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Bureaucracy and Regulations in action: The Fourth Branch of the US Govt.
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Topic: Bureaucracy and Regulations in action: The Fourth Branch of the US Govt. (Read 5106 times)
Power User
Posts: 28121
Re: Bureaucracy and Regulations in action: The Fourth Branch of the US Govt.
Reply #50 on:
April 14, 2013, 11:32:23 AM »
Perhaps even more to the point is that this is the man who believes in the power of the state to "nudge" we the unwilling into state-desired behaviors.
This is the guy who Glenn Beck called "the second most dangerous man in America".
Power User
Posts: 387
Re: Bureaucracy and Regulations in action: The Fourth Branch of the US Govt.
Reply #51 on:
April 14, 2013, 05:19:40 PM »
Yes, I'm well-aware of this man's predilection for controlling others' behavior. He's a true Marxist in that sense. Believes that man can create utopia on this earth, if only the right government polices are enacted. The very essence of the difference between conservatives and leftists.
"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.
Power User
Posts: 28121
Tornado relief aid from Canada denied entry
Reply #52 on:
June 02, 2013, 07:47:48 AM »
Power User
Posts: 28121
Sen. Orin Hatch: The IRS and the administration of health care
Reply #53 on:
June 15, 2013, 02:19:30 PM »
Power User
Posts: 28121
Calabrese: Our Founding Fathers did not anticipate the Imperial Bureaucracy
Reply #54 on:
June 18, 2013, 02:47:48 PM »
The Founders didn't quite anticipate the imperial bureaucracy
Published by: Dan Calabrese
Our masters.
First of all, I wish someone could explain to me how Beltway conventional wisdom declares a shallow hack like Ezra Klein "bright," but doesn't recognize the real brainpower in Jay Cost. If you read the Weekly Standard at all, you know Cost for being thorough, analytical and always honest in his assessments. And as we see here, he does his homework and knows his history. Cost has done a really excellent piece that spells out one of the biggest problems facing the citizens of this nation - the fact that a gigantic bureaucracy the Founders could never have anticipated, and really designed no mechanism for reining in, has become such a power unto itself.
Here is the money passage:
The Declaration of Independence vested all sovereign power in the people alone, while the Constitution established a government to manage that power in a republican fashion. While the people still swear fealty to the founding ideals, they have not put much thought recently into the problems the Founders tackled. As society has become more complex, the government has, too; Americans have not reexamined the structure of government, in an age in which it accounts for more than 20 percent of the national economy, to ensure it still reflects the republican spirit. In fact, there has not been a serious public discussion about the organization of the bureaucracy since the 1880s, even as it has doubled in size many times over. And so today, it is a vast enterprise of millions of workers, with precious little oversight from the peoples elected representatives.
Its no wonder that some agency somewhere in the bureaucracy could have worked so perniciously for so long against the peoples interests. Perhaps the only surprise is that we ever noticed the malfeasance at the IRS at all. Were it not for the over-the-top questioning from the IRSasking one group to pledge not to protest abortion clinics, another to reveal what books their members were reading, another to say what theyre praying aboutall this might still be hidden in the shadows, unbeknownst to an overburdened Congress and an incurious media. And it remains to be seen what will be done about it, whether the bureaucracy, now under attack, has the resources and wherewithal to block oversight and prevent reform.
If there is a battle between the people and the bureaucracy to see who will maintain power, the bureaucracy has a huge advantage because it knows the inside picture, knows where the bodies are buried and knows how to lay hold of the public's resources. Elected officials are theoretically responsive to the voters, but the truth is they know the bureaucracy can make more trouble for them on any given day than some constituent.
The IRS is far from the only bad actor here. We've all heard stories of the excesses at the EPA, and the truth is few really know what goes on in a broad sense within every little agency of the federal government. Even Obama's defenders - in a strange manner of defending him - acknowledge that the government is too big for anyone to really keep tabs on what it's doing.
Congress could pass reforms that would make the bureaucracy more accountable, which would most certainly mean it would have to be smaller, but if Congress tries, you know the greatest resistance will come from the bureaucracy itself and its champions in Congress.
This is a fight that needs to be waged at some point. I'm not sure how to fight it, and I don't see anyone willing to lead it. But someone needs to.
Follow all of Dan's work, including his series of Christian spiritual warfare novels, by liking his page on Facebook.
Power User
Posts: 28121
Economist: Ignoring changing reality
Reply #55 on:
June 18, 2013, 03:27:57 PM »
second post
Money to burn
The muddle-headed world of American public-pension accounting
SLOWLY but surely the cost of Americas public-sector pension promises is becoming clear. Last year the best estimate of the shortfall was more than $4 trillion. To deal with its deficit, a giant Californian pension fund, CalPERS, recently announced plans that will increase contributions by employers (in effect, taxpayers) by up to a half, starting in 2015-16.
Final-salary pension costs have risen for decades because workers are living longer and the retirement age has barely budged. The bill was disguised in the 1980s and 1990s by good asset returns. But dismal equity markets have since forced many private providers to close final-salary schemes to new members and switch to less lavish defined-contribution plans.
This shift has hardly happened in the public sector, in large part because the accounting treatment is so different. Devin Nunes, a Republican congressman, recently revived a bill to move to a more conservative accounting approach.
Failing to recognise the true cost of public pensions builds up all sorts of problems, as an academic paper last year made clear. As pension funds become more mature (i.e., more of their members are retired) their asset allocation should, in theory, become more conservative. After all, the fund has to worry more about paying benefits immediately and has less scope to gamble that riskier assets will deliver long-term growth.
Sure enough, mature pension funds in Canada and Europe and in Americas private sector all follow this approach. But more mature American public plans have riskier portfolios than less mature equivalents. In its latest Global Financial Stability Report the IMF worried that American funds had increased the riskiness of their portfolios, exposing them to greater volatility and liquidity risks.
The explanation for such Behaviour is not hard to find. American public-sector schemes discount their liabilities by the expected return on their assets. The riskier the asset mix, the higher the assumed returnand the lower the bill appears to be.
This is an odd way of thinking. Suppose a car company borrowed $10 billion in the form of a 20-year bond to build a manufacturing plant and planned to pay off the debt with the profits from running the plant. The car company will assume a higher return on capital than its financing cost (otherwise it should not build the plant). But it still has to recognise the $10 billion bond liability on its balance-sheet. It cannot say it owes only $2 billion because it expects a very high return.
The reason is clear. If the plant fails to earn a high return, the firm will still be liable to repay the bond. Similarly, if pension schemes fail to earn a high return on their assets, they still have to pay benefits. Final-salary pensions are a debt-like liability.
When private-sector companies account for their pension schemes, therefore, they discount liabilities with a corporate-bond yield. Lower yields have pushed up liabilities and led to big deficits. Moodys, a ratings agency, will in future use a long-term bond yield to discount American public-pension schemes, resulting in much larger liabilities than before.
Even if you use the expected-return methodology, the discount rate used by public-sector pension funds should fall. That is because all pension funds tend to own some bonds, and low bond yields mean low future returns. But the paper finds no link at all between the discount rates used by public-sector funds and the level of bond yields.
The motto seems to be: if reality is challenging, just ignore it.
The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) did change the rules for public pension funds last year. But the revised rules still throw up absurdities. In a paper for theFinancial Analysts Journal, Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Rochester argues that by destroying assets invested in cash a scheme can reduce its deficit by increasing the expected return on remaining assets. A plan can sometimes improve its funding status by literally burning money, he remarks.
This seemed such a startling finding that The Economist asked GASB to comment. Instead of a detailed rebuttal, we received this response: GASB gave serious consideration to the views of Professor Novy-Marx when developing its new pension standards. Not serious enough, it seems. American taxpayers must not know whether to laugh or cry.
Power User
Posts: 11179
Re: Bureaucracy and Regulations in action: The Fourth Branch of the US Govt.
Reply #56 on:
June 18, 2013, 03:34:38 PM »
The low information voters are in for a bad time when the bills finally come due.
