Boko Haram means Education is Forbidden

From the Wall St. Journal.
" Abuja Nigeria- An Islamic fundamentalist group expanded its attacks into three states of northern Nigeria on Monday, a day after at least 50 people died during fighting between the group and security forces, according to aid workers and police.
On Monday fundamentalist group Boko Haram, which means "education is prohibited," launched attacks in three states where at least 100 bodies were counted be a reporter in Maidugurin, the capital of the Borno State, the BBC reported. "

Leave it to the "religion of peace" to create a terror gang named "education is forbidden."

We all have gold plated health plans

I worked at a lot of places and had a lot of health plans over the years. Each one paid for everything, accidents, cancer, operations, obstetrics, drug addiction, chiropractice, mental illness, prescription drugs, you name it. That's the ordinary company health plan.
Is that gold plated? What more could a health plan offer?
I think the current talk about taxing gold plated health plans actually means taxing all company plans. Which means taxing most people's health plans, since most people get their health insurance thru their company.
The real reason companies offer nice health plans is the tax break. The plan is tax free to the employee, and so a dollar of health care is worth $1.50, more than a dollar of ordinary taxable salary to employees. Eliminate that tax break and companies will decide it's easier to just pay salary rather than messing around with health care. Given five or ten years and most of us are out of company paid health care and doing God knows what.
You cannot finance health care by taxing health care. It's like hoisting yourself by your bootstraps. Obama needs to learn this.

Yet another thing Obama didn't talk about

He said nothing about allowing nationwide sale of health insurance. Right now, only insurance companies licensed by the state can sell insurance in that state. Few insurance companies have the time, money, and lawyers to get licensed in all 50 states. So us patients are limited in our choice of insurance company to the few that operate in the state we live in.
We could pass a federal law allowing any insurance company licensed by one state to sell insurance in every state. This would increase competition between insurance companies, and lower premiums. And not raise our taxes at all.

Words of the Weasel Part 10

"Is the recession over?" asked a newsie.
"Probably in a partial limited sense" said Paul Krugman on the ABC Sunday pundit show. Paul Krugman is supposed to be an economist although he is actually an editor of the New York Times. Classic evasion reply, saying both yes and no at the same time.

Going back to Firefox 3.0.12

The firefox web site doesn't show any of the 3.0.yadda-yadda versions. I just downloaded 3.0.12 from here. Works good, much better than 3.5.1. The 3.5.xx versions do have a faster render engine, it can paint the screen faster. But it has some kinda bug about opening new websites which cripples it so badly that the 3.0.xx version gives a better browsing experience.

FireFox 3.5 and the firewall, again

Firefox 3.5 is still having great difficult finding websites. Click to go to a site and often as not you get a "cannot connect to server" error message. I turned the firewall clean off, ran barefoot, and the problem is still there. I'm going back to 3.0.10

Fed unveils borrower protection rules.

After two years of mortgage catastrophes that brought on Great Depression II, the Fed is proposing a few little tweaks to mortgage policy. Just hand the borrowers a slip of paper with a few numbers on it before they sign the mortgage. The paper, if read, would warn about negative amortization (payments aren't big enough to reduce the outstanding balance)and balloon notes, (incredible amounts of money still owned the bank when the mortgage runs out). The lender is supposed to "provide clearer information" on how much the bank might jack up monthly payments on Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs).
And they want to restrict kickbacks to mortgage brokers for steering marks into higher rate mortgages.
Oh yes, they want to revise how the interest rate is computed.
This weak tea is supposed to protect us from Great Depression III, coming to an economy near you.

How about standardizing the way interest is computed? My little local bank has a sign in their lobby listing two different interest rates for every kind of loan they would make. I asked about that once, and received a complicated explanation as to what the difference was. How can I shop for the lowest rate when each lender figures the rate a different way? Having a standard way of computing interest isn't a restriction on the right to make money.
Then there is the title insurance scam. The bank or someone gets a free few thousand dollars to guarantee that no shyster lawyer will turn up and claim ownership of the property because of an uncrossed T or undotted I in the title. That ought to be outlawed.
They ought to outlaw "points", another few thousand dollars claimed by the bank at closing for no particular reason. Banks charge "points" because they can.
They ought to outlaw mortgage brokerage completely. Everyone knows that you get mortgages from banks. Home buyers can go to the bank without paying a mortgage broker a fat fee for getting them in the bank door.
They ought to outlaw the termite inspection scam, the radon inspection and mitigation scam, the smoke alarm scam, the urethane insulation scam, and the lead paint scam. The house is sold as is. Should the new owner desire these various improvements, he is free to pay for them. The state should not force the seller to make these expensive and unnecessary improvements that the seller doesn't care about.