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POPSWhat? Paying for Prayer Only in America. I'd like to be subsidized for the altar to Zeus I'm building in my backyard. I'll be big enough to ward off the flu for my entire subdivision. It's true. America is getting stupider and stupider.
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POPSWhy Not "Universal Food Coverage, Too"? who only want to insure against the possibility that they'll be hit by a truck. So politicians at both the state and federal level keep passing boatloads of insurance mandates requiring that all insurance plans cover a raft of non-emergency conditions that are expensive to treat -- but whose practitioners have high-priced lobbyists. Insurance plans that force everyone in the plan to pay for everyone else's Viagra and anti-anxiety pills are already completely unfair to people who rarely go to the doctor. It's like being forced to share gas bills with a long-haul trucker or a restaurant bill with Michael Moore. On the other hand, it's a great deal for any lonely hypochondriacs in the plan. Now the Democrats want to force us all into one gigantic national health insurance plan that will cover every real and mythical ailment that has a powerful lobby.
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POPSThe Joker Doesn’t Seem To Understand Competition, So He Will Prohibit It In place of the variety of products that competition would generate, we would be forced “choose” among virtually identical insurance plans. Government would define these plans down to the last detail. Every one would have at least the same “basic” coverage, including physical exams, maternity benefits, well-baby care, alcoholism treatment, and mental-health services. Consumers could not buy a cheap, high-deductible catastrophic policy. Every insurance company would have to use an identical government-designed pricing structure. Prices would be the same for sick and healthy. In this respect, it wouldn’t matter whether or not Congress created a “public option,” a government insurance plan. In either case, bureaucrats would dictate virtually every aspect of the health-insurance business. What Obama says in favor of a public option " as of today, at least " tells us how little he understands competition.
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POPSScroogle: An introduction and micro-review As mentioned in a previous rant, here it is in the flesh. every person I have turned on to this has continued to use it, and with good cause. Its most obvious advantages are that it is simplistic and unbiased. Unlike serach engines from the Google family where the highest bidders appear on the first page. But it doesn't stop there, this is truly anonomous searching and surfing that to a large extent ignore ads, has multi-browser support (support for safari is near completion if not already done) and has a toggle button for when encryption is required. As with all open source stuff if you like it then support it... or don't.
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POPSScroogle review on Cnet.com
"Over 130,000 searches per day are made through the Scroogle site, 10 percent of which use SSL. In an e-mail conversation, Daniel told me that his "ultimate goal is for Scroogle to survive long enough so that the public sector gets the idea that all major search engines should be treated like public utilities." Daniel Brandt seems like a great guy. He's doing this for free--and accepts tax deductible donations on the Scroogle site. However, for users who don't trust Daniel's claims, they may wish to use the anonymizing TOR proxy in parallel with Scroogle. What Daniel's site shows, is that privacy preserving search is possible. While Scroogle doesn't show any ads, if Google offered this service, they could still make a buck on it. Imagine that--making money, while not being evil. Disclosure: I'm paid as a technology policy fellow by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest group that has repeatedly criticized Google for its privacy policies. Furthermore, I i
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POPSDoes Medicare actually have higher administrative costs than private insurers? Way too much information to clip. It goes on to discuss the per person admin cost of medicare vs. private insurance ($509 vs. $453), how much of that is due to the age of medicare patients, and if that should be accounted for as well. Either way, it looks like the estimated savings of a public option plan could be greatly exagerated. Be sure to read the comments as the first comment is by the person who wrote the article being discussed.
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POPSCEO John Mackey's Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare & The Lefty Bloggers' Backlash
Brian Beutler of TPM noted the inclusion of a diet endorsement in the op-ed, and offered a translation of Mackey's manifesto: ""Whole Foods is the solution to all of America's health care woes." Other attackers had less time for mockery, and demanded a boycott: I Will Never, Ever Shop at Your Stores Again Users at the Daily Kos screamed their outrage, other bloggers linking to their hot-blooded denunciations. "Mr. Mackey," wrote one user named DarkSyde, "your extremist views on employee benefits and unionization have Mackey's Response: The WSJ Put Words in My Mouth Three days after the initial op-ed, John Mackey stated on the Whole Foods CEO's Blog that "Whole Foods Market as a company has no official position on the issue." Saying that he had written the editorial under the simple title of "Health Care Reform," Not Off the Hook , declared The Reality-Based Community's Mark Kleiman, referring to Mackey's response: "The title is the least . . .
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POPSSensible and free health care reform that the left can't stand John Mackey is the CEO of Whole Foods. After this article Obamacare supporters started a boycott of Whole Foods. Many on the left like to say the right is opposed to health care reform and would rather do nothing, but it seems to me more like those on the left want a government run system or nothing. They say the right is stonewalling reform, but they seem to be the one's unwilling to give any ground.
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POPSFive Endangered Freedoms In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.
