Shorties of Riddick

Let’s start off with the Health Insurance Reform bits: Many thanks to Florinda for noticing this item, the story of the mom who was the only person in the whole Emergency Department with health insurance. However, don’t think that mandatory health insurance would have changed that. And here’s a moving piece on health care — particularly mental health care, as it fits into our nation’s Christian traditions.

Continuing the Bush Economic Tradition: Huzzah, they are now proudly telling us that GDP went up 5.9% in Q4 of 2009. Isn’t that great? The Great Recession is officially over! Of course, that’s only if you ignore the reality of fewer jobs, higher unemployment particularly among people under 25 (many of whom don’t show up in the official statistics), collapsing consumer confidence, and stuff like that. In fact, the Christian Science Monitor has gone as far as to say that the recovery is a scam. Oh well, some jobs cost more to create than others. Real worry that the Senate decided it was more important to go home than to make sure that people on unemployment would be able to pay the rent next month.

Going to the Vitamin Store?: Not sure what to make of this chart of what science really knows about the various supplements you could buy there.

Huh, Maybe Blackwater is Out Of Control: Duh, Senate.

From the Department of WTF: The military thought it important to take time away from 2 overseas wars to spy on… Planned Parenthood? And white supremacists? Why, recruiting?

New USDA Rules on Organic Food: summary here.

“You never know who it used to be”: A local Buddhist temple is in trouble with the city. Why? Too many cats hang out there and the temple is kind enough to see to it they have food and clean water.

Sad but true: The bullet is still mightier than the restraining order. My heart goes out to everybody involved, including the students of the slain teacher. There is still a lot we don’t know about this situation yet. But ladies, one thing I do know is that you don’t owe anybody a “mercy date” or an explanation about why you want nothing to do with them. Stay away from guys that scare you! Stop answering the phone, stop talking to them, stop seeing them, cut them off cold turkey! Telling them more than once that you don’t want to talk to them is still talking to them!

Why Housing Prices Won’t Go Up Soon

I know, I usually talk about housing over on my real estate site.

Today there’s a bunch of conflicting information about whether nationwide, house values are going up or not. Prices fell 2.5% in Q4 of 2009 (not in Vegas, but nationwide), but rose in December, but only if you looked at it on a “seasonally adjusted” basis. That’s a nice way of saying you ignore the fact that prices “always” go down in December. You could get dizzy trying to make sense of this data.

But here’s the thing. 1 in 4 homes is “underwater” right now — the mortgage is more than the house is worth — and it’s more like 7 in 10 here in Nevada. That means among other things, that the owners of those homes have limited ability to pick up and move to a new job, and that unless a very specific set of circumstances apply to them, they can’t realistically reduce their housing costs. Add to that the fact that a record number of mortgages are seriously delinquent or in foreclosure. Add to that the expert opinion that over 6 million delinquent homeowners will not be able to negotiate with lenders and will lose their properties. The mortgage system is overwhelmed and in need of reconstruction, and the latest program announced by the President is little more than a bandage on a chest wound.

So we’re not out of the woods yet, even though there are some signs of a trail ahead.

Here’s the next set of hazards as I see them. First, none of the plans out there do a thing to help legitimate investors. Investors are necessary, because not everybody will own their primary dwelling when all is said and done. If there is to be affordable rental housing, somebody must invest in it. Right now, it’s hard for investors to buy unless they have cash. And right now it’s almost impossible for investors to refinance or get any sort of assistance; somebody decided that only owner-occupants deserve help, so screw the family that rents from the investor. To a lesser extent, a sub-problem of this is the difficulty that non-citizens have getting mortgages for property in the United States. I currently have no, zero, zip, nada sources for mortgages for Asian or European clients (I speak Japanese and French), and can only help Canadians if they plan to live in the property.

Second hazard strikes close to home. Most of my neighbors are underwater on their mortgages. Banks are dumping properties for less than half what they sold for 3 years ago. None of the current refinance or loan modification programs has anything to offer people like me and my neighbors, people who can continue paying the bills each month but are underwater and have interest rates 1-3% above current levels. Now, every book about stock market investing advises that you must have an exit strategy — a plan for when to sell if things go right or even if they go horribly wrong. It’s far better to take a loss, even a loss of 50%, than wait for your losses to get even greater in the vain hope that things will turn around. If you buy on margin, sometimes this decision will be made for you by the brokerage and it is a very painful mercy. This being the case, the rational thing for many of my neighbors is to stop paying the mortgage, buy something nearby for half what they currently owe, and let the bank have their overpriced asset back.

