Paul Krugman discusses the way the doctor/patient relationship has been debased in our society, especially by our politicians, and how we need the medical review panel to decide which treatments really work to make a start on controlling health care costs.....
Excellent column.....
But something else struck me as I looked at Republican arguments against the board, which hinge on the notion that what we really need to do, as the House budget proposal put it, is to “make government health care programs more responsive to consumer choice.”
Here’s my question: How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as “consumers”? The relationship between patient and doctor used to be considered something special, almost sacred. Now politicians and supposed reformers talk about the act of receiving care as if it were no different from a commercial transaction, like buying a car — and their only complaint is that it isn’t commercial enough.
What has gone wrong with us?
Matt Taibbi has a most delicious style of writing....pithy springs to mind when you read his opening paragraph.....he is one of the best journalists in America.....
Another great commentary, this time on the Paul Ryan Republican budget proposals....
Excellent read.....
Paul Ryan, the Republican Party’s latest entrant in the seemingly endless series of young, prickish, over-coiffed, anal-retentive deficit Robespierres they’ve sent to the political center stage in the last decade or so, has come out with his new budget plan. All of these smug little jerks look alike to me – from Ralph Reed to Eric Cantor to Jeb Hensarling to Rand Paul and now to Ryan, they all look like overgrown kids who got nipple-twisted in the halls in high school, worked as Applebee’s shift managers in college, and are now taking revenge on the world as grownups by defunding hospice care and student loans and Sesame Street. They all look like they sleep with their ties on, and keep their feet in dress socks when doing their bi-monthly duty with their wives.
Every few years or so, the Republicans trot out one of these little whippersnappers, who offer proposals to hack away at the federal budget. Each successive whippersnapper inevitably tries, rhetorically, to out-mean the previous one, and their proposals are inevitably couched as the boldest and most ambitious deficit-reduction plans ever seen. Each time, we are told that these plans mark the end of the budgetary reign of terror long ago imposed by the entitlement system begun by FDR and furthered by LBJ.
The Royal Wedding is next week, and here is a viral video spoof of the way the wedding could go....it's actually a T-Mobile commercial.
How many of the Royal lookalikes do you recognise? One minute......
And this is what they are spoofing - Jill and Kevin's Wedding from a couple of years ago. Personally I love this one because they are all real people......a charming video....5 minutes of fun.....and a great Bobby Brown song....
Watch them both - which one touched you? The corporate one? Or the real one?
Originally a Monty Python song, morphed into something quite unusual..... great pictures of the stars and our galaxy......
Amid all of the revelations about nasty large corporations abusing their workers, closing plants and shipping the jobs overseas and just being evil there were a few companies one had an image of as being decent.....IKEA would be one of those.
Well forget it - they are as ruthless as all the rest of them......
Really disappointing....who can you trust any more?
When it comes to ubiquitous symbols of mass American culture, the 1999 movie “Fight Club” aptly reminded us that bland Ikea furniture is now on par with mom and apple pie.
The film, of course, was lamenting more the ennui of homogenization than Ikea’s particular business model, because Ikea’s market saturation was always considered somewhat laudable thanks to the company’s seemingly special ethos. Based in Sweden, the blue-and-yellow behemoth was known to consumers as one of the few courageous anti-Wal-Marts in the big-box world—a firm whose Scandinavian-socialist flavor appeared to assure us that it was probably treating its workers better than most multinationals, thus giving America a rare haven of guilt-free shopping.
Or so it seemed, until the Los Angeles Times this week published a damning story about Ikea’s manufacturing plant in Danville, Va.
The piece looks at racial discrimination charges against the company, airs employees’ complaints of workplace mistreatment, and examines Ikea’s Walton-like efforts to bust union-organizing drives. Taken together, the allegations undermine one of Ikea’s unique selling propositions and, in the process, lay bare a disturbing new economic dynamic—one that now ensnares even the companies we think are the most socially conscious of all.
Buried in the Times report is the troubling story of why Ikea opened a plant in the United States in the first place. No, the decision wasn’t made to take advantage of superior workforce skills or productivity—positive attributes that once drove our manufacturing sector and built our middle class. Instead, it was made to exploit our decreasing wage levels and weak worker protections.
Though company factories in Sweden produce the same bookcases as the plant in Virginia, the Times notes that “the big difference is that the Europeans enjoy a minimum wage of about $19 an hour and a government-mandated five weeks of paid vacation [while] full-time employees in Danville start at $8 an hour with 12 vacation days”—and that doesn’t count the one-third of Danville workers who are paid even less because they are deliberately subcontracted through temp agencies.
Ikea’s exploitation motive evokes memories of General Electric’s Jack Welch. He famously said that in an era without strong international unions and with standards-free trade pacts, profit-maximizing companies would end up putting “every plant you own on a barge” and trolling the world for the lowest wages and workplace conditions, knowing they would no longer face tariff costs.
On Onion News the panel of experts discuss whether the nations unemployed should be required to buy a new Apple computer......2 minutes.....
Interesting article on yet another way the finance industry has devised to exploit the poor - the tax refund anticipation loan [RAL]. Every year at tax time if you are among the working poor the IRS will refund you a portion of the tax deducted from your paycheck over the course of the year, and it can be in the mid-thousands. So they get you a refund on the spot, and screw you.....
Over the years, entrepreneurs and corporate executives have devised any number of clever ways for getting rich off the working poor, but you'd have to look long and hard to find one more diabolically inventive than the RAL. Say you have a $2,000 tax refund due and you don't want to wait a week or two forthe IRS to deposit that money in your bank account. Your tax preparer would be delighted to act as the middleman for a very short-term bank loan—the RAL. You get your check that day or the next, minus various fees and interest charges, and in return sign your pending refund over to the bank. Within 15 days, the IRS wires your refund straight to the lender. It's a safe bet for the banks, but that hasn't stopped them from charging astronomical interest rates. Until this tax year, the IRS was even kind enough to let lenders know when potential borrowers were likely to have their refund garnished because they owed back taxes, say, or were behind on child support.
"Strange Brew"
Remember Bob and Doug MacKenzie, the Great White North on SCTV? If you do you'll remember their movie, and here's the funny 1 minute trailer.....love these guys, eh.....
Here is a movie you may miss amid the big budget features - "The Bill Hicks Story". Critically acclaimed, great reviews, so stay alert if it ever comes to Florida.....
Bill Hicks was a comedian in the 1990's, the Bill Maher of his time.....died of cancer at 33, and this is a documentary on his life and work.
Sounds like a really interesting movie.....
Two minute trailer.....
Todays environmental video - Gone Walkabout
A couple of jokes for married people......
A woman is sitting at home on the veranda enjoying a bottle of wine with her husband and she says, "I love you."
He asks, "Is that you or the wine talking?"
He asks, "Is that you or the wine talking?"
She replies, "It's me............. talking to the wine."
..............................
A husband and wife were sitting watching a TV program about psychology and explaining the phenomenon of mixed emotions.
The husband turned to his wife and said, "Honey, that's a bunch of crap. I bet you can't tell me anything that will make me happy and sad at the same time.
And she said, "Out of all your friends you have the biggest pecker."
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