Slashdot Mirror

That's actually very common at landfills.

Tapping Power From Trash http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/14Rmethane.html

"Power from landfill methane exceeds solar power in New York and New Jersey, and landfill methane in those states and in Connecticut powers generators that produce a total of 169 megawatts of electricity — almost as much as a small conventional generating station. The methane also provides 16.7 million cubic feet of gas daily for heating and other direct uses."

On extending the patents from 5 to 12 years:

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/14/us/house-debates-bill-to-extend-drug-patent-term-by-7-years.html

http://www.milliman.com/expertise/healthcare/publications/newsletters/pa/pdfs/president-obama-pharmaceutical-industry-PA-03-31-09.pdf

The actual bill. It is hard to read, but go to the page 1869 and read it. You'll see it. But you can also read around it. Apparently all kinds patents are going to be extended, by half a year here, by seven years there, various interesting stuff.

Also look at Obama killing the bill, that would have allowed cheap drug imports from Canada or other countries.

Dorgan introduced the bill

You will find shadows of this information in the news:

how the White-house killed this bill.

Dorgan had 30 or more Senators supporting this on his side, it still ended up dead.

Obama is nobody to love.

There was an interesting article in the NY Times a few months ago about this..

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/technology/personaltech/10basics.html

The author mentions all the gadgets he had previously hooked up, but threw them aside and now has a Mac Mini, wireless mouse and a Microsoft Xbox hooked up to his television. He also mentiones Boxee, Hulu and Joost.com. There is also a picture of his wife operating a wireless mouse called the Loop.

During the Kennedy administration, the Republican minority in Congress introduced many bills to protect the constitutional rights of blacks, including a comprehensive new civil rights bill. In February 1963, to head off a return by most blacks to the party of Lincoln, Kennedy abruptly decided to submit to Congress a new civil rights bill.

Wow. You're guzzling the GOP Kool-Aid pretty hard -- mainlining it right from The Washington Times, apparently. That's at least a two letter grade reduction for plagiarism. Really, you could at least bother to re-phrase the Republican whining points in your own words.

As for the facts of the matter, JFK was pushing for a meaningful civil rights bill in the Senate in 1960. The idea that he "abruptly" discovered the issue is nonsense. Not to say that there weren't some progressive Republicans who favored civil rights -- I'll certainly give a nod to Eisenhower on that.

Though he shared Johnson's convictions on safeguarding the constitutional rights of blacks, if Nixon had been in the White House...

Just so long as they didn't breed with whites, that is. According to Tricky Dick, "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape."

Socialism, Communism, Fascism, and Progressiveism are all on the extreme end of the scale ranging from anarchy at one extreme to total government control on the other.

No, they aren't. Anarchists are socialist, as one of the links I've already provided to you explains. And lumping Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt in with fascists is just silly.

"Make those rich people PAY! It's not FAIR that they have money and you don't!", never minding that the rich person got that way by working hard, being smart

No. That's the fantasy. One accumulates vast wealth by a combination of being born into it, by gaming the system, by exploitation, or by luck. Very, very rarely does a person become truly wealthy by talent and hard work.

Bill Gates? Born with a silver spoon, rode IBM's coattails, used criminal business practices and used government-issued copyrights and patent to rake it in. Warren Buffet? Son of a Congressman, got rich not from producing useful goods or services but made his wealth in the form of gambling called the stock market. Carlos Slim Helú? Gamed the deregulation of the Mexican telephone system to end up in control in 90% of its landlines, so that his company can charge some of the highest usage fees in the world.

Meanwhile, the investment class sucks its profit out of the labor of the people who actually do the productive work. The worker creates all the value, the bank, the bondholder, and the stockholder create none -- yet they not only get a cut -- indeed, often the lion's share -- of the value the worker creates, but we set our economic policy for their benefit.

We still live in the most-free (as an overall measure) nation on the planet with the highest standard of living of any other nation, ever.

No, we don't. It's a great nation -- hey, we taught the world to rock and roll, and whose bootprints are on the moon? -- but it's not as great as those wearing the flag as a blindfold like to pretend. We have the highest rate of incarceration on the planet. We rank 13th on the human development index, and are well down from the top in the CIFP rights rankings.

The progress we have made, though, is entirely because of those who l

If you have an iphone this might be useful.

never happen. china has an infinite supply of workers ready to grind themselves into the ground to put $ on the pockets of execs back in the US. that's just too sweet a deal for US corporations to pass up.

