Remember when Mitt Romney wanted to get the urban vote, as Republicans think of African-Americans?
That didn't work out so well for him, so this time around, Mitt's going for the all-important Racist Tea Party vote by attacking blacks directly.
And I mean attacking. Mitt picked a fight with a rapper named "Sky Blu" back in February:
according to Blu's account of the incident ... he was tired, put his new "Party Rock" jacket over his face and leaned his coach seat back while the plane was still on the ground. That's when Romney began yelling at him to put the seat upright.
"I'm trying to just adjust myself so I can go to sleep," Blu said. "I just hear this guy, he's, 'Sir, sir, put your seat up!' I thought it was a flight attendant at first ... and he says again, 'Sir, put your seat up!' A little louder and more angry towards me."
...Well, next thing you know, Blu said Romney reached out and put his hand on his shoulder and asked him again to put his seat up. Blu said he knocked Romney's hand away, thinking nothing of it. "His wife screams. ... They're getting loud, so then the flight attendant comes over, and I try to get louder than them to plead my case. 'No, the man assaulted me! I was protecting myself!' I might have thrown a few cuss words in there."
(Source.) Romney has, I understand, denied using a Vulcan grip on the rapper -- but that didn't stop the man (who's a member of the group LMFAO) from making this:
I know this happened over a year ago -- in February 2010 -- but I thought it worth bringing up now, because I'd like to keep reminding people that it's Mitt who let the dogs out. You know, Mitt, when Clinton attacked Sistah Souljah, he didn't do it physically.
This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Straight Talk for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.
There’s a movie Sweetie loves, because Sweetie loves stupid movies, that came to mind today.
The movie was called “Pandemonium,” and it’s some kind of Airplane!-esque horror movie, full of wacky people saying wacky things. It’s not very good. But there’s one scene that I liked. In it, a man is in a diner and eating from a plate, when the waitress takes the plate away.
“Hey, what’s going on?” the man says, pointing to a sign. “That says all I can eat for a dollar.”
“Yeah,” the waitress says back, “And that was all you can eat… for a dollar.”
I thought of that because (a) it’s really a great joke, and (b) I was looking with Middle Daughter at those Straight Talk plans I mentioned the other day -- plans that I got Middle to buy into, hook, line and sinker, and I saw that they had a plan called “The “All You Need Plan” which gives phone users 1,000 minutes, 1,000 texts and 30 MB of web data per month for a superlow price, and Middle said “How do they know that’s all I’ll need?” which I thought was funny and she didn’t get why I laughed.
Straight Talk phones really do seem to have all people need – beginning with cutting your phone bill in half each month, and continuing with providing a phone without a contract or credit check, leaving absolute freedom in how long you want to use your phone and how you use your phone. People, including Middle, would have to be crazy not to use Straight Talk.
Middle was interested in Straight Talk because she’s trying to save money for her next year of school, but also has two cats and doesn’t want to have to give them up or buy them cheap food, so a less-expensive-but-still-good phone plan helps her have college and cats, which is kind of the 20-year-old girl win/win, I understand.
But anyone can benefit from Straight Talk, with or without cats. They really do have everything you need. They have unlimited text, talk, and data for $45 a month, free 411 calls, international long distance to over 75 countries, and phones as low as $10.
$10 for a phone – with capped charges at $45 per month, so you can get your kids one. Or, if you’re an employer like me, you could buy all your employees a smart phone (Straight Talk has them for less than $60) and give them unlimited text, talk, and data, and maybe they’ll finally respect you. (At least they’ll be happy, and you’ll know your expenses are capped.)
So stop reading this post, and instead watch this happy guy running:
The state Department of Justice is using a creative strategy in hopes of uncovering new information on unsolved homicides and missing persons in Wisconsin: distributing playing cards with pictures of the victims' faces and descriptions of the cold cases.
The cards will be distributed to prisons and sheriff's departments throughout the state in the hopes that inmates will recognize information on the cards and come forward with a lead.
Two decks of playing cards are being released - one for Milwaukee-area cases and one for the rest of the state. The cases span from 1953 to 2008."The information received from an inmate might just be the missing link that can breathe new life into a case that has gone cold," Special Agent Jim Holmes said in a statement released by the DOJ.
(Source.) The cards are supposed to have cost $10,500 to produce the first 2,000 packs -- but that estimate doesn't seem to include the time spent identifying the cold cases, writing up the summaries and producing the cards. No word on how many state resources were used making what will, I am 1000% sure*
*that is a lot of percents
will end up being sold on eBay and will lead to exactly ZERO new convictions. I'm glad we can use state money to create collector's items for Republicans to hand out to their kids.
Wasn't there a shortage of money that required we fire every teacher in the state and let our kids be educated by raccoons or something? Isn't there anything else for the DOJ to do now that the Act10 litigation has been
Paid off by the Kochs
litigated?
I'm getting 2-3 calls per day from people whose homes are in foreclosure under shady circumstances; I've got several cases of repossession companies run amuck open already, and I'm meeting with a person next week over what are claimed to be egregious violations of state landlord-tenant law. Is the DOJ phone not working?
As an added bonus: Suppose that you are a relative of, say, Alexis Patterson, shown on one of those cards. How do you feel about her picture being handed out to every inmate in the State of Wisconsin?
