SOTU

This speech is ridiculous. That is all.
Highly partisan, more like a campaign speech that a stateman's address.
Pot shots at the GOP, SCOTUS, the last president...real nice.

Hot race in snowbound MA

UPDATE: Wonder of wonders! HE WON!!! "I drive a truck, and I am nobody’s senator but yours."

A snowstorm isn't keeping the pols inside up in MA....
Republican State Senator Scott Brown is giving Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley a run for her money--in fact, he's leading in several polls. Tonight's results should be interesting.
The race has generated a groundswell of GOP support from across the country, leading to millions being donated to Brown's campaign coffers in recent weeks. Republicans in Massachusetts are feeling confident going into today's voting, and reports on the ground look good.
This is my site for tracking politcal news and elections. If you haven't visited, you must. It will become a daily addiction.

Haiti

How to help, by Margaret.
I dated a guy (david, for long time blog readers) who worked for Homeland Security doing immigration law. Soon after we first started dating, he was assigned to Haiti for a month to help out with the office down there (processing immigration requests and so on). We exchanged emails pretty often, and he would tell me about parts of the city that no one was allowed to enter after dark, even with an escort (read: someone armed.). Then he would also tell me about after-work drinks in the swanky hotels.

A true two nations perspective.

This was written a few years ago, but I have found it to be one of the best articles on Haiti (or any country) that I've read. There is also the book Mountains Beyond Mountains, which talks about Dr. Paul Farmer's efforts to provide health care and education to the poor of Haiti (it has since expanded to other parts of the world).

Death and Taxes

I don’t normally watch the evening news. I’m around news all day, I read news websites, and by 6:30 I can probably give you a detailed summary of all the major events of the day with my eyes closed.


But, I was watching CBS evening news the other night (I was waiting for Jeopardy!), and there was a segment on obesity. The normal ideas were trotted out: more gym classes, taxes on “junk food”, all healthy foods in the cafeteria, etc.


I have several problems with this, not just because I like my Diet Coke, but because I needed that “junk” food when I was in high school. I needed as many calories as I could stuff into my body, because CF patients are extremely malnourished. Sure, we can wear a 00, but we can also look like African refugees. Not a good look. Coke machines, and the candy sold in the school store, helped my weight more than any apple or orange would have. The emphasis wasn’t so much on health food as food that will make me bigger.


Now I realize that CF kids are in the minority. But what about diabetics, who drink Diet Coke instead of juice? Most juices are packed with sugar. I don’t drink juice anymore unless I absolutely have to—as in, it’s the only choice at a hotel breakfast buffet. I’d much rather have coffee, milk, tea, or diet soda. Fruits send blood sugar levels sky-high. So what’s often considered “junk food” can be necessary food for a lot of people.


So, I think increasing these taxes, or banning these foods in schools, is an awful idea for a lot of the population. If you don’t want your kids to eat it, don’t give them pocket money. If they have pocket money in high school, from a job or whatever, they can make their own decisions. If theychoose junk food, that’s their choice. It doesn’t affect anyone but them.


The CBS story also likened taxing junk food to taxing cigarettes. Of course, the big difference is that cigarette smoke harms other people directly. I love taxes on cigarettes. My favorite cigarette tax story is from Cleveland—there, they use the money to fund arts programs. (We’ll forget about the fact that a lot of artists—including, lamentably, singers—smoke. At least they’re funding their own jobs.) But if you decide to eat a Big Mac every day for the rest of your life, that doesn’t directly affect me.


The argument can be made that it will affect me, indirectly, in rising health care costs. But everything we do can, indirectly, affect others. For example, I don’t think there should be seatbelt laws requiring adults to wear seatbelts. If you’re 18 or 25 or 62, and you decide that you don’t want to wear one, you can face the consequences of those actions. But that’s your choice. Part of living in a free society is the ability to make these choices.


