McDonald's, 29 other firms get health care coverage waivers - USATODAY.com
Nearly a million workers won't get a consumer protection in the U.S. health reform law meant to cap insurance costs because the government exempted their employers.Thirty companies and organizations, including McDonald's (MCD) and Jack in the Box (JACK), won't be required to raise the minimum annual benefit included in low-cost health plans, which are often used to cover part-time or low-wage employees.
Va. launching portable housing for aging relatives
SALEM, VA. The Rev. Kenneth Dupin, who leads a small Methodist church here, has a vision: As America grows older, its aging adults could avoid a jarring move to the nursing home by living in small, specially equipped, temporary shelters close to relatives.
Skeptics, however, have a different name for Dupin's product: the granny pod.
Do you have to be a granny? Because if this thing has a high-speed internet connection it might be better than a cave!
...he would be sending - right now he would be sending the FBI, the IRS, and any other three-letter agency he could think of, and some kind of Justice Department SWAT team into the mortgage forclosure fray
(...three major banks -- Chase, GMAC Mortgage and Bank of America -- halted certain foreclosures in 23 states to check whether documents in the cases were properly checked....
One major title company, Old Republic National Title Insurance Co., based in Minneapolis, said it will not insure titles for Chase and GMAC until the issue is resolved, according to an Old Republic memo obtained by the New York Times. Old Republic had no comment....
And more, says the Chicago Sun-Times)
because here's a chance to actually do something by helping Main Street and standing up to the big bankers - making himself useful for a change instead of hectoring his erstwhile backers about "bucking up"...
And if the Democrats had any stuff they would be back in Washington right now, today, doing something to correct this...
Little-Noticed Bill Could Make It Harder To Challenge Foreclosures
Challenging foreclosures could become more difficult for homeowners if the president signs a bill that passed through the Senate last week. The little-noticed bill comes at a time when the validity of foreclosure proceedings across the nation have been called into question.
...instead of calling for an "investigation"...
...but he won't and they're not.
Fail.
Later: From Reuters...Obama almost gets it together...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will not sign legislation that could have made it more difficult for homeowners to challenge unjustified foreclosure actions, the White House said on Thursday....
and then...
White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said Obama was sending the bill back to the House of Representatives for further discussion....
Blah.
The Real Impact of Food Stamp Cuts « The Washington Independent
Congress is poised to cut food stamps again, taking more away from an extended benefit created by the 2009 stimulus, before its original expiry date, and setting up an unprecedented “cliff” in food stamps, now known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. To demonstrate how hurtful this might prove, anti-hunger advocate Joel Berg recently spent a week eating according to the SNAP budget....
Go look.
Suburban Guerrilla » Blog Archive » Why don’t you love me?
I read several pieces yesterday that amounted to “look at all the great pieces of legislation we passed, why oh why don’t they love us?”
Unrequited love. Yeah, that’s some painful stuff. Really. But the fact is, we’re just not that into you.
Pentagon: The global cyberwar is just beginning - CSMonitor.com
The Pentagon is rapidly preparing for cyberwar in the face of alarming and growing threats, say senior defense officials, who add that sophisticated attacks have prompted them to take the striking step of investigating the feasibility of expanding NATO’s collective defense tenet to include cyberspace.
But as such planning intensifies, the military is struggling with some basics of warfare – including how to define exactly what, for starters, constitutes an attack, and what level of cyberattack warrants a cyber-reprisal.
[My italics.)
Who says cyber any more except when they're trying to make something sound really spooky?
Well, anyway. The real question here is, why would anybody think the Air Force would have any better handle on cyberwar (woo woo) than the bunch of regular civilian IT guys and computer scientists (and hackers) who've been dealing with this whole thing all along, since even before the Air Force started drawing flow charts? And if there is a reason, why don't we know?
Editorial - Verizon Wireless Says Oops - NYTimes.com
Mistakes do happen. What’s instructive about Verizon Wireless’s behavior is that when customers called to complain about the problem, it often refused to reverse the charges. When the F.C.C. officially approached the company in December, it denied there was a problem. The F.C.C. opened a formal investigation in January. On Sunday, Verizon changed its tune.
12 Deadliest States With The Highest Mortality Rates - Insider Monkey
Lots of sun, high employment, environmentally friendly, lower crime rate- all factors people take into account when looking for a new place to live. They may want to add another this factor: Likelihood of death.
All the other southeastern states are on this list of the 12 deadliest, plus Arkansas, Oklahoma, and DC (is DC a state?). But no Florida. Seems a little bit weird.
For a list of the states with the lowest mortality rates, click here.
Filipino Flight Safety Demo Is YouTube Hit - NYTimes.com
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Flight attendants for a low-cost Philippine airline who dance to Lady Gaga to keep passengers from snoozing through an in-flight safety demonstration are the latest YouTube sensation.
Mike DeBonis on Local Politics - Hacker infiltration ends D.C. online voting trial
Last week, the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics opened a new Internet-based voting system for a weeklong test period, inviting computer experts from all corners to prod its vulnerabilities in the spirit of "give it your best shot." Well, the hackers gave it their best shot -- and midday Friday, the trial period was suspended, with the board citing "usability issues brought to our attention."
Here's one of those issues: After casting a vote, according to test observers, the Web site played "Hail to the Victors" -- the University of Michigan fight song....