Power User
Posts: 11179
Reply #57 on:
June 18, 2013, 03:39:48 PM »
Quote from: G M on June 18, 2013, 03:34:38 PM
The low information voters are in for a bad time when the bills finally come due.
Detroit To Dump Retiree Health Costs On ObamaCare
By JED GRAHAM, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 09:18 AM ET
The federal government isn't among the creditors Detroit has turned to for mercy, but U.S. taxpayers will bear a large share of the cost of its restructuring.
High on emergency manager Kevyn Orr's to-do list: slash health care outlays for thousands of early retirees by shifting them to ObamaCare.
Detroit spent $177 million on health benefits for 19,000 retirees last year but figures it can cut that to $28 million-$40 million a year.
Part of the savings would come from paring supplemental coverage for retirees age 65 and older, most of whom already get Medicare.
But the federal government will pick up much of the slack for early retirees through age 64, who will be eligible for subsidized coverage as long as household income is less than 400% of the poverty level.
The news is hardly surprising. While the Motor City is an early mover when it comes to shifting early retirees to ObamaCare, it's not alone and the road for doing so has been well-paved.
Last month, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel Obama's chief of staff when the law was passed in 2010 disclosed that the Windy City would shift 30,000 early retirees to ObamaCare. Last year, retiree health care cost the city $109 million, but that's projected to balloon to $500 million within a decade.
Sheboygan County, Wis., also has crunched the numbers and envisions saving $286,000 in the upcoming fiscal year by shifting early retirees to ObamaCare's exchanges starting Jan. 1.
ObamaCare's crafters intended to provide an alternative to employer-provided coverage for retirees, which had long been in decline.
The law set aside $5 billion to offset employer costs from June 2010 until the launch of the subsidized exchanges at the start of 2014. The funds, to reimburse 80% of per-person claims between $15,000 and $90,000, were exhausted by December 2011. New claims were rejected.
About half of the employers who signed up for the program were government entities, including the city of Stockton, which has sought to dump retiree health care in bankruptcy proceedings.
Stockton public employee retirees recently agreed to accept $5.1 million in a lump sum, which is equal to just 2% of their lost health benefits.
The Early Retiree Reinsurance Program was described by the Department of Health and Human Services "as a bridge to the new health insurance Exchanges."
The implication was that employers would cross that bridge by shifting coverage to the federal government come 2014.
While relatively few government entities have declared such an intention, it seems logical to expect many to make that move in the next year or so.
As governments struggle with massive liabilities for pension and health benefits, court rulings have lent support to the contention that pensions are protected under state constitutions. On the other hand, rulings in a number of states have found no such protections for health benefits.
In a recent column, former Comptroller General David Walker wrote that ObamaCare presented "a huge opportunity for states and localities in desperate need of fixing their long-term finances."
He predicted: "The overall tax burden will shift, and in ways that Americans in other more fiscally responsible states may not appreciate."
Walker also warned that the influx of older, high-cost patients into ObamaCare would put upward pressure on premiums and make it less likely younger workers would sign up.
Read More At Investor's Business Daily:
Power User
Posts: 28121
Let's put these folks in charge of our health care!
Reply #58 on:
June 22, 2013, 06:17:56 PM »
Power User
Posts: 11179
Re: Let's put these folks in charge of our health care!
Reply #59 on:
June 24, 2013, 08:17:24 PM »
Quote from: Crafty_Dog on June 22, 2013, 06:17:56 PM
Too busy crushing the Tea Party.
Power User
Posts: 28121
Toll Keepers on the Road to Serfdom
Reply #60 on:
June 25, 2013, 10:16:26 PM »
The Tollkeepers on the Road to Serfdom
Mises Daily: Friday, June 21, 2013 by D.W. MacKenzie
Elected Federal officials can be voted out of office. But the entrenched army of empowered, unelected Federal bureaucrats remains to wield its power, and the Internal Revenue Service bureaucrats are some of the worst. Six years ago I published an article in The Freeman on the incompatibility of the tax code and liberty, and the threat to liberty continues unabated.
Friedrich Hayek described the process by which bureaucratic empowerment and discretion extirpates personal liberty and democracy as the road to serfdom. He warned us all that socialism requires bureaucratization. In the socialist state bureaucrats would become the new aristocracy and its citizens would take on the role of serf. My article argued that similar dangers existed with increasing the powers of the IRS bureaucracy, and that democracy could not be relied upon to hold it in check. Recent abuses validate this fear. Any agency without restraint and accountability is a threat to personal freedom and should be abolished.
I have published critiques of the US government and politicians without IRS reprisal, including some that targeted tax policy and the IRS specifically. The types of concerns I raised regarding IRS authority were spelled out by Hayek in his classic The Road to Serfdom. Scholars from Jeff Sachs to Gordon Tullock have claimed that Hayeks warnings about abuse in social democracy were overstated. After all, many Western nations have large public budgets and extensive regulations without suffering the dire results that Hayek predicted.
The current IRS scandal has renewed concerns regarding abuse of IRS power. One flagrant example from the last election was the partisan use of the IRS as a political weapon. The IRS has a history of political abuse. Hoover, FDR, JFK, and Richard Nixon all used the IRS against enemies, long before Clinton or Obama. In the wake of recent scandals, some politicians are now investigating the IRS. IRS officials, like Douglas Shulman, Lois Lerner, and Holly Paz, in their appearances before Congress, have exhibited the arrogance of an entitled aristocrat instead of the public servants that they are.
Politicians see the IRS and its tax code as a means of fixing perceived political problems. Republicans want to use tax code to promote family values. Democrats want to use taxes to alleviate poverty and reduce pollution. Yet, regardless of the legislative agenda, it is largely unelected bureaucrats who decide where tax money goes.
Hayek pointed out that neither voters nor Congress can watch or manage modern Federal bureaucracies. Consequently, most bureaucratic actions are unseen. Agencies come under scrutiny only when a non-government entity, or the media finds their actions objectionable enough to sell papers or improve ratings. Last years GSA spending scandal took front page headlines away from a different IRS abuse scandal, and before that it was a different agency on the hot seat. The agencies of the Medusa-like Leviathan are too numerous to scrutinize all at once, so it is one agency and one scandal at a time, allowing hundreds of other agencies to function unabated.
The potential for bureaucratic abuse is pervasive. The worst rise to the top of bureaucracies in part because the people who want power most are, as Hayek put it, single-minded idealists. Single-minded idealists are intolerant, by definition, believing that their plans for society are objectively superior to any competing plans. Those who have a comparative advantage at acquiring and wielding power are the most ruthless and insensitive people in society. Obama once said We're going to punish our enemies and we're going to reward our friends who stand with us. Some characterize Obamas remark as Chicago. This is not just Chicago politics; all politics works this way because intervention always favors some people over others.
The New Scandal
IRS officials admitted to political bias during the last election. They deliberately delayed hundreds of applications for tax-exempt status, and used inappropriate criteria to select the groups it targeted. The IRS asked inappropriate questions of applicant groups, and targeted Obamas opponents with audits. Romney donor Frank Vandersloot was hit with multiple audits by the IRS (with seven other donors) and also by the Department of Labor, at a cost of $80,000. Katherine Engelbrecht was harassed by the IRS, FBI, BATF, and OSHA.
The Justice Department has moved against the Associated Press and Fox News journalist James Rosen, in particular, over privacy issues. It appears that the EPA has been charging fees according to political bias. Obama most likely did not directly order Lois Lerner or Holly Paz to punish enemies in the Tea Party movement, but Tea Party members were singled out. Since Tea Party groups oppose the current Federal tax/spending system, the single-minded idealists at the IRS thought these targeting actions to be justifiable.
The fact that some bureaucrats might now be penalized for their transgressions is good news, but the heart of the problem runs deeper. Hayek pointed out that people complete the path from citizenship to servitude only after a psychological (or sociological) change occurs. Todays change is from a free people believing in the primacy of individuals to make their own choices to dependence and acceptance of government as the entitled class.
