One Big Pothole May 16, 2012May 15, 2012 CAR TIPPING Luann: “I’ve been wanting to send you this clip for days, following your Car Tipping column. This is hilarious (because no one got hurt, of course).” ☞ Really funny. Thanks. (Here’s Wikipedia on the Reliant Robin.) UNEMPLOYED: WHY? Charles Burgner: “Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood says ‘America is one big pothole right now. We need a transportation bill.’ I say, let the unemployed fix our infrastructure. We have 150,000 bridges and 35,000 schools in need of repair. Civil engineers give our entire infrastructure condition a grade of ‘D.’ Meanwhile, millions are unemployed and suffer needlessly for lack of work. Why? Because Washington is morally and ethically bankrupt and nuts!” ☞ As the President said to Congress last year — and to its Republican members frankly determined to see him fail — “Pass the American Jobs Act … right away.” They still could, but will presumably wait until at least the lame duck session in the hope of bringing him down first for “his” failure to create more jobs. WHERE TO GIVE Carl: “Which group should I give money to for Obama’s re-election? There are so many groups / organizations and I don’t want to throw my money away.” ☞ Most political money goes to what will be an ocean of television advertising in the fall. It’s necessary, but the marginal utility is low. If anything, all that advertising will turn people off. The leverage is in giving — now — to the Obama Victory Fund 2012, much of which support goes to paying thousands of field organizers (last I looked, we had 22 offices open in Florida alone) whose main job is to recruit, train, and motivate volunteers to recruit, train and motivate more volunteers — ultimately, each one paid field organizer snowballs into hundreds of volunteers — who will spend the next months helping to register millions of new voters (many of whom were 16 or 17 last time) and to RE-register millions of existing voters whom the Republicans are working so hard to disenfranchise. If we can turn out those incremental voters as we did in 2008, we hold the White House and Senate, take back the House, and keep from losing the Supreme Court for the next 20 years. Click here. I’ll see it as soon as it comes thru and jump through your screen to say thanks (if I’m at mine).
Losses May 15, 2012 TTNP LOSS On paper so far we’ve lost more than half our money on this one — which is no problem, because we only bought it (at $1.77) with money we could truly afford to lose — but at least one analyst thinks the game’s not over yet. He’s initiated coverage of the stock with a target of $4. Read it here. MEMORY LOSS – I Governor Romney has no recollection of the event his prep school classmates find searingly memorable — which may or may not say something about the Governor. (Charles Blow in the New York Times: “There is so much wrong with Governor Romney’s response that I hardly know where to start. . . .“) But however much or little significance you attach to his “prank,” and to its having made no lasting impression on him, you’ve got to admit this song is a heck of a good Sondheim adaptation — “The Demon Barber of Wall Street.” MEMORY LOSS – II Governor Romney was clear about his memory loss. Contrast that with the way the Romney campaign is trying to claim a memory loss President Obama never had. As explained here in the Washington Post: No, Obama didn’t admit he `forgot’ about recession By Greg Sargent The Romney campaign and some on the right are having a grand old time blasting Obama for supposedly saying late yesterday that he ”forgot” about the recession. Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul claims Obama has “now admitted that he’s forgotten about the recession.” This is an absurd distortion. But it’s worth dwelling on, because it says an enormous amount about what this presidential campaign is all about. Here’s Obama’s actual quote, courtesy of Buzzfeed’s video: << It was a house of cards, and it collapsed in the most destructive worst crisis that we’ve seen since the great depression. And sometimes people forget the magnitude of it , you know? And you saw some of that I think in the video that was shown. Sometimes I forget. In the last six months of 2008, while we were campaigning, nearly three million of our neighbors lost their jobs. Eight hundred thousand lost their jobs in the month that I took office. And it was tough. But the American people proved they were tougher. >> The Romney campaign’s response: << It’s not surprising that a president who forgot to create jobs, forgot to cut the debt, and forgot to change Washington has now admitted that he’s forgotten about the recession. In fact, it seems that the President has forgotten that he’s been in office for the last three-and-a-half years. In November, the American people won’t forget. >> What Obama actually said, of course, is that sometimes he forgets about the magnitude of the crisis that hit before he took office and continued into the early months of his term. The irony here is really rich: It’s actually the Romney campaign that is heavily invested in getting voters to forget the magnitude of the crisis Obama inherited. The Romney statement above captures this perfectly. The claim that Obama “forgot to