† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: The Wall Street Journal reports that “gold parties” are to today’s entrepreneurial housewives what Tupperware and Mary Kay cosmetics parties were to their mothers and grandmothers:

Worries about inflation have pushed gold prices above $1,110 an ounce, up 50% from a year ago. And many people stung by the weak economy are looking for discreet ways to raise extra cash without sneaking down to the pawnshop.

As a result, gold parties are booming, creating opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs - and a new worry for regulators. Typically, small companies promote the parties through word of mouth or by advertising in communities likely to produce plenty of sellers. The companies provide a specialist to value sellers' items, and pay the host a cut of about 10% of proceeds.

Most gold-party companies pay sellers between 65% and 75% of what their gold would be worth to a refiner. The quality of workmanship and sentimental value have nothing to do with it.

One jewelry store owner cautions that if an unwanted piece includes one or more gemstones, a seller would get a better deal from a jeweler who will pay for the stones as well as for the gold.

† Nice School, If You Can Afford It: On Sunday the Senate approved a spending bill that defunds Washington, D.C.’s Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides 1,700 minority kids from low-income families with vouchers worth up to $7,500 per year to attend a private school. But the National Education Association sent letters to each Dem in both houses of Congress threatening that a vote to extend the voucher program will be noted in the union’s Legislative Report Card for the 111^th Congress, reports The Wall Street Journal, and supporters of the program accuse Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who heads the subcommittee that oversees funding of “finding reasons not to support the program."

† Life Imitates “A Law Abiding Citizen”: In an interview with The New York Times’ Deborah Solomon, former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) had this to say about the fallout from his long-ago pardon of Maurice Clemmons, who killed four police officers in WA last month, as well as his plans on contacting their families to offer his condolences:

It’s disgusting that people want to talk about what are the political implications rather than what are the implications for four families who have had a senseless, tragic loss. It’s a blame game. If I had quietly retired as governor in 2007 and went into banking or something of that nature, I would have been, at most, a footnote in the story and probably never mentioned. …

I want to in the appropriate time, but now it’s not the appropriate time. To do something for my sake would be selfish and boorish, and I don’t think there’s anything that I can say to them now that would make them say: “Oh, that’s great, I’m so glad. That really solves it for me.”

Solomon brought up the Chris Matthews “witticism” that he could be “Hucka-was” - which elicited a curt, “Who cares what Chris Matthews thinks?” - but in this interview with Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, Huckabee allows that granting clemency to Clemmons and other AR inmantes “was a politically stupid thing to do,” adding that "There is no political upside to granting a clemency action, ever. … It makes it look like I'm soft on crime." 

Well, Huckabee won’t be alone in looking like he’s soft on crime as parole rates are starting to skyrocket, due to a combination of budget problems and prison overcrowding resulting from mandatory minimum sentencing and “three strikes” laws, reports The Associated Press:

The inmate population has risen steadily since the early 1970s as states adopted get-tough policies, which sent more people to prison and kept them there longer. But tight budgets have states rethinking these policies and the costs that come with them. …

In Texas, parole rates were once among the lowest in the nation, with as few as 15 percent of inmates being granted release as recently as five years ago. Now, the parole rate is more than 30 percent after Texas began identifying low-risk candidates for parole.

In Mississippi, a truth-in-sentencing law required drug offenders to serve 85 percent of a sentence. That has been reduced to less than 25 percent.

California's budget problems are expected to result in the release of 37,000 inmates in the next two years. The state also is under a federal court order to shed 40,000 inmates because its prisons are so overcrowded.

As public policy analyst James Q. Wilson has observed, “The typical criminal commits from 12 to 16 crimes a year (not counting drug offenses). Locking him up spares society those crimes.” In the end, it may prove more costly to society to parole felons than to keep building and staffing new prisons, if the rates of violent and property crimes – which are now the lowest since the 1960s and declined significantly again in the first half of 2009 – make a U-turn.

