Category: Interesting Tidbits

Well, it’s the end of August, and that means it’s time to consider the latest statistics for poverty in the United States. For the first time since the beginning of the Bush Administration, poverty is down compared to last year. However, if you counted up the number of times words like “but” or “however” were used in the article, you might come away wondering if that was worth mentioning. There are not actually fewer people living in poverty, just a lower percentage of Americans living in poverty; in other words, the poor are still poor and there are just as many of them as last year, it’s just that there are more Americans total. Furthermore, the percentage is still over 12% (just short of one in every 8 people). Another few “howevers”: both the number and percentage of Americans without health insurance is up to record levels; today’s numbers reflect conditions from a year ago, long before most people suspected a mortgage meltdown was on the horizon; and 29 states had median incomes below the national median.

The Washington Post has another round of “buts” and “howevers” to add, charitably calling the report a “mixed picture”. On the first page alone they note that “Although median household income, adjusted for inflation, rose for the second straight year, it has not reached the pre-recession high of 1999,” that increased houshold earnings weren’t because of higher wages — wages dropped by 1% — but rather because more people in the house were working (although apparently the Heritage Foundation chose to overlook that point), that the poorest families had the highest percentage gain (a fifty cent an hour raise is a lot bigger percentage of $6 than of $12), that income inequality is even bigger than last year, that the group for whom poverty decreased was the elderly, and that we still have higher poverty rates than we did during the last recession. Not before, during the recession.

On page 2 of the article, they tackle the health insurance side of the numbers. They do not point out the obvious, that there are more people without insurance than people in poverty — and people living in poverty qualify for insurance programs like Medicaid — which means lack of the ability to pay for medical care is now a huge problem in the middle class. The number and percentage of kids without health insurance grew for the second year in a row to 11.7%. That means pretty much every classroom in our nation has at least a couple uninsured kids on average. On a related note, I’d like to throw in Krugman on the dreaded socialism of schools and health care and The Glittering Eye’s rebuttal (ht to Pete Abel, who highlighted the story in his Center of Attention the other day). Even worse, fewer than 60% of people have employer-provided health insurance at all. This is the most important reason why I feel employer-based insurance is not the answer to our current health insurance crisis, and support at the very minimum a MediKids program, if not full-on Medicare For All.

In the end, these numbers must mean something real, or certain conservatives wouldn’t be arguing things like “but the poor are so much better off now!” with a straight face.

In closing: I’ve been meaning to talk about food and fat for a while, but there’s always something else to talk about, so here’s National obesity rates continue to rise and you can’t blame that on how BMI is calculated, you do have to eat to get flatter abs, diet might be the key to reducing violence, treating mental illness, and raising kids test scores, and so-called convenience foods often don’t save time; yes, Virginia, there are things the government does better than private industry; “The attempt to redefine woman-controlled contraception as “abortion” speaks volumes about both the anti-choice agenda (ban all female control over reproduction) and their understanding that their actual goals are so far to the right that they can’t be spoken out loud.”; this won’t help most of us, but here’s an item on how to fly a private jet for less; and finally, immigration raid on chicken processing plant. Interesting that they went after a relatively small player in the poultry game. Has Tyson cleaned up its act, or is this a political favor?

Cross-posted at Central Sanity.

Part One: What, Me Worry?

The New York Times was kind enough to publish a little item called “A Question Recurs: How Safe Is Las Vegas?”

Please remember, I am one of the 1.5 million people who live in the Las Vegas Valley, and that Las Vegas itself is one of the 50 largest cities in the United States, and 5000 people move here every month. This is before you account for the fact that 16 of the 20 largest hotels in the world are in Las Vegas and that 38.9 million people visited town last year.

Reading the article, I could not decide whether the NYT was saying “eek beware stay away” or “hey, they have things under control.” You wouldn’t know it to watch reruns of CSI on Spike, but there have really only been two recent incidents that have broken into the national news seen: a lone nutcase who opened fire before being taken down by off-duty military tourists, and a hit that happened to involve a bomb on the victim’s car. A former sheriff, who now runs security for one of the casino groups, says:

“We have not had an event here in Las Vegas the equivalent of the events of 9/11 or anything close to that, and that hasn’t been by accident…. With all that said, it’s going to be very, very, very difficult to prevent lone criminals who have the intentions of harming themselves and others.”

Translation: it’s really hard to stop one nut.

Look, folks, I am not worried about terraists attacking here. First, every casino has cameras everywhere (remember? “part of me knows what you’re thinking”?) — and there’s even casinos in grocery stores. There’s also security everywhere, and they have been trained to make sure that the city’s guests have a good and safe time. There are other factors I won’t trouble you about, let me just say that the only coordinated attack that I think has any chance of success is if some truly fringe religious group is involved.