Until banks are forced to face the reality that something must be done to fix every seriously underwater mortgage, and not just the delinquent ones, we will be at risk of more foreclosures coming onto the market. And since they will continue to dump these properties at unrealistically low prices, property values will continue to decline and housing construction will continue to be a money-losing proposition. That will in turn continue to put pressure on the budget of any state or local government that depends on property taxes for revenue, and that will put pressure on the Federal government to make up the inevitable shortfall.

In closing: Mr. Volker has some good ideas, some very smart people agree with him, and don’t cry for the banks (oh, I know you want to do just that!) because they won’t go bankrupt; The Senate is highly dysfunctional right now, with record numbers of cloture votes and 290 bills passed by the House sitting in the docket collecting dust (Hey Reid and Ensign! Get to work, you bums!); unemployed people don’t buy fast food breakfasts; and Rich People Sure Are Different (yeah, they pay almost nothing in taxes).

And Now We Know

It’s official. The Obama plan for health insurance reform has been released. Anybody care to take a guess what’s not in it? The public option.

And what is in it? Mandatory insurance and an excise tax on plans that cost more than $27,5oo annually. “The plan includes a provision that allows low-income people who cannot afford health insurance to receive a waiver from the mandate,”  as opposed to some way to help pay for insurance, so basically it’s little better than what we have right now from the standpoint of covering the uninsured. Particularly in a recession, where states are cutting Medicaid because they have to balance the budget somehow.

Wow, Mr. President. Three strikes. As far as I am concerned, it’s outa there!

Now, to the plan’s credit, it does protect against insurance companies declining people with pre-existing conditions, but if it doesn’t regulate how much extra those people pay, say hello to the excise tax. It does regulate how much insurance companies can jack up the rates, and it does have an insurance exchange. I am unclear on how this “exchange” will be any better than websites like eHealthInsurance. It does close the Medicare prescription “donut hole”. Update: here’s a handy comparison chart; the President’s plan does prohibit rescission, which is an improvement over both House and Senate plans.

However, there is a very good likelihood that this bill will place limits on abortions. Since it’s very hard to know when an abortion will be a medical necessity, this is very shortsighted. Unless you want to be the dad who loses his wife to complications of pregnancy or the parents of a child doomed to die by his 4th birthday, this is a no-go.

In closing: secrets of the ER; credit card rules change today; on the job loss numbers; it’s not terrorism when a white guy does it, only brown people can be terrorists; even terrorists deserve a fair trial and even John Ashcroft says so; already up to 20 bank failures for 2010; and an update on the school that decided to spy on its students in their homes. They had better hope there are no outraged dads who decide that the courts are too slow for justice.

Public Option: Resurected or Zombie?

Let’s put the pieces together and see if we have something functional, or some kind of Frankenstein’s Health Insurance Reform. Americans are rightly disgusted by the thing that Congress has brought forth, mostly because it includes such odious things as mandatory coverage and taxing of “decent” health insurance plans. There is still a big health care reform “summit” next week, which is looking more and more like a circus the closer it gets. Health insurance premiums are continuing to rise steeply, and health insurance company profits are rising too, even though they managed to increase “political giving” — that’s legal bribes — 14% in 2009. Add the fact that more Americans are depending on Medicaid, while there is less money for the states to cover them.

Gee, no wonder Americans are disgusted by the idea of mandatory coverage and taxing plans that the tax code decrees too expensive.

Amid this backdrop, the President has finally announced that he will throw an official, Presidential seal of approval health insurance reform bill into the mix, and is planning on stapling it to a budget bill so it can’t be filibustered. He’s even indicated that he’s willing to back a public option — but only if Senator Reid will jump with him. Harry’s in a tough re-election race this fall, and could really use something to bring his polling numbers up. Ah, the real reason for his Nevada visit is out — it’s certainly not because the President feels he owes the Mayor a martini.

Perhaps the feds should start by killing two birds with one stone. If they fully fund Medicaid, the states will have an easier time making their budgets balance and all those extra people on the rolls (see above) will be proof that a public option can work!

But what about this new public option that might be under consideration? We don’t have any real details, so it’s hard to support it. Is it going to be a decent plan? Is it going to be cost competitive with the for-profit insurance companies or will it be a higher priced insurer of last resort? Is it going to have gutted provisions for women’s health so as not to offend the far religious right? Is it going to be available to all Americans, or only to a small percentage of us? Is it going to be saddled with triggers and means tests and all sorts of other crap that will cripple it?

In short, is it some variant of Medicare For All, or is it just another favor for insurance companies?

If this is the real deal — a resurrected public option — I will preach the gospel for it. But beware, if it is a zombie, I will be ready with my blogging boomstick to blow its head off.

