] In 2001, 1.458 million American families filed for
] bankruptcy. To investigate medical contributors to
] bankruptcy, we surveyed 1,771 personal bankruptcy filers
] in five federal courts and subsequently completed
] in-depth interviews with 931 of them. About half cited
] medical causes, which indicates that 1.9-2.2 million
] Americans (filers plus dependents) experienced medical
] bankruptcy. Among those whose illnesses led to
] bankruptcy, out-of-pocket costs averaged $11,854 since
] the start of illness; 75.7 percent had insurance at the
] onset of illness. Medical debtors were 42 percent more
] likely than other debtors to experience lapses in
] coverage. Even middle-class insured families often fall
] prey to financial catastrophe when sick.

There IS something more perverse then this bankruptcy bill. Its the conservatives who are celebrating its passing. These people are getting screwed, and they are happy about it. They are cheering it. They have been completely manipulated.

The idea that this bill is intended to prevent irresponsible people from using bankruptcy to avoid the consequences of their actions is simply not supported by the facts. If that were the case, there would be no reason that exceptions could not be made for people who face catastrophic medical expenses, and people who have dependent children and had recently been divorced. Neither of these circumstances is predicatable, and therefore neither can be considered irresponsible behavior. This can happen to any middle class family. Furthermore, an exception for medical bills exists for veterans. If it can exist for veterans, then it can exist for anyone.

Why not? All you have to do is ask why not have an exception for medical catastrophies. Keep asking until you get an answer that seems satisfactory. You will be enlightened.

Conservative readers will refuse to beleive what I'm suggesting the answer is. They will seek out any other explanation even if it is not entirely sound. They are fooling themselves. I encourage them to keep asking that question.

That answer is that were such exceptions applied to this law, the result would be unpalitable to its supporters, as likely 60-70 percent of the cases would be eliminated before the means test was even applied. Pile on other concerns such as theft, natural disasters, etc... The result would not have the economic impact that the advocates of this law seek.

People who tell you that bankruptcies raise interest rates surely have a poor understanding of economics. Interest rates are set by economic externialities, price competition, and demand. They are lower today then they have ever been.

Costs in the lending industry don't impact prices. They impact dividend yeilds for owners.

Its quite simple. This law will cause an increase in dividend yeilds measured in small fractions of cents for companies that provide financial services, and the cost is to ruin people who have been the victims of severe unpredicatable catastrophies.

In other words, they are fucking you up the ass, and you are smiling about it all the way.

MarketWatch: Illness And Injury As Contributors To Bankruptcy -- Himmelstein et al., 10.1377/hlthaff.w5.63 -- Health Affairs

] There are powerful people for whom the spectacle of an
] unrepentant murderer for the unborn, a clean-cut movie
] star handsome Christian terrorist, posed political
] problems. Better to defend life in the abstract, keep the
] focus on the enemy at the gates and keep skeletons like
] Eric Rudolph locked up in the closet.

I'm opposed to the death penalty. I'm also opposed to hypocryticial government. I think it is abundantly obvious that if Eric Rudolph was an Islamic terrorist they would be seeking the death penatly in his case.

Eric Rudolph - 'An American terrorist' | csmonitor.com

] In a letter to Congress two months ago, 104 bankruptcy
] law professors predicted that "the deepest hardship"
] would "be felt in the heartland," where the filing rates
] are highest -Utah, Tennessee, Georgia, Nevada, Indiana,
] Alabama, Arkansas, Ohio, Mississippi and Idaho. A study
] conducted by legal and medical specialists at Harvard
] University of 1,771 personal bankruptcy filers in five
] federal courts found that about half were forced into
] bankruptcy because of heavy medical costs.

The house version eliminates the homestead loophole that was causing even international observers to cry foul. The senate version doesn't do this. I don't fully understand the rules for how those kinds of things get resolved. I've heard that minor differences don't require the involvement of conference committee, but how is the final law determined?

The New York Times - House Passes Bankruptcy Bill; Overhaul Now Awaits President's Signature

] President Bush said Thursday that he had been surprised
] to learn in the newspaper of his administration's
] decision last week to require Americans to have passports
] to enter the country from Mexico or Canada by 2008. He
] said he had asked the State and Homeland Security
] Departments to look into other means of tightening border
] security.

Thank you Mr. Bush!

Er... Wait... Fingerprints? I agree that we should not implement a policy that slows the flow of cross border traffic. I don't agree that the solution is to biometric everyone.

There are deep questions here that require some pause for reflection.