Part Two: Even Steve Liesman doesn’t like the numbers

CNBC was talking about the job creation figures for July, which were released today. CNN nicely summarizes job growth as “weaker” and points out that average hourly wages grew a whole six cents! So much for how raising the minimum wage was going to put employers in a bind. Those who would like to blame the minimum wage hike for these numbers would do well to remember that this is merely the latest in a trend of bad numbers, and that we have actually had a month with worse job creation earlier this year. TheStreet.com has some more details, but if you want the overall picture check out this chart from The Mess That Greenspan Made.

Let’s set aside the fact that 92,000 jobs were created, when we need at least 150,000 to absorb new people in the labor pool. Let’s not get bogged down in the fact that none of those people count as “unemployed” because they were never employed in the first place. And let’s only give a passing nod CNBC’s mentioning “All the July job growth came in service industries, which added 104,000 jobs while goods-producing industries cut 12,000 positions. The government shed 28,000 jobs in July, the first time in more than a year and half that the government has cut hiring.” That’s the second month in a row that “service industries” created more jobs than the headline job creation number! How long until every job requires phrases like “how can I help you”? How can we continue to call ourselves a “superpower” when each month we make less stuff, we build fewer things, and we spend more time giving one another “service” using products made somewhere else?

An hour after the figures were released, CNBC’s Chief Economist Steve Liesman asked whether the job creation numbers in the financial services industry accounted for the 7000 employees of American Home Mortgage for whom today is the last day of work. Frankly, he sounded skeptical of the numbers overall. Could it be that he’s beginning to suspect that the employment and job creation numbers are just as rigged as the inflation figures?

In closing: the things dads can teach their kids include financial literacy and lockpicking; remember me mentioning that the Canadians had sent an expedition to claim the North Pole? Well Russia sent a submarine to claim the land under the ice cap, so the Stalemate for Santa is on!; and finally, beating your wife is not a Christian value! Submitting to “authority” and having the crap beaten out of you are different things, and any man who can’t see that does not deserve to have a wife. Or, to paraphrase Karl Cullinane, “You do not say ‘my wife’ or ‘my child’ in the same way you would say ‘my shovel.'”

Today I got one of those coupon booklets in the mail. You know the sort of thing. I was flipping through it when I saw this:

Menopause, the Musical

The rest of the page informed me that someone from the local paper wrote “Dollar for dollar, it’s the best show in town.” At this point, it is worth pointing out that the next line on the page is “Free Las Vegas Hilton Buffet! See Reverse Side for Details!”

Apparently this is for real, but I bet you’ll never ever see a high school production of it.

Before I get started, I’d like to mention that I don’t bring in big bucks. In fact, to date I have not taken in a dime for this site. Now then. I have had some requests for Japan and Japanese language links. Some of these links have been posted before, nevertheless it is handy to have them in one post. You’ll find them by clicking the read more link. If this is not your cup of tea, please scroll down for something completely different. Thank you for your patience!

Continue reading Japanese Data Dump

Like all websites, I would be nowhere without referrers: search sites that have indexed my work; communities where I am a member and have a listed profile that includes my web address; sites that have added me to their link-lists, with or without reciprocation; and most importantly, people who have taken the time and effort to link to me and say “Check This Out.”

Today I would like to take a few minutes to say “Thank You!” to some of the people and websites without whom most of you would never have known I was here.

This includes — in no particular order! — Flea at One Good Thing, Cynthia C at Shorty Stories, Jill at Brilliant At Breakfast, all my colleagues and co-authors over at Central Sanity, the wonderful people at The Moderate Voice, Maya’s Granny at her eponymous site, NYC Educator at his self-named site, Robaato Bureedi, er Robert Brady at Pureland Mountain, Elisa Camahort once, twice, three times, four times! (busy lady!), Bradford Plumer, and finally (at least for today’s list) Dean Paxton of Paxtonland. With a list like this, you will have to forgive me if I have forgotten somebody.

Thank you!

Go check them out!

I have been asked to become a regular contributor at Central Sanity. You may know them from my link list at the right. I consider this a great honor, and I have accepted the offer. Have no fear, I will continue posting here as well, particularly those items that just don’t fit well over there. I will also cross-post when appropriate. Many thanks to Pete Abel and everyone else at Central Sanity for letting me join them.

The events I will describe are true. If WAMU would like to comment on this entry, their representative should contact me. Once I have verified the origin of such comments and the authority of the representative to send such comments to my satisfaction, I will gladly post their reply in an update to this post.

