marketing is particularly troubling when marketers already have consumers' credit card or billing account information and can easily charge consumers' accounts without their permission or when marketers fail to disclose that consumers' credit card numbers will be transferred to another company and charged unless consumers call to cancel," the FTCs Elaine Kolish told Congress in November, 2001.

Although in this case Microsoft did not charge for the upgrade, I still find it offensive that they are modifying OTHER companies' programs without my permission. Microsoft should not be practicing negative option upgrades to non-microsoft products.

After going through all the usual suspects like yourself, it turned out that that particular line of Dell laptops was just badly designed. It simply couldn't cope with the heat build up and slowed down the CPU instead.

I wonder if you are talking about a certain earlier range of Dell laptops? If so, then you might be glad that it is slowing down and not doing something else.

PS - I couldn't resist the joke and have nothing against Dell.

Your numbers are wacked. Defense spending is 20% of the federal budget. Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security take up over 40% of the budget. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

Do you trust the government? If you do, those numbers are fine. If you don't, take a look at real numbers. Social Security is paid in and paid out, so that's irrelevant. When you add discretionary spending, military research in non-DoD branches, like nuclear weapons research in the DoE, the budget looks quite different.

How much did 9/11 cost this country? Hundreds of billions.

You're off by an order of magnitude, and that's only if the only thing that you value is money. According to all insurance claims, it's 9.3 billion. The highest estimates I've seen for total economic impact that never recovered is forty or fifty billion. If you have to pretend for your argument that the stock market didn't recover, well... let us know when you come back to reality.

Personally, I mourn the loss of the casualties of 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, of the right to an attorney, the right to be charged if I am held, the right to free association, and the right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures much more than the money. And that figure is still a few trillion dollars less than the increase in war spending.

Bush prevented another attack during his Administration against all odds.

Yes, like the Chicago Seven:

An FBI informant infiltrated the group, the sources say, neutralizing the threat. They say it is not clear how much damage the group would have done on its own. They were making plans to purchase bomb-making materials, the officials add.

So, we stopped someone from possibly purchasing bomb making materials, possibly using that to make a bomb, and possibly using that to carry out an attack. Excuse me for saying so, but if this is making the front page, it looks like they are desperate to find anything that looks like a terrorist attack. If they could squeeze more political capital out of any foiled attack, they would do it.

The intelligence community failed to predict the collapse of the USSR, failed to prevent the WTC 93 attack, failed to prevent the Cole bombing, failed to prevent 9/11, and then claimed that Saddam had WMDs. What exactly have they done right in the past thirty years?

War costs will continue since Barry will be moving troops from Iraq to Afghanistan/Pakistan.

We owe it to the Afghanis. When their secular government requested help from the Russians, we spent hundreds of billions of dollars organizing bin Laden and all of the muslim extremists we could find in order to embarrass Moscow. Afghanistan was completely destroyed, and we left the foundation of the Taliban to do whatever they wanted with the ashes. We also owe the same to the Iraqis, but we should be providing logistical support to the democratic side so they have the freedom to form their own government, instead of being forced at gunpoint to accept ours.

Your Democratic Congress has approved bailouts since coming into power that have eclipsed the war costs.

Whoa, cowboy. Let's try that hard math again. The bailouts will top out at 1.2 trillion, and we currently spend 1 trillion every year. Not that I favor the bailouts, but your premise is provably false to begin with.

So, how's that Democratic Congress for the last 2 years been working out for you?

One the scale of idiocy and ignorance, I prefer the less idiotic and less ignorant. Clinton may have been a corrupt politician, but at least he knew not to shit where he ate, at least when it came to balancing the eco

The Craigslist Bad Check scam, where the con sends a check for several thousand more than the asking price...

(Clicks on link to website advising consumers of scams)
(Gets pop-up window claiming you can make $18 billion in a year as a California option trader)
Sigh...

Believe me, there are plenty of other people out there who are willing to con you that don't rely on your greed.

Care to point some of them out?

The Craigslist Bad Check scam, where the con sends a check for several thousand more than the asking price. They'll email you saying that their secretary made a mistake, but they trust you, so go ahead and cash it and send back the difference. It's a bad check, of course, but your bank won't notice for a few days, and then they'll hold you responsible for the difference, plus the check you just sent back.

The mark isn't working on greed. They don't expect to get anything more than the original asking price. The con works purely on feelings of trust.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/10/fcc_cable.html That's all I could find quickly but it is the decision I was thinking of. It may only apply to apartments from what that article says.

The Real Deal on the Current Economic Crisis

So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working home owners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

I never said anything about living forever, that's an absurd expectancy. I would not consider (under normal circumstances) that a socialized health care system is "stealing". Most people would be contributing to the system. The people who couldn't afford health care before were still receiving basic care at a cost to the hospitals and state anyway.

I currently work for a hospital, and I can confirm that the cost of the pacemaker itself is about $3,500 to $5,000, but you also have the hospital stay (a day or two), the cost of the other equipment, the cost of the doctors, etc. You're looking at about $10,000+ for the implant. A bi-ventricular implant will run about $20,000+.

