Johnny Coli

For the penalty portion: I think you would have to look at the main body of the bill. Last night, the people who looked over the Bill all said that the penalties would be huge in the long run for people who didn't pay for a plan. You automatically lose your exemption, which can get substantial in this state, in adition to the other penalties which could end up being sveral thousands of dollars on top of that. We'll have to see on that one. For the employer part: The employers wouldn't track it, the hospitals would. It says that if an uninsured employee seeks care 3 times in a 12 month period, or there are 5 instances of your employees seekeing care, than you pay a surcharge. There is no surcharge if you offer a healthcare plan for your employees, and I imagine that if you do, and they don't buy into it, the employer is exempt and the employee eventually pays. It is my understanding that the benchmarks are yet to be determined. I believe this is more of a requirement for providers in order to get the Medicare subsidy. Health legislation puts emphasis on pay for performance

UPDATE: I found a committee summary of the report. Link UPDATE II: Here's the Globe article on the lobbying and the interest groups behind it. Lobbyists took in $7.5m on health bill UPDATE III: The Globe has a quick and dirty summary: The Legislation So, I misstated in a previous post. The sliding scale coverage goes to people up to 300% of the Federal Poverty Level (~$48,000, which in Mass is pretty low). People making below ~$10,000/year get covered for free, but if you're making that kind of dough you got other problems in this state than just your health.

I haven't read it yet, either, but will try to find a direct link. It was all over the news yesterday, of course, so here's what I heard. The amount of coverage you can afford is based on your gross income...so it will be determined when you file your taxes. They will supposedly have a database showing who has coverage, who doesn't, and what coverage they have. There will be a sliding scale of affordable coverage...basically, if you're poor, you have to pay for something, but it doesn't mean you get screwed out of decent coverage just because you have the more cost-effective plan. Right now you have people of all income ranges refusing to get health insurance saying they can't afford it, yet still show up at the emergency rooms looking for free care. Those people will have to pay. The first year they are required to pay for at least half of the lowest-cost plan. But, the amount they pay will increase every year that they refuse to buy a plan. In the long run they won't be screwing the system, they'll just incur larger and larger penalties. The only people who are exempt from paying are people whose income is 300% below the poverty level. This I'm not sure about. I believe the subsidies are supposed to force health insurance companies to come up with affordable, low-cost plans that still have an acceptable number of healthcare benefits. That's all I know. There is a Boston Globe article detailing the amount of lobbying money that got tossed around while this was being hammered out, so make your own judgements about that until more info comes out. See the answer to this question above. It may be cheaper to screw the system earlier on, but you incur larger financial penalties the longer you do. Not sure on that either. There will be a substantial pool of money from companies with 10 or fewer employees that refuse to provide some health insurance plan for their workers. That is set at $295/employee/year. That pool is supposed to cover some of the cost for care for the uninsured, or the less-insured. I believe children are still covered through Medicare. While not a perfect plan, it seems like a good start. As in many states, there are plenty of individuals who can afford insurance that don't get it, and end up going to emergency rooms for free care. This plan makes everyone pay at least something.

The article states that he's an oceangrapher studying paleolimnology. I doubt the primary purpose of his reasearch is to disprove biblical miracles. I'll look up what else he's published later if I have time. It's probably just the musings of a scientific mind.

If the guy's research is garbage, then he will be summarily judged by the scientific community as a quack. And if he is judged to be a quack, then religion shouldn't feel compelled to issue hate mail. Or you could just execute him for being a heretic, like they did in the good old days.

How very christian of them. History is loaded with a hell of a lot more persecution of scientists at the hands of the Church (any church, for that matter) than the Church has suffered at the hands of scientists. I don't see how a scientific interpretation of a biblical event could shake or threaten someone's faith enough to inspire hate mail, or in the past, execution.

Looks like The Hammer gets to use all of his campaign fund money for his legal defense. That's one nice perk for bailing on his re-election campaign. Think that factored into his decision to fall on his sword? Federal Probe Has Edged Closer to Texan Pretty sweet deal for the man from Sugarland, TX. Bail out of a race you had a good chance of losing, and use the re-election campaign bankroll to add to your legal defense. Unbelievable. This little nugget of info justs add to the comedy. What a shocker. His legal defense was/is financed by corporations that had something to gain for having him in Congress. Notice how the contributions drop off as the indictments pile up and The Hammer isn't a good horse to bet on any more. Poor Tom. Just another GOP victim of the Left-Wing liberal media machine.

