Here's why the Obamacare website sucks

An article at TechDirt offers what seems to me the best explanation:

While any massively large-scale internet launch is likely to suffer some problems, the level of disaster on this particular project has been quite impressive...

The Sunlight Foundation figured out the list of contractors who worked on the site, and noted that the big ones not only are well-known DC power-player insiders, but they're also big on the lobbying and political contributions side of things. You've got companies like... Booz Allen Hamilton, famous for promoting cyberwar hype and employing Ed Snowden. There's defense contracting giant Northrup Grumman...

As you look down the list put together by the Sunlight Foundation, it's all companies like this: giant monstrosities which are simply tied in closely with the government. All the large consulting firms are listed: Accenture, Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, McKinsey. What's missing? Basically any company with even the slightest smidgen of experience building and maintaining large-scale, public-facing web-based apps. The list has no "internet native" companies.  

Incisive commentary from a variety of web-knowledgeable people in the Reddit discussion thread.

Ritual whale slaughter in the Faroe Islands

Whaling in the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic has been practiced since about the time of the first Norse settlements on the islands. It is regulated by Faroese authorities but not by the International Whaling Commission as there are disagreements about the Commission's legal competency for small cetaceans. Around 950 Long-finned Pilot Whales (Globicephala melaena) are killed annually, mainly during the summer. The hunts, called grindadráp in Faroese, are non-commercial and are organized on a community level; anyone can participate. The hunters first surround the pilot whales with a wide semicircle of boats. The boats then drive the pilot whales slowly into a bay or to the bottom of a fjord.

Many Faroese consider the hunt an important part of their culture and history. Animal-rights groups criticize the hunt as being cruel and unnecessary. As of the end of November 2008 the chief medical officers of the Faroe Islands have recommended that pilot whales no longer be considered fit for human consumption because of the levels of toxins in the whales...

The primary reason for the Faeroes abstaining from joining the EU was in an effort to prevent the EU from meddling in their fishing policies. The slaughter of cetaceans is illegal within the European Union. 

More details, photographs, and a couple videos at this link.

Poachers rule in a world gone mad

The stench of rotting elephant carcasses hangs in the air in western Zimbabwe, where wildlife officials say at least 91 elephants were poisoned with cyanide by poachers who hack off the tusks for the lucrative illegal ivory market.

Massive bones, some already bleached by the blistering sun in the Hwange National Park, litter the landscape around one remote watering hole where 18 carcasses were found. Officials say cyanide used in gold mining was spread by poachers over flat "salt pans," also known as natural, mineral-rich salt licks. They say lions, hyenas and vultures have died from feeding on contaminated carcasses or drinking nearby...

Tusks of the poisoned elephants are thought to have been smuggled into neighboring South Africa through illicit syndicates that pay desperately poor poachers a fraction of the $1,500 a kilogram (2.2 pounds) that ivory can fetch on the black market.

Officials believe at least two deeply drilled wells supplying the water holes may have also been contaminated and will likely have to be sealed. New wells will probably be drilled away from the tainted ones. "We will drill more boreholes in the park because these criminals target areas where there is a shortage of water," said Kasukuwere...

Kasukuwere said Hwange park, Africa's third largest wildlife sanctuary after the Serengeti in Tanzania and South Africa's Kruger National Park, has only about 150 rangers and few fully operational off-road vehicles for an expanse that ideally should have a staff of at least 700.

Scores of vultures, the first predators at a kill, have died from the cyanide. Rangers say their absence makes the ecological impact of the poisonings much harder to fight and control.

Photos and text via PhysOrg.

How the world's oceans are being destroyed

Excerpts from an essay published in the Newcastle (NSW) Herald, by a man who recently sailed the western Pacific:

What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.  The birds were missing because the fish were missing...  No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all...

North of the equator, up above New Guinea, the ocean-racers saw a big fishing boat working a reef in the distance.

"All day it was there, trawling back and forth. It was a big ship, like a mother-ship," he said. And all night it worked too, under bright floodlights. And in the morning Macfadyen was awoken by his crewman calling out, urgently, that the ship had launched a speedboat.

"Obviously I was worried. We were unarmed and pirates are a real worry in those waters. I thought, if these guys had weapons then we were in deep trouble." But they weren't pirates, not in the conventional sense, at least. The speedboat came alongside and the Melanesian men aboard offered gifts of fruit and jars of jam and preserves.

"And they gave us five big sugar-bags full of fish," he said. "They were good, big fish, of all kinds. Some were fresh, but others had obviously been in the sun for a while.