Once people accept bureaucrats as authorities, as persons who should direct the actions of others, and reject dissenting views as illegitimate or illegal, they have taken up the mantle of serf. A recent poll found that 36 percent of self-described liberals thought that the IRS acted appropriately; that it should have singled out Tea Party groups for special investigations and delayed approval of their tax exempt status. In other words, they dont think that there is a scandalthey believe that the IRS should be used to suppress dissent. Even 26 percent of Independents and 15 percent of Republicans found IRS abuses acceptable. One-in-four Americans currently embraces bureaucratic abuse and this is frightening for our future. Passage of The Affordable Care Act and The Dodd-Frank Bill, along with Obamas reelection, indicate solid voter support for a bureaucratic state.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has declared his intention to prevent IRS abuses from ever happening again, but can he? Conviction of a few IRS or DOJ officials wont prevent future abuses. Nixon resigned because of abuses that included misuse of IRS power, but the misuse of power didnt stop. The prospects of reforming the IRS are poor. Fifteen years ago Congress passed The Internal Revenue Service Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, but here we are again embroiled in yet another wave of IRS scandal.
It is obvious that we cannot rely on political processes to regulate the IRS. Obamas defenders initially thought that the IRS scandal would increase his approval rating, as it did for Bill Clintons, because many Americans sympathized with Clinton during the public inquiries into his misdeeds during the 1990s. Obama is in a weaker position, but it is still unlikely that the Senate would begin proceedings to remove Obama from office. FDR also misused the IRS, but most Americans see FDR as a great presidentdespite his corruption and the failures of his policies.
As long as unelected, empowered bureaucrats with tenure run the IRS, there is no solution but to abolish it and the Federal Tax Code along with it. Total abolition of the IRS will not happen immediately, but Congress should pass a sunset provision on both the IRS and the Federal Tax Code. Strong feelings of discontent with Obama and the IRS create a temporary opportunity to enact real solutions to recurring IRS abuses. Americans should move against the IRS quickly before these feelings of discontent fade.
Power User
Posts: 28121
Magician needs disaster plan for his rabbit
Reply #61 on:
June 30, 2013, 09:21:37 PM »
Power User
Posts: 11179
Re: Magician needs disaster plan for his rabbit
Reply #62 on:
July 01, 2013, 03:58:30 PM »
Quote from: Crafty_Dog on June 30, 2013, 09:21:37 PM
A spit and a campfire?
Power User
Posts: 28121
Re: Bureaucracy and Regulations in action: The Fourth Branch of the US Govt.
Reply #63 on:
July 01, 2013, 04:53:30 PM »
I was thinking in exactly the same way
Power User
Posts: 11179
Re: Bureaucracy and Regulations in action: The Fourth Branch of the US Govt.
Reply #64 on:
July 01, 2013, 04:57:51 PM »
Quote from: Crafty_Dog on July 01, 2013, 04:53:30 PM
I was thinking in exactly the same way
Thank god the sequester spared these federal employees. Imagine the chaos without them regulating magicians so closely.
Power User
Posts: 28121
Whoops! IRS posts SS#s
Reply #65 on:
July 09, 2013, 03:05:58 PM »
Power User
Posts: 11179
Re: Whoops! IRS posts SS#s
Reply #66 on:
July 09, 2013, 03:32:53 PM »
Quote from: Crafty_Dog on July 09, 2013, 03:05:58 PM
Wouldn't happen to be certain people whom the administration dislikes, would it?
Power User
Posts: 28121
Re: Bureaucracy and Regulations in action: The Fourth Branch of the US Govt.
Reply #67 on:
July 22, 2013, 08:39:48 PM »
Power User
Posts: 28121
Killing baby Bambi
Reply #68 on:
August 02, 2013, 10:47:54 AM »
Power User
Posts: 1997
House votes to give Congress power over costly regulations
Reply #69 on:
August 02, 2013, 12:25:08 PM »
Power User
Posts: 28121
Newt: Fire Sebelius
Reply #70 on:
October 17, 2013, 08:05:29 AM »
Sebelius Must Go
The kickoff of Obamacare and rollout of the exchanges since October 1 has been a disaster. It has been a technical disaster, a fiscal disaster, and most importantly, a human disaster. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius should be held responsible.
We now know that the Obama administrations early characterization of the problems as glitches caused by overwhelming demand was disingenuous at best.
The technical failures are extraordinary. Millions of people are supposed to sign up for insurance plans using the exchanges in the next few months, but very few have been able to do it. It appears the system has turned away the vast majority of users. Apparently the flaws are so serious they may not be fixed for a couple of months, according to an astonishing New York Times report this weekend.
The Obamacare website, HealthCare.gov, cost taxpayers an estimated $500 million and yet doesnt work, even after three years of lead time to develop it. For comparison, the Mars Pathfinder (a pretty complex technical undertaking) cost $150 million and was developed in less than three years. It also actually worked.
Details have begun to trickle out about just how poorly the government managed this project. The Times reported:
Deadline after deadline was missed. The biggest contractor, CGI Federal, was awarded its $94 million contract in December 2011. But the government was so slow in issuing specifications that the firm did not start writing software code until this spring, according to people familiar with the process. As late as the last week of September, officials were still changing features of the Web site, HealthCare.gov, and debating whether consumers should be required to register and create password-protected accounts before they could shop for health plans.
Fatefully, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services assumed to itself the responsibility of managing the project, which, the Times continued, some people intimately involved...seriously doubted that the agency had the in-house capability to handle.
Much of the complexity was avoidable, but HHS and the White House complicated the challenge for political reasons. In particular, the administration chose to require users to register and enter lots of personal information before showing them the prices of various plans, so that consumers would only see prices after their subsidy was factored in. The administration insisted on the more complex registration system because it was afraid of the sticker shock Americans might feel if they saw the true costs of the policies.
No one, including those Americans who are deeply opposed to Obamacare, should think that the exchange failures are a minor problem. Even the New York Times admitted they threaten the fiscal health of the insurance initiative, making the law even more fiscally toxic than it already was. Thats because those Americans who are less likely to have health problems (like young people) need to enroll in the plans to help balance the cost of the more risky, more expensive people who are likely to flood into the system. The technical breakdown poses such a high barrier to entry that the healthy may not bother to enroll and instead simply pay the fine, while those with serious health problems will be willing to spend days trying to sign up, if thats what it takes. Thats a recipe for financial disaster.
The human disaster is just as significant. Millions of people are being forced to buy health insurance in the next few months--many of them because Obamacare caused their employer to drop their coverage. And yet because the system is failing so badly, these Americans dont know what coverage theyll be able to get for themselves and their families, or how much it will cost. When they try to log onto the government website, theyre met with error messages and blank screens--sometimes after hours of frustrating attempts to enroll. This is a horrible position for the administration to put people.
The worst part is that senior officials knew the exchanges werent ready to launch but chose to proceed anyway, rather than face the political embarrassment of a delay. Long after they recognized there were major problems with the system, they continued to promise that everything was fine. In June, Secretary Sebelius insisted they were ready to go on October 1.
Even after the issues became obvious to the public, Secretary Sebelius remarked glibly that she hoped Americans would give us the same slack they give Apple, as though Americans health coverage is as trivial a concern as their smartphone software. Later, in a Daily Show interview with Jon Stewart, she claimed she couldnt say how many Americans had signed up for Obamacare because she didnt know. The claim is hard to accept, but whether she really didnt know or she was deliberately deceptive, it doesnt portend good things for Obamacare.
Senator Pat Roberts has called for Secretary Sebelius to resign, and hes right. She has presided over one of the largest bureaucratic disasters in recent memory. If she wont go voluntarily, President Obama should fire her. Its time for real accountability.
Your Friend,
Power User
Posts: 28121
WSJ: Rationing Bone Marrow
Reply #71 on:
November 25, 2013, 10:48:25 AM »
Rationing Bone Marrow
The feds want to control who can donate despite shortages.
