THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Why Middle Class Americans Can’t Afford Health Insurance: Part II: A Los Angeles Times editorial notes that several egregious practices of for-profit health insurers in CA – such as asking doctors to divulge policyholders’ pre-existing conditions and retroactively cancelling coverage - resulted in a crackdown by state officials:
Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner is investigating gaps in PacifiCare's claims process that resulted in more than 100,000 violations of state law. Los Angeles City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo has set up an investigative team to examine rescissions, and has created a website soliciting reports of unfair denials of care. Assemblymen Hector De La Torre (D-South Gate) and Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) have sponsored bills designed to curb egregious rescissions. Those are worthy undertakings and good bills.
The Times recommends “broadening the debate” to answer these bottom-line questions: “What is a reasonable profit for an insurance company? And if such a profit is impossible to attain without forcing catastrophic costs on patients, what then?”
† The Last Of The Red-Hot Virginia Jihadi Lovers: Three of the September 11 hijackers had frequented mosques in CA and Falls Church, VA, that American-born imam Anwar al-Aulaqi led. Aulaqi was being held in Yemen at the request of U.S. officials who allege he was helping al-Qaeda networks in the Persian Gulf plan terrorist attacks, reports The Washington Post, but was released in December, reports The Washington Post. In his 2004 book "Intelligence Matters" Sen. Bob Graham, who led the congressional panel on the September 11, accused the FBI of ineptitude in its investigation of Aulaqi, allowing him to flee the U.S.
† What Freedom Of Speech Means To Muslims: Kurt Westergaard, the 72-year-old Danish cartoonist whose a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, made him the target of murderous Islamofascists wants to sell the source of his fame and misfortune – for the right price: "I would like to think that it has some value. It is a symbol of democracy and freedom of expression. I think I should have a little money for this,” Westergaard tells The Wall Street Journal. It’s going to be a tough sell, reports The Journal:
[H]ow do you fix the value of something that auction houses won't touch, that museums won't hang on their walls and that still inspires murderous passions?
Two weeks ago, Danish authorities said they had foiled a plot to kill Mr. Westergaard in his home. Seventeen Danish newspapers, outraged and eager to show solidarity, reprinted his drawing. Muslims again took to the streets. Iran and others demanded an apology. "I always had a feeling this cartoon crisis would not end," says Mr. Westergaard. "Now I know." …
Some Muslims here want the bomb-in-a-turban drawing destroyed. Salah Suleiman, an activist in a mosque that helped whip up the fury over it in early 2006, delights in the artist's troubles and says no amount of money can save him from God's wrath: "He is living like a rat.... He is living in hell already." …
When Muslims started burning Danish flags and ransacking Danish property in early 2006, extremists joined in bidding war to get Mr. Westergaard killed. The bounties they offered ranged from a new car to a million dollars.
† Hunting Hokies (“The Other Shoe Drops,” first item): During the murder-suicide shootings at Northern Illinois University last month during which a student killed five classmates and wounded 16 others before taking his own life, the school followed an emergency response plan put into place after the deadly Virginia Tech shooting rampage that involved locking down the campus and notifying students of the danger via E-mail and voicemail messages. All well and good, but The Associated Press reports that colleges that are trying to enroll students in services that provide emergency alerts via text messages sent to their cell phones are running into indifference on the part of the students and ineffectiveness on the part of the service providers:
Omnilert, a Northern Virginia company that provides an emergency alert system called e2Campus to more than 500 campuses, reports an average enrollment rate among students, faculty and staff of just 39 percent.
Another industry leader, Blackboard Connect, reports even lower participation - 28 percent for the 300 campuses that use its Connect-Ed emergency alerts. …
Even at Virginia Tech, where a gunman killed 32 people and himself last April, four in 10 students still have not signed up for emergency text alerts. The campus also employs other alert methods, including e-mails and online instant messages. …
[G]litches can reduce the effectiveness of text-message alerts.
When two doctoral students at Louisiana State University were killed in December by an intruder in a campus apartment, this text alert went out: “PD notified of shooting @ Ed Gay Apts. 2 M victims-Police on scene/No suspects at this time. Please use caution.”
But half the students who had signed up to receive the alerts didn't get word of the shooting because of registration problems. ClearTXT, the company that provided the LSU alerts, required students to take an additional step to sign up by responding to a confirmation message - a "dual opt-in" approach also seen on other campuses.
† Praise The Lord, And Pass The Ammunition: In a predictably wrong-headed editorial, The Washington Post slams state lawmakers for “dishonoring” the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre by passing legislation that would “make it easier to carry concealed weapons in cars, bars and restaurants” because “[i]n its wisdom, the legislature has decided that citizens will benefit from a proliferation of hidden weapons -- here, there and everywhere.” It’s muddle-headed thinking like this that drives contrarian journalist John Stossel up the wall. He demands to know “how many shootings at schools or malls will it take before we understand that people who intend to kill are not deterred by gun laws?,” adding:
Last I checked, murder is against the law everywhere. No one intent on murder will be stopped by the prospect of committing a lesser crime like illegal possession of a firearm. The intellectuals and politicians who make pious declarations about controlling guns should explain how their gunless utopia is to be realized.
While they search for - excuse me - their magic bullet, innocent people are dying defenseless.
That's because laws that make it difficult or impossible to carry a concealed handgun do deter one group of people: law-abiding citizens who might have used a gun to stop crime. Gun laws are laws against self-defense.
Criminals have the initiative. They choose the time, place and manner of their crimes, and they tend to make choices that maximize their own, not their victims', success. So criminals don't attack people they know are armed, and anyone thinking of committing mass murder is likely to be attracted to a gun-free zone, such as schools and malls.
There may come a day when you’re unlucky enough to find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time and your right to life can only be exercised by your right to bear arms. It’s as simple as that.
Comments