I have been a customer of Washington Mutual Bank for about 5 years now. I have had business and personal accounts; I have had accounts in two states. The nice people at the Harbour Pointe Banking Center have been very helpful, in particular a young man named Kyle.

However, since I have moved back to Nevada, it is a good idea to change my banking accounts to Nevada accounts. We have been through this before, and do not want to hear things like “I’m sorry, there’s a 5 day hold on your paycheck because it’s from out of state” or “I’m sorry, I can’t process a cashier’s check in that amount because you have an out of state account.” Problems like this are why we changed from
Bank of America 5 years ago. Well, that and charging me $0.25 to talk to customer service “too many” times and clear up a problem caused by their error.

So this morning I assembled all the various documents I would need to open a new checking account at the WAMU branch just 5 minutes away. To my delight, they were actually open a few minutes before their stated opening time of 9 AM. Within moments we were talking to a customer service representative, one of those folks we used to call a “bank teller”.

This representative told us that no, there was no need to open a new account. Not only would there be no problem continuing to bank using our old account, there would be no problems with checks and so forth (not even with the pizza guy? I think not!), but opening a new account would in essence be starting “a new banking relationship” and they would have to treat us as a brand new (implying “untrustworthy”) customer. We were furthermore told that the only services she could not do for us right there on the spot was address changes and ordering checks.

Ok, now remember that after a cross country move, two things I desperately need are to change my address with the bank, and get checks that reflect that address.

To do those things, all I need is to make a “quick call to customer service.”

I’ve had the occasion to talk to customer service over the years, and “quick” is never a word I would use to describe the experience.

But nevertheless, I went home and poured a cup of coffee and grabbed the telephone. It was now about 9:15 AM. After navigating an arcane voice-routing system, punching in my account number, giving it a phone password I didn’t even know I had, it insisted on giving me my balances before offering me any opportunity to speak with a human. Hint: just because a particular kind of information is commonly needed doesn’t mean everybody needs it every call before dealing with every problem.

I finally got to talk to a human. As nearly as I can tell, this human was Charlie Brown’s teacher. If calls really are recorded, some supervisor will hear me say multiple times “I’m sorry, I can’t understand what you are saying.” All I could hear was a woman’s voice and lots of background noise. It was as if she’d called in from one of those trendy restaurants that are way too loud so patrons will eat and leave right away. I finally told her that something was clearly wrong and I would call again.

I hung up and called again. Again the punch this number and that and listening to my balance which has not changed in the last 5 minutes and don’t I want my 5 most recent transactions…. At least these calls are toll free. For me anyway; who knows what this costs them every phone call.

Human Two was at least understandable. I explained that I needed two things today, and the first thing was to change my address. She told me that was fine, but it would take 30 days for the address change to go into effect, and in the meantime I would not be able to do things like order checks.

Um, that’s the second thing I needed to do.

She replied: Oh, If I need this done right away I could do it at my branch bank (where they just told me I need to call customer service).

She continues: Or I could do it instantly online, and then call her back to order checks.

So let me get this straight, if I change my address with customer service it takes 30 days, but if I do it instantly online then I have to order checks from customer service?

She replies: No, you can order checks online too.

Ok fine thanks for your [lack of] help I’ll go do that now. Click.

But wait! There’s a punchline!

By now it was past 9:30, not quite 9:45. I calmly walked over to my computer and logged into my online account. After a minute or so, I found the “change address” option buried in the “change personal information” section. I punched in my information and clicked the box marked “NEXT”.

A moment later, my computer screen informed me that this service was not available at this time, and that I should call customer service.

That’s when I screamed in frustration.

I spent the rest of my morning shopping for a new bank. I’m going with one that has competitve products/rates, and posts the phone numbers of individual branches on their website. When I called, the phone was picked up on the second ring by a human. No voicemail tree, no requests for my account number (which I don’t have yet), no press-this-to-get-that. Within 30 seconds I was talking to a New Accounts Specialist who told me all about the features of the various accounts they offered, asking helpful questions to eliminate products that would not suit my needs. She told me about branch locations, and pointed out that as a full service bank they had additional offerings such as investments and mortgages. WAMU could learn a lot from Colonial Bank.

