The Housing Bubble

Agreed.

You forgot Barbara Lee.
The only person with the balls to vote against the Iraq war.

I’m more interested in the link that says 25% of women are on mood-altering meds.

Pony up, Paulie-swooner.

According to a 2008 Scientific American article 11% of American women and 5% of American men take antidepressants.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-medicated-americans

Dunno where to get handbag industry market research, but the other was big news a few weeks ago.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1112425236/1-in-4-women-take-medication-for-mental-health-condition

If the redorbit article is correct and considering that antidepressants can be libido killers … there’s probably a lot of unhappy guys out there.

That said, what is the percentage of Americans who drink alcohol as a way to “cope” with life’s daily pressures?

95% of quoted statistics are just pulled out of the air.

Depression is a libido-killer too, so guys don’t win either way.

1 in 4 great no wonder there are so many bad drivers out there.

doesn’t that stuff make you gain weight as well ?

Seriously, Sammy? You have some stats to back up the assertion that $5000 purses are largely owned by women who don’t have children? Really?

Yours Truly never reproduced, and at this stage of my life, it ain’t gonna happen.

But the $5k purse thing? Puh-leeze. If I spent 50 bucks on something to carry house keys, money, ID, and a checkbook, I’d feel like I was a mondo big spender.

“…At the time it was easy to get fake rolexes on the street….”

Similarly, a jaded man-about-town type I used to date had a cache of fake Piagets he put to good use.

Never a great judge of intent, he was prone to being used for his money by opportunistic dates of recent acquaintance. So, after a typical night’s carousing, he took to leaving one of the shiny fakes on his nightstand. The next morning he’d get up early to go to his office and leave a nice note instructing his date to sleep in and order breakfast, then let herself out at her leisure.

If the watch was gone when he returned, he’d solved two problems.

I’ve been using those for years. You can also easily sling them over your back to bike-commute to work.

But city driving while talking on the cellphone while trying to find good music on the radio is good exercise for the brain when you’re tired.

Nowadays my attention is riveted on the vehicle approaching me on these 2-lane roads, as I look for any sign of drift in either direction

I do the exact same thing now. Two years ago my older sister was badly injured when a cell phone user drifted in to her head-on (two lane road). She broke both arms and sustained permanent nerve damage to her right hand. She was a landscape and floral design artist but is now out on disability. So until she learns a new trade (at fifty-three?) the taxpayer will pick up the tab. Not coming out of the Sprint CEO’s bonus…

+1. My passengers think I’m nuts when I move halfway into the emergency lane when there is traffic coming from the opposite direction. I especially give berth to large trucks…

Highway deaths are incredibly low the past few years. They should save the bans for when they go back up to move the needle .

out of habit, immediately starts the phone when they start the car.

This. Throw car in reverse, dial phone, look around absently. Isn’t this how it’s supposed to work?

Good advice up there Bill. I do a lot of podunk driving and get nervous in the turns and now I realize it’s for good reason.

“wee-meaning in intent.”

Should read “well-meaning”.

As a capitalist, I want to make sure that the entity that kills me does it efficiently and at a profit. Not like Cuba, where they’re so lazy they may never get around to it…

They do it at a profit. As far as “efficiency” goes …

Not to mention that universal health care is not good enough for many people in places like the UK.

To my understanding doctors there aren’t satisfied with the low payments provided by the government, and people are not satisfied with the government care, so they buy private insurance on top of the government program.

Sweden spends $2,828 per capita in health care, we spend $6,096. (2007 numbers)

And they insure everybody.

