1344: Photos For College Apps

1102: Palin Man – musta been under a tent when we were there

1045: Time to play the blame game again. And again. And again.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Cuyahoga County expects the Medical Mart fund to be at about $80 million by the end of this year. That”s a few million dollars less than expected because sale tax revenue has been down. However, that doesn”t include investment earnings that add to the fund.

The interest rate presently earned on County money is 2.97 percent, slightly down from 3.17 percent, according to investment officer Terry Maltarich of the County Treasurer”s office.

Over two years the interest earnings are expected to be $1.2 million this year, some $2.4 million over the first two years of the tax. The tax was voted by Commissioners Tim Hagan and Jimmy Dimora. Collections began in January, 2008.

County Administrator Jim McCafferty told City Council last week that revenue expected via the extra quarter percent sales tax was lower than expected. He didn”t mention that the County had invested those receipts or any resulting earned income.

Even at $40 million a year the 20-year tax should raise $800 million dollars, a hefty sum, primarily to be paid to MMPI, the Chicago firm hired by Commissioners to build and operate the Med Mart and Convention Center.

However, the sales tax is likely to produce far more than $800 million unless we never have an economic recovery.

The economic recession can be blamed for the lower than expected sales tax revenue. Lower inflation also hurts revenue derived from sales.

Over the 20-year period we are likely to have better economic times and price inflation. Both will result in higher sales tax revenue. That will likely kick the revenue on the quarter percent sale tax increase for the Med Mart above $40 million a year. Indeed, the first year”s collection totaled $42.1 million.

In addition, funds collected during this early period before construction costs kick in are being invested by County Treasurer Jim Rokakis.

So the Medical Mart fund is being enriched at some $1.2 million more than the actual collections this year, a year of slow sales tax collections. Interest rates are lower also.

We can expect higher revenue from the sales tax in coming years and more interest income until major costs of construction kick in.

MMPI has an enticing pot of gold to mine at a time when financing is difficult to obtain. This combination makes it hard to believe MMPI will leave Cleveland.

Something else is going on with MMPI”s recalcitrant attitude about negotiating a purchase of the corner properties where the Med Mart was originally scheduled to be built.

MMPI seems to be holding out for something it never should have – a building location on Mall C property overlooking Lake Erie for its Medical Mart.

MMPI should not be allowed to build on government land, particularly not on land long ago preserved for public buildings ONLY.

From David Frum:

If you like Palin – well go ahead. It”s a free country. But quit saying that “the people” love Sarah Palin.

They don”t. Actually, they quite dislike her. The longer they know her, the more they dislike her. And even more than they dislike her, they do not respect her. That reaction of dislike and disrespect is most concentrated among American women.

Sarah”s constituency is a relatively small cohort of conservative men. I offended a lot of these people last week by suggesting that there was some sexual dynamic (emphasis mine, JH) at work in the enthusiasm for the politician whom Rush Limbaugh used to describe as “Governor Babe.” So let”s put it this way: Whatever impulse it is that so excites Palin supporters, it is not shared by their wives.

Hmmm? Does Palin-Man support Frum’s thesis?

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. — Winston Churchill

Warning: never trust an Internet quote without checking something other than Google. I’m willing to bet that less than 10 percent of these are real or accurate.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

There was once a school of thought in the theater that maintained that scenery should be as detailed as possible, even down to details which could never possibly be apparent to the audience. If there was a desk on stage, for example, there ought to be papers and pencils and such in the drawers, even if those drawers were destined to remain shut throughout the performance. I don”t suppose there are many set designers nowadays who devote much time to filling up unopened desk drawers, but I think the principle is a sound one. I know it works at the typewriter, and at root the reason is as basic a one as you can get. Fiction, let us never forget, cannot work properly without the reader”s voluntary suspension of disbelief. He knows it”s just a story but he elects to discard that knowledge. While he reads it, he chooses to believe in it. But first is it not essential that the writer suspend his own disbelief? p. 214

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

I wrote 1,395 words yesterday morning and my total word count is now 45063.

Previously…

The military dictators of Myanmar — known under the Orwellian moniker of the State Peace and Development Council — believe that the best way to control their political opponents is to adhere to the adage: Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer, and how much closer can you keep an enemy than locked away in a prison?

From PalaungNLD:

Kan Myint, who spent four years in prison in the early 1990″s, was an active member of the commodity protester group, Myanmar Development Committee, whose protests against the sudden hike in fuel prices in September 2007 triggered the uprising.

He was arrested on 8 December 2008 and later handed a 10-year sentence on charges of causing a public riot, and breaching the Immigration Act and Video Act. The leader of the group, Htin Kyaw, is currently serving 12 years and six months in prison.

A source close to Kan Myint”s family said that he was sentenced on 13 November to eight more years in prison on separate under the Unlawful Association Act (17-1) for having link with an unlawful association, and Act (17-2) for involvement with an unlawful association.

This use of the quasi-legal fiction is not unique in Myanmar.

The case mirrors that of another activist, Generation Wave member Nyein Chan, who last month had an eight-year sentence extended by 10 years. He had been caught distributing leaflets to mark the one-year anniversary of the founding of the youth activist group.