(Alexis Patterson disappeared more than 9 years ago, according to this story. She was 7 years old when she disappeared after being walked to school by her stepfather. Prosecutors, ignoring that the stepfather had a drug problem and that Alexis' dad hinted that he knew what had happened to her, said they had no real solid leads. A John Doe case is ongoing. But luckily for Alexis, every single prison inmate in Wisconsin now has a picture of her smiling face.)
But that gratification left me when I began to wonder about the point of this post, which began when I watched this clip of him taking $13 from some kids as a donation for his Superpac ($13 which was obviously sent in by parents who were hoping that their kids, or they, would get on Colbert):
And they're doing that while sending money to a comedian. I don't know how much money they've sent to Stephen Colbert, comedian, for political purposes -- but I do know that if you sent even a single dollar to Stephen Colbert, then you darn well better demand that not a single cut in social spending be made.
Because if you've got money to mail to Comedy Central, you've got money to pay higher taxes to keep people from dying in the streets.
This is a country so rich that we can pay comedians voluntarily. Quit talking about cutting Medicare, Social Security, and other safety nets, for crying out loud.
I've sworn that I will actively oppose any politician who votes to cut even a single dollar from safety net programs. You ought to, too -- especially if you've sent money to Colbert. If you've done that, then as penance I say you ought to call your Congressman and insist that he or she not vote to cut spending even a single penny.
Even I don't spend ALL my time thinking and writing about politics. Sure, it's important, but so are other things, and everyone's got to relax now and then.
So in between taking potshots at the Tea Party, why not try some online skill games? I was just over at that site playing a little "BalloonO," and I loved it.
Skill Games lets you play fun games like that, alone or against other people, right at your desktop (keep the volume down, and the boss'll never find out. That's the American way.) And they have more than just action games -- there's online board games like "Fishy Fate," and a lot of online gambling games so you can get your poker fix without actually losing money or violating state and federal laws.
Gaming -- WITHOUT violations of federal law. What a world!
There's plenty of competition available, and you'll be able to track where you're at on their leader boards: high scores get posted and you get the acclaim, and more people will see that than the phone book.
What's best about the Skill Games website is they aggregate them all there for you in one place. You can lose a lot of time googling around to try to find a good game, so why bother? Don't waste your downtime. Skill Games will hook you up with the game you're looking for. Feel like a first-person shooter? I bet they have one. Want to play dress-up? Okay, weird, because you're a 57-year-old accountant, but who am I to judge? They've got that, too. But I'd recommend "ASCIIvader," a neat throw-back to the olden days of video games and computers that's not only fun, but charming.
(True story: "Not only fun, but charming," is exactly the phrase used to introduce me as the 1986 nominee for UN Secretary General. [I turned down the job, as I was only 17 at the time, and also lazy.].)
In ASCIIvader, you operate "Squareface," a little emoticon looking guy who must avoid little emoticon guys, too, zooming around on the screen to avoid getting hit and losing all your health (which is measured in colons, appropriately.) I've been playing that this morning, too, which is yet another reason I never get anything done.
But look at this way: by me not doing anything, I'm letting the work pile up for someone else to do, thereby creating jobs -- so in a way, I'm saving America. And so can you. Now get playin'.
Ordinarily, a young blond living with a rich older man would be featured, say, on an E! reality show for a few weeks before we forgot all about her.
But Florida isn't ordinary, and so Florida elected someone who could've been just The Next Girl Next Door to be its attorney general, replacing the former AG Bill McCollum (who ran for Governor) with Pam Bondi (shown at right.)
Pam is more than a potential playmate; she was a prosecutor for 18 years before running for Florida AG. But once she ran, she sure got the attention of Republicans.
Republicans who, when they weren't attacking her for living with a 60-year-old optometrist, were giving her scads of money. Nearly 1/4 of her campaign money came from the Florida Republican Party, while almost the same amount came from public financing through the State of Florida (how conservative!)
That doesn't make her a Bad Republican. A Bad conservative, maybe, but not a Bad Republican.
What makes Blondie a Bad Republican is that she recently fired two assistant AGs who were heavily pressing foreclosure fraud investigations on behalf of the State of Florida.
The two lawyers had received what were described as "strong" performance reviews before they were called into Blondie's office and questioned about investigations they were doing into two companies -- and then were fired.
Blondie the AG wouldn't initially comment on the firings; a few days later she claimed the firings were justified for a variety of fake-sounding reasons.
[The fired lawyers] said publicly in newspaper stories that their boss, Richard Lawson, who heads up the economic crimes division in Bondi’s office, questioned them extensively about two mortgage processors that are under investigation by the office, Jacksonville-based Lender Processing Services and Tampa-based ProVest.
Lawson told the News Service on Wednesday that he did indeed ask about those two companies, after their lawyers expressed concerns about the way Edwards and Clarkson were handling the cases – and, in particular about a public presentation the two gave in a public forum that gave their “impressions and theories” about the Lender Processing Services, and characterized certain companies as foreclosure mills.
In other words, lawyers for companies being investigated for fraud went and complained to the prosecutor's mother, and got what they wanted: the two lawyers were let go.
While Blondie the AG claims she's still pressing the investigations, imagine if you were the lawyer taking over that file. Work too hard on it, and what's going to happen to your job?
