New York - Eric Hanneken on Diigo

31 Dec 09

22 Dec 09

The States’ Failed Experiments: The major provisions of ObamaCare have already been tried. And they don’t look good

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United States state New York Washington Massachusetts Maine Tennessee health insurance socialism government politics

Like participants in a
national science fair, state governments have tested variants on
most of the major health care reforms Congress is considering. The
results include dramatically higher premiums in the individual
market, spiraling public costs, and reduced access to care.
Despite these state-level failures, President Barack Obama and
congressional Democrats are pushing a slate of similar reforms.
Unlike most high school science fair participants, they seem
unaware that the point of doing experiments is to identify what
actually works. Instead, they’ve identified what doesn’t—and
decided to do it again.

18 Dec 09

Report Condemns Oversight of New York State Police Crime Lab

www.nytimes.com/...18statepolice.html - Preview

New York forensics CSI crime police

The New York State Police’s supervision of a major crime laboratory was so poor that it overlooked evidence of pervasively shoddy forensics work, allowing an analyst to go undetected for 15 years as he falsified test results and compromised nearly one-third of his cases, an investigation by the state’s inspector general has found.
And when the State Police became aware of the analyst’s misconduct, an internal review by superiors in the Albany lab deliberately omitted information implicating other analysts and suggesting systemic problems with the way evidence was handled, the report said.
1 more annotations...
- But on Thursday, police officials said that none of the district attorneys had found that Mr. Veeder’s work had cast doubt on any of their convictions.
  - How did I know they were going to say that? - on 2009-12-18
  Add Sticky Note

10 Dec 09

Big Blighters: How developers use "blight" as a pretext to get the land they want

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eminent domain blight New York politics Jacob Sullum

But most states still allow condemnation
of property deemed to be “blighted,” and many of them define that
condition so broadly that it has become a synonym for
coveted, as illustrated by two recent New York cases.

18 Nov 09

Corruption, Panic and Incompetence Fueled Geithner's Backstairs Intrigue

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Maiden Lane III TARP AIG bailout Federal Reserve New York Timothy Geithner politics

Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for
the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program, has now
issued a harshly critical report on Geithner's handling of
the AIG bailout.
Barofsky's report [pdf]
details how the bailout vehicle "Maiden Lane III" was created,
and why Geithner quickly decided to pay 100 cents on the dollar
to AIG counterparties -- including Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank,
and others. (Go to page 23 for the full list.) The deal ended up
costing taxpayers at least $13 billion.
1 more annotations...
- Had AIG been allowed to fail, the damage would not have been
  sustained by this "system" we keep hearing about. It would have
  been limited to the willing signatories of a business deal.
  Barofsky's thorough dismantling of Geithner's logic, and his
  silence on the matter of how much reality there was to the
  Paulson-Bernanke-Geithner hysterics, just point up what a swindle
  the AIG bailout really was.

13 Nov 09

What Health Reform Will Do to My Insurance

online.wsj.com/...4402404574527493169603118.html - Preview

health insurance New York government politics

I'm a registered Democrat living in New York City, and I buy my own health insurance. But now, having seen the health-care reform bill that passed the House, I'm preparing for life without health insurance.
I will gain one thing, though—an annual fine for losing my insurance. The exact amount of that fine isn't clear yet, but so far it looks like I'll be paying about the same amount—$2,000 a year—for having no insurance as I do now for having it.
3 more annotations...
- Why do I choose the Empire "Tradition Plus" plan instead of a comprehensive HMO-type plan that covers physician fees, prescriptions, etc.? Because, unlike other states, New York already mandates two things that the current federal health-care reform will mandate. The first mandate prohibits insurers from denying coverage because of a pre-existing medical condition. The second mandate prohibits insurers from denying coverage, or determining prices, based on age. The result is that HMO plans in the state are now very expensive.
- The House health-care reform bill hinges on what it calls a "qualified" health-care plan. Individuals will be required by law either to buy a plan that meets the criteria of a qualified health-care plan or pay a fine. What are those criteria? They're the basic components of a comprehensive HMO-type plan, which means that Empire's "Tradition Plus" will not qualify because it covers only hospital costs.
- once the health-insurance mandates that already exist in New York become the law of the land, insurance premiums everywhere else will rise as they did here.

06 Nov 09

New York Fed’s Secret Choice to Pay for Swaps Hits Taxpayers

The Federal Reserve, after conferring in secret with investment banks, agreed to cover all of their losses with taxpayer money. This is how government works in the real world.

www.bloomberg.com/...news - Preview

AIG credit default swap CDO New York Federal Reserve Fed bank Goldman Sachs Timothy Geithner finance crisis government politics

Habayeb, 37, was chief financial officer for the AIG
division that oversaw AIG Financial Products, the unit that had
sold the swaps to the banks. One of his goals was to persuade
the banks to accept discounts of as much as 40 cents on the
dollar, according to people familiar with the matter.
After less than a week of private negotiations
with the banks, the New York Fed instructed AIG to pay them par,
or 100 cents on the dollar. The content of its deliberations has
never been made public.

The New York Fed’s decision to pay the banks in full cost
AIG -- and thus American taxpayers -- at least $13 billion.
That’s 40 percent of the $32.5 billion AIG paid to retire the
swaps. Under the agreement, the government and its taxpayers
became owners of the dubious CDOs, whose face value was $62
billion and for which AIG paid the market price of $29.6
billion. The CDOs were shunted into a Fed-run entity called
Maiden Lane III.
1 more annotations...
- The deal contributed to the more than $14 billion that over
  18 months was handed to Goldman Sachs, whose former chairman,
  Stephen Friedman, was chairman of the board of directors of the
  New York Fed when the decision was made.