My friend Richelle wrote a post about a Senate proposal that would tax indoor tanning. Now, while I think that indoor tanning—really, any tanning where the purpose is to turn yourself the color of a rotisserie chicken—is ridiculous (because, yeah, we need more cancer-causing agents in our lives), especially in Ohio in February, I don’t think the tax would serve as a deterrent. As my friend Candi noted, tanning is relatively cheap—packages can be bought for around $20. A 10% tax on $20 isn’t a very large deterrent. And, again, it’s a personal choice—one that I happen to think is inane, but hey, if you want skin cancer, that’s your call.


I draw the line here—things like cigarettes, that affect other people, should be taxed, banned, whatever. If you want to smoke at home, or in a smoking room (a la Titanic, or a British men’s club), sure, go ahead. But I (especially I) do not need, or want, to breathe in your toxic smoke. Sorry. So government can tax the hell out of it.


Tanning, junk food, etc.: These are personal choices. They do not affect me or other people. You are not clogging my arteries by eating those pounds of Doritos. And, like I stated above, some people need high-calorie, high-fat foods. Some people need diet drinks. I know of no people who need cigarettes for better health.




(NOTE: I’m tacking this one at the end in case I get some readers who aren’t regulars. Abortion is not a personal choice. You are directly killing another human being. Case closed.)

1001 Things

(stole this from Jane...well, most of it. Some ideas are mine, and I've eliminated things that don't apply to me at all. Like med school :)) Red are things I've done

January 1, 2010 – September 28, 2012

 1. Run a 5K (I've walked one) 

2. Run a 10K

 3. Run a ½ marathon 

4. Run a full marathon 

5. Lose 30 pounds 

6. Once a week, jot a note about something that makes me happy

 7. Leave a postcard inside a PS book

 8. Find a church I love 

9. Attend church 100 times 

10. Be credit card debt free 

11. Read the bible cover to cover (in the process...)

12. Grow fresh vegetables in my yard

 13. Fall hopelessly in love 

14. Donate 100 hours to charity each year

 15. Use my passport at least once 

16. Refresh my French to conversational ability 

17. Take a self defense class 

 20. Organize iTunes 

21. Organize old photos and get everything digitized 

22. Visit 6 new states 

23. Cut down a Christmas tree 

24. Cook a complete meal once a month 

25. Snail mail one card a week to various people

27. Clean out and organize garage 

28. Maintain garden 

29. Tip a server 100% 

 31. Find a mentor and work with him/her

 32. Get all A’s  (1st semester,sophomore year of college)

33. Ride in a hot air balloon

 35. Make bread from scratch

 37. Try yoga 

39. Watch 26 movies that each start with a different letter, A-Z that I have never seen before (this is way cool)

 40. Take 6 weekend trips to places I have never been before

45. Take a dance class 

48. Donate blood (can't, as we know my veins are AWFUL)

49. Build a headboard 

50. Purchase furniture I like

 51. Hang paintings I like  

53. Find out if I’m a CF carrier  (yes, I am. :-D)

54. End 1001 days with every article of clothing in my closet and drawers actually fitting

 55. Sleep under the stars 

56. Find out my blood type 

58. Pay for a random table’s meal 3x 

60. Go to Oktoberfest 

61. Vote in all major elections  (it's part of my job!)

62. Volunteer for a political campaign (again, part of my job)

63. Spa day – mani, pedi, facial, massage, blowout 

64. Go on a picnic

 65. Build a snowman 

66. Kiss in the rain (well, OK, snow)

68. Eat raw food only for 2 weeks

 69. Try rockclimbing 

70. Kiss under mistletoe

72. Develop relationship with all professors 

 74. Visit San Francisco 

75. Visit Virginia Beach

 76. Kiss someone I care about at midnight on New Year’s Eve 

77. Maintain blog as history of my life 

78. Finish thinking of 101 things I want to do...

And here are my additions:

79. Read all of Edith Wharton

80. GET my passport

81. Go to Europe

82. Finish my MA

The last 10 years...