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POPSMy Response to Sen. D. Stabenow (D-MI)
For the most part, my insurance coverage is catastrophic only. My portion of the premiums if I were to cover eligible members of my family would cost nearly 1/4 of my bi-weekly take home pay. Obviously, if a mortgage is only supposed to by 1/3 of your monthly salary, then insurance premiums are nearly the price of a good-sized house. Adding to the 'ranks of the uninsured' is the fact of a 14.2% unemployment rate - of which my husband is one. He doesn't qualify for unemployment insurance so he isn't even counted. So, why are my premiums so high? First, because malpractice insurance for my physicians is totally out of control due to frivolous law suits, huge legal fees and the costs associated with trying even a small case. The judge, clerks, bailiffs, secretaries, etc...all have to be paid - by me, the taxpayer. Because of the need to cover themselves, doctors are forced to order complicated, often if not always expensive and sometimes unnecessary tests and procedures. Ev
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POPSWhy we must ration healthcare More: we should remind ourselves that the U.S. system also results in people going without life-saving treatment — it just does so less visibly. Pharmaceutical manufacturers often charge much more for drugs in the United States than they charge for the same drugs in Britain, where they know that a higher price would put the drug outside the cost-effectiveness limits set by NICE. American patients, even if they are covered by Medicare or Medicaid, often cannot afford the copayments for drugs. That’s rationing too, by ability to pay. Dr. Art Kellermann, associate dean…at Emory School of Medicine…wrote of a woman who came into his emergency room in critical condition because a blood vessel had burst in her brain. She was uninsured and had chosen to buy food for her children instead of spending money on her blood-pressure medicine. In the emergency room, she received excellent high-tech medical care, but by the time she got there, it was too late to save her.
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POPSKnow what your Senator pays for insurance? Compare a 64-year-old Senator with a typical 64-year old Iowan. The Senator has government insurance, and it is outstanding - a different world from what you and I can get - and at a fraction of the price. It's a government-run program, it's one of the best insurance plans in the country, and it's a bargain. Chances are your Senator doesn't think you should have it.
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POPSA.I.G. Sues U.S. for Return of $306 Million in Tax Overpayments In part, A.I.G. says it overpaid its federal income taxes after a 2004 accounting scandal that caused it to restate its financial records. A.I.G. says in part that it is entitled to a refund of $33 million that SICO paid in 1997 as compensation to employees, which it now says should be characterized as a deductible expense. A.I.G.’s lawyers in the case, at Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, referred calls to the company. Asked about the lawsuit, Mark Herr, an A.I.G. spokesman, said Thursday that “A.I.G. is taking this action to ensure that it is not required to pay more than its fair share of taxes.”
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POPSU.S. Financial Aid To Israel: Figures, Facts, and Impact In addition, there is the more than $1.5 billion in private U.S. funds that go to Israel annually in the form of $1 billion in private tax-deductible donations and $500 million in Israeli bonds. Total U.S. aid to Israel is approximately one-third of the American foreign-aid budget, even though Israel comprises just .001 percent of the world's population and already has one of the world's higher per capita incomes. With a per capita income of about $14,000, Israel ranks as the sixteenth wealthiest country in the world; Israelis enjoy a higher per capita income than oil-rich Saudi Arabia and are only slightly less well-off than most Western European countries.
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POPSThen Let Them Pay Taxes If ministers want to use their non-partisan churches to preach partisan politics, then let them get a tax bill and explain to their parishioners why it needs to be paid. It's not as if the US budget couldn't use the extra revenue.
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POPSDemocrats To Commuters - Ride a Bike for 20 Bucks yes - here's the solution to our energy problems. Giving 20 dollar per month per employee tax deductions to businesses. Of course, they are frantically working to make sure that we can't drill for oil precisely where we KNOW it is - because that might actually make sense apparently. But your legs might be worth a double sawbuck to your employers. Not to you of course - the tax benefit will go to your employer. Just one other question - are we now going to have bike tax police to monitor the tax returns of business who claim this deduction to verify that the employees are truly humping themselves into the office? When will the first bike tax deduction scofflaw be hauled before the authorities? Lots of employment benefits here.
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POPSGender can cost you in individual health insurance "Perhaps this is partly because women are more likely to seek preventive care, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. But this should make them better insurance risks. After all, they're proactively working to stay healthy. And isn't that exactly what insurers encourage people to do? "It doesn't make any sense," said Alice Wolfson of United Policyholders, a San Francisco-based advocacy group. "The insurers aren't assessing risk. They're assessing how much healthcare is used, even when it's preventive treatment." A spokesman for the California Department of Insurance said there were no regulations preventing gender-based pricing for individual policies."
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POPSHow to fold Proteins Proteins are complex molecules, and understanding the way they can fold using distributed computing, in the unused cpu load of home computers, can spread the load and research in more detail , both the way proteins fold, and the effects of incorrect folding. A prime example of such an instance in in the proteins known as prions, which with a wrong fold can be one of the contributing factors in Alzheimer's disease. The foldingathome network is the biggest computer in the world, with calculations done by the petaflop
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POPSTop 10 Oddball Tax Deductions Swimming pool. A taxpayer with emphysema put in a pool after his doctor told him to develop an exercise regime. He swam in it twice a day and improved his breathing capacity. Turns out he swam in the pool more than his family did. The Tax Court allowed him to deduct the cost of the pool (to the extent the cost exceeded its added value to the property) as a medical expense because its primary purpose was for medical care. Also, the cost of heating the pool, pool chemicals, and a proportionate part of insuring the pool area were treated as medical expenses.
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POPSGive One Get One - One Laptop Per Child I want one of these.. if I only had $450 USD to spare. You can get one of these (and give one to a child in a developing country) through the "Give One Get One" program up to November 26, 2007.
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