Things to Know - 26 March

1.  So, let's get back into this world of newsy stuff that disturbs the mind and spoils your CHI (something learned while away).  The Robert's Court certainly creates swirls of angst:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/opinion/when-other-voices-are-drowned-out.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120326&pagewanted=print

2.  In a double-whammy that floods the political funding, the owners who have their own pile of dough to give millions now have the ability to have their corporations give directly to political pots.   What is it going to be like when the MIC (military-industrial complex) piles up money to hawkish conservatives?   There should be a law...wait, there is one,....or what happened to it?:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/opinion/the-wall-between-contractors-and-politics.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120326&pagewanted=print

3.  The Parking Lot.   To all of you who wonder what Urban Planners and the Santa Monica News Bureau worry about, read this.  The automobile is not just a machine that gobbles up fossil fuel and leaves us with collateral damage, it also gobbles up our useful acreage in the worst ways.  Creative solutions to both situations require forward leaning thinking:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/opinion/when-a-parking-lot-is-so-much-more.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120326&pagewanted=print

4.  Steve Lopez has this column that really gets my old blood boiling.   The smoke-and mirror deceptive, and obscured costs of medical care are rip-offs and a shame to our medical care system.  Going to get tests at labs (blood, MRI, x-rays, etc) is a testament to the corrupt practice of hiding costs and piling on fictitious phrases that just steal from Medicare and leave consumers close to bankruptcy.   It does not seem that there is any effort by the medical community to police itself, and if there is, where is it?  Emergency and Urgent Care centers are particularly adept at figuring out how to take advantage of ripping off the system.  We just got back from a visit of several islands in the Caribbean....all of which have a public health care system that provide the basic needs in a well-regulated environment.  So why do we have tea-bagged crazed zealots running around, planning to demonstrate against a federal health care program?   Go figure:
http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-lopez-medicalcosts-20120325,0,3717408,print.column

5.  To all of those Ron Paul applauders, you got your wish; let them die:
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/woman-demanding-care-at-st-mary-s-hospital-is-arrested/article_ed640f3d-64a0-516c-88ff-fb770b5e9677.html

That's all for now.  
--
Juan

"Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor."
       -- James Baldwin

"The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals."
       -- Sir William Osler

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."
       -- Sir Francis Bacon

"He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."
       -- Douglas Adams

"I can't complain, but sometimes I still do."
       -- Joe Walsh