WiredAtom

At least Nixon had some integrity when he was caught with the Water Gate incident. Now that Bush and Cheney are caught with their pants down, what will they do (again)?

US President George W Bush authorised the leak of secret intelligence to a newspaper to help defend the Iraq war, a former White House aide has said.
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… in the past the president has said he does not approve of such leaks and would sack anyone involved.

How many lies does an administration have to tell for its members to be impeached?

Excerpt direct from Slashdot:

“Facts and science collide with tribal loyalties, the Washington Post reports: ‘Scientists doing climate research for the federal government say the Bush administration has made it hard for them to speak forthrightly to the public about global warming. The result, the researchers say, is a danger that Americans are not getting the full story on how the climate is changing.’”

WTF?

While Singapore is often praised for being an economic and technology miracle in Southeast Asia, some of the decisions made by its political leaders are really dumb. I guess Singapore never pretends to be a “democratic” country anyway.

It’s hard to imagine why people keep using Microsoft products when the alternatives are obviously so much better (except for the poor souls who are locked in to the platform because their preferred software vendors, ahem, Autodesk, don’t know any better). Here’s another reason why Microsoft is really, truly, incredibly evil.

Worst yet, the U.S. government is playing into Microsoft’s hands for something that is clearly a punishment for Microsoft’s own antitrust behaviors. Double standards?

The Chinese media has been heavily covering Mayor of Taipei, Ma Ying-Jeou and his visit to the United States for the past few days. The sheer volume on the coverage of his speeches, people he met, his schedules, and… practically anything and everything about this man, has been unprecedented. If foreshadowing reveals anything of the future, this could signal the newly elected Chairman of KMT will be a serious contender for the 2008 presidential election in Taiwan.

Ever since DPP’s double blow in the past two presidential elections on KMT, Taiwan has been at its most polarizing point between different “ethnic groups” in recent memory. The political atmosphere in Taiwan has reached a point where the Pro-Blue (KMT) population of Taiwan simply can’t communicate with the Pro-Greens (DPP) and vice versa. Whenever Pro-Blue and Pro-Green issues arise among friends and family, you can literally feel the tension in the air.

While George Bush and the Republican Party in the United States are busy covering their lies about the war in Iraq, President Chen and his DPP simply live their lies out in the open with no one daring to prosecute him or members of his party — lies about scandals, money lundarying from public projects, purposely pitting one Chinese ethnic group against another, driving the Taiwanese economy to the ground… etc. I thought I’d never say this, but THANK GOODNESS China has been acting like a true world power in the matter of DPP’s thoughtless push for “formal” Taiwanese independence (yeah, like it will EVER happen). Like an adult irritated with a child’s annoying pranks, China simply yells at the little one to shut him up. The day when it stands up and takes Taiwan for a good spanking, there’s really not much anybody can or will do anything about*.

Now that I have painted a gloomy picture of Taiwan, let’s look at the silverlining… Chairman Ma (not MAO) has a pretty good grasp of world affairs and what they pertain to Taiwan as a whole (I am sure having a Ph.D from Harvar didn’t hurt). He’s not just another frog in a well who sees world affairs narrowly and carelessly. The Pro-Greens don’t like Ma because they think he’s pretentious** and has a track record of doing the “politically right” things. But hey, at least he’s not going to rock the boat and put the lives of the Taiwanese people on jeopardy against an enemy Taiwan simply can’t win fighting.

Having laughed at the Americans for having elected a dumbass president twice, now I have to laugh at my own dumbass people for putting a clown in the presidential seat two times in a row as well. But at least when an ant is run into the ground, nobody will notice, whereas when America is run into the ground, the world might explode (literally)***.

* China is a permeant member of the UN, that rules UN intervention out; US forces are too tied up with N. Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, “war” on terror and other things; Japan and S. Korea just want to watch Taiwan burn; the rest of the world would be too afraid to lose their investments in China to do anything. Sure, they will issue “statements” on how disappointed they are on China’s actions. But what is boils down to is this: there are no true friends between nations, just buiness as usual. In other words, Taiwan will be f*ucked within a week when China spanks.

** He CAN’T be more pretentious than Bush or Chaney!

*** And it has been “exploding” daily in Iraq.

I know I said I didn’t want to get into why nationalized healthcare is a better idea, but I just think privatizing healthcare and education are just stupid ideas. Corporations exist for only one true purpose — to maximize shareholders values. Any first year business school student can tell you that in his sleep. And why is the Republican party so adamant in placing the two most important public facilities in the hands of private entities whose highest priority is to bring their shareholders most money possible? Sure, some companies do have a good conscience and are responsible to the greater good of the society, but guess what, those decisions are made only after sharesholder’s values are secured, never the other way around (because I think that could be borderline illegal and is against the very purpose of a corporation’s existance. Look it up. I guarantee you that if a company’s CEO purposely chooses to do good for the society but in the process lose a lot of money when he knows the other way around can make the company great profit, he will go to jail).