create jobs” is supposed to mean that a net total of zero jobs were created on Obama’s watch. This assertion rests on a metric that factors in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs that were lost while the economy was in free fall during Obama’s first few months in office, before his policies took effect, and blames Obama for those early job losses. Romney has used this metric for months. It’s central to his whole case against Obama. Watch the Obama campaign’s latest ad, and you’ll see that the conflict of job data interpretations displayed above is what this campaign is all about. The ad — like Obama’s comments yesterday — stresses the long view, the awfulness of the meltdown, and the two dozen months of private sector job creation that followed. Romney wants you to forget this recent history. His whole candidacy is based on an amnesia strategy: It is premised on the hope that voters either will forget about the severity and depth of the crisis Obama inherited, or won’t factor it into their decision this fall, and will instead hold Obama responsible for the sluggish pace of the recovery. And yet the Romney campaign is now accusing Obama of forgetting about the recession. Just perfect. HACKED Whirled Pixels worked overtime this weekend getting my page back up. (If you missed yesterday’s column or Friday’s, just click here or here.) Luann writes: “One thing that might be good to mention to your readers, because some browsers hold on tightly to the site pages they’ve cached, would be to delete their browser cache if they think they see any issues. I’ve found Safari to be particularly stubborn about really refreshing a page after it’s been updated.”
All In May 14, 2012May 12, 2012 HIJACKED Someone apparently shut this site down Friday. Smarter people than me are working on it. I’m sorry for any inconvenience, past or ongoing. JPM Two billion dollars isn’t that much to JPMorgan, but a smart person I know thinks it may not be the full extent of the problem. I’m buying puts this morning, but only with money I can truly afford to lose. THE CASE FOR REGULATION If you knew we were putting humans on a course to extinction — or at least misery and mutation — would you want to take steps now to avoid that? Even if you would have to forgo the use of DDT or drive more efficient cars? The preferred response, especially among Republican lawmakers and their corporate patrons, is: I DON’T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT IT. There’s no proof smoking causes cancer. There’s no proof climate change is real. There’s no need for environmental regulation — the Earth is so big, how could 7 billion people spewing effluent into the air and water 24/7 possibly affect it? All this came to mind as I read Nick Kristof’s recent column: “Last year, eight medical organizations representing genetics, gynecology, urology and other fields made a joint call in Science magazine for tighter regulation of endocrine disruptors. . . . Big Chem says all this is sensationalist science. So far, it has blocked strict regulation in the United States, even as Europe and Canada have adopted tighter controls on endocrine disruptors.” ALL IN Daniel: “I’m not sure if the best part about this is the headline itself or the fact that my dad sent it to me: ‘With Dicks in, all 6 WA congressional Democrats favor repeal of gay-marriage ban.’ — Seattle Times reference to Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA).” EVEN THE REPUBLICANS? Andrew Sullivan posted a remarkable Republican strategy memo that suggests they may soon be dropping much of their opposition to equality. Andrew concludes: The last paragraph is, to my mind, the most remarkable. It’s advising Republican candidates to emphasize the conservative nature of gay marriage, to say how it encourages personal responsibility, commitment, stability and family values. It uses Dick Cheney’s formula (which was for a couple of years, the motto of this blog) that “freedom means freedom for everyone.” And it uses David Cameron’s argument that you can be for gay marriage because you are a conservative. BECAUSE, AFTER ALL . . . How radical is marriage equality anyway? Listen to Atlantic staff writer Conor Friedersdorf: Writing in National Review in the hyperbolic language that social conservatives in the gay marriage debate so often adopt, Dennis Prager declares that “nothing as radical as redefining marriage to include members of the same sex has ever been publicly supported by a president of the United States,” and goes on to claim that it is “the most radical social experiment in modern history.” It isn’t uncommon to hear this sort of claim from gay marriage opponents, so it’s worth taking on. Same sex marriage would permit gays to participate in an existing institution that encourages those who enter it to practice sexual fidelity, give emotional support, and provide financial stability. What social experiments in American history were more radical? I got to wondering. Here’s what I came up with . . . There follows a list of 21 items (not even including, as he notes, experiments like communism), and he challenges Prager to tell us which of the 21 he finds less radical than allowing loving same-sex couples civil marriage licenses. It is an interesting exercise.
