Read All About It in the Sunday Papers-April 5, 2009

LEAD STORY-BOSTON GLOBE: Bush Steered Investors Involuntarily into Risky Funds With Predictably Disastrous Results

There comes a point where you have you ask yourself, as Keith Olbermann has, whether the Bush Administration deliberately set out to destroy the country. There’s almost no other explanation for stories like this.

Shortly before the first signs of the stock market collapse, the Bush administration made a crucial decision that has propelled an estimated one to two million workers into stock-heavy retirement funds.

Many of the funds in which workers were automatically enrolled dropped more than 25 percent last year, while a more conservative investment strategy rejected by the Bush administration would have resulted in a gain of 4.7 percent.

The administration’s decisions came in response to a congressional mandate to encourage more workers to participate in company-sponsored retirement savings plans. The Bush administration came up with a rule that enabled businesses to automatically enroll their workers in tax-free 401(k) retirement plans.

If the workers failed to specify how they wanted their money invested, the company would be required by law to place their retirement money in investment funds that, for the most part, relied heavily on stocks. The administration specifically rejected calls for a more conservative investment option.

Read the entire excellent article by Michael Kranish, especially the response by the Bush Administration Undersecretary of Labor who concocted this monstrosity, and try not to let your blood boil.

BTW, a big El Somnambulo Tip of the Sombrero to the Boston Globe editors for not using the hed: NYTimes to Globe: Drop Dead. The Times, which owns the Globe, is using strongarm tactics to wring even more concessions from already tapped-out workers. 

Washington Post: Afghan Law Pits Tradition vs. Progress?

A nuanced article about the new law that appears to codify female subjugation to the husband. The law still sucks, but you’ll learn a lot about the societal/cultural pulls and tugs that led to it.

Miami Herald: The Pill Mills of Broward County

An incredible story by Scott Hiassen about so-called pain clinics dispensing millions of pills to people who drive to south Florida from all over the country. DEA officers can only watch in disbelief:

”Out of State Patients Welcome,” blares a recent ad for A1 Pain in Fort Lauderdale. ”No Wait for Walk-Ins,” another clinic’s ad says. One doctor offers a $25 gasoline coupon to the weary, pain-afflicted traveler.

And the travelers come — by the thousands, narcotics investigators say, from Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Massachusetts and other states. Prospective pill buyers sometimes camp outside clinics overnight, waiting for the doors to open, said Hollywood police Capt. Allen Siegel, director of a South Broward narcotics task force.

”Broward County has become the Colombia for pharmaceutically diverted drugs,” Siegel said. “We’re supplying everywhere.”

The number of pain clinics in South Florida has ballooned from 60 to 150 in just the past year, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimates. Broward alone has 89 clinics, Siegel said.

Pain management with narcotics is recognized as a legitimate medical practice to quell chronic pain for those with injuries or conditions like arthritis. But investigators and health advocates say many of these clinics are merely pill mills where doctors feed narcotics to 65 patients a day or more.

”This medicine is about profit-making,” said Mark Trouville, special agent in charge of the DEA’s Miami office. “I hate to call them doctors. These people are just out to make money.”

A single physician can dispense hundreds of thousands of pills. In the last six months of 2008, Trouville said, just 45 South Florida doctors dispensed nearly nine million pills of oxycodone — a favorite among drug addicts and traffickers.

Experts blame these clinics for a startling rise in prescription-drug overdose deaths in Florida, including a 107 percent jump in oxycodone deaths in two years.

”The rate [of overdoses] is just incredible,” said George Hime, assistant director of toxicology for the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office. “It is the new epidemic of drug abuse.”

Yet, regulators and police can’t control the problem — handcuffed, they say, by tepid Florida laws that allow these clinics to open in-house pharmacies and sell drugs directly to clients walking in off the street, even from far-away states.

”We are source-supplying many other states. This is literally embarrassing,” Sgt. Lisa McElhaney of the Broward Sheriff’s Office told a recent meeting of a county drug task force. “The system has enabled this.”

This is about as much of an excerpt that ‘bulo can provide, considering fair use. The article is lengthy but will draw you in right away. Highly-recommended.

New York Times: Trying to Teach Empathy to Spoiled Rich Junior High Kids

The Beast Who Slumbers’ opinion? Without 6 years at a Quaker school already under their belts, it ain’t happenin’. Still the educators on this board might have a different opinion. Read the article, and share your opinions. ‘Bulo promises to be ‘nothing if not empathetic’. Warning: ‘Bulo did not attend Quaker school.

San Francisco Chronicle: Electric Car Industry Thrives in…India. Seriously.

While the bodacious Tata Nano (be honest, you wouldn’t have passed up such a cheap joke either) is  both the world’s cheapest car and a gas-guzzler :

…India’s other automotive innovation – the Reva-i – has quietly become the world’s best-selling electric car, with support from two Northern California firms.

The Maini Group, the Bangalore company that manufactures the car, used $20 million in seed money from three venture capital firms, including Menlo Park’s Draper Fisher Jurveston, and motor-control devices from Livermore’s Curtis Instruments to produce the nearly silent, plug-in vehicle.

“It was a collaborate effort,” said Chetan Maini, the company’s chief technology officer.

The Reva-i is not yet available in the United States. Like many European models, strict safety and testing regulations make the price of entering the U.S. market prohibitively expensive. But once it meets U.S. standards, it would cost much less than GM’s Volt, the highly anticipated electric-gas vehicle scheduled to hit showrooms next year at between $30,000 and $40,000, and the $57,400 Tesla Model S all electric four-door sedan expected to be ready by 2012.

The Banglalore company hopes its newest model, due in May, the L-ion, will pass U.S. regulations. “Our next-generation products might be able to fit that bill,” said Maini.

In the meantime, the Reva-i is being marketed mainly in Europe to affluent, environmentally conscious, urban drivers who commute to work and own a home. The car must be plugged in at the end of each day, making it a logistical hurdle for those without a house and garage.

 

Dallas Morning News: National Memory Champion Teaches You How To Find Your Car Keys Every Time!

He hails from Eulus, TX (or is that Euless? Or Useless? ‘Bulo’s already forgotten). He may be kind-of a jerk, but he has some real cool suggestions on improving your memory skills. And the article’s worth it just for the visual of the ‘nose on the stove’.   The Beast Who Slumbers may have a lousy memory, but he knows how to entice people to click on an article…unless Tom Waits’ name is involved.