Bullshit, China has a labour shortage http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/business/global/27yuan.html

The government has passed laws guaranteeing that all races are equal in the eyes of the law. There's no way to see this through unless they have data based on race. Minorities have only had true equal rights since the 1960s and 1970s - that's not too long ago. I still know small business owners who refuse to hire non-white employees.

Black unemployment is roughly double that of white unemployment. If you're a black male between 18 and 25, there's a 1 in 9 chance you are currently in jail. The rate for whites is much lower. Obviously there is something going on, and unless you know how bad the problem is, there's no way to figure out how to fix it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/28cnd-prison.html

You sure about that?

I realize most of those links are for British stories, but still...

Wow, this is old news. Seriously, this was discussed over a year ago. In fact, I submitted this story to Slashdot way back then, but it was rejected. No Slashdot love for the Zebra. :-(

Oh come on, Everyone knows GPS can't detect obstacles and this gets modded as insightful? Yet rear obstacle avoidance systems is available on many models today, as is adaptive cruise control, and *shockingly* collision avoidance systems.

Not only does this technology exist today, but it is standard on some models.

Go back to putting a six foot wing on your Civic. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Turkey has a secular military, not a secular government. And they certainly don't value free access to information since they also recently banned the pro-Kurdish party. We have been helping Turkey kill Kurds for years in exchange for political and military support in the middle east. Just across the border we support Kurdish rebels in Iraq. Another spot of American foreign policy dripping with irony.

The decision appeared to be a setback for the government’s efforts to bring Kurds into the political system. Last month, the government presented a landmark plan calling for the free use of the Kurdish language in the media and in political campaigns, restoring Kurdish names to towns that had been given Turkish ones, and a new committee to fight discrimination.

The Kurdish party, known as the DTP, applauded those efforts but has refused to join the government and other lawmakers in calling for the Kurdish rebels to lay down their arms, a position many analysts believe led to the court’s ruling on Friday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/world/europe/12istanbul.html

"Try typing "Tienanmen massacre" in China and see what you get up..."

Is this really any better? Hell, its not even really that different.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html

Not that I'm saying the West is as bad as China. I don't think that at all.

I'm sorry, did you just make a parallel between nationwide censorship of government brutality and an elected school board mandating partisan bias in a high school social studies curriculum?!?

Uh, what are you on about? I think you pretty much entirely missed my point.

That said, I'd like to address one point:

"Try typing "Tienanmen massacre" in China and see what you get up..."

Is this really any better? Hell, its not even really that different.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html

Not that I'm saying the West is as bad as China. I don't think that at all.

No, I was pointing out that when China does something like this someone says they are terrified of their citizens. When the west makes a move in the same direction, its because they don't fear their citizens enough. I found it an interesting juxtaposition... that we rationalize why two different governments are on precisely the same sort of march against freedoms (even if the west isn't as far down the path) for apparently polar opposite reasons: terrified vs not afraid

And what happened to that guy who was thrown in jail for non-fraudently fixing satellite dishes so they could see certain channels? Oh yaa, that was in the US, forget about it. Of course Al-Manar is "terrorist"...according to the US, and other current/former British colonies (which I'll call CFBC's). This seems to be a CFBC confusion though, no other countries in the world aside from the CFBC's (and Holland for some reason) see Al-Manar or Hezbollah as terrorist.

Hopefully they wont end up being Hikikomoris

I was thinking the same thing, as an extension of the "rental sisters" that are sometimes used for hikki therapy as well. Perhaps this might not be such a bad idea.
The game serves as a focus for parallel play, allowing a poorly socialized male to be distracted long enough to become acclimated to the female's companionship before they realize it. I've seen the same sort of gradual opening up at anime clubs and D&D sessions, but this might work in situations where someone's too far withdrawn even for that.

I don't want to sound negative, but I was always worried about Oracle buying Sun, for how it would impact negatively on Sun's business.

Sun's business was already in the negative. At this point, I can't blame them for trying something new to turn-around Sun's profit/loss statement:

For the quarter that ended March 29 [2009], Sun posted a net loss of $201 million, or 27 cents a share. That’s a sharp downturn from the loss of $34 million, or 4 cents a share, it reported the same period last year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/technology/companies/29sun.html

...plus, will have all this data to play with, thanks to Tim-Berners Lee. Surely we can come up with a new and better way to organize society, right? Solve the poverty problem, etc? Dance with unicorns?

