FoleyFunctional

From the books and articles I’ve read I’m very convinced that more money does not equal higher quality. Here is an article in the New York Times with some good pointers that look at both sides of the arguments as well as provides the papers that back up the commentary.

"In sum, the evidence for regional variations in the United States and in other countries is strong, and every study indicates huge levels of inefficiency in health-care spending."

optical amplifier

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/is-more-care-better-care/?hp

…"Medicare beneficiaries in higher spending regions are hospitalized more frequently, are referred to specialists more often and have a much smaller proportion of their visits to primary care physicians.”"

Which is why every doctor wants to be a specialist….charge more $, cost the health care industry more $…screw over family doctor, who should be the first line of defense in health care! Something along those lines…

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I was at work today, browsing the web (what else) and I went to CNN.com. On the front page were two headlines. One was describing the the photo shoot of Air Force One over New York City. The other, of the semi-nude pictures of Miss California. Each time they used the word pictures, they substituted with pix.

I don’t have the exact wording, since it’s not on CNN.com anymore, but it was something like "$328,835 pix…." or "Miss California pix….".

Who’s the editor? Some pimple faced 14 year old? Or are you trying to insult your audience? Or maybe their target audience is between the age of 13 – 18. I can not respect a major news organization that will use the word pix.

I have plenty of other news sources to go to, where I don’t feel dumber when I leave the site.

I’ve bitched about their online articles in the past, and I’m finally so fed up I’m going to stop going there.

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I was browsing around the web and ran into this article on Obama revitalizing the US. in it he says

"Obama said a change he looks forward to "is once again seeing our best and our brightest commit themselves to making things – engineers, scientists, innovators" and not simply go to Wall Street, lured by huge salaries."

If you’re going to make Wall Street look like the bad guy, don’t forget the medical industry either.

 

Even a nurse makes as much as I do. A nurse with a masters degree (i.e. CRNA), almost twice the salary! Why would I make things, when as doctor/nurse I can just take my pay check and buy it from India?

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I listened to an NPR talk show one day while I was driving. It was talking about the Proposition 8 being passed in California (a vote on banning gay marriage). People blame the black population on passing the ban because 70% of the black population voted for the ban. The talk show host went on to describe the percentage of white, and hispanic voters that voted for the ban. They failed to mention the Asian American vote. I thought that was a bit odd because I know that Asian Americans make up a large population of California. I went off to do some research

It turns out, Asian Americans make up 12.3% of the California population, whilst blacks are just 6.2% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California#Population)

Asian Americans make up 6% of the vote in California. Blacks make up 6% also (http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/jtf/JTF_LatinoVotersJTF.pdf)

I remember from the talk show, Hispanics and Blacks were more likely to vote for the ban. I had to do my own research to show that 57% of Asian Americans were more likely to vote against it (http://newsroom.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display.cgi?id=1934)

From this site (http://cagaymarriage.blogspot.com/2008/10/survey-asian-americans-overwhelmingly.html) a member of the NAAS survey team says “…Asian-Americans tend to be more sensitive than other Americans to laws that exclude certain groups…”.

I don’t think it was responsible for the NPR talk show host to not even mention briefly the Asian American vote for Proposition 8. At least give the Asian American population credit for voting against the ban. It would have taken 5 seconds of radio talk time. I can understand in other markets where the Asian American population vote is minute that it may not be worth mentioning (though I think no matter what, it should be mentioned!). That seems to be the stand point of a lot of politicians and decision makers – Asian American voice is small and their opinions can be excluded.

But when the weight of the Asian American vote is the same as blacks, there is no excuse for that.

The Asian American voting survey is drawn from the National Asian American Survey (коли под наемhttp://www.naasurvey.com/) and the largest scientific poll of Asian-Americans ever done. A copy and paste about the survey:

Beyond the pattern of underrepresentation in political voice and representation, it is
notoriously difficult to establish firm facts about which Asian Americans vote, why they vote, who they vote for, and whether the Asian American vote is a partisan or a swing  vote.  This is primarily due to a lack of good data on Asian American political behavior.
A typical pre-election survey or exit poll will contain only a handful of Asian Americans, is biased toward those who are more educated, well-off, US-born, English proficient, and otherwise assimilated into life in the U.S.  Even academic, media polls, and exit polls that explicitly survey Asian Americans are limited because they typically focus on just one or several cities, or they disproportionately sample particular ethnic origin groups, or because interviews are only done in English or a limited number of Asian languages.
The 2008 National Asian American Survey aims to fill this important gap in our
understanding of this potentially rising force in the American electorate

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Now, I’m not a huge McCain fan, but I sympathize with him. McCain as of 9PM has more populate vote than Obama, but trails him in the electoral vote by 1/3rd. I think Gore should have won in 2000 when he got more popular vote. If McCain gets more popular vote than Obama but trails in electoral vote…well…*sigh* I think the election needs reform!