In Closing: Getting ahead at the office and getting head at the office are mutually exclusive (I love the story of what was found in a certain executive’s office); a great t-shirt; there has to be some balance between what the community thinks education should be and what the educators think education should be; Japan has overtaken China as America’s biggest creditor; more people trying to ditch “too big to fail” institutions; Dude, where’s my stimulus funds?; class, race, and the War on (some) Drugs; TrueMajority; “Rich people create jobs, all we have to do is cut their taxes enough”? Might just as well wait for Santa to put one in your stocking; if this is true, the dumbest school administrators in the nation thought it would be a good idea to spy on students in their homes using the webcams in their school issued notebook computers; Catholic Charities has decided that politics is more important than that “helping the poor and the sick” crap that Jesus was on about (one more reason my charitable giving is secular whenever possible); and why people pirate DVDs.

“Tell Me a Story, Gramma!”*

I get so tired of being angry at politicians, banks, and the clueless. I wanted to bring you a happy story today. How about this one, about the First Grandmother — or FGOTUS — settling in to White House living and helping raise 2 adorable (if perhaps chubby*) grandchildren while their parents do important work. Sasha and Malia are very lucky indeed that their Grandmother is around to help out — and tell old family stories that might otherwise have been forgotten.

The Obamas have yet another example of an “intergenerational” or “multigenerational” household, where 3 or even more generations of one family live under one roof. It’s not a new thing; in fact it used to sort of be the norm. Newlyweds often lived with Mom and Dad until they got together the money to put a downpayment on a house. And if Gramma or Aunt Frannie happened to be around to provide childe care, or teach Mom how to raise kids and run a household? A bonus. Please note that Grampa and Uncle Ted were rarely available for regular child care, but could usually be counted on for “fun” activities like camping. It wasn’t uncommon for Momma to move in with the kids when Daddy passed away, particularly in Asian cultures.

But there is something new going on. Unlike the Obamas’ situation, many modern intergenerational households are not entirely by choice. Multiple generations of a family are often consolidating to one address out of necessity. Someone has gotten evicted or foreclosed upon. Somebody has so much student loan debt they can’t qualify for even a crappy apartment. Somebody is seriously ill and needs the stability of not worrying about the rent — having a potential caregiver is a welcome side effect. Somebody is between jobs, with little hope of getting a full time one anytime soon.

It will be very interesting to see what data the Census is able to pull together about these families as they gather the official 2010 data. This is what they found back in 1998. *

As happy as I am that the First Family’s intergenerational lifestyle is working out, it just doesn’t reflect reality for most of us.

* Strictly speaking I am old enough to be a grandmother, but boy am I glad I’m not!

** Excuse me, I actually think BMI means something, but it does not directly apply to children! Children have different proportions than adults.

The Last Straw: Google Found It.

This week, you may have heard that Google introduced something called Buzz. If you are a Gmail user, you are probably signed up without even knowing it.

Before we go any further, a bit of background. I started being a dedicated Google user in 2000, when I was working as a research analyst for a small dotcom company I will not name here. It was at the time the best search engine available. Time progressed. I signed up for Orkut. I think I have two profiles there and I can’t figure out how to merge them, but I stopped caring some time ago. I have been part of blogging projects that required the use of Blogger. For over 2 years I have run my email through Gmail because it is convenient to access remotely via the web and my G1 Android phone (which I bought in the first few weeks it was available), and until recently the spam filtering of Gmail had been excellent. And about my G1, it does so much stuff that once I had a client surprised that it was also a phone!

Now about Gmail’s spam filtering. At some point in the last 6 months, it started to decide that I didn’t need certain emails. It decided that my electronic fax service was spam — thankfully this service stores faxes for 30 days so no permanent harm. It has at various points decided that some communications from my clients were spam. I have been reduced to going through the spam folder and trying to make sure it doesn’t get rid of things I need. This wastes my time every day, and I am still likely to miss an important email. Moreover, I think I am being punished for correcting the spam filter. “Oh, that’s not spam, is it? How about this one from an approved online drugstore? Is that not spam? How about this Russian bride wanting to meet you, surely you want to read that??” Pain. In. The. Butt.

Some people think Buzz is going to be a huge hit, a terrific win, a Twitter Killer with a side order of Facebook. Strangely enough, Orkut wasn’t enough to dislodge any of the various online communities, but hey. But here’s the killer part:

Google Buzz certainly isn’t groundbreaking, but it will achieve critical mass virtually overnight. Thanks to integration with Gmail, the new tool is in the eye-line of the millions of users who obsessively check their inboxes for new mail. ComScore pegged Gmail at 176.5 million unique visitors in December.

