A Spork in the Drawer

The Invisible Hand Of The Market...

...continues to squeeze our necks:

Health insurance premiums paid by workers and their employers rose an average of 6.1 percent this year, outpacing inflation and pay increases and taking a bigger chunk out of families' budgets, according to a new survey.

[...]

Insurance costs probably will rise again next year, according to the survey released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health care research organization that annually tracks the cost of health insurance. Many of the more than 3,000 companies surveyed said they planned to make significant changes to their health plans and benefits, and nearly half said they were very or somewhat likely to raise premiums.

This year, premiums reached an average of $12,106 for a family of four, with workers paying, on average, $3,281 of that. Premiums to cover a single person cost $4,479, with employees paying $694. The portions both families and single people pay in premiums has nearly doubled since 2001.

But remember: Advocating anything other than staying the course, if you will, is tantamount to advocating Stalinism.

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Capitalism Murders

It's no secret that American investment money is pouring into China. And it should come as no surprise that American investment money is pouring into surveillance technology. Combine the two and you're talking investment gold:

Wall Street analysts now follow the growth of companies that install surveillance systems providing Chinese police stations with 24-hour video feeds from nearby Internet cafes. Hedge fund money from the United States has paid for the development of not just better video cameras, but face-recognition software and even newer behavior-recognition software designed to spot the beginnings of a street protest and notify police.

Now this practice is catching the attention of Capitol Hill, specifically the Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), who calls this “an absolutely incredible phenomenon of extreme corporate irresponsibility.”

One hedge fund director points out that New York City (among others) is installing surveillance cameras:

“Is New York a police state?” said Peter Siris, the managing director of Guerrilla Capital and Hua-Mei 21st Century, two Manhattan hedge funds that were among the earliest investors in China Security and Surveillance.

Well, Mr. Siris, I'd say that these cameras are a step towards a police state. But even if you discount that there's still a big difference: The US doesn't use those cameras to identify people, grab them, give them a brief sham trial, then put a bullet into the backs of their heads (so far as we know).

But none of this matters because there's money to be had. Yahoo, Google (motto: "Don't Be Evil"), and even Rupert Murdoch have all joined the gold rush. Where there's obscene amounts of money to be made morality can be discarded.

And besides, who cares about dead Chinese?

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No Escape

Advertising rules our world:

AOL announced yesterday it has bought Third Screen Media, a private company in Boston that specializes in placing ads on mobile phones, two weeks after Microsoft announced a purchase of a similar advertising firm.

Although mobile advertising remains in its infancy, the acquisitions by these two major technology companies underscore the mounting attraction this market holds for advertisers, wireless carriers and computer companies.

This being AOL there's going to be no escaping ads now. It'll be like those damned disks that were everywhere. And, besides, is there nothing that some marketer can't slap an ad on?

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Second Verse, Same As The Last

And on it goes:

The Food and Drug Administration has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show.

Overwhelmed by huge growth in the number of food processors and imports, however, the agency took only limited steps to address the problems and relied on producers to police themselves, according to agency documents.

Maybe this has become worse under the BushCheney regime but it's not a new story. At some point - under Reagan? - the idea of regulatory agencies actually regulating became "quaint," as Abu Gonzales might say.

In the peanut butter case, an agency report shows that FDA inspectors checked into complaints about salmonella contamination in a ConAgra Foods factory in Georgia in 2005. But when company managers refused to provide documents the inspectors requested, the inspectors left and did not follow up.

The next time I'm audited by the IRS I'm simply going to refuse to provide documentation. I'm sure the tax auditors will then leave me alone. Who knew it was that easy?

A salmonella outbreak that began last August and was traced to the plant's Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter brands sickened more than 400 people in 44 states. The likely cause, ConAgra said, was moisture from a roof leak and a malfunctioning sprinkler system that activated dormant salmonella. The plant has since been closed.

[...]

During the inspection, the report says, ConAgra admitted it had destroyed some product in October 2004 but would not say why.

"They asked for some of our documentation and we made the request to them that they put it in writing due to concerns about proprietary information," ConAgra spokeswoman Stephanie Childs said last week. "We did not receive a written request, . . . they filed the report and that was that."

See how easy it is?

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There's No Escape

Your forehead is next:

Add this to the endangered list: blank spaces.

Advertisers seem determined to fill every last one of them. Supermarket eggs have been stamped with the names of CBS television shows. Subway turnstiles bear messages from Geico auto insurance. Chinese food cartons promote Continental Airways. US Airways is selling ads on motion sickness bags. And the trays used in airport security lines have been hawking Rolodexes.

[...]

“We never know where the consumer is going to be at any point in time, so we have to find a way to be everywhere,” said Linda Kaplan Thaler, chief executive at the Kaplan Thaler Group, a New York ad agency. “Ubiquity is the new exclusivity.”

[...]

Yankelovich, a market research firm, estimates that a person living in a city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 ad messages a day, compared with up to 5,000 today. About half the 4,110 people surveyed last spring by Yankelovich said they thought marketing and advertising today was out of control.

"Ubiquity is the new exclusivity."

Just think about that a moment.

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