Many people insist that private schools consistently perform better than public schools. Yeah, NO SHIT. That’s because private schools get to choose who they want to accept into their exclusive club. Public schools have no choice because the law mandates they accept and educate anyone and everyone who wants to learn (even ones who don’t even want to be there). So you see how unfair the scores can look for the public schools in most cases. On the flip side, there are plenty of excellent public schools all over the United States that do far better than any of the private schools you can find. How does one explain that? And how does one explain all those public schools elsewhere in the world that crank out great students who can do just as well as students from private schools? In countries like Taiwan and Japan, private schools are for losers for can’t make it in the public schools (outcasts, drop outs, trouble makers). What does that say?

Placing children’s education in the hands of profit generating machines en mass can be a pretty bad idea. Let’s just for a moment imagine if all schools in the United States are privatized. What does each pupil look to the schools? Think about it…. Dollar signs. The United States has one of the highest per-pupil expenditures in the world. Private companies schools will only be too interested in getting that child for the Federal and State money s/he is attached to, not necessarily the well-being of the child. I am sure sophisticated laws, checks-n-balances, and all sorts of things can be implemented to make sure the child is doing well, but how does that differ from a well-run public school/school district where all those checks-n-balances are already in place mandated by the law? And what about the working conditions of the teachers and staff in private schools? From what I have researched, some are worse off than the public school teachers. Remember, those teachers are employees of corporations. And corporations want to maximize each employee’s time and resources to maximize the value for… you guessed it, the investors and shareholders.

I can go on forever on the topic of education, thanks to my previous job in the education sector. But I digress.

A similar arguement goes to the public healthcare system and the welfare system. Why is it that someone has to pay so much money each month into the private healthcare industry when that money could just as well go into a public healthcare fund and have a national healthcare system, much like Taiwan, Malaysia and almost all other industrialized countries? The latest Medicare fiasco under the Bush Administration is proof that privatized public healthcare just plain sucks. Who’s going to be looking out for the well beings of the senior citizens? They are often expensive to take care of when they get sick. And if we learned anything about the private companies, that is… you got it, they want to maximize value for their investors, not the senior citizens. So they’ll do as much as they can to cut corners, deny benefits and give them the run arounds to minimize expenditure (hence increasing company value).

Sure, sometimes government can be inefficient. And often social programs are huge budget holes. But some programs are worth losing that money for… Or, a better term should be, “worth the investment for.” When citizens can’t count on their most basic needs being met (the right to be educated and the right to receive quality low cost healthcare), how can the government count on them to be productive? In the case of the United States, if its government can stop spending those billions in Iraq, Afghanistan and all those efforts trying to bully other countries into their submission, maybe a lot more scholarships can be properly funded? Maybe a lot more schools woulnd’t be failing? Maybe senior citizens won’t have to decide between food and medicine? Maybe it ought to take care of its own citizens before it is out there telling others how to run their own damn government? And just maybe the United States will be respected again?

Dreams can be so cruel.

On my last trip back to Savannah, Billy and I met up with another friend and her family for dinner. They are the only Republicans I know who are actually for a nationalized American healthcare system. But I won’t even try to go into that debate in this entry… While she and her husband were questioning the logic of why it couldn’t be done in the United States when all other industrialized (or not so industrialized) countries have implemented it so successfully, they brought up the issue of health insurance frauds — not by consumers, but by the doctors!

So here’s the story as she explained it…

My friend’s insurance covers chiropractics for her back pain. So both her and her husband went to see a really good chiropractor in Savannah. But soon they figured out the guy was making appointments with them for unnecessary visits (it got pretty suspicious when the chiropractor called on Christmas eve to make an appointment for the next day). So it turned out that the chiropractor was trying to max out both of their insurance accounts allowable for each patient in that specific care coverage. He got so greedy that he even asked for their daughter’s insurance information!!

This is how the private insurance industry works in the United States as I understand it: For each covered plan, each person has a maximum allowable coverage for each type of care. For example, a particular plan may cover you for ER visits for up to $20,000 each year, after which amount you are liable to pay for the costs incurred yourself. Now just imagine a dollar value assigned to everything you’d ever need to visit a doctor for — flu shots, hospital overnight stays, surgeries, X-rays, MRI scans, medicine… etc. In other words, for an unethical doctor, he only sees each patient as a dollar sign walking in the front door of his clinic.

While the majority of doctors are probably good people, insurance frauds like what my friend’s family experienced happens often enough that now there’s a high premium offered by most health insurance companies. And now I understand those premiums are not necessarily incurred by unjust lawsuits from patients, high medical bills or even patient frauds. But most likely, it’s due to fradulent practices of unethical doctors. Just imagine how much money an insurance company could lose if one unethical doctor goes unnoticed/unpunished for 10 years with a solid patient base?

