Tag Archives: favorite

The CARD Act Has Saved Us $12 Billion Per Year

by celemaiieftinebileteavion Posted on January 9, 2016

Mother Jones

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Who do credit card companies make the most money from? Answer: the poor, by far, because they rack up the highest fees and the highest interest expense. Card issuers also make some money on the rich, because they buy a lot of stuff. This generates interchange fees (usually 2-3 percent of the amount charged) that exceed the cost the reward points they dole out to attract these customers.

It’s the customers in the middle who cost them. They don’t buy enough stuff to generate lots interchange fees, but they aren’t poor enough to get themselves stuck with lots of late fees and interest charges. The chart below shows this. Folks with FICO scores between 660 and 730 (representing about a third of all customers) are net losses for credit card companies.

This comes from a paper written last year about the effect of the CARD Act, a law passed in 2009 that modestly regulated the credit card industry. The authors’ conclusion: “The CARD Act successfully reduced borrowing costs, in particular for borrowers with the lowest FICO scores. We find no evidence for offsetting increases in other costs or a decline in credit volume.” All in all, the CARD Act saved consumers—mostly lower-income consumers—about $12 billion per year. For much more, see today’s Harold Pollack interview with one of the authors here.

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The CARD Act Has Saved Us $12 Billion Per Year

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Friday Cat Blogging – 8 January 2016

by StantonVerdon Posted on January 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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The holidays just fly by, don’t they? At least, that’s what we all say after they’re over. This time, though, the inconvenient timing of Christmas means that you never saw the furballs in action on Christmas morning. As usual, the presents we bought them were dirt cheap, but they nonetheless enjoyed them far more than the humans did. The picture below is relatively early in the morning, when the cat presents were still in tolerably good shape. An hour later it was just a mountain of scraps.

By the way, Hopper here is the reason we didn’t have a Christmas tree this year. It would have been a disaster. Maybe next year.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 8 January 2016

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Marshall Crenshaw Plays Superior Guitar Pop

by ElvaGibbsta Posted on August 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Marshall Crenshaw
#392: The EP Collection
Red River Entertainment

A worthy heir to Buddy Holly (who he portrayed in the biopic La Bamba) and John Lennon (who he played in a production of Beatlemania), Michigan-bred, New York-based Marshall Crenshaw has made superior guitar pop for more than three decades. Folks with long memories will recall such early faves as “Someday, Someway” and “Favorite Waste of Time,” also recorded by Bette Midler. Compiling highlights from six recent EPs, #392 showcases Crenshaw’s gift for blending razor-sharp melodies and wistful vocals that have just enough grit to avoid any suggestion of cheap sentiment. This 14-track set also offers some savvy covers, including a lovely, un-ironic take on the Carpenters’ “Close to You” and a crackling, previously unreleased version of the Everly Brothers’ “Man with Money.” If you’re new to Crenshaw’s work, consider yourself lucky: A great back catalog awaits.

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Marshall Crenshaw Plays Superior Guitar Pop

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My $500 Pill Revealed

by Jarred2039 Posted on July 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Have you ever wondered what a $500 pill looks like? Well, here’s your answer: it looks like pretty much any other pill.

Anyway, I’m supposed to take this for 21 days, then a week off, then another 21 days, etc. This will last a few months before we know if it’s working. If it does work, then I’ll be taking it forever (I think). So that’s $126,000 per year to keep Kevin alive. Of course, I pay only a fraction of that thanks to having excellent health insurance, and I’m sure that even Kaiser pays nowhere near that list price. Maybe half that, or a third. Still, pretty expensive!

Luckily I’m not on Obamacare. From what I hear, my case would have gone straight to a death panel, which almost certainly would have decided that my societal worth didn’t measure up to the cost of the treatment. And who could argue? I mean, blogging? Seriously?

POSTSCRIPT: I forgot to mention something in my previous health update: I feel great. Not 100 percent, mind you, but pretty good. My stomach is in fine fettle (in fact, I’m overeating these days), I’m sleeping well, and my energy level has recovered almost to normal. The long-term prognosis for the multiple myeloma is obviously still uncertain, and that’s an unhappy thing, but in the meantime at least I feel good for the first time in eight months!

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My $500 Pill Revealed

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Friday Cat Blogging – May 15 2015

by RogerToftfsj Posted on May 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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With Kevin continuing to concentrate on his (ever improving!) health, over the past week we’ve hosted guest blog posts from all-stars like Ruy Teixeira, Aaron Carroll, and Ana Marie Cox. But now that it’s Friday, it’s time for the humans to step aside for a real star.

It’s time to welcome Phelps.

Phelps linked up with MoJo senior editor Michael Mechanic around the time of the 2008 Beijing summer Olympics. While he’s not as much of a swimmer as his namesake, one of his favorite spots in his Oakland home is a perch near in the sink, where he can swat his paws through water. Mike reports that Phelps loves spending time nearby while he plays music (“maybe because my fiddling sounds like a cat”) and outside, where this “neighborhood tough guy” can face down cats, birds, and dogs.

From his front porch, Mike was witness to one such interaction when a dog got the best of Phelps and chased him up a tree. The incident spurred Mike to compose a little ditty (“Dog Treed a Cat”). Another tabby-inspired tune is “Phelps’s Favorite.”

And today, Phelps, you’re my favorite.

