Either @BernieSanders is psychic or he just really knows his sh*t about the health care industry pic.twitter.com/fhJ7C7X8LQ
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 1, 2019
Yes, Bernie Sanders is psychic.
He is the last son of of Krypton and ……… Never mind, my bad.
Kara Swisher of Recode has a remarkably credulous interview with textbook publisher CEO John Fallon, and swallows his line of crap without any challenge.
Fallon is claiming that somehow or other, the digital textbook will fix Pearson’s flagging textbook business (it probably will) and will make things better for students. (It certainly will not.)
The text books have gotten expensive enough that the resale market, and the 3rd party rental market, have been eating the publisher’s lunch.
Pearson’s solution is digital, not because it is more convenient, nor because it is better for students, but because it allows to lock down the market, preventing students selling their old books, and extend their monopoly rents.
This is just another way to f%$# their customers.
I’m not sure what the beginning of serial production for the Russian stealth fighter, which, if I read this right basically means LRIP (Low Rate Initial Production).
The aircraft is not really fully combat capable yet, but the RuAF will get needed experience in operating the aircraft.
It’s not a surprise. Private equity is morally indistinguishable from a Colombian drug cartel:
I have to confess to having missed how private equity is a central bad actor in the “surprise billing” scam that is being targeted by Federal and state legislation. This abuse takes place when hospital patients, even when using a hospital that is in their insurer’s network, are hit with charges for “out of network” services that are billed at inflated rack rates. Even patients who have done everything they can to avoid being snared, like insisting their hospital use only in-network doctors for a surgery and even getting their identities in advance to assure compliance, get caught. The hospital is in charge of scheduling and can and will swap in out-of-network practitioners at the last minute.
Private equity maven and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research Eileen Appelbaum explained in an editorial in The Hill in May how private equity firms have bought specialist physicians’ practices to exploit the opportunity to hit vulnerable patients with egregious charges:
Physicians’ groups, it turns out, can opt out of a contract with insurers even if the hospital has such a contract. The doctors are then free to charge patients, who desperately need care, however much they want.
This has made physicians’ practices in specialties such as emergency care, neonatal intensive care and anesthesiology attractive takeover targets for private equity firms….
Emergency rooms, neonatal intensive care units and anesthesiologists’ practices do not operate like an ordinary marketplace. Physicians’ practices in these specialties do not need to worry that they will lose patients because their prices are too high.
Patients can go to a hospital in their network, but if they have an emergency, have a baby in the neonatal intensive care unit or have surgery scheduled with an in-network surgeon, they are stuck with the out-of-network doctors the hospital has outsourced these services to….
It’s not only patients that are victimized by unscrupulous physicians’ groups. These doctors’ groups are able to coerce health insurance companies into agreeing to pay them very high fees in order to have them in their networks.
They do this by threatening to charge high out-of-network bills to the insurers’ covered patients if they don’t go along with these demands. High payments to these unethical doctors raise hospitals’ costs and everyone’s insurance premiums.
Balance billing is a huge problem.
A bigger problem is private equity and the rest of the looting schemes favored by Wall Street.
We need changes in laws pertaining to things like derivatives, bankruptcy, and corporate looting to stop this bullsh%$.
I am referring of course to Barack Obama’s proposed Presidential library.
I think that his presidential complex would rip the heart out of one of Fredrick Law Olmstead’s most significant works, and the Federal Highway Administration’s review of the project has determined that it would diminish the integrity of the park.
Here’s hoping that this, along with the fact that Obama crony Rahm Emanuel is no longer mayor, will result in some much need accountability on this project.
There is also the matter that the Obama Foundation has refused to even consider a community benefits agreement, which would provide guarantees for the local residents regarding jobs and affordable housing:
Construction of the $500 million Obama Presidential Center will have an “adverse impact” on historic Jackson Park that must be mitigated, a federal review has concluded.
In a report triggered by Jackson Park’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places, the Federal Highway Administration homed in on the negative impact the four-building complex would have on the majestic Midway Plaisance and the Jackson Park Historic Landscape District.
The project would diminish the “the historic property’s overall integrity by altering historic, internal spatial divisions that were designed as a single entity” by renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the FHA concluded.
It also concludes the “size and scale of new buildings” would “diminish the intended prominence of the Museum of Science and Industry building and alter the overall composition and design intent of balancing park scenery with specific built areas.”