That's right. So maybe just let that file sit a while, and work on something else. Play Tetris, or something! Don't sweat that foreclosure (alleged) fraud! It'll work itself out.
That alone would be bad enough -- an AG firing lawyers for too aggressively trying to protect state residents. But Blondie The AG got a chunk of money from real estate interests -- $150,000 (or about 10% of her total) from industries labeled "real estate," with $218,000 from "Lawyers and Lobbyists."
I wonder what it was Florida Republicans liked so much about Blondie the AG?
Occupation: Prosecutor and spokeswoman for the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office.
Home: Tampa
Describe your style: Conservative but trendy.
Style icons: Anne Hathaway, Molly Sims, her mom. ("She has a beautiful, classic style.")
Favorite stores: Paradise Island Boutique, which she calls Tampa's "best-kept secret" for duds from the hottest designers. And she loves the shoe department at the Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH outlet store in Ellenton.
Best recent deal: Ruffled cardigans from Forever 21 for under $20. "You cannot tell the difference from the $100 ones."
What's worth a splurge? Designer shoes and purses. "Anything leather," she said. "I'd rather have one nice pair of shoes than 10 outfits."
Items you can't live without: The classic 60-inch pearls her parents gave her ("I wear those more than anything") and her 20-year-old Abercrombie & Fitch jeans. "Every rip in them is legitimate," she said. "They're more comfortable than pajama bottoms."
Her favorite trends: Long necklaces, huge purses and one-shoulder tops and dresses. — Colleen Jenkins
$150,000 in campaign cash from real estate interests might help replace those 20-year-old jeans, Blondie.
You are a serious person. I get it. You do serious things for a living. You say serious things to other serious people in serious meetings. You deal with serious issues.
Could you at least try once in a while to have fun? Not everything is always life-and-death, you know. Even the most serious people among us have to kick back and relax now and then, don't they? Don't surgeons sometimes have to golf? Don't prison wardens sometimes get to play Tetris?
Heck, I bet even the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse take a break to watch a couple of Youtube cat clips now and then.
So you, Serious Person, should take a break from being Serious, and go look at the Geek Toys and other cool stuff available at Geek Alerts.
Geek Alerts -- one of my favorite websites-- lets you know about the latest cool toys, gadgets, gizmos, and other stuff. Like the ice-cube maker that makes cubes look like your favorite sports ball (or even molecules and stuff.)
Or the Desktop Robot Vacuum, which is what it sounds like: a little robot that vacuums up crumbs on your desk.
Yes, even Serious People can enjoy those kinds of things. And if you're not sold yet, there's a Serious reason for visiting: Geek Alerts doesn't just have cool stuff. They offer discounts, coupons, and savings -- like the Carbonite offer code or the Sierra Trading Post Coupons that'll help you get things you want (or need) (or both) for a lot less.
So be a Serious Person.
But be a Serious Person who saves money on cool stuff, and who owns a Robot Vacuum. Get to Geek Alerts now.
Autism Worksis an across-the-board post I'm doing to help keep people informed of recent events affecting those who have autism and their families. The goal of Autism Works is to raise awareness of, and collect information for, people on the autism spectrum by providing news and information about autism-friendly businesses and developments in treatments and identification of this condition.
Michael Offutt, who writes the blog SLC Kismet, pointed out a while back that there are a great many autism-related apps on the iPad, and it looks like there might be more, so I'll take a look at those today:
First, autism apps. I have a Droid smart phone, one I got in part because Mr F's and Mr Bunches' teachers suggested an iPad last year as something to help the boys learn to communicate. Rather than invest $800 plus right off the bat on something that may not work, I went cheap by getting the touch-screen phone and trying that out.
Finding apps hasn't been difficult. Finding apps suited for autistic kids has -- there is, so far as I can tell, no "keyword" or "tag" type of search for the Droid store.
On the one hand, any app that lets the boys use the phone is a good one, and the smart phone (or touch screen pad) works great for that: Mr Bunches, who particularly likes the computer, had a lot of trouble originally learning how to use the mouse and keyboard, and still has trouble clicking, so a touch screen was great in getting them to play games and use the screen.
That let them play games -- they liked Angry Birds, in particular -- and watch videos all by touching, rather than clicking, and Mr Bunches in particular learned to get around Youtube pretty successfully on my phone, which was also portable enough for him to carry around.
Specific games that I found worked particularly well on the small touch screen included Fisher Price's online learning games: they have counting and ABC games that work well on a touch screen, and some "learning about opposites" and "animal sounds" games that even on a 3-by-1 inch screen look good and are easy to work. They're free and easy to access.
Another game Mr Bunches particularly enjoys, and which can be played on a small or large screen for free, is the "Jumping Box" game, where a person has to click-and-drag on a box to make it slide and jump through obstacles. (I like that one, too.)
"Talking Tom" was an app suggested by the teachers -- it's a cat that repeats everything you say in a slightly higher voice, and reacts to certain touches and other input. It's available for free and for $0.99, but don't bother paying; there's no difference between the two.
Then there's "Hacking Autism." This is a project I just learned about yesterday, an attempt to help "give people with autism a voice." They're going to have a Hackathon to get volunteer software developers in touch with autism specialists to develop new touch-enabled apps for the autism community.