Nov. 24, 2013 6:15 p.m. ET
You know an agency has gone off the rails when its rules make the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals look like a beacon of sanity. So it goes at the Department of Health and Human Services, where a proposed rule-making is seeking to override the court's decision to allow bone-marrow donors to be compensated for their donations.
In 1984, Congress passed the National Organ Transplant Act banning the purchase or sale of organs like livers and lungs for transplants. The intention was to prevent the exploitation of poor donors or self-mutilation for profit (think drug addicts). Swept up in the ban was bone marrow, which produces blood cells and is critical to the immune system.
Organs are unique and specialized groups of cells, but bone marrow is a connective tissue that regenerates naturally in a healthy body. In 1984 the typical bone marrow transplant was relatively complicated. Today, you can donate bone marrow through an outpatient procedure called apheresis. A donor receives a series of shots and then is hooked up to a machine that draws blood and collects marrow cells, much like blood donation.
Enlarge Image
Associated Press
The technique is less invasive than egg donation and has none of the risks associated with kidney or liver donation. Unlike blood donors, however, marrow donors cannot be compensated, which has led to shortages for patients with life threatening blood diseases and a waiting list of some 13,900.
In 2009, the Institute for Justice sued on behalf of Maine resident Doreen Flynn, whose three children have a disease called Franconia anemia and will most likely need bone marrow transplants to survive. In 2012's Flynn v. Holder, the Ninth Circuit agreed, noting that new technology and the ease of marrow donation put the ban wholly out of step with the purpose of the organ donation law.
The Justice Department petitioned for rehearing en banc, insisting that marrow transplants should "not be subject to market forces." When the Ninth Circuit declined to rehear the case, the Administration mobilized HHS, which has proposed a rule that would overturn the Ninth Circuit and define marrow extracted from the bloodstream as an organ. The purpose, says the rule, is to "ban the commodification" of bone marrow used in transplants, "encourage altruistic donations, and decrease the likelihood of disease transmission resulting from paid donations."
None of these arguments stands up to scrutiny. If banning donor compensation encouraged altruistic donations, it would already have done so. The ban has been in place for decades and the result is chronic bone-marrow shortages, which have disproportionately affected minorities who have a harder time finding a donor match.
The claim that compensation would increase "disease transmission" is also a straw man. The thousands of people on the waiting list, including many with leukemia and blood cancers or anemia, often need marrow donation to stay alive. Any marginal increase in risk pales next to the certainty of death.
Treating bone marrow as a public resource distributed by the federal government hasn't worked. The Administration's campaign to reimpose the compensation ban and overrule the courts is another example of its penchant for political and bureaucratic control over medical decisions. The rule is open for public comment until December 2, and patients and doctors ought to express their opposition on moral and humanitarian grounds.
Power User
Posts: 11179
Re: Bureaucracy and Regulations in action: The Fourth Branch of the US Govt.
Reply #72 on:
November 25, 2013, 11:08:13 AM »
Get used to the words "government" and "rationing" appearing together alot in the next 38 months.
Power User
Posts: 5163
Re: Bureaucracy and Regulations in action: The Fourth Branch of the US Govt.
Reply #73 on:
November 25, 2013, 01:08:04 PM »
"Rationing Bone Marrow
The feds want to control who can donate despite shortages."
Quote from: G M on November 25, 2013, 11:08:13 AM
Get used to the words "government" and "rationing" appearing together alot in the next 38 months.
Government inefficiency is perhaps a redundancy.
I wonder what the price of 8-track tape players would be right now if the government had taken over that industry. All we know for sure is that they would still be state of the art.
Power User
Posts: 5163
Re: Bureaucracy in action: The Fourth Branch of the US Govt.
Reply #74 on:
November 26, 2013, 10:53:23 AM »
A few weeks after taking office in 2009, Mr. Obama issued a memorandum to government agency heads ordering them to minimize the use of non-competitive contracts, calling them potentially "wasteful, inefficient, subject to misuse."
CBS/Reuters November 25, 2013, 10: 30 AM
Obamacare agency rushed in contractor without bids, documents show
"representatives of the agency were unavailable to comment on the contract "
Asked about how Novitas was awarded the contract and the work it is doing... a company official told him, "We're not going to be able to get into this right now."
Power User
Posts: 3514
"tweaking" - our lives
Reply #75 on:
November 27, 2013, 07:36:55 AM »
More from the technocrat elites. So we know that reducing the speed limit would save lives just by lowering the speed limit to a total crawl? So now we make a city of several million slow down even more because statistically we might save some lives. Why not get rid of all the cars? Then the 98 % would be 100%? Why do they decide when where how much? Again the liberals making everyone suffer for some haze stats. No one should ever die (except when they approve - death panels). Every single thing must be studied and data has not become basis of all our laws, how we must live our lives. It will NEVER end. First the world has to give into delayed red lights. Then we have the disability thing that inconveniences 98 % for the few. Now millions must slow down for a relative tiny theoretical gain. No end. There really is no compromise.
****Council Working to Reduce Speed Limit on City Streets
By Jill Colvin 11/26 4:03pm
The New York City Council hopes to pass legislation that would reduce the speed limit on most residential and side streets to 20 miles per hour, Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced today.
We are actively working on that bill and our goal is to pass it before the end of the year, Ms. Quinn said during an unrelated press conference this afternoon before the months final council meeting. Were actively working on it right now.
The bill, introduced by Councilman David Greenfield, is aimed at reducing serous pedestrian injuries and traffic fatalities. Last year, 148 pedestrians were killed in traffic accidents and crashes.
We are working to fine-tune this life-saving legislation that will slow down automobiles on narrow residential streets. I am hopeful that we can get consensus on this important legislation, which will literally save lives once it is enacted here in New York City, he said in response to the speakers comments.
But there are complications. The citys Department of Transportation has argued the proposal would conflict with state law, which only allows limits that low if other traffic-calming devices are used. Last Friday, Councilman Jimmy Vacca, chair of the councils transportation committee, told WNYC the bill was being tweaked a little bit and that members were aiming for 25 miles per hour on narrow, one-way streets.
Currently, the speed limit on most city streets is 30 miles per hour, unless otherwise posted. The new regulations would be a boon to advocatesincluding those who installed their own 20-mile limit signs in Park Slope this weekbut have drawn grumbles from some drivers who feel the citys notoriously gridlocked streets are slow enough.
According to the group Transportation Alternatives, pedestrians have an 80 percent chance of surviving being hit by a car traveling 30 miles per hour and a 98 percent chance of survival if the car is traveling 20 miles per hour.
The measure is just the latest of several recent efforts aimed at making streets safer for pedestrians. Later today, the council is expected to pass another bill, introduced by Councilwoman Debi Rose, aimed at slowing speeds near public and private schools. The rules would require the city to install speed humps near at least 50 schools.
Speeding is the number one cause of deadly crashes in New York City and we must do everything we can to prevent fatalities, Mr. Quinn said in a statement touting Mr. Roses bill.
A spokeswoman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg did not immediately comment on whether the mayor supports the bill.
Follow Jill Colvin on Twitter or via RSS.
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Floppy Disks
Reply #76 on:
December 07, 2013, 08:02:05 AM »
Slowly They Modernize: A Federal Agency That Still Uses Floppy Disks
By JADA F. SMITH
WASHINGTON The technology troubles that plagued the HealthCare.gov website rollout may not have come as a shock to people who work for certain agencies of the government especially those who still use floppy disks, the cutting-edge technology of the 1980s. Every day, The Federal Register, the daily journal of the United States government, publishes on its website and in a thick booklet around 100 executive orders, proclamations, proposed rule changes and other government notices that federal agencies are mandated to submit for public inspection.
So far, so good.
It turns out, however, that the Federal Register employees who take in the information for publication from across the government still receive some of it on the 3.5-inch plastic storage squares that have become all but obsolete in the United States.
Now government infrastructure experts are hoping that public embarrassments like the HealthCare.gov debacle will prompt a closer look at the governments technological prowess, especially if it might mean getting rid of floppy disks.