 I think the last decade of my life may have been the most eventful ever. I mean, short of getting married and having kids, I can’t imagine doing more in 10 years than this.
So here’s a round-up:

• Graduated from high school (2000)
• Graduated from college (2004)
• The transplant (duh!) (2005)
• 1 ICU stint (hopefully the first and last)
• Travel! Florida (2000), D.C., NYC (including New Year’s Eve in 2003), Chicago (2006), Duck, N.C. (2008), Houston/Galveston (2009), Rochester, NY; Wilkes-Barre, PA (King’s College debate tournament), Cleveland, Cincinnati, Wheeling (Oglebay resort), Muncie, IN (Ball State debate tournament), Michigan…
• Worked on the 2000 and 2004 Presidential campaigns
• My brother graduated from high school and college (OSU), my sister graduated from high school and started at Capital
• Theater!
• Reviewed in the Dispatch twice: Verdi Requiem in April of ’01, and Parade (see sidebar for that one)
• Got my first acting paycheck
• All-State Choir, Cleveland 2000
• Sang the Christmas section of Messiah, as well as “Worthy Is the Lamb” and “Hallelujah!”
• Christmas Festival singing at Cap
• Initiated into Sigma Alpha Iota (and was a founding member of the chapter at Capital)
• First serious relationship (college)
• Engaged (for awhile…)
• Moved out of my parents’ house
• Got my first car (1995 Honda Civic EX)
• My first real job—Swim Club concession stand in 2001.
• First real real job—LSC intern, fall of 2004
• Port put in
• The Bionic Ear appears (May 2006)
• My first Coach bag. J (Hey, had to include that)
• Got on the Mac Wagon
• Grandma and Pa celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary
• Mom and Dad celebrated their 30^th wedding anniversary
• Baghdad fell on my 21^st birthday
• 9/11
• Solo trip to Pittsburgh with Mel
• Accepted to Franciscan University’s MA Theology program
• Joined St. Patrick
• Started this blog! (2006 and counting…)
• Got my driver’s license (2000, after high school graduation. Mom made me wait.)
• Fell in love with Jane
• Read many, many, many books
• Saw Phantom on Broadway (and thus fulfilled a lifelong dream)
• More theater? A smattering: Les Miz, Beauty and the Beast, Avenue Q, The Producers, Spamalot, Wicked (Columbus and Chicago), The Light in the Piazza, Chicago, The Lion King, Into the Woods, Street Scene, Macbeth, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Master Class, 12 Angry Men
• Heard Itzhak Perlman play Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the Columbus Symphony. Brilliant.
• Lots, lots, lots of ballet. Samples: Jewels, Dracula, The Great Gatsby, Aladdin, Nutcracker, Stars and Stripes, Night moves, 30x30, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet
• I actually learned to like opera!
• Saw La traviata, La boheme (Opera Columbus) and began collecting Renee Fleming CDs.
• Worked with the Secret Service
• Toured the White House
• Went to the top of the Empire State Building
• Heard Mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral
• Went shopping on the Miracle Mile
• Rode the NYC subway (one word: Ugh)
• Visited Ellis Island and found my great-grandfather!
• Attended my first black tie dinner

Dinner with the Chief Justice

A fun story for your Tuesday:

October 26, 2009, 10:05 AM

Waiter, There’s a Gavel in My Soup

By GAY TALESE

My writer friend Sidney Offit and I were dining at Lumi’s on 70th Street and Lexington Avenue on Saturday night with our mutual friend, the enduringly beautiful 78-year-old modelCarmen Dell’Orefice; and seated next to our table, quietly engaged in conversation with his wife, Jane, while sipping red wine, was the chief justice of the United States, John G. Roberts Jr.