You don't have to be a programmer or expert to participate: the site is seeking comments on existing ideas, and suggestions for apps to be developed, so if you have autism or are related to someone who does, weigh in and let them know.
You might even get some inspiration from the Hacking Autism's "Stories Of Hope," which includes a touching story written by an autistic boy who had never spoken until he was given a "Lightwriter," after which he was able to have a conversation with his older brother -- a conversation that was so special, they videotaped it for his parents and made it their Christmas present.
The GOP's answer to the health care problem has long been "Let them die in the streets," a phrase they dress up by saying "Let's let insurers sell across state lines," and pretending that's not a recipe for disaster. By letting insurers "sell across state lines", Bad Republicans hypothesize, we can bring the beauty (?) of the free market (?) to health care, keeping costs down while care goes up.
That's what they pay lip service to, anyway, but keep in mind that across-state-lines sales in other areas of public need have not kept costs down, at all. (See, e.g., college.)
Even with that claim, the GOP has a secret: They don't want to sell insurance across state lines to save you money (or save your life.) They want to do it to help insurance companies make more money.
Vukmir is introducing a bill to let out-of-state insurers sell insurance in Wisconsin -- insurance that would not be subject to Wisconsin's insurance mandates. And she's upfront about it. According to WMC's press release:
Rep. Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa) recently announced she will be introducing legislation which would allow Wisconsin consumers to pick and choose which of the state’s health insurance mandates they actually want to purchase. Wisconsin, by statute, requires certain treatments and services which must be included in health plans sold in Wisconsin. Under this legislation, consumers would be able to evaluate each government-mandated benefit and its cost, and then determine whether they want to pay for and receive the mandated benefit.
Now, think about that: Do you get to evaluate the coverage you purchase? Or does the HR person in your company evaluate the coverage you purchase? And think about this: what is it, exactly, that you'll be getting sick with in the next year? Do you know whether you're going to hurt your back? Or get glaucoma?
So how can you evaluate which mandates you need when you don't know what will happen, and you don't pick out your insurance?
You don't do that when you buy car insurance, do you? You can choose between liability and collision, but you don't get to pick, say, coverage only for accidents on rainy days, or coverage only for accidents when someone else is in the car with me. You just get coverage for things that are your fault, and/or things that are not.
So forgive me for thinking "Gee whiz, it sure doesn't seem like people are screaming for the right to determine exactly what health problems they'll have covered in the future," because they're not. (Yet another reason there's no free market in health care: you pay for things that go wrong without your being able to anticipate them. And frequently those things are emergencies, in which you cannot take the time to shop around.)
So this isn't to let people "pick and choose" what mandates they want, because people don't know and can't know what they'll need coverage for in 1, 2, 5, 10 years.
-- Wisconsin mandates: Coverage for chiropractic care is mandatory if the policy would cover those services when provided by a physician. Also mandatory is coverage for optometrists, nurse practitioners, and other professionals performing services that would be covered if provided by a doctor.
That's mandatory right now, and it's important because allowing lower-cost alternatives helps keep doctors free to focus on the big stuff, while keeping costs down. Why should you pay a doctor's rate to get a chiropractic adjustment when a chiropractor can do the same thing? Getting rid of that mandate lets insurers refuse to cover chiropractic services and nurse practitioners -- so you'll have to go to a doctor when you hurt your back doing yardwork, and you'll have to pay for that, through higher premiums.
-- Wisconsin mandates: that adopted children the same as biological children.
Why would you want to get rid of that? The Republicans are trying to make it okay for insurers to refuse to cover adopted children?
-- Wisconsin mandates: that children whose developmental disabilities prevent them from achieving full independence at adulthood be allowed to remain on their families' health insurance policies.
There's more: Wisconsin mandates that insurance policies provide coverage for up to 40 home health care visits per year. People heal better and are more comfortable in their own homes, and it's cheaper than keeping them in a hospital. Vukmir wants to make you stay in a more-expensive hospital away from your kids when you recuperate. Wisconsin mandates that newborns be covered by parents' policies from the moment they're born. Why would Republicans want to take that away? (Especially in a state where the government is refusing to investigate the high incidence of birth defects affecting farmers -- that's a double-whammy right there: Don't prevent birth defects, and refuse to provide health insurance coverage for farmers' kids. Nice.)
Wisconsin prohibits insurers from doing genetic screening of insureds, requires diabetes and autism treatment, anesthesia for children, and more. Why do the Republicans want to do away with those things?
I'll tell you why: To let insurers from out-of-state charge the same amount as in-state insurers, while providing fewer benefits. Your employer (and you) are already paying a health-insurance premium for Wisconsin-mandated coverage that lets you recuperate at home and have your children covered and more.
When these carpetbagger insurance companies come into Wisconsin to sell you mandate-free health coverage, do you think they're going to always charge less than Wisconsin insurers?
Hell, no.
They may start out a little lower -- but eventually, the carpetbaggers will charge the same as the in-state companies, so you'll be paying the same premiums for less coverage.
Or, if they do continue to charge less, in-state insurers will demand the "freedom" to not provide you necessary coverage, too -- charging less, too, for less coverage, and they'll get it.