………
The finding puts pressure on the Obama Foundation to find a way to “resolve adverse effects” and turns up the heat on Mayor Lori Lightfoot to order the foundation to make those changes.
“The Obama Foundation has yet to show any interest in compromising on any of this. It may take [Lightfoot] to bring them to the table,” said Margaret Schmid, co-president of Jackson Park Watch.
“It means there are lots of new obstacles facing this proposal. A big question is, does Chicago want to go on record as having allowed a project that has major adverse impacts on this important historic park or can the project be redesigned to be compatible with this historic landscape?”
It’s not a surprise that the Obama Foundation is refusing to do anything for the poor and minority residents of the neighborhood, that was pretty much the Obama administration’s policy for or the poor and minority residents of the country.
They were too busy, “Foaming the runway,” for the big banks.
Obviously, this is a crime, assault, and if you do the crime, you should do the crime.
However, some wannabee fascists in the New York State Assembly decided that a simple assault charge isn’t enough, and so have drafted a bill making “disrespecting the police” a felony.
That sound you hear is Eric Arthur Blair spinning in his grave at relativistic velocities:
New video surfaced Tuesday evening of more NYPD officers being doused with water.
The most recent incident in Queens has compelled lawmakers to announce a new bill that cracks down on anyone who disrespects the badge, CBS2’s Natalie Duddridge reported.
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“We will not wait until these attacks spread like wildfire,” said Assemblyman Mike LiPetri, R-Long Island. “This time, it’s water. What’s next? Gasoline? Acid?”
At a rally on the steps of City Hall on Wednesday morning, LiPetri and Assemblyman Michael Reilly, R-Staten Island, proposed a new law to stop what some call a disgusting trend.
“What we are witnessing in New York City is disgraceful. A culture of blatant disrespect for law enforcement has been fostered and encouraged simply for political gain which has resulted in such despicable acts of hate becoming acceptable in our communities,” LiPetri said. “New York State must send a message that this will not be tolerated and I am confident that this bill provides law enforcement the tools they need to properly react.”
According to LiPetri and Reilly, the new bill would make it a Class E felony to throw or spray water, or any other substance, against an on-duty police or peace officer. The charge would be punishable by up to 1 to 4 years in prison.
Because clearly disrespect of cop is worse than, I don’t know, stock fraud.
Here’s an idea, do something about the culture of impunity that has people so fed up with cops that they are dumping water on them.
Also, fire Pantaleo.
And then their instruments caught fire:
In response to Kamala Harris’s absurd proposal for college loan forgiveness, which provided for (only) $20,000.00 in loan forgiveness and required:
There might be 3 people in the United States who would actually qualify for this grant.
It might be 6 if you count the well-off parents who are pulling the guardian scam to snag undeserved financial aid for their kids.
In response, someone has written the Oddly Specific Kamala Harris Policy Generator, where you press a button, and get a randomly generated policy, like the following:
Yesterday, I announced that, as president, I’ll establish a basic income program for Atheists who open a spy agency that operates for 12 weeks in Comet Ping-Pong.
………
Yesterday, I announced that, as president, I’ll establish a high speed rail program for African-Americans who open a fire dept. that operates for 8 days in communities of color.
………
Yesterday, I announced that, as president, I’ll establish a military expansion program for firefighters who open a bungee jump that operates for 19 weeks in the Google App Store.
………
Yesterday, I announced that, as president, I’ll establish a tort reform program for Tea Party voters who open a buffet that operates for 10 days in their local tourist trap.
I am amused.
It’s hard to sum up what happened tonight, but most of it was a bunch of guys with no chance to win the Democratic nomination yelling Republican talking points at the people who can. It was like watching the seven dwarves offering Snow White a poison apple.
Steven Colbert is a f%$#ing treasure.
First, it was the electromagnetic catapults, which are still missing performance and reliability goals, then it was the advanced arrester gear, and now it appears that the munitions elevators cannot deliver ordinance to the flight deck, meaning that the Ford is not even close to combat ready:
Only two of 11 elevators needed to lift munitions to the deck of the U.S. Navy’s new $13 billion aircraft carrier have been fully installed, according to a Navy veteran who serves on a key House committee.