But they are Swedes. They are efficient, and statistics don’t give you the true story. How much corruption, payoffs and FRAUD goes into the Swedish system? I seriously doubt it approaches Medicaid and Medicare, which won’t prosecute the criminals.
But to be fair, the Swedish GDP per capita in 2007 (your base) was 31,600. US, about 50,000. They spent 9.1 % of their earnings on “healthcare”, according to my sources.
So we spent a bunch more, mostly from government waste and fraud, and so, you think if the government takes over the WHOLE system, it will be cheaper? No government program is every cheaper. Here’s an excerpt from a report on SWEDEN:

By the early 1980s, with an aging population and increasingly expensive health care technology, the system had become unsustainable. In a ten-year period from 1972-1982, the health care portion of Sweden’s GDP grew from 7.2 percent to 9.3 percent (see Figure 1).10 Until 1985, the national government reimbursed county councils for health care expenses on a fee-for-service basis. The Dagmar Reform of 1985 changed the reimbursement formula to one of “capitation,” in which counties were reimbursed for the number of patients served. This led to “global budgets” - a fixed amount that each county could spend annually on health care services.
Global budgeting would prove to have serious consequences for Sweden’s health care system, most notably expanding waiting lists. Waiting lists for surgery and other procedures had long been a problem in Sweden. Like most government-run systems, the Swedish health care system was already plagued by declining productivity - a consequence of which included delays in care.11 Global budgeting, however, worsened the problem of waiting lists. With county councils now operating with fixed budgets and citizens facing few restraints on demand for health care, county councils needed to ration health care services. An increase in wait times was the result. By 1988 the wait time for an angiogram - a heart X-ray - was up to eleven months. The wait time for bypass surgery could be an additional eight months.12
The report was from National Policy Analysis in May 2007.
Look it up.
Yea, statistics are great. We spend a lot more than any other country and haven’t increase life expectancy more than much, much poorer countries, but then, here, everyone is “equal” and demographic factors can’t be considered. Although certain groups have a lot more heart disease, cancer and other long term ailments. The Swedes don’t.

While the Scandinavian countries aren’t that ethnically diverse, the UK and Canada are. Yet they manage to have universal health care that works for them. And they’re not clamoring to have a health care system like ours.

So much for the mono-ethnic argument. Next, please?

What lower (health-care) costs?
Sweden pays about 1/2 its income on taxes to support their programs. Diogenes

(These lower heath-care costs)
Sweeden spends $3470 per person per year on healthcare
USA spends $7540 per person per year on healthcare.
But for $3470 per year Sweeden covers everyone. Big diff.
source: 2008 OECD Health Data

Even when comparing the median income per capita of the USA ($27K) with Sweden ($20K) We get Sweden spending 18% of median income per person on healthcare vs 28% for the USA but the USA has 1/3 of our population uncovered or with BS coverage and Sweden has cradle-to-grave healthcare coverage for EVERYONE. median income figures: wiki

These are Homogenous societies with hard-working and Prudent people.Diogenes

Our employment rate has been higher than Sweden’s many times historically even if we are “browner.” Your racial comment has no relevance at all to the economics.

Incidentally, those other “advanced” countries are all imploding on their promises to pay for everything via government “benefits”. Diogenes

And we are not because of wars? Many of those Social Democracies are in better fiscal shape than the USA.

Not to mention that universal health care is not good enough for many people in places like the UK.
Rental Watch

You’re right. You should not mention that. Because even though the UK spends less than half the amount per person on health-care (including public and private spending)….

“In Great Britain, satisfaction with access to affordable healthcare (43%) is consistent with satisfaction with quality (42%). In Canada, satisfaction with access to affordable healthcare (57%) is slightly higher than satisfaction with quality (52%). But the most dramatic variation in satisfaction with these two facets of the healthcare system occurs in the United States, where only 25% are satisfied with the availability of affordable healthcare, but 48% are satisfied with quality….