Vukmir's bill is the beginning of the end for even the relatively modest health care coverage Wisconsinites get; it's the start of yet another Republican race-to-the-bottom. We've seen Republicans reduce taxes to gut public service. We've seen them pass "No Child Left Behind," vouchers, and Act 10 to tear apart public schools. And now, with the "No Mandate" a la carte carpetbagger insurance bills, Republicans are starting to eliminate decent health insurance coverage.
And the war on Wisconsinites continues -- but now they're going after the sick, and the old, and the newborns.
So I went looking for details on the story, and found precious few. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which is perilously close to being Fitzwalkerstan's Pravda, had maybe 100 words on the story, period, but included this tantalizing line:
The Beloit Welcome Center was reopened by Gov. Scott Walker and other officials as part of a new public-private partnership
Public-private partnership, you say? Interesting. I wanted to see what, exactly, the partnership is -- what's the State doing, and who's the private partners we Wisconsinites have.
"The Beloit Welcome Center is a gateway for hundreds of thousands of motorists coming into the state from Illinois," said Governor Walker. "The public-private partnership established between Visit Beloit, and the Departments of Tourism and Transportation is a best practice model that provides friendly and knowledgeable front-line customer service and again shows why 'Wisconsin is open for business.'"
Interesting. But, er... what is the partnership?
More from Tourism:
The new arrangement is the result of a public-private partnership between Tourism, DOT and Visit Beloit. The agreement creates a branded presence for TravelWisconsin.com in three key visitor information centers -- La Crosse, Kenosha and Beloit, which are operated and staffed by the local Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Well, that...
... doesn't clear it up at all. What?
A search on Tourism's website for "Visit Beloit" gets no information about what the partnership might be.
It’s a great way of partnering with Visit Beloit, tourism and the department of transportation to find a solution (to open this as a staffed welcome center),” Walker said, as he left the lobby of the Welcome Center for another Beloit appointment. “Hopefully this is the start of more partnerships like this in the future.
"Visit Beloit." That's our new buddy?
So who is Visit Beloit? DFI lists no organization by that name under the corporate records listings. The Daily News mentioned someone named Linda Ross, of "Visit Beloit," so I googled her.
That, in turn, made me wonder why the State was stepping in at all, if things were okay on a volunteer basis and a private business was already benefitting from the efforts -- let alone why the State had increased Tourism's budget by $2.5 million while cutting funds for schools.
But I was still hot on the trail of this public-private partnership -- I still wasn't clear on what the State was doing, and what Visit Beloit was doing.
First, the Tourism website (and news articles dutifully quoting Gov. Patsy) say that the tourism centers closed in 2008 to save money. But newspaper articles from 2010 and press releases from the governor's own people say that the 10 centers were operating before any of these secret public-private partnerships went into effect.
So what, exactly, did the secret public-private partnerships do? The tourism centers were already operating in January, 2011 -- when Gov. Patsy took office.
So how, exactly, did this secret public-private partnership save small businesses money? Now, to get their brochure into the Beloit welcome center, a mom-and-pop business has to pay $400 annually.
Finally, third, what, EXACTLY is the public-private partnership? Not one single news source I read was able to say what the State was doing, what private corporations were doing, or provided any other information about this whatsoever.
Before we all go skipping down the path shouting hooray, jobs! wouldn't it behoove a reporter to simply ask some of those questions? I know Republicans aren't concerned about throwing tax money at private corporations while extorting mom-and-pop tourism destinations simply to get their brochures on a rack, but aren't reporters concerned about that? Let me put it more simply: why did the State spend $2.5 million more on tourism to do what private groups were already doing, and how does this secret deal benefit taxpayers more than, say, giving our schools money?
There's an old saying that goes something like "If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but if you let a man stay in your home in Hawaii for a week, he might never leave, so you'd best get a deposit from him."
Okay, that's not an old saying at all; it's just something that popped into my head when I heard about the new home exchange programs that are popping up to help people take vacations.
Home exchange is a new way to stay on vacation: two people or families get in touch with each other, and do what the title sounds like: they swap homes for a while. So my family would let you stay in our house for a week or two, and your family would let us stay in your house for a while.
Provided, of course, that you live in Hawaii, which is where I want to go.
I see the appeal of this: who wants to take their whole family to stay in a hotel, living in one or two small rooms with no kitchen and limited space, when you could stay in a whole house, spreading out and truly relaxing?
Not to mention that a home exchange for vacation would save money. A decent hotel is what, $150 or more per night around Madison, Wisconsin? So if someone wants to come here, they'd spend over $1,000 for a week in a hotel, whereas if they stay in our house, they'd have three floors and five bedrooms of luxury...
... well, middle-classer-y...
... for free -- and access to our kitchen, so they could cook breakfast instead of having to go to restaurants, and a yard to spread out in, and the rest.
They'd have a home to stay in.
The sites where I've seen them talk about this make a good point: you might be trading your castle for a condo, one says, but it's about the adventure, and in a home exchange you'll also get away from the beaten path and into where people actually live, so you'll see a side of that vacation you might not otherwise get into.
And the money you save on hotels can be used for other things -- more activities, theme parks, golf outings, fishing trips, you name it.