Youve got this antiquated system that still works but is not nearly as efficient as it could be, said Stan Soloway, chief executive of the Professional Services Council, which represents more than 370 government contractors. Companies that work with the government, whether longstanding or newcomers, are all hamstrung by the same limitations.
The use of floppy disks peaked in American homes and offices in the mid-1990s, and modern computers do not even accommodate them anymore. But The Federal Register continues to accept them, in part because legal and security requirements have yet to be updated, but mostly because the wheels of government grind ever slowly.
Davita Vance-Cooks, the head of the Government Printing Office, which oversees The Federal Register, spoke at a congressional hearing on Wednesday about her departments attempts to make its work remain relevant in a post-print world. Despite creating mobile apps, The Federal Register still requires agencies to submit information on paper, with original signatures, though they can create a digital signature via a secured email system.
Agencies are also permitted to submit the documents on CD-ROMs and floppy disks, but not on flash drives or SD cards. The Federal Register Act says that an agency has to submit the original and two duplicate originals or two certified copies, said Amy P. Bunk, The Federal Registers director of legal affairs and policy. As long as an agency does that through one of the approved methods of transmission, she said, theyve met the statutory requirement.
But the secure email system which uses software called Public Key Infrastructure technology is expensive, and some government agencies have not yet upgraded to it. As a result, some agencies still scan documents on to a computer and save them on floppy disks. The disks are then sent by courier to the register.
Ms. Bunk said that although many agencies did use the secure email system, The Federal Register could not require it until Congress made it compulsory by law.
There are limits as to how far we can make the agencies do everything in lock step, said Jim Bradley, the assistant public printer for the Government Printing Office. Federal budget cuts, he said, had helped slow down any modernization.
Weve got to accommodate the funding and everything else, Mr. Bradley said. Some agencies move forward with technology, and thats great. Other agencies arent ready to go this year, maybe not next year.
A spokesman for The Federal Register would not say which agencies still used floppy disks. But at The Registers office, a modest space on North Capitol Street in sight of the Capitol dome, couriers were recently seen coming in and out as an employee pulled a floppy disk from one package and at least two CD-ROMs from others.
Meanwhile, experts say that an administration that prided itself on its technological savvy has a long way to go in updating the computer technology of the federal government. HealthCare.gov and the floppy disks of The Federal Register, they say, are but two recent examples of a government years behind the private sector in digital innovation.
Mr. Soloway, of the Professional Services Council, said that the governments technology was also causing it to fall behind in cooperation with the private sector. Its undoubtedly inhibiting the expansion of what corporations are willing to do with the government, Mr. Soloway said. And it remains an inhibitor for the next generation of companies.
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Ann Shelton doublethink 'We have maintained a silence closely resembling stupidity' Neil Roberts 1982 2013 (detail). Courtesy the artist
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Dr. Oz talks about helping tourist hit by cab
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UPDATED 12:43 AM MDT Aug 21, 2013TV's Dr. Mehmet Oz attempted to offer more than just health guidance on a busy street in Manhattan on Tuesday morning after a taxi jumped a curb and hit a pedestrian and a cyclist.
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Skipfish is open source software under Apache 2.0 licensing. The Google Code site has its own Skipfish page, with downloads of a source tarball and online documentation.
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Do Women View The Web Different Than Men?
Posted 19 May 2007 - 08:04 AM
I'm not talking about women being more likely to view sites like baby gifts or cosmetics, but all sites in general. For example, a real estate site, or restaurant site, or business/office supply vendors, etc.
I'm not sure I've seen this addressed on this forum, but I'm sure there are some definite differences in marketing here. As a manly-man (you know us, we never read maps, lord of the manor, always buy the most expesnsive grill-and still burn everything we don't serve half-raw), maybe I'm missing something.
Posted 19 May 2007 - 08:25 AM
There's definitely a difference in how you should write your copy based on who your target audience is. She will surely be 'round to speak on that. In the meantime, you may want to read some of Karon's Articles from her site as I believe she has addressed the issue of writing for different audience segments there.
Posted 20 May 2007 - 07:42 AM
This very subject is what first led me down the road of doing a lot more Conversion Analysis in fact.
Are you looking for generalities? Getting into specifics is a pretty deep subject and may be more than can be covered here in the forums.
Posted 21 May 2007 - 02:13 AM
Posted 21 May 2007 - 03:11 PM
Here's some interesting research about color preferences by age and gender, for instance. (Well, at least I thought it was interesting!)
This is but one aspect of what makes (and keeps) conversion analysis so interesting!
Posted 21 May 2007 - 06:06 PM
Following on from the fact that we don't read maps - we do find things by land marks don't we. With regards to that point:
I read a book (honest) called the 'New Marketing Paradigm' it was about integrating your communications (Drucker I think).
Something I took away from it, was the fact that we now use image more than text when navigating around sites. Think about the ORANGE ads - and different logos for different service, play station controller, putting your DIY furniture together.
Hello Magazine - or their agency must of been on the ball as they now offer loads of social media tools on their site, we are just soooo technically apt.
Someone once told me the best form of marketing is Television - then Telephone and now it's
Tele woman (sorry couldn't resist) Maybe there are more women online now, just because of word of mouth, and we can now save time online, with handy tools, and more time to spend in the shops is a bonus for any woman, surely.
Don't call me surely/shirley !!
With copywriting for women I think focus should be on benefits - tell me why i should be on the site, why I should come back and I will tell my mates and we will rule the web pretty pink world (or is that just me !)
Sarah G
Posted 21 May 2007 - 08:44 PM
Focusing on benefits is something I can relate to and work on.
So what other things do women look at that men may not. If I may use an example, my biggest client is a developer - big time adult lifestyle communites, not focusing on houses (how big the kitchen is, etc, they sell properties, not houses) but more on the value of the lifestyle in this community. So what do I need to do to convince a woman that there is more value in my products and services in this area that would differ in what a man relates to? This target age is more baby-boomer than any other age group (I'm one, too).
FYI, Jill was right, Karen has some great info on her site, very helpful, but not anything there that particularly addressed this issue.
Edited by donp, 21 May 2007 - 08:52 PM.
Posted 21 May 2007 - 09:09 PM
Like Torka pointed out above, it's more than just about the Copy. It's about the overall design, the images you use, the placement of those images, etc. etc. As Sarah pointed out it even involves the use of certian colors, and the results can vary depending upon the age range and gender you're shooting for.
And before the question gets asked, Yes you can construct a site to have a high appeal to both men and women. Even men and women in slightly varied age ranges. We're wired differently, but there are ways to satisfy both market segments. FTR, most of the response to these factors happens completely in the subconscious. People don't even realize what's happening or why they choose one site over another.
Some quick hits regarding the gender marketing research I've done since I'm short on time today. Hopefully it makes some sense considering I'm winding down from a 16 hour (totally kick butt!) Monday... Obviously, these are all very, very general.
Things that help when your target market is women:
1. Women tend to be extremely visually oriented. This doesn't necessarily mean that you should just use pictures, but that you need to use the right type of pictures. More on this concept below.
2. Women rely heavily on their own past experience to when considering whether to make a purchase or not. If they've had a favorable experience with you or something similar to what you're selling before, the level of fear and anxiety is greatly reduced. Thus the conversion rates soar.
3. Benefit selling is especially important if your target market is women. Potential women customers put a heavy weight on explanations that help them to avoid present or future problems. Which is what benefit selling is all about when performed correctly.
4. If a woman potential customer does not have any or has little personal experience to rely upon, she will read and place some significant weight on the experiences of others. Testimonials can thus become quite important.
5. Even given #4, women tend to not rely Totally on testimonials or such experience of others to make their final decision. They will take in the information and use it, but will not believe it blindly like many men will. They know and accept that testimonials can be a self-fulfilling tool for the advertiser.