On a less relative basis, the fact that 72% of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the availability of affordable healthcare, and 50% are dissatisfied with the quality of medical care are cause for concern. Regardless of how these numbers measure up to those in Canada and Great Britain, they indicate that the U.S. healthcare system has considerable room for improvement.” Gallup

Well, it doesn’t really work. It’s just their current system.
I met an elderly man (60’s) hobbling around Clearwater Beach last year with a band around his knee. Needed a knee replacement. He told me it would be next year before he could get it taken care of.
And for all you “national health care” advocates, i was listening in to a radio program a couple of weeks back. The gist of the conversation from a brain surgeon was that they are already being told that they will not be allowed to perform emergency life-saving surgery on patients over 65 or 70. Just too expensive. Triage. That’s the solution. And it will be America’s solution.
They will be instructed to provide “comfort” support to help them not feel uncomfortable as they are dying. Old people will be the first to be denied medical care.
As one other astute reader wrote, the very aged consume the largest part of the health care budget. The simplest solution is to simply remove them from the list of pending surgeries, operations, and support facilities. Give Grandma a pain pill and pat her on the head. Goodnight Grandma.

A huge cost is related to end-of-life care in the US. In Sweden, the decisions are largely left to the doctors, patients have less involvement in their own care decisions.

To put in the most inflammatory terms, Sweden has death panels.

To put another way, patients and their families don’t have an ability to use massive medical resources when a physician’s decision otherwise would be to simply let nature take its course.

Not that this is a perfect study for what I note, but in the same direction:

An abstract to a study comparing Russia, Sweden, and Germany for certain types of decisions:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1733385/

The applicable quote:

“Results—Swedish physicians chose fewer life-prolonging interventions as compared with the Russian and the German doctors.”

I heard a health-care expert speak and she noted that if decisions about end-of-life care were made in the US in an similar fashion as to other countries (she noted France), the difference in healthcare cost per capita would not go away entirely, but the differences would be MUCH smaller.

End-of-life decision making, and, if patients or their families take part in such decisions, who bears the cost for what doctors may otherwise consider excessive treatment, is the elephant in the room that everyone is trying to ignore. It is a critical piece to getting healthcare costs under control, especially as our population ages.

And AZ Slim, the UK still has private insurance because many people find the government program to be inadequate.

And they’re not clamoring to have a health care system like ours.

No one is. Most view our system with a combination of revulsion and horror, unless of course they are very rich. Our system serves the rich (and well insured) fairly well.

the UK still has private insurance because many people find the government program to be inadequate.

Perfect. I’ll take that combination system any day over what the USA has.

Sorry if I’m bummed out today. I had to pay my $150 monthly 1st world medical/dental/PhysTher/homeopathic/MentalHealth/Acupuncture insurance premium yesterday.

And last month when I needed stitches on a weekend my private insurance was too much of a hassle to go to my plan’s hospital so I had to go to my neighborhood free clinic with the socialistas. (Thankfully I think they took down the Che Guevara posters when they saw me coming)

Needed a knee replacement. He told me it would be next year before he could get it taken care of.

I know a 50 year old un-insured American that hobbled around for 6 years needing a hip replacement. He finally paid thousands out of his pocket.

As a inhabitant of England and a member of a private healthy care scheme, perhaps I could set forth my views on the NHS.

Is it ideal no, but I don’t have to worry if my family fall sick about insurance. It is possible that they may require an expensive medicine that has not been approved by the local NHS, but how does that differ from your private medical schemes?

It is not uncommon to see fund raising campaigns to send sick people (usually children) for ground braking medical treatment abroad. Unfortunately few of these campaigns end well.

The main plus points about the NHS are on the whole they do a good job. The only worry I have in the event of family ill health is the illness not the cost.

Why you ask are you in a private medical scheme and what advantages does it give you. Well it will get me a private room in an NHS hospital or a cash sum if I’m willing to lie in bed amongst the general public. It will get me to see a specialist sooner for minor ailments and none life threatening illnesses, but if I have a major problem they will soon shuffle me back to the NHS. The main reason I have it though is it comes with the job and I think it suits my employers for me to have it. If I do need non urgent medical attention I can book it on a weekend or late at night which while this might not be ideal for me does at least ensure I won’t be taking any time of work.

P.S The practice of doctors working both for the NHS and themselves goes back to the inception of the NHS. In fact local doctors (GP’s) run their practices as small businesses and consultants receive a salary from the NHS and allowed to keep doing private practice.