I don't see anything bad about this idea, unless you count it as "bad" that I'd probably be expected to put away all the socks in that laundry basket before someone comes to stay here. (Unless I could convince them those are the scenic socks of Middleton.)
Autism Worksis an across-the-board post I'm doing to help keep people informed of recent events affecting those who have autism and their families. The goal of Autism Works is to raise awareness of, and collect information for, people on the autism spectrum by providing news and information about autism-friendly businesses and developments in treatments and identification of this condition.
Today's business is My Autism Team, a website that promises to help with what these posts are intended to do, to: help people find autism-friendly businesses and identify service providers and other tips.
Signing up for My Autism Team is simple: a little bit of detail to set up a profile (and a chance to upload a picture) and you're ready to go, with an email verification that was simple. The profile didn't offer me a chance to enter information about more than one child, and the categories of information about the children were pretty limited (just four options about his or her behavior, rather than entering, say, a sentence or two), but it only took about 5 minutes to sign up.
Once signed up and verified, you can enter information in a format similar to Gather or Twitter -- blog posts with a button to click about whether you're having a "good" or "bad" day, and the chance to enter additional information. (I, for example, entered my first post as having a "good" day, and noted in the explanation that it was "like most days.")
I then went looking for other services to see what was there. The boys recently had to stop occupational therapy because we can't afford the co-pay (thanks, Republicans!) each week, so I went to see if there were occupational therapists in our area that I could contact who might have a lower (or no) co-pay.
The search itself is simple: type occupational therapy and your location and get a list of providers listed there -- but the six providers suggested for me had no information about them at all, beyond their office address. There wasn't even a way to click to contact them by email, on or off the site, making it somewhat less than useful.
I also looked for "sports leagues," as I've been trying to find a league that is autism-friendly so I could get the boys involved in soccer (I'm not a big fan of soccer, but it seems like it would be the easiest sport for them to play.) Under sports leagues I got these results within 20 miles of Middleton:
Again, there was almost no useful information under those tabs. I clicked on "Middleton Sport Bowl", which is only a few minutes from our house, because I thought an autism-friendly bowling league might be just as good as soccer, but found only an address and this review, from 18 months ago:
1/31/10 Middleton Sport Bowl is a classic neighborhood bar and bowling alley. They updated the Bowl a few years ago and it's a nice bowling alley. You can always run into a familiar face, having fun, and eating good bar food.
Frankly, that looks like it was posted on the Middleton Sports Bowl fan page, and isn't in any way helpful to someone with autism or a child with autism; what I was looking for was whether they have leagues, or "sensory friendly" days or times that it's less crowded (and therefore less noisy and easier to police children.)
I've only just found the site, so I'll keep checking in -- it's obvious to me that it works better as more people use it and provide information; that's how crowdsourcing helps, after all. But the fact that it's been around for over 18 months and hasn't developed a lot of information isn't encouraging for me.
Also discouraging: why aren't there sports leagues for kids with autism? Or mixed-leagues for spectrum- and non-spectrum kids? I can't do everything, here.
Today's Site is: "The World Of Mismatched Socks." Written by a woman with autism about her and her also-autistic brother's lives, this blog is a fascinating look at what life is like for someone on the spectrum. It's funny, interesting, at times a bit sad, and well-written.
The latest post begins like this:
What come to your mind when you think about Hell?? Most people think of fire, brimstone, gnashing of teeth, A Justin Bieber concert, algebra, etc...
A growing feud between two Madison health care systems will soon result in fewer choices for thousands of patients and could drive up costs for everyone
The basic problem underlying the feud is that both Meriter and UW Hospital -- which sit about a mile apart -- have decided that the market is too small to feed the both of them, and so they're starting to cut off your nose to spite their faces. In the past, UW and Meriter allowed patients served by their insurers (Unity and Physicians Plus, respectively) to choose doctors from either hospital to treat them. And to choose hospitals, for that matter.
Which brings up the first problem in this so-called "system." I'm covered by Physicians Plus -- not by choice, as is required by a free market, but because that's what my employer provides me.
But I never knew, before reading that article, that I could choose between hospitals. So last year, when I had to go to the ER twice in one week, I went to the hospital I thought I had to go to -- Meriter.
So much for the free market! I never knew I had the option of researching which hospital I could go to -- until a highly-publicized feud let me know the option (which I didn't know I had) no longer existed.
So now, UW and Meriter will run two separate "systems," "systems" that include a hospital in Madison that's usually only 60% full.
What kind of "system" is that? What kind of "system" encourages businesses to so overduplicate efforts that both can make profits running at only 60% capacity? If my law firm ran at 60% capacity -- if every person in the firm only typically had 5 hours worth of work to do in a given day -- we'd close down or lay people off.
Not the health care field, where there is no free market:
The duplication of services between UW Health and Meriter "is going to drive up our health care costs, and employers and consumers will pay those costs," said Cheryl DeMars, chief executive officer of The Alliance, a Madison-based group of 160 companies that collectively purchase health care.
What other industry could operate a 60% capacity and make a profit in a crowded market? (There's a third major health care provider, Dean/St. Mary's, in the same market.)
Before you answer that, consider that Meriter, which is operating at 60% capacity in that crowded market, has the money to hire doctors away from UW by offering them signing bonuses, high retirement contributions, and other incentives, incentives some say aren't sustainable in the marketplace.