You can't be serious. Do you think for one second Moran's issues would be anything more than a blip on the national news? You seriously think Moran even comes close to the House Majority leader stepping down because he's under indictment (the first time in the last 100 years, btw)? You seriously think Moran's questionable loan issues come close to Delay's ties to the Abramoff scandal, perjury, gerrymandering, money laundering, violating election law, accepting bribes, and on and on? Oh, right...,it's got to be the liberal media, the liberal grand jury members, the liberal prosecutors.... Here's the freaking Wikipedia entry on Delay....Tom Delay. I only link to it because it would take me too long to compile all the links that show how corrupt and morally vacant Tom Delay is. If that link isn't long enough for you, here's more specific entries on The Tom DeLay corruption investigation, Delay and the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal, andThe K street project, to name but a few. Your crusade to show that Tom Delay is just a run-of-the-mill corrupt politician doesn't do him "justice." But he'll get his. Why do you really think he dropped out? It couldn't have anything to do with his former staffer Tony Rudy's guilty plea on March 31, could it?

Jim Moran looks like a scum-bag, indeed, Bill, and shame on those constituents who continue to support him. That being said, in your first post it says that a fellow Democrat is calling for the ethics committee investigation into Moran. That in itself is a far cry for how the Reps handled the "Hammer", Tom Delay, who they repeatedly defended, changed rules so that he could remain a comittee chairman even though under indictment, and when he was forced to step down they turned around and gave him a seat on the Justice Department commitee. Jim Moran and McKinney are an embarrassment for our party and I am whole-heartedly behind getting them out of there to clean it up. But to suggest that Jim Moran's activities are even close to the same level of corruption as those of Delay is foolish.

I'm torn, really. He deserves to rot in prison for a long, long time, but I'll miss the abrassiveness and the scandles. MSNBC has a nice rap sheet/time line here. I read through it a couple times while finishing the champagne I opened.

Which is why Mims' use of the following "review" is inflammatory: (emphasis mine)

I never called you a country rube. I was criticizing the jump to characterize him the way you did. If a transcript from the speech surfaces and he turns out to be a nut then I will be the first to denounce him as such because science doesn't need a poster child for the Right to hold up to the light as representative of us all. That being said, saying that the world is overpopulated and a pandemic is coming is not such a radical progostication. Yet there is a huge difference between stating that you believe it is coming, or "advocating" it.

You highlighted the only two questionable evaluations of his class, out of the scores of evaluations that state he's the best professor they've ever had. That link doesn't lend weight to your characterization of Pianka as a human-hating loner. And for the last time, before this thread degenerates, I am in no way condoning what Pianka said because I have no idea what he said. If he's "advocating" (Carlson and Mims' words, not mine) for the extermination of 90% of the human population through an ebola pandemic, then that's just nuts.

And you're basing this characterization on what bit of evidence? The fact that of the hundreds of people that attended his presentation, a single one is claiming he made those statements? I read the article you posted to, but unlike you I decided to look into Pianka's credentials. Pianka's got a long list of research papers, book chapters, awards and has an evolutionary ecology textbook now in it's sixth edition. He's been a noted scientist since the mid-60s, and the Texas Academy of Scientists gave him an awared at the very symposium in question. Having sat through many ecology lectures, they almost all state at some point that the planet as a whole would be better for not having as many humans on it. But, that would in no way excuse him for "advocating" the extermination of 90% of the world's human population via a plague. However, until someone other than a guy who's claim to fame is being the author of an electronics guide for Radio Shack shows us exactly what was said and in what context, it is premature to assume Pianka was pounding his fist saying he believed we should all die.

It didn't, as far as I know. As we've often discussed regarding avian flu, the ebola virus would have to recombine in a host infected with a second virus that can be transmtted via an aerosol route. After some digging, I found this report on the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. It describes what turned out to be a co-infection of Simian hemorrhagic fever (SHF) virus and Ebola in cynomolgus monkeys imported into the US from the Philippines in 1989. This PubMed abstract (Combined simian hemorrhagic fever and Ebola virus infection in cynomolgus monkeys) refers to the follow up (could only get an abstract): (emphasis mine) This web page (Ebola Reston Outbreaks) has a pretty good description of the above-mentioned outbreak, and a few others in the US. As for my take on Dr. Pianka, without an actual transcript of his comments, it's hard to say whether what he said was really as crazy as it was portrayed by Forrest Mims, or if Mims took the comment out of context. I'm not familiar with Pianka's work or reputation, but if he did say that then that is unfortunate and does a disservice to other ecologists and conservation biologists. The scientific community is already under attack from the Right and this administration, and these types of comments (if he actually made them) only add to the problem. But, like I stated, until more information on the talk comes to light it's hard to comment on it directly. It should be noted that Forrest Mims is not without controversy either, as he was fired from Scientific American for espousing Creationism. There were a lot of people at that talk, apparently, and Mims is the only one who reported it in that manner. EDIT: Update... Well, it's hit the blogosphere here and here.

