I have four seats available for this game on Friday, April 9, 2010. You can buy my tickets through StubHub so your purchase is secure. These are great seats!
White Sox vs. Twins Tickets for sale.
I have other tickets available throughout the season including vs. the Cubs, Yankees, Red Sox, and many exciting division contests! Head on over to my White Sox Ticket page on this web site.
Governor Deval Patrick
The state of Massachusetts has ObamaCare and it’s failing miserably. There is a coverage mandate yet premiums continue to climb higher and faster than the rest of the nation.
average Massachusetts insurance premiums are now the highest in the nation. Since 2006, they’ve climbed at an annual rate of 30% in the individual market. Small business costs have increased by 5.8%. Per capita health spending in Massachusetts is now 27% higher than the national average, and 15% higher even after adjusting for local wages and academic research grants. The growth rate is faster too.
The Massachusetts plan was hatched to control spending on health care yet spending is out of control and way over budget.
As with all new entitlements, the rolling cost crisis began almost immediately. For fiscal 2010 taxpayer costs are $47 million over budget, in part due to the recession, and while the $913 million Mr. Patrick requested for 2011 is a 5% increase over 2010, spending has grown on average 6.7% per year.
So now, that premiums are rising and the state budget is busting what is the plan to solve this government created crisis? Price controls.
Governor Deval Patrick landed a neutron bomb, proposing hard price controls across almost all Massachusetts health care. State regulators already have the power to cap insurance premiums, which Mr. Patrick is activating. He also filed a bill that would give state regulators the power to review the rates of hospitals, physician groups and some specialty providers. Those that are deemed too high “shall be presumptively disapproved.”
The funny (or sad) part of all of this is that this universal health care system was signed into law by Republican Governor Mitt Romney. And the even funnier part (or sadder) is that his Democrat successor Governor Deval Patrick is doubling down with price controls. Both parties ignoring reality thinking government is the solution to all life’s problems.
Now, the funniest part (or saddest) is that Congress and President Obama is ignoring everything that is happening to the people of Massachusetts and proposes to implement the entire universal health care debacle, including price controls, on the entire nation in one fell swoop.
The future of national health care is now in Massachusetts and it’s failing miserably.
Read the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial on Massachusetts and ObamaCare
The view from my seats. This is Frank Thomas up to bat for the Chicago White Sox in 2000
I’ve been a season ticket holder of the Chicago White Sox for 11 years running. This is the first year where I probably will not be able to attend many of the games. So, I created a special page on this site where you can look at the games I have available and purchase them if you like.
There are many great games available versus the Cubs, Yankees, and the Red Sox, not to mention I still have two of my seats available for opening day.
Warning: This Hot Dog Potentially Wants to Kill Your Kid
CHOKE PROOF HOT DOGS?!? You’ve got to be kidding me.
Last night while channel flipping I ran across part of a news story on our local CBS news that stated some group was looking to redesign the hot dog because children choke on them from time to time. Or, at the very least, put a freaking warning label on the package. Just stop and think about this for at least two seconds and you must see how ludicrous these ideas are.
If you’re a parent and you need to have someone redesign a hot dog so your child does not choke you should just turn your children over to a relative that is a capable parent or turn them over to the state now. You have no business raising children. Read the rest of this entry »
I just finished the 1000+ page novel, “Under the Dome”, by Stephen King a few minutes ago. I haven’t tackled a book so large in a while but it was well worth the time spent. Even though it was over a thousand pages long the story never felt slow or boring. In fact, towards the end of the book I was so entrenched in the story that I found it difficult to breathe (if you read it you’ll understand).
Buy it and read “Under the Dome” for yourself.
I offer up my thanks to Stephen King for another wild ride.
I agree with this article 100%.
Most citizens have the right to vote, but not everyone should exercise that right. Voting is too important to be thrust into the hands of the uninformed.
No rational person would suggest that anyone with some time on his hands should wander through a courthouse, stopping into courtrooms at random and casting a jury vote. “If you haven’t heard all of the evidence you shouldn’t be voting on something that can affect someone else’s life or liberty” most folks would say, and they would be right.
The same goes for voting.
Consider the case of two citizens, one who studies the candidates and issues, and one who doesn’t but goes to the polls anyway.
The random votes of one cancel out the wise ones of the other.
Is good government more likely because both citizens go to the polls, or would we be better off if only the informed citizen voted?
Wow! For all those people who kept skewering the Bush Administration for warrantless wiretaps of suspected terrorists in the United States it seems the Obama Administration is taking that ball and running with it at full speed. Their argument is that if you’re using your cell phone on public streets that you have no expectation of privacy with regard to your conversation or your location.
… the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their–or at least their cell phones’–whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that “a customer’s Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records” that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.
Further down in the article we also find this little gem:
In addition to a search warrant not being necessary, prosecutors said, because location “records provide only a very general indication of a user’s whereabouts at certain times in the past, the requested cell-site records do not implicate a Fourth Amendment privacy interest.”
The Obama administration is not alone in making this argument. U.S. District Judge William Pauley, a Clinton appointee in New York, wrote in a 2009 opinion that a defendant in a drug trafficking case, Jose Navas, “did not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in the cell phone” location. That’s because Navas only used the cell phone “on public thoroughfares en route from California to New York” and “if Navas intended to keep the cell phone’s location private, he simply could have turned it off.”
When do we have expectation of privacy? You don’t have it at the airport because the government can search you without probable cause. Local police can set up random check points and pull you over, again without probable cause, in attempting to find drunk drivers. There are municipalities that have passed no smoking ordinances preventing people from smoking in their own homes.
Enough is enough already. Leave us alone.
Read the CNet story on the federal government’s push to track your cell phone.
This is from the first round of shoveling from the 14″ or so of snow that fell in the Chicago area.
It’s been a week since Apple announced its entry in to the tablet computing space. The iPad is a very cool sleek device. But after all is said and done the iPad cannot be elevated beyond a very big slightly more powerful iPod Touch. It runs the same OS and runs the same applications. The only difference is that it is larger and has contract-free 3G. That’s it.
Apple did add the iBook Store to their mix of media distribution channels and in doing so has harmed consumers. MacMillan Publishers, Ltd. struck a deal with Apple where MacMillan books will cost consumers $15 in the iBook Store instead of $9.99 on Amazon’s Kindle. Amazon in an attempt to bring this to the bright light of day temporarily removed all MacMillan books from their store before announcing they will reluctantly continue to sell MacMillan books at the higher price. Amazon realistically can’t exclude MacMillan because they are one of the world’s largest publishers. Then the tech pundits went after Amazon.
Too many in the tech podcast and blog space are blinded by Apple’s ability to make cool and sleek devices. I guess that’s what makes it possible for them to declare Amazon’s move as anti-consumer. Usually competition brings lower prices to consumers. If, when Amazon was essentially alone in the e-book market prices were lower and when Apple decided to enter the market prices went higher, shouldn’t these same tech pundits be skewering Apple? Simply because Apple decided to sell e-books consumers now will have to pay $4 to $5 more per book. How is this good for consumers?
From all the coverage of which I’ve been listening and reading the most egregious offenders are those heard on Mac Break Weekly. Namely Leo Laporte, Andy Ihnatko, Merlin Mann and Chris Breen on Mac Break Weekly number 178. I can’t put any blame on Alex Lindsay because he wasn’t on the show this week.
I know it’s an Apple fan show but all these guys are professionals and should be able to see outside the Steve Jobs/Apple distortion field.
Listen to Mac Break Weekly number 178 and decide for yourself.