† Mama, Don’t Take My Incandescent Bulbs Away: Strands of energy-efficient LED lights don’t shine as brightly as those old-fashioned incandescent bulbs for many traditionalists, reports The Associated Press:

The old two-inch, 9-watt incandescent bulbs may be the gas guzzlers of holiday lights, but they remain a holiday staple in homes across the country. Many people aren't willing to trade the chubby, colorful halo effect for the softer glow of a light-emitting diode, or LED. And as retailers increasingly stock the more energy-efficient lights, lovers of the classic lights scramble to find them, fearing they will soon be gone from shelves for good. …

Despite their passionate fan club, incandescent lovers are a dying bunch. Strands of LEDs are more expensive than incandescents, but the LEDs are much cheaper to run. Retailers say the long-term savings may be driving people to stores to make the switch.

John Banta, a project leader for New York-based Consumer Reports, said LEDs provide more benefits than just energy savings.

"They run cooler, so there's less of a chance of a fire hazard," Banta said. "They're much more durable and they did last longer."

One Oklahoman said that his neighbor’s LED lights make his home look like a “discotheque,” adding, "I like the vintage look, the old-school look. That's the way everybody's lights used to be growing up."

† Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson offers a scathing assessment of President Barack Hussein Obama’s role in fulfilling one of his campaign’s central promises, universal healthcare coverage:  

Barack Obama's quest for historic health-care legislation has turned into a parody of leadership. We usually associate presidential leadership with the pursuit of goals that, though initially unpopular, serve America's long-term interests. Obama has reversed this. He's championing increasingly unpopular legislation that threatens the country's long-term interests. "This isn't about me," he likes to say, "I have great health insurance." But of course, it is about him: about the legacy he covets as the president who achieved "universal" health insurance. He'll be disappointed.

Even if Congress passes legislation - a good bet - the finished product will fall far short of Obama's extravagant promises. It will not cover everyone. It will not control costs. It will worsen the budget outlook. It will lead to higher taxes. It will disrupt how, or whether, companies provide insurance for their workers. As the real-life (as opposed to rhetorical) consequences unfold, they will rebut Obama's claim that he has "solved" the health-care problem. His reputation will suffer. …

Obama's plan amounts to this: partial coverage of the uninsured; modest improvements (possibly) in their health; sizable budgetary costs worsening a bleak outlook; significant, unpredictable changes in insurance markets; weak spending control. This is a bad bargain. Health benefits are overstated, long-term economic costs understated. The country would be the worse for this legislation's passage. What it's become is an exercise in political symbolism: Obama's self-indulgent crusade to seize the liberal holy grail of "universal coverage." What it's not is leadership. [Emphasis, The Stiletto.]

American University law professor Kenneth Anderson has also criticized Obama for his decision to transfer Gitmo detainees stateside without resolving “the serious trade-offs involved in national security versus rights” or breaking with “the Bush administration’s fatal tendency to do things by executive discretion, without seeking appropriate legislation from Congress,” opting instead to leave it to the courts to make the hard choices. “That’s not leadership.” [Emphasis, The Stiletto.]

The Christian Science Monitor wonders whether Obama is a “master of compromise or sellout?”:

The president who came to office vowing change instead has enshrined compromise as the hallmark of his administration. …

In short, it seeks to achieve what can be achieved rather than holding to specific ideas that are impractical politically. …

The Senate’s healthcare reform bill does not have anything approaching a government-managed public option that Obama – and Democrats on the left – certainly wanted. Yet when Sen. Ben Nelson (D) of Nebraska agreed to back the bill Saturday – bringing Democrats a filibuster-proof 60 votes – Obama hailed it as “genuine reform” nonetheless.

In Copenhagen, Obama stressed that without firm commitments to a timeline for reducing carbon emissions “any agreement would be empty words on a page.” At the end of the conference, however, he lauded just such an agreement – with no short- or mid-term goals and no mechanism for enforcement – as an “important breakthrough.”

Obama was swept into office for having a way with words, but his record during the first year of his term suggests that he will likely leave office without having the courage and fortitude to show the leadership that transforms words into action. Since the majority of Americans disagree with many of his domestic and national security policies – for instance, healthcare, climate change and trying terrorists in U.S. civilian courts - it’s lucky for us all that he has been ineffectual - a lame duck, as it were -  from the git-go.

