What are the facts about junk mail? You can study them at donotmail.org. Here are a few compelling items:
It takes more than 100 million trees to produce the total volume of junk mail that arrives in American mailboxes each year—that's the equivalent of clearcutting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every 4 months.
The manufacture of junk mail releases more greenhouse gas emissions per year than the emissions released by 9,372,000 million average passenger cars.
Entire households only average 1 personal correspondence each week, compared to almost 18 pieces of junk mail.
A response rate of less than 0.25% is considered acceptable for the 500 million U.S. credit card solicitations that are mailed monthly.
Fascinating Op-Ed in today's NYT, written by three former prosecutors (ELIOT SPITZER, FRANK PARTNOY and WILLIAM BLACK) who are demanding that AIG be forced to release voluminous emails in its possession that would allow the public to understand the economic meltdown that cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, including 180 billion dollars to AIG. I agree entirely. There is no reason for delay. It's time to turn AIG inside out, that much is clear. The only thing that is unclear is whether the politicians in Washington DC can muster up the courage to represent the taxpayers rather than the big banks.
Here's an excerpt from the Op-Ed piece:
In Early November, a Maine ballot measure defeated a law legalizing gay marriage. It is clear that the Catholic Church, acting through 45 dioceses around the country, contributed substantial money to defeat gay marriage in Maine. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the St. Louis Archdiocese contributed $10,000.
Here in St. Louis, protesters have made themselves visible in a way that would likely irritate many Catholics and (see the comments to this article). The protesters have repeatedly stationed themselves prominently in front of the St. Louis Cathedral before, during and after the noontime Mass, in order to protest the $10,000 payment by the St. Louis Diocese to defeat gay marriage in Maine. Some of the St. Louis protesters have claimed that they were harassed by the police. See the following video they published.
I fully support gay marriage. And even though I don't believe in a Divine Jesus, I can't imagine Jesus, who purportedly opened up his heart to criminals and whores, taking active steps to keep gays from getting married. In my opinion, the Catholic Church, which has severely crippled its own moral authority, has acted out of bigotry in opposing gay marriage. On the other hand, I also think that the protesters need to be careful to pick their battles.
If you click the title to go to the full post, you'll can view a gallery of a dozen photos I took while participating in the protest of 12-20-09, the day after I originally wrote this post. The temperature as a brisk 25 degrees.
[more . . .]
Howard Dean on what pretends to be "health care reform":
Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these. Real health-care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on preexisting conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company, which may take up to 30 percent of your premium dollars and spend it on CEO salaries -- in the range of $20 million a year -- and on return on equity for the company's shareholders. Few Americans will see any benefit until 2014, by which time premiums are likely to have doubled. In short, the winners in this bill are insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced with a bailout in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG.
I entirely agree with Dean. I would like to tear up the current proposals and start over. I'd do it in two steps. First, quickly pass a bill with all of the low-hanging fruit, to get them out of the way: for example, requiring portability and prohibiting rejection of new customers based on pre-existing conditions. Only then, proceed with the brunt of the program. Let the expensive part of the program live or die on its own merits. Undistracted by the low-hanging fruit, we can better evaluate how much the new program would cost and what the tax-payers would get for their money.
Hello, I invite you to subscribe to Dangerous Intersection by entering your email below. You will have the option to receive emails notifying you of new posts once per week or more often.