19 Oct 09

Yankee Welfare: How all of us, even non-baseball fans, line the pockets of history's richest team.

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New York Yankees corporate welfare regulatory capture politics

As famously within the game, since the dawn of baseball's free
agent era in the mid-1970s, the Yankees have been notorious for
outspending all comers on talent.
The main source of this spending disparity is easy enough to
identify: The Yankees field an elite team in the country's
richest media market.
4 more annotations...
- In very much the same spirit—only much,
  much worse—that rich rock stars never have to pay for guitar
  strings, rich baseball owners (i.e.,
  all of them) never have to pay anything close to full market
  price for their most important asset: their home stadium. Chamber
  of Commerce Republicans and Democrats, can-do boosters, and
  middle-age-crisis jock-sniffers, convince themselves
  that—all
  economics to the contrary—keeping or
  wooing a professional sports team will improve the local
  economy.
- Though baseball fans tend to focus on the unfair advantage that
  such rule-bending gives the Yankees over their baseball
  competition, the real scandal in this story is the unfair
  advantage that the team gets over any business that
  needs to raise $1 billion in bonds. And, by extension, the unfair
  advantage that $1 billion bond-seekers tend to get over people
  who just need $10 million. The greater the number of laws and
  regulations and taxes, the more that full compliance (or
  negotiated avoidance) become the exclusive province of the
  deepest pocketed, who are often—ironically!—the very same
  companies targeted by the initial legislation. It's true of
  Sarbanes-Oxley,
  it's true of the
  Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, and it's true of
  prohibitions on using tax-exempt bonds for private commerce.
- To sum up: The most successful, most opulent, and most hated
  baseball franchise in North America, widely known as "the
  Evil Empire," receives an unprecedented amount of government
  giveaways in a time of recession and government budget-squeezes,
  with which it increases its already sizeable revenue advantage,
  partly by charging ticket prices that only the rich can afford.
  With all that dough safely pocketed, the team then shells out
  
  $423 million in free agent contracts for just three players,
  who help vault them back into the League Championship Series for
  the first time since 2004.
- It's an enduring puzzle in contemporary
  America that long after "welfare reform" restructured transfer
  payments to individuals, the corporate welfare
  queens—who by any estimation have been sucking more from the
  public teat than all welfare recipients combined—continue
  gobbling hundreds of billions each year, image largely unsullied.

12 Aug 09

The Epidemic of Pot Arrests in New York City

How New York City arrests tens of thousands of people per year for possessing small amounts of marijuana in a state where that has been "decriminalized."

www.alternet.org/...f_pot_arrests_in_new_york_city - Preview

New York City New York marijuana drug prohibition decriminalization police politics

Marijuana possession is legally decriminalized in NY State. Nonetheless, NY City makes more pot arrests than any city in the world. How do they do it?
One can be given a ticket and fined $100 for marijuana possession, but not fingerprinted and jailed. For over thirty years, New York State has formally, legally, decriminalized possession of marijuana.
6 more annotations...
- despite that law, since 1997 the New York City Police Department has arrested 430,000 people for possessing small amounts of marijuana, mostly teenagers and young people in their twenties.
- The arrests are easy, safe, and provide training for new officers. The arrests gain overtime pay for patrol and narcotics police and their supervisors. The pot arrests allow officers to show productivity, which counts for promotions and choice assignments. Marijuana arrests enable the NYPD to obtain fingerprints, photographs and other data on many young people they would not otherwise have in their criminal justice databases. And there is very little public criticism and thus far no political opposition to New York City's marijuana arrest crusade.
- The NYPD has found easy ways to trick or intimidate young people so they allow a search, or even just take out their marijuana and hand it over to the officers.
- So in a stern, authoritative voice, NYPD officers will say to the young people they stop:
  
  "We're going to have to search you. If you have anything illegal you should show it to us now. If we find something when we search you, you'll have to spend the night in jail. But if you show us what you have now, maybe we can just give you a ticket. And if it’s nothing but a little weed, maybe we can let you go. So if you’ve got anything you’re not supposed to have, take it out and show it now.”
  
  When police say this, the young people usually take out their small amount of marijuana and hand it over. Their marijuana is now "open to public view." And that – having a bit of pot out and open to be seen – technically makes it a crime, a fingerprintable offense. And for cooperating with the police, the young people are handcuffed and jailed.
- other cities are also making many pot possession arrests and jailings at high rates, often using the same techniques as the NYPD.
- Arrests for possessing even tiny amounts of marijuana and other drugs are subsidized by the U.S. government. Up to a billion dollars a year has been going to states, prosecutors and police departments through the Byrne Grant Program to “fight” drugs and crime.

Eric Hanneken's Library tagged "New York" → View Popular

NY state's owe woes

The States’ Failed Experiments: The major provisions of ObamaCare have already been tried. And they don’t look good

Report Condemns Oversight of New York State Police Crime Lab

Big Blighters: How developers use "blight" as a pretext to get the land they want

Corruption, Panic and Incompetence Fueled Geithner's Backstairs Intrigue

What Health Reform Will Do to My Insurance

New York Fed’s Secret Choice to Pay for Swaps Hits Taxpayers

Yankee Welfare: How all of us, even non-baseball fans, line the pockets of history's richest team.

The Epidemic of Pot Arrests in New York City

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