Usa Thread

[Flashermac]

My state is also "better red than dead". The more I hear about Johnson, the more I like him. I am tired of Obama but not excited by Romney. If I vote at all, it may well be for Johnson.

 

The AMA for decades has done what it could to keep the number of MDs as low as it is. I remember when a town in Kentucky brought in a fully qualified Canadian doctor, since no US MD wanted to live there. The AMA went after the Canuck hammer and tongs and got him sent back to Canada. Then the town once again had no MD. Money comes first with the AMA.

[Flashermac]

Right to resell own stuff is threatened

 

 

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Tucked into the U.S. Supreme Court’s busy agenda this fall is a little-known case that could upend your ability to resell everything from your grandmother’s antique furniture to your iPhone 4.

 

At issue in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons is the first-sale doctrine in copyright law, which allows you to buy and then sell things like electronics, books, artwork and furniture as well as CDs and DVDs, without getting permission from the copyright holder of those products.

 

Under the doctrine, which the Supreme Court has recognized since 1908, you can resell your stuff without worry because the copyright holder only had control over the first sale.

 

Put simply, though Apple has the copyright on the iPhone and Mark Owen does on the book “No Easy Day,†you can still sell your copies to whomever you please whenever you want without retribution.

 

That’s being challenged now for products that are made abroad and if the Supreme Court upholds an appellate court ruling it would mean that the copyright holders of anything you own that has been made in China, Japan or Europe, for example, would have to give you permission to sell it.

 

“It means that it’s harder for consumers to buy used products and harder for them to sell them,†said Jonathan Bland, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association for Research Libraries. “This has huge consumer impact on all consumer groups.â€

 

Another likely result is that it would hit you financially because the copyright holder would now want a piece of that sale.

 

It could be your personal electronic devices or the family jewels that have been passed down from your great-grandparents who immigrated from Spain. It could be a book that was written by an American writer but printed and bound overseas or an Italian painter’s artwork.

 

It has implications for a variety of wide-ranging U.S. entities including libraries, musicians, museums and even resale juggernauts eBay and Craigslist. U.S. libraries, for example, carry some 200 million books from foreign publishers.

 

“It would be absurd to say anything manufactured abroad can’t be bought or sold here,†said Marvin Ammori, a First Amendment lawyer and Schwartz Fellow at the New American Foundation who specializes in technology issues.

 

The case stems from Supap Kirtsaeng’s college experience. A native of Thailand, Kirtsaeng came to the U.S. in 1997 to study at Cornell University. When he discovered that his textbooks, produced by Wiley, were substantially cheaper to buy in Thailand than they were in Ithaca, N.Y., he rallied his Thai relatives to buy the books and ship them to him in the U.S.

 

He then sold them on eBay, making upwards of $1.2 million, according to court documents.

 

Wiley, which admitted that it charged less for books sold abroad than it did in the U.S., sued him for copyright infringement. Kirtsaeng countered with the first-sale doctrine.

 

In August 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a lower court’s ruling that anything that was manufactured overseas is not subject to the first-sale principle. Only American-made products or “copies manufactured domestically†were.

 

“That’s a non free-market capitalistic idea for something that’s pretty fundamental to our modern economy,†Ammori said.

 

Both Ammori and Bland worry that a decision in favor of the lower court would lead to some strange, even absurd consequences.

 

For example, it could become an incentive for manufacturers to have everything produced overseas because they would be able to control every resale.

 

It could also become a weighty issue for auto trade-ins and resales, considering about 40% of most U.S.-made cars carry technology and parts that were made overseas.

 

This is a particularly important decision for the likes of eBay and Craigslist, whose very business platform relies on the secondary marketplace. If sellers had to get permission to peddle their wares on the sites, they likely wouldn’t do it.

 

Moreover, a major manufacturer would likely go to eBay to get it to pull a for-sale item off the site than to the individual seller, Ammori said.

 

In its friend-of-the-court brief, eBay noted that the Second Circuit’s rule “affords copyright owners the ability to control the downstream sales of goods for which they have already been paid.†What’s more, it “allows for significant adverse consequences for trade, e-commerce, secondary markets, small businesses, consumers and jobs in the United States.â€

 

Ammori, for one, wonders what the impact would be to individual Supreme Court justices who may buy and sell things of their own.

