Ketchup Is A Vegetable

In the USA, any woman who once has a Caesarean birth automatically gets a Caesarean the next time she has a baby. That’s because it has been declared by the medical establishment to the best i.e. safest way to do it, even though it is much more expensive, and not a great choice for the mother, and often not even necessary.

There is a hospital in New Mexico that does not routinely do Caesareans second time around, and in fact has the lowest Caesarean rate in the country. The hospital is successful because it uses midwives, it has doctors close at hand at all times, and it does not have a profit motive for doing Caesarean births.

The hospital serves Native American communities (mostly Navajo and Hopi) and it is entirely funded by the federal government. It’s a single payer system, and it works to hold down the cost of services while maximizing the benefits to the patients. You can read all about it in the NYT.

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From the New York Post, no less:

The video that unleashed a firestorm of criticism on the activist group ACORN was a “heavily edited” splice job that only made it appear as though the organization’s workers were advising a pimp and prostitute on how to get a mortgage, sources said yesterday.

The findings by the Brooklyn DA, following a 5½-month probe into the video, secretly recorded by conservative provocateurs James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, means that no charges will be filed.

Many of the seemingly crime-encouraging answers were taken out of context so as to appear more sinister, sources said.

See Speak Truth to Morons:  Surprise! Surprise! ACORN Framed.  December 9, 2009

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The Arizona legislature has a novel plan to forestall home foreclosures. They want to allow foreclosed homeowners to stay in the house for an additional year as renters. Not a bad idea, but it has its faults.

First, we should point out that Arizona is home to more foreclosed houses than almost anyplace but Las Vegas. It is worth pointing out that underwater housing and foreclosures are problems tied to poor personal decisions, and the people who made those decisions are now demanding that someone bail them out. Don’t get me wrong. I think one of the only ways out of this mess is to prop those people up, but I also bet that they will vote for some right wing teabagger nut this year, not for the party that has done the most to bail them out… the Democratic Party.

Now lets consider the consequences of allowing the displaced to stay in place as renters. What this means is that people will be paying money to the bank for a year without getting any credit for the payments. So the debt will continue on the bank’s books, even though the borrower is still making some form of payment to the bank. This looks like a politician’s trick to me. Get the masses past the election without being thrown out of the house and without squeezing the mortgage holders. Everyone is happy all around.

Here is a better plan. Pass a moratorium on foreclosures. Nothing will force the mortgage boys to the table faster. They want to foreclose because it’s the only way they know to get the junk off their books. The fact that it will clog the market with junk is of no consequence to them. Neither is the fact that it will leave many people broke and homeless. Put an end to foreclosures indefinitely and demand that mortgage companies develop a plan for working out each bad loan. You make the people happy and actually force the lenders to sit down and talk rationally with the borrowers. That is a much better result.

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National Journal is one of those smug inside-the-beltway rags that carries on the corporate right wing banner for official Washington. They asked me (via email) to take a survey on the promise that I would be contributing to the public debate. The survey turned out to be a marketing survey aimed at figuring out what makes NJ so fucked up.

At the end of the survey, they ask for party affiliation. Are you a member of the Democrat Party or the Republican Party? Now we know why they are so fucked up.

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