"We told them there was no way we could possibly use all those fish. There were just two of us, with no real place to store or keep them. They just shrugged and told us to tip them overboard. That's what they would have done with them anyway, they said.

"They told us that his was just a small fraction of one day's by-catch. That they were only interested in tuna and to them, everything else was rubbish. It was all killed, all dumped. They just trawled that reef day and night and stripped it of every living thing."

The essay goes on to detail seeing evidence of the Japanese tsunami in mid-ocean -

Ivan's brother, Glenn, who boarded at Hawaii for the run into the United States, marvelled at the "thousands on thousands" of yellow plastic buoys. The huge tangles of synthetic rope, fishing lines and nets. Pieces of polystyrene foam by the million. And slicks of oil and petrol, everywhere.

Countless hundreds of wooden power poles are out there, snapped off by the killer wave and still trailing their wires in the middle of the sea...

All of this is anecdotal, of course, but still unbelieveably tragic.  The children of our generation will inherit a world with vastly depleted and damaged oceans, and those living far inland will not be unaffected.

Seymour Hersh castigates American journalists and President Obama

Seymour Hersh' reputation as an investigative journalist was established when he exposed the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam war.  He has harsh words for the pandering American press in terms of their relationship with the current president:

Don't even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends "so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would"...

The Obama administration lies systematically, he claims, yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him. "It's pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama]," he declares in an interview with the Guardian...

"Duncan Campbell [the British investigative journalist who broke the Zircon cover-up story], James Bamford [US journalist] and Julian Assange and me and the New Yorker, we've all written the notion there's constant surveillance, but he [Snowden] produced a document and that changed the whole nature of the debate, it's real now," Hersh says.

"Editors love documents. Chicken-shit editors who wouldn't touch stories like that, they love documents, so he changed the whole ball game," he adds, before qualifying his remarks.

"But I don't know if it's going to mean anything in the long [run] because the polls I see in America – the president can still say to voters 'al-Qaida, al-Qaida' and the public will vote two to one for this kind of surveillance, which is so idiotic," he says...

Hersh returns to US president Barack Obama. He has said before that the confidence of the US press to challenge the US government collapsed post 9/11, but he is adamant that Obama is worse than Bush. "Do you think Obama's been judged by any rational standards? Has Guantanamo closed? Is a war over? Is anyone paying any attention to Iraq? Is he seriously talking about going into Syria? We are not doing so well in the 80 wars we are in right now, what the hell does he want to go into another one for. What's going on [with journalists]?" he asks...

"The republic's in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple." And he implores journalists to do something about it.

More at the link.

The value of a dashcam

YouTube link.

Dashcams are very popular in Russia because they provide documentation of faked accidents and injuries - as for example those created by the pedestrians in this supercut.

One note from the BoingBoing via: "Unfortunately someone really does get run over, so don't watch this if you think you might be disturbed."

The slaughter of rhinoceros

I've written five posts about the ongoing worldwide slaughter of rhinoceros.  I hate to keep harping on the subject, but it keeps happening:

Nearly 700 rhinos have been killed in South Africa in 2013, making it the bloodiest year yet for rhino poaching. Last year, a record 668 rhinos were poached for their horns, but that figure has already been eclipsed with the deaths of 688 rhinos with three months left of the year, figures from the South African government show. There are around 18,000 white and 4,000 black rhinos in the country.

The dramatic growth in rhino poaching in South Africa, up from just 13 in 2007, has largely been driven by demand in Asia, in particular Vietnam, where rhino horn is seen as a status symbol. A survey of 720 people in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, published earlier this month, found that typical buyers were "educated, successful and powerful individuals" and use rhino horn as currency in networking.

Elite fundraiser for Obama nominated for Canadian ambassadorship

Every president does this, and I'm frankly tired of it.

A veteran Goldman Sachs & Co. executive and major fundraiser for President Barack Obama has been nominated as the next ambassador to Canada — the latest in a parade of big-dollar campaign backers slated to represent U.S. interests abroad.

Chicago-based Bruce Heyman raised more than $750,000 for Obama’s committees since 2007, along with his wife, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of records.

Heyman’s nomination is a sort of milestone for the White House: During his second term, Obama has now tapped 20 campaign bundlers for ambassadorships. Together, these moneymen and women raised at least $13.8 million — and likely much more — for Obama’s political committees since 2007, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s research.

