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A Tale of Two Restaurants

Las Vegas is one of the top foodie cities in the nation — or the world, depending whose list you like to use. When Top Chef did a season here, we thought “it’s about time!” We’ve got our own copy of the latest Michelin guide. There won’t be a 2010 edition for economic reasons, but a fresh version will be out in 2011.

Last Saturday, we had the occasion to visit 2 restaurants mentioned (but not starred) by Michelin. We had been both places several times before, but this was more of an adventure than it needed to be.

Saturday afternoon, we made a dinner reservation through OpenTable at Vintner Grill, a restaurant in the city’s West Side planned community of Summerlin. It is known for its extensive wine list, cheese list, and fine dining. Oh, and it does have something of a local reputation as a Cougar hangout. We arrived a few minutes early and were seated fairly promptly. Then things began to go wrong.

Someone had already long since taken care of water for our table by the time the waitress arrived. For some reason, she decided not to bother asking for our drink order. Perhaps she assumed that we wouldn’t be having any beverages; perhaps she assumed that a couple with a pre-teen child wouldn’t be tipping very well anyhow (and perhaps she should have asked her co-workers about those assumptions!). Either way, we almost had to beg to put in a drink order. She never did ask if we wanted any appetizers.

In the long wait that ensued, I overheard the hostess remind her about the table that had been seated right before us, I watched her stand at a table for about 5 minutes giving a dissertation on one of the menu items, and saw her go to another table to give what I can only assume was a similar lecture on a menu item. By this time, we were very hungry and there was no sign of our drinks. The server in charge of water came and left again, the server in charge of dinner rolls and butter had been to visit our table, but even though we had a view of the bar, not a sign of our cocktail orders.

A half hour after we had been seated, there were still no cocktails — if they had been shaken but not poured they would certainly be unpalatable by this time — our waitress had not taken any of our food orders, and we had enough. We left some money on the table for the sparkling water and left. Notably, the host did not make any attempt to stop us or placate us in any way. No manager appeared. Since I have gotten no follow up email from OpenTable, I suspect they falsely listed us as “no-shows”.

So, still hungry, we went just down the street to Red Rock Casino Resort to one of our favorite restaurants, Terra Rossa (sister restaurant to Terra Verde at Green Valley Ranch, where one of the Hell’s Kitchen winners is working). We were immediately recognized as regulars and seated. Within 5 minutes we had a plate of cheese and veggies, dinner rolls, and a pair of martinis. The service was impeccable, the food great, and we had the kind of quality dining experience that one expects from a restaurant mentioned in the Michelin guide.

Guess which restaurant we will be visiting again?

By the way, if Italian isn’t your thing and you happen to be out at Red Rock, Hachi is good too.

Maybe We’re Going About this the Wrong Way

We’ve tried writing our elected officials, calling and emailing them, threatening them with the loss of our votes, giving money to progressive organizations, telling the DNC the way things are when they call on the phone, crashing events, and anything else we could think of. Still, it seems at times that the actual constituents are the last people our Congressmen, Congressmice, and Congresscreeps think about.

Clearly there’s got to be another way to get through their thick skulls.

Maybe the problem is that we’re talking to them in their offices, while they are set for business and wearing suits. Perhaps the key is to catch them when they’re sweating in their workout gear.

It’s no secret that the President likes a good game of hoops, but fewer people know about the Congressional P90X club. It’s a group of almost 30 elected officials — so far! — and a big enough deal that Tony Horton himself has come out to lead workouts with them a couple of times. Most important are the bipartisan relationships they are making in the gym: it’s “an opportunity to build relationships that go beyond grabbing a glass of recovery drink together.” More:

And how does trainer Horton feel, knowing that his program’s not just building bodies but building the relationships that guide the fate of the nation?

“I have goose bumps,” he says. “That question gave me goose bumps.”

I can just hear Tony saying that too.

Excuse me, gentlemen, did you remember to log that workout into WOWY for your chance to win up to $1000?

In Closing: 20 worst kids foods; can you afford to stay home when you are sick?; 7 more bank failures yesterday brings us to 106 and counting for the year; Yakuza; and unusual clouds.

One more time

Let me repeat this, nice and slow, so certain Congressmen, Congressmice, Congresscreeps, and other armchair politicians can keep up.