Although it was raining heavily outside — so much so that the Yankees‘ playoff game at the stadium was called off — Lumi’s restaurant had few cancellations, and every table was occupied when the chief justice and Mrs. Roberts arrived to receive, as is standard in New York, barely a nod of recognition from the onlookers and not a trace of effusion from the waiters, most particularly those who lent service to the justice. It is one of those clichés in Manhattan to remark upon the restaurant population’s indifference to celebrities of any kind, ever.

We at our table, true to form, paid the Roberts couple no mind, although after two hours of pretending not to notice them, we were certainly respectful (and grateful) when, as they stood to leave, the chief justice himself said: “Excuse me, but we cannot possibly finish this wonderful bottle of wine, and I wonder if you’d like to try it.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Chief Justice,’’ I replied, and then added my own admonishment (how brazen of me!) “… but only if you’ll sign the label.’’

Unhesitatingly, Chief Justice Roberts removed from his jacket pocket a ballpoint pen, and scribbled on the label his name: “John Roberts.’’

After they had left, and we were about to leave, I handed the autographed (half-empty) bottle to Carmen. She was pleased to carry it home. On the label read “Chianti Classico 2005,” from Villa Mangiacane.

“It’s from Firenze,’’ she explained, adding that this is the region of her ancestry. She had a renowned uncle from there, she went on to say — Enzo Dell’Orefice, a voice coach who tutored Caruso.

Scary much?

Learning about presidents is one thing.
Singing this about a president is another.
So glad I'm not in school anymore.

SOHC 17: 10 ways we beat Europe and Canada

h/t Corner:

1. Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.

2. Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians. Breast cancer mortality in Canada is 9 percent higher than in the United States, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher, and colon cancer among men is about 10 percent higher.

3. Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries. Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit from statin drugs, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease, are taking them. By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons, and 17 percent of Italians receive them.

4. Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians. Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate, and colon cancer:

• Nine out of ten middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to fewer than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).


• Nearly all American women (96 percent) have had a Pap smear, compared to fewer than 90 percent of Canadians.


• More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a prostatespecific antigen (PSA) test, compared to fewer than one in six Canadians (16 percent).


• Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) have had a colonoscopy, compared with fewer than one in twenty Canadians (5 percent).

5. Lower-income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report “excellent” health (11.7 percent) compared to Canadian seniors (5.8 percent). Conversely, white, young Canadian adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower-income Americans to describe their health as “fair or poor.”

6. Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long—sometimes more than a year—to see a specialist, have elective surgery such as hip replacements, or get radiation treatment for cancer. All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada. In Britain, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.

7. People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and British adults say their health system needs either “fundamental change” or “complete rebuilding.”

8. Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the “health care system,” more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared with only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).

9. Americans have better access to important new technologies such as medical imaging than do patients in Canada or Britain. An overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identify computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade—even as economists and policy makers unfamiliar with actual medical practice decry these techniques as wasteful. The United States has thirty-four CT scanners per million Americans, compared to twelve in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has almost twenty-seven MRI machines per million people compared to about six per million in Canada and Britain.

10. Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations. The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other developed country. Since the mid- 1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to U.S. residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined. In only five of the past thirty-four years did a scientist living in the United States not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.

Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and care for the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries.

The link is here.

SOHC 16: Mitt on MA's program

Mr. President, What's the Rush? (USA Today op-ed by Mitt Romney)

Sounds like he's setting up to be our standard bearer, no?

:)

SOHC 15: End of Life Care

Charles Krauthammer, during Special Report: (emphases mine)

Byron talked about Obama's answer about the 100-year-old woman who... had the pacemaker, and he said, well, perhaps she should have had a painkiller.

Well, that not only is chilling, it is a revelation of abysmal ignorance on the part of the president. You don't treat an arrhythmia with a painkiller.

This is a guy who wants to run one-sixth of our economy in health care, and he doesn't know the most elementary things about it.

But on the larger issue here having to deal with end-of-life care, I looked at the language [in the House bill]. There is no requirement that you be counseled, because it would be inherently coercive. If you're dying and a government official shows up and says I want to discuss options including your death, that obviously is going to be kind of a coercion.