“I don’t see an end in sight right now” to getting all the elevators working on the USS Gerald R. Ford, the costliest warship ever, Democratic Representative Elaine Luria of Virginia said in an interview. The ship was supposed to be delivered with the Advanced Weapons Elevators, which are moved by magnets rather than cables, working in May 2017.
It’s another setback for contractor Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. — and for the Navy, which had said in December it planned to complete installation and testing of all 11 elevators before the Ford completed its post-delivery shakedown phase this month, with at least half certified for operation.
Instead, the shakedown phase has been extended to October and the vessel won’t have all the elevators fully installed — much less functioning — by then, according to Luria, a 20-year Navy surface warfare officer whose served on two aircraft carriers and as shore maintenance coordinator for a third.
“Essentially, the ship can’t deploy,” Luria said. “It can’t carry ammunition.” She said the Navy and Huntington Ingalls are trying to solve new problems with doors and hatches lining elevators shafts that don’t meet specifications.
Navy Secretary Richard Spencer said in January that he told President Donald Trump to fire him if the service couldn’t fix the weapons elevators by July. Instead, Trump praised the Ford as “phenomenal” on July 22.
The Ford’s Advanced Weapons Elevators are designed for the carrier’s crew to move as much as 24,000 pounds of ordnance at 150 feet-per-minute, up from the 10,500 pounds at 100 feet-per-minute on the older Nimitz-class carrier. That would increase by more than 30% the number of combat sorties that could launch from the carrier over 24 hours, according to the Navy.
The elevators aren’t the only issue plaguing the ship, which has had problems with two other core systems — the electromagnetic system to launch planes and the arresting gear to catch them when they land.
What can I say, but, “But I cannot be held responsible for my future actions if I am compelled any longer to share my cell with Professor Norden, late Chief of the Research Staff of my armed forces.”*
The Pentagon is going to innovate itself into oblivion.
*Seriously, just read the story, you can find it online.
In a conversation with Richard Nixon in 1971, Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, described African UN representatives from as, “Those monkeys from those African countries, damn them.
I always knew that the Gipper was an enthusiastic supporter of racist and racism, launching the 1980 Presidential campaign with a speech about states rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where civil rights activists Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were assassinated.
His entire career was about dog whistling to racists.
Now we know that he was a bigot and a racist.
Rot in hell Ronnie, rot in hell.
That’s my take on the debate.
Right wing framing, a phobia of substantive answers, and general wankertude.
Bernie was good, if you like him combative, and I do, but Elizabeth Warren had the quote or the evening, directed at the hapless John Delaney:
I Don’t Understand Why Anybody Goes to All the Trouble of Running for President of the United States Just to Talk about What We Really Can’t Do and Shouldn’t Fight For
She just won the internet.
I love reading Taibbi, but in his article on the craziness in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, he buries the lede.
More than ⅔ down in the article is the money quote, “Sanders is the revolutionary. His election would mean a complete overhaul of the Democratic Party, forcing everyone who ever worked for a Clinton to look toward the private sector.”
This primary season is about how the Democratic Party consultant class, the leeches, is fighting for its power at the expense of both the party and the country.
In 2017, members of the mobile telephony industry group 3GPP were bickering over whether to speed the development of 5G standards. One proposal, originally put forward by Vodafone and ultimately agreed to by the rest of the group, promised to deliver 5G networks sooner by developing more aspects of 5G technology simultaneously.Adopting that proposal may have also meant pushing some decisions down the road. One such decision concerned how 5G networks should encode wireless signals. 3GPP’s Release 15, which laid the foundation for 5G, ultimately selected orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), a holdover from 4G, as the encoding option.
But Release 16, expected by year’s end, will include the findings of a study group assigned to explore alternatives. Wireless standards are frequently updated, and in the next 5G release, the industry could address concerns that OFDM may draw too much power in 5G devices and base stations. That’s a problem, because 5G is expected to require far more base stations to deliver service and connect billions of mobile and IoT devices.
“I don’t think the carriers really understood the impact on the mobile phone, and what it’s going to do to battery life,” says James Kimery, the director of marketing for RF and software-defined radio research at National Instruments Corp. “5G is going to come with a price, and that price is battery consumption.”
And Kimery notes that these concerns apply beyond 5G handsets. China Mobile has “been vocal about the power consumption of their base stations,” he says. A 5G base station is generally expected to consume roughly three times as much power as a 4G base station. And more 5G base stations are needed to cover the same area.
