Friday, August 21, 2009

The high price for vendor rights in NYC

Gary did a posting about a girl selling lemonade in a NYC park - she was issued a ticket for not having a vendor permit.

Now we know why.

From the NY Times

The city once earned more than half a million dollars a year in vending rights from two hot dog carts in front of the museum. Then, two years ago, a third vendor, Dan Rossi, nosed his cart onto the property, saying that as a disabled veteran, he had the right to be there without paying the city a dime.


I guess NY has to make money any way it can.

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Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Wongo Dongo

This Spanish Read by Jumilla (2006 vintage) was on sale at a local wine shop so I thought I'd try a bottle and see if it was worth buying a case.

I'm going to pass on the case purchase.

It's okay as far as a cheap red wine goes, but there are better cheap reds. Most red jugs wines are better.

It's just astringent with no fruity or woody taste of any kind. It's not terrible, it doesn't leave a harsh tannic aftertaste and doesn't pucker up my mouth, but there's just not much there.

The rest of the bottle is going into the fridge to use as a cooking wine.

Red, White and Food
doesn't agree with me.

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The War Against Refreshing Citrus Drinks

From Channel 2, NYC
...To 10-year-old Clementine Lee, setting up a lemonade stand at Riverside Park on a hot Saturday afternoon seemed like a fun way to make money.

Instead, she and her dad got slapped with a $50 fine.
...

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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Don't go to West Palm Beach, Florida

. . . unless you just enjoy getting beat up.

...the officers concocted a story to explain the beating caught on dashcam video. The problem was that, when they huddled together to come up with a story, the discussion was also caught on tape.

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Monday, August 10, 2009

Level of productivity in society

In a speech the other day Palni complained that Obama wanted to kill her disabled infant and her parents by having a "death panel" ration health care according to "level of productivity in society".

I'm not sure what all this whining about rationing is. We have to ration health care simply because we don't have unlimited health care resources. Flu shots go first to those at highest risk, that's a form of rationing. Transplants are rationed, primarily according to judgements about probability of success. We ration drugs of all kinds according to who can pay. We ration health care all the time, and the criteria for the rationing depends on the particular care being rationed and the particular and specific circumstances.

So why is rationing a problem? We can't get rid of it. But we can be explicit about the criteria we'll use.

We will ration. I'm pretty sure that "level of productivity in society" will be at least part of the criteria used to ration. But it certianly won't be all of it, probably not even most of the criteria and the rationing won't be done by a "death squad".

If you don't realize that right at the gitgo then you're either insane or an idiot.

Althouse appears to have become insane.
... death will occur as a result of the decisions of cost controlling bureaucrats with the power to determine who can receive various treatments. I don't know why "level of productivity in society" is in quotes, nor do I know whether it is the plan to ration care on this basis. Those are actually serious matters, and I'd like to know the answers. ...

Yes, she used a colorful expression "death panel," but it's a good and fair polemical expression if in fact life-saving care will be rationed on this basis. I have found myself saying, in conversation, "I'm afraid Obama is going to kill me." Now, I'm not picturing him or one of his minions coming over to murder me, but I am afraid that as I get older and need expensive care to keep me alive that I will be told I cannot have it, because at my age, in the government's opinion, there's not enough life left in me to be worth the money that I would take from the system that needs to pay for everything.


Free Republic tells us where the phrase comes from.

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Saturday, August 08, 2009

Health Care

I found a copy of the new Health Care Bill and thought I'd try to read some of it.
I didn't have to get far to discover I don't like it.
On page 1
The purpose of this divison is to provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending
This is not an acheivable goal, you cannot grow the number of people covered and also reduce the growth in health care spending. They need to make up their minds what they want to accomplish first.

Also, it doesn't serve transparency in government to publish a bill on the internet and not allow me to copy segments of it for use in my blog. I had to hand type the above, the copy edit function doesn't work on the pdf file.

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