I was delighted in 2009 when he chose John Huntsman (fluent in Mandarin Chinese) to the diplomatic post in China.  But by 2011 the stream of patronage was obvious -

More than two years after President Obama took office vowing to banish “special interests” from his administration, nearly 200 of his biggest donors have landed plum government jobs and advisory posts, won federal contracts worth millions of dollars for their business interests or attended numerous elite White House meetings and social events...

As a candidate, Obama spoke passionately about diminishing the clout of moneyed interests and making the White House more accessible to everyday Americans. In kicking off his presidential run on Feb. 10, 2007, he blasted “the cynics, the lobbyists, the special interests,” who he said had “turned our government into a game only they can afford to play.”

And now it continues during the second term.  Please someone tell me this Heyman at least speaks French.

eDelivery

This message was on an envelope I received from TIAA/CREF:

eDelivery will save trees, conserve paper and reduce mailbox clutter.

I encounter messages like this several times a year.  And they are absolutely true.  And I do have the vast majority of my financial and business data transmitted to me electronically; there are just a few items for which I prefer to receive paper documents.

But... I wish just once that just one of these companies would say this:

eDelivery will reduce our company's costs, increase our profits, and maybe we will then return a portion of that to you in the form of lower fees or higher returns.

Just once.  Say that.  Especially when you're sending me documents I didn't request or need. Say that instead of pretending that the financial services industry is one of the bastions of environmental conservation.

Sorry for the mini-rant.  I'm in a grumpy mood this morning.

The majestic millennia-old " Mark Twain" giant redwood tree

Cut down in 1892.

Embedded photo slightly cropped from the original at National Geographic Found.

Guantanamo detention facility = $900,000 per year. Per inmate.

As reported by Reuters, via MSN:

The Pentagon estimates it spends about $150 million each year to operate the prison and military court system at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, which was set up 11 years ago to house foreign terrorism suspects. With 166 inmates currently in custody, that amounts to an annual cost of $903,614 per prisoner.

By comparison, super-maximum security prisons in the United States spend about $60,000 to $70,000 at most to house their inmates, analysts say. And the average cost across all federal prisons is about $30,000, they say...

The huge cost of running the prison and judicial complex stem from its offshore location at a 45-square-mile U.S. Naval Base on the southeastern coast of Cuba. Because ties between the two countries are almost nonexistent, almost everything for the facilities has to be ferried in from outside.

When the military tribunals are in session, everyone from judges and lawyers to observers and media have to fly into Guantanamo on military aircraft. Food, construction materials and other goods are shipped in from outside, experts say.

But despite the high cost of the camp, and despite the fact that Republicans traditionally demand belt-tightening by the federal government, a Republican aide with the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee said there was little point in asking if the price was worth it because "there isn't an alternative at the moment."..

Among current inmates, nine have been charged with crimes or convicted, 24 are considered eligible for possible prosecution, 86 have been cleared for transfer or release and 47 are considered too dangerous for release but are not facing prosecution. ..

General John Kelly, the head of Southern Command, which is responsible for Guantanamo, told a House of Representatives panel in March that he needed some $170 million to improve the facilities for troops stationed at the base as part of detention operations. Kelly said the living conditions were "pretty questionable" and told the panel, "We need to take care of our troops."

Your tax money at work.

It's only a dead body

The uncle of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev arrived in Massachusetts on Sunday to arrange for his burial, saying he understands that "no one wants to associate their names with such evil events."..

Funeral director Peter Stefan said he hasn't been able to find a cemetery in Massachusetts willing to take the body. He said he plans to ask the city of Cambridge, where Tsarnaev lived, to provide a burial plot, and if Cambridge turns him down, he will seek help from state officials...

[Cambridge city manager Robert] Healy says it would not be in the best interest of the city to execute a deed for a plot at Cambridge Cemetery... He said the families who have loved ones interred at the cemetery also deserve to have their deceased family members rest in peace. He said other federal agencies should take the lead in the burial...

Tsarni told reporters that he is arranging for Tsarnaev's burial because religion and tradition call for his nephew to be buried. He would like him buried in Massachusetts because he's lived in the state for the last decade, he said. "I'm dealing with logistics. A dead person must be buried," he said.

Stefan said he has received calls from people criticizing him and calling him "un-American" for being willing to handle Tamerlan Tsarnaev's funeral."We take an oath to do this. Can I pick and choose? No. Can I separate the sins from the sinners? No," he said. "We are burying a dead body. That's what we do."

A half dozen protesters gathered outside the funeral home Sunday holding signs and American flags and chanting "USA!" One sign read: "Do not bury him on U.S. soil." Several people drove by the funeral home earlier Sunday and yelled, including one man who shouted, "Throw him off a boat like Osama bin Laden!"