So how did 5G get into a potentially power-guzzling mess? OFDM plays a large part. Data is transmitted using OFDM by chopping the data into portions and sending the portions simultaneously and at different frequencies so that the portions are “orthogonal” (meaning they do not interfere with each other).
The trade-off is that OFDM has a high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). Generally speaking, the orthogonal portions of an OFDM signal deliver energy constructively—that is, the very quality that prevents the signals from canceling each other out also prevents each portion’s energy from canceling out the energy of other portions. That means any receiver needs to be able to take in a lot of energy at once, and any transmitter needs to be able to put out a lot of energy at once. Those high-energy instances cause OFDM’s high PAPR and make the method less energy efficient than other encoding schemes.
Short range, poor building penetration, and high battery consumption.
Heady brew.
The Vampire Squid, calls it, “Returning cash to shareholders,” but what it really is looting by senior management.
Stock buybacks drive up the price of the stock, which takes executives stock options from worthless to a multi-million dollar payout.
It’s the looting, baby:
S&P 500 companies are returning cash to shareholders at an unsustainable rate, says Goldman Sachs analysts.
Goldman data show that in the 12 months ended on March 31, firms in the S&P 500 index, spent 103.8% of their free cash flow on stock buybacks and dividends, up from 101.9% in the fourth quarter of last year.
This latest spree is the first time that constituents of the index spent more cash than they earned on payouts since the period between September 2006 and March of 2008, when there was a seven-quarter stretch during which S&P 500 companies paid out more to shareholders than they earned in cash, on a trailing 12-month basis.
They are literally borrowing money to driver up their stock price without creating any actual value.
We need to understand that this is control fraud, not responsible stewardship of the enterprise.
In addition to bribing school officials for admission, parents are now setting up phony guardianships of their children to avoid having their assets considered by colleges:
Dozens of suburban Chicago families, perhaps many more, have been exploiting a legal loophole to win their children need-based college financial aid and scholarships they would not otherwise receive, court records and interviews show.
Coming months after the national “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal, this tactic also appears to involve families attempting to gain an advantage in an increasingly competitive and expensive college admissions system.
Parents are giving up legal guardianship of their children during their junior or senior year in high school to someone else — a friend, aunt, cousin or grandparent. The guardianship status then allows the students to declare themselves financially independent of their families so they can qualify for federal, state and university aid, a ProPublica Illinois investigation found.
“It’s a scam,” said Andy Borst, director of undergraduate admissions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Wealthy families are manipulating the financial aid process to be eligible for financial aid they would not be otherwise eligible for. They are taking away opportunities from families that really need it.”
While ProPublica Illinois uncovered this practice in north suburban Lake County, where almost four dozen such guardianships were filed in the past 18 months, similar petitions have been filed in at least five other counties and the practice may be happening throughout the country. ProPublica Illinois is still investigating.
Borst said he first became suspicious when a high school counselor from an affluent Chicago suburb called him about a year ago to ask why a particular student had been invited to an orientation program for low-income students. Borst checked the student’s financial aid application and saw she had obtained a legal guardian, making her eligible to qualify for financial aid independently.
The University of Illinois has since identified 14 applicants who did the same: three who just completed their freshman year and 11 who plan to enroll this fall, Borst said.
You will notice that it is the well off, not poor people who are pulling this scam.
The rich are different from you and me, they are significantly less ethical than the rest of us.
That’s probably how they get rich in first place.
To not quote Honoré de Balzac, it appears that he never actually wrote this, “At the base of every great fortune there is a great crime.”
When a gunman opened fire at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California, on Sunday evening, killing at least three people, including a 6-year-old boy, and wounding 12 others, Dilbert creator Scott Adams apparently saw a juicy marketing opportunity for his blockchain app.
Adams is best known for creating Dilbert, a comic strip satirizing soulless corporate culture and the grueling punishment dished out on its eponymous engineer by idiot co-workers and clueless management. But he also moonlights. In addition to punditry on topics ranging from fifth-dimensional chess analyses proclaiming Donald Trump a genius Pavlovian manipulator to tortured theological treatises, to questioning the specifics of the Holocaust’s atrocities, Adams is the co-founder of app company WhenHub. WhenHub is similar to Cameo, the app that allows everyday people to pay celebrities to create customized videos, except instead of pre-recorded messages from movie stars and rappers, it offers live chats with a range of subject-matter experts.