In Buddhism, I know of no concept of a "messiah". None. Maybe those of you who have perhaps studied more of the Sutras than I could offer another point of view.

Maitreya is a future Buddha who's supposed to show up some day and show us all the True Dharma. What we have here is the Theosophical Maitreya, which is a variation on the Buddhist one.

(A bizarre variation, but Theosophy is pretty wacky. It's also historically important, playing a big role in uniting Buddhism and bringing it to the attention of the West in the late nineteenth century, and also in kicking off what developed into Neopaganism.)

There's a saying in Buddhism, "If you see the Buddha on the side of the road; kill him!"

That's Zen, which -- despite its strong impact on the Western view of Buddhism -- is really a small part of Buddhism. Many, if not most, Buddhists follow some sort of devotional path where they believe that some Buddha or Bodhisattva will come down and give good little boys and girls a ride to Candyland.

Sure, that's in contradiction to what (we think) the Buddha actually taught...but then, Jesus didn't say "if you don't work you don't eat", and Mohammad explicitly forbid the killing of women and children, so it's not like the Buddha is the only one whose legacy has been twisted.

Actually, they're making new high risk pools, scheduled to be in effect in 90 days.

Yes, of course, no one even mentions energy efficiency, which is why the Obama administration has been pushing for more energy efficient lighting, applicances, homes, automobiles, and industry. But don't tell anyone I mentioned it. It's a secret!

I'd have to go back and look but it's moot at this point because HSA/MSA accounts are being eviscerated under the new bill:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/03/21/us/health-care-reform.html

"Starting in 2013, flexible spending accounts, which allow users to escape taxes on many medical expenses now, will be limited. There will be a $2,500 maximum on accounts that typically carry $4,000 or $5,000 limits now, and you will no longer be able to use the accounts for over-the-counter medicines."

It's true that we don't know the whole scope of the issue and, while my background is in medicine and not economic theory, there are other, more reputable sources that argue otherwise. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/business/03view.html?ex=1359694800&en=e2a7992c36d4a0ad&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3122 I agree that Medicare is a much more pressing issue at the present. The analogy is that

living off 1st world medical care certainly explains why there's no cure for Malaria.

certainly, the priorities of our pharmaceutical companies are kinda whack. seeing as most private pharma R&D goes into keeping their drugs from losing patent protection. and most private medical R&D seems to go into making more expensive scanners.

seems like the rest of the world might benefit by a leveling out of the research playing field.

For your reading entertainment, here's an article about the emerging markets for pharmaceuticals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/business/global/17drug.html

Next year, the report predicted, drug sales in China will outpace those of France and of Germany, while Brazil will be buying more medications than Britain.

all those countries mentioned provide some form of universal healthcare.

If you believe that medical insurance has been deregulated, then you're an idiot

The kind of idiot that compares vets to doctors? Or health programs for humans that resuscitate at all costs, versus another where spending more than $500 usually means you put the animal down?

Let me help you out. You seem to be in want of the curiosity to discover data, but if you subscribe to the Austrian School of I Don't Believe In Economics, it's entirely expected.

Hawaii has near universal, government mandated health care. They've had it for forty years, and according to the New York Times:

But perhaps the most intriguing lesson from Hawaii has to do with costs. This is a state where regular milk sells for $8 a gallon, gasoline costs $3.60 a gallon and the median price of a home in 2008 was $624,000 — the second-highest in the nation. Despite this, Hawaii’s health insurance premiums are nearly tied with North Dakota for the lowest in the country, and Medicare costs per beneficiary are the nation’s lowest.

Hawaii residents live longer than people in the rest of the country, recent surveys have shown, and the state’s health care system may be one reason. In one example, Hawaii has the nation’s highest incidence of breast cancer but the lowest death rate from the disease.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/health/policy/17hawaii.html

The answer, I believe, is incentive. If budgets are the limiting factor, the incentive is to keep patients healthy. If there is no limiting factor, then the incentive is to raise prices until the lower income clients are filtered out, and dumped on to public services at very high costs. Insurance companies have a single goal of externalizing high cost patients, which are the poor, the chronically ill, and those who have lost their jobs. In a nutshell, the patients who need health care the most.

If the bill forces them to keep everyone on their rolls, it will drive costs down. No one competes for high cost clients. But, through the haze and ignorance of your dogmatic belief in the fairytale "market," I doubt this thought would ever cross your mind.