Checkbook IRA May 11, 2012May 11, 2012 Apologies for posting yesterday’s column late — I forgot to click “publish.” (Duh!) If you missed Fantasy Politics and are already a fantasy football or baseball pro, go check it out. Following up on the marriage equality piece, I commend this prescient January 2009 post by my friend Don George comparing Obama’s leadership style with Lincoln’s: OK, so I went out and bought Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book “Team of Rivals” after it became clear that Barack Obama was trying to emulate Abraham Lincoln in this respect. I’m about 3/4 of the way through this 800 page tome and highly recommend it for new insights into Lincoln as well as possible insights into Obama’s modus operandi. Lincoln was one of the greatest leaders this country has ever seen, but one trait from the book that struck me was that Lincoln was not usually on the cutting edge of the great progressive causes of his day — until the timing was right. He is remembered as the great emancipator and terminator of slavery in the U.S., but he was not a strong proponent of either movement as they were building strength and volume. He joined and then acted when the timing was right. As with any progressive movement there are activists who are agitated and want immediate change. They scream loudly but with little effect. When these big movements eventually do succeed, these people are not usually the ones remembered as much as the leader who actually jumped on the wagon at the right moment and escorted the sought-for change. Take same sex marriage for instance. Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry is associated with this cause since his early efforts in Hawaii in the 1990’s and has been a mover and shaker ever since. However, when gay marriage finally becomes a reality on the national level, it will be the Supreme Court justice or the president who makes it happen who will be remembered best. And most likely that person will not will have been an active gay marriage advocate all along. As they say, timing is everything. Barack Obama is not a strong supporter of gay marriage. It appears that he was a stronger advocate in the past —before he ran for U.S. Senate or for president. Lincoln did the same thing on the most controversial issues of his day. He was a more vocal opponent of slavery years before his run for the presidency, but became more cautious in his rhetoric the closer he got to the presidency and even in his first two years as president. When the time was right, and he knew he could win that battle, he took a very strong position however, against slavery and the rest is history. During this period of being publicly cautious and not revealing their stronger internal positions, both Lincoln and Obama, at least leaned more toward the morally correct position. A good leader cannot get too far out in front of the public. Lincoln himself said that he could not have successfully issued his emancipation proclamation even six months earlier than he did. The public wasn’t ready yet and it would have failed. A good leader while simultaneously not getting too far ahead of the public, uses his office to bring the public closer to his position by educating them and leading them there. Lincoln was great at this with his speeches and letters to the nation. If a leader is too far ahead of the nation, he cannot make that change and fails…. no matter how moral that position is. Think Bill Clinton and “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Two of Lincoln’s contemporaries observed his leadership style. Leonard Swett wanted Lincoln to immediately propose a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. Lincoln refused and replied that he could see a “time coming” for a constitutional amendment and whoever “stands in its way, will be run over by it” but that the country was not ready just yet. Swett later wrote that the secret to Lincoln’s leadership was “by ignoring men, and ignoring all small causes, but by closely calculating the tendencies of events and the great forces which were producing logical results.” John Forney, a news reporter at the time, put it another way. Lincoln was “the most truly progressive man of the age, because he always moves in conjunction with propitious circumstances, not waiting to be dragged by the force of events or wasting strength in premature struggles with them.” I believe this is the way that it is with Obama and same sex marriage at the moment. Now is not quite the right moment for Obama to take up same sex marriage. It would be a premature struggle that would end as badly as Clinton’s trying to lift the ban on gays in the military. However, I bet that when the timing is right, Obama will jump on recognizing same sex marriage at the federal level and it will be historic. The timing isn’t quite right yet. I don’t know