Slashdot Mirror

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903285704576559103573673300.html That's funny, the president seems to think there is, but as always someone on Slashdot knows better! I should really stop looking elsewhere lest the deluge of misinformation makes me woozy.

Riiiight, because politicians never lie or mislead.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903285704576559103573673300.html

That's funny, the president seems to think there is, but as always someone on Slashdot knows better! I should really stop looking elsewhere lest the deluge of misinformation makes me woozy.

Can't track me if I don't accept your cookies.

Do you load images? (tracking pixels)

Do you use flash? ('super' cookies)

etc.

Actually, cardiologists do treat cancer patients, because many of the cancer treatments cause heart damage.

But to your original point, it is true that hospitals turn away cancer patients. Here's a well-documented example. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118781024289705455.html Remember, hospitals are required under Medicare rules to accept people in an emergency and stabilize them. They're not required to treat them for chronic conditions.

You say UCSD isn't like Texas? I'm not there, so I don't know for sure. But I do remember a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine. A doctor was addressing the claim that free-standing radiology clinics made x-ray services more accessible. She called up several free-standing clinics, gave them symptoms of a treatable brain tumor, told them that her doctor had suggested that she get a CT scan, and asked them if they would accept her if she couldn't pay. They refused, and suggested that she go to a University of California hospital. The doctor said that that hospital was her own institution, and she knew that their CT scanners were booked solid and weren't available for people who can't pay. (She called the centers again, gave them the name of the insurance plan she actually had, and asked them if she could come in for a (useless) CT scan for a sprained ankle. They offered to schedule her immediately.)

OK, that was a while back, before CTs were overbuilt. The NEJM had a recent article in which they did something similar. They had people call doctors, claim they were on Medicaid, and describe symptoms which would have been life-threatening. Many of the doctors refused to take them.

One last point: The cost of the medical malpractice system is about 2% of the total cost of health care. The malpractice crisis is to a certain extent bullshit propaganda propagated by insurance companies as an excuse to raise their premiums.

So perhaps it's more accurate to say "refusing to provide basic medical care (up to $x in cost) due to inability to pay is immoral." In that respect the U.S. is already there - it is illegal for hospital emergency rooms to turn away patients due to inability to pay.

Not quite. First, it's not illegal. If hospitals choose to get Medicare and Medicaid (as most do), they're required to admit people in an emergency and stabilize them. Then they can kick them out, and often do. A hospital can turn away a patient who is dying of cancer, until she's in an immediate crisis. Then they stabilize the crisis, and kick her out again. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118781024289705455.html

Second, they can send the patient a bill. If the patient doesn't pay, they send it to collections. There are collection agencies which will hound the patient for decades, seizing their bank accounts and paychecks.

I hope it happens to you. I normally don't wish suffering on people but you seem heartless and cold, and so maybe a lesson to you would be justice for the world.

So, because of what he thinks, you wish him ill. . . literally.

No One Would Miss ObamaCare, but the Window for Repeal Is Two Years

However, most states had made provisions for the "uninsurables" long before ObamaCare came around. Thirty-five states have created state-based high-risk pools—Minnesota and Connecticut established the first ones as far back as 1976—which currently provide comprehensive health coverage to some 222,000 Americans who couldn't qualify for standard health insurance because of a pre-existing condition.

Instead of tapping into this existing system, ObamaCare set up a temporary, and mostly redundant, system of high-risk pools, complete with $5 billion in funding, to cover the uninsurables until 2014. Only 62,000 people have enrolled in the new pools, about one-seventh of the predicted number.

Consider also the experience of eight states—Maine, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Washington, Massachusetts, Kentucky and New Hampshire—which passed guaranteed-issue legislation in the mid-1990s. None of them included a mandate to have coverage—which meant that people could wait until they needed health-insurance to get it, making the insurance pools very small and policies very expensive. As a result, New Hampshire, Washington and Kentucky eventually abandoned guaranteed issue. Kentucky repealed most of its law in 2000 after premiums exploded by an average of 50% and 45 health insurers, including New York Life, Mass Mutual and The Principal, fled the state.

Why should you have the right to do maintenance on a car that you probably do not own outright?

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/10/29/supreme-court-grapples-with-copyright-law-and-the-resale-trade/

I believe that Obama naively did not expect the Republicans to dedicate themselves to stopping him from getting reelected.

Yes, I'm sure that was his first and enduring thought on the matter.

Also, I don't think anyone expected the Republicans to declare war on reality.

That should be, "war on reality, as reported." That is the key, as reported. The BBC leadership admits it as a bias problem, but there can't be a problem in the United States?

As Margaret Thatcher noted, "The facts of life are conservative."
It is the reporting that is liberal.