But the idea that it is important to do it [end-of-life counseling] years in advance is nonsense. We heard Senator Grassley say this stuff ought to be decided when you're 50 and not when you're 80. What doctor, when he has an 80-year-old with pneumonia, will look at a document signed 30 years earlier and say he [the patient] decided he didn't want to have extra treatment, so I'll pull the plug?

The idea of advanced directives (as it is called in the [medical] lingo) or living wills are determinative, is absolutely false. It almost never applies. It only [applies] if you are in a coma or demented, and even in those cases, it's the wishes of the family which almost always override everything in writing.

The revolution in Iran will be lead by...

Brutus Buckeye? 

School Funding 101

OK, I am NOT going to go into the crazy, convoluted, insane state that is current school funding in Ohio. Not gonna do it. 

However, I am going to give you one basic distinction:

**LEVIES are passed by local communities. 

**The STATE can allocate certain amounts of General Revenue Funding (GRF) to schools. Right now, schools and medicaid make up about 70% of Ohio's budget.

**THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (aka Congress) can also allocate money for funding. 

Here's the thing--when you get it from the state, or the feds, it is much, much more likely to have strings attached. I.e, here is federal govt. money, but it can only be spent on reading/math/ gifted/early childhood/whatever education. 

Furthermore, as we are discovering--it is really, really hard to get "equitable" school funding without screwing one or more districts. You're either being Robin Hood, or Robin Hood in Reverse. 

So--if you want money for music, etc.--you need to work for local/state levies to get that funding. The local level is the best. 

Oh, and note to those who have "I want the military to have bake sales to buy bombers" bumper stickers--appropriations at the federal level are not subject to balance budget statutes (like they are in Ohio, for example).  But yes, generally, the DOD (Department of Defense) gets more money than the Department of Education. It helps that the preamble to the Constitution specifically states that "provid[ing] for the common defense" was (is) part of establishing the country in the beginning.

 

So--summary: 

Do not blame the feds when people in your district vote down levies. 

AND

If you would like more money for education, then be prepared to say where other areas should be cut. Roads? Health care? Human services? You pick. 

What does volunteering have to do with college?

Um....I don't think a lot. But apparently our fearless leaders do. (warning: Sailor-like language)
Now before I get all sorts of angry comments, I'm not against volunteering. Volunteers do great things. I volunteer at church, for Lifeline of Ohio, etc. The world needs volunteers.
That said--the genesis of volunteering is that you are doing it freely. You do not expect tangible reward. You're doing it because it's important to you. Forcing kids to volunteer takes that entire angle away.
Second--why should volunteering have anything to do with college? College scholarships should be tied to one thing--grades. From the bill summary:

Puts young people onto a path of national service by establishing a Summer of Service program to provide $500 education awards for rising 6th-12th graders, a Semester of Service program for high school students to engage in service-learning, and Youth Empowerment Zones for secondary students and out-of-school youth. (um, what does THAT mean?)

From the link:

First, public or national service is profoundly un-American as a historical concept and comes always and everywhere slathered in the stink of trench warfare and rhetorical horses***. This is especially true when it is paid service even as those participating and spending your tax dollars luxuriate in the silky-smooth language of altruism. Which, last time I checked, was supposed to be free. Jesus rendered unto Caesar; he didn't ask for a block grant from Pontius Pilate in return. That Obama pushes national service and voluntarism even as he works to limit tax breaks for charitable giving that drives all sorts of philanthropy is a classic screw-you, my-way-or-the-highway move.

I'm not a bad person! Really! I just don't want my tax money going to pay volunteers. And I mean myself. I don't volunteer because I want money or recognition. I do it because I care about organ donation, I care about my church and the activities/events we provide. Things don't get done unless people step up. And really, I want people in my group that want to be there, not because they'll get paid if they show up, or will get high school credit, or whatever.