10 million??

If you *really* want to get your way, then you have to spend $100 million, like the drug companies did.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21holtz-eakin.html

Just imagine...they spent $100 million dollars to get something passed. Their returns must be mind-boggling.

You see, that's what people think health insurance is: just a way to get others to pay for their problems. Socialism and its "single payer" system will arrive eventually, it will just take a while. First, all the people who have insurance now will stop buying it. Insurance costs $6400/year while the fee for not having it is $700. Furthermore, many states have already passed nullification laws prohibiting the federal government from charging you the above fee, so if you live in, say, Idaho, you will not have to pay a thing. Then, when you get cancer, you can simply go to any insurance company and buy coverage at that point; the company will be forbidden to turn you down for this preexisting condition. Then employers will eventually start doing the same thing. The fee for employers not providing insurance is higher, $3200, but it is still higher than the coverage premiums. So the boss will tell you to just buy insurance when you need it and take an extra $2000/year raise (or not).

The insurance companies will start losing lots of money, since only the sick will be subscribed, and will raise your premiums. If price controls are instituted (and they will be), the insurance companies will start going bankrupt. Then we can have another huge bailout bill for the "too big to fail" ones, which will then end up being mostly owned and financed by the government. They will stay that way because there is no way to turn a profit when you stop being "insurance" and become "entitlement". Then we'll get another health reform bill, where the government will step in, raise everyone's taxes and just pay for health care itself, like most of the other countries do.

Of course, you'll have to contend with various problems that will bring, like long waiting times, care rationing, and "for your own good" legislation. But at least, everyone will finally be equal.

I understand Medicare has among the highest rate of fraud and abuse in the insurance industry, expanding that "flawed" program to every breathing American would likely lead to unheard-of levels of fraud and corruption...

Aside from that likely reality, sounds like a fine idea.

Here's one example from the NY Times on a recent bust in Florida:

The raids came a week after a report that Miami-Dade County got more than half a billion dollars from Medicare in home health care payments intended for the sickest patients in 2008, more than the rest of the country combined, even though only 2 percent of those patients nationwide live there.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/us/16fraud.html

Maybe the Chinese universities would be happy to take him, let him do his research and publish his stuff.

Just like the other researchers they are welcoming:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/business/global/18research.html

Tort reform is not a solution in itself. It's a small piece of a bigger problem. It can help, but results of (e.g.) Texas's reform are mixed.

Restricting competition across state lines is done because we want to avoid a race to the bottom on consumer protections and other 'mandatory coverage' rules that benefit us collectively--and those are mostly there at the state level. They're there so that, for example, some right-wing nutjob can't claim religion as a reason to avoid letting his daughter see an ob/gyn (say, to get birth control)--or perhaps a better example, he can't claim it as a reason to avoid covering his *employees'* daughters. Since most people get their health coverage through employers, they serve as a way to insulate individual employees from moralistic assertions by their employers.

And as to what constitutes a race to the bottom, well, see what happened with credit card deregulation: now all of the CC companies are in South Dakota because SD happens to have the fewest consumer protection regulations re: spontaneous rate increases, etc. Or at least they did until the CC Holder's Bill of Rights went into effect last month. I certainly don't want all the health insurance co's moving to the place where they're the least regulated and applying those standards to all of us. If individual states have legislated what their citizens feel ought to be included at a minimum, who are these corporations to circumvent that?

No, it is not. The assertion was that it unconstitutional for the government to require anyone to enter into a contract as a reason why this bill is ill-conceived. I gave a clear and accurate counter-example.

You pointed out another example where the government is violating the constitution. You're making a logical fallacy called "begging the question". Because it is being used elsewhere without legal contest is not proof of its constitutionality. In fact dozens of AGs from various states are suing the federal government on the constitutionality of the bill. Here's one.. So maybe you can point out where in the commerce clause it says the government can force you to enter into a contract. Last time I checked the commerce clause only effected TAX. And I will also argue that the SCOTUS got that decision wrong. The idea that you can't grow your own food without the government taxing you because you're "effecting interstate commerce by not buying food" is ridiculous and more than a little tyrannical. If you support that decision it really speaks to your ideological background.

Massachusetts has had this exact system in place for years and has had NO constitutionality issues.