when it will be right, but I bet it’s coming soon. WHEELTUG I don’t know why I hadn’t seen this article before, but it is a comprehensive look at WheelTug and its prospective competitors. For those of us who own it (indirectly, via BOREF), it’s interesting stuff — including their estimate of the overall size of the market (26,000 planes by 2020) and their notion of leasing the WheelTug systems at no cost to airlines, but half the realized savings (which WheelTug believes may average $500,000 per plane per year). There is still the significant chance some insurmountable problem will arise (e.g., the prototype won’t work). But if WheelTug systems were one day in the nose wheels of 5,000 aircraft and netting WheelTug (say) $100,000 a year each, that would be a net of $500 million a year. Borealis, at $5 a share with no debt, is valued at $25 million. And thus remains, I think, a remarkable lottery ticket: perhaps a 50% chance it all fizzles somehow and you lose your money. (So only those who can afford to speculate should buy this lottery ticket. And they should use “limit orders,” lest even a small purchase drive up the price they pay.) But if it does work? And there actually were the prospect of $500 million annual earnings from this subsidiary? Or even a small fraction of that? Borealis would presumably be worth a lot more than $25 million. CHECKBOOK IRA Ever wish you could buy rental property with money from inside your IRA? Or make a private loan? Or start a business? It could be a terrible idea, of course. The only thing worse than losing money is losing tax-sheltered money. And it makes no sense if you have $8,000 in your IRA, if only because the fees are so high to set it up. (Much lower for a “standard” self-directed IRA, without the checkbook; but then you can’t pay the plumber when your rental property springs a leak.) But if you have a large IRA and have chafed at the inability to make certain investments within its shelter — a 12% three-year first mortgage on some conservatively valued piece of real estate a friend with bad credit wants to buy, say — you might want to check out folks like Guidant Financial Group (for a checkbook IRA), and Pensco or the (much more reasonably priced) IRA Club. Have a great weekend.
A More Perfect Union May 10, 2012May 10, 2012 If you believe the stuff about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — and the other stuff about the wisdom of separating church and state — then you will defend to the death the right of religious institutions to discriminate against people like me, and predict our eternal damnation, even as you will also defend to the death our right to the same civil protections and responsibilities as anyone else. Yesterday, as you doubtless saw, the President joined Laura Bush, Dick Cheney, Cindy McCain, Meghan McCain, and Steve Schmidt, among others (Steve Schmidt was McCain’s campaign manager, singularly focused on defeating Obama), in supporting marriage equality. He did it respectfully and in wonderfully human terms — as I knew he would, once he decided to do it. Each time we act to advance the rights of our citizens — be it freeing slaves, enfranchising women, allowing gays to visit their loved ones in the hospital, or anything else that moves us closer to equal rights — we perfect our union. So yesterday was a good day. We have much bigger challenges than marriage equality, but most of them require making someone unhappy — whether it’s the wealthy, because we raise their taxes, or the indigent, because we cut their safety net; whether it’s the coal companies, because we restrict their strip mining, or the environmentalists, because we don’t. This gay marriage thing is not be as important as getting the economy back on track or our species on a sustainable path, but it has the virtue of being easy. Letting two devoted people assume responsibility for each other, love each other, pursue their happiness, has no downside. FANTASY POLITICS Full disclosure: I have never played fantasy baseball or fantasy football. Further full disclosure: I am a small investor in the just-now-launching Fantasy Politics. And already I’m confused, because at least for now (because it’s still in beta?) the site is a “.co/” instead of a “.com.” Does this mean it’s a Colombian company? Congolese? Cote d’Ivoire? It’s too late at night to call the CEO and ask; I’m sure all will be revealed with time. Here‘s what USA Today had to say about the venture recently. Your political beliefs aside, would you trade Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry for Rick Santorum and Ron Paul? Millions of people play fantasy sports. So it was probably inevitable that a start-up would push fantasy politics, especially during the season in which the presidential primaries are in full swing. The start-up is appropriately called Fantasy Politics, and the