Book Review: Stitches

Title: Stitches
Author: David Small
Year: 2009
Type: Non-Fiction
Genre: Memoir, Comics

Review: This is a comic style memoir of the author's life (supposedly). It is extremely easy to read and should take less than an hour to finish it. Worthy of a rental for sure.

Grade: B+

Title: Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises
Author: Charles Kindleberger
Year: 2005
Type: Non-Fiction
Genre: Finance, History

Review: This is a very informative book, however, it is extremely boring. The writing just makes an interesting topic completely boring. Good book nonetheless and worthy of a read.

Grade: C-

Book Review: Global Political Economy

Title: Global Political Economy
Author: Theodore Cohn
Year: 2008
Type: Non-Fiction
Genre: Economy, Globalization

Review: This is a decent overview of international political economy. Full of terms and definitions it is well worth the read and purchase (if at a low price).

Grade: B-

Book Review: Fast Food Nation

Title: Fast Food Nation
Author: Eric Schlosser
Year: 2001
Type: Non-Fiction
Genre: History

Review: This was an excellent and informative read about the fast food industry - both the good and bad. It is interesting how many founders of fast food restaurants were high school drop outs. Definitely read this though it is worth the purchase as well.

Grade: A-

Book Review: American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

Title: American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
Author: Joseph J. Ellis
Year: 1996
Type: Non-Fiction
Genre: Biography, American History

Review: This was an alright book. I was looking forward to reading an in depth look at the life of Jefferson which this book did not fulfill. It was a very generalized story. Maybe worth a rental if you have read everything else.

Grade: C

Book Review: Financial Shock

Title: Financial Shock
Author: Mark Zandi
Year: 2009
Type: Non-Fiction
Genre: Politics, Finance

Review: This is a very easy to read book and should be read by anyone who is interested in the reasons behind the current financial "crisis." My only problem with the book is that the author seems to repeat the same stuff over and over again which, to me, is a complete waste of my time.

Grade: B

Book Review: Against that "Powerful Engine of Despotism"

Title: Against that Powerful Engine of Despotism
Author: Bruce A. Newman
Year: 2007
Type: Non-Fiction
Genre: American History, Constitutional Law

Review: This is a decent book. You can tell the guy wrote it for his thesis right away. It provides a great historical account of the 4th Amendment. His argument is as follows: "The original understanding of the Amendment differentiated between searches on property and searches in public areas, generally requiring warrants to search property, while allowing warrantless searches in public areas if there was cause for the search" (XV). It is a short book and worthy of a read but not a purchase.

Grade: C

Reality Check: Column Ignores Facts about Health Reform

• President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum directing the Secretary of HHS to move forward with an initiative to give states and health systems the opportunity to apply for medical liability demonstration projects. Section 2531 of the House bill also includes a voluntary state incentive grants program to encourage states to develop alternatives to traditional malpractice litigation.
• Section 9001 of the Senate bill does impose a fee on high-cost health care plans. (A PDF of the Senate bill is available here.) To clarify: This is a fee on insurance companies that offer high-cost plans that drive up the cost of health care for all Americans, not a tax on individuals.
• Section 1333 of the Senate bill allows for interstate health care choice compacts. Coupled with insurance market reforms to ensure individuals are not discriminated against, this policy will expand health care choices to millions of Americans.

America's 200 Largest U.S. Charities

Nationally, there are more than 1.4 million nonprofits vying for your normally tax-deductible contributions. The 200 on our list, many of them national brand names, get a disproportionate share: a whopping $47 billion (up from $40 billion last year).

State pushes high-school end-of-course tests

Florida, never shy about using standardized tests, is stepping into the latest trend: end-of-course exams for high-school students.

The state plans to field-test standardized algebra 1 and geometry exams early next year, adding to the battery of tests it already gives many of its 2.6 million public-school students.

By 2011, the Florida Department of Education plans to give the two math tests to all students taking those two high school math courses.

These new tests — statewide final exams that would be the same for students from Miami to Orlando to Tallahassee — would be taken on computers at the end of the school year.

End-of-course exams in biology and U.S. history should follow the two math tests a few years later, the department says.

Eventually, if money is available, exams in other high-school subjects, from civics to English to physics, would be developed, too.

State educators say these new exams are critical pieces of their high-school-reform efforts and will help ensure students learn enough to move on to college.

Education Commissioner Eric Smith said this new group of tests is needed to push students past the "foundational work" tested by the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, the state's series of standardized exams in math, reading, science and writing. FCATs are given in grades three to 11.

With approval from the Legislature, the new end-of-course exams would replace some FCAT sections now given to high-school students. Eventually, the new exams could be used in the annual A-to-F school-grade calculations and as high-school-graduation requirements.

Council Considers Fee Change

Hate getting the stormwater and solid waste fees in your mailbox? One proposal Jacksonville's City Council is considering would consolidate those fees into your property tax bill.