Pew: Public Perception of Media Bias Hits Historic High

In Pew's biennial news survey, out today, the public revealed an alarming opinion that the media just can't be trusted to tell a story straight. . . . Said Pew, "The overall ratings for the performance of the news media are quite negative: Fully 66% say news stories often are inaccurate, 77 % think that news organizations tend to favor one side, and 80% say news organizations are often influenced by powerful people and organizations. The percentage saying that news stories are often inaccurate has risen 13 points since 2007, with much of the increase coming among Democrats and independents."

Media bias worse than money in politics

Rasmussen Reports Tuesday revealed poll results that 47 percent of likely voters feel that "media bias is a bigger problem in politics today than big campaign contributions." Fewer, 42 percent, say money is more evil.

Worse for the media, 51 percent believe that "most reporters will try to help the president," while just 9 percent will go to bat for Republican Mitt Romney. The polling is just the latest to slam media bias, with most still viewing the TV, internet and print reporters on the left's payroll.

The following has been known for some time now, from more than one study.

Journalists dole out cash to politicians (quietly)

Msnbc.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

The Vast Left-Wing Media Conspiracy

When I'm talking to people from outside Washington, one question inevitably comes up: Why is the media so liberal? The question often reflects a suspicion that members of the press get together and decide on a story line that favors liberals and Democrats and denigrates conservatives and Republicans.

My response has usually been to say, yes, there's liberal bias in the media, but there's no conspiracy. The liberal tilt is an accident of nature. The media disproportionately attracts people from a liberal arts background who tend, quite innocently, to be politically liberal. If they came from West Point or engineering school, this wouldn't be the case.

Now, after learning I'd been targeted for a smear attack by a member of an online clique of liberal journalists, I'm inclined to amend my response. Not to say there's a media conspiracy, but at least to note that hundreds of journalists have

Yes assuming this "new negative news stream" that I haven't noticed is coming from Fox News. It also explains why you think no one has read the bill.

I'm sure you don't mean to be obtuse, but what I wrote was, "passed without anyone reading the whole thing first." Are you going to deny that is true? They were making massive deletions and additions up till the last moment. Do you think passing major laws with massive effects on 1/6 of the economy without reading them first, let alone study, understand, and debate them, is a good thing? This isn't the first time that happed.

Passing unread laws

Welcome to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives. The “people’s House” is now a place where bills are voted on not only before legislators or the public have read them, but also before parts of the bills even have been written. Such was the case with a 300-page amendment to the cap-and-trade bill the House passed on June 26. The House leadership could not even produce this amendment on paper, in final form, before it was voted on.

Fox New, AP, whatever, I can't account for you being uninformed.

Kids with Pre-Existing Conditions NOT Covered By Obamacare
Now the AP tells us

Hours after President Barack Obama signed historic health care legislation, a potential problem emerged. Administration officials are now scrambling to fix a gap in highly touted benefits for children.

Obama made better coverage for children a centerpiece of his health care remake, but it turns out the letter of the law provided a less-than-complete guarantee that kids with health problems would not be shut out of coverage.

Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday.

- - - - -

So let's perpetually bend over to the insurance companies hoping to God that they keep rates reasonable. The point of the exchanges is to introduce some competition so that insurance companies can't easily abuse customers as you describe.

To borrow your phrase, do you know who you will bending over to instead? (And won't that be so much better? You can always try to change insurance companies, at least till now, but you aren't really going to change the IRS, are you?)

IRS looking to hire thousands of tax agents to enforce health care laws

A March 18 report from House Ways & Means Committee Republicans estimates the IRS will need to hire between 11,800 and 16,500 new agents to enforce the bill.

No One Would Miss ObamaCare, but the Window for Repeal Is Two Years
Its alleged benefits are overrated, and by 2014 the bureaucratic mess may be impossible to untangle.

The primary place ObamaCare's pre-existing condition provision will have an impact is in the individual market, where about 14 million people buy their own coverage. Individuals are the ones most likely to wait until they need coverage to buy it; hence ObamaCare's mandate requiring them to have insurance.

However, most states had made provisions for the "uninsurables" long before ObamaCare came around. Thirty-five states have created state-based high-risk pools—Minnesota and Connecticut established the first ones as far back as 1976

Screwed?

Or fixed the jobs situation after the last R president?

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/11/02/tallying-president-obamas-jobs-record/

US voters get exactly the government they deserve.

Jobs?

According to the WSJ (not a left leaning publication), after fixing Bush's failings, jobs under Obama have been going up WHILE he's been reducing gov't head count.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/11/02/tallying-president-obamas-jobs-record/

I'm told at work that I'm "wasting" my vote by not selecting candidate XXX, but to me, a wasted vote is a vote for something I don't agree with. I like Obama for ending the war in Iraq,

Kudos for voting third party. Me too.

