I’ll assume this is well intentioned, but the premise is crazy.
Really? That’s the best we can do? Isn’t the very existence of this loan type a huge red flag?
This blog post asks a simple question. If climate change is bogus, why did Monsanto (farming seed company) pay a billion dollars for a company whose business model is to help farmers deal with the crazy fluctuations of climate change (mission statement: Our mission is to help all the world’s people and businesses manage and adapt to climate change).
Here’s the long read from the New Yorker.
This article makes an important point. Yes, it’s from Mother Jones, the publication that released the Romney video. And full disclosure, Mother Jones was delivered to my house pretty much my entire childhood due to my commie pinko parents.
But if you are worried that Social Security has a crazy mismatch of benefits paid vs. received, this is a good chart to consider.
As the article points out:
Generally speaking, you’re always being conned when people talk about “entitlements.” That usually means Social Security and Medicare, but they’re very different things. Social Security is fine, and will stay fine with nothing more than tweaks. Medicare is a bigger problem, and it’s the one that needs the most attention.
But that’s leftist propaganda…
Courtesy The Incidental Economist. Life expectancy (y-axis) and health care spending per capita (x-axis).
We’re better than the Czech Republic! (at only 4x the cost)
I realize that New York state is not typical, but I heard something from a friend today that I wasn’t expecting. He’s an older tech guy who freelances, so he has an individual health policy. He heard about Obama’s new plan to let carriers continue deficient plans for another year. And his response was:
I hope they don’t cancel my cancellation.
He had received a cancellation notice from his carrier with references to similar plans. He had done serious research on the plans to see how comparable they were. And it turned out he was going to be paying about a third of what he currently pays for the same coverage.
Now New York already has real minimum coverage requirements, so you really can’t buy a crap-ass plan (that’s the official insurance term) here. But I had never heard anyone receive a cancellation notice that directs them to much cheaper, equivalent policies.
And this friend is that rare species, a New York City Republican.
I object to policy by anecdote, so I draw zero conclusions from this. I was just very surprised…
Look at the trend since 2000. Wow. Good to know the average worker is seeing a similar wealth increase…
Oh the horror.
Truthfully I don’t even know what that title means. Comments in code cannot be HIPPA compliant or not, because they don’t do anything.
As a developer, perhaps I should explain. Software code is often complex. Developers can add “comments” to the code. This is just text that no one sees except the next developer trying to figure out what the code does. It doesn’t appear to the user, it’s not even part of the system at all. It’s the developer equivalent of a sticky note to remember to pick up the laundry.
Different languages have different syntax to indicate a comment. I code mainly in C#. You can put // at the beginning of a line which means the whole line is a comment. Or you can put /* somewhere and everything in the code until */ is a comment (good for really long, multiline comments.
But it’s not always explanatory comments. Sometimes you have a chunk of code, maybe you copied it from somewhere else, and you realize that part of it isn’t applicable. Or maybe you aren’t sure if it’s applicable. So you don’t delete it, you comment it out. Same thing, at that point it’s just not part of the system anymore.
In HTML (basic web site) code, comments always use the code block approach (like /* … */ above). For HTML the syntax is <!– to start the comment and -–> to end it.
This is the chunk of code that Rep. Joe Barton (R – Tex.) went ballistic over in the house hearings today. The highlighted part in line 1408 is what he objected to (click to zoom). But note the beginning of line 1406 and the end of line 1411. This is a comment block. It was probably boilerplate code used on many sites that the developer commented out. Honestly, I have no clue what it was, but it’s not part of the actual system.
Can we officially state that folks in Congress have no business discussing computer source code?
In two weeks.
We don’t need no stinkin’ web site…
Though Oregon’s health insurance exchange is not yet up and running, the number of uninsured is already dropping thanks to new fast-track enrollment for the Oregon Health Plan.
Most people seem shocked that people would even threaten that the US default, because it’s so unthinkable. But other folks have been thinking about default for a while now and not in terms of it being horrible.
As always, I think it’s important to be reading all sides of a debate, even (especially?) the side you disagree with.
So in that vein, a reading list:
There Is Life after Default (that’s how they capitalized it, draw your own conclusions)
The Looming Federal Default: Sooner or Later?
Niall Ferguson: America Needs to Cancel Its Debt
(side note, there’s been a funny Eco-blog-slamming between Ferguson and everyone else lately)
America’s default on its debt is inevitable
The other side?
The Incidental Economist is a health care focused blog, frankly often over my head in the health care arena.
This post talked about costs on the Indiana heath exchange. The main point:
Let me say that again: The most expensive plan I could find for a family like mine on the Indiana Health Insurance Exchange is less expensive than the average employer sponsored health insurance plan in the US.
Steve Fischer's Random Blog 