Ridiculous

No wonder kids don't learn anything!

(not to sound way old, but....)

When I was in elementary school, we turned off the lights to reduce the heat during the late-spring, late-summer months. And I will tell you, we didn't learn a whole lot doing that. Instead, I believe we had nap time. Heads on the desk--in sixth grade. Yup.

It's a big tent

Except for (h/t Corner...I bolded all that apply to me)

Celebrate Diversity . . .   [Peter Kirsanow]

except veterans, small-business owners, practicing Catholics, gun owners, talk-radio listeners, tea-party attendees, Texans, smokers, limited-government proponents, pro-lifers, taxpayers, NASCAR fans, Boy Scouts, oil-company employees, secure-border advocates, capitalists, global-warming agnostics, Cuban refugees, school-choicers . . .

My nanny-state note: I do NOT feel bad for smokers. At all. Actually, when I see one I sort of want to go vomit on my shoes, because really, they are killing themselves and making their lungs (and other organs) unusable for others. I know many smokers, and I love them (I mean, come on, I'm in the theater, lots of smokers), but come on! 

UPDATE: Upon re-reading that I realized it didn't make a lot of sense. So let's just say this--hate the smoke, lover the smokers. But the habit still really makes me want to shake people and whack them upside the head. 

CF folks in Ireland, part II

More on the wonders of Universal Health Care!
A salient point: (emphases mine)

Cystic fibrosis sufferers again left in the queue
Sunday, April 05, 2009 By Aileen O’Meara
Last week began with another row in the health services which had a familiar theme: should the private sector provide public health services?

This row centred on the issue of long-awaited and necessary facilities for people with cystic fibrosis (CF). The cash-strapped Health Service Executive (HSE) confirmed that it would not have the resources until 2011 ‘‘at the earliest’’ to build the promised special unit for CF sufferers at St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin.

This is a year later than promised after an intense media campaign in January last year, when CF sufferers - led by Orla Tinsley - highlighted the scandalous conditions for cystic fibrosis sufferers in hospitals which lack isolated single rooms to prevent suffers picking up infections. (you must, must, must have single rooms for CF suffers. Without it, you are just compounding the problem. CF patients can spread a bacteria called b.cepacia, that is highly dangerous and only dangerous to the CF population. That's why CF kids can't play together anymore, or have camps, without wearing masks and being in a large space. The fact that they do not have this most basic resource is absolutely appalling.) That campaign led to the promise of a 30-bed unit in a new 120-bed hospital in the grounds of St Vincent’s. (Here at Children's, we have entire CF floors. And not only that, the new hospital will have only private rooms.)

Replying to complaints, health minister Mary Harney told journalists last week that the state would have to look at the possibility of private sector investment to build the unit.

Her pragmatic response was criticised from the Labour Party and Sinn Féin, in particular, on the funding issue. ‘‘The public health service is not the responsibility of the private sector. If minister Harney insists on peddling this defunct PD ideology at the expense of people’s lives, then she should go,” said Jan O’Sullivan of Labour. Wait, EXCUSE ME? You are the ones who are pushing ideology at the expense of lives! Sheesh! CF patients need private rooms. it's not a vanity thing. It's necessary.

Sinn Féin’s Caoimhghín O’ Caoláin said the minister’s suggestion ‘‘added insult to injury’’, adding that this was ‘‘a recipe for further delay’’, and was the minister’s knee-jerk response to every problem in the health service.

The row about the CF unit in St Vincent’s encapsulates many of the elements of the dilemma facing the government, the Department of Health and the HSE, with the abrupt end to the economic boom.

OK so here's the deal--Children's can expand to meet its needs, like, oh, setting up a lung transplant program-- because the private sector can donate funding. It's now called "Nationwide Children's Hospital" because the insurance giant donated millions of dollars to the hospital. Every year, Children's has a telethon to raise money for the hospital (I was a part of it in 2006). They take donations of money, toys, books, etc. for patients and their families. Local companies donate hundreds of thousands--sometimes even millions of dollars--to the hospital. This enable them to provide top-notch care and save thousands of lives.

