The Friday Post

snowtigerredux 12.11.09 at 2:13 pm

Why women shouldn’t drive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p570nGshue0

George Orwell Is Alive and Well and
URL: http://pumapac.org/2009/12/10/george-orwell-is-alive-and-well-and/comment-page-3/#comment-401761

The best of luck on all fronts, Murphy. I think Friday is one of the toughest days to wait for news. Anything business-related, if late, will not be known until Monday.

I came on to ask if there’s anything we can do to help show Chris Dodd the door out of the Senate.. The thought was prompted by this article: Chris Dodd (D-Conn) has been in the Senate for five terms, rising through the ranks to become one of the most powerful lawmakers in Congress. Yet it seems he may have an uphill battle in trying to secure a sixth.
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/11/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5967140.shtml

‘;icl nywkkij

oops, well typing with arms crossed for chez murphy doesn’t work very well either. Good luck Chez Murphy!!! whatever the BIG news might be.

Good point, Dances. I need to get my eyes checked.

You are awesome, thanks so much. I just booked by ticket. I’m going down on the 24th and we’ll be there until the 2nd. Let’s make some plans. I’ll send you and email.

(((((Murphy)))))

Sending good thoughts to Chez Murphy, that the news will be happy. (I crossed my toes so I could still type)

Wishing the cast at Carlise well… Break a leg!

Lovely – our govt. is getting ready to screw us by Christmas, ignoring all the polls and people burning up their fax machines & phones. *THEY* think they know what’s best for us. We’re in big trouble.

US Health care tab to keep growing under overhaul

WASHINGTON — Democrats trying to push President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul plan through the Senate got a sober warning Friday that costs will keep going up and proposed Medicare savings may harm the program.

A new report from government economic analysts at the Health and Human Services Department found that the nation’s $2.5 trillion annual health care tab won’t shrink under the Democratic blueprint that senators are debating. Instead, it would grow somewhat more rapidly than if Congress does nothing.

More troubling was the report’s assessment that the Democrats’ plan to squeeze Medicare for $493 billion over 10 years in savings relies on specific policy changes that “may be unrealistic” and could lead to cuts in services. The Medicare savings are expected to cover about half the nearly $1 trillion, 10-year cost of expanding coverage to the uninsured.

In still more bad news, the report starkly warned that a new long-term care insurance plan included in the legislation could “face a significant risk of failure” because it would attract people in poor health, leading to higher and higher premiums, and eventually triggering an “insurance death spiral.”

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jlMpJGn28kqCcgU-aGcYE_ZHW-ywD9CH93RO4

Obamacare can’t hold a candle to Hillarycare. I had heard that hillarycare was going “reduce premiums as well as add money back into the budget”. Do you think Obama’s nightmare care will do anything close? Here’s what they had to say along with a very good article about Hillarycare. It’s from 2007 but it’s awesome.

Puma-SF, The New Republic has an article on CBO and Hillarycare written n June 2007. The name of the article is “Hillary Was Right“. It is a fascinating article to read especially in light of what is going on now. Hillarycare was smeared and Americans lost out. Sadder, Hillary was denied the ability to try again, with all the lessons learned by her and us. Americans are the ones worse off.

BTW, our critique of Pelousy and the Public Option is a critique of the Speaker and the flim-flam she and Dimocrats call a “Public Option”. Our critique is not directed towards a “Public Option” of the type which Hillary has proposed. Our critique is directed towards the flim-flam Obama/Pelousy “public option” limited to the sickest and poorest 6 million and the consequent higher premiums of this latest Obama scam.

Excerpt:

A different set of concerns came from more thoughtful experts like Ellwood and Enthoven, the fathers of managed competition. Of particular concern to them was a limit on how much insurers could raise premiums from year to year. Government was in no position to set such limits, the argument went, because it couldn’t determine as well as the market what the proper level of medical spending was–or how to allocate it. If, for example, the cap was too low, doctors and hospitals wouldn’t get the money they needed–and would begin cutting back on services.

From a policy standpoint, these caps were indeed the plan’s most controversial element–and the ones about which questions could most legitimately be raised. But, looking back, even these concerns were probably overblown. The task force had included this cap partly to satisfy the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which, in its official estimates of the program’s cost, wouldn’t assume that having a bunch of insurance plans was likely to save money, as the Clintons insisted it would. Since CBO’s projections would guide the debate, and since political moderates were likely to abandon the plan if it threatened to raise deficit spending or spark new taxes, the task force threw in the cap. But it was entirely possible premiums would not have exceeded the caps, at least not for a while: In fact, over the next few years, premium increases stayed under the limits set by the caps. And that was without a lot of the administrative savings that Hillarycare would have generated. Don’t forget, too, that Congress always had the power to ease the caps if they really threatened to disrupt medical services–although the hope was always that limiting spending would ultimately push the health care system to be even more efficient.