Flawed Bank Paperwork Aggravates a Foreclosure Crisis - NYTimes.com
The flawed practices that GMAC Mortgage, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America have recently begun investigating are so prevalent, lawyers and legal experts say, that additional lenders and loan servicers are likely to halt foreclosure proceedings and may have to reconsider past evictions....
Attorneys general in at least six states, including Massachusetts, Iowa, Florida and Illinois, are investigating improper foreclosure practices.
...the key quote is:
Homeowners, lawyers and analysts have been citing such problems for the last few years....
Right. The last few years. And you don't even have to understand these mortgage-backed securities, just read a general, non-technical description of them, to see that with mortgages sliced and diced and combined and re-combined it would be highly unlikely one could isolate the actual title owners of said mortgaged properties anyway. Whatever. The fact that this problem is only now leaking out of the business section and, worse, the fact that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people have literally been thrown out of their homes due to these sloppy practices on the part of our too-big-and-important-(and-well-connected) financial institutions is a disgrace.
Will anybody, ever, except for some nameless file clerk in Basement B (how could the executives of a bank be expected to know what the bank actually does?), be held accountable for any of this?
Noted by our Midwest bureau:
Op-Ed Columnist - Fear and Favor - NYTimes.com
As Politico recently pointed out, every major contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination who isn’t currently holding office and isn’t named Mitt Romney is now a paid contributor to Fox News.
I got so frustrated with Windows Vista sometime last winter that I nuked the whole thing and then let my virtualization software go to seed, who needed it, until the other day I ran across a $10.00 upgrade offer from VMware on its Mac desktop Fusion which was too good to pass up. So I got it, installed Ubuntu, and am currently waiting for some 800 Debian files to download (about half an hour this should take, from start to finish) - so then, two flavors of Linux to play with, neither of which I have the slightest conceivable need for but hey, isn't that the point?
Idea of the Day: Don't Take Funds From One Child Nutrition Program to Pay for Another
Last month, the Senate passed a bill that aims to reduce hunger and obesity. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act will reauthorize the nation’s child nutrition programs such as School Breakfast, School Lunch, summer feeding, and the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program for pregnant women, infants, and children. There is much to like about this bill, which improves the nutritional quality of school meals and invests in strategies to enhance access to healthy foods.
Unfortunately (and ironically), the legislation proposes to pay for the bill’s improvements with $2.2 billion in cuts to improvements made to food stamp...benefits in the Recovery Act.
Growing pains for a centerpiece of health overhaul - Yahoo! News
Premiums [for something called a Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, a key feature of the much-applauded health insurance reform] may be out of reach. In many states, people in their 40s and 50s face monthly premiums ranging from $400 to $600 and higher. "I think there's some sticker shock going on," said Sabrina Corlette, a Georgetown University research professor.
Op-Ed Columnist - The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine O’Donnell - NYTimes.com
By latching on to O’Donnell’s growing presence, the Rove-Boehner-McConnell establishment can claim it represents struggling middle-class Tea Partiers rather than Wall Street potentates and corporate titans. O’Donnell’s value is the same as that other useful idiot, Michael Steele, who remains at the Republican National Committee only because he can wave the banner of “diversity” over a virtually all-white party that alternately demonizes African-Americans, Latinos, gays and Muslims.
Editorial - On the Foreclosure Front - NYTimes.com
The housing mess got a lot messier last week as JPMorgan Chase halted 56,000 foreclosures amid doubts that it had correctly followed laws on the foreclosure process. The announcement came soon after GMAC Mortgage suspended an undisclosed number of foreclosures to gain time to review its legal procedures. There may be more suspensions to come.
It is hard to be shocked.
Suburban Guerrilla » Blog Archive » A republic of men, not laws
I’m catching up on my Ian Walsh and he’s completely right on this one. By coming in and refusing to even investigate the criminal actions of BushCo, and then the bankers, the Obama administration gave the go-ahead signal to the corporate criminals that the law was only for the lower classes.
[Link in original]
GOP/Tea Party "Young Guns" Looking At Serious Legal Problems | Crooks and Liars
News comes today that GOP candidate for the 13th District of Ohio, Tom Ganley, has been accused of sexually assaulting a supporter he met at a tea party rally (he's been sued over 400 times for ethics and business violations)
[Boldface in original, also link]
Wow indeed.
Nominated by our Midwest bureau as quote of the week:
Op-Ed Columnist - The Terrible Election Race Race - NYTimes.com
Which state is having the most appalling campaign season?
Wow, so much competition.
Indeed. Click the link.
But we, here in the pleasant valley, are spared; we have no Senator to be elected, only a safe and invisibly colorless representative and the usual copious assortment of local officials (New England, in the puritanical tradition, is woefully overgoverned) and, oh yeah, a governor, but the hinterlands - the valley - is not where that particular battle is being fought. So all, as usual, is peaceful here.
Too, we (that would be the imperial, editorial "we," there) are currently reading a book called Last Call by Daniel Okrent, documenting the history of prohibition and the infliction of the 18th amendment to the U.S. Constitution on its besotted citizens (and the consequences thereof) which offers conclusive evidence we were just as screwed up 100 years ago as we are today, and vice versa, for better or for worse.
And, by the way, further, that "progressives" had some real brawn back then. Take, for example, one Carry Nation (Carry was her real name, but Carrie worked too). Okrent writes:
"Carry Amelia Moore Gloyd Nation was six feet tall, with the biceps of a stevedore, the face of a prison warden, and the persistence of a toothache."
Try to imagine somebody saying anything like that about Harry Reid.
But it is an entertaining season, nonetheless.