In the hallway linking the outpatient care unit and the education building, there are many plaques listing the names of donors, in amounts ranging from $500,000+ to $1,000. Some of these are families, individuals, small businesses, and huge corporations.

Yes, the hospital also gets money from the state, and just received federal stimulus money. But the hospital would, in no way, shape or form, be able to provide the care it does WITHOUT private donors.

Lovely.

Masters of Dark Arts cast a bitter spell

We can fix this country if we insist on fairness, logic and an equality of opportunity for all, writes Gene Kerrigan

By Gene Kerrigan

Sunday April 05 2009

The market is back for what used to be called "white mince". It was a staple food for a lot of people in the bad old days of the 1980s.

It's not really white, more like pale pink. The mince on the top shelf of my local supermarket is the "healthy option", guaranteed not more than five per cent fat. On the bottom shelf, the low-priced "white mince" is guaranteed not more than 28 per cent fat.

For those who can't afford even that, there are the food queues. All across the country, people struggle desperately to hang onto their jobs, their homes, their lives. Next Tuesday, having already decided to deprive Cystic Fibrosis patients of life-prolonging treatment units, the Government will announce new ways to help us "share the pain".

Meanwhile, one banker turned down a top job because it pays a mere €360,000. He knows he won't go short -- there are lots of high-paying positions at certain levels. And RTE announces that bank bosses want to "renegotiate" the cap on salaries -- they're upset that the top money is €690,000, the poor darlings.

There's a pretence that certain people are worth big money, because they alone are Masters of the Dark Arts of Finance -- they include bankers, brokers, consultants and economists. It doesn't matter that bankers and their wealthy clients and their favourite politicians engineered the meltdown of the economy. Despite their record, they remain Masters of the Dark Arts. In devising strategies for fixing the economy, the Government listens to them.

How good are they? The Master we've picked is not a banker, but one of those celebrity economists who never stops publicly demanding this or that measure. Jim Power, Chief Economist with Friends First. Let's look at his record.

Jim was once worried by the credit bubble. In 2004, he described bank practices as "nutty". He warned, "When things go wrong they go very wrong". In March 2006, he warned that "a significant correction to house prices would . . . undermine the overall economy". Which is what happened.

"An economy cannot grow on the basis of the public sector and the housing market indefinitely," Jim said.

He called on policy makers to "focus on nurturing an indigenous and sustainable economic base".

This was sensible. Jim is a smart guy.

By February 2007 he was more optimistic. "Nothing in the overall data" suggested a hard landing. At a round-table discussion he suggested that the Regulator might take "a more flexible approach to stress testing" for loans. Odd advice, given that the regulator was not so much flexible as limp as a wet noodle.

The following month Jim was sure there was no bubble. "The market looks set to remain solidly based. Beyond 2007, house price inflation should settle down to levels broadly consistent with general inflation out to the end of the decade."

A "soft landing" was in sight. "The fundamental demand in the marketplace is still strong and is not about to disappear,'' he said in April 2007, as the fundamental demand was about to disappear.

It was about the time of Richard Curran's TV programme warning of economic dangers. "There is currently an inordinate amount of negativity permeating Irish economic debate," Master Jim told the Heineken Ireland Open Forum, in Cork.

A report said he warned against the "merchants of doom" who were risking the country's future prospects. Merchants of doom, huh? Remember that phrase.

In January 2008, "After more than a decade of uninterrupted growth, the Irish housing market finally came a cropper in 2007". Another four months and Jim mused that, "2008 is certainly turning out to be a challenging year".

Back in June 2007 he knew that a slowdown "should not be of sufficient scale to seriously undermine the overall economy". By November 2008: "I reckon the majority of first-time buyers who bought into the market over the last three years are in negative equity". (These, of course, would be the people who ignored the "merchants of doom".)