However, I feel obliged to correct a misconception about Obama. He did not "end the war in Iraq" --- he merely failed to extend it. In the months leading up to the expiration of SOFA, scheduled for Dec 2011, the Obama administration lobbied Iraq for an extension in order to keeps thousands, maybe up to 20,000 troops in Iraq. SOFA was a prerequisite for that because it forbids Iraq from prosecuting soldiers in Iraq, for crimes committed while they are in Iraq. Had Obama been successful at extending SOFA, Obama would not now be claiming to have "ended the war in Iraq" because it would still be going on. I mean, it still is, just with mercenaries and such, but it is perhaps a worthy semantic distinction. I just hate to see people give credit to Obama though, when all he did was "fail to extend," which is totally different from "intending to end."

Citations: http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/10/23/obamas-revisionist-history-on-ending-the-iraq-war-a-lesson-from-the-3rd-presidential-debate/

and this from within the above:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704889404576277240145258616.html

http://www.glassdoor.com/GD/Salary/United-Airlines-Flight-Attendant-Salaries-E683_D_KO16,32.htm?filter.experienceLevel=TEN_PLUS/

$84k:

try $48K at most.

12-15 days off per month (average):

not if you want that $48K: More like 10 days off...

free travel for you and your family:

There's never any "space available" for those pesky employees. It's nothing but an enormous waste of time to even try.

big discounts on rental cars and hotels

You get the same thing we do...

per diem of $3k-$5k per year:

What? Do you think dining on the road is cheap- you must not travel much. That doesn't even cover it. Take a look next time, most of them carry a cooler full of food with them.

tuition reimbursement, matching 401k:

YGTBSM. Maybe at Southwest, but even with them 401K's are the only retirement.

pensions:

GONE, GONE, GONE. After telling us to take MASSIVE paycuts to save them- tremendous bait and switch. We were totally suckered. Live and learn...

Of course, airline pilots making up to $200k per year and all the above is a pretty good deal too.:

IAAAP (I am an airline pilot) and I don't even make half that- after 17 years. From the devil itself:http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2009/06/16/pilot-pay-want-to-know-how-much-your-captain-earns/. Not everybody gets to be Captain, and it take years to make it. Oh yeah, they keep raising the retirement age: moving the line ever so further away...

Look at profits made by the company. Apple is making more by far than any Android crap.

You DO realize Apple is the largest company in the United States, right?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443855804577601773524745182.html

Every time you make a system too efficient, you reduce the number of workers but with economies it's important to have as many people working as possible.

Ever heard of Milton Friedman?

At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: "You don’t understand. This is a jobs program." To which Milton replied: "Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels."

most of the folks in Congress are lawyers

This is not true and hasn't been for a long time, if it ever was. Lawyers have not been a majority of members of Congress since at least some time before 1945. The 92nd Congress (71-73) did have a bare majority of lawyers in the Senate, but that's about it. The percentage of lawyers is presently only around 25% for the House and around 38% for the Senate, and the percentage has been declining for decades, particularly in the House.

This was suspiciously in the news yesterday: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/10/29/joss-whedon-warns-that-mitt-romney-could-spur-zombie-apocalypse/

Maybe the hurricane Sandy really started it . . . ?

being head developer of Apple Maps must earn really good!

Well, he's just been fired. So now he has enough time to spend on slashdot, lucky him. And welcome!

>> the FBI is now hunting hackers 24/7

Is that because we finally figured out what happened in Benghazi?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444620104578008922056244096.html

How 'bout we figure out who let Sean Smith down first, eh?

Well, if your friend told you so, then by all means you're right to be modded "informative"

Oh give me a break, it's not like this is something unheard of, it IS an accepted fact that tax evasion in Greece is a huge problem for the government. And of course it's not just the taxpayers fault, nor is everyone doing it (if you have been following American politics at all "47%" of the US doesn't effectively pay any taxes - "the minority" of people doesn't mean it's a small amount of tax revenue - the wealthy in Greece have higher tax bills, and are doing most of the evading). But blaming "the government" for everything (hello, ALL governments spend money on stupid things and are corrupt to some extent) is such a cop out.

And just in case for some bizarre reason you want to pretend it's something I just "heard from one person", here are a few of the thousands of articles written on the topic:

[Some of my favorite quotes - and I'm pretty sure "only the stupid pay tax" would be considering evasion "as an obligation"...]

    * Cash provides a convenient escape route for lawyers, accountants and builders. The government has published the names of almost 70 doctors it says have cheated the taxman and some surgeons are said to be earning €900,000 a year and not declaring tax.

    * “Only the stupid pay tax,” one eye surgeon told a Greek state radio.