………
Adams seems to have concluded the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting was an ideal time to direct-market this app to witnesses—who, as he made quite clear on Twitter, he believed could cash in on their traumatic experience by selling interviews to news organizations via WhenHub.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the gunman opened fire sometime around 5:30 p.m. PT on Sunday when the festival was nearing its conclusion. Less than three hours later, at 8:21 p.m. PT, about 13 minutes after President Trump advised locals to exercise caution because reports indicated the shooter was still at large, Adams began pitching the survivors on signing up for, and charging for, interviews with media outlets via WhenHub.
“If you were a witness to the #GilroyGarlicFestivalshooting please sign on to Interface by WhenHub (free app) and you can set your price to take calls. Use keyword Gilroy,” Adams tweeted.
Roughly 23 minutes later, Adams had some advice for critics who correctly identified this as shameless opportunism aiming to capitalize off an atrocity: Grow up and stop it with the “fake outrage.”
………
Adams did not immediately respond to our request for comment, although he did respond to the controversy in a livestream Monday morning on Periscope, where he continued to stand by his promotion efforts and blamed the controversy on socialism.
#BoycottDilbert is trending on Twitter, with good reason.
He hasn’t had an original idea for his comic strip since before the end of the last century.
Don’t read his comics, don’t buy his merch, and if you want to complain to your local paper about this, that would be nice too.
Scott Adams should have been drowned at birth.
Thread: 1) During a military expo in Beijing, #China has unveiled Shark-styled underwater drones designed to carry out reconnaissance missions. pic.twitter.com/xDioOyQo3B— IndoPacific_SCS_Info (@IndoPac_Info) July 28, 2019
China has created an underwater that looks like a shark.
I am sure that I am not the only one who’s initial response was to think of the movie,
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery?
Because I cannot look at that shark drone, and not think that this something out of a parody of the James Bond films.
Of course, I always thought that they missed a joke with the Sea Bass: At the time that Dr. Evil went into the deep freeze, there was no such thing as a Sea Bass, they were known as Patagonian Toothfish.
Just saying, “Patagonian Toothfish,” is funny.
Matt Lubchansky channels Maureen Dowd:
anyway, time to complain about it in the pages of the world's most famous newspaper, which lets me write whatever the hell i want in it
— matt lubchansky (@Lubchansky) July 28, 2019
He shoots, he SCORES!!
Boeing is considering the drastic move of temporarily halting 737 MAX production and rejigging 777X assembly plans as uncertainty continues over its two newest commercial aircraft programs.
Executives at the beleaguered aerospace giant acknowledged July 24 that it will accelerate assembly of 777 freighters next year to offset the impact of a slowdown on the new 777X linked to its General Electric GE9X engines. Yet, despite facing what could be a yearlong delay to flight test and delivery, the widebody program issues barely register when laid next to those of the 737.
………
While many analysts embraced the news as a rare bit of clarity in a fluid situation, Boeing’s earnings call comments suggest that the MAX’s notional return-to-service timeline and related ramifications are tenuous estimates.
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Boeing has been working on software and training changes designed to convince regulators that the MAX is ready to fly again. While neither the FAA nor Boeing discussed public return-to-service timelines in the weeks after the grounding, Boeing was set to present a finalized version of its changes to the FAA in April when several issues cropped up. Boeing did not provide a revised timeline estimate until its recent second-quarter charge revelation. During Boeing’s second-quarter call, Muilenburg reiterated that Boeing’s current assumptions include delivering the final package detailing the changes to the FAA “in the September time frame.”
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While next year’s 737 production plans remain in flux, Boeing has already decided to make changes in its 777 assembly plan to ensure it maintains its current rate even as delays push back the 777X’s debut.
“We continue to expect 777 delivery rates to be approximately 3.5 aircraft per month in 2019,” Muilenburg says. “Given the pressure around [the] 777X first-delivery timeline, we are reassessing the 2020 skyline. In light of the strong demand for our freighter line, we intend to mitigate some of the impact by producing more 777 current-generation freighters in 2020.”
“2020 skyline?” Someone just won a game of corporate bullsh%$ bingo.
Stop worrying about the business, and start worrying about the damn planes.