By January 2009 Master Jim was denouncing those who demanded we all "talk up the economy". He complained: "One is now fearful about saying anything negative in case one gets vilified or accused of being a . . ."

And here the average Soapbox reader surely knows what's coming. ". . . merchant of doom". Master Jim, in short, was worried about being denounced by . . . well, presumably by Master Jim.

The government, Jim complained, "only took advice from people who told them what they wanted to hear and they never listened to anyone who was criticising them".

To which we can only say, Duh.

We must emphasise that there's nothing spectacularly unique about Master Jim. He is representative of that whole class of Masters of the Dark Arts who spent most of the past decade talking through their arses.

In fact, Master Jim at least spotted the dangers, around 2004 -- which many of them never did.

Today, it's the Masters of the Dark Arts who are directing the debate on the emergency Budget, on the solution to the banking crisis, and on how we should "share the pain".

Like the rest, Master Jim is all for "wage restraint, major cuts in public spending . . . a proper financial regulatory framework". (One, perhaps, that's not so "flexible".)

Last week the Irish Times reported that he wants the Government to consider a cut in the minimum wage, because it's a "major source of lack of competitiveness".

This is the same Master of the Dark Arts who last July rejected a cut in the minimum wage, as scraping the bottom of the barrel.

This country is broken. If and when and how it gets fixed will determine how we live and how many are forced to leave the country. It will determine how many of us will die prematurely on hospital waiting lists.

The hills are alive with media airheads insisting that we not "point the finger" or "play the blame game", that we must listen to the Masters of the Dark Arts as they prescribe the amount of pain we all must bear.

The vast majority of us didn't gamble and didn't party or borrow more than we could afford. The vast majority of us worked and paid our taxes conscientiously.

Now, the Government has drawn up measures that will shred our lives -- this in a country where there are Masters of the Dark Arts who turn down jobs because €360,000 isn't enough, where €700,000 is deprivation.

The Government is struggling. They see their job not as looking at the broken pieces and putting them together in the most logical way. For instance, nationalise the major banks, throw out the clowns who run them, let outfits like Anglo die.

Instead, they seek to restore things exactly as they were -- to maintain the old relationships, the status of the Great Ones. And, above all, to maintain the ratio of earnings between the Great Ones and the rest of us. To do otherwise is to breach a sacred tenet of the Dark Arts.

We can fix this country, if we insist on equality of opportunity, equality of democracy, if we insist on fairness and logic. If we stop genuflecting to the semi-religious economic prescriptions put out by people whose record doesn't -- to say the least -- inspire confidence.

And, the next media airhead who tells me that we must all "share the pain", that some must go jobless and hungry while others continue their obscene spending, is going to get their face rubbed in a plate of white mince.

- Gene Kerrigan

So, yeah, all our health care problems will be solved if--when!--we go to government health care.

Right.

And now, for something completely different

behold

A Health Care Rant

OK real quick--

in a lot of papers yesterday, there was a story about how millions of people can't afford their prescription drugs. OK. This isn't really new. 

Some of these stories allowed comments beneath it. This is where people continue to amaze me. They talk about the evil corporate drug companies who are just out for profit, and it's all their fault!

As Mitt Romney said back in February '08, Drug Companies Are Not Evil. 

Do you know how much it costs to develop a new drug? How many trials have to be done? How many scientists you have to pay, lab time has to be bought, oh, and ingredients? How much trial and error before you get a drug that actually works? 

This costs money. I'm sorry. And yes, drugs like mine, which fewer people take, costs more, because not that many people need tac or imuran to stay alive. 

Look--the U.S. develops a TON of new drugs. This costs money. So you can pick--have the drugs available, or don't have them available, which means certain things, like transplants, can't happen, because we can't solve the rejection component. 

It's expensive to stay alive. I know. Should it be this expensive? Discuss. But please do not just blame it on the drug companies.