And of course more than a million Americans go out of country for medical and dental treatment because of…UNAFFORDABILITY!

And of course more than a million Americans go out of country for medical and dental treatment because of…UNAFFORDABILITY!

I wonder how long it will take before the medical lobby manages to ban this practice.

are you cereal? adding millions to their parents policies at no charge lowers the cost?

The added millions to their parent’s policies are paying the extra premiums for their addition to (or their continuation on) their parents policy. (or their parents are paying)

And no, I am not cereal although I sometimes eat it. (Does that make me part cereal?)

How does a bunch of uninsured sick people showing up in the ER in late stages of disease that previously could have been treated for pennies on the dollar saving money.

Hospitals have to increase what they charge to cover the losses. They also deduct the losses from their taxes if they make a profit. How is that different then just spending money on cost effective medicine? The money still comes out of the gov and tax payers pocket. How is it more efficient? If it’s an infectious disease like TB or HIV, how is it safer or better for society? Until society is willing to kick sick patients in the ER to the curb to die society is still paying the cost of medical care, and they are doing it in a less effective more expensive manner.

Thanks, Rio.

Why anyone would think that there aren’t any premiums for the covered adult kids is beyond me. If that had been the case the insurance companies would have been screaming their heads off. Never heard a peep out of them. They got to collect premiums for providing coverage to a bunch of middle class 20 somethings with parents who had jobs with group health benefits. Hardly a group they wanted to avoid covering.

“How does a bunch of uninsured sick people showing up in the ER in late stages of disease that previously could have been treated for pennies on the dollar saving money.”

Short term vs. long term. Polly said this years ago. Why spend money on prevention when whatever disease you’re preventing tends to show up and need $$ drugs when that person is older and on Medicare? It’s the usual privitizing gains and socializing losses.

“are you cereal?”

I just about LOL at that expression; I know a Peruvian woman who really says that when she means “are you serious?”.

It’s pretty funny when you hear it, and I’ve taken to saying it myself…

They got to collect premiums for providing coverage to a bunch of middle class 20 somethings with parents who had jobs with group health benefits. Hardly a group they wanted to avoid covering.

I would think it would be mainly the employers who pay the majority of insurance premiums would be the ones complaining about this provision.

Increasing competition among insurance companies was the Republican proposal to avoid “national health care”. It was rejected by the Democratic Congress at the time. Not even considered.
You are correct. That was the solution to getting costs under control, along with de-centralizing government control under Medicare.
The States would be a better place to reform Medical laws, not provide “health care”. It’s the job of the government to enforce laws (not mandates) and protect the rights of people from other people who would do them harm, not to provide “services”.
However, all the States have “rigged” political payoffs in the insurance industry. The reason you don’t have 15 or 20 companies offering health insurance is because they are kept out of your State by State regulations…….
Government’s real purpose: Keep out the outsiders and support us insiders. If you’re in the club, you get benefits, if not, you can pay. We need an overturn of Health Care Insurance regulations Statewide. ObamaCare may prevent this.

Government’s real purpose: Keep out the outsiders and support us insiders.

Yet they can’t even do that right at a national level in regards to jobs. Or maybe they do…it’s just that all but the elites are no longer part of “us”.

“However, all the States have “rigged” political payoffs in the insurance industry. The reason you don’t have 15 or 20 companies offering health insurance is because they are kept out of your State by State regulations…….”

Actually, one of the main reasons is due to the sweetheart deals that larger insurance companies can negotiate with providers.

If you ask a hospital what they are paid for a kidney transplant, they will give you more than one number:

Medicare is one number (generally the lowest for most types of payment), each insurance company has their own negotiated rate, and if you’re an uninsured rich guy, you pay the most.

Over time, this has allowed the largest insurance companies to cut costs the most and outcompete/absorb the small carriers.

I would love to have a “most favored nation” law in the US that makes it illegal for healthcare providers to charge different rates for different payers. Flatten the field for insurance companies and watch competition explode. Rich uninsured man would pay the same as any insurance company, which would pay the same as Medicare.