company chose the Launch conference in San Francisco to unveil an online game for political junkies, coming in a week or two. Like a fantasy sports site, you get to draft a team of real life national politicians and pundits (Jon Stewart, Rush Limbaugh, etc.), make trades, and add or drop pols that fall in or out of favor. Each member of your team has a card just like a baseball card. The people behind the company come from across the political spectrum. An adviser, Aaron McLear, was press secretary for former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you’re a Republican you might be reluctant to draft a team of left-leaning politicians; Democrats would feel the same about acquiring GOP politicians. But CEO Aaron Michel compares the game to a Washington Redskins fan playing fantasy football who despite his gridiron loyalties would still happily draft star New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. In fantasy football, you measure results by passing and rushing yards, touchdowns scored and other statistics. The metrics aren’t as clear-cut in politics, of course, an arena whereby the ultimate winners are chosen in the voting booth. Fantasy Politics says it has developed a power score between 0 and 100 that measures “political momentum,” based on 30 different characteristics—polling numbers, campaign funding, Twitter followers, Facebook friends, predictions at Intrade, data from OpenSecrets.org and so on. Intrade, OpenSecrets and Rock The Vote are among the outfits partnering with Fantasy Politics. Like many presidential hopefuls, Fantasy Politics would seem to face long odds. Though many political die-hards read partisan blogs and watch favorite cable channels, the Super Bowl of politics, a U.S. presidential election, only takes place once every four years. But even in off-year election cycles, Michel thinks Fantasy Politics will remain relevant as an educational tool and way to keep folks engaged in the political process. Says Michel, “More people voted in 2008 than watched this year’s Super Bowl yet there is no online gaming experience that matches the billion fantasy sports market played by over 30 million Americans.” If you’re an early adopter, go take a look. Suggestions welcome.
Car Tipping May 9, 2012May 8, 2012 WORST. SOCIALIST. EVER. “If President Obama is truly a socialist,” Ezra Klein writes, elaborating on Floyd Norris’s recent column, “then he’s not a very good one.” For the first time in 40 years, the government sector of the American economy has shrunk during the first three years of a presidential administration. Check it out. VEEP You haven’t started watching? It’s a half hour Sundays on HBO — or anytime, anywhere on HBOGO (free to HBO subscribers) — and wicked, wicked funny. Check it out. BRAVE NEW WORLD Thanks to Shelley Palmer for pointing to this story on AT&T’s plans to wire your home for remote control and your automobile to remind you if you’ve forgotten something before you drive off to work (your wallet? your cell phone? your keys? your charger? it will be looking to detect their RFIDs) . . . and to this one wherein Google has received a license to begin testing cars that drive themselves on Nevada roads. And holy Toledo! Look at Samsung’s new phone. I’d like to point out that when my grandmother was born there were no phones . . . and photographers stuck their heads under a cloth and exploded something that might ultimately produce a very expensive, very stiff, black and white portrait. Samsung’s contraption is a little different. It fits in your shirt pocket; calls whomever you’re texting half a world away when it detects that you’ve lifted it to your ear; shoots 20 color photos in a single burst, then chooses the best one for you. (Oh: and recognizes your friends IN those pictures and offers to send them copies.) CAR TIPPING You’ve probably seen Smart cars. Tiny. I’ve seen quite a few of them parked around the city, but I never saw one in motion before last night when it slowly rounded a curve in front of me as I was about to cross the street. Small as they are — and strong as I am (like bull) — I don’t think I could tip one over when parked. But rounding a curve, if I caught it just right, adding some oomph to its own centrifugal force? I almost surely wouldn’t do this — I’ve never gone cow-tipping, either — but it’s oddly empowering to think that there’s a car on the road today to which I, as a pedestrian, might pose more hazard than it does me.
One Cat’s Tale May 8, 2012March 27, 2017 IF FELLINI WERE FRENCH AND HAD JUST ONE L And were still alive, but why quibble. A deeper two-minute cat YouTube than you might expect, mes amis. JURY DUTY I’m on jury duty. Please use this time to get our national finances in order. Robert Novick: “Piece of cake. Just pick and choose what you wish to do here.” It’s an absorbing, informative (important) exercise.