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Friday Cat Blogging – May 15 2015

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John Coltrane for Experts

by GiselleBatson Posted on March 9, 2015

Mother Jones

The John Coltrane Quintet Featuring Eric Dolphy
So Many Things: The European Tour 1961
Acrobat
So many “things” indeed! This intriguing four-disc collection of concert performances from November 1961 features six different renditions of the standard “My Favorite Things, each running 20 to 29 minutes, along with more compact versions of “Blue Train,” “I Want to Talk About You.” and other Coltrane favorites. These previously bootlegged concerts were taken from radio broadcasts and suffer slightly from thin sound, but are more than listenable. If So Many Things isn’t for beginners, it’s great extra-credit listening: With multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy briefly in the lineup, Coltrane was pushing his tenor and soprano sax chops into new territory, leaving behind traditional melodies and song structures in a restless search for fresh ideas and approaches—a quest he would continue until his death in 1967. The harsher extremes of his final years are yet to be reached, and there’s a mesmerizing, meditative quality to the music throughout that’s dreamy, yet subtly urgent.

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John Coltrane for Experts

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Opposition to Obamacare Appears To Be Shrinking as Problems Get Resolved

by duhhumavug Posted on March 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll is out, and Greg Sargent summarizes the highlights: “Views of the ACA remain unfavorable, but the gap is narrowing…..Support for repeal continues to shrink….Crucially, a majority, 53 percent, say they are tired about hearing about the law and want to move on to other issues….Most of the ACA’s individual provisions are wildly popular.”

There’s one other interesting note from the latest poll, along with one frustrating note. First the interesting note. On Monday I mentioned that views of Obamacare had become dramatically less favorable among the uninsured. Apparently that was short-lived. Here’s the latest:

This suggests that the main reason for the blip was Obamacare’s well-publicized rollout problems. Once those got addressed, and people were able to sign up without too much hassle, opinions turned back around.

And now for the frustrating note. I’ve mentioned several times before that a simple approval/disapproval question about Obamacare is misleading. The problem is that there’s a fair chunk of the population that disapproves of Obamacare not because it’s a government takeover of health care, but because it doesn’t go far enough. These are people who are perfectly happy with the idea of national healthcare, but want Obamacare to do more. This is obviously not part of the standard conservative critique that we automatically think of whenever we hear about “disapproval” of Obamacare.

This month, Kaiser asked about this in more detail than before. Among those who disapprove, they asked why they disapproved. Here’s what they got:

So close! The bottom two answers are clearly right-wing concerns. But the first one is mixed. “Cost concerns” is split between people who think the subsidies are too low (left-wing criticism) and those who think it’s a budget buster (right-wing criticism). Those are very different things. This was a great opportunity to really get a read on how much right-wing opposition there really is to Obamacare, but it doesn’t quite do it. Maybe next time.

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Opposition to Obamacare Appears To Be Shrinking as Problems Get Resolved

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Administration Announces Yet Another Obamacare Extension

by Severynjg5 Posted on March 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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This is about the least surprising announcement of the week:

The Obama administration has decided to give extra time to Americans who say that they are unable to enroll in health-care plans through the federal insurance marketplace by the March 31 deadline.

Federal officials confirmed Tuesday evening that all consumers who have begun to apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov, but who do not finish by Monday, will have until about mid-April to ask for an extension. Under the new rules, people will be able to qualify for an extension by checking a blue box on HealthCare.gov to indicate that they tried to enroll before the deadline. This method will rely on an honor system; the government will not try to determine whether the person is telling the truth.

I suppose conservatives are going to throw their usual fit over this, but it’s neither unexpected nor very serious. Unlike the renewal delay and the employer mandate delay, which are both calculatedly political and of long duration, this one is merely an attempt to allow as many people as possible to enroll. It’s pretty justifiable, and it only extends the deadline by a few weeks. Nothing to get hot and bothered about.

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Administration Announces Yet Another Obamacare Extension

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Paul Ryan is the Odds-On Favorite to Win the Republican Nomination in 2016

by siteforme Posted on February 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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There’s been a lot of blathering about who the front runner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination is, and so far I’ve resisted taking part. But I guess I’m kind of curious: Is there much of a case to be made for anyone other than Paul Ryan?

On the substantive side, Ryan sure seems like he’s setting himself up for a run. There’s his steady series of “unheralded” anti-poverty outreach trips that always manage to be just heralded enough to get sympathetic press coverage. He brokered a budget deal with Patty Murray that was businesslike and low-drama but didn’t alienate the tea party crowd too badly. Today, in a hearing about the CBO’s report on Obamacare, he acknowledged that the report didn’t say that employers would be cutting jobs—points for intellectual honesty!—while also calling Obamacare a “poverty trap”—points for demagoguery! This is all stuff that seems very delicately calculated to stay in the good graces of the tea party base while building up plenty of policy substance cred that will keep him attractive to moderate voters.

On the flip side, who are his big competitors? Chris Christie is toast. Marco Rubio is inexperienced to begin with, and then muffed his chance for statesmanlike glory when he staked his reputation on immigration reform and came up empty. Jeb Bush can’t even get his mother’s endorsement. Scott Walker is getting buzz, but he strikes me as having too much baggage. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are novelty candidates, not to be taken seriously. And although I used to think Bobby Jindal might have a chance, he’s had a rough past couple of years.

Maybe I’m dismissing all these guys a little too glibly. Walker and Bush are certainly serious possibilities. And I admit that Ryan doesn’t always give off a vibe that says he’s running for president. And of course, we’re still a couple of years away from 2016, anything can happen, blah blah blah.

Still, ol’ blue eyes sure looks like the favorite to me right now. Anyone want to make a case for one of the others?

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Paul Ryan is the Odds-On Favorite to Win the Republican Nomination in 2016

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