† We All Have Civil Rights: The Supreme Court: The 14 New Haven, CT, firefighters who won their discrimination suit before the U.S. Supreme Court after being denied promotions because too few minorities were able to pass the qualifying test have now filed a suit against the city seeking back pay with interest, damages and attorney fees, reports The Associated Press. Their attorney Karen Torre says her clients were subjected to "the humiliation and economic hardship of prolonged career stagnancy in a rancorous atmosphere fostered by raw racial divides."

† Obama – Not McCain - Will Be Bush III: Following President Barack Hussein Obama at the podium in an unscheduled speech to attendees at the Copenhagen climate conference, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he "still" smelled the same satanic scent of sulfur that he detected emanating from President George W. Bush, reports FOX News.

† College President Earning $220K Is A Deadbeat Dad: Financial documents released by Montgomery College show that Brian K. Johnson – who faces arrest in AZ, for allegedly failing to pay $12,000 in unpaid child support – racked up $65,000 in airfare, hotel stays, meals and other work-related expenses during his tenure as president of the MD community college, reports The Washington Post:

Johnson previously has defended his spending, saying he recovered only legitimate business expenses, often involving other officials.

The president's detractors used his credit-card receipts to drive him from the job, portraying him as a leader who was off at conferences and top-drawer restaurants when he should have been on campus, steering the institution through a recession. They said Johnson's spending was inappropriate while he was calling for cuts across the institution.

On a single day in March, records show, Johnson charged $130 for a Virginia limousine service, $100.32 for a D.C. steakhouse, $776.39 for airfare, $144.80 for a spa in Utah and $20 for Metro fare. There were big-ticket expenses such as the $4,051 hotel bill in Delhi. There were also small but symbolic examples of perceived excess, such as two visits to high-end car washes in 10 days.

College trustees removed Johnson a week after the faculty approved a vote of no confidence in the president. In a written report, faculty leaders alleged Johnson had "destabilized" the college in 2 1/2 years of governance by leaving his office for days at a time, missing important events, intimidating employees and overspending.

Johnson, who was put on paid leave from his $233,210-a-year job in September is nearing the end of negotiations to terminate his contract, which runs until the end of June 2010.

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, How Is Airline Safety Like Healthcare?): There is emerging evidence that not every generic drug is identical to – or equally effective and safe – as its brand-name counterpart, reports The New York Times:

The problem is not pervasive, but it’s something consumers should be aware of - especially now that more insurers insist that patients take generic medications when they are available [emphasis, The Stiletto]. …

Some specialists, particularly cardiologists and neurologists, are concerned about generic formulations of drugs in which a slight variation could have a serious effect on a patient’s health. The American Academy of Neurology has a position paper that says, in part, “The A.A.N. opposes generic substitution of anticonvulsant drugs for the treatment of epilepsy without the attending physician’s approval.” …

Neurologists who treat epilepsy have similar concerns. Two studies published last year in the journal Neurology found that patients who switched from a brand-name product to a generic one had more seizures or higher hospitalization rates.

“For many drugs, generics are just fine,” said Kimford Meador, a professor of neurology at Emory University.

“But when you’re taking a seizure medication, the therapeutic window is narrow,” Dr. Meador said. “If the absorption of the drug is slightly different between brand and generic or between generics, then the patient could have a seizure, and that seizure could lead to serious injury or perhaps even death.”

The problem is not just in changing from a name-brand drug to a generic, Dr. Meador said, but also switching from generic to generic. And the patient may not even know the change is happening.

When patients are on maintenance medication for which a generic is available, they might be given a different version of the generic drug when refilling their prescriptions. A pharmacy might stock one generic for a few months, and then switch to another a few months later, if the store is offered a better deal on it.

For its part, pharmacy benefits manager ExpressScripts counters that a study it sponsored found no difference in hospitalizations or ER visits for people taking brand-name epilepsy drugs v. those on taking generics.

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on a group of passers-by in MD who rescued a woman from her Jeep, which caught on fire after being rear-ended by a tractor-trailer. The Associated Press reports that the doors of the Jeep were stuck so as one person tried to put out the fire with an extinguisher, “others jumped on the Jeep hood and ripped open the rooftop” and pulled the driver out.