If we can only agree on one thing that requires reform in the entire health insurance industry, it needs to be that pre-existing conditions must go away. Seriously. The use of pre-existing conditions for any and every purpose must be outlawed. This includes but is not limited to using it for underwriting, rate setting, or coverage. This includes conditions such as chronic diseases, any issue related to a past or present pregnancy, genetic conditions regardless of whether they have been diagnosed, prior or current use of medication, or status as a crime victim.

True story, I happened to be looking at my health insurance booklet last week. I noticed that the small print says they won’t charge me higher rates on the basis of genetic testing. Bully for them! I bet a shiny quarter that if I actually had some genetic tests done for the genes that are associated with a higher risk of breast cancer and ovarian cancer and the tests came back positive, they would find a way to not cover me should I actually get breast cancer!

The insurance industry has demonstrated over and over again that they will abuse their covered individuals whenever money is involved. This must be stopped. There is no potential compromise on this issue, except maybe in the minds of certain Congressmice and Congresscreeps. Eliminating the pre-existing condition is far more important than anything else, even the public option. Implementing a “universal”, “socialized“, or mandatory coverage scheme without eliminating pre-existing conditions is a literal sick joke on the American people.

Seriously people, how many stories do we have to hear about ordinary, hard working folks who can’t get their single biggest health concern covered — or can’t get coverage at all — because somebody decided they had a pre-existing condition?

In closing: best thing you’ll read today about the unemployment numbers; get used to high unemployment, by the way; after all, where will the jobs come from?; when the Government is your biggest shareholder, they get to say what your top execs make, and if you don’t like it you can buy them out of their shares!; on pensions and why you are unlikely to get one (ergo, why you need to support Social Security); CNN realizes that the Catholic Church in America is increasingly Latino (way to notice trends there, CNN); and make sure the name on your ticket matches the name on your ID exactly, because goodness knows we can’t trust the TSA to figure out that John S. Smith is the same person as John Samuel Smith. It isn’t like they’re required to have a high school diploma or pass a civil service exam or anything like that.

Paranormal Shorties

How Stimulating: Jobs created by the stimulus bill. Not as many as might be hoped, but it’s a start.

Exactly where are the government economists shopping?: No Cost of Living Adjustment for those on Social Security. Just because you’ve seen prices of bread, eggs, and fuel rising must surely be a statistical anomaly! What did they do to get these figures? Make sure that Vegas and Detroit housing prices were put in the basket?

About time somebody asked: A Federal Judge has officially asked how — exactly — gay marriage is any threat to those of us with heterosexual, traditional marriages in any way shape or form. The lawyer on the receiving end of this question had no good answer.

Bankerpalooza: Bank of America loses $2,200 Million in a single quarter, mostly on bad mortgages and credit cards. Banks and investment companies are robbing us blind, and their executives are taking home huge bonuses based on the money they take from us. Meanwhile, in the real economy, there is “no downside limit for the dollar.” Nuts.

How to read a corporate balance sheet: Start with the footnotes.

What a strange world we live in: Kiko’s House has a more complete rundown, but the week is well summarized by America’s distraction, the balloon boy who wasn’t.

Have a safe and sane weekend, folks.

This is Not a Halloween Post

Sorry it’s been a while since I posted. I’m a little burned out on health insurance reform, and that continues to be the important topic out there.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes.

Maybe when you were a kid you had creative parents. Or at least thrifty ones. A set of black sweats could with just a few accessories or trim turn into a Halloween costume for a ninja, cat, skeleton, or even a vampire. Grey sweats could be the base for a robot costume. White ones could put you on the road to being a ghost or dalmatian or angel or even Princess Leia. Add an oversized orange t-shirt? Future jack-o-lantern costume!

In addition to being relatively cheap and reusable, these costumes were warm enough for late October. It always felt dorky to have to put a winter coat on over my costume. (So, the year I went as Princess Leia outfitted for Hoth? Perfect!)

Don’t go running out to the discount store thinking I’ve just solved your costuming problem.

For some reason, the overwhelming majority of sweats available this year are already pre-adorned with silkscreens, patterns, embroidery, or other crap. Finding plain sweatshirts is harder than finding a new job this season, particularly in kids’ sizes. I’ve been to Target, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, S-Mart, you name it. My net haul is a total of one black hoodie. It was at least on sale for a mere $5.