Just because it wasn't challenged does not make it automatically constitutional. And it's completely broke, totally out of money, and yes, it is exactly like it. If you read to the second page they're even skirting around the issue of rationing out care because " it cannot fall back on the strategy used by other states in hard times -- to simply remove people from the public insurance rolls by restricting eligibility. ". Why don't you think the same thing will happen here? Perhaps the same way the government has bankrupted social security and medicare? The examples are pretty obvious, just watch the line on your paycheck, hope you don't think you're getting that social security back when you retire. It's already gone. And now we're bowowing money from generations that have yet to be born, so we can start paying for a program for 10 years, but it only starts after 4? Non of this stuff troubles you?

This survival rate thing is total baloney. The US runs more screens so it detects the disease earlier. So obviously if you detect the disease before it progresses much the n-year survival rate will be better even if you do no treatment what-so-ever.

If you're a cancer survivor, as I am, I think survival rate is everything! I really don't understand how "survival rate will be better even if you do no treatment what-so-ever." The only example given is completely made up, there is no 5yr toe cancer. The breast cancer example is just really stupid. The guy points out how the U.K. doesn't screen for breast cancer till 50 as a cost savings method, yet at age 40 you have a 1 in 68 chance of getting it before your 50.. And the U.K. has determined that if you live in the U.K. you simply cannot have the screening till you're 50 even if you really want it. I guess 1 in 68 are just fucked? I'm sure the 1 in 68 care a lot about how soon they get screened. That's probably why our breast cancer survival rates are so much better than the U.K.'s. Just because you're covered does not mean you're going to get care, the U.K. is a great example of that. Care denied is coverage denied. Think of the Donner party, they were on the right track, they just didn't get there in time. Even the hack who wrote the article admits at the end "UPDATE: This in no way means I'm opposed to mammography and/or early detection for breast cancer. That can absolutely make the difference in outcomes." Which is to say: His hypothetical is totally made up

> The current (well-supported) suspicion of banks and stock traders gives the whole article a sinister patina, e.g. "the banks were keeping upgrades and downgrades secret, but theflyonthewall was exposing the information before the brandy-and-cigars set could fully exploit it!"

So we want the public to be well-informed, but not too well informed? This will let the investment bankers keep their dirty little secrets secret for just a bit longer while they offload stock. The public won't know until the stock price dives. Preventing these *facts* from being published flies in the face of an open society. It shows what a dirty rigged game the stock market plays, and how the judiciary and congress plays along with it.

Another example is High Frequency Trading aka Zero Latency trading lets investment banks (not you) set up their computers right next to the NYSE's computers so they get advance notice of a few milliseconds of buy orders. They then buy big and when the other orders come in, the investment banks have already bought all the stock and onsell with a fat mark up. Amazing what these guys get away with, and that congress and the public let them get away with it. Despite the bawling about the bailout, the banks got everything they wanted and are still paying themselves obscene bonuses. Politicians profess outrage but never force their hand. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html

The whole market is so rigged the only way the public can make a profit is when *everything* is going up. A good quote by boom roadkill: "We used to we were geniuses the stocks we bought always went up. Then when the bubble burst we looked back and realized it didn't matter what we bought, because everything went up anyway."

Is it? Are you a constitutional expert? Is it unconstitutional to collect income taxes? (I see this as the same thing)

Well, it was unconstitutional until they passed the 16th amendment. Unless, of course, one believes that they decided to pass that amendment "for the lulz".

There is a reason that we have an amendment procedure in the Constitution. If we really feel that it should be legal to have the Federal government force people to obtain health insurance, then an amendment is required. I know the 10th amendment isn't popular anymore, but that doesn't mean it is void.

Of course, the Feds could always use coercion (that is popular) to force the states to fall in line. This is what they have done with RealID (threaten states who don't comply with denial of their citizens access to domestic air travel without a passport), or forcing states to increase the minimum drinking age to 21 by threatening to cut off their highway funds:

Less than a week after [the Louisiana Supreme Court] decision, the Clinton Administration warned Louisiana to find a way to reverse the ruling. The state will lose $17 million in Federal highway money if it does not comply with the 1986 National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which requires states to set their legal drinking age at 21.

The Constitution doesn't illegalize coercion. Threatening highway funding is very popular. It's dirty to sidestep the Constitution with coercion, but that's life in the post-Progressive era--government money always comes with coercion. The best way to avoid being coerced is to never accept the money in the first place.

No problem... We can implement Romania's healthcare system...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/world/europe/09bribery.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

The number of Americans without health insurance is 47 million, according to the U.S. census.