What’s more, Google Buzz uses data about those you frequently e-mail to automatically build a social network for you. Gone are the challenges of critical mass faced by virtually every new social networking service. In Google Buzz, your address book is your network.

That’s the benefit, but that’s also a huge problem. In fact, it’s a privacy nightmare for every Gmail user, especially for anyone who has someone they would like to avoid, perhaps someone they keep in the address book specifically so they know not to answer the phone if he/she calls. Even if the privacy concerns weren’t enough, there’s more reasons to want nothing whatsoever to do with this “service,” including the fact that it is yet another distraction from Getting Stuff Done.

Thanks to some Twitter friends (I’ve already thanked them online), I have found the way to disable Buzz. It’s non-obvious. From Gmail, if you click on the obnoxious multi-color Buzz icon, you end up on the Buzz page and have the option to, well, select your options. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page. Further. There, at the very bottom there’s a link to turn off Buzz and another option to turn off Chat.

Over the next 6 months, I will be migrating off Google products wherever possible. My sites are already WordPress and hosted elsewhere. I will in-source my email and use something like SpamAssassin to filter it. I never used Google Apps, so no migration is required there. I will buy an iPhone and stop griping about my crappy battery life (girl at the T-mobile store suggested turning off GPS, but I need that feature on for safety while I am out with clients). I may even use Bing.

Google, thanks for nothing. Or rather, thanks for blowing off a loyal customer of 10 years.

In Closing: I wouldn’t let you go without some obligatory health insurance reform items, now would I?; on bureaucracy and government; checklists prevent mistakes whether you are planning a trip or a major surgery; thanks fo AmericaBlog for putting us on the quiet bus; with the money lobbyists have spent they could have bought us all a pony, or actually done something useful; PayGo is back but will it work; the Euro may well be doomed; and Computer Engineer Barbie may have a laptop, smart phone, bluetooth headset, quirky geeky fashions, and cool librarian-type glasses, but if she’s going to make a living in the computer room, she needs a lot more caffeine.

The Water Bottle Saga

Last summer, we made some changes in our exercise routine, such that for the first time it made sense to actually consume some sort of “recovery drink.” A simple glass of water — or refilling one of those water bottles you get at the convenience store — was no longer going to cut it. My requirements for such a bottle included the following:

  • BPA free.
  • Dishwasher safe!
  • No stupid gasket that really should be removed for cleaning or it will get gross, but won’t really fit back in correctly should you manage to pry it out of there.
  • Mouth of bottle must be big enough to fit ice cubes, preferably from the door dispenser on the freezer rather than having to shove them through individually.
  • Must be easy to drink from quickly.
  • Must hold roughly a quart or liter of fluid (I won’t quibble over the small difference between the two sizes)
  • Must not be prone to leaking.
  • Must be translucent.

Why translucent, you may ask? We mix our own recovery formula so we can not only control the number of calories involved (here’s the nutrition panel for Gatorade dust; I can choose to make a “weaker” version). We can add a small quantity of glutamine to the mix, something even Gatorade’s scientists admit may be helpful [Update: here’s what we do and why]. If you can’t see through the bottle, you can’t know if it’s shaken enough. For that matter if you can’t see the insides, how the heck do you know it’s really clean?

So this seems to me like a reasonable enough list. I think most people would agree that these are good things to have out of a water bottle for sport/exercise use. Things like “using recycled materials” and other buzzwords are nice, but not if the product can’t do the basic job.

So then consider this list of “best” reusable bottles from HuffPo. What I see here are a lot of bottles you can’t see through, many of which have teeny necks that you have to manually force an ice cube through, and a lot of bottles that you have to completely remove the lid to have a drink. When you only have a 30 second break for hydration, that just won’t cut it. I actually went to REI (why do I bother, they never have what I need) to look at their selection. It was almost exclusively Nalgene and Camelbak products, and not a darn thing that met all my criteria. For what those products cost, I will not settle for “almost.”

As a stopgap — the bottle I had been using had developed a leak around the base of the drinking spout — I found a Rubbermaid bottle that was clear, dishwasher safe, and best of all cheap. However, it was prone to tipping and did have a gasket in the lid. Moreover, that opening looks pretty wide, but it’s a couple millimeters too narrow to avoid spraying ice cubes all over the kitchen. That’s just something you can’t tell in the store.

Yesterday I happened to be in a supplement store when I stumbled across something called the Blender Bottle. While this thing was really designed for some of the heavier protein mixers and such, it fit what I needed perfectly. The little spring thingy is really kind of optional when we’re talking about something as light as Gatorade. The mouth is wide, the spout generous and easily operated, no gaskets, dishwasher safe, even heat safe. So far so good on this thing.