I, just like you, have not purchased a new computer in about 6 years. I've saved up a fairly decent amount of money, and I could afford a hospital stay or two. My wife and I just had a new baby boy about 5 months ago. We had planned a home birth for personal and financial reasons (a midwife is a lot less expensive than a hospital birth). We live just a few blocks from the hospital, so if something came up, we knew we'd have adequate medical care. When the baby did come, my wife labored for about 24 hours until we decided it was time to go the hospital. To make a long story short, my son ended up in the NICU for a few days and my wife had an unplanned cesarean. Without insurance, I would have had to pay about $25,000. I do have insurance through my employer, so I was lucky in that regard, but if I was poor and didn't have as good an insurance plan (or none at all), then I would have basically been screwed. Medical costs are the #1 cause of bankruptcy in America (a little old, but I think it's still the case).

I think the doctors deserve to be paid well, but people also deserve to have medical care. I also think that the cost of a socialized health care system is a hard pill to swallow, but I'm currently paying a "tax" into my insurance plan anyway (total cost is over $12,000/yr including what the employer pays). Private care could definitely co-exist, but that's getting a little off-topic.

+2 to Duradin.

And here's an article worth reading. It was very predictive of what would eventually happen: "Bankruptcy Bill Preys on Consumers; Endangers Economy" (2005) - http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/bankruptcy_act01.html

Yes, but he was talking about his friend the balloonist, and unless his friend's last name was Fossett he was probably not at airliner altitudes.

With the old networks, even GA planes could cause havoc. I heard one story about a guy who was approaching Chicago and called his family to tell them he would be home soon. When his bill showed up that one call had been billed to him six separate times, because he hit so many different towers that were too far apart to communicate with each other and coordinate billing. Of course airliners are far worse simply because of their speed, but at 10,000ft over flat terrain the horizon describes a circle over 250 miles in diameter, way bigger than a phone cell.

My understanding is that the older networks got really messed up by any aircraft use, and newer ones don't get messed up by any aircraft use. As evidence, I submit this article which claims:

The researchers found that on average one to four cell phone calls are typically made from every commercial flight in the northeast United States. Some of these calls are made during critical flight stages such as climb-out, or on final approach. This could cause accidents, the investigators report.

In my opinion that last sentence is crap, but there's no reason to doubt their data. If that kind of call volume is already taking place I'd think the mobile phone network would already be in shambles if it couldn't withstand phones on airliners, although it's certainly possible that it can cope with this much but not with more.

what the hell are you talking about ?

oh, maybe this

Great, now all we need to do is stick it in my car's gas tank to improve fuel economy! Yay!

Companies off-shored those obs to save costs. If they didn't the cost of everything would be higher the nit is now. Would you want to pay $10 for a gallon of milk? Or how about $50,0000 for that basic car?

Look at the companies that are having pension issues. Most (if not all) also have unions. Those unions were needed back in the 1920s and 1930s. But they have out lived their usefulness. They are now dragging down the companies and the people they are supposed to be protecting.

Airlines, auto makers, truck drivers, manufacturing all have major unions in them. The contracts almost always cost more to the company forcing it to either raise prices or look else where to cut costs. How many jobs do you still get paid even if your job goes away? Welcome to a lot of those contracts. The companies is paying past employees for years after they were laid off. The loopholes are huge. Look at GM's $17 million a year just on Viagra ( http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/04/gm_viagra.html ) The systems is messed up.

(Sorry, some of this will sound US-centric, cuz I am.....I'm pretty sure these concepts apply to other markets too....lemme know.)

Haven't you noticed that people in general seem afflicted with that "love of cellphone"?

"I love my phone, but..." your carrier, [Verizon|AT&T|Sprint|etc], sucks and you're obligated to them for how long???

All phones are insanely expensive when you consider the contract. (Why the f**k do I even need a contract again???) Even a bottom-end phone on a pay-go plan is stoopid expensive. As companies, pretty much all the carriers blow massive chunk themselves so there's no getting away from this just by bagging on the iPhone. (Those with experience using all the carriers, please chime in to confirm/deny.)

Using an iPhone with a bug in this context isn't going to noticeably bring any more "suck" into the equation. It'd be like having 500 Suck Points while using your old phone+contract just because it's a cellphone with a contract, but then you get 8 bonus Suck Points when you get an iPhone. Shee-it...you get 5 Suck Points just for upgrading your phone at all - no matter the phone! The three extra for an iPhone with a bug are not enough to worry about. Not only that but the issue will almost surely be worked out with a software update later. That's not something that's going to stop cell phones or their service providers from royally sucking though. Further,the iPhone is arguably a better phone than the others even with that bug.

Good luck with that and hang up your damn phone! ;)

-Matt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States Compared to what half of the house hold's in this country make, $48,201.00. A catastrophic or chronic illness is of course the leading cause of bankruptcy. http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/bankruptcy_study.html I don't think thinning the "insurable herd" with some "illness score" is going to solve any problem but one... Making insurance companies wealthier. We are so close to a civil revolution in so many ways... This kind of data gathering is just one more step in the direction of anarchy. Equal and oppiset and all that.