Thanks, fellas! I'm off to Maine for some drinkin' and rock n' roll with the old band. See you all on Monday...if Bush's Drones don't get me first. Have a good weekend, lads.

I don't want to get another thread going about Bush abusing executive power, so I'll tack it onto this thread about Bush blowing off the new Patriot Act oversight requirement. (I actually would like to start another thread, but I've been kind of an a-hole lately and I'm about to leave for Maine for the weekend and I'm in a good mood). If anyone knows what abuse of presidential power is, it's former Nixon White House counsel and ex-con John Dean. He testified today in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee looking into Russ Feingold's censure thingy. From the Boston Globe...(sorry fellas, nothing on Drudge or FOXNews to link to yet...) Ah yes, "Institutional Pride." Wasn't Bush going to restore that at some point to the office of the President? Maybe he'll do that after the mid-term elections. On the other hand, Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) doesn't think we ought to be bothering the president with trivial things like breaking the law during "wartime." Nope. We should be giving him more power! Anyway, Rawstory has the transcript....

The city of Chicago won't enforce any federal laws criminalizing undocumented immigrant workers. City may buck feds on immigration It seems to be a "don't ask, don't tell" kind of policy. Undocumented workers won't be required to reveal their status before receiving city services, and the providers won't ask for their status, or turn them in. Kind of an interesting development. I wonder if similar laws will spring up around the country pre-emptively defying the proposed Sensenbrenner bill?

You'd be surprised.

I'm going to add in another reply to this statement. Hell yeah people should pipe up about civil rights. Every single time something new is introduced we should beat it into the ground until it is airtight with respect to civil rights. You think it's a bad thing. I think it's a damn good thing, and in the end makes it a stronger piece of security, or a law enforcement tactic. As a drug discovery researcher, it's not my job to make a compound look good. It's my job to tear it to pieces, test the hell out of it, and show the chemists why I think their miracle molecule sucks. A good, successful drug will be able to withstand that level of scrutiny. Our laws, how we enforce those laws and our security should be under the same microscope.

Bush hasn't shown us any reason to trust him wrt civil rights. In fact, his multiple signing statements added onto laws with his and Alberto's "interpretations" of which laws they have to follow and which ones they don't suggest he doesn't give a damn. He fought the FISA law. The compromise Congress gave him letting him off the hook for that little indiscretion wasn't even enough, and he added a signing statement to that, saying in not so many words that his interpretation was he didn't have to follow the oversight rules. They're in court right now in Hamden v. Rumsfeld saying that habeas rules don't apply to people they tag as enemy combatants. Everyone would love it if the rules dictating how they performed their jobs were loosened, done away with, or were free to ignore. We'd have a bunch of drugs out there tomorrow. But the rules are there for a reason. Why is it so egregious and such a burden to get a warrant? This isn't "Bush Bad!" This is "Civil Rights Good!"

Yeah, Bill. I'm the one not making any sense.

Huh? Where are you getting that from? I was replying that Paul's Wright Brothers example didn't make sense in the context of this discussion. Hey, man, if you think turning something loose with a 90% false positive rate is a-OK for US border security, then that's ok with me. You guys know a lot more about finances and security than I do. I feel better already knowing that a multi-million dollar piece of equipment that can direct a border patrol to a rabbit nine times, and a illegal alien once out of every ten times is flying around down near the border with no one in it. I'm sure the american people would agree.

Manned one's, Bill. Just going by what the guy from DHS said in the report.

The difference being that no commercial airlines showed up to purchase a flying bicycle until it could be proven that it could get people to where they wanted to fly to better than 9 times out of 10. You guys are twisting the argument. How is demanding a product exceed some level of competency before purchasing it standing in the way of innovation? Why not just implement Reagan's Star Wars missle defense system? That should work great in about 100 years. Why are you standing in the way of innovation?