In closing: It’s ok for a General to say Iraq must live with “sensational” attacks, but it wasn’t ok for John Kerry to talk about reducing terrorism to “nuisance” levels, go figure; The FDA knew about food that could kill us and did nothing; eventually I will get around to my own thoughts on the 9th Amendment; welcome back to the ’50s, a radio station is ditching traditional commercial spots in favor of sponsored hours of programming; fossil filter, fossilized rain forest and mystery fossil turns out to be a giant fungus; bad legislation on the horizon, “Let’s sum up. If the Spy Act become law, hardware, software, and network vendors will be granted carte blanche to use spyware themselves to police their customers’ use of their products and services. Incredibly broad exceptions will probably allow even the worst of the adware outfits to operate with legal cover. State attempts to deal with the spyware problem will be pre-empted and enforcement left up almost entirely to the FTC”; here’s a list of 50 places where you will probably never eat; must read item, 10 steps to fascism; clever wording, Muslims show only partial support for Al Queda rather than no support at all; I hate to agree with rightwingnews.com, but he’s right…. er, correct; someone who may have figured out why free trade isn’t a panacea; turnabout, a religious group says that if they want God in their personal reproductive issues, they will ask Him!; if you ever thought that what you got at the end of the fast food line didn’t look like what you wanted, you need fast food ads vs reality; a must bookmark item, how to reach a human in a voicemail maze and finally, How to Prepare for an Alien Invasion.

This morning whilst reading the news I came across this CNN item entitledWoman Allegedly Advised by Geese Not Guilty in Tot Death.

Yes, you read that correctly. Granny has apparently been in the mental hospital before, and one fine day she killed her grandchild with a chef’s knife. “Authorities said Pappas had told her son she had been receiving spiritual advice from geese flying over his house, where she was living,” according to the article.

Yes, Geese.

Now think about this a minute:

HONK! HONK! HONK!

“Yes! Of course, I see it now! Thanks!”

Make no mistake. This woman is clearly insane, and clearly needs to be in the mental hospital for a good long time; what a shame that she had to kill somebody for that to happen.

But what about charges for the parents who left their toddler in the care of a woman who had been admitted to a mental hostpital 6 weeks previously and gets spiritual advice from geese?

If you are looking to read something with a bit more substance, may I recommend The Nation’s article “The Care Crisis.”

According to the word experts over at Merriam-Webster:

Universal: 1 : including or covering all or a whole collectively or distributively without limit or exception; especially : available equitably to all members of a society [universal health coverage]

Now look at that. They even use the specific example of universal health coverage being available — equitably — to all members of a society. So if you have a problem with my definition of universal health coverage, please take it up with them. Very handy, those clever people at Merriam-Webster. The people over at the Associated Press are by comparison not so clever.

They printed an article today entitled California Governor calls for universal [healthcare] coverage . The people over at the International Herald Tribune make the same mistake! This is yet another one of those plans that calls for every citizen to get coverage or face the consequences; larger businesses will be required to buy policies for employees; the 80% of California businesses that qualify as “small” will be exempt; if Joe Average does not have coverage, he will be forced to buy it; if he cannot afford it the state will darn well help him buy it. In fact, the Chicago Triubune is most accurate when they call it Mandatory Health Insurance.

At least this program would cover all children under a statewide program. Remember, kids don’t have employers. But otherwise, this isn’t universal. One is forced to wonder whether the program will cover students until they finish high school, or whether 18 year olds will have to buy a health insurance policy.

First, 80% of employers are not required to get with the program at all. Think about that; only one out of every 5 employers will be effected by this in any way shape or form. The employees of the overwhelming majority of businesses are still left to fend for themselves. They are in good company, in the same boat as every contractor, every unemployed person, every self-employed person. All of these people will now be required to pay through the nose for an individual health insurance policy.

Second, although we must give credit for the fact that “insurers would not be able to deny coverage based or age or pre-existing health conditions”, that does not mean that insurers will be required to charge affordable rates. Nor does it mean insurance companies can’t charge a premium to cover those with chronic health conditions. The very people who would be most helped by an actual universal health coverage program will instead find themselves bled dry by premiums.

This plan may indeed cover everyone, but it will not be equitably available. It isn’t universal, unless of course you’re a kid. The biggest risk of this program and others like it is that someday, it will be used as “proof” that universal coverage does not work, when in fact all it proves is that forcing customers to participate in an unfair market does not work.

In closing: a net gain of 167,000 new jobs in December, which sounds great until you realize that the majority of them require an specific degree you don’t have and as for jobs you could get, “Factories, however, cut 12,000 positions and construction companies eliminated 3,000 jobs — casualties of the souring housing market and the struggling auto industry. Retailers shed just over 9,000 slots” (more on where job openings are here at least locally speaking); 2007 expected to be warmest year on record but remember that some people still think global warming is just a crackpot theory; What Does 200 Calories Look Like; is there a Zombie next to you right now?; Terry Jones on the value of human life in the War on Terror; and ok, you’ve finally got your dang iPhone, along with a MacTV. Where have I seen that before?

There have been a few changes here at ShortWoman. One of them, the new look, is obvious. One of them, the new server, is not.

One side effect of these changes is that some static links may have become mangled in the migration. We regret any inconvenience and/or 404s this may cause.