The problem is that Medicare would be forced to pay at the levels of insurance companies at a time when Medicare can’t afford to pay more–so this deal wouldn’t fly (and the Republican side would scream about getting in the way of the free market–since they would be getting lots of money from insurance companies to scream such things).

“When you DO have coverage, since it’s only a small co-pay, if you have a minor injury of the flu…..well, gee, I better go see a doctor.”

Some people go to the doctor hardly at all even with great coverage. Who has the time? Who wants to spend it at the doctor?

“As for the argument that it’s “preventive medicine”, most people don’t get to be disasterous health drains until after many years of poor diet, no exercise, over-eating, smoking and drinking. “

Not all chronic, expensive conditions are caused by poor diet, etc. MS has recently been linked to Vitamin D deficiency and a gene mutation that can make it worse. You can’t get enough from your diet and in most parts of the US, you can’t make any from the sun for more than 6 months of the year.

Sleep apnea is exacerbated, but not caused, by obesity. In many people it is simply an artifact of their soft palate, tongue, and throat structure. It can lead to disrupted leptin and grelin hormone levels, causing or contributing to weight gain. It can cause cardiac problems, including arrhythmias like atrial fibrillation. It occurs in normal weight children and young adults and is absent in some obese people. It can cause brain damage and dementia.

Cardiac issues have been linked to periodontal disease. Without the preventive care given by my dentist and his assistants, I might not have eliminated mine. My parents both had to have significant work in their 40s to take care of it.

I would agree that exercise is a miracle drug and most of us do not get enough. I don’t agree that most expensive medical care is caused by lifestyle issues, unless you also include driving a car or riding in a car or walking or biking near a roadway in your lifestyle issues.

Fine, but then again I could have gone Cobra with my old plan for $900+ a month (whole family), which is less than $15,000 a year.

It is hard to get an apples to apples comparison as the size of your group, your own demographic and and the type of plan do affect the cost.

What I do know from personal anecdoatal experience is that that the Cobra plans I have been offered over the past 10 years (everytime I changed a job) have hovered around $1000 a month. What has changed over the years are ever higher deductibles and copays. So you pay the same, but get less.

An individual plan w/Kaiser use to cost us $1,200/mo for 2 overall healthy adults. It’s insane on Cobra or solo.
Yep, Colorado, you pay more for less coverage. I use to see the illegals on Ca’s Medi-cal (medicaid) plan not even pay a co-pay at Kaiser, yet then can afford a nice vehicle.

The U.S. doesn’t have a broken medical system. We don’t have a system, imo.

What I do know from personal anecdoatal experience is that that the Cobra plans I have been offered over the past 10 years (everytime I changed a job) have hovered around $1000 a month. What has changed over the years are ever higher deductibles and copays. So you pay the same, but get less.

Also keep in mind that a cobra is a very nasty snake.

I always thought that was a lousy name.

I also wonder how many people exercise their COBRA option? I mean, if you’ve just been laid off, are you really going to cough up 1 grand a month for COBRA?

I would have if I hadn’t found a job before my previous insurance ran out…and I’d have had to pay about $1500. My family has a lot of healthcare needs, though…makes no sense for us to go uninsured unless there’s no other choice. And when that happens it may be a one way trip. It might be very difficult to get anyone to insure us again.

Maybe “Doctors without Borders” can send 3rd world doctors to the USA to treat the uninsured.

Nevermind, the AMA and FDA would never allow that (business is business after all). I guess we’ll have to send our uninsured to Brazil.

Splendid idea, Rio!

In Co, the major stumbling block to having doctors from more prosperous countries working here would be obtaining a license to practice medicine. Those are controlled by each state.

In many rural areas of this country, they, or doctors groups like hem, are doing exactly that, right now.

Actually, in CO, there is an American charity called Remote Area Medical which sort of does that. They are a mobile unit that treats the rural poor. One time, rural patients lined up for hours to be treated in the horse barn at the state fairgrounds.