Health insurance fraud probably hapens quite frequently because in my friend’s case, they have gone through two chiropractors with exactly the same issue. And just recently, we also experienced the same thing ourselves when Grace visited our dentist.

As soon as the dentist found no cavities in Grace’s teeth, she had to come up with something to max out Grace’s insurance account. So she chose the most expensive procedure allowed under our plan, which was a deep cleaning. Granted a deep cleaning has long been overdue for Grace, but the amount to which the dentist charged the insurance company was suspicious enough to warrant a call from Grace to the insurance company. And Grace found out that the dentist was WAY overcharging Grace as well as the insurance company on the procedure (over $1500 total, $500 out of which is not covered by the insurance!). For $1500, a patient can have 4 deep cleanings done at other dental offices (as Grace confirmed by having called several dental offices to varify the prices).

It’s pretty disgusting to get the feeling that your doctor doesn’t see you as a patient but more like a walking dollar sign. If insurance companies have to keep charging customers for higher premiums to cover their losses to the doctors, ultimately United States will have one of the least insured population eligible for healthcare. And that’d be a pretty sick population.

What?

Hey… don’t look at me. Blame your elected officials. Write a letter to your congressman or something…

It’s a surprising twist that nobody talks about, even the nosey media…

The most important reason is a government policy that, amazingly enough, seems almost intended to undercut the benefits of efficient cars. In 1978, Congress set a minimum corporate average fuel economy, known as CAFE, for all carmakers. Today, the minimum average for cars is 27.5 miles a gallon. (For SUVs and other light trucks, it is 21.6.)

You can guess what this means for hybrids. Each one becomes a free pass for its manufacturer to sell a few extra gas guzzlers. For now, this is less true for Toyota’s cars, because they’re above the mileage requirement. But Toyota’s trucks and the American automakers are right near the limits. So every Toyota Highlander hybrid SUV begets a hulking Lexus SUV, and every Ford Escape–the hybrid SUV that Kermit the Frog hawked during the Super Bowl–makes room for a Lincoln Navigator, which gets all of 12 miles a gallon. Instead of simply saving gas when you buy a hybrid, you’re giving somebody else the right to use it.

The hybrid, then, is just about the perfect example of what’s wrong with our energy policy. It’s a Band-Aid that does a lot less to help the Earth than we like to tell ourselves. When Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed conservation as “a sign of personal virtue” a few years back, a lot of environmentalists were disgusted. But that, sadly, is what a lot of well-meaning hybrid owners are driving: an expensive symbol that they’re worried about our planet, rather than a true solution.

Tricky tricksters…

From NPR:

All Things Considered, February 8, 2006 · The Bush administration has canceled funding for the most ambitious study of children’s health ever designed — prompting outrage among scientists and public health officials. The study was to investigate the causes of widespread obesity and asthma, among other childrens’ health problems.

Hmm.. So, tax cuts for his friend was a go. Invading Iraq costing American people billions was a go. But Jesus Christ, what does America need healthy children for!?

The full audio clip is available at NPR.

I came across this article today and was pretty disturbed after reading it…

“Last week, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing on the ‘Broadcast Flag’ and ‘Audio Flag,’ a set of proposals by the MPAA and RIAA that would stifle innovation by giving content holders a virtual veto over new technologies and existing user rights,” iPaqAction.org writes. “But Senator Stevens, the 82-year old committee chairman from Alaska, surprised the audience by announcing that his daughter had bought him an iPod, and suddenly Stevens had a much greater understanding of the many ways innovative technology can create choice for consumers. Content industry representatives at the hearing found themselves answering much tougher questions than they typically receive.”

This is so wrong on so many levels. First of all, how does a fricking 82-year-old living fossil get to become committee chairman of a technological debate when he hasn’t even used the technology himself? Has this been how policies have been made in the history of this nation? Someone who has not used the technology and doesn’t understand its underpinning affects to the rights of both the consumers and corporate entities get to call the shots in this debate. They are all just making all this shit up as they go like that clueless company I was consulting with? This is absolute chaos from a consumer’s standpoint. These guys are making policies left and right without even understanding even the tiniest bit on how they will affect everything else. Makes me wonder what kind of homework the lawmakers did before they passed DMCA of 1998.

God I can’t tolerate idiotic lawmakers.

via [MacDailyNews]

If I woke up early enough, I could see street sweepers quietly sweeping the streets of Taiwan when I was younger. They quietly collected all the garbage from the day before and dutifully tidied them into trash liners. Maybe it was because no one else wanted that kind of job, or maybe it was really tough work, the sweepers were almost exclusively elderly women or retired soldiers from the Chiang Kai-shek era. And that’s been going on for a long time.