Go and check the methodology for that number, firstly it is not sourced from the census it is sourced from two surveys. Secondly it covers everyone including resident aliens and those on temporary visas. Thirdly when you drill down in to the data you will note a significant number (~30 million) are firmly in the middle classes and can afford insurance but choose not to.

Many people do not want insurance.

Further, according to Paul Krugman, the U.S. spends over 15% of GDP on healthcare, nearly twice that of the U.K at around 8%.

Again you get a much clearer idea with the raw data as compared to the opinion on the issue - countries report healthcare spending in extremely different ways, primarily the US reports on all spending including cosmetic and other quazi-healthcare spending whereas other countries do not.

Besides this I clearly stated that non-medical costs consume 80% of the spend, the expense is largely down to people wrongly assuming that they need full coverage insurance, they don't and until fairly recently insurance didn't cover visits to the dr etc.

Perhaps rather than mandating insurance government should be raising awareness on why the alternatives are often preferable.

According to Google the life expectancy of the UK is 79.3 years, and 78 years in the U.S.

Supportive healthcare is less important then lifestyle, a minority of early deaths can indeed be explained by lack of access to healthcare but as the US already has supportive care for the elderly (not to mention in excess of that in most of Europe) but lifestyle choices such as eating habits and smoking (Both of which are generally higher in the US) have a much larger impact. As an indication of this 8 times the number of Americans have heart attacks compared to Britons yet the survival rate is better then the UK (In the UK 48% die within 28 days of having a heart attack, in the US this is 12%).

The infant mortality rate in the U.S. is higher than the U.K. also (by about 1% I understand).

Again lifestyle choices are in play here as much, if not more, then healthcare access.

All to say this post – like many on this topic with an agenda – is utter, mindless drivel.

You don't have an agenda here? clearly you support socialised medicine of one form or another so clearly you have an agenda as much as I do, the difference being I don't want to force my view on to other people - they can have their single payer system as long as it remains voluntary and doesn't restrict my property rights via taxation.

The U.S. would have a much better healthcare system (among other things) if there weren't so many people like this with baseless yet entrenched positions.

As I mentioned earlier I recently migrated to the US. I have used the healthcare systems in the UK, France, SA and the US. While France was marginally better then the UK (I was able to actually visit a dentist for instance) they are both nothing in comparison to my experiences with the US system. I am middle class earning slightly above average (~2%) for where I live which is precisely the same to my situation in the UK. How many healthcare systems have you used first hand rather than simply reading aggregated statistics that can be used as opinion pieces as much as an article in the Guardian or Washington Post?

Do you just re

I know you're trolling, but just a bit of perspective shows that tort reform is 1-2%, while overall administrative costs (most of which are claims adjusters, evidenced by Medicare's superior administrative margins.

I'm paying for healthcare. It was a pain in the ass to get, and I still don't have anything resembling what I would have if I had a full-time job.

Furthermore, I'm paying into Social Security and medicare, money that I will never see back (unlike you.)

(just a quick aside, you don't really think the money collected from the telephone excise tax is going to fund an ongoing Spanish-American war, do you?)

I am not saying that the issues you raised are mutually exclusive. What I am saying is that as they stand they are just a collection nits, not a cohesive argument.

If it's broken, why are most Americans happy with their health care?

Most Americans think they are of above-average intelligence. Most Americans thought the Iraq war was a good idea. Most Americans thought the economy was going gangbusters before 2007.

Most Americans don't believe in evolution.

Most Americans don't pay for their health insurance directly (though they certainly pay for it in reduced salary).

What do workers in the health-care industry think? Cause what I hear from friends and family is a universal "The system is broken".

there is NO way a Democratic executive with his party having supramajority in the Senate and a huge majority in the lower house would have trouble passing such "reform"

We have a huge and complex health insurance system in this country with countless interested parties. We have an issue that has been building for 20 years.

We have 40% of the US Congress just adamantly refusing to do anything in the hopes that it will improve their chances in November. Which means that in order to pass a law the other 60% have to be unanimous.

Requiring a unanimous vote on an incredibly complex issue, it seems reasonable that it would have some difficulty no matter what the situation.

and secondly, supramajority?

Sir —

This post is apparently written without regard to widely established facts. For example:

The majority of people in the US do have access to the high quality care, the fact that roughly 10 million US citizens do not have access to regular healthcare and need it is not a reason to penalise the other 300 million.