 

“Sometimes it’s impossible to tell where things have been manufactured,†said Ammori, who once bought an antique desk from a Supreme Court justice. “Who doesn’t buy and sell things? Millions of Americans would be affected by this.â€

 

If the Supreme Court does rule with the appellate court, it’s likely the matter would be brought to Congress to force a change in law. Until then, however, consumers would be stuck between a rock and a hard place when trying to resell their stuff.

 

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the case on Oct. 29.

 

WTF?

[unit731]

"The AMA for decades has done what it could to keep the number of MDs as low as it is."

 

My neighbors daughter became an MD/doctor.

 

The little I have spoken with her about the health of the heath care system.

From what she stated there are too few new doctors that become family doctors or GP's.

It comes down to money. Most new doctors specialize. That is where the money is.

[Steve]

Family doctors can make a lot of money and there are people out there who will do it. Many well qualified foreign doctors. I posted this a while back but there are tons of rural and inner city areas that are underserved. The government should set up a program where the government would take care of part or all of a doctor's med school loans if he served an under priveleged/poor area. Areas of West Virginia, the inner city, Kentucky, Montana, etc. Also, set up a program where older doctors can mentor them and also go there and provide a stipend for living expenses, etc. I would do the same for nurses. There is a shortage of nurses as well.

 

The bottom line is no one has taken on the AMA and the Nursing industries yet. Foreign doctors are one proposal. Make it area specific. Allow Mexican and other spanish speaking doctors to come to the U.S. to serve areas with a high concentration of poor latinos. There should be some proficiency in English. Have a state/federal government partnership in setting up clinics and hosptitals. The vast majority of maladies can be done by a neighborhood clinic. The serious cases after being diagnosed can be referred to a hosptial. Basic medical needs are what is needed. Not brain surgery. Hospitals charge out the ying yang for basic services. Clinics are more than capable of taking care of bad flus, sprains and broken bones, pre and post natal care, childhood vaccinationas, etc. Allowing medical insurance to go across statelines is a must. Too many monopolies. I'd even allow foreign medical insurance to help keep costs down and allow some competition IF they are fully vetted. They meet reserve requirements, etc.

Utilize group insurance more to keep costs down.

 

Have the UN pay for major medical breakthroughs. If some company comes up with a new and better drug for parkinsons, cancer, AIDS, etc. provide a cash incentive for the use of the drug generically world wide. At most it cost a company 4-6 billion for the R&D of the most expensive breaktroughs. As a body of a few hundred nations we can easily come up with 20 billion to the company, government or research facility that has a breakthrough on that magnitude. Its a guranteed huge instant profit for the company and the costs spread out over all nations would be cheap. The G8 alone could pay for something like that. The long term cost savings of being able to use the drug and not pay through the nosse would more than pay for it.

[Flashermac]

Thailand requires all MDs to spend so many hours a week working at government hospitals. I was told that in the late 1980s by the MD I used to visit occasionally when I worked on Soi Chidlom. He was actually a heart specialist, western trained, and was on call by the palace. He told me that HM had a slight heart murmur, nothing serious but enough to keep an eye on. Three heart specialists took turns being on call by the palace. He also spent I think 2 half days at a government hospital treating anyone who came in.

 

US MDs would scream bloody murder if forced to do any similar community service.

 

 

 

 

[Flashermac]

Updated election forecasting model still points to Romney win, University of Colorado study says

 

 

An update to an election forecasting model announced by two University of Colorado professors in August continues to project that Mitt Romney will win the 2012 presidential election.

 

According to their updated analysis, Romney is projected to receive 330 of the total 538 Electoral College votes. President Barack Obama is expected to receive 208 votes -- down five votes from their initial prediction -- and short of the 270 needed to win.

 

The new forecast by political science professors Kenneth Bickers of CU-Boulder and Michael Berry of CU Denver is based on more recent economic data than their original Aug. 22 prediction. The model itself did not change.