    * Helicopters have been hovering over plush suburbs in northern Athens in the search for swimming pools in the homes of professional people who claim they are living on only €35,000-€43,000 a year. ... The swimming pool fraternity are also responding by using nets to cover the pools to avoid detection.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8585593/Greece-loses-15bn-a-year-to-tax-evasion.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_evasion_and_corruption_in_Greece

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/09/greece-tax-evasion-professional-classes

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/07/09/how-greek-tax-evasion-sunk-the-global-economy/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/business/global/greece-warns-of-going-broke-as-taxes-dry-up.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/09/tax-evasion-greece

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203937004578076801161935378.html

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2011/07/11/110711ta_talk_surowiecki

Another case in point. One of my students' father was trained as an M.D. in China. The family emigrated to the U.S. and the father had to go through medical school all over just to prove he knew what he was doing. The only thing that improved in med school was his English. Were he, and hundreds of thousands other fully capable practitioners, able to come here and just hang out their shingle, you'd see health care costs plummet. But no. The medical profession protects its own from competition by convincing everyone they know best by limiting the number of doctors and med students.

Healthcare would be a hell of a lot cheaper if the government stayed the hell out of it.

You made a good point, but this isn't it.

China is a big place. They have some of the best scientists and doctors in the world. They also have some of the worst. We need someone to figure out which category a Chinese doctor falls into, before we turn him loose on a public that can't tell the difference.

HARSH TREATMENT
In China, Brain Surgery Is Pushed on the Mentally Ill
Irreversible Procedures Rarely Done Elsewhere; A Mother's Regrets
By NICHOLAS ZAMISKA
Wall Street Journal
November 2, 2007

NANJING, China -- Mi Zhantao, a poor 25-year-old living with his parents outside this provincial capital in eastern China, was battling depression and had trouble socializing. Doctors said he had schizophrenia. They recommended brain surgery.

Mr. Mi's family spent about $4,800 -- the equivalent of four years' income, and more than their life savings -- on the operation, at No. 454 Hospital of the People's Liberation Army in Nanjing. The highly controversial procedure involved drilling tiny holes in the young man's skull, inserting a 7½-inch-long needle and burning small areas of brain tissue thought to be causing his problems.

The surgeon, who operated on Mr. Mi the day he met him, says he has performed nearly 1,000 such procedures, mostly for schizophrenia, but also for illnesses ranging from depression to epilepsy, since the hospital started offering the operation in 2004.

Mr. Mi's parents say the surgery did nothing but leave their son with a partially limp right arm and slurred speech. He continues to be depressed and withdrawn, his mother says. Wang Yifang, the surgeon, says he checked the medical records and, as far as he knows, the patient left the hospital uninjured.

Mr. Mi's mother, Kong Lingxia, 50, says she'll regret the decision for the rest of her life. "I feel so angry," she says. "But I'm really angry at myself. How could I let this happen?"

(more)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119393867164279313.html

Chinese pharmacists in the US have generally escaped regulation, under the "dietary supplement" laws, and when the New York City health department investigated some of them, they were selling medicines that were adulterated with lead, Viagra -- you name it. The Chinese pharmaceutical industry sells source material to US companies, but the FDA can't go to China and investigate the manufacturers. As a result, there have been several incidents of people getting sick and dying because Chinese products, whose manufacture the government stayed the hell out of, turned out to be contaminated or deliberately adulterated. The New York Times had a series about that by I think Walt Bogdanich. One batch of children's cough syrup contained antifreeze and killed about 100 children. You want to sue them? The NYT tried to track some of those companies down, and couldn't find them.

I don't think you can find a country in the world that has a successful health care system where the government stays out of it. Very few patients know enough to shop for health care. A doctor has the ultimate high-pressure sales pitch: "You have to do this, or you might die. And you have to do it now." What are you going to do when a doctor tells you that in your 15-minute office visit? Stop and look it up on Google?

WSJ reports:

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.

But not if it's STUXNET or FLAME, right?

Similarly, the media would have us believe that if a country in the Middle East refused to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, invaded neighboring countries, ignored condemnation from the UN Security Council of its actions, and repressed its people into poverty and apartheid, while also developing a nuclear weapons program, that the USG should intervene militarily to take out its nuclear program and probably impose new leadership.

But not if it's Israel, right?

But, it's OK, because Iran has such an aggressive history that it's worth the US getting into a war with Russia over. In fact, if the USG needs to kill half a million Iranian children to impose its will, that's just breaking a few eggs, right?

After all, there is no higher concern that the US Petrodollar, right?

The fellow who wrote the Declaration of Independence and our third President described the appropriate role of the United States in the world as:

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

But whose interests does that serve, really?

Considering that 30% of Americans are arrested by age 23, and nearly 52% of adult males in America are arrested in their lifetime, maybe more parents should want to achieve the "doesn't get arrested" scenario.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125851115456653127.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125851115456653127.html

Considering that 30% of Americans are arrested by age 23, and nearly 52% of adult males in America are arrested in their lifetime, maybe more parents should want to achieve the "doesn't get arrested" scenario.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125851115456653127.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125851115456653127.html

The weak opponent doesn't have that benefit already being weak. Mitt Romney had it too easy, surrounded by yes men or suckers not used to taking on really skilled opponents if Obama pushes him hard Romney could lose it and expose his vicious self serving nature

Romney is the weak one? Romney, who had to fight for the nomination against a large field of challengers versus President Obama who walked through the primaries? I don't think that makes sense.