And from the comments at Huffington Post:

This %$^#^ does not deserve to buried on US soil. I'm surprised his family is even trying, if he does end up being buried here, his grave will be desecrated on a regular basis, and I can't say I blame whoever would do it.

Maybe there's a nice dog park in Boston where they can bury him. He gets buried, and the dogs have a headstone to use = WIN-WIN

Cremate him then put his ashes in a garbage truck!

Put him in a packing crate, tell the parents they have 7 days to come and get him or arrange for shipping back to Russia. After 7 days, burn the crate and scatter the ashes over cesspool. I have no idea where this as anyone's problem other than the parents or family.

Put a granade in his mouth and just pull the pin....no burial needed!!! 

So, where were all these comments for Adam Lanza, Wade Michel Page or Timothy McVeigh? I don't recall protests like this or calls to drop them into the ocean. What is the difference? I was a little young, but did we protest Bundy's burial like this? Or Gary Ridgeway's? Or John Wayne Gacy's? What makes Tamerlan so special? 

It's just a dead body.

Sequestration reaches NASA

NASA Internal Memo: Guidance for Education and Public Outreach Activities Under Sequestration 

Subject: Guidance for Education and Public Outreach Activities Under Sequestration

As you know, we have taken the first steps in addressing the mandatory spending cuts called for in the Budget Control Act of 2011. The law mandates a series of indiscriminate and significant across-the-board spending reductions totaling $1.2 trillion over 10 years.

As a result, we are forced to implement a number of new cost-saving measures, policies, and reviews in order to minimize impacts to the mission-critical activities of the Agency. We have already provided new guidance regarding conferences, travel, and training that reflect the new fiscal reality in which we find ourselves. Some have asked for more specific guidance at it relates to public outreach and engagement activities. That guidance is provided below.

Effective immediately, all education and public outreach activities should be suspended, pending further review. In terms of scope, this includes all public engagement and outreach events, programs, activities, and products developed and implemented by Headquarters, Mission Directorates, and Centers across the Agency, including all education and public outreach efforts conducted by programs and projects...

The rest of the text of the memorandum is at SpaceRef via Reddit.

It's worth noting here that the mandatory "across-the-board" spending cuts did not affect the salaries of Senators and Congressmen.

Here's why American medical care is so expensive

A woman in Arizona was stung by a scorpion:

With the help of a friend, she called Poison Control and was advised to go to the nearest hospital that had scorpion antivenom, Chandler Regional Medical Center. At the hospital, an emergency room doctor told her about the antivenom, called Anascorp, that could quickly relieve her symptoms. Edmonds said the physician never talked with her about the cost of the drug or treatment alternatives.

Her symptoms subsided after she received two doses of the drug Anascorp through an IV, and she was discharged from the hospital in about three hours.

Weeks later, she received a bill for $83,046 from Chandler Regional Medical Center. The hospital, owned by Dignity Health, charged her $39,652 per dose of Anascorp.

The Arizona Republic reported last year about the pricey markup Arizona hospitals were charging for the antivenom made in Mexico. Pharmacies in Mexico charge about $100 per dose.

After the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug last year, Tennessee-based Rare Disease Therapeutics sold the drug to a distributor for $3,500 per dose. The distributor charged hospitals about $3,780 per dose.

The Republic polled several hospitals in November, finding that hospital charges for the serum ranged from $7,900 to $12,467 per vial. At the time, Chandler Regional declined to tell The Republic how much it charged for Anascorp.

Edmonds' insurer, Humana, has paid Chandler Regional $57,509 for the bill. The hospital has asked Edmonds for the balance of $25,537.

Costs are passed through the system, no questions asked.  It make you want to scream. God, I am so tired of reading stories like this.  Where is the adult supervision?

See also some of the comments in this Reddit thread:

I drove myself to the ER and spent 40 minutes sitting in an exam room. I spoke to a Physician's assistant who called an Orthopedist to see if there was anything they could do for me. No tests were done aside from the PA touching my leg for a minute or two. I was given crutches ($59) and a prescription for painkillers.

The bill I was sent was for $2800.

If you think there isn't something wrong then you're a fucking retard.

A question that has not been answered

Appearing at a Senate Banking Committee hearing Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) grilled officials from the Treasury Department over why criminal charges were not filed against officials at HSBC who helped launder hundreds of millions of dollars for drug cartels.