"We are actually going to save a tremendous amount of money," Council President Richard Clark says. "Which means we'll make better use of those dollars we take in."

Clark says the cost of sending out and collecting those annual fees comes with a hefty administrative price, totaling more than $700,000.

"So it is something we have to produce entirely on our own, at great expense, as opposed to simply adding a line item to an already posted bill that goes out," Clark argues.

But Duval County Tax Collector Mike Hogan says this idea has been tried before with little success.

In 1991, the city added a garbage fee to property tax bills. The result created a lot of problems, Hogan said.

"First of all, nearly everyone's mortgage account was short that year," the Tax Collector said. "And then the following tax year, everyone's escrow payment increased, which of course irriated the taxpayers."

Hogan suggests collecting the stormwater and solid waste fees through monthly JEA bills. Already the city's utility franchise fee is collected through electric bills and Hogan questions why the other two city service fees can't be collected the same way.

Council could vote on the city fee change at it's next meeting December 8. If approved, the fees would start appearing on property tax bills next year.

Tax Informants Are On The Loose

For years the IRS grudgingly paid stingy rewards to squealers who brought it mostly small cases; during 2004 and 2005, 428 informants received a total of $12 million--only 7% of the paltry $168 million all their leads brought in. But in 2006, hoping to entice insiders to rat out big-dollar cheats and corporate tax shelters and games, Congress directed the IRS to pay tipsters at least 15% and as much as 30% of taxes, penalties and interest collected in cases where $2 million or more is at stake.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, in a separate report, added up all the 2008 tips and found that $65 billion in unreported income was alleged.

Consumer drug ads drive up health costs: study

When consumer advertising began for the popular blood-thinner Plavix, Medicaid insurance programs for the poor and disabled spent millions more on the drug, even though the ads did not tempt doctors to write more prescriptions, researchers reported on Monday.

They said the study suggested that while ads might not directly increase the number of prescriptions, they still affect the cost of publicly funded healthcare because drugmakers appear to build the cost of the ads into their prices.

The 'Real' Jobless Rate: 17.5% Of Workers Are Unemployed

According to the government's broadest measure of unemployment, some 17.5 percent are either without a job entirely or underemployed. The so-called U-6 number is at the highest rate since becoming an official labor statistic in 1994.

The number dwarfs the statistic most people pay attention to—the U-3 rate—which most recently showed unemployment at 10.2 percent for October, the highest it has been since June 1983.

The Cost of Dying

Last year, Medicare paid $50 billion just for doctor and hospital bills during the last two months of patients' lives - that's more than the budget of the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Education.

And it has been estimated that 20 to 30 percent of these medical expenditures may have had no meaningful impact. Most of the bills are paid for by the federal government with few or no questions asked.

One of her doctors, Ira Byock, told 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft it costs up to $10,000 a day to maintain someone in the intensive care unit. Some patients remain here for weeks or even months; one has been in the ICU since May.

"This is the way so many Americans die. Something like 18 to 20 percent of Americans spend their last days in an ICU," Byock told Kroft. "And, you know, it's extremely expensive. It's uncomfortable. Many times they have to be sedated so that they don't reflexively pull out a tube, or sometimes their hands are restrained. This is not the way most people would want to spend their last days of life. And yet this has become almost the medical last rites for people as they die."

And once someone is admitted to the hospital, Fisher says, they're likely to be seen by a dozen or more specialists who will conduct all kinds of tests, whether they're absolutely essential or not.

Republican Deficit Hypocrisy

Recall the situation in 2003. The Bush administration was already projecting the largest deficit in American history--$475 billion in fiscal year 2004, according to the July 2003 mid-session budget review. But a big election was coming up that Bush and his party were desperately fearful of losing. So they decided to win it by buying the votes of America's seniors by giving them an expensive new program to pay for their prescription drugs.

Recall, too, that Medicare was already broke in every meaningful sense of the term. According to the 2003 Medicare trustees report, spending for Medicare was projected to rise much more rapidly than the payroll tax as the baby boomers retired. Consequently, the rational thing for Congress to do would have been to find ways of cutting its costs. Instead, Republicans voted to vastly increase them--and the federal deficit--by $395 billion between 2004 and 2013.

However, the Bush administration knew this figure was not accurate because Medicare's chief actuary, Richard Foster, had concluded, well before passage, that the more likely cost would be $534 billion. Tom Scully, a Republican political appointee at the Department of Health and Human Services, threatened to fire him if he dared to make that information public before the vote. (See this report by the HHS inspector general and this article by Foster.)

It's important to remember that the congressional budget resolution capped the projected cost of the drug benefit at $400 billion over 10 years. If there had been an official estimate from Medicare's chief actuary putting the cost at well more than that, then the legislation could have been killed by a single member in either the House or Senate by raising a point of order. Then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., later said he regretted not doing so.