Romney is surrounded by yes men? I think you somehow missed picking up on Obama's cult of personality.

Romney: weak, but also vicious and self serving? You seem a bit conflicted there. I'm not sure that will hold up either.

In 2011, the Romneys donated about 29% of their income to charity – $4 million out of their total $13.7 million in income. For 2010, they donated about 13.8% of their income, $2.98 million out of $21.6 million. Over a 20-year period, the Romneys gave to charity an average of 13.45% of their adjusted gross income, according to an accountants’ letter they provided on Friday. -- Romney’s Taxes: A Window Into Charitable Giving

Digging up dirt on potential voters to keep them in line with some form of blackmail.

Which is why the secret vote has been important, and will continue to be important. A pity not everyone is committed to it.

Samzenpus, can you please do a better job on the submission approval process?

" China's largest electronics manufacturer, the already-loathed Foxconn ..."

First of all, Foxconn is from Taiwan, not China.

Second, no matter how much the submitter pigrabbitbear loaths Foxconn, the ill-feeling pigrabbitbear has towards Foxconn is NOT related to the story of TFA, and Samzenpus, the mod who approved the submit, should have known better than allowed "the already-loathed Foxconn" to pass through the approval process.

Slashdot is faltering, and it's not the users who has brought it down.

It's the moderators, such as Samzenpus, who have failed to carry out their job duty, in a professional manner.

Problem is, that is is a quote from TFA. But it shows a golden rule of Slashdot submissions: Never link directly to the original article, always to one that is as loosely based on it as possible.

So, in your model, what happened during QE1 through Q3?

The Quantitative Easings are a perfect example: the Fed bought government debt (a Fed asset) in exchange for issuing n billion dollars to the government (which serves as a loan on the Fed balance sheet). The government subsequently spent that money in various ways. This is tantamount to printing money. The only difference is that because the QE's involved purchase of government debt the inflation has a dubious promise that the government will pay off the debt, thus resulting in "unprinting" the money that was created.

Honestly, this is simple bookkeeping. Since the Fed loan of the new money is at interest, how are the quantitative easings (and Fed money creation in general) not not tantamount to "printing money, with a promise to destroy it in the future"?

Merely alleging that double entry bookkeeping creates money doesn't make it true. Besides, if the Fed is the ultimate source of money (as it is), then its loans cannot be bypassed by "money multiplier" sleight of hand: paying off loans is the opposite of fractional reserve multiplication.

The loan from the Fed ultimately has to be repaid. The repayment of loans is the opposite of money multiplication. All of your examples make sense, except in the fundamental sense of the money itself. That is to say, if the Fed gifted money into the economy then your model would work. Instead, the only way that a new dollar exists is as a loan, and this has been the way it has worked since 1913.

The issue is that serious news gathering, in the old way, is expensive. Keeping a network of reporters distributed round the world in places where news events are liable to happen costs money.

I'd like to expand upon this point, many news organizations don't do expensive journalism. They use news stories from the wire (Associated Press) and unlike a newspaper, a news wire organization does not have its own product. Nearly every newspaper across the world is a member of the Associated Press. The AP, like Reuters and other wire services, supplies stories, photographs and photos to newspapers. Most newspapers can't afford to send reporter(s) overseas to cover a war or an economic summit, however the AP has employees who do just that. For most newspapers, the news wire is the "official" source. Nothing is "official" until AP or another news wire picks up the story.

In a nutshell: The wire reporter covers an event and writes about it, then story is filed and edited. After that, it is submitted (electronically) to member newspapers, who choose to print the story or not. The process also works in reverse. For example a reporter for a local newspaper covers an interesting event and sends it to AP, where the story is picked up and possibly sent to the national wire. Local television stations work their news in much the same way. Because a news wire reporter works for his organization and not for a particular newspaper, his coverage is considered more unbiased than a local reporter's coverage.

But as disruptive technologies like Twitter affect the way people consume news, the number of eyeballs on the output produced by those expensive journalistic networks is declining.

Disruptive to established players of an older medium, perhaps? Twitter redefines the roles of publishers, much like blogging, and even YouTube. Why don't we just say the Internet? The Internet enables anyone to become a publisher. Regardless of the medium shouldn't this underline the value of quality content? There are good blogs and bad blogs (referring to informative quality) on a variety of topics. This leads into another point, value. For many price is the single biggest motivating factor in a purchase decision. Price is not the end all be all, but look at cheap import products for a physical analogy. Quality exists but it is at a premium. For many the cheap goods fulfill the role adequately. Conversely there are subscription services available which cater to different audiences much like "expensive" niche goods.

