Blood Shorties

Have you all missed me? Finals is upon me and all is chaos. Nonetheless, the need has arisen to clean out many tabs of items I had hoped to share with you. Let the Blood Shorties begin!

It just won’t die!: I am of course talking about the TPP. The world has certainly turned, since Hillary has made weasel words about maybe it’s not a good idea. Do I believe Hillary? I believe she will say whatever she thinks will get her elected. In the meantime, more bits have been leaked. Make sure your CongressCritter knows where you stand (and remind him that unlike corporations, you vote).

Speaking of voting: Sometimes dollars speak louder than words. And yes, it would be nice if the news media would report news that actually matters.

The Price of Medicine: Not all drug price hikes make the news. Of course, since the price tag for most of us is laundered through our insurance companies, all we see is rising premiums.

Come on, Generation X! Get your act together!: You are behind on saving for retirement. Couldn’t have anything to do with being stuck in crappy jobs (when you can find jobs at all). Terrifyingly enough, it turns out that I am ahead of over half of all Americans when it comes to savings.

The Smartphone App Saving Detroit: It’s called “Improve Detroit.” And apparently, it works!

Now Accepting Applications: Speaker of the House.

Secret Society: The Hidden Christians of Japan.

Sure they did: FBI has prevented lots of people from becoming ISIS terrorists! They just can’t tell you about any of them.

Wow: Prehistoric Tsunami.

Finland: We keep sending people to study what they are doing right, then we do the opposite.

What could possibly go wrong?: Put a single, newly sober young woman into a room with a bunch of recovering alcoholics in meetings as often as every day and trust that nothing will go wrong.

And finally: How to pet a kitty.

Well Done, House of Representatives

Republican leadership in the House took a gamble on an expedited procedure to get the PATRIOT Act extended and lost. Moreover, 26 Republicans crossed party lines to vote against renewal, including 3 “Tea Party Caucus” original members and 9 newly-elected Congressmen. Let’s hear it for democracy.

In Closing: 100 views of Edo; create 1.5M jobs; no jobs; what??; criminally bad; damn straight; joblessness.

Nevada Firestorm

And no, I’m not talking about the two multi-acre blazes within 4o miles of Las Vegas.

Well, the internet has been all abuzz over the latest from Sharron Angle. Everybody and their dog has already had something to say about her latest interview, including the guy who interviewed her. No wonder she does so few of them! Ezra Klein points out that the choice should be fairly simple, given that Nevada has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, Angle thinks all those unemployed people should get up off their lazy asses and find a [nonexistent] job, and Reid keeps trying [and failing] to get unemployment benefits extended to at least try and prevent all those unemployed people from becoming homeless too. At least her website has been updated with a little less crazy. She still does think it’s unreasonably hard to get a ballot initiative up in Nevada. I have long urged people to Just Say NO to all voter initiatives, so this is just fine with me.

But wait! Let’s not forget that The Other Reid (he’d prefer to just be known as “Rory“) is in an election too, and his opponent Brian Sandoval has also been campaigning. This week he announced a plan for Nevada schools. It includes giving a “grade” to each school and allowing kids in poorly graded schools to transfer to better schools. Now, there’s 2 problems I see with this. First is that No Child Left Behind already allows the same freaking thing; why reinvent the wheel? The second problem is geography. Nevada is a big state with a small population, and 73% of the population is in one county. While the idea almost makes sense in the Las Vegas Valley, the Reno area, and the Carson City area, it makes no sense in the rural areas where the next school might be an hour or two away.

His second plan is the popular idea of making teacher pay dependent upon student performance. Well, here’s the thing. Teachers can only control what happens in their classroom, and even then only most of the time. When you’ve got kids worried about living on the street, kids stealing ketchup packets so they can have dinner, gang violence, child abuse, parents who don’t give a damn, official curricula that still use sight words*, limited ability to discipline students who are out of line, a bureaucracy that would make any government proud, and a half dozen impediments to learning in the classroom, merit pay is a sick joke.