Is Meriter hoping that it will hire enough doctors away to drive UW Hospital out of business, so that it can then take on the additional patients to cover the above-market rates it is supposedly paying doctors it swipes from UW?
At the same time, both Meriter and UW are building outlying clinics, in some cases quite near each other, duplicating services and serving as a stunning example of how much money is flowing through the "system" people like to champion as being the best in the world.
That best is a subjective thing. Right now, the system we have set up requires that all employers -- whether they be law firms, restaurants, accounting companies, or record production studios -- be experts in health insurance; our office manager has to find health insurance to cover the needs of 32 different families. Health insurance is the only insurance that we insist, for some reason, go through employers.
That helps hide the cost of insurance from people. You see what you pay out of your pocket, but not what your employer pays. And that means that most people aren't aware of how fast health care costs are going up. But they are going up: since 1999, health insurance premiums have gone up 119%. Workers wages, meanwhile, went up only 34% during that time. Since workers' contributions' share has stayed about the same (most people pay about 28% of the premium out of their pocket) that means that the out-of-pocket cost has gone up steadily -- but the bulk of the cost is still hidden from most people.
Imagine if you only paid 28% of your gas expenses; would you be aware of how far or much you drove, or what mileage your car got? That's the free market "conservatives" love to champion: a market where someone else (your HR manager) does the shopping for you and you only see a fraction of the cost.
Even worse, that fraction you see isn't even a smidgen of the real cost: when I had a heart attack, I don't know what the bill was, at all. I paid $100 -- the cost of going into the ER that Friday morning.
I paid that $100 the same as anyone else in my firm would, from the highest-earning partner to the lowest-earning clerical employee. But the $100 doesn't hurt the same for all of us; I'm less able to afford it than the guy that founded the firm, but way more able to afford it than the guy who just started working the mail desk.
Some free market.
And look how much money is going into the system: Enough to fully fund two, or three separate health systems that operate at 60% capacity and yet are still flush enough to try to spite build clinics and spite hire doctors.
That's the system that conservatives champion and Obama and the Democrats want to feed with ObamaCare and its mandatory insurance clause. A system that has evolved into a money printing press for health care providers, as we've gone from spending an average of $2800 per person on health care in 1990 to an average of $8,160 per person in 2009 to a projected average of $13,000+ per person in 2018.
We have a public education system, and it works great: nobody is building two elementary schools right next to each other and having them each be half-full. Nobody is trying to spite-hire teachers at above market rates (although that would be nice!) Nobody is insisting that my office manager choose a school for all our kids to go to.
But we don't have a health care system, at all. We have an ad hoc set up of overlapping, dysfunctional clinics that suck money from us and our employers and don't provide the benefits that we think it provides.
There's a simple solution: the government could simply set up a series of public hospitals and clinics, the way we've set up a public schools and colleges. Care could be provided at those hospitals to anyone, based on taxpayer support and with copays set on ability to pay.
Alongside those would be (if people wanted them) private institutions where those who wanted could get their medical care if they so chose -- the way we have public and private schools now and both do just fine.
The existence of the government-run facilities would both ensure affordable care to everyone and would serve as a check on those private facilities, which would have to compete on price or luxury, the way private schools do now.
ObamaCare, which was at best only a start, isn't going to fix the problem. It's just going to divert more money to insurance companies, which will continue pumping money directly from your wallet into their half-full spite clinics. But as long as people continue to let hypocritical conservatives bully them by shouting socialized medicine over and over, and as long as Democrats continue to quail in the face of that, we'll continue to have half-full clinics and people dying of treatable diseases.
Second, in the past 10 years, tuition increases have been common, increasing every year, sometimes by as much as 18%. (Source.) Those increases are 2 to 3 times the rate of inflation -- so while everything's getting more expensive, college educations are getting more expensive-er.
Third, nobody is bothering to address whether top-heavy administration salaries are responsible for the tuition increases -- something I've harped on in the past and will again. But it bears examining. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the flagship UW school, total salaries and wages are $1,109,451,519. A billion dollars, on salaries alone. (Source.) Over $4,000,000 of that is paid in salaries and wages to the Chancellor's office alone. That's administration: people who do not teach, research or otherwise add to the academic excellence of the University of Wisconsin.
While the University of Wisconsin was spending $437,000 on a temporary leader, and $4,000,000 in support staff for that leader, it was decreasing professor pay in the past two years. The average professor at the University of Wisconsin, according to that article, makes $107,000.
Is Temp David Ward worth four professors?
That's a question that hasn't been asked by anyone, so far as I can tell.
(Reprinted from here.) 22% of students in 2-year colleges are now taking out loans. The average student graduates with a ton of debt:
Those 2-year public school college students are graduating with $50,000 in student loan debt. Nondischargeable, easily-collectible, student loan debt, sometimes with really high interest rates. Most student loans are payable in 10 years. A $50,000 loan at 5% interest requires $533 per month in payments over 10 years, or $6,396 per year. (Which means that a student at a 2-year UW school paid $63,960 for that degree; shouldn't that be put on a warning label when the student applies to the school?)
Concerned about the economy? That's $533 that won't be spent on cars, electronics, houses, or other spending that companies rely on. Unless you work for a student loan lender, that money doesn't benefit you directly.