Perhaps the dissatisfaction of paying subscribers or even visitors to traditional news sites is due to people being turned off by bias and agendas which is represented as quality journalism? The demographic which only has a computer at work is shrinking. More eyeballs than ever are coming online everyday with mobile devices. Eyeballs are good, conversions into sales are even better. Besides simply getting the word out Advertisers make money for their clients by bringing in business, this means (typically) understanding your market and knowing where to reach the buyers. Advertising networks deal with market segments, so it's not like everyone deals with the papers/magazines/sites directly.

For example let's take Facebook which has many eyeballs and a company with lots of money, General Motors. They're not as inept as you might believe, GM Spends $1.8 Billion USD annually on advertising. According to GM Facebook's user base doesn't seem to be that interested in buying cars from advertisements. Conversely, look at how effective Amazon is, especially with regards to related products (targeted advertisements).

The other difference is that renovations in China is a new thing.

1. China was a poor country, not so long ago, and a lot of it is still poor. People forget that a lot here, but 20 years ago, my parents wouldn't have been able to renovate if they wanted to, just based on materials cost. 2. Back then the government owned your house. Spending the money and effort to renovate, to have your apartment possibly re-appropriated, sounds like a lousy idea.

That takes care of the demand for such products, until very recently.

3. Space. You can definitely buy a hammer or a screwdriver, but something the size of a Home-Depot with flooring and kitchen kits and stuff? Yea, can you see that in the middle of Manhattan? It doesn't fit in the middle of Beijing either. And for people that don't live in cities? Go back to point 1.

I would say the North American Home Depot concept won't work. You have to modify your concept, and make it a one-stop shop: come in, choose materials, and pay someone to install it for you (ie hire the same cheap workers, but at least you chose all the materials). But eh, what do I know.

I think this is deliberate counter propaganda that shows up more often when there is some big scandal about business doing something stupid that screws a lot of people. In this case I guess it is the compounding pharmacy that caused the meningitis epidemic. The corrupt criminal organization calling itself the "International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists" successfully lobbied Congress to defeat attempts to regulate their industry. Now there are over 200 meningitis cases and 15 deaths, and the number of exposed patients may be higher because more drugs were tainted.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444657804578052972230404046.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

If you want to be paranoid about something, worry about corrupt politically connected businesses risking your life for profit. It actually happens. Not that it often ends up on Slashdot, as opposed to right wing scare tactics.

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You'd think Slashdot wouldn't make users visit the HuffPo for a link to the entire article, but you'd think wrong.

"Erm, source? I find it really, really hard to believe LG (or Motorola, or Nokia) isn't making a fair amount of money selling cell phones."

Motorola

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-05-01/business/chi-motorola-mobilitys-loss-widens-in-q1-20120501_1_motorola-mobility-holdings-google-s-android-mobile-devices

Nokia:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444464304577536440351488600.html

LG:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/25/lg-q2-2012-earnings/

This is good stuff, I didn't know Bill Gross was 'an extremist'

Gross runs the largest bond fund called 'Pimco', he manages 1.8Trillion dollars.

Here is his latest investment letter, I just found out:

To keep our debt/GDP ratio below the metaphorical combustion point of 212 degrees Fahrenheit, these studies (when averaged) suggest that we need to cut spending or raise taxes by 11% of GDP and rather quickly over the next five to 10 years. An 11% "fiscal gap" in terms of today's economy speaks to a combination of spending cuts and taxes of $1.6 trillion per year! To put that into perspective, CBO has calculated that the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and other provisions would only reduce the deficit by a little more than $200 billion. As well, the failed attempt at a budget compromise by Congress and the President - the so-called Super Committee "Grand Bargain"- was a $4 trillion battle plan over 10 years worth $400 billion a year. These studies, and the updated chart "Ring of Fire - Part 2!" suggests close to four times that amount in order to douse the inferno.

Investment Conclusion

So I posed the question earlier: How can the U.S. not be considered the first destination of global capital in search of safe (although historically low) returns? Easy answer: It will not be if we continue down the current road and don't address our "fiscal gap." IF we continue to close our eyes to existing 8% of GDP deficits, which when including Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare liabilities compose an average estimated 11% annual "fiscal gap," then we will begin to resemble Greece before the turn of the next decade. Unless we begin to close this gap, then the inevitable result will be that our debt/GDP ratio will continue to rise, the Fed would print money to pay for the deficiency, inflation would follow and the dollar would inevitably decline. Bonds would be burned to a crisp and stocks would certainly be singed; only gold and real assets would thrive within the "Ring of Fire."

To hedge against the inflation risk, Mr. Gross has cut down holdings of Treasury debt to 21% at the end of August compared to 33% in July.

China is the most dangerous country in the world today. And the information about how horrible the Chinese, despite them getting MUCH worse given the economic situation, the information flow has been nearly shut down since 2007 timeframe. There were big 60 minutes type exposes in 2007 but since then the Police State has seen that information regarding our forced consumption of Chinese Walmart Plastic with Federal Reserve Notes remains in place.