The number of Americans without health insurance is 47 million, according to the U.S. census.

Further, according to Paul Krugman, the U.S. spends over 15% of GDP on healthcare, nearly twice that of the U.K at around 8%.

According to Google the life expectancy of the UK is 79.3 years, and 78 years in the U.S. The infant mortality rate in the U.S. is higher than the U.K. also (by about 1% I understand).

All to say this post – like many on this topic with an agenda – is utter, mindless drivel.

The U.S. would have a much better healthcare system (among other things) if there weren't so many people like this with baseless yet entrenched positions.

(forcing people to buy health care, taking away private property to give to another private party are just two examples)

I'm not a fan of the bill -- the lack of a public option creates, as you say, a major problem by forcing people to give money to insurance companies that have little incentive not to gouge their captive market. A mandate *is* necessary, though, for insurance-based health reform to work. (That's why single-payer was the way to go...)

As for the other, that's inevitably always going to happen. Unless the government carries out its necessary functions entirely itself (which wouldn't be a bad thing, but would probably be considered "socialist" or something), there will always be government contractors and the like. But redistributing income is a core part of every government, ever. Taxing the serfs to keep your warriors in meat and mead fits that description just as well as does Social Security, the Space Program, and the local fire department.

When it continues to spend us into either runaway iflation or economic ruin, I'd say that's bad for America.

We are nowhere near runaway inflation. In fact, there is a substantial risk of a very bad deflationary spiral at present. (see e.g. graph here). Deflation is bad; it means wages decrease, consumer spending drops, and job losses keep mounting. I mean, deflation is wonderful if most of your assets are dollars. If you own anything of value though, like say a gold stockpile, or a house, or if you like jobs, deflation is very very bad. And there is approximately zero chance of Zimbabwe-style inflation in any imaginable non-post-apocalyptic America over the next fifty years.

Great article last year in the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/magazine/16Bruce-t.html?pagewanted=all

Daily Show

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-september-28-2009/bruce-bueno-de-mesquita

TED Talk

http://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_bueno_de_mesquita_predicts_iran_s_future.html

What amount do the corporations actually PAY? Did you know that it's close to 0? http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/study-tallies-corporations-not-paying-income-tax/ Yes, we have one of the highest rates, but that amount is not actually paid.

I say, instead of cutting corporate taxes, raise them, and use the money to teach people new skills. Free college for every American paid for by the corporations that will higher you after you get out.

*pat pat*

You just go on believing that.

The editorial pages are intended to be biased, that's the point. The news pages are far less slanted but your blinders seem to be in the way.

As for the AP, they provide news to lots of people, including the NYT...if only there were a way to prove it, but I guess we'll never know.

Meanwhile, maybe you can spend some time addressing the discrepancy between Fiscal Year 2009 and Calendar Year 2009. You do realize they're different, right?

So you think Google is the rule, and not the exception? Most modern corporations have the will to skirt US law to sell to countries like Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and so forth, despite trade embargoes. US companies helped themselves and Hitler make a killing during WWII. (A guy named Prescott Bush even got in some trouble for it.) The US and her corporations armed Indonesia in the genocide of the East Timorese, right through the 90s. We are still responsible for 70% of the arms sales in the world, all manufactured by US corporations.

So, no. As long as the Chinese government is paying cash, corporations will ignore everything else. Just like they always do.

Hell, US investment in China skyrocketed after Tiananmen Square, because China proved they were willing to kill their own citizens to maintain order while they opened China up to "investment" in the Special Economic Zones. Meanwhile, Cuba is under an embargo because it's a communist state? I think we can all see the true value system of the American corporation. Just be glad you're on this side of the equation -- for now.

anecdote + anecdote does not equal data Note the positions of Buick ( a GM brand ) - and the positions of the Japanese makes you mention http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/porsche-tops-in-dependability-study/

Yeah maybe not. And McDonald's serves a hell of a lot of hamburgers every day, and virtually all of their customers are 100% satisfied (or they get free french fires) but they will never ever get a Michelin star.

anecdote + anecdote does not equal data Note the positions of Buick ( a GM brand ) - and the positions of the Japanese makes you mention http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/porsche-tops-in-dependability-study/

One reason is that as a method of assassination drones are hugely indiscriminate, averaging about 50 non-combatant casualties for each targeted individual. This number of civilian deaths raises all kinds of legal, ethical and tactical questions.