Mittout Jobs May 7, 2012May 6, 2012 THE MASSACHUSETTS MIRACLE: NOT SO MUCH By now most know that when he was Governor, Mitt Romney took Massachusetts down from 37th in jobs creation to 50th. Paul Abrams compares Governor Romney’s jobs record with that of others — including Jimmy Carter. The results are telling. And what’s fun about the Internet (well, what isn’t fun about the Internet?) is how it opens the world to so many interesting voices. Who is this Paul Abrams? I know a Bob Abrams, a Jason Abrams, a Roy Abrams, a Stefan Abrams, and a Wendy Abrams . . . but this Abrams? He is identified on the Huffington Post simply as “Paul Abrams, last person on Earth not on Facebook.” Sensing immediately that he has organized his life better than I have organized mine, I clicked through to his bio. And assuming it’s all true (can anyone be this smart, well rounded, and self-effacing?), he “received doctorate degrees in medicine and in law, and a B.A. summa cum laude in Political Science & Economics, all from Yale. He is a board-certified oncologist and was editor of the Yale Law Journal. A former intercollegiate swimmer, he enjoys scuba-diving, general exercise, film, theater and plays guitar but, for the benefit of mankind, sings only in the shower.” Oh, and he was CEO of two bio-tech companies, holds 12 patents, and has published 35 peer-reviewed articles. So take a minute to read his thoughts on Governor Romney’s jobs record. (Hint: President Obama’s doing better.) AMEX POINTS TO BA MILES: CAVEATS Friday, I laid out this 50% bonus offer: If you convert American Express points to British Airways miles, you not only add 50% to your total, you’ll be able to use them on any of the One World airlines, like American. William Szczuka: “Yes, BA miles can be used on AA but with a number of caveats: (1) Forget travel outside North & South America. Way too high fuel surcharge. (2) Redemption is based on a per segment basis. If you connect somewhere it will most likely cost more than 25k / Round Trip. (3) Award tickets can only be booked for “Saver” not “Anytime” awards. Now the good part: BA awards are priced based on distance. I can fly round trip to Hawaii from the West Coast for 25k miles instead of 45k miles on American.” John Seiffer: “You can use the BA miles domestically on American – the fees are low and the flights actually cost fewer miles than with American miles. But since AA filed for bankruptcy, there have been so few seats available we couldn’t book a ticket. . . . We also wanted to use them for flights to Japan, but since BA flies there its own self, you can’t use BA miles on AA for that and the fees to use BA miles to Japan were $700 per person. Luckily we had enough AA miles. Some of this $700 was taxes because BA would have routed us through London (from JFK to Japan) and apparently there are more taxes going to Europe – even if that’s not your ultimate destination. But some of it also was fees that BA charged to convert the miles which are much higher than other airlines. My wife and I don’t remember the details since we went on AA due to those costs. However she follows this stuff on two web sites: ThePointsGuy and FlyerTalk. ThePointsGuy has a long thread on how to best use BA miles specifically because they tend to be problematic.” Tomorrow: If Fellini had one L and were French.