6. Women do not buy solely for the Now benefits. They are more calculating in their purchases, typically needing an answer to the question of how your product/service is going to help them 3 weeks or 8 months down the road. Women just don't make immediately gratification purchases like so many men do. Which is one of the reasons why you may see more women making repeat visits before making a purchase when compared to men, if you track that sort of thing.
7. Building on #4 and #5, if you can conduct an effective buzz marketing campaign and get it in front of women in your target market it can be a quite effective marketing tool. Women do tend to be heavily influenced by what can best be described as Gossip Marketing, or what some may simply call Word of Mouth advertising. This sort of consensus tends to carry a heavier weight with women since not all of the opinions can be as easily manipulated.
8. Back to the Visual element for a second. The fastest way to convince a woman to do whatever it is you want her to do on your site is to show a picture of another woman she can identify with doing exactly what you want her to do. Or show a picture of a woman who has gained the benefits you promise by taking you up on your offer.
Things to remember when your target market is men:
1. Men live in the moment. Which makes them more susceptible to making an Instant Purchase or to accepting without question those obvious marketing shams of someone needing to Act Now in order to get whatever deal.
2. Men tend to base much of their decision on positive influences, often devaluing negative influences. Meaning if someone else has had problems with something they'll often ignore the negative and put more weight on the positive. eg Jim, Joe and Ed bought it and it didn't work out for them, but I know I can make it work.
3. Even if a man has had a previous bad experience (as long as it wasn't with you specifically) he won't automatically close the door as most women would. Men are fixers and gamblers by nature, so they're willing to take a shot that they can fix anything.
4. Men can be heavily affected by copy or images of problem situations being solved by what you have to offer. Often this alone will subconsciously persuade them to make the purchase.
5. Unlike women, men do not factor so-called near-term benefits (a few weeks) or far future benefits (months) into their buying decision. They want something to fix a problem they have Now. (Have you ever seen a man run to the store to get a tool or part for something he's working on, only to go back to the store an hour later to get another tool/part that he needed to complete the task?)
6. Men will not purchase if they feel Threatened in any way. Even if everything else falls into place if they feel an abnormal amount of anxiety they will not buy.
7. Men respond to Leaders, especially to depictions of male leadership. Whether that be an image of a male Boss talking to his staff or words on the page that make you a Leader doesn't matter much. Though the image is obviously processed faster and on a more subconscious level. An important point ... If you're using copy to depict this concept of leadership to your male target audience be careful not to be too preachy. It's easy to go overboard, so it's best to get the point across in a subtle manner.
There ya go. That should give you something to gnaw over for a bit.
Posted 21 May 2007 - 10:46 PM
Posted 22 May 2007 - 08:58 AM
1. The above very general info is derived from my own testing on my own sites, so is not an acceptable sample size in my opinion. Though I do use it as a starting point once I've figured out who my target market really is and it does match up pretty well with the things I've read from others involved in similar study.
I can also tell you too that 90% of the site redesigns I've done over the past couple of years is because --being a male-- my original designs when I'm first rolling a site out tend to be more Male Oriented. It just happens. So most of my redesigns have revolved around making them more appealing to potential female customers. Thank goodness I have a couple of female web designer friends who can put their touches on my general concepts, helping me to clean up my mistakes.
2. There is absolutely, positively No substitute for testing. None. Never has been, never will be. So you'll need to test any theories for your own site and your own market.
When I'm doing gender marketing tests I'm most often making use of CSS capabilities to conduct what most would call Radical Redesign experiments. Where entire page layouts, or in many cases the layout of each page on a site is being completely swapped out. The text and navigation tend to stay the same, but in my radical redesign tests one site version almost never resembles the other from the visual/design angle.
Posted 22 May 2007 - 09:42 AM
In addition to showing pictures, if you can get the audience to actually read or skim the text copy, the kinds of words and phrases used can paint a more powerful picture in a visual person than an actual picture. This is because if you can use the right language that is ambiguous enough so that people paint their own personalized pictures in their minds, it can be much more powerful on an emotional level than showing them the picture about something specific that might have seemingly minor details that turn them off in some way. This is why non-specific symbolic pictures are often (not always) more powerful for a wider audience (e.g. a silhouette of a person instead of a photo that shows skin color, age, color of clothing, etc.).
That's a great list you provided Randy - and you were right to underscore that it's very general. For instance, there can be large target female audiences that lean toward the auditory and likewise large target male audiences that lean toward the visual. For this reason, gender can often become very secondary to the emotional triggers and sensory preferences. While this needs to be calibrated for the target audience with testing like you said, it's great info to start with if you have nothing else to go on.
Examples of phrases targeted toward 3 of the senses:
visual bias - getting some perspective, i see what you mean
auditory bias - talking things over, i hear what you're saying
kinesthetic bias - things have been rough this week, I'm under a lot of pressure
For my day job, the company is made up of largely males while the customers are largely female. It's very difficult to help them understand that they don't know the target audience as well as they think they do (it's not about what appeals to them) and that testing needs to be done-or at least additional perspectives heard. It's ironic that it's so difficult to help them understand this when many of them often talk about how they don't understand their own wives.
Again, this is just bias and preference. Each sense gets stronger like a muscle the more it's used. Similarly, each of us tend to prefer using one hand more than the other - so while not as strong as the other due to less use, this doesn't necessarily mean the other hand is weak.
Edited by bluenote, 22 May 2007 - 12:07 PM.
Posted 22 May 2007 - 06:17 PM
Posted 23 May 2007 - 04:39 AM
As my oft quoted dear old granny used to say ... There is a method to the madness.
I'd honestly like to see what others have found to be successful or not in the whole Gender Marketing sector. Not only would it be interesting, but it would probably help me to build upon what I've been doing with it since I started paying attention a year or so ago.
That said, I saw a report somewhere (can't remember where unforuntately) that the majority of web sites these days are Male Oriented. It's swung back and forth over the years with the late 90's having more sites apparently being designed to appeal to a female audience. To me this is a bit of an oddity and I'm sure not being done on purpose. In fact it's completely backwards in my opinion if you think back about the number of men vs women buying stuff on the web back in the 90's and the same sort of figures today where women supposedly account for more than 50% of all sales on the 'Net.
My guess --from personal experience I noted above-- is that this Male Orientation swing is probably a product of who is responsible for either designing the sites or who is responsible for making the final decision.
Back in the day there were more men code jockies, but a lot of the layout was often done by women who had an artistic flare and a copy of Photoshop. That's the way it was for me for the most part. A (female) graphics designer churned out the design and I made it work in code. Today I think the swing back is probably more a product of men bosses being the final decision maker for coporate sites, so they're naturally going to find male oriented sites more appealing. And where small businesses are concerned a product of men being gamblers, which is sort of a requirement if you're going to try to start a business on the web. These solo shops are basically one guy doing all of the work and producing what he thinks is best.
Anyway, it's a subject with all sorts of fuzzy edges and very few absolutes. Sort of like SEO/SEM. However I do attribute many of the increases I've seen over the last year or so with my own sites to my finally paying attention to Gender Marketing and Conversion Analysis.
Posted 23 May 2007 - 07:22 AM
Can anyone give me an example of a female oriented site versus a male one? I'm not sure if I'm totally following.
Posted 23 May 2007 - 01:02 PM
Seriously, I don't think I've ever run across a single site that encompasses all of the factors correctly for gender orientation. Especially for the Female side of the equation since there are fewer to choose from. Though I have consulted on one that gets pretty close.
Many of the Female Oriented site out there (the biggies especially) make pretty good use of images of women or women's products, good use of varied colors, good use of a warmer color palette in both images and text, and are even pretty good where ease of navigation and speaking in an informal language is concerned. But by the same token most of these biggies don't do a very good job of creating a free flowing design or one that has rounded corners instead of straight lines and blocks, which can be important factors.
For those biggies think the likes of:
Jessica McClintock - jessicamcclintock.com
Ann Taylor - anntaylor.com
Liz Claiborne - lizclaiborne.com
Nordstroms - nordstrom.com
Jones Apparel - jny.com
and similar big retailers who have the bucks and know how to focus on women customers.
