Beautiful Boy

Title: Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
Author: David Sheff
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Drugs

Review: Excellent book and memoir. Sheff writes about his son's addiction with meth (and the irony that he had his own addiction with his son's "treatment"). Short and easy to read. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has or knows someone with an addiction (this should apply to everyone whether you think so or not).

Grade: A

Knockemstiff

Title: Knockemstiff
Author: Donald Ray Pollock
Genre: Drama

Review: Decent book. Short and easy to read. It lacks any climax or story though. It was just a handful of different stories about a small town.

Grade: C

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

Title: The Tales of Beedle the Bard
Author: J.K. Rowling
Genre: Fiction, Magic, Science Fiction

Review: Very short book that includes a few short stories from the Harry Potter world. I have read a few in the series and this is nothing compared to the actual Harry Potter stories. I would suggest to not read it. Some of the stories do not even make any sense.

Grade: D+

The Telephone Gambit

Title: The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret
Author: Seth Shulman
Genre: Non-fiction/Science

Review: Shulman argues that Bell was not the first to invent the phone but rather a man named Elisha Grey. Decent book although the book is too long. He repeats his argument and the handful of evidence to support it at least 12 times. Could have been a very small book (although it is only 200 pages).

Grade: B-

City of Thieves

Title: City of Thieves
Author: David Benioff
Genre: Drama/War

Review: Pretty good book about a soldier in World War II and his search for a dozen eggs. Short and well worth the time.

Grade: B

N.Y. doctor offers flat-rate care for uninsured

"A New York doctor is offering flat-rate health care for the uninsured for $79 a month, but he has run afoul of state insurance regulations in a case that challenges the established norms of the U.S. health system."

"Dr. John Muney, president of AMG Medical Group, said he started the program in September after noticing that many of his patients were losing their jobs, and therefore, their health insurance coverage."

"About 500 people have registered for Muney's $79-a-month plan, accounting for 15 percent of patients at the practice, which has offices in each of New York's five boroughs."

"The monthly $79 fee -- roughly equivalent to the price of a Starbucks coffee a day -- covers unlimited preventive visits and onsite medical services such as minor surgery, physical therapy, lab work and gynecological care."

"So far the program has not turned a profit, but Muney said he estimates that it could be profitable with 4,000 patients. In the meantime, he said, his motive is to give something back and provide a model of how healthcare can be more efficient."

"Our healthcare system lends itself to abuse, fraud and waste," he said, adding that bypassing insurers saved on administrative costs, which he said were about 25 percent of the price of care. "With this model, we're bypassing all that."

"Muney said he received initial complaints from state insurance authorities in November. "The law says you can do preventive checkups unlimited, but if they come for sick visits you have to charge your overhead costs," he told Reuters."

"In February he received a letter instructing him that he must charge that minimum cost, which he calculates at $33 a visit -- a price he says will deter people from signing up."

Where Have All the Doctors Gone?

"But the rate of that growth is expected to shrink considerably over the next decade as the number of retirees increases."

"At the same time, consumer demand for medical services is expected to increase. Again, blame the baby boomers: While the total population is expected to increase by 18 percent over the next 10 years, the population over the age of 65 will expand by 54 percent. Since older people require more health care, we'll need more doctors to handle the same number of patients."

"Ironically, just a little more than a decade ago, there was a doctor surplus. In 1996, a committee of the Institute of Medicine warned that the United States had a surfeit of doctors caused by foreign-trained physicians coming here to work and recommended freezing med-school class sizes and limiting first-year residency positions. A year later, Slate ran an article on an alternative strategy for reducing the number of doctors approved by the federal Health Care Financing Administration. Under the Graduate Medical Education Demonstration Project, 41 teaching hospitals received $400 million in exchange for not training between 20 percent and 25 percent of the medical residents they would otherwise have trained over the next six years."

Obama Takes Aim At Tax Havens, Loopholes

"President Barack Obama vowed Monday to "detect and pursue" U.S tax evaders and go after their offshore tax shelters. "

"In announcing a series of steps aimed at overhauling the U.S. tax code, Mr. Obama complained that existing law makes it possible to "pay lower taxes if you create a job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in Buffalo, New York."