China tires bad:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118278927863547228.html

The organizing committee of Beijingâ(TM)s Olympic games has promised to investigate charges that official merchandise is being manufactured using child labor.

The PRC Chinese poison dog food:
http://www.themoneytimes.com/articles/20070523/chinese_protein_export_scandal-id-104033.html

The PRC Chinese poison toothpaste:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/02/us/02toothpaste.html?ex=1181620800&en=d26dab8b2bd85303&ei=5070

The PRC Chinese poison Children's Toys:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070614/thomas_recall_070614/20070614?hub=CTVNewsAt11
http://blogs.eastbayexpress.com/92510/2007/06/thomas_why_hath_thou_forsaken.php

Chinese Seafood Detained for Safety
http://www.topix.com/forum/food/TFSGN6836LFM2QFV7

Melamine put into milk formula, dog food, etc.
http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/got-melamine-53000-chinese-children-did-in-their-milk.html

- Cow milk so inundated with antibiotics you can not make Yogurt from it.

- Pigs force-fed waste water.

- Lard made from separating fats from sewage.

Made in China: tainted food, fake drugs and dodgy paint
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2118920,00.html

China Jails 2 Protestant Church Leaders
http://www.nysun.com/foreign/china-jails-two-protestant-leaders/58150/

The PRC Chinese government has murdered countless people:
"DEATH BY GOVERNMENT: GENOCIDE AND MASS MURDER"
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.TAB1.GIF
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.FIG1.GIF

Given modern industrial process and productivity, I don't even see how using Chinese slave labor saves that much in the face of having to crate up and ship the goods from china to consuming markets.

The bean counters saved maybe 10% at best making product, and now with the price of shipping goods going up due to petrol, they are probably paying more to have it made in China.

The only real reason it may never come back to the US is a host of states (NY, CA) and The Fedzilla / US government that have a long list of anti-business laws making a return to the US difficult.

You want Made in the USA? Tell state and federal congress to stop doing everything to drive up the cost of business compared to China and India (the only two competitors that matter); stop buying Chinese crap where possible.

Slave Labor rented at a PREMIUM with low quality results is still apparently cheaper than coming back her

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443989204577603641131488960.html for example

It's an apparently wholly new and unique method for doing something in the physical world. Why would it make them evil to patent that?

Because It's not really all that unique

Why are the links so recent? Because after that collision 2 years ago they put out a request for people to think about this problem.

Found an article referencing the water spray idea.

... and today Nokia seems considering selling its HQ building.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443768804578033922512338166.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

(didn't require registration when I looked).

According to the WSJ, Astronomy and Astrophysics had a 0% unemployment rate as of the 2010 census.

Hey, at least Beck pushes gold instead of bitcoin.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/goldline-execs-charged-fraud/story?id=14857253

The complaint alleges that Goldline "runs a bait and switch operation in which customers, seeking to invest in gold bullion, are switched to highly overpriced coins by using false and misleading claims," according to a statement released by the consumer affairs division of the Santa Monica City Attorney's office.

The company has been charged in the court filing with misdemeanors that include theft by false pretenses, false advertising, and conspiracy, the City Attorney's office said. In addition to the charges against the company, the complaint accuses former CEO Mark Albarian, executives Robert Fazio and Luis Beeli, and salespeople Charles Boratgis and Stephanie Howard of defrauding customers. Current CEO Scott Carter is accused of making false or misleading statements. Each of the charged offenses carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail and maximum fines of between $1,000 and $10,000 per offense.

And the conclusion
http://blogs.wsj.com/totalreturn/2012/02/23/goldline-agrees-to-refund-4-5-million/

Gold coin and bullion dealer Goldline International agreed on Wednesday to refund up to $4.5 million to former customers, ending the criminal prosecution brought against the company last November.

Goldline was running a bait and switch.
They were advertising bullion and pushing people to buy coins at an inflated collector's price.

The Goldline press release about the settlement is a fine bit of doublespeak and PR nonsense.

People with expertise in the field seem to disagree. Every recent source I've read confirms that North America has huge gas reserves.

http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303343404577514622469426012.html?mg=reno64-wsj

An article entitled "The Oil Industry's Deceitful Promise..." written by a journalist in an anti-industry blog hardly constitutes an authoritative source.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443890304578006702760267388.html The Fed said it would buy mortgage-backed securities, or MBS, for an indefinite period to bolster the economy. Smells like shoveling money at the derivatives to me.. and who holds a metric fuckton of those I wonder...

The OP may be seeking overkill. The hearing aid should always, as you pointed out, be tuned for your specific condition. Here's a link to an article about some non-script amplifiers (can't call them hearing aids if they aren't prescribed): http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443921504577643451266751104.html There are some out there that let you tune to your condition, but don't use BT or apps to do it.