Meanwhile, three members of the opposition National League for Democracy party facing trial in Rangoon”s notorious Insein prison special court were yesterday charged with the Unlawful Associations Act, according to lawyer Kyaw Ho.

The members are Ma Cho (also known as Myint Myint San), Sein Hlaing and Shwe Gyo.

Burma currently holds around 2,120 political prisoners, including 244 monks and 270 students, according to the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners

After more than two years and tens of thousands of blog posts, the monks, and others are still bound as tightly as ever.

1012: Consensus Among Economists Says Stimulus Working

1006: Walters should”ve followed up, Palin should have boned up re: Jews “flocking” idea

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

The government is like a baby’s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. — Ronald Reagan

Warning: never trust an Internet quote without checking something other than Google. I’m willing to bet that less than 10 percent of these are real or accurate.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Afterward, though, when you reread what you”ve done, you might want to see whether your modifiers , your descriptive words, do the job you”ve given them. should they be more or less specific? Should they me more descriptive? More judgmental? Are you trying to control the reader”s reaction? Should you aim for more show and less tell? Have you overloaded your prose with adverbs and adjectives? Or have you gone overboard in the other direction, being rather too sparing in their use? p. 210

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

I wrote 1,667 words yesterday morning and my total word count is now 43,668.

Previously…

In the United States we are having a very long, very heated and very important political debate over ensuring that every citizen has access to health care. Imagine what it would be like to live in a country where the government spends a total of $61 per citizen per year on health care. No, that’s in Thailand, not Myanmar.

In Myanmar the generals spend $0.40, that’s 40 cents, per citizen per year.

From Burma Journal:

doctors, too, must take on aliases and watch their step when they decide to forgo state-sanctioned employment and help fellow Burmese on their own.

KK, we’ll call him, looks too fresh-faced to be a doctor — less “Grey’s Anatomy” and more “Doogie Howser.” But he graduated from Rangoon medical school after the requisite six years of education and now works underground, crisscrossing the country on his motorbike and helping to train local health workers in remote parts of the country. His work is partially funded by a Western organization, but he is, for the most part, a staff of one.

When we meet, it is at a remote table in a largely empty restaurant. Despite the apparent privacy, KK speaks in hushed tones when explaining that his organization sends pharmaceuticals to the Centers for Disease Control in the U.S. for testing, because most of the drugs in Burma come from China and the Burmese government does not control their quality. Complicating matters even more, antibiotics are available readily, without prescriptions, throughout the country; as KK explains, to self-prescribe medication without understanding one’s ailments, especially when using low-quality drugs, creates an iffy proposition.

And here we worry about drugs from Canada?

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Ohio”s Senator George Voinovich was the only U. S. Senator to not cast a vote yesterday on moving the historic health care bill. It didn”t make a difference since his would have been the 40th Republican vote against moving the bill to a floor vote.

Democrats had 60 votes to overcome a filibuster by Republicans. The vote was 60-39.

Voinovich didn”t want to waste time voting, as the Plain Dealer explains.

According to a Huffington report Voinovich was celebrating at a party marking his 30 year victory over Dennis Kucinich in 1979.

Here”s a man who, with his family, has enjoyed public health insurance by virtue of his service in various government positions for at least half his life. I figure more than 40 years since he was a state representative.

Yet, he would have voted to delay health coverage to some 40 million other Americans, if he had been at the job yesterday.

But he had more important things to do.

Via Plunderbund…

0803: Consensus Among Economists Says Stimulus Working

0734: The twitching rage of the irrational Republican when you tell them they fucked up our country

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

Talk is cheap, except when Congress does it. — Anonymous

Warning: never trust an Internet quote without checking something other than Google. I’m willing to bet that less than 10 percent of these are real or accurate.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

If you”re interested in watching a master put not only verbs but all the other parts of speech through their paces, you might make the acquaintance of Pelham Greenville Wodehouse. p. 205

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

I wrote 991 words yesterday morning and my total word count is now 42,001.

Previously…

Say what you will — I do as much as possible — about the State Peace and Development Council, aka Myanmar’s military dictators, but these guys have more chutzpah than the Menendez brothers begging for mercy because they’re orphans. And speaking of orphans, the generals do love the little tykes, as cannon fodder.

From The Irrwaddy:

The Burmese military junta celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Universal Convention on Children”s Rights on Friday in Naypyidaw.

The ceremony surprised many people in the human rights community because the junta is often cited as one of the world”s worst regimes in violating the rights of children. The army is regularly accused of conscripting child soldiers.

A non-binding resolution approved on Thursday by the UN Assembly”s Third Committee called on the Burmese government to end the recruitment of child soldiers and “to intensify measures to ensure the protection of children from armed conflict.”

The UN committee called on the junta to cooperate with the UN special representative for Children and Armed Conflict by granting access to areas where child soldiers are recruited.

According to a report by the US State Department: “Urban poor and street children in Rangoon and Mandalay are at risk of involuntary conscription as child soldiers by the Burmese junta. Thousands of children are forced to serve in Burma”s national army as desertions of men in the army rise. Some children were threatened with jail if they did not agree to join the army.”

The Burmese army has an estimated 70,000 child soldiers, one of the highest percentages in the world, according to rights” groups. Some are as young as 11 years old. Non-state armed groups also recruit thousands of children as soldiers.

It keeps them off the streets, right?