"The president said he wants to prevent U.S. companies from deferring tax payments by keeping profits in foreign countries rather than recording them at home and called for more transparency in bank accounts that Americans hold in notorious tax havens like the Cayman Islands."

"The president, who hammered on this issue during his long campaign for the White House, said at a White House event that his plan would generate $210 billion in new taxes over 10 years and "make it easier" for companies to create jobs at home. Over a decade, $210 billion would make a modest dent in a federal deficit expected to swell to $1.2 trillion in 2010. "

"Under the plan, companies would not be able to write off domestic expenses for generating profits abroad. The goal is to reduce the incentive for U.S. companies to base all or part of their operations in other countries. "

The Rust Belt: A forgotten housing crisis

"While most attention has focused on the wave of foreclosures sweeping mostly middle-class, suburban Sunbelt neighborhoods from California to Florida, the nation's emptiest neighborhoods have remained concentrated in the same place for nearly a generation: the mostly minority, poor, urban neighborhoods of the American Rust Belt."

"An analysis by The Associated Press, based on data collected by the U.S. Postal Service and the Housing and Urban Development Department, shows the emptiest neighborhoods are clustered in places hit hard during the recession of the 1980s — cities such as Flint, Mich.; Columbus, Ohio; Buffalo, N.Y.; and Indianapolis."

"In some sections of certain areas like Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, roughly two of every three homes are vacant or used by squatters. The area is more than 70 percent black and poor, with unemployment often around 50 percent. It's a place where simmering resentment and frustration boiled up into three days of rioting in 2001 after police fatally shot a young, unarmed black man fleeing arrest on traffic warrants."

"In Buffalo, there are as many as 10,000 vacant, abandoned homes. Suburban sprawl, an aging population and manufacturing losses have left the city with a population under 300,000 — about half what it was during the 1950s."

House Democrats unveil $94.2 billion wartime spending bill

"House Democrats unveiled a $94.2 billion wartime spending bill Monday which adds $9.3 billion to White House requests but also reflects serious doubts about the long-term viability of President Barack Obama’s military commitments to Afghanistan and its neighbor Pakistan. "

Get ready for more taxes, less service from $65B Florida budget deal

"A few days late and a little worn out, Florida legislators finally reached an accord Monday on how to balance the proposed $65 billion state budget that touches every life in the nation's fourth most-populous state."

"The budget raises an historic amount of taxes, fees and licenses -- about $2 billion worth -- on smokers, drivers, property owners, sportsmen, university students and sportsmen."

"Pumped with $5 billion in federal bailout cash, the budget provides a small boost in per-student spending for K-12 schools, and trims a wide array of Medicaid reimbursements to doctors and hospitals and applied a 2 percent reduction to the salaries of state workers earning more than $45,000 yearly."

Book Review: Sail

Title: Sail
Author: James Patterson
Genre: Mystery

Review: Horrible book. I have constantly promised myself that I will no longer read Patterson novels, however, the quickness by which I can read his novels make it hard to turn them down. I wish I would have though; I didn't even finish it.

Do not read this book!

Grade: F

Book Review: Indignation

Title: Indignation
Author: Philip Roth
Genre: Drama

Review: A good story. It is incredibly short and can be read in only a few hours.

Grade: B+

Book Review: The Spellman Files

Title: The Spellman Files
Author: Lisa Lutz
Genre: Mystery, Comedy

Review: This is a hilarious book. It is both entertaining and engrossing. I couldn't put it down. It is a comedy/crime novel about a family of private investigators and the life they live.

A must read!

Grade: A

(For all book reviews: the above link will guide you to the synopsis of the actual book. My only job is to tell you, in the least amount of words, whether it is worth reading or not).

Taxpayers to get rude surprise

"Millions of Americans enjoying their small windfall from President Barack Obama's "Making Work Pay" tax credit are in for an unpleasant surprise next spring. "

"The government is going to want some of that money back."