 

“We continue to show that the economic conditions favor Romney even though many polls show the president in the lead,†Bickers said. “Other published models point to the same result, but they looked at the national popular vote, while we stress state-level economic data.â€

 

While many election forecast models are based on the popular vote, the model developed by Bickers and Berry is based on the Electoral College and is the only one of its type to include more than one state-level measure of economic conditions. They included economic data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

 

Their original prediction model was one of 13 published in August in PS: Political Science & Politics, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Political Science Association. The journal has published collections of presidential election models every four years since 1996, but this year the models showed the widest split in outcomes, Berry said. Five predicted an Obama win, five forecast a Romney win, and three rated the 2012 race as a toss-up.

 

The Bickers and Berry model includes both state and national unemployment figures as well as changes in real per capita income, among other factors. The new analysis includes unemployment rates from August rather than May, and changes in per capita income from the end of June rather than March. It is the last update they will release before the election.

 

Of the 13 battleground states identified in the model, the only one to change in the update was New Mexico -- now seen as a narrow victory for Romney. The model foresees Romney carrying New Mexico, North Carolina, Virginia, Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. Obama is predicted to win Michigan and Nevada.

 

In Colorado, which Obama won in 2008, the model predicts that Romney will receive 53.3 percent of the vote to Obama’s 46.7 percent, with only the two major parties considered.

 

While national polls continue to show the president in the lead, “the president seems to be reaching a ceiling at or below 50 percent in many of these states,†Bickers said. “Polls typically tighten up in October as people start paying attention and there are fewer undecided voters.â€

 

The state-by-state economic data used in their model have been available since 1980. When these data were applied retroactively to each election year, the model correctly classifies all presidential election winners, including the two years when independent candidates ran strongly: 1980 and 1992. It also correctly estimates the outcome in 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but George W. Bush won the election through the Electoral College.

 

In addition to state and national unemployment rates, the authors analyzed changes in personal income from the time of the prior presidential election. Research shows that these two factors affect the major parties differently: Voters hold Democrats more responsible for unemployment rates, while Republicans are held more responsible for fluctuations in personal income.

 

Accordingly -- and depending largely on which party is in the White House at the time -- each factor can either help or hurt the major parties disproportionately.

 

In an examination of other factors, the authors found that none of the following had a statistically significant effect on whether a state ultimately went for a particular candidate: The location of a party’s national convention, the home state of the vice president or the partisanship of state governors.

 

The authors also provided caveats. Their model had an average error rate of five states and 28 Electoral College votes. Factors they said may affect their prediction include the timeframe of the economic data used in the study and that states very close to a 50-50 split may fall in an unexpected direction due to factors not included in the model.

 

“As scholars and pundits well know, each election has unique elements that could lead one or more states to behave in ways in a particular election that the model is unable to correctly predict,†they wrote.

 

All 13 election models can be viewed on the PS: Political Science & Politics website at http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=PSC.

 

My link

 

 

[Flashermac]

Updated election forecasting model still points to Romney win, University of Colorado study says

 

 

An update to an election forecasting model announced by two University of Colorado professors in August continues to project that Mitt Romney will win the 2012 presidential election.

 

According to their updated analysis, Romney is projected to receive 330 of the total 538 Electoral College votes. President Barack Obama is expected to receive 208 votes -- down five votes from their initial prediction -- and short of the 270 needed to win.

 

The new forecast by political science professors Kenneth Bickers of CU-Boulder and Michael Berry of CU Denver is based on more recent economic data than their original Aug. 22 prediction. The model itself did not change.

 

“We continue to show that the economic conditions favor Romney even though many polls show the president in the lead,†Bickers said. “Other published models point to the same result, but they looked at the national popular vote, while we stress state-level economic data.â€

 

While many election forecast models are based on the popular vote, the model developed by Bickers and Berry is based on the Electoral College and is the only one of its type to include more than one state-level measure of economic conditions. They included economic data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

 

Their original prediction model was one of 13 published in August in PS: Political Science & Politics, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Political Science Association. The journal has published collections of presidential election models every four years since 1996, but this year the models showed the widest split in outcomes, Berry said. Five predicted an Obama win, five forecast a Romney win, and three rated the 2012 race as a toss-up.