The HSBC scandal resulted in the Department of Justice and Treasury announcing a record $1.92 billion fine after finding that the international bank repeatedly helped the world’s most violent drug gangs move at least $881 million in ill-gotten gains through numerous countries the U.S. has economic sanctions against.

“HSBC paid a fine, but no one individual went to trial, no individual was banned from banking, and there was no hearing to consider shutting down HSBC’s activities here in the United States,” Warren said. “So, what I’d like is, you’re the experts on money laundering. I’d like an opinion: What does it take — how many billions do you have to launder for drug lords and how many economic sanctions do you have to violate — before someone will consider shutting down a financial institution like this?”..

Warren reiterated her question and still got nowhere. “We at the Treasury Department… don’t have the authority to shut down a financial institution,” Cohen said...

“You know, if you’re caught with an ounce of cocaine, the chances are good you’re going to go to jail,” Warren said. “If it happens repeatedly, you may go to jail for the rest of your life. But evidently, if you launder nearly a billion dollars for drug cartels and violate our international sanctions, your company pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night, every single individual associated with this. I think that’s fundamentally wrong.”

Extended excerpt from The Raw Story.  Can any reader of this blog - Democrat or Republican - justify not sending any bankers to prison?

If you're in the 1%, don't watch this animated short

YouTube link.

Created by Ed Asner.

How some tigers die

The Premier of China, Wen Jiabao has publicly stated that he is committed to saving the wild tiger.  However, his government is allowing trade in tiger skins from tiger farms and skins taken before poaching was outlawed. This trade is acting as a smokescreen for skins taken by killing wild tigers. If China does not stop this trade, the wild tiger is doomed. 

Image and text from the TigerTime website, where you can sign a petition "I appeal to Premier Wen Jiabao to send a clear message to his government, calling for an end to all tiger trade within China. This is to include a call for a zero tolerance policy applied to all trade of all parts and derivatives of tiger and other protected Asian big cats, from all sources."

The reason for doing this is explained in the imgur image below... 

... and discussed in this Reddit thread.  If you don't want to sign the petition, at least don't buy or drink the wine.

Here's how bad the money/Congress problem is

Excerpts from a StarTribune article about the experience of a Minnesota representative after his arrival in Washington:

Fresh off a $16 million congressional race, Nolan received a not-so-subtle reminder that he is expected to maintain the frenzied fundraising pace that helped him win his northern Minnesota seat.

During an orientation session, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee staff recommended that incoming members, as part of a 10-hour work day, spend four hours daily on the phone canvassing for campaign contributions during the congressional session.

That is twice as much time as the DCCC recommended spending on actual legislative work, such as attending committee meetings and voting...

When Nolan left Congress in 1981, members spent time on the House floor and in offices and cafeterias, chatting up colleagues and forging connections regardless of party ties. "It's a very different environment than when he was here" before, said Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.

Now, he said, as soon as a vote is taken on the House floor, a stream of representatives often can be seen bolting for Republican and Democratic party headquarters or party social clubs to begin dialing for dollars. "[Fundraising] literally takes them away from their jobs..."

Nolan said that the DCCC presentation to incoming members likely understated the time spent fundraising to avoid intimidating new members. He said that conventional wisdom dictates that "if you're smart, you're going to spend 30 hours per week" on the phone, at formal fundraisers and meeting with potential donors...

House members are expected to contribute to their party's campaign committees each election cycle, either directly or by donating to other candidates. In both parties, failure to deliver can carry severe consequences...

Nolan said that when he begins fundraising for 2014, he'll stick to weekends and evenings. He will not, he said, devote four hours a day during his work week. "If it means I'm a one-term congressman, so be it," he said.

Image found at Stand Up For America.

The Libor scam

First the definition:

The Libor scandal is a series of fraudulent actions connected to the Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) and also the resulting investigation and reaction. The Libor is an average interest rate calculated through submissions of interest rates by major banks in London. The scandal arose when it was discovered that banks were falsely inflating or deflating their rates so as to profit from trades, or to give the impression that they were more creditworthy than they were.

Now some excerpts from an article at Bloomberg:

Details are only now revealing just how far-reaching the scam was...
For years, traders at Deutsche Bank AG, UBS AG, Barclays, RBS and other banks colluded with colleagues responsible for setting the benchmark and their counterparts at other firms to rig the price of money, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg and interviews with two dozen current and former traders, lawyers and regulators. UBS traders went as far as offering bribes to brokers to persuade others to make favorable submissions on their behalf, regulatory filings show...

“We will never know