In closing: on the national debt; here‘s obligatory health insurance reform links; the next incarnation of the iconic 747 flies; more reason to like Alan Grayson; the real filibuster-proof majority; the Social Security “reform” idea that just wouldn’t die; and two items on the changing face of employment. What a shame that someone doesn’t get that women are holding their jobs specifically because they often get paid less for the same work!

Shorties Todd

Well, “free” does appear in the title: someone is suing FreeCreditReport.com for charging them a monthly fee for credit monitoring in order to get that “free” credit report.

How can payrolls and the unemployment rate both go down at the same time?“: More than you want to know about how those figures are manipulated and tortured.

Data bears out common sense: Layoffs are often very bad for the companies that make them. Not only are there severance costs and bad morale (duh), it’s harder to hire back good people when market conditions improve.

Speaking of employment: The President is still of the opinion that small business hiring can and must get us out of this recession. Specifically, he said “Government can’t create these businesses, but it can give entrepreneurs the support they need to open their doors, expand, or hire more workers.” And what does he want to do about it? He wants to expand a couple of SBA programs designed to help well established businesses that already have debt. You know what would really help small businesses? Leveling the playing field with large businesses when it comes to taxes. Dave’s point is that only profits get taxed, which benefits large companies rather than small ones; tax cuts benefit big businesses while shafting the government that needs taxes to run. But let’s face it, Joe’s Hardware Shop has no leverage with city hall, but Wal-Mart can threaten to open in the next town over unless it gets tax breaks.

5th Amendment takes a beating: apparently the Obama Administration reserves the right to assassinate Americans overseas with “special permission.”

Makes me wonder why I bother to pay my mortgage: Here’s your real “phantom inventory,” banks refusing to foreclose on homes where the owner is well over a year in arrears. People are paying credit cards ahead of the mortgage now, which makes sense in a way. Financial planners have always said to pay down your high interest rate debts first! And, well, if the mortgage company is unlikely to foreclose, what incentive is there to pay?

Shackleton’s Whiskey: it’s been freed from ice near the south pole, and sent off for analysis and hopefully recreating lost liquor formulas.

Speaking of drinking: did you know that a 7-11 Double gulp is twice the size of what your stomach should reasonably be able to hold? And, at 64 oz, it’s the equivalent of 8 servings of soda.

And speaking of serving sizes: the FDA wants to crack down on misleading serving sizes on nutrition labels. You know, the ones that say a bowl of cereal is 2 servings, or 6 chips is a serving?

Glad to see someone holding the banks accountable: Cuomo has filed a lawsuit against B of A and several of it’s executives, charging that they hid information from shareholders and lied to the Feds to get bailout money.

And last but not least: a lesson about inflation.

Stay warm and dry, wherever you are.

Reform. For Freedom.

We have officially gotten to the point where corporations control us.

They control how much money we are allowed to make. They control our finances on the national, international, and personal level — badly. They control our health care in a system that is doomed to collapse under the weight of its own expense real soon now. Worst of all, they play by whatever rules they like while squeezing ordinary people to desperation. Now they have a green light to even more openly control our government.

And unless this worthless Congress remembers that the one thing corporations can’t do — yet, anyway — is vote, things are going to get worse rather than better. We desperately need real financial reform now, the kind that restores rules that worked through most of the 20th century and not the kind so riddled with loopholes as to be a gift to the financial services industry. We need insurance reform that puts more of our health care dollars to work providing health care and curtailing the abuse of patients who foolishly want the care they think they (or their bosses) are paying for, not a “reform” that forces everyone to participate in a broken system through mandatory coverage.

I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free,” the song goes. Free to do what? Free to get involved in staged protests of issues we don’t understand? Free to loudly proclaim “facts” with no basis in reality? Free to watch propaganda dressed up as news? Free to owe everything to the companies that hire us, care for us, and mis-manage our money with no hope of anything else?

If you don’t mind, I’d prefer a different flavor of freedom.

In Closing: Roman Army Knife; “Um, because it was the right thing to do and we didn’t want any lawyers saying we did wrong later? Was the 5th Amendment repealed while I wasn’t looking?”; nice to see that we are going to count job losses more honestly, but it’s a shame that Mr. Obama will be blamed for “losing” these jobs when he merely counted Bush Administration losses correctly; I couldn’t have said it better either; at least child abuse is down!; where genetic testing and “pro-life” collide; trees are loving global warming (much more so than the polar bears); and Americans are drinking more, but we’re not paying for the Good Stuff. So, uh, maybe the price of Scotch will return to rational levels? No? I thought not.