Yeah, it really is garbage

I mean, why would a greater propensity to roll, a larger passenger cage more prone to buckling, a higher, more exposed profile, and a larger mass which carries more energy (which is then transferred into the passenger and provides more challenge to the structural integrity on impact) be less safe!

BTW, avoid that $5 insurance fee like the plague. My ex was paying $5 insurance per month on a late-90's pre-Ericssen Sony phone. When it finally broke, the insurance said that they didn't cover phones that old. Of course, she had been paying them the entire time to cover the phone that old, but they re-assured us that such a thing was not possible. They then asked if she would like to cancel her coverage.

See also this class action suit. These frequently come with a 100 dollar deductible and send back a refurb phone that is less expensive than that deductible. Similarly, they insure the current value of the phone, not the purchase value. As the value of the phone drops, your premium does not, and the likelyhood of a functional replacement drops to zero.

Partially correct. Pure oxygen is not poisonous. Medical oxygen is one example. The Apollo missions also used high oxygen concentrations. It is however, extremely dangerous to be in a high concentration of it. The slightest static discharge can create an inferno. When deep sea diving, under high pressure; it can become toxic ( nitrogen also has effects: see nitrogen narcosis). I hadn't heard about oxygen increasing the rate of aging. The most relevant result google produced was this . Anyone have more insight on this?

You are correct about oxygen not being flammable by itself. It requires some sort of fuel to actually undergo redox. The fire triangle is an easier way of thinking about it.

did verizon count themselves? http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/03/verizon_laptops.html

I personally consume over 600grams of protein per day

Are you trying to destroy your kidneys, or is this just a side effect of some other goal? That's an obscene amount of protein, even for bodybuilding. Whatever happened to "1 gram per pound"? If you're eating that much protein, you're getting your calories from protein. Which means huge levels of amino acids to be broken down. Amine groups contain nitrogen, which must be excreted as urea. This is hard on your kidneys. ~200g is shown to only be damaging to your kidneys if there are preexisting problems, but that's three times that already "high" number. You probably have ketoacidosis, too. With that mostly coming from meat, I can't imagine your cholesterol and saturated fat intake.

So, now, tell me how, without resorting to a highly processed food powder, do I get that much protein without going over 70 grams of carbs per day?

Off the top of my head, gluten would do it. Most pollens would as well. But again, are you trying to destroy your kidneys? Or, for that matter, your bones? Your blood vessels and heart? Trying to get colon cancer, perhaps? That is simply not healthy.

There continue to be links between cell phone use and brain tumors and, though I haven't heard anything recently about power lines, I would not buy a house near high voltage lines.

At least, that's their conclusion for explaining the unexpected outcome that cell phone users living near cell phone towers are actually less likely to develop brain tumors than the same people living farther away from those towers.

Illness and medical bills caused half of the 1,458,000 personal bankruptcies in 2001, according to a study published by the journal Health Affairs.

The study estimates that medical bankruptcies affect about 2 million Americans annually -- counting debtors and their dependents, including about 700,000 children.

Surprisingly, most of those bankrupted by illness had health insurance. More than three-quarters were insured at the start of the bankrupting illness. However, 38 percent had lost coverage at least temporarily by the time they filed for bankruptcy.

Most of the medical bankruptcy filers were middle class; 56 percent owned a home and the same number had attended college. In many cases, illness forced breadwinners to take time off from work -- losing income and job-based health insurance precisely when families needed it most.

None of that involves government intervention. How are you going to blame all that on government intervention?

It's also curious that you make a distinction between "being right" and "holding" of the law, while complaining that interpreting the law in disagreement with your idea of "rights" implies lawlessness. If what's right is not held, then their interpretation would be lawless, but they're legally able to hold such an opinion. It's lawless and lawful? How do you work yourself out of that antinomy?

For what it's worth, I've heard your shitty arguments from other right-wing idiots about the Supreme Court not being the final arbiter of the constitution. They simply don't hold water:

The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court ... The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States,

It doesn't say that the judicial power doesn't apply to some cases, like, when you think their decision was wrong under the Constitution, it says it extends to all cases. If the judicial power didn't have a say about the constitution, then all their decisions about the constitutionality of inferior laws are mooted, since one could just follow the constitution instead in each of those cases and then it would get up to the supreme court and their decision would simply be wrong if they decided against it. The argument you make is that the court is only able to decide laws inferior to the constitution, but not the constitution itself. If any law contradicts the constitution and remains upheld, since the constitution is the supreme law of the land, the inferior law is overridden by the constitution.

But the justices decide things in many ways contradicted by the constitution's plain reading. Free speech? Not in case of public endangerment, for example. Legal theories aside, the Supreme Court effectively interprets the constitution. Are they thus lawless?

About rights, I was arguing against their transcendent status, but it seems you're in agreement that they aren't transcendental, that instead they are merely "self-evident", which to me means thei

I stand corrected, it is only 2.34 years. Still a major difference for two countries so closely linked. I did however check the hospital beds and doctor stats and we're about 10% ahead of the us (3.9 hospital beds per 1,000 in Canada, 3.6 per 1,000 in the US). That and the fact that medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US:

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/bankruptcy_study.html