And idea three is to outsource non-educational services. That would include janitorial services, human resources, and food service. It makes me wonder what firms I would find if I were to look closely at Mr. Sandoval’s investments! There is just no way that it’s cheaper to have a cleaning crew come in at night than to have one or maybe two people on hand all day to clean messes as they occur. Hiring a for-profit catering service to put the cafeteria ladies out of work is just madness. This is aside from the concern some parents will have over whether the employees of these firms might maybe have some desire to harm a child. As much as I would like to dismiss this as tinfoil hat lunacy, the fact of the matter is that Clark County School District has had incidents where non-teachers are accused of harming students.

* I was just horrified to learn what constitutes homework for a first grader!

In closing: A tangible Good Thing from health insurance reform starts today; mortgage rates at record lows, why aren’t we borrowing? (because unemployment is around 10% and most homes are worth less than what is already owed, duh); a financial reform package passed the House and is headed for the Senate, let the hunt for loopholes and political favors begin (it’s ok, banks will ignore what they don’t like anyway); fiscal austerity still doesn’t work; Real Socialists beg the wingnuts to stop calling Obama one of them; a bit of follow-up, the list of countries Van Der Sloot can be extradited to for more charges grows; both of these statements are logical, but both cannot be true; 100 Yen shops, the Japanese Dollar Store; vaccinate your kids!; smart pet tricks; flying cars; and libertarians.

The Internet Ate My Homework

In the last 24 hours I have switched cell phones and had my RSS reader suddenly stop working. As a result, I’ve spent much of the last day digging out and trying to organize things — and that’s no easy task. So as much as I would like to write something deeper, I’ll be talking briefly about the group of cowards and self-centered blow-hards in Washington DC who are our elected Representatives and Senators.

Thanks to our elected officials preferring the company of insurance company lobbyists to that of citizens that can actually vote for them, we still have a health care system that costs too much and does too little. At least we will soon have certain “rights” when dealing with these companies, but some warn that these “rights” will translate into even higher costs. The House of so-called Representatives did get up off their collective asses to fix a looming slashing of what doctors would be paid under Medicare. Why is this important? First, your doctor’s costs of doing business have not gone down. Second, most major insurers base what they will pay on what Medicare pays. So this would within a year put some doctors out of business.

The House also managed to pass a campaign finance reform bill that would force candidates and political parties to disclose the identities of most big donors. Except of course for the biggest and most powerful donors. They are still free to own their own Congresscritters. Now the bill is ready for slaughter in the Senate.

A couple of Senators are actually trying to do something for children — odd in an election year since they can’t even vote. It seems that an unintended result of some immigration raids is that there are kids whose parents have been taken away. Those kids are often American citizens thanks to the clarity of the 14th Amendment. The bill in question would allow the parents to arrange care for these little Americans, make sure that they have resources and can report abuse, and prevents authorities from involving the kids in interrogations. Think what you want about the parents, but the kids did nothing wrong and deserve the protections of law. The end.

But what could our elected officials not be bothered to do? They couldn’t be bothered to protect servicemen from predatory car salesmen, not even for Mrs. Petraeus. They couldn’t be bothered to extend unemployment benefits for a million people, despite the fact that there are at least 5 unemployed Americans for every available job opening. And no, Sharron, people aren’t living a life of luxury in Las Vegas on unemployment benefits.

So Remember Come November. Vote for those few who have been taking care of your business in Washington, and against those who have been trying to obstruct your business. In the meantime, click here to figure out how to contact your Senators, and here to find your Representative. You’ll need to know your Zip+4, so dig out some mail first.

In closing: fat people don’t walk (an essay on urban design); a “silly” lady who desperately needed the 911 operator to listen (need help? these people can help); they hate us for our electricity; what would Jesus do?; it’s not your typical state dinner — don’t tell Michelle they split an order of fries; and your dose of Japanfilter, the Pepsi Strong Shot.