SeniorJunior

Are We More Gullible? As an addicted poll reader, I note that (some) polls say that white people are much less likely to say that the health care reform law will help them personally than say people of differing shades. One question: Have you never run afoul of your insurance company? Would you like those parasites to still have the power to cancel your insurance when you need it most? Would you like to be unable to buy health insurance if you change - or worse, lose your job - because of a "pre-existing condition?" That happened to me, because I had (treatable, controlled) hypertension. Do you like your premiums going up at two or three times the rate of inflation? Blue Cross just popped my wife's premiums 29% - no recourse, no appeals, no changing insurance companies because she has a - guess what? - pre-existing condition! Do you like having to haggle with some insurance company clerk for legitimate claims? Do you oldies just love the "donut hole?" I

Ten Times Retail Markup?!? Healthcare costs are skyrocketing. Why, Lord, why? - Is it all those scans prescribed by the docs who own the scanners? - Is it all those CYA tests to protect the docs from lawsuits? - Is it the meds that cost 300% more in the U.S.A. than anywhere else in the world? - Is it the weak regulations on keeping our food safe? - Is it the $500 a minute specialist fees? YES! All that and insane overcharges for everything from the famous dollar-per-aspirin some hospitals charge to things like THIS... THE STORY A close pal breaks her ankle. She goes to a podiatrist. The Physician gives her a simple, off-the-shelf ankle brace for temporary support. The bills trickle in. Cost for that brace? $490! Whoa, we say. So we look up the cost of this device. Check it out: = $490 charged by the Podiatrist = $49.95 charged by Smart+Medical Identical product. Identical manufacturer. Identical reimbursement code. Keep in mind #49.95 is a retail price, available to you and

Way to Go, House Not finished, but partially irreversible, health care reform cleared a giant hurdle. To the brave men and women in Congress who voted for US , even in the face of intimidation, I thank you. To those who fought this bill as though what its detractors in the insurance business and their surrogates said was actually true, take a deep breath and see what this really means to you, your fellow citizens and American small business in general, then see if you're still mad. I am grateful, in the prayerful sense.

Another Leadership Stumble Just another slap in the face from Reality. This morning's NY Times whacked me with this: China Drawing High-Tech Research From U.S. Oh, darn. Not just (almost all) our manufacturing base, but now our innovation base. The story is about how Applied Materials, a VITAL part of our technological manufacturing base, is moving much of its R&D to China. So what's wrong with us? Is it our laws? (Yep. "Free trade" = "OK, move out.") Are our taxes too high (Yep, for the corporations which don't give a flip for anything but their bottom lines.) Are we running short of good engineers? (Yep, our decaying education system) Does a good part of our population sound like idiots? (I shouldn't say.) I'm feeling grouchy.

Those Darn Socialist Europeans If you've been paying attention to what the Right has to say negatively about almost anything we're trying to get done in American, you have heard the word "Socialist" about a thousand times. The Stimulus, health reform, energy independence, environmental progress, education... on and on ... it's ALL Socialism! Just like Europe! Well, in area after area, those darn Socialists are kicking our butts. Take a look : VAST SOLAR PROJECT IN THE SAHARA DESERT TO PUMP ELECTRICITY TO EUROPE This huge project linking solar power from the Sahara to energy users in Europe and North Africa could create 240,000 German jobs and generate 2 trillion euros ($2,822 billion) worth of power by 2050,executives from blue chip companies such as Siemens, E.ON, RWE and Switzerland's ABB along with firms from southern Europe and northern Africa will be at the inaugural meeting. Energy groups plan for European 'super-grid ' An ambitious plan for a

I actually felt pretty good about Hormel before now, even though I'm no fan of processed food. Pretty good corporate citizen, I thought. Now I hear Sean Hannity crowing that Hormel is a new sponsor. Dang! I wrote this letter to Hormel: "Your decision to become a sponsor for Sean Hannity leads me to the decision to cease buying any Hormel product. Hannity - in my opinion - is a propagandist of the worst sort, dealing in half truths. He is bad for America." I think he's almost as bad as Limbaugh for stretching, bending, distorting and downright avoiding the truth. He's welcome to his opinions, but I get really grouchy when people knowingly lie for political motives. Sorry, Hormel, I'm just saying..... But hey, they answered promptly with: March 05, 2010 Mr Duff, Thank you for contacting us regarding the radio advertisement. I will forward your message to our marketing area responsible for this. Nancy Consumer Respon