Try to ignore the pictures, though they're certainly an important element. Notice the use of different colors and lots of pastels? And how even when they're in a straight line/block design they're softening the harsh edges? Also notice the use of different color text in set off sections of some of the pages? And the colors of the dominant text itself in some cases?
Contrast the above with most of the sites you see, or if you want a comparable list of Male Oriented designs:
Exxon/Mobil - exxonmobil.com
Ford Motor Company - ford.com
Citi - citigroup.com
IBM - ibm.com
General Motors - gm.com
Notice the significantly greater use of straight lines and blocks? Notice the starker lines in the overall designs? Notice the absence of softer colors?
Which designs would attract you more easily?
So what are more of the elements? I can almost hear ya asking...
Gloria Moss and others at the University of Glamorgan published one of the first studies about Gender difference when it comes to web sites a couple of years ago. e-consultancy interviewed her back then, a copy of which you can read on the Glamorgan blog here. It doesn't give a huge amount of minute details, but is an easy read and will give you some things to think about. If you want to read the much drier research papers to get into the details of the research Moss and others at Glam have conducted, there's also a linked list here. Though it's a terribly dry read, the Angling (as in Fishing) vs. Beauty paper is quite funny if you have a slightly wonky sense of humo(u)r. And points out the problem of having a web site that isn't constructed to speak to its users' gender.
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Judge Smales: "You'll get nothing and like it!"
Banks Lose to Deadbeat Homeowners as Loans Sold in Bonds Vanish
Some highlights:
Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Joe Lents hasn't made a payment on his $1.5 million mortgage since 2002.
That's when Washington Mutual Inc. first tried to foreclose on his home in Boca Raton, Florida. The Seattle-based lender failed to prove that it owned Lents's mortgage note and dropped attempts to take his house. Subsequent efforts to foreclose have stalled because no one has produced the paperwork.
...Judges in at least five states have stopped foreclosure proceedings because the banks that pool mortgages into securities and the companies that collect monthly payments haven't been able to prove they own the mortgages.
...Each time the mortgages change hands, the sellers are required to sign over the mortgage notes to the buyers. In the rush to originate more loans during the U.S. mortgage boom, from 2003 to 2006, that assignment of ownership wasn't always properly completed, said Alan White, assistant professor at Valparaiso University School of Law in Valparaiso, Indiana.
"Loans were mass produced and short cuts were taken,'' White said. "A lot of the paperwork is done in the name of the original lender and a lot of the original lenders aren't around anymore.''
...When the mortgage servicers and securitizing banks that act as trustees of the securities fail to present proof that they own a mortgage, they sometimes file what's called a lost-note affidavit, said April Charney, a lawyer at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid in Florida.
Nobody knows how widespread the use of lost-note affidavits are, Charney said. She's had foreclosure proceedings for 300 clients dismissed or postponed in the past year, with about 80 percent of them involving lost-note affidavits, she said.
"They raise the issue of whether the trusts own the loans at all,'' Charney said. "Lost-note affidavits are pattern and practice in the industry. They are not exceptions. They are the rule.''
"Lost-note Affidavits". Add that to "Bandos" as a nominee for best new bubble buzzword of the year.


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Well, it's over. And I have to admit, it was better than I expected.
I'm talking about my wife's 40th high-school reunion in Independence, Ky., a suburb of Cincinnati.
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December 2013—What succeeds at home may not work overseas. The chairman of Aditya Birla Group, Kumar Mangalam Birla, says Indian companies must be prepared to change long-held traditions if they are to thrive on the global stage.more
The academic and author explains how creative companies and the venture capital that drives them are increasingly flowing to cities, and what that means for economic and societal development.
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Final Sale
Shirred-Sleeve Jacket
Item# 2515704
Sorry, this item is no longer available!
- Crossdyed stretch weave has a soft heathered look
- Single-button front with besom pockets
- Short sleeves with feminine ruched detail
- Front-and-back princess seams for shaping, back vent
- Fully lined
- 21" Length
- Polyester, Rayon, and Spandex Blend
- Dry clean.
- Imported
Beautiful concept but poor fit
I ordered a small size of this jacket along with the pants (size 2). The shoulders' width indicated it was the right size, but the sleeves were extremely wide and so I looked like a little girl trying my mom's clothes. In conclusion, I believe this jacket's sizing has major defects. I would expect a perfect fit for the price it's selling for! Soo disappointing.
September 8, 2012
Great style and fabric
I originally thought I was going to purchase a different suit jacket but grabbed this one on the way to the fitting room. I am so glad I did! This jacket will be great for Spring, Summer & Fall. The fun detail at the bottom of the sleeves makes it different than a standard suit jacket. I usually buy medium in Limited suit jackets but I bought this in a small. Great purchase!
August 31, 2012
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P-Zero Nero. Pirelli's P Zero Nero is a ultra high performance all season tire that is perfect for the harsh weather conditions North American has to throw at it. The All Season P Zero Nero provides a winning combination of quiet ride, precise cornering and superior grip in wet and dry driving conditions.
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CLINTON - A pedestrian was struck and killed by a vehicle early Thursday morning, Highway Patrol officials said Friday.
Neither the pedestrian nor the driver have been identified.
The victim had been walking along the southbound lane of Garland Highway near Ebenezer Forest Road in Clinton and was hit about 12:30 a.m., troopers said.
The accident remains under investigation, they said.
- Caitlin Dineen
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Mint Chocolate Chip Whoopie Pies
Last week I stopped by the library to pick up a book I'd requested that had recently come in (this one, if you're curious). I was running a ton of errands that day so the plan was a quick hit and run to grab the book - no stopping to browse the shelves for other cookbooks. It should have been easy enough, the circulation desk is right at the entrance while the cookbooks are up on the second floor; I wouldn't even have to walk past them! You all know where this is going. I wound up spending 15 minutes combing the shelves and then another few trying to convince myself I really didn't need to bring home five more cookbooks no matter how awesome they all looked.
One of my best finds that day? Another whoopie pie book, one I hadn't previously seen anywhere! I'm only a little bit obsessed with whoopie pies, and since it's been over 2 months since my last batch, I was itching to try another.
As flavor combinations go, chocolate and mint is right up there for me with peanut butter and chocolate, so I was instantly drawn to the chocolate mint cookies I found while flipping through the book. The cookie recipe resembled a basic chocolate whoopie pie in a lot of ways but it also included peppermint extract for flavoring. It was just enough to add mint flavor without becoming completely overwhelming. I loved the way the cookies emerged from the oven too - tall and fluffy, which I always think make the prettiest whoopie pies :)
The book suggested sandwiching a frozen mint chip cream (made simply by combining whipped heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, peppermint oil and grated chocolate) between the cookies. Obviously what you see in my whoopie pies is not the mixture I just described. I did make it, and let me tell you, it was beyond delicious, but for some reason mine just never froze enough to hold its shape when sandwiched between the whoopie pies. Rest assured it didn't go to waste - I ate it like ice cream with a spoon :) My fall back plan was a light, fluffy mint buttercream to which I added just a tiny bit of green gel food coloring. It's a buttercream I've made before and I like that it's not super buttery and that it has a really great texture for piping, whether it's on cupcakes or between these cookies. If you want to add a fun finishing touch, you can roll the sides of the filled whoopie pies in mini chocolate chips too! Visually, I think I liked them better without the chips, but they were both delicious so you can't go wrong either way.
