Time to go - Bye Bye

Dear Mayor Kilpatrick,

This is an open letter requesting.. no - encouraging.. no - imploring you to resign. You have had a career of bringing disgrace on the City of Detroit and the people there deserve better. But, not only have you exercised poor character and judgement - now your lies and missteps are causing a financial hardship on the city.

Please consider the economic condition of the city, look yourself in the mirror and ask if you are contributing to the betterment of your constituency. Sure - you've been noted to bring new development and investment - but at what cost. Surely no one could take an honest assessment and believe your costs don't outweigh your benefits.

For the sake of your employees, residents, friends - your family (especially your wife, hasn't she been through enough?) please do the one RIGHT thing in your mayorship and step down. Leave the city in peace.

What Are We Coming To?

If there was a quicker path to socialized medicine it's the medical industries latest push to formulate a method for determining a patient's ability to pay.

The project, dubbed “MedFICO” in some early press reports, will aid hospitals in assessing a patient’s ability to pay their medical bills. But privacy advocates are worried that the notorious errors that have caused frequent criticism of the credit system will also cause trouble with any attempt to create a health-related risk score. They also fear that a low score might impact the quality of the health care that patients receive.

Is it that big a reach to think medical insurance companies won't use this system to score a patient's worthiness from a profit perspective. There's so much wrong with our countries health system, one knows barely where to begin. I think the basic bones are there and I can't say that I'm an advocate of socialized medicine. However, when I read stories like this (click the link in the title) on MSNBC it makes me wonder if it isn't going to take something as radically as completely taking health care away from the insurance companies to put us back on track.

The whole notion of a Medical Fico score speaks to the industries concern with profits over providing quality health care. Something that should be a 'right' of every human being - not just the wealthy.

Getting It Back This Week

My Truck Is Almost Done... and so we'll have to get an alarm. I don't think our new neighborhood is a problem, but more for when we're driving around out in town.

Unfortunately, I'm on a budget. What does one do when you can't afford an alarm, but can't afford to replace this top and stereo one more damn time?

Answer: Give rob an official license to nag.

With this not built-in feature I can be reminded every time I walk away from the vehicle without removing the faceplate or the Ipod from the car. If I do, there will be an alert in a grating voice that will ask "did you bring in the faceplate and ipod!?!". It will run continuously, and without interruption until I do so - so therein lies the motivation to go back and remove them at once!

I know it's not the same as having an actual alarm - but maybe later in the summer I can scrape the pennies together for this.

Besides, in the meantime - it's far cheaper, much louder, more annoying than a car alarm and you don't have to have bulky 'booper' in your pocket. Hell - I may put off getting an alarm indefinitely!