Even with a deceptively low estimate of the drug benefit's cost, there were still a few Republicans in the House of Representatives who wouldn't roll over and play dead just to buy re-election. Consequently, when the legislation came up for its final vote on Nov. 22, 2003, it was failing by 216 to 218 when the standard 15-minute time allowed for voting came to an end.

What followed was one of the most extraordinary events in congressional history. The vote was kept open for almost three hours while the House Republican leadership brought massive pressure to bear on the handful of principled Republicans who had the nerve to put country ahead of party. The leadership even froze the C-SPAN cameras so that no one outside the House chamber could see what was going on.

Among those congressmen strenuously pressed to change their vote was Nick Smith, R-Mich., who later charged that several members of Congress attempted to virtually bribe him, by promising to ensure that his son got his seat when he retired if he voted for the drug bill. One of those members, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was later admonished by the House Ethics Committee for going over the line in his efforts regarding Smith.

Eventually, the arm-twisting got three Republicans to switch their votes from nay to yea: Ernest Istook of Oklahoma, Butch Otter of Idaho and Trent Franks of Arizona. Three Democrats also switched from nay to yea and two Republicans switched from yea to nay, for a final vote of 220 to 215. In the end, only 25 Republicans voted against the budget-busting drug bill. (All but 16 Democrats voted no.)

No hospital savings with electronic records: study

New electronic record systems installed in thousands of U.S. hospitals have done little to rein in skyrocketing healthcare costs, Harvard University researchers said in a study released on Friday.

A review of roughly 4,000 hospitals from 2003 to 2007 found that while many had moved away from the paper files that still dominate the U.S. healthcare system, administrative costs actually rose, even among the most high-tech institutions.

But lead author Dr. David Himmelstein, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, and his team found so far the savings are not there.

"Our study finds that hospital computerization hasn't saved a dime, nor has it improved administrative efficiency," said Himmelstein, who oversees clinical computing at Cambridge Hospital in Massachusetts. "Claims that health IT will slash costs and help pay for the reforms being debated in Congress are wishful thinking."

The researchers found administrative costs increased slightly from 24.4 percent in 2003 to 24.9 percent in 2007, with facilities that computerized the most quickly seeing the largest jump. Hospitals with the highest costs tended to be smaller, for-profit, non-teaching ones in cities, they added.

Philip Morris ordered to pay $300 million to smoker

A Florida jury on Thursday ordered cigarette maker Philip Morris USA to pay $300 million in damages to a 61-year-old ex-smoker named Cindy Naugle who is wheelchair-bound by emphysema.

The Broward Circuit Court jury assessed $56.6 million in past and future medical expenses against the company, part of Altria Group Inc, as well as $244 million in punitive damages.

The verdict is the largest of the so-called Engle progeny cases that have been tried so far, both sides said.

NYC mayor, government try different ways to trim workers

New York City and the state both want to cut expenses by trimming public employees but so far they are using different strategies.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is encouraging agencies to prune workers by giving them credit for saving money on health care and pension benefits, although those costs come out of the city's overall spending plan, Doug Turetsky, a spokesman for the Independent Budget Office, said by telephone on Friday.

In contrast, Governor David Paterson is trying to entice workers to quit in exchange for $20,000 severance payments.

Both the city and state must close multibillion dollar deficits over the next few years as they face fallout from problems on Wall Street.

Paterson, a Democrat, on Thursday extended the state's severance program until January 20 because agencies had only let 1,089 people opt in by the time it ended on November 11.

About 137,000 workers are eligible for the buyouts, but agencies have a compelling reason to find other ways to cut the $500 million the governor has demanded.

Panel Votes to Broaden Oversight of the Fed

In a display of populist anger toward the Federal Reserve, a House panel voted on Thursday to let Congress carry out sweeping new oversights of the central bank’s policy decisions and operations.

The House Financial Services Committee approved a measure proposed by Representative Ron Paul of Texas that would allow Congress to order audits of all the Fed’s lending programs as well as of its basic decisions to set monetary policy by raising or lowering interest rates.

If the measure becomes law, it would expose the Federal Reserve to far more political pressure than it has faced for decades. Fed officials have adamantly opposed the measure, saying it would undermine the central bank’s political independence and gravely threaten its credibility as a bulwark against inflation.

The vote on Thursday occurred despite the opposition of Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, who had wanted to shield the Fed’s decisions on monetary policy from political pressures.

Mr. Paul, a libertarian Republican who has called for abolishing the Fed entirely, has introduced a version of his bill in every session of Congress since the early 1980s and never made any progress. But the Fed’s trillion-dollar efforts to bail out major banks and rescue the financial system provoked a popular firestorm that ignited both right-wing Republicans and left-wing Democrats.

In a surprising display of political rebellion, about half the Democrats present and all the Republicans voted for Mr. Paul’s bill instead of a compromise measure drafted by Representative Mel Watt, Democrat of North Carolina.