....Or a Mini Glacier, Maybe I have long been fascinated – what would you expect from a sci-fi fan? – with the megafloods . Catastrophic floods have carved canyons, rivers, lakes and even seas. Imagine the spectacle of billions of gallons of water, acre feet per second, thundering across the landscape with inconceivable force, making tsunamis seem tame. These colossal events have happened at the end of every ice age when giant lakes of melt water are unleashed by the failure of the large ice dams that created them. That is some scientist’s conception of what the ice dam looked like that released the flood that created the Western Washington badlands. Big deal flood. Not as big as the one that created the Mediterranean or the huge one that flushed out the Great Lakes, but pretty darn big. Anyway, fascinating, no? Biblical at least. Now I have my very own ice dam. Hard to photograph, at least for me. B

To Heck With the Big Guys Someone close to me was one of those victims of Wells Fargo (Could have been B of A or J.P. Morgan Chase, any of the Big Guys... ) charged $35 each for several overdrafts on his debit card before he caught on what was happening. As a college student, $35 here and there amounts to a big deal. And of course I'm groused out about how the big banks are exploiting credit card holders, not lending like they should, soaking up public funds, overpaying their executives, lobbying against reasonable regulations, etc. So we decided to take our meager funds out of Wells Fargo and put them in a local credit union. And that was BEFORE Huffington Post came up with the "Move Your Money" campaign. But I really like how Huffington approaches this. Check it out here . Chances are, you will actually save money by moving it to a credit union or a locally owned bank. art credit

Only Dummies Believe in Free Rides National Debt Growing Huge Infrastructure Falling Apart Education Decaying Medical Bankruptcies Rampant Wars With No Civilian Sacrifice On and on and on and on and on...... Bad stuff, all that. So what do numbnuts do? Attack the IRS! Scream that taxes take "my money." So I'm screaming "take my money!" Tax me fairly. Use the money wisely. Don't let America slide into shambles. Paying our way is the American way. (P.S. as a retired person, I am reminded every day that those FICA taxes were the best money I - and my employers - ever spent.) And I want America to stay the world leader it should be. For that to happen, we all have to shoulder our share of the load. So TAX ME. pix credit

Wouldn't You Know It The Prez sets out to recover our (we the taxpayers') TARP money from the banks we saved. Then before the plans get finalized, we have this Reuters story: Banks, experts eye possible ways around Obama fee Dan Wilchins NEW YORK Thu Jan 14, 2010 6:20pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - No sooner does Washington propose a new tax than an army of experts tries to figure out ways to avoid it. That is already the case with U.S. President Barack Obama's proposed fee on banks, designed to ensure that Wall Street banks pay up to $117 billion to reimburse taxpayers for the financial bailout: Bankers, lawyers and consultants are already considering ways to avoid paying the fee. "This law could be a real boon for lawyers and consultants like me. There are tremendous opportunities for coming up with new mechanisms to avoid it," said Bert Ely, a bank consultant in

86 is a "B" Isn't It? An oft repeated thing I say (and have said and said) is: "I discovered the limits of my brain's capacity in differential equations." Usually I'm explaining how I went through four majors and five years at four universities without winning a degree. (Then I say, "a broad, shallow education.") It's no small thing to actually have a hard number on your limits. But now I have one. 86. Oh, not that I don't strive for and occasionally reach, say, 90. But it never holds up long. The measuring metric is - get this - FreeCell Solitaire. Note: Squint hard, and you will see the "86%." Wins, that is. That, by the way, is up from 80% at about 500 games, begging the question, "How much time do you waste on FreeCell?" Well, Duffer? If I hit 90%, I'll give you an update.

It Just Keeps Getting Worse Ye who have checked this humble blog occasionally might sense that I have been on the anti- BPA ( Bisphenol Acid in common plastics in our lives) bandwagon for quite a while. And NOW... whoo , boy... it seems BPA in the blood correlates with heart disease. Not good. Anyway, check out Web- MD's take on the research. And watch what the stuff you eat and drink is packaged in. [Here are my prior rants on the stuff: http://seniorjunior.blogspot.com/search?q=bpa+]