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Published Letters: 159
Editor's Choice: 3
The media is smart enough to realize that the Obama attacks on Fox are really aimed at the media in general. Play along with us or face our wrath. Fox is playing a time honored role as the opposition media. Freedom of the press will end in America when all media must agree with the government out of fear of retaliations.
There are more than 1000 McDonalds in France. Quick serve food and low prices appeal to French people as much as they do to Americans. Iceland folks can't even get a filet o' fish, and that's sad.
Beer is legal, but try getting Medicare to cover it. But if Marijuana is a medicine, than the government is required to buy it for you. With 300,000 people prescribed marijuana in Los Angeles alone and more marijuana dispenseraries than schools, the cost is going to be as high as the patients.
Back in the 19teens when women's sufferage was up for a Constitutional Admendment, it was the Republican Party that supported women's sufferage and the Democratic Party that was firmly against it. Of course, that was back when the Democratic Party billed itself as the white man's party.
Half the country's Democrats and half is Repubicans. The Democratic audience is split amongst ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and PBS. Fox has the Republicans to itself (maybe CNBC too). That's why Fox is killing in the ratings. They have half the audience looking to them. They may secretly be Marxing Anarchists, but by targeting Republicans they are making money hand over fist. Look at Rush Limbaugh. He wanted to buy an NFL team. Don't see Charlie Gibson buying an NFL team.
I was at DMV today and the lack of coordination was stunning. What should have taken 10 minutes took 2 hours. A number of grumblers said the same thing. Is this what government run health care is going to be like? Will health care providers slow down so that patients put pressure on legislators to up the budgets?
Many health care providers already look at patients as customers. In the future, will the government be their customer and the patients just a cost and a burden?
Health care isn't that great today, but at least it's not the DMV.
I'm also worried about people who think that people will have a choice between dying peacefully at home or in a hospital burning through 200k worth of health care in the last few weeks of life. I doubt that people will have that choice. When government decision makers get involved the 200k will be redirected toward vaccinating young people and old people will be told that if they want to die expensively in a hospital, it will be on their dime. That's a change for the better, but journalists are hiding this inconvenient truth from their readers.
Every year we are forced to watch wild fires in California as if it was unexpected or news. The whole act got old a few years ago. Build smarter, for God's sake. Other parts of the country might occaisionally have a big fire, but Southern Californians seem incapable of developing their communities in harmony with nature. Chicago had a big fire 100 years ago and they learned how to build. Wood frame and shake shingles in the chapperel is just stupid. Los Angelenos need to fix their problems and learn how to avoid these annual fires.
Although the morality of abortion is up in the air, I would rather tell people at a cocktail party that I was curing cancer or helping children as a pediatrician than admit I was an abortionist. I would rather people ask how many people I cured today than how many I killed.
From best to worst -- Ford, Honda, Toyota, Chrysler GM. GM down 20 percent despite $3 billion in government stimulus. So who owns GM? The Obama administration. Yes, Obama bought the worst of the auto makers. We taxpayers own their loses going forward. What a bummer.
What's important is what kind of job he's doing. If he was born in Kenya or Pakistan is not important. His defense of Professor Gates alone informs me that he's the greatest president in decades.
A celebrity feud as a form of cross-promotion. What an original idea. I don't think these two small cable shows have gotten this much press in months. The Cramer show attracts, at best, 150,000 viewers, and the Stewart show 800,000. But the audience for all this hype is in the millions. I suggest that Cramer invite Stewart onto Mad Money as a rematch.
Why should only those who lost money in real estate be reimbursed. Stock market losses, including those in tax advantaged accounts should be made tax deductible. That way more people could be helped.
Property taxes are regressive because poor people pay a higher percentage of their income for housing than rich people do. Sure rich people may own mansions and pay more taxes, but poor people often pay a third or more of their income in housing expenses. That's why property taxes are always consider regressive.
About a quarter of the foreclosures nationwide are in California. As a matter of fact, the worldwide economic crisis seems closely linked to surreal real estate prices in California, quick-buck lenders who gave money to anyone who could fog a mirror, and politicians and the media who looked the other way because they were profiting from rising prices. Well, now prices are falling. And if real estate taxes are revised from 1 percent of sale price to 2 percent of market value as they are in other states, people will be forced from their homes and the reduction in prices will accelerate.