Archive for National
Healthcare for those who can afford it
Posted by: | Comments“Hi, Tom. When did you get back in town? Your regular table is available. Can I get you a Guinness?”
It’s a creaky little pub at the edge of downtown Charlotte where, well, everybody knows your name. In a town filled with prefab, coming in for dinner is like coming home.
“Linda” is one of the regular waitresses and hadn’t seen me in a couple of months. The first thing she wanted to tell me was that she had finally scheduled a surgery to remove the lump on the right side of her neck. It’s been growing since we met in August last year, but with little money and no insurance, she’s been unable to do anything about it. The lump is now about the size of a small potato and making her jawline disappear.
She didn’t say how much the surgery might cost, but it almost cost her several thousand dollars more. The clinic told her that this type of surgery was usually done on Fridays. Being a waitress, that wasn’t her best financial strategy. They told Linda she could move it to Monday and she jumped at the idea. Only after asking did she find out it would cost a couple thousand dollars more to get the surgery done on Monday. She stayed with Friday.
No one at the clinic offered that information up front. “If I hadn’t asked,” Linda said, sounding exasperated, “I would have paid all that money extra. It would be like me serving you beer in a bottle without telling you that you could get the same beer for less on draft.”
As is, Linda will be making payments on the surgery for — she doesn’t know for how long.
“The best health care system in the world,” for those who can afford it.
244%
Posted by: | CommentsFrom ThinkProgress:
A new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center has unearthed shocking data about the rise of militias, antigovernment groups, and other right-wing extremist groups. The report, titled “Rage on the Right,” has found that there has been an increase of 244 percent in the number of these extremist groups in 2009…
Let’s Change The World
Posted by: | CommentsGoogle is planning to launch an experiment that we hope will make Internet access better and faster for everyone. We plan to test ultra-high speed broadband networks in one or more trial locations across the country. Our networks will deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today, over 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. – Google Fiber Initiative
I’ll post the whole thing here at some point, but for now take yourselves over to googleavl to read all about Asheville’s effort to invite Google to town.
“You all heard about the Information Superhighway of the internet back in the day. Compared to a superhighway, this network is like a teleportation device. It’s so far beyond what anyone else is using that it gives Asheville the opportunity to dream big.”
Some CIBO With Your Tea?
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If you’re into seeing political candidates go head to head in public forums, then this is the week for you.
Thursday at Noon, barring another wintry postponement, Patsy Keever and Bruce Goforth will be fed identical meals of meat, green beans, and whipped taters before debating the issues of the day. CIBO is hosting this event at Magnolia’s. It’s ten bones to pay for your lunch, and the political theater is free. Read my previous post on the event here.
If you’ve got plans Friday night, you be better off bagging them and heading to the Tea Party at A/B Tech. The GOP candidates will line up at 6:30pm and get their liberty on. Erika Franzi, headmistress of the local Tea Folk, is soliciting questions from you and me. Click here to email her a question for the gang. The six candidates committed to attending are Dr. Dan Eichenbaum, James Howard, Ed Krause, Jeff Miller, Greg Newman, and Kenny West. Congressman Heath Shuler is invited as well, but he hasn’t signaled any inclination to sip from the same cup as the organizers or the broad field.
Dr. Dan has been winning straw polls across western North Carolina with his “We have seen enough ‘government solutions’” approach. The GOP faithful appear to be drawn more towards Jeff Miller and Greg Newman. But what do I know? If you’ve got the constitution, go see for yourself.
Big kudos to both groups for helping to educate the people and ask hard questions of the candidates. No matter our political differences, good campaigns make for better elections.
Perspective
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1,774.7 deaths per year, according to the U.S. Department of State vs. 45,000 deaths per year, according to the Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance. Graphic by Jake Lewis.
Are Those Cameras Off?
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Et tu, Wall Street Journal?
Using letters it obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the Wall Street Journal chronicles how GOP critics of the stimulus bill wrote letters supporting stimulus projects in their districts:
Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who called the stimulus a “wasteful spending spree” that “misses the mark on all counts,” wrote to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis in October in support of a grant application from a group in his district which, he said, “intends to place 1,000 workers in green jobs.” A spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan said the congressman felt it was his job to provide “the basic constituent service of lending his assistance for federal grant requests.”