Our HBB Librarian will tell you that it was scenes like this that inspired former health ins CEO Wendell Potter to do a 180 and support single payer.

I tell people that we have the best health care in the world, but Dick Cheney took it all.

“But we are paying market rate already”, was the answer.

Yes, the market rate for barely enough barely good enough people. If you want more than that, the market rate is higher.

“Market Rate” is not a “Free Market” rate.

In most cases, it is determined by what their business plan says they can pay.

Back in the old “TQM” days, the aviation OEM I used to work for was having a problem retaining A&Ps, especially the guys they hired as newbies, worked 2-3 years to get experience, then hit the road for greener pastures.

One of my fellow supervisors led a TQM team to find out why. Six months of research found that the company pay (or lack thereof) led people to take jobs that paid more money.

The company’s response was to $hit-can the report, and put the guys who stayed on mandatory overtime/56 hour weeks for 48 out of 52 weeks/year. For 10 years.

So like many other technical/skilled positions, we are at a point where the guys you have been running into the ground for 15 years are in their 50s, and breaking down/retiring, and there are very few late 30s/early 40s guys with 15-20 years experience to take their place. So the slots get filled with 20 something new hires, with zero training and zero experience, and zero “adult supervision” to show them the stuff that isn’t in the manuals/books.

I’ve related some of the stories I’m hearing from my SIL, who is in precisely this position. He’s kinda happy about it. Last week, he worked 23 hours of overtime, changing out an engine that was trashed by a newbie crew chief, who “overtorqued” the engine on a ground run.

Lots of us have been sounding the warning flags for years on this. But what do we know?

goon
I took a turn for the better (or so I thought) and went into shopping center management from accounting. I even went to management school specific to the sector. I need a FT gig, and boy has it been a hard one to find. You’re not kidding about micro skill sets.

I don’t like interviewing. HR people are clueless. Those psycholgical tests are ridiculous. I wish they asked pertinent questions. Those that can’t… go into HR.

“Where do you hope to be in 5 years?”
Answer: “In your job. Even my dog could do it.” LOL

And don’t get me started on head hunters. I’d like to hunt of few of theirs. LOL

“a” not “of” editing oops.

So much for SarBox creating demand for accountants.

I’m just loving the commentary here.

Seems that a bunch of other fields are just as screwed up as the one I work in.

Gainesville is dead. Just like Ocala, the hobby farm weekend business for people from Tampa and Orlando has collapsed. Out of state people aren’t buying - in state people aren’t buying.

Never mind that these “farmers” left their horses to starve.

http://www.ongo.com/v/641810/-1/B041A12D80DCCF55/spanish-horses-left-to-starve-in-wake-of-economic-slump

You could always join the “Free $hit Army” if it’s so darn good.

FWIW, I’m seeing more “intersection beggars” than ever. I guess they forgot to sign up for their “free $hit”. They are getting creative. The latest trend is to beg with their dog on a leash (maybe you’ll feel sorry for the dog?). The other day I saw a guy dressed in a Santa suit sitting in a Radio Flyer wagon.

How about a debtors Halfway House?

How about making banks mark the house to market and all this stuff will magically work itself out?

You could always join the “Free $hit Army” if it’s so darn good.

Would you please stop beating this strawman.

No one has said it’s *GOOD*. Simply that it’s wrong, and the free $hit they get is taken from someone else who is likely struggling to make ends meet themselves.

“You could always join the “Free $hit Army” if it’s so darn good.”

Can you turn back the clock to 2005 so I can buy the house of my dreams with no money down, make the neg am payment for a couple of years, take $150k of “my equity” out in 2007 and then live there for free for 4 years? Hell if you can I will buy 3 extra and rent them out for an extra $5k a month tax free income. Private saturday reporting for duty sir.