Fast forward to my arrival to the United States. I started to notice that nobody actually sweeps in their homes in America — they vacuum. In fact, it was pretty tough to find brooms at Walmart. But cheap vacuums were everywhere. As for the outside yard work, Americans use these blowers to blow the leaves around. Is that laziness or ingenius at work? Is it that much more efficient to use gasoline to blow the leaves, dusts and garbage all the while generating polution? But then I realized that some people simply blow the trash into their neighbors’ yards. So the trash actually never gets picked up… because the next time the neighbor’s out cleaning his yard, he’s going to blow them right back!

On the industrial side, Americans have invented these huge street sweeping machines to help clean the never ending streets of America. In fact, these machines are so big and mean, if your car is ever in the way of it cleaning, you get a ticket (in humble Savannah, GA, a ticket of that sort is worth about $12; but in NYC, I think it was $65 or something rediculous like that). But the thing is, these damn machines don’t actually clean the streets either. All they do is sweeping trash from one corner of the street to the next. And a lot of times they are cleaning the streets when the traffic is the worst. Nothing’s more frustrating than to be driving behind one of those monsters. But again, I question these machines’ efficiency and usefulness. Is it really that much cheaper to purchase hordes these expensive machines, and to maintain and insure them, and then to have to hire someone and train that person to do the street cleaning? Is that an attempt to glorify what the society deems a “low paying” job (by driving a machine like that, they become “operators”, not street sweepers anymore)? Or maybe the government just doesn’t want to have to deal with the labors and the unions?

There’s probably more politics and “corporate economics” behind all this than meets the eye. But it sure makes America look all advanced and futuristic having monster machines sweeping the streets and men with blowing devices blasting dirt and leaves everywhere. Long live Land of the “Free“.

It really pisses me off to see monthly charges on my bank account when the balance falls under a certain amount that my bank sets. I am letting them to use MY money to loan to other people for a much higher interest. And yet THEY want to charge ME money for letting them having MY money? Crooks!

And I love how the poorer you are in America, the more happliy the banks are willling to rob from you, legally. See, in the United States, most banks place a set of restrictions on most checking and savings accounts. Some accounts limit how many checks you can write, other limit how many visits you can have at the counter. Yet others charge you a “monthly maintenance fee” for letting your overall account balance dip under a set amount (varies from 500 to $1500 depending on the bank).

It’s precisely because I am f*cking poor and that’s why I can’t consistently keep a strong balance, but somehow the bank has to labor over the fact that I have no money and charges me a “maintenance fee”?! What the f*ck is there to maintain a broke man’s checking account? Seriously?! While they are charging me for having too little money in the checking account, “premium” accounts, where people have tens of thousands of dollars, get this, receive free checking with no penalties. If you asked me, it takes more effort to manage and monitor THOSE accounts than someone who’s life depends on the social service. It should be the other way around! Crooks.

And what’s the deal with all the limitations on check writing that certain banks impose? Why do they care if I wrote more than 8 checks a month? Sure, the bank has to process them and post them. But isn’t that the bank’s job? And how come they are loaning money out to people anywhere at 5% to 20% depending on the terms, but yet they will only allow you to make a meager interest of far less than 3% in most cases — across ALL banks!?

And don’t even get me started on ATM fees and outbound and inbound service charges! Why does MY bank charge me $1.50 if I use someone else’s ATM machine? It’s bad enough that THEIR bank already charges me $1.50! And then how come they charge me for incoming wires as well as outgoing wires? Shouldn’t the bank be happy that I am getting money INTO the account? Hello? The worst part is, it costs $10 to recieve money via wire. TEN WHOLD DOLLARS!! WTF?! In Taiwan, a wire transfer costs NT700 (roughly $2) to send and nothing to receive! ARGH! CROOKS!.

All of these things, of course, are legal under current U.S. banking laws. Just like Howard Hughs once said of the U.S. Senators, “I don’t want to bribe them. I want to do it legally — I want to own them.” Banks pretty much own the United States Senators and Congressmen (as do the major corporations). Laws are passed in favor of those corporate entities and the people who run them, not in favor of the little guys who are struggling to make ends meet. And THAT, friends, is what’s wrong with America today. When lobbyists and corporate executives can call the lawmakers’ private numbers in the middle of the night to sneak a provision into a bill while ordinary citizens can’t even get an appointment to meet their aids.

Big, socially unconcious corporations suck. But worse are the lawmakers who are had by the balls of those corporations. Voting in most countries these days seem to have lost its meaning. Everything’s bought with money and corporate favors. And nothing is being done to address them (this is even more visible in Taiwan where the president is involved in many publicly known and visible scandals but yet it’s clear that he’s not going to get in trouble for them).

God, I hate banks.