You want to have an efficient border. You want to control access. Biometrics, properly implemented, are well suited to this application, whereas they are not well suited to many applications people attempt to apply them to. But this is simply the technical argument.

The real question is whether we want to collect biometrics from everyone. Do you want your government files to be nonreputible? In many people's cases it doesn't matter, because you've already given up your fingerprint for immigration or drivers licenses or because you were booked on a charge. The frogs are already fairly warm.

Its really hard to go through life without getting fingerprinted by the government.

I think that driver's license biometrics are unconstitutional. I have never, ever seen driver's license biometrics actually used to authenticate a holder of a driver's license. Its simply a way of collecting biometrics that police can use in investigations. You could almost argue that its a "pre-search." Its clearly a 4th amendment violation to fingerprint everyone in a town in the wake of a crime to find the criminal, but if we do it in the context of driver's licenses then its not a "search" and so its OK(?!)

This is an example of creeping technological efficiency on the part of the government. The threat is that technological efficiency serves the government regardless of whether it's intentions are good. One reflexively fears this, thinking of the IBM punch card systems used to tabulate Jews in Germany.

But what is the alternative? If you want to control border access then it makes sense to apply these technologies. The alternative is to not control border access. But people reflexively see border control as a smart anti-terrorism strategy.

Is it? Objectively, has anyone really asked and answered whether this is the right way to deal with terrorism? Or is it simply a system that is more effective for other purposes that gets sold as an anti-terror tool? What are those other purposes?

These are the questions which are typically overlooked in these kinds of discussions. I imagine they are being overlooked here. The problem is that I don't know who knows enough about this problem to really know who is able to address these questions critically. Terrorists were stopp... [ Read More (0.5k in body) ]

The New York Times - A Surprised Bush Says He Wants New Travel Rules Reconsidered

The Long Tail is the new Smart Mob.

] Jeremy Stribling said that he and two fellow MIT graduate
] students questioned the standards of some academic
] conferences, so they wrote a computer program to generate
] research papers complete with nonsensical text, charts
] and diagrams.

Scientific conference falls for gibberish prank. 15/04/2005. ABC News Online

] First, there is a genuinely substantive policy discussion
] going on within WIPO about its obligations to be more
] than an IP-factory and instead explore its capacity as a
] positive force for the social and economic development of
] its member states.

This is much needed. I was bitching about WIPO a couple days ago. Cheers to the people who've been working on this.

EFF: WIPO reform

] After the panel, I discussed this issue with Kenn Cukier
] of The Economist, who has followed the development of
] this technology for a while and has a good perspective on
] how we reached the current state. It seems that the
] decision to use contactless technology was made without
] fully understanding its consequences, relying on
] technical assurances from people who had products to
] sell. Now that the problems with that decision have
] become obvious, it's late in the process and would be
] expensive and embarrassing to back out. In short, this
] looks like another flawed technology procurement program.

Freedom to Tinker: Why Use Remotely-Readable Passports?

] When your results are ready Project Director Dr. Spencer
] Wells will introduce you to your earliest human
] relatives the members of your specific haplogroup.
] You'll receive a personalized genetic analysis, including
] an online overview of your deep ancestral history. The
] analysis reveals where and when your haplogroup
] originated and how they lived. You'll also receive a
] dynamic map, specific to your lineage, on which to trace
] your relatives' journeys across the planet.

At first glace this seems neat. For $100 you can send a DNA sample to National Geographic. They'll sequence part of it and line it up with a particular subgroup of African ancestors, and provide information about how those ancestors travelled across the planet.

However, upon consideration I'm wondering if DNA analysis is really nessecary. If you were of African descent it might be interesting, but how many haplogroups migrated to Europe? A handful. Most English/Irish/French/Spanish come from one haplogroup. Some english people come from one of the others. If you are of eastern european descent or if you might be native american things get more interesting it appears.

Also, aren't there still debates raging about how native americans got here? You'd think if they could perform this sort of genetic match accurately they could resolve whether native americans are asian, european, or a combination of the two... The website seems to show no relationship between native americans and european haplogroups, but it was my understanding that there is some confusion about this. Its possible that abberant data is written off (possibly incorrectly) as post colonial genetic mixing...

Your Genetic Journey - The Genographic Project

] he Long Tail is about the shift from hits to niches.
] Several readers have asked what this means for the future
] of mass (hit-driven, mainstream) culture in America.
] The short answer is that it will not only get less mass,
] but that this is a trend that's already well underway.

This long tail blog is very good. Worth following possibly.

The Long Tail Blog