Can you turn back the clock to 1999 so I can buy webvan/grocery.com

Webvan was an online “credit and delivery” grocery business that went bankrupt in 2001. It was headquartered in Foster City, California, USA, near Silicon Valley. It delivered products to customers’ homes within a 30-minute window of their choosing. At its peak, it offered service in ten U.S. markets: San Francisco Bay Area, Dallas, San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, Sacramento, and Orange County. The company had originally hoped to expand to 26 cities.

In June 2008, CNET named Webvan the largest dot-com flop in history, placing it above Pets.com and eight other sites on its list. It is now owned and operated by Amazon.com.

“FWIW, I’m seeing more “intersection beggars” than ever. I guess they forgot to sign up for their “free $hit”. They are getting creative.”

25 Awesome Homeless Guy Signs

http://www.holytaco.com/25-awsome-homeless-guy-signs/ - 330k -

Re: that last guy, IDK there where homeless Mormons?

Webvan was an online “credit and delivery” grocery business that went bankrupt in 2001. It was headquartered in Foster City, California, USA, near Silicon Valley. It delivered products to customers’ homes within a 30-minute window of their choosing. At its peak, it offered service in ten U.S. markets: San Francisco Bay Area, Dallas, San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, Sacramento, and Orange County. The company had originally hoped to expand to 26 cities.

In June 2008, CNET named Webvan the largest dot-com flop in history, placing it above Pets.com and eight other sites on its list. It is now owned and operated by Amazon.com.

Fun factoid: Webvan got a good chunk of its startup funding from Louis Borders. Of Borders Books and Music fame.

“No one has said it’s *GOOD*”

Huh? I keep reading here all this ranting about free rent and houses, people on foodstamps buying steak and lobster while yakking on the new iPhone, etc.

Can you turn back the clock to 2005 so I can buy the house of my dreams with no money down, make the neg am payment for a couple of years, take $150k of “my equity” out in 2007 and then live there for free for 4 years?

What can I say? You snooze, you lose.

“Huh? I keep reading here all this ranting about free rent and houses, people on foodstamps buying steak and lobster while yakking on the new iPhone, etc.”

Do people need SNAP? Yes.

Is there a lot of fraud? Yes.

Have I seen people use SNAP cards that need it? Yes.

Have I seen people who use SNAP cards that are comitting fraud? Yes.

Do I even have to say anything about the free rent and houses?

The Food-Stamp Crime Wave

The number of food-stamp recipients has soared to 44 million from 26 million in 2007. Not surprisingly, fraud and abuse are rampant..

JUNE 23, 2011.

By JAMES BOVARD
Millionaires are now legally entitled to collect food stamps as long as they have little or no monthly income. Thirty-five states have abolished asset tests for most food-stamp recipients. These and similar “paperwork reduction” reforms advocated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) are turning the food-stamp program into a magnet for abuses and absurdities.

The Obama administration is far more enthusiastic about boosting food-stamp enrollment than about preventing fraud. Thanks in part to vigorous federally funded campaigns by nonprofit groups, the government’s AmericaCorps service program, and other organizations urging people to accept government handouts, the number of food-stamp recipients has soared to 44 million from 26 million in 2007, and costs have more than doubled to $77 billion from $33 billion.

The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service now has only 40 inspectors to oversee almost 200,000 merchants that accept food stamps nationwide. The Government Accountability Office reported last summer that retailers who traffic illegally in food stamps by redeeming stamps for cash or alcohol or other prohibited items “are less likely to face criminal penalties or prosecution” than in earlier years.

Lax attitudes toward fraud are spurring swindles across the nation:

• Earlier this month, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel revealed that Wisconsin food-stamp recipients routinely sell their benefit cards on Facebook. The investigation also found that “nearly 2,000 recipients claimed they lost their card six or more times in 2010 and requested replacements.” USDA rules require that lost cards be speedily replaced. The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute concluded: “Prosecutors have simply stopped prosecuting the vast majority of [food-stamp] fraud cases in virtually all counties, including the one with the most recipients, Milwaukee.”