The basket of prices does not include many important things, that are excluded supposedly because they are too volatile.

However when reporting on inflation not on a weekly or monthly basis, but instead reporting on inflation per year or even decade, those supposedly 'volatile' goods MUST be included in the numbers.

Instead the calculations always exclude things that people truly use and buy every day. Food, energy, rent, housing, such things. These MUST be included into calculation of price inflation (and I say 'price inflation', I really mean just rising prices. Inflation is money printing, the change in dictionary definition came around 10 years ago, but it doesn't matter, their trying every Orwellian trick in the book, but people shouldn't fall for it.

Beyond that, the real inflation should be counted against the relative value to gold, which is the real money, it's what people use as real money and it's what governments fight against, they hate real money, that's because real money prevents long terms deficit and debt financing of all that government spending and thus prevents growth of gov't, prevents destruction of individual liberties.

AFAIC gold = freedom and fiat = slavery.

Your old friend may not even realize it, but he is part of the propaganda machine.

Austrian economics is the only economics that we know works, all other theories are used for propaganda, nothing else, they are not useful to predict economic situations and outcomes.

1. Definition of inflation has been updated in dictionaries to support government propaganda. There is a reason the government doesn't publish M3 numbers anymore, they go against government propaganda.

2. Inflation only does one thing to 'increase productivity', that one thing is equivalent of a pay cut.

When the Fed's chairman (Bernanke right now) talks about 'employment mandate', he is talking about using inflation (*which is his only tool, he has no other tools, all tools he has only use this one hammer: creating money out of thin air and pumping them into the economy one way or another, loans or asset purchases or whatever*), he is talking about DECREASING YOUR WAGE IN REAL TERMS.

That's right. The only reason the economy may 'pick up' in the short term due to higher inflation (stimulus, QE, whatever) is because while your nominal pay check stays the same, your labour is now cheaper to higher in real terms. So the Fed devalues your labour, congratulations. Heads they win, tails you lose.

3. "inflation adjusted" - this is government propaganda. First they underreport inflation by 1000%, then they 'adjust' your fixed incomes to that number, that is 10 times smaller than the real inflation rate.

Policies designed to shift wealth never benefit the bottom, they only benefit the top. Somebody sells an apartment at 70 million and somebody else buys it, how does it benefit the bottom? The bottom ends up paying more for food, energy, rent - the REAL things people pay for every day, not that fake 'basket of goods'.

4. 1930 is infamous, that's when the government truly upped the ante, stepped in with massive stimulus, bail outs, work programs designed to make it look like there is economic activity, while in reality destroying and mis-allocating the scarce resources further. That recession was started by the Fed printing dollars to buy bad UK debt from France. Hoover started with huge purchases of assets, huge money printing, FDR came to power on the promise of austerity but then doubled down on the bail outs and money printing. That recession was created by the Fed and turned into a depression by the Fed and the Treasury and the government (president and the Congress and the Senate and SCOTUS, everybody participated in that disgrace). Since 1947 (when the depression ended with the end of the WWII due to gov't cutting spending by 64% and all taxes by over 30%) USA had massive growth of gov't, which couldn't be sustained on a gold dollar, so 1971 was the time Nixon defaulted and the seventies were a disaster, which shows you to be wrong about the 'post-regulation' era as well.

The stagflation was the final nail in the coffin of Keynesian charlatanism. It was a paradox, impossible by Keynesian standards, but there is nothing impossible about inflation and rising unemployment. It's very simple: the production was falling even faster than inflation, so unemployment was rising.

5. The busts are restructuring of the debt, and the debt touches everything. When the gov't is half of the economy (and money is half of every transaction) you are not safe in any part of the economy, there is debt in everything. Even if you are doing something with no debt and you have customers and profits, your profits are going to disappear once your customers disappear, and they will disappear because they are in massive debt and have no productive jobs themselves.

We should pick someone we hate, and wind them up and point them in that direction.

Seriously, those idiots are not storming a US embassy because they are upset about a Youtube video, they are storming it because it's a US embassy, and 9/11 was a convenient excuse to celebrate by storming an embassy.

According to Reuters http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/13/us-usa-libya-attack-idUSBRE88B1C620120913 and the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444517304577653680320732176.html?mod=googlenews_wsj, the Libya attack was planned in advance.

That's called dumping and there is international law against it. If the US chooses, they can bring a complaint against China to the WTO. And in fact there is one ongoing.

It was Akio Toyoda himself was involved with the transaction.

As for who else knew of this deal, I'd suggest you look at the various newspaper articles that discussed the investment by Toyota into Tesla.

In fact the Governator himself was at the ground breaking with Mr. Toyoda and Elon Musk, as can be seen in the photo with this article:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37358614/ns/business-us_business/t/tesla-toyota-give-jolt-nummi-plant/#.UFVoi1GaVRQ

I can't help it if you've been living under a rock, and neither could the GP poster.