 

The Bickers and Berry model includes both state and national unemployment figures as well as changes in real per capita income, among other factors. The new analysis includes unemployment rates from August rather than May, and changes in per capita income from the end of June rather than March. It is the last update they will release before the election.

 

Of the 13 battleground states identified in the model, the only one to change in the update was New Mexico -- now seen as a narrow victory for Romney. The model foresees Romney carrying New Mexico, North Carolina, Virginia, Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. Obama is predicted to win Michigan and Nevada.

 

In Colorado, which Obama won in 2008, the model predicts that Romney will receive 53.3 percent of the vote to Obama’s 46.7 percent, with only the two major parties considered.

 

While national polls continue to show the president in the lead, “the president seems to be reaching a ceiling at or below 50 percent in many of these states,†Bickers said. “Polls typically tighten up in October as people start paying attention and there are fewer undecided voters.â€

 

The state-by-state economic data used in their model have been available since 1980. When these data were applied retroactively to each election year, the model correctly classifies all presidential election winners, including the two years when independent candidates ran strongly: 1980 and 1992. It also correctly estimates the outcome in 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but George W. Bush won the election through the Electoral College.

 

In addition to state and national unemployment rates, the authors analyzed changes in personal income from the time of the prior presidential election. Research shows that these two factors affect the major parties differently: Voters hold Democrats more responsible for unemployment rates, while Republicans are held more responsible for fluctuations in personal income.

 

Accordingly -- and depending largely on which party is in the White House at the time -- each factor can either help or hurt the major parties disproportionately.

 

In an examination of other factors, the authors found that none of the following had a statistically significant effect on whether a state ultimately went for a particular candidate: The location of a party’s national convention, the home state of the vice president or the partisanship of state governors.

 

The authors also provided caveats. Their model had an average error rate of five states and 28 Electoral College votes. Factors they said may affect their prediction include the time frame of the economic data used in the study and that states very close to a 50-50 split may fall in an unexpected direction due to factors not included in the model.

 

“As scholars and pundits well know, each election has unique elements that could lead one or more states to behave in ways in a particular election that the model is unable to correctly predict,†they wrote.

 

All 13 election models can be viewed on the PS: Political Science & Politics website at http://journals.camb...ournal?jid=PSC.

 

My link

[Flashermac]

Why he's falling apart

By Jim Geraghty / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

 

 

 

A presidential reelection campaign needs three key elements: a defense of the incumbent’s record, a successful effort to define the opposition and a compelling vision of a second term.

 

President Obama may well celebrate a second term in Chicago next month, but the conventional wisdom underestimates the difficulty he faces, as his campaign has distinct problems with all three elements.

 

His defense of his record is exceptionally weak, his effort to define Mitt Romney is nearly exhausted, and his vision for the next four years — perhaps the most important — has been largely missing from his effort this year.

 

Defense of the incumbent’s record

 

Four years ago, Obama expressed great confidence that he would be running amid renewed prosperity; he famously told Matt Lauer, “One nice thing about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable. You know, I’ve got four years... If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.â€

 

In February 2009, even most Republicans would probably have predicted that by 2012, the country would be feeling much more prosperous, with much lower unemployment.

 

Friday’s jobs report brought much-needed good news, with the 114,000 new jobs in the payroll survey meeting economists’ expectations and bringing unemployment down to 7.8% — but that was fueled by 582,000 part-time jobs. GDP growth is at a meager 1.3%, gasoline is averaging $3.78 per gallon nationally and the foreclosure rate is only slightly below 2011’s 17-year peak.

 

Any fan of Obama who tells you he expected the country to be in this condition at this moment is either lying to you or lying to themselves.

 

Still, Obama’s poll numbers have overcome the economic gloom for much of the year, because many Americans concluded he was doing the best he could after stepping into a bad situation. Probably the single most effective line of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte was Bill Clinton’s declaration, “no President — not me, not any of my predecessors — no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he found in just four years.â€

 

It’s one thing to express a resigned acceptance about the state of the economy to a pollster months or weeks away from Election Day; it’s another to affirmatively embrace four more years of the same economic policies, and accept the risk of four more years of similar results, inside the voting booth.