The situation is worse for people with higher debt, of course. That same article estimates the national average starting salary for people with a 4-year degree to be $43,000. Those people, though, graduate with $70,000 in debt -- or $8,900 per year in student loan payments.
The high cost of do-nothing administrators is not the only problem facing public schools; the other problem is a lack of a free market. Demand for a college education is up -- way up -- but the market doesn't let people freely pick and choose where they want to attend.
Ordinarily, when demand goes up, way up, a free market will respond by increasing supply, keeping the price within reason. But colleges (like health care) are not a free market. Private colleges (for-profit and not-for-profit) compete with public universities that are subsidized by the state. (I would point out that so-called "conservatives" do not have any qualms about socialized education, but as shown by Gov. Scott "Patsy" Walker's attack on public education this year, they do hate educating people.) And students are not free to choose where to attend: They get lower tuition for the schools in their state, and higher tuition for schools elsewhere, as all 50 states practice educational protectionism: lower "in-state" tuition for residents which punish students who would choose to attend, say, the U. of Iowa but happen to have been raised in Wisconsin.
So colleges, who have something of a captive market, are free to raise their tuition above the cost of inflation, and to take other anti-capitalistic approaches, like giving students grants that are designed to fail after the first year, forcing students to then either give up on college or spend heavily, or simply increasing their tuition and class size to take advantage of the boom -- offering fewer services for the same amount of money.
That, in turn, leads to higher rates of default and poorer credit for those students, providing an even greater drag on the economy.
And, all of this has been averages. But averages don't mean that much; specifics mean a lot, and as I've pointed out in the past, the high cost of education means that some jobs are going to be priced out of the market.
That four-year degree costs a minimum of $89,000. Assuming you're willing to work through the low-pay years, which degrees will you want to get to maximize your earnings once you've paid off those loans and are 32 years old and want to live the good life?
Nursing? Forestry? Public health? All making less than $70,000 a year, mid-career. And mid-career is when you want to be buying a house for you and your spouse and your 2.2 children live in.
Keep in mind that the hypothetical person who is now earning $70,000 a year as a nurse at age 32 has no savings because he has been paying off his student loans. He also has few to no consumer goods. He's just getting started, at 32.
Now think about this: That average person who goes to a UW school and spends $70,000 on her education doesn't have to stay in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, average income for a four-person family is about $54,000. But it's $70,000 in Maryland. You may be stuck going to school in Wisconsin because of where your parents chose to live -- but you can then take your Wisconsin-subsidized education and move it to a state where there is greater opportunity. As of 2010, 1 in 5 University of Wisconsin graduates moved out of state, while about 1 in 10 nonresidents who went to school here, stayed here.
Of course, that 81% figure may be misleading; it's the number of people who initially stayed here. Over time, fully 1/3 of all University of Wisconsin graduates move to another state. And the University of Wisconsin-Madison, does the worst of all: 31% of Wisconsin residents who go to school in Madison leave to go somewhere else right away. Younger people are more likely than older students to up and move after graduation. (Here's the source for all that info.)
There's the problem: Schools are free to raise tuition by an average of 9.5% on in-state residents, because Wisconsin residents still by and large will choose to go to school here, as it's cheaper than anywhere else. The price-gouging supports too-high administrative wages, keeping professor's salaries low (and requiring that the state chip in money to retain faculty, keeping taxes up). But once they graduate, more and more UW-degree holders are moving to other states.
In other words: we are subsidizing highly-educated people going to work in other states.
What if we didn't do that?
Imagine!
Here's my proposal, since I do more than just complain, I fix things.
First, offer Wisconsin residents a tuition-free first year of school at any 2-year UW campus. If you grew up in Wisconsin, you and your parents have already paid for schools -- so why not let anyone who has lived here, say, five years, get the first year free? That's relatively low cost; tuition at those campuses is about $2300 per year.
Second, offer tuition tax credits for any University of Wisconsin graduate who stays in Wisconsin after graduation. This would be a dollar-for-dollar credit based on the tuition you were charged (not the loans you took out.) So if tuition was $5,000 per year while you were in school, you have a $20,000 tax credit coming, one that carries over until it's used, or you move out of Wisconsin. Say your first year after graduating, you were to pay $1,000 in state income taxes. You can apply $1,000 of your lifetime tuition tax credit to that, and pay no income taxes at all to the state that year, or any year.
But if you move out of state for any reason, you lose the credit. That encourages grads to stay here, because they'll pay lower taxes here than anywhere else -- and it encourages students from other states to come here and stay here, because the size of their tax credit is even bigger -- they pay out-of-state tuition.
The UW system graduated 24,000 people with bachelor's degrees in 2008. By their own statistics, about 8,000 of those people have now moved out of state, taking with them their our-money-subsidized education, their businesses that employ people, and their spending on other businesses that employ people.
Would they have stayed here if they were freed of income taxes? And if they'd had the first year of their education free?
I think so. And they'd have been more free to choose jobs that earn less money, on average, but which are jobs we need. We need people to work in schools, social services, and forests. Not everyone can be an investment banker.
But until people start paying attention, and start caring, we'll keep on overpaying temporary workers and using our tax dollars to send our best and brightest off to jobs in engineering... in Maryland.