In addition to thwarting many Halloween dreams, this poses a problem for parents whose kids are subject to uniform codes or “standard student attire” allowing only plain, solid color sweatshirts in one of several school-approved colors — over an “approved” collared shirt, of course. A quick search shows this is not uncommon, and and it is policy in at least one of the 10 largest school districts in the nation. I mention this to any sympathetic store employee I can find, but the fact is that they are limited to what corporate sends them.

I am almost desperate enough to visit one of the crafting stores.

In Closing: banks reducing lending to small businesses, ensuring that we will either all be corporate pwned and/or the Great Recession will not end anytime soon; 5 ways banks rip you off; Elizabeth Warren on preventing banks from continuing to rip you off; and making abortion illegal doesn’t even reduce how many of them happen, but access to contraception does prevent abortion. Stuff that in your so-called-pro-life pipe and smoke it: the only way to prevent abortion is to prevent unwanted pregnancy in the first place.

First Monday in October

The Supreme Court is now in session! I really meant to do a nice post on this. But frankly Pat Edaburn did such a nice job, why should I reinvent the wheel?

So let me close with some nice bits on the economy (Yes, I love Calculated Risk, why do you ask?), some nice bits on health insurance reform, one on how real reform could create jobs (Thanks, Mr. President, I’m a bit ahead of you on that one. Why just now beating the drum?), a couple things on housing, one on the TARP, one on “fetal personhood” (They aren’t. Moving on now), and 10 myths about Iran.

Let the backlash begin

Over the weekend, I happened to hear a piece on NPR about young adults without health insurance. Why didn’t they have coverage? Because they couldn’t afford it. One young lady explained that it was a simple choice between paying for insurance or paying the rent. One Democratic Senator they interviewed agreed that this was a problem, and the answer was the individual mandate, or as I prefer to call it mandatory insurance. How exactly forcing people to buy something they can’t afford solves anything, I don’t know.

And that’s where the public option comes in. The insurance companies have proven that given the chance, they will raise prices and deny coverage whenever possible, or offer “affordable” plans so spartan that they don’t actually cover anything. A public option that anybody can buy into keeps the insurance companies honest, because We The People can say “enough of enriching my **** insurance company!”

We The People understand this. Alas, our Senators do not. They are so beholden to special interests that they have killed the public option, or threatened to load it up with nonsense and requirements and triggers and abortion bans and only lobbyists know what else. Our healthcare debate has become so tortured that other world leaders are asking our President what the heck is going on.

If they pass nothing more than mandatory insurance and a few cosmetic reforms, Howard Dean correctly predicts a backlash.

Not everyone agrees that the public option is dead, but it sure looks to be in critical condition.

If this is what we are left with, let’s just scrap it all. Let’s put together 5 pages of legislation that does the most critical things we need out of health insurance reform:

Outlaw pre-existing conditions in all forms and for every purpose including pricing, coverage, and claims.
Regulate rate increases, perhaps indexed to inflation (CPI increase + 5%?).
Put doctors, not insurance clerks, in charge of making medical decisions.
Change the tax code so that everybody can deduct health insurance premiums even if they don’t itemize and even if they aren’t self-employed.

I think everybody except insurance companies and their purchased members of Congress can agree that these things are essential. If we can’t agree on anything else, let’s not make things worse.

It’s [Still] the Economy….

It’s going to be a long, slow crawl out of this economic pit.

Visualize if you will, two triangles. These triangles meet at the middle, like a bow tie. Please excuse my crude little sketch.

triangles

That middle point we will call Consumer spending. It depends on how much money people have, which in turn depends on whether they have jobs. It also depends on their other expenses and what access they have to credit/loans. Right now the consumer has it rough — unless he or she is in the top 1% of earners. The good news (sort of) is that new unemployment claims are down; the bad news is that those claims are still way too high. For reference, the poverty line on a family of 4 is just under $22,000.

On one side of the triangle, we have housing and banks. We all know real estate prices have plummeted. This drop is even worse if you look at housing priced in gold. I put banks at the top of this triangle because they hold all the cards. They are involved in every mortgage, both good and bad. They effectively control housing in many markets not only through mortgage origination, but through sale of foreclosures and pre-foreclosures. They also directly control consumer credit, and therefore whether people have the ability to spend. Bank lending standards are notoriously tight right now.

The other triangle is more complicated. Insurance is at the bottom because, like housing, it is an expense. In fact it’s a wildly rising expense, having gone up a minimum of 88% in the last decade. This is clearly not a sustainable trend. Because most Americans get insurance through their employers, this impacts whether or not employers can afford to hire; indeed it impacts whether employers can continue to employ. Why employers aren’t begging for Medicare for all or at least a public option I have no idea.

