By Dick Miller WE.CONNEC.DOTS: Barack Obama is taking his eight-year war with his political enemies right to them. For the beginning of the fourth quarter of the battle, he chose immigration. Just like in health care, Obama bets House Speaker John Boehner will crash in flames again. GOP strategy relies on a vocal segment of […]
Month: November 2014
Independent Is Elected Taipei Mayor as Taiwan’s Governing Party Falters
NEW YORK TIMES: …The election results, including a victory by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party in the central city of Taichung, signal that Taiwan’s governing Chinese Nationalist Party, known as the Kuomintang or K.M.T., will be hard-pressed to retain the presidency in the 2016 election. The Kuomintang’s losses also suggest that Taiwan voters may be […]
Is LGH / U of P hospital mergers a scam?
A primary rationale is to increase the hospitals’ bargaining power with the commercial insurers in order to be able to raise their rates. If many of the hospitals in a geographic region are art of a single hospital system, then the insurer must include them in a network and the hospital system can demand high rates.
Seldom has a corruption case hyped like the PA. Turnpike scandal produced such meager results
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE COLUMN: …From the perspective of someone who covered it closely, all I can offer is theories: • This wasn’t Kane’s case. The probe was initiated by former Republican Attorney General Tom Corbett, elected governor in 2010 and defeated for re-election in November. There was bad blood between Kane and former Chief Deputy Attorney […]
Require, fund more police department mergers
SCRANTON TIMES-LEADER EDITORIAL: A new state legislative report makes such a strong case for forming regional police departments that it overwhelms the only real opposition to them.
Penn State alumni-elected trustees ask (again) for Freeh files
In it, the group claims a fiduciary interest in reviewing the document files from the 2012 investigation because of the financial and reputational costs it heaped on the university.
Hagel Departure Reveals Obama’s Uneasy Relationship With Pentagon
There have been similar gripes from other Cabinet officials, but the friction between the White House and the Pentagon has been particularly pronounced during Obama’s six years in office. That dynamic already appears to be affecting the president’s ability to find a replacement for Hagel, who resigned Monday under pressure from Obama.
Russia’s Freest Website Now Lives in Latvia
DAILY BEAST: The team of Russian journalists at Meduza, a newly created Internet news portal, no longer live in fear of the authorities shutting down their project. Finally, nobody is trying to fire their editor-in-chief, Galina Timchenko, for posting a story about Ukraine on their website. The Kremlin is far away—almost 1,000 kilometers away, in […]
The March Toward Marijuana Legalization: 2016 and Beyond
DRUG WAR CHRONICLE: State-level marijuana law reform won big in this month’s elections, with legalization initiatives triumphing convincingly in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, DC.
Cashless Society? It’s Already Coming
NEW YORK TIMES: …When you are out shopping, it’s the wallet, not the credit card, that is the annoyance. It’s bulky. It can be forgotten, or lost. I’ve learned while traipsing about buying stuff with my ApplePay that I can whittle down wallet items that I need to carry to three: ■ A single credit […]
US-backed Syria rebels make new push south of Damascus
FOX NEWS: Syrian rebels backed by the United States are making their biggest gains yet south of the capital Damascus, capturing a string of towns from government forces and aiming to carve out a swath of territory leading to the doorstep of President Bashar Assad’s seat of power… The rebel forces are believed to include […]
Hospitals sock it to the poor who have no health care coverage
The “Charge Master Rate” is akin to the list price. “Typically, only a few people pay list prices, such as Arab sheiks flying in for a service and are asked to pay cash. Tragically, however, they are often collected from the uninsured, who have no leverage to negotiate lower prices.”
Prison phone cost to drop 70% in Pa.
“The reduction in the phone rate will go a long way to keep inmates connected to their families and friends, which is an important part of the re-entry process,” [Department of Corrections Secretary John] Wetzel said…
EU piling pressure on Google to change ways
USA TODAY: … The European parliament on Thursday approved a non-binding resolution that calls for the unbundling of search engines from other services that Internet companies offer, a practice that could in theory lead to the break-up of giant Internet companies like Google…. EU antitrust authorities are currently investigating Google to see whether it is […]