 

Paul Solman, the business and economics editor for PBS’s “NewsHour,†believes that the long-term unemployed — those who have stopped looking for a year or more, but say they want a job, a figure reaching about 7 million — should be included in the public definition of unemployed, as should the “discouraged workers,†those looking for work sometime in the past year but have stopped looking for work.

 

Throw in those working part-time who want full-time work and cannot find it, and our calculation of America’s “unemployed†booms from 12.1 million to an ungodly 27 million. As we approach the day of decision, Americans may look the scale of continuing economic pain and wonder if Clinton was right, that this is really the best anyone could reasonably expect.

 

Defining the opposition

 

For much of the year the Obama campaign excelled at this, perhaps better than any other incumbent presidential campaign before. But they and their SuperPAC allies may be victims of their own success in this area. By running ads painting such an unappealing, monstrous portrait of Romney — callous, uncaring, incompetent, selfish — they set the lowest of bars for the Republican nominee when he walked onto the debate stage Wednesday night.

 

Once Romney came across as knowledgeable, clear and deeply concerned about the state of the country, the entire vilification campaign of summer and early fall looked shaky and less convincing. The man standing before the country didn’t match the Gordon-Gekko-meets-Thurston-Howell-III caricature at all.

 

After this week’s debate, millions of Democrats were left wondering about the attack lines left unused by the President — why didn’t he mention Romney’s “47%†remark, or the layoffs at companies under Bain Capital or the years of tax returns that the GOP nominee hasn’t released?

 

But Obama had two good reasons to hesitate. One of the factors helping Obama overcome the lousy economy is most Americans’ sense that he is a decent, likeable, good-natured man. Obama often wisely let allies and surrogates act as his most relentless attack dogs.

 

It is one thing to attack a man in the now-ubiquitous, incessant form of television attack ads, with the scathing demonization tied to the aspiring national leader by only the rote declaration that “I approved this messageâ€; it is another to do so to his face, with 60 million people watching.

 

Another reason to hesitate — and something to watch for in the remaining Romney-Obama debates — is the risk that Romney might deftly refute the criticism by asking why an incumbent’s presidential campaign, during a time of war and economic pain, is so obsessed with tax returns from years ago.

 

Negative attacks on Romney have taken Obama’s reelection hopes far, but they’ve probably taken him as far as they can go.

 

Offering a compelling vision for the second term

 

This is usually one of the most challenging aspects for an incumbent, because he needs some reasonable explanation as to why each big proposal or idea wasn’t achieved in the first term.

 

There’s some evidence that this is Obama’s strongest area, when he chooses to flex those muscles; as Emily Ekins, the director of polling for the Reason Foundation, pointed out to me, in one survey Obama actually outscored Romney by 9% points on which candidate has “vision for a successful future.â€

 

The most uplifting portions of Obama’s speeches from about 2007 to about late 2009 were his descriptions of the America to come: one where every child is getting a quality education, where every college student can get a diploma without crushing debt and then step into a good job.

 

By “asking†the wealthy to pay “a little bit more†— somehow the IRS never appears in these happy visions — a plethora of new “investments†keep America competitive in the global economy, and we zip along on high-speed rails and in fuel-efficient cars produced by General Motors, with a shiny infrastructure replacing perpetually-cited “crumbling roads and bridges.â€

 

Obama’s problem is that after four years on the job, that ideal America doesn’t seem any closer, and might even seem further away than in 2008. He also doesn’t talk about that vision as much as he used to.

 

Some of that may be because the public — or perhaps even Obama himself — doubts he’ll be able to deliver much in the coming years. Obama’s first term can be neatly divided into two halves. The first, before the midterms, saw Obama passing a slew of big legislative initiatives: the stimulus, the Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank financial reform.