That arrow between banks and employers reflects that they depend on one another. Employers put their money in banks; employers often need loans from banks. This is particularly true of start-up companies that need funds to buy supplies and equipment before they can hire people. Those tight lending criteria I mentioned before also effect employers and impact whether they can be in business.

The points on these triangles are connected, and we won’t see an improvement in consumer spending until something is done about banks, housing, employment, and insurance. They simply have nothing to spend.

Oh Nuts, Another Health Insurance Reform Post

I’m going to start by pointing out that not only are real wages down to levels not seen since 1997, not only is the poverty rate up to a level not seen since 1997, health coverage is down. One in every 20 people who had coverage from their employers last year don’t have it anymore. The only coverage gains were for government insurance programs such as Medicare (hrm, pesky socialism!) Moreover, income hasn’t kept up with reality for the last 40 years. No wonder things seem tight!

So despite the fact that We the People are being squeezed, we get “reforms” that protect the profits of insurance companies, and helpful advice to not need coverage. Nothing is being done to make sure that “coverage” actually “covers” us. Nobody is offering to let Joe and Jane Average buy into government coverage programs that are actually known to work (and work pretty well for the most part).

Open Left is a little behind me on this one: the Democratic Party and its candidates don’t get a dime from me until they start to deliver on some of their promises. In the meantime, every time the Party calls me, I will be sending money to organizations that actually campaign for my interests. Don’t tell me the party has to be “centrist” to get “bipartisan support,” because the majority of people support a very progressive agenda by their standards, and bipartisanship once again means “do it the Republicans’ way.” Don’t tell me to be reasonable, because there is no reason we can’t do this right. And finally, don’t tell me that we can’t get it done in Congress, because they have majorities in both houses.

The party ran on hope and change. It’s time to deliver

In closing: VW’s 240 MPG car will go into production; wouldn’t it be nice if employers followed the law?; a follow-up on different ways to measure unemployment; Levi’s got it together; heart attack rates fall 17% after public smoking bans; the paradox of thrift; send the crooks to prison; scumbag banks; safety tips; and finally, Happy Equinox.

Clive Barker’s Book of Shorties

Flower Power: 10 things you can do to start a community garden.

Obligatory Insurance Items: So you’ve heard that we have 45,000 deaths annually that are essentially from lack of health insurance, right? These are deaths that would have been prevented if people had thought they could afford to see a doctor sooner. We’ve got insurance companies paying huge fines for dropping people who might need care — but only when they get caught and taken to court. We’ve also got insurance companies effective saying that women’s health issues aren’t their problem (covering women who are trying to escape abusive relationships or who once had a C-section might cost money). And our Congressmice want to pander to the insurance companies. Well, most of them anyway.

Bankers hold all the cards: Ok, household and business debt is down. That’s good, right? Well, the reason debt is down is that banks aren’t lending, despite the fact that TARP was supposed to give the banks plenty of liquidity (i.e., money) so they could lend. Their excuse? Nobody “qualified” wants to borrow. Of course they set the qualifications, which used to be ludicrously loose and are now ludicrously tight. Guess what? No real end to the recession without new startups putting people to work, and that’s not happening until startups have access to capital.

On Economic Inequality: Why it’s a problem.

Nevada is a funny place: Aw gee, maybe it’s a bad idea for Medical Assistants to be giving Botox injections and chemo drugs and a bunch of other stuff. Flu shots? That’s ok. On the other hand, I’m kinda looking forward to Penn and Teller’s new TV show.

Some good economic news, for a change: If you actually still have a job, your wages likely went up! What’s more, you’re less likely to lose your job! Of course since 5 states now have unemployment rates of over 12%, that’s not saying a whole lot. Remember, that’s the super-narrow “U3” rate, not the wider U6 number.

Condoms can save the world: It turns out that preventing unwanted pregnancies is 4 to 5 times more cost effective than most “green” technology. But nobody wants to talk about that because contraceptives are “controversial”. News flash, the people who are against contraceptives also don’t believe in global warming, and many of them think the world is ending in their lifetime anyway. Moving on now!

Um, yeah: So I conclude on a related note, 10 worst cars to have sex in.

Happy Saturday, Happy New Year to my Jewish readers.