• Troy Hutson, the chief of Washington state’s food-stamp program, resigned in April after a Seattle television station revealed that some food-stamp recipients were selling their cards on Craigslist or brazenly cashing them out on street corners (for 50 cents on the dollar) and using the proceeds for illegal drugs and prostitution. Washington state Sen. Mike Carrell complained: “Dozens of workers at DSHS [the Department of Social and Health Services] have reported numerous unpunished cases of fraud to me. They have told me that DSHS management has allowed these things to happen, and in some cases actively restricted fraud investigations.”

• Thirty percent of the inmates in the Polk County, Iowa, jail were collecting food stamps that were being sent to their non-jail mailing addresses in 2009. But Iowa could not prosecute them for fraud because the state’s food-stamp form failed to ask applicants whether they were heading for the slammer. Roger Munns, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Human Services, told the Des Moines Register last year that asking such questions could make food-stamp applications “unwieldy.” (Many states do make such inquiries.)

Looser federal rules are spurring a bureaucratic crime wave. Last December, two veteran employees for New York City’s Human Resources Administration were busted for concocting 1,500 fake food-stamp cases that netted them $8 million. Nine Milwaukee, Wis., staffers plundered almost $300,000 from the program during the last five years, and a Louisiana state bureaucrat pleaded guilty last year for her role in a scam that snared more than $50,000 in fraudulent food-stamp benefits.

The food-stamp poster boy of 2011 is 59-year-old Leroy Fick. After Mr. Fick won a $2 million lottery jackpot, the Michigan Department of Human Services ruled he could continue receiving food stamps. The Detroit News explained: “If Fick had chosen to accept monthly payments of his jackpot, the winnings would be considered income, according to the DHS. But by choosing to accept a lump sum payment, the winnings were considered ‘assets’ and aren’t counted in determining food stamp eligibility.”

But the Obama administration doesn’t deserve all the blame. Food-stamp enrollment surged before Mr. Obama took office. The number of food-stamp recipients on George W. Bush’s watch rose by more than 50%, even before the recession hit in 2007. As Slate reporter Annie Lowrey wrote for the online magazine last December, President Bush and his food-stamp chief Eric Bost “went on a quiet crusade to expand eligibility, increase enrollment, and reduce stigma around nutrition aid.”

H.L. Mencken quipped that the New Deal divided America into “those who work for a living and those who vote for a living.” The explosion in the number of food-stamp recipients tilts the political playing field in favor of big government. The more people who become government dependents, the more likely that democracy will become a conspiracy against self-reliance.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304657804576401412033504294.html - 179k

“What can I say? You snooze, you lose.”

You mean…

Live within your means and responsibly, you lose.

How about making banks mark the house to market and all this stuff will magically work itself out?

It really is that simple. Thank you.

“Leona Helmsley didn’t get it either”.

Trouble is, her dog did!

(There are examples , rare though they be, that the “trickle down” theory has some $ucce$$.) ;-/

The dog was blind and stricken with health issues before her death. Her caretaker, Carl Lekic spent $100,000 annually on her care — including $8,000 for grooming and $1,200 for dog food.

Trouble, who had faced 20 to 30 death and kidnapping threats, also retained a full-time security guard, according to news reports.

The will also stipulated that when the Maltese went to the big kennel in the sky, she would lie beside her in the 12,000-square-foot Helmsley family mausoleum in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Westchester County, N.Y.

The dirt-hating Helmsley ordered that the mausoleum be “washed or steam-cleaned at least once a year,” for which she left $3 million.

Funds held in the dog’s trust will revert to the Helmsley family trust, which supports charities, she said.

Arizona Slim would like to rescue turkey lurkey from Lame Radio Land by recommending KXCI Community Radio here in Tucson. You can listen online.

I just meant that it isn’t just hard work and talent that get people into the NFL, for some it’s performance enhancing drugs.

BTW, the “twice as much” was from a glance earlier in the AM, when I first posted the question.

It’s far more of a difference now; the ratio is closer to eight times.

Something different than change in the value of the dollar is definitely afoot.