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I don’t usually talk about touchy subject, but I will go out on a whim. I was listening to NPR, and they interviewed a 76 year old black  female. She told the interviewer she voted for Obama because he’s black, and went on to say that black people do not have opportunities in life to become successful.   She later on was asked if she thinks racism will ever end in the US, and she replied no, people will always hate and discriminate. It’s easy to put blame in others and not see the faults in ourselves. But lady, when you vote for Barack Obama because he’s black, that is racism. And because of people like you, yes, racism will never die.

In my years through college, I have witness many opportunities given solely to black people, and minorities in the form of scholarships strictly for minorities (some even excluded Asians, because in engineering, Asians are not minority), or educational programs strictly for minorities. Government, educational institutions and corporates reach out to under served minorities.

Even without such programs, I am a firm believe that in the United States, everyone has the opportunity to become successful one way or another. You may not be sitting on the executive board of a Fortune 500 company, but you for damn sure make enough money to raise a family and live very comfortably. You can do this without breaking laws, backstabbing people, or any other unethical or immoral actions.

The first generation in my family proved you do not need a formal education to succeed. Only 3 of the 14 of my aunts and uncles that came move to the US from China received a college degree. I would say, none spoke English either. Specifically neither of my parents graduated high school. Yet we are all doing well.

The second generation in my family proved that you do not need to come from a wealthy or educated family to attend college. Of the 8 children who are > 18 years old and raised in the US, 8 have a college education. 4 have a masters degree. We are all doing well.

Before you look at others for a reason why you are not doing well, maybe you should look at yourself first.

I do believe Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have broken a lot of barriers that are not there for white males in the political world. I do believe that once you reach a certain level, particularly in upper management of companies, the “Good Ol Boys” have a large say on who gets on board. However, to say that opportunities do not exist, is complete BS.

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I voted today. If it wasn’t for Sarah Palin, I would have had a hard time deciding who to vote for. I know I’m not the only one who feels that way. IMHO, McCain may have shot himself in his foot.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/education/01lunch.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Excerpt:

San Francisco school officials are looking at ways to encourage more poor students to accept government-financed meals, including the possibility of introducing cashless cafeterias where all students are offered the same food choices and use debit cards or punch in codes on a keypad so that all students check out at the cashier in the same manner.

Only 37 percent of eligible high school students citywide take advantage of the subsidized meal program. But the stigma of accepting a government lunch, while others are paying for food from a different menu, is not unique to San Francisco

“I know kids need to eat but they don’t want to be identified with free food,” said Kenneth Block, a track coach and security guard who oversees the lunch shift at Balboa High.

At Balboa High and other schools, students and officials say, one group has fewer problems accepting free food: foreign-born students. At noon one day at Balboa, bubbly teenagers from Thailand, India, Myanmar and Hong Kong (as well as a table of girls who identified themselves as “ABC’s,” or American-Born Chinese) ate chicken teriyaki in the cafeteria and said they appreciated the free lunch.

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I had free or reduced lunch my entire 12 years of public school. We would enter a pin number and off we go. I would even prepay for the week when I had reduced lunch so I don’t have to carry money around – just enter my pin. In high school, we had the ‘a la carte’ lines. Those lines were typically short, and I only ventured over there if I was running short on time.

If schools are truly concerned they should stop serving those food lines. They should stop having vending machines too. The profits from these extra sources of food go back into the school. It’s bullshit that a school would pay money to upgrade their system, when the root of the problem stems from them serving food/snacks that they profit from. They should be forced to serve only government food. The administrators admit that the ‘a la carte’ items are less nutritious, yet the schools still serve them. Why would a school maintain a program that serves less nutritious food that also creates a social rift amongst the student population? Is it because the profits go back to the school? Hmm…money, the root of all evil.

Very few of my friends throughout public school were foreign born and most of us ate the school lunch, subsidized or not. Maybe it’s because we were taught the value of money. With the average family  having a negative savings rate, it’s no wonder that these stuck up kids would rather starve than eat lowly food meant for the poor.

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