Mint Chocolate Chip Whoopie Pies
cookies from The Whoopie Pie Book, filling from Whoopie Pies
Chocolate Mint Cookies
1 1/4 cups (175 g) all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (100 g) unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
9 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup (200 g) sugar
1 large egg
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon peppermint extract
Mint Buttercream Filling
2 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 tablespoons heavy cream
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
green gel food coloring (optional)
To make the cookies: In a medium bowl, sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt together (I rarely sift, but I think it's worth it when it comes to cocoa powder, which can be quite lumpy). In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes. Add the egg and beat until combined. Mix in the buttermilk and peppermint extract (my batter looked curdled at this point, it'll come together in the next step). With the mixer on low, gradually add the dry ingredients, beating just until combined. Transfer the mixer bowl to your refrigerator and chill the dough for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Using a small cookie scoop (mine measures about 1 1/2 inches across - you'll need to adjust the baking time accordingly if yours is larger), portion the batter onto one of the prepared baking sheets, spacing the cookies about 2 inches apart. (If there are any rough edges or batter sticking up, I like to use a wet fingertip to smooth it down. It makes the cookies look neater once baked, but it's not necessary.) Bake (one sheet at a time) for about 10 minutes, or until the cookies spring back when gently pressed. Transfer the baking sheet to a wire rack and let the cookies cool for a few minutes then remove the cookies to the wire rack to cool completely. Repeat with all of the dough, alternating baking sheets.
To make the filling: In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the confectioners' sugar and butter (first on low and then increasing the speed to medium) until evenly distributed and crumbly, about 1-2 minutes. Add the cream, extracts, and salt and beat on high speed until light, fluffy and smooth, about 3 minutes. If you want green buttercream, beat in a little bit of food coloring at a time until you achieve your desired color.
Match the cookies in pairs by size. Transfer the filling to a piping bag and pipe a small amount onto the flat side of one cookie of each pair. Sandwich the cookies together, and press the filling to the edges.
Makes about 24 whoopie pies
21 comments:
- Maria said...
Chocolate and mint together-swoon!
- May 23, 2012 at 9:21 AM
- Katrina @ Warm Vanilla Sugar said...
These look so fabulous!! I seriously need to up my whoopie pie baking.
- May 23, 2012 at 10:22 AM
- Ashley @ Wishes and Dishes said...
Ohh I love the addiction of the mint buttercream with the chocolate. I'm in! :)
- May 23, 2012 at 11:01 AM
- Cassie/Bake Your Day said...
Why have I never thought of checking out cookbooks from the library? Great idea...although, I would spend way too much time with my nose in cookbooks if I did that. These sound awesome, Tracey. I love mint + chocolate!
- May 23, 2012 at 11:29 AM
- Rachel @ Baked by Rachel said...
One of my many favorite flavor combinations - yum!
- May 23, 2012 at 11:37 AM
- Kathleen said...
These look perfect!
- May 23, 2012 at 12:15 PM
- Catalina @ Cake with Love said...
Mint & Chocolate chip is my all time favorite flavor, I always order it at Cold Stone!! Love these whoopi pies, they are so cute!!
- May 23, 2012 at 12:50 PM
- Averie @ Averie Cooks said...
These are the most perfect looking whoopie pies Ive ever seen! The shape, sizes matching, not a crumb out of place, the icing is perfect...seriously you have the steadiest hands ever! Gorgeous!
- May 23, 2012 at 12:52 PM
- Becca said...
Oh boy, these look amazing! The chocolate cookie part looks like a brownie. So it's like you're getting three desserts in one! I really need to try and make whoopie pies one day.
- May 23, 2012 at 1:28 PM
- Elizabeth King said...
Oh looks good and two of my favorite things! ^_~
- May 23, 2012 at 4:01 PM
- Cathy @ Savory Notes said...
I may have just bookmarked all of your previous whoopie pie posts... they ALL look so good!
- May 23, 2012 at 4:36 PM
- Angelyn said...
Mint chocolate chip is the best - these look so good!!
- May 23, 2012 at 5:13 PM
- Suzi said...
Woo hoo this is cool. A whoopie pie, love it. Happy to meet another library cookbook stalker.
- May 23, 2012 at 7:16 PM
- Julie @ Table for Two said...
mint chocolate chip is one of my fav flavors and it is so creative that you combined them in a whoopie pie! jason would not be a fan (who doesn't like mint?! grr) but I definitely would make these for myself and coworkers :)
- May 23, 2012 at 8:16 PM
- Nessie said...
Oh my goodness, I think these are the most perfect looking whoopee pies I've ever seen! LOVE the flavour combo too! Am inspired to try making whoopee pies for the first time!
- May 24, 2012 at 2:56 AM
- Rachel Cooks said...
Heaven! I'll take 20!
- May 24, 2012 at 8:46 AM
- Erin @ Dinners, Dishes and Desserts said...
Perfect! The flavors are always a hit together, and these look incredible!
- May 24, 2012 at 11:27 AM
- Jen @ My Kitchen Addiction said...
Oh my... Mint chocolate chip ice cream was always my favorite as a kid. I know I'll LOVE these. Perfect for Memorial Day :)
- May 24, 2012 at 4:34 PM
- amanda @ fake ginger said...
These are gorgeous Tracey! I went to the library the other day just to do a quick return of my kids' books and ended up browsing the cookbooks. Whoops! I swear they called my na.e
- May 26, 2012 at 12:04 PM
- Gloria said...
Kind of like you and the jalapeno poppers, I really WANT to like Whoopie Pies. Especially when I see ones like this. Chocolate and mint is pretty irresitable. I haven't given up on the whoopie pie yet...
- June 5, 2012 at 11:48 PM
these were wonderful!i mde them for my grandmas visit and everyone loved them
- September 22, 2013 at 11:47 PM


text:
CHINA SYNDROME: China is building nearly half of all the new nuclear reactors in the world, including this AP1000 at Sanmen nuclear power plant.
Image: Courtesy of Westinghouse
Across the East China Sea, west of Japan and its ongoing crisis, sits the growing Qinshan nuclear power plant, where four new pressurized-water reactors are under construction in addition to the five already operating on-site. The Qinshan addition is one of 20 new nuclear power plants undergoing construction or approved for construction in China today, part of a bid to increase the nuclear share of China's electricity-generating capacity from less than 2 percent to 5 percent. That means China is building nearly half of all the nuclear reactors under construction worldwide, according to the World Nuclear Association.
"Now in China we have 13 nuclear power reactors in operation," said Zhang Guobao, former vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission—the government agency charged with setting energy and industrial policy—via a translator during a visit to NDRC headquarters in Beijing this past November. "In comparison with countries like the U.S.A. and France, this number is very small, [but] we are first in the world in the construction of new nuclear reactors."
China's newly released five-year plan requires that China source 11.4 percent of its energy needs from other than fossil-fuel—at least 43 gigawatts of that to come from nuclear alone—up from slightly more than 8 percent now. Further, Chinese officials have announced plans to explicitly cap China's total energy use at four billion metric tons of coal-equivalent by 2015; they also have drafted a "New Energy Industry Development Plan" that would invest amore than $750 billion in "new energy," which includes nuclear, in the next decade.
But the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent 14-meter-high tsunami on March 11 has given cause for concern. A State Council meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao has put a halt to new nuclear construction and approval. "We will temporarily suspend approval for nuclear power projects," the State Council said in a statement following a meeting on March 16. "Safety is our top priority in developing nuclear power plants."
That will be temporary. "China's energy mix is dominated by coal," explained Guobao, who retired this year. "In the near future it is our priority to increase the proportion of nuclear and renewable energy in our energy mix."
China's currently operating reactors deliver nearly 11 gigawatts of electricity—or more than half the amount delivered by the nation's notorious Three Gorges Dam alone. And China is building 25 more reactors. "By 2020, installed [nuclear] capacity could reach over 70 gigawatts," Guobao said, although the current five-year plan for nuclear is to boost it from 10 to 50 gigawatts by 2015.
But that would still be only a fraction of the electricity produced by burning coal. "For the foreseeable future, coal will continue to take up a big part of our energy mix," Guobao said.
Nuclear with Chinese characteristics
China's new nuclear future is a mix of its own and foreign reactor designs. China has or is building heavy-water reactors from Canada, "evolutionary" pressurized-water reactors from France, pebble-bed reactors tested in South Africa, and even is working on reactors that would use molten salt for cooling and thorium for fuel. China has become the nuclear industry's living laboratory for new reactor designs and the learning that comes from actual construction.