 

But the public largely disliked or was indifferent to those proposals, generating the huge GOP comeback in the 2010 midterms. The second half of Obama’s term, dealing with a GOP-controlled House, showcased Washington stuck in neutral, unable to push policy to the left or right. A persistent cliché is that Americans like divided government, but that theory applied better during the peace and prosperity from 1994 to 2000 under President Clinton and a GOP Congress. When the country is at war and struggling, the arguments of a divided Washington sound like the grinding of gears.

 

Barring some dramatic change in the outlook for (often-gerrymandered) House races, Obama will still be dealing with Speaker John Boehner in January 2013. Obama has suggested that his reelection could “pop the blister†of partisan passions in Washington, but that theory envisions Republicans capitulating and accepting tax increases, an immigration bill they deem amnesty, and so on.

 

So the choice before Americans is a rerun of the gridlock of the past two years, or something different — a Republican-controlled Washington, but with a President Romney whose record, demeanor and style is quite different from that of George W. Bush.

 

None of this means that the task remaining before Romney isn’t difficult. But for most of this general election, the race featured an incumbent and a poorly-defined caricature.

 

The debates demonstrated that no one can make the case for a candidate better than the candidate himself — not the SuperPACs, not the national party, not the surrogates nor the running mate. Only Romney himself could look the voters in the eye and demonstrate that he had the knowledge, the composure, the deftness and the concern they wanted to see. Romney’s message was simple but resonant — if we can get more Americans in jobs, we’ll see dramatic improvement in our budgetary, debt and social conditions.

 

If, by Nov. 6, Americans conclude they believe Romney can deliver on that vision, then the conventional wisdom of just a few weeks ago may prove spectacularly wrong. Romney may not just win, he may win handily.

 

My link

[Steve]

No matter how one slices that pie, the election is over if there are no game changers. The jobs numbers was one of the last chances. In fact, I checked the vegas odds. If you bet $100 on Romney you can win about $280 if he wins. However, to win $100 on Obama you have to risk about $300. Bookies have this kinda stuff down to a science but you don't have to be. Way too many things have to happen for Romney.

 

One of the big reasons for the low job numbers is the Republicans blocking any jobs bills. There are a few. The infrastructure one is huge. There are at least a million or so immediate jobs. There was a bill proposed by the white house to give a massive incentive to hire vets of the wars. That got shot down as well by the Republicans. There was the infrastructure bank. Where wall street or anyone can invest in a bond that builds infrastructure things such as making public building energy efficient and the savings would pay down the bond. Government buildings of all kinds, city, state and federal are often using 30 year old generators, or positioned well for solar panels, etc. Republicans shot that down as well.

 

The unsaid, cold hard truth is the Republicans made it a priority to block pretty much any initiative that creates jobs. Even the ones they agree with. Unless it affects their monied backers like oil and defense. That is why they made a fuss about the pipeline and why Romney wants to give the defense money it doesn't need.

 

Obama's ex chief of staff Emmanuel is going ahead on his own in Chicago and massively investing in the infrastructure and its paying off in immediate jobs. He's doing his own version of the infrastructure bill.

 

The no brainer part of is that with modern technology you can pretty much calculate the savings in energy costs and pass that on to the bondhoders. Simple things as painting a roof which can provide unskilled jobs to high unemployment inner city workers. People on wefare, etc. Its a no brainer.

 

I guarantee if Romney is elected he'll do these things. The Dems won't be just as obstructionist. There is a deep un-American-ness about how the Republicans conduct business these days. F*cking over America in order to get power, impediments to voting such as these ID requirements. Republican secretary of states in swing states trying to get Johnson off the ballot.

 

Itstead of doing what's right and sharing in the credit and I wouldn't begrudge them if they told the President secretly, we agree with this and that and if we sign off and its successful we get partial credit as well, stated by you. That's fair because its true.

[Bangkoktraveler]

willard Romney is hearald by the Republicans

as a business man's dream come true.

 

They claim he knows how to start and run a business

and he will be 'there' to get things going.

 

When I look at Willard Romney's 'resume'

I do not see him starting any businesses.

 

I don't see him 'scratching around' for money

nor do I see him really knowing any of

the ends and outs of starting and running a business.