Jobs, Fraud, and Reality TV May 4, 2012May 4, 2012 MITT, MITT, HE’S THE MAN . . . If he can’t raise Massachussetts’ job creation ranking, nobody can! Except that as governor he led his state down — from ranking 37th out of 50 to a truly dismal 47th. As Paul Begala notes in Newsweek, “While the country as a whole enjoyed 5 percent growth, Romney’s Massachusetts grew at 0.9 percent.” His cuts to higher education and job training, Begala continues, were especially severe. He assumed public office promising to create jobs — and failed. Now he’s promising to do it again. And promising to keep us safe from our most serious enemy — Russia. (Huh?) And to snatch health insurance from people with preexisting conditions. And to back a Constitutional amendment enshrining discrimination against gays and lesbians. One assumes he doesn’t actually mean that last one — and it wouldn’t pass anyway — but as David Axelrod says, “I’m not so much worried about what he says and doesn’t believe as I am about what he says and does believe.” For example: his belief in further cutting taxes for billionaires — to zero, in the case of the estate tax — and in slashing regulation. (Because what could possibly go wrong when banks or mortgage lenders or oil drillers or coal miners or food producers are unregulated?) I love the way Begala ends his column: The Romney recipe of cutting education and job training, forcing higher fees on the middle class, and protecting the rich from tax hikes didn’t work in Massachusetts. But his approach to health care did. Paradoxically, the best thing Romney did as governor—and it was a great thing—is the one thing he dares not talk about as a presidential candidate. Too bad, because a solid 62 percent of the folks who actually live under Romneycare—and its dreaded individual mandate—say they like it. The Romney record in Massachusetts suggests that Romney’s campaign has it backward: instead of talking up jobs and running away from health care, Mitt ought to be bragging about Romneycare and avoiding scrutiny of the one time his economic theories were actually put to the test. ROOTING OUT MEDICARE FRAUD Here: (AP) MIAMI — Federal authorities charged 107 doctors, nurses and social workers in seven cities with Medicare fraud Wednesday in a nationwide crackdown on unrelated scams that allegedly billed the taxpayer-funded program of $452 million — the highest dollar amount in a single Medicare bust in U.S. history. It was the latest in a string of major arrests in the past two years as authorities have targeted fraud that’s believed to cost the government between $60 billion and $90 billion each year. [And that was presumably going on throughout the Bush years as well. — A.T.] Stopping Medicare’s budget from hemorrhaging that money will be key to paying for President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Attorney General Eric Holder partnered in 2009 to increase enforcement by allocating more money and staff and creating strike forces in fraud hot spots. . . . This enforcement ramp-up seems to have begun early in the Obama administration. Arguably (or should I say argumentatively? too simplistically? but perhaps still with a grain of truth), Democrats try to cut down on fraud and abuse in worthy programs; Republicans would rather just end the programs altogether. Romney’s cuts to education and job training were especially severe. Fees for university students shot up 63 percent as Romney hammered college funding. Robert Karam, former chair of the UMass Board of Trustees, was a Romney backer. But no more. “I think higher education really stood still” under Romney, he has said. Romney even annoyed the business community—his core constituency—by cutting job training, workforce development, and trade assistance. 50% BONUS FOR AMEX CARDHOLDERS Last year, American Express was running a promotion that let you transfer Amex miles (or “points,” as they call them) into Delta Airlines miles with a 50% bonus. Turn 100,000 Amex points into 150,000 Delta miles (say). I did it and it worked fine. Now — until May 31 — they are doing it with British Airways . . . which is significant, because you can use those miles with any of BA’s One World partners — such as American Airlines. I may be missing something in the fine print (quick – tell me if I am!) but it seems to me as though this is a great deal. The only downside — a fee that works out to $6 for each 10,000 points transferred but with a maximum $99 charge — so you could turn 200,000 Amex points into 300,000 BA miles for $99. Click here to set up a British Airways frequent flier account; then to link it to your American Express rewards account; then to transfer points into it with that 50% bonus. If you figure miles are worth a penny each (and in many situations they are worth more), then the $60 charge for converting 100,000 of them into 150,000 of them brings you 50,000 more miles valued at $500 for a net gain of $440. Don’t say this web site isn’t worth its subscription fee. [UPDATE: BEFORE YOU PULL THE TRIGGER, MORE ON THIS MONDAY] HOW TO BE SMARTER, RICHER, AND BETTER-LOOKING THAN YOUR PARENTS Simple: Watch less reality TV, says Zac Bissonnette here on the 700 Club. Have a great weekend.
Rachel: It’s Okay If You’re a Republican May 3, 2012March 27, 2017 Click here or below to watch. It just builds and builds. And if you have time, here’s a bit more in the ongoing saga of the Ryan/Romney budget: Matt Ball: “Paul ‘cut the deficit!’ Ryan refuses to consider even slowing the growth of the Department of Defense budget. Which includes the F-35, as described here in ‘The Jet That Ate the Pentagon.'”