As we all now know, those objections ended up carrying the day. The fear of rationing played directly into public fears of government incompetence–a fear the press did little to dispel. Harry and Louise and McCaughey may have been talking nonsense, but they spooked a lot of Americans. And, even though many interest groups stood to benefit from the Clinton plan–chief among them, large employers already paying for generous worker benefits–few lifted a finger to help. The plan died, and, just like that, Hillary went from savior to scapegoat.

But look at everything that has happened since that time. By the end of the ’90s, virtually every American was enrolled in an HMO or some other type of managed-care plan–in other words, precisely the scenario that Harry and Louise, along with McCaughey, had warned would happen if the Clintons got their way. But managed care had evolved in a rather different direction than it might have under Hillarycare. The Clinton plan had proposed to regulate HMOs closely. Not only would the standard benefit package limit the ability of insurers to skimp on necessary care for people who needed it, but the Clinton plan also would have required all insurance plans to collect and publish data about how well their beneficiaries were doing (like, for example, whether they all got recommended tests, how satisfied they were with the service, and so on). This would have bolstered the best managed care organizations, the nonprofit group practices (like Group Health of Puget Sound in Seattle or Harvard Community Health in Boston, both of which had excellent reputations in the ’90s) that really did promote high-quality medicine. There was even a patients’ bill of rights, to make sure that people who thought their insurers had denied treatments improperly could appeal such decisions in a binding legal process.

Read the whole article, it is very educational:

http://www.tnr.com/article/hillary-was-right

Let me know what you think. I hear ya, goofs.

More money and lives wasted thanks to him! His Royal Jackass has gotten on the bad side of a U.N. human rights committee:

http://www.miscellani.org/blog/2009/12/and-the-war-president-drones-on/
Little else can unite Pakistanis like a hypocritical Peace Through War policy of an arrogant U.S. president, deciding their fate at his leisure half a world away. Is he different from Bush? The warmonger’s acceptance of a Nobel peace prize is the latest bitter irony that Obama is worse than Bush’s harshest critics imagined.

Gee I dunno, maybe the Nobel committee members in Oslo could have done a couple of minutes of research and found he has given millions of our tax $$ to the homicidal maniacs at Blackwater (Xe) for “aviation services” in the CIA’s Predator drone program.

It’s only a matter of time before *we* are in their flyover zone.

Sorry, Murphy.

Another way to get more money…

12/9/2009Indiana: City Threatens $2500 Fines for Challenging Traffic Tickets

Motorists who receive minor parking or traffic tickets in Indianapolis, Indiana are being threatened with fines of up to $2500 if they attempt to take the ticket to court. A local attorney with the firm Roberts and Bishop was so outraged by what he saw in Marion County traffic court that he filed a class action suit yesterday seeking to have the practice banned as unconstitutional.

“The deck is stacked against the motorist,” lawyer Paul K. Ogden wrote. “To penalize that person for seeking justice seems wrong. I know it is done for the purpose of discouraging baseless challenges to tickets and clogging the docket, but in the process you are also penalizing people who have a legitimate defense and want a chance to present it to the court.”

The city made explicit the threat of additional fines for challenging parking tickets in a November 30 press release announcing a deal between Indianapolis and a private firm, T2 Systems, to hand over operations of a parking ticket court to increase municipal income.

“Using Six Sigma process improvement strategies, it is estimated that under this program the city may collect an additional $352,000 to $520,000 in parking citation revenue over the next 12 months,” the city press release stated. “If citations are not paid prior to their scheduled hearing, the city may request a fine of up to $2500 per citation. Upon receiving a judgment for an unpaid citation, individuals responsible could be subject to collections actions or having their vehicle registration suspended.”

Ogden is specifically representing three motorists affected by court policies. Toshinao Ishii received a ticket for driving 63 MPH in a 55 zone in February. Had he paid the ticket without challenge, the fine would have been $150. After Judge Young sided with the police officer in court, Ishii was fined $550.

Motorist Matthew Stone was told by his doctors not to wear a seatbelt over his chest as it could damage his cardiac pacemaker. He received a $25 ticket for wearing his seatbelt “improperly.” After reading that he would face a $500 fine, Stone gave up his intention of challenging the citation.

Adam Lenkowsky, who did not receive a ticket, attempted to attend a traffic court proceeding on September 23, 2009. He was barred from the court, despite the state constitutional requirement that court proceedings be open.

More here:
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/29/2985.asp

Fine for forgetting to pay a parking ticket – $2500

scarlet in #24:
“he filed a class action suit yesterday seeking to have the practice banned as unconstitutional.”

- it’s cruel & unusual punishment
- violates rights to due process
- probably violates the equal protection clause, if such radically different punishment is meted out to people who actually committed the same offense…
- … assuming they did commit any offense, hah

Fascism!

ANy PUMAs at Facebook. PLease join. The swiss are under attack.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=222438222533

Great post at Uppity Woman….. take a look… about Hillary

I wonder who you are over there dances. Hmmmm.

I’ll figure it out.

perched…………gack

Murphy, RemNov and Big Cat,

Responded to your posts on Women of 2010…

Murphy,