Republican Reps. Sue Myrick of North Carolina and Jean Schmidt of Ohio sent letters in October asking for consideration of funding requests from local organizations training workers for energy-efficiency projects.
In November, Ms. Schmidt said in a statement, “It is time to recall the stimulus funds that have not been spent before the Chinese start charging us interest.” Aides to the congresswomen said they had always supported local organizations in their requests for federal funding.
Spokesmen “didn’t respond to a request for comment” crops up a couple of times in the WSJ story. Rachael Maddow was on MSNBC Tuesday night waving these letters letters from various Republicans supporting requests from groups in their districts for stimulus money they voted against. Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) wrote in support of a National Urban League request:
Funding this application will make it possible for “green jobs training” to benefit 250 participants in greater Charlotte, NC and lead to solar energy related jobs in an area hard hit by unemployment. We have an urgent need for a workforce that is truly prepared to contribute to the “Green” economy.
The entire Alabama delegation signed a letter supporting a $15 million funding request by the Alabama Forestry Commission. Senator Richard Shelby, who called the stimulus bill “the socialist way” during the debate, said “way” once stimulus funds became available.
Uh, yeah … uh, um, possibly
Posted by: | CommentsGoldman’s rigging online polls, now?
From the Telegraph of London on Thursday:
Goldman Sachs is investigating claims that one of its computers was used to rig a public vote on the introduction of a so-called “Robin Hood tax” on bankers.
From Business Insider on Friday:
A few days ago robinhoodtax.com, asked the public to vote on a “tiny” tax on bankers that would donate no more than .05% of each banking transaction to the poor.
[...]
Robin Hood’s security team said that it traced the erroneous votes to two computers, one of which is allegedly registered to Goldman, according to The Telegraph.
From the Digby on Sunday:
Unbelievable. Why in the hell are people entrusting all this power to such a bunch of babies?
On the other hand, if they are forced to pay a .05% tax on transactions it goes without saying that they’ll all hold their breath until they turn blue because it just won’t be worth it to work anymore. And then where will we be?
It seems that somebody at the great vampire squid isn’t too keen on the idea of the banks that brought the world economy to its knees owing anything to the commoners who bailed them out. It’s not a European notion they’d like to see spread to the U.S.
Tell us again how that personal responsibility stuff is supposed to work, how about it?
[h/t Crooks and Liars]
RNC Winter Meeting: Saving Americans from Themselves
Posted by: | Comments“These poor bastards just didn’t realize they were living in a socialist nightmare …” [timestamp 6:04]
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The Apparent Trap | ||||
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An Open Letter To President Emanuel
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President Rahm Emanuel, 10 Seconds After Taking Oath Of Office, Jan. 20, 2009
Thumbing Nose At Everyone To His Left. American Youth Scowls In Dismay.
I wake up some mornings hating me too.
– President Rahm Emanuel
Dear President Emanuel,
Let me begin by saying I’m pleased you’re lucid some mornings. I hope you read this letter on one of those mornings. I hope it awakens you with the cold certainty of a window left open to the blizzard.
Like nearly everyone else, I placed hope in you; it was a cautious hope, a hope borne of knowing no other hope existed. We needed you to be almost perfect, so that you might rescue us from almost perfect ruin. Heck, I even turned my cautious hope into a song. Went a little like this… Soup_And_Songs
Read More→
Choose a Side
Posted by: | CommentsOver at Daily Kos, Darcy Burner poses this challenge:
Next week, there’s going to be a test in Congress. A real litmus test about whose side various Representatives and Senators are on. It’s a stunningly straightforward bill – only two pages long – that would simply remove the antitrust exemption for health insurers. It would keep insurers from being able to collude and price fix, requiring them to compete in the marketplace for business.
Unlike nearly everything else that’s been done in the last year, this bill is completely uncompromised – no deals have been cut to water down the bill in favor of health insurance companies. It is an unambiguously populist bill, and a clean cut against corporatism. It’s building off of work that key progressives in the House, including Reps. DeFazio, Slaughter, and DeGette, have been teeing up for years.
Assuming the Perriello-Markey bill makes it onto the floor, no one in Congress should be allowed to duck their vote for the insurance companies and against their constituents. Hagan, Shuler and the rest of NC’s delegation should know, as Darcy explains, Vote against this bill, and it means you’re in the pocket of the insurance companies.
As Digby said, “The campaign ads write themselves, don’t they?”
Choose a side. We’ve already chosen.