I hope this turns out better than the geothermal energy that was causing earthquakes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/business/energy-environment/24geotherm.html

But I jest, this is a step in the right direction.

China seems to play the game differently.

"China joined the W.T.O. in 2001 and in its first seven years filed only three cases. But it has stepped up its pace recently, and has filed four of the 15 cases in the last year: two against the United States, on poultry and tires, and two against the European Union, on steel fasteners and poultry."

from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/business/global/15yuan.html

China seems to be throwing their weight around lately, I guess because the US is busy with 2 wars, and the West's economy is in trouble.

Privatization! All the same mistakes the government makes, plus the cost of profits, administrative overhead, plain old greed, no transparency, and no incentive to make things right.

The Pentagon’s reliance on outside contractors in Iraq is proportionately far larger than in any previous conflict, and it has fueled charges that this outsourcing has led to overbilling, fraud and shoddy and unsafe work that has endangered and even killed American troops. The role of armed security contractors has also raised new legal and political questions about whether the United States has become too dependent on private armed forces on the 21st-century battlefield...

“This is unprecedented,” [Charles Tiefer] added. “It was considered an all-out imperative by the administration to keep troop levels low, particularly in the beginning of the war, and one way that was done was to shift money and manpower to contractors. But that has exposed the military to greater risks from contractor waste and abuse.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/washington/12contractors.html

"Right now the government is paying health insurance plans that administer Medicare Advantage, on average, 12 percent more per person than it spends on patients enrolled in traditional Medicare," said AMA Board Member Cecil Wilson, MD. "With Medicare payments to doctors who care for seniors slated for a 10 percent cut next year, Congress must put the money used to subsidize the insurance industry to better use."

At the AMA's Annual Meeting late last month, America's physicians sent a resounding message to Congress - eliminate the Medicare Advantage subsidy. AMA policy clearly states that subsidies to private plans offering alternative coverage to Medicare beneficiaries should be eliminated, and that these private Medicare plans should compete with the regular Medicare program on a fiscally neutral basis.

"While groups that truly represent physicians fight to preserve all seniors' access to health care by stopping Medicare physician payment cuts, the insurance industry and its partners are solely focused on preserving their $65 billion government subsidy," said Dr. Wilson.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/76805.php

Engineers hired to investigate the cause of September's massive Big Dig tunnel leak have discovered that the project is riddled with hundreds of leaks that are pouring millions of gallons of water into the $14.6 billion tunnel system.

While none of the leaks is as large as the fissure that snarled traffic for miles on Interstate 93 northbound in September, the breaches appear to permeate the subterranean road system, calling into question the quality of construction and managerial oversight provided by Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff on the massive highway project.

Finding and fixing all the leaks will take years, perhaps more than a decade, said Jack K. Lemley, an internationally known consultant hired by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority to investigate the problem. Just repairing the section of wall where the September leak occurred will take up to two months and require closing of traffic lanes.

The engineers also said they have discovered documents showing that Bechtel managers were aware that the wall breached this fall was deficient from the moment it was built in the late 1990s, yet did not order it replaced and did not inform state officials of the situation.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/11/10/big_dig_found_riddled_with_leaks/

You're missing context. See here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/technology/14brawl.html

Apparently, Apple considered Google's Android a stab in the back. So now Google's CEO (Eric Schmidt) is off Apple's board of directors and Apple is suing HTC for patent infringement (Google is not named, but is the indirect target).

I'm surprised this whole fight hasn't gotten more coverage on Slashdot. In any case, I'm squarely in Google's corner on this issue. We need Android to succeed to preserve competition and openness in the smart phone and tablet/e-reader markets.

Even President Obama's new director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, wrote in a memorandum to his staff last week that "high value information came from interrogations in which these methods were used," an assertion left out when the memorandum was edited for public release ...
Many intelligence officials, including some opposed to the brutal methods, confirm that the program produced information of great value, including tips on early-stage schemes to attack tall buildings on the West Coast and buildings in New York's financial district and Washington. Interrogation of one Qaeda operative led to tips on finding others, until the leadership of the organization was decimated. Removing from the scene such dedicated and skilled plotters as Mr. Mohammed, or the Indonesian terrorist known as Hambali, almost certainly prevented future attacks.

The Heathrow Airport Plot: In 2003, the US and several partners - acting on information from several detainees-disrupted a plot to attack Heathrow Airport using hijacked commercial airliners KSM and his network were behind the planning for this attack.