"The tax credit is supposed to provide up to $400 to individuals and $800 to married couples as part of the massive economic recovery package enacted in February. Most workers started receiving the credit through small increases in their paychecks in the past month."

"The credit pays workers 6.2 percent of their earned income, up to a maximum of $400 for individuals and $800 for married couples who file jointly. Individuals making more $95,000 and couples making more than $190,000 are ineligible."

"But new tax withholding tables issued by the IRS could cause millions of taxpayers to get hundreds of dollars more than they are entitled to under the credit, money that will have to be repaid at tax time."

"A single worker with two jobs making $20,000 a year at each job will get a $400 boost in take-home pay at each of them, for a total of $800. That worker, however, is eligible for a maximum credit of $400, so the remaining $400 will have to be paid back at tax time -- either through a smaller refund or a payment to the IRS."

Jacksonville Air Quality: F

"The American Lung Association has given Duval County an "F" grade in air quality."

"Breaking it down, the city scores an "F" in both the number of high ozone days and in particle pollution."

"The worst air quality? It's Los Angeles. By comparison, the ozone data for Los Angeles indicates a weighted average of 96.5. A failing grade is anything over a 3.3. Jacksonville rates a 7.0."

School Cut By 45 Minutes For Thousands of Local Students

"The Duval County School Board reduced the amount of time middle and high school students will spend at school next year."

"In a 5-2 vote, the board voted to reduce the school day by 45 minutes."

"The district says it will save $13 million dollars, but 200 positions will be cut. Students will have three 90-minute classes and one 45-minute class."

Teach for (Some of) America

"If you've spent time on university campuses lately, you probably know the answer. Teach for America -- the privately funded program that sends college grads into America's poorest school districts for two years -- received 35,000 applications this year, up 42% from 2008. More than 11% of Ivy League seniors applied, including 35% of African-American seniors at Harvard. Teach for America has been gaining applicants since it was founded in 1990, but its popularity has exploded this year amid a tight job market."

"So poor urban and rural school districts must be rejoicing, right? Hardly. Union and bureaucratic opposition is so strong that Teach for America is allotted a mere 3,800 teaching slots nationwide, or a little more than one in 10 of this year's applicants. Districts place a cap on the number of Teach for America teachers they will accept, typically between 10% and 30% of new hires. In the Washington area, that number is about 25% to 30%, but in Chicago, former home of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, it is an embarrassing 10%."

"This is a tragic lost opportunity. Teach for America picks up the $20,000 tab for the recruitment and training of each teacher, which saves public money. More important, the program feeds high-energy, high-IQ talent into a teaching profession that desperately needs it. Unions claim the recent grads lack the proper experience and commitment to a teaching career. But the Urban Institute has studied the program and found that "TFA status more than offsets any experience effects. Disadvantaged secondary students would be better off with TFA teachers, especially in math and science, than with fully licensed in-field teachers with three or more years of experience."

Obama Calls for an End to 'Abusive' Credit Card Lending

"Surrounded by some of the country's top credit card company executives, President Obama today called for an end to "unfair rate increases," "abusive fees" and "confusing terms and conditions" facing American consumers."

"I think there has to be strong and reliable protections for consumers -- protections that ban unfair rate increases and forbid abusive fees and penalties," Obama said. "The days of anytime, any-reason rate hikes and late fee traps have to end."

"In addition to limits on rate increases and late-term penalties, the president called for companies to disclose the terms and conditions of credit cards "in plain language" and "in plain sight." "No more fine print, no more confusing terms and conditions. We want clarity and transparency from here on out," he said."

"He also proposed that each card issuer might issue "a plain vanilla, easy-to-understand" credit card "that the average user can feel comfortable with." There should also be more accountability for card issuers, he said. Those who break the law, Obama said, "will feel the full weight of the law.""

House votes to increase Fla. graduation standards

"High school graduation standards would be tightened under a bill that's cleared the Florida House."

"The measure (HB 1293) passed Thursday on a 75-42 party line vote with Republicans for and Democrats against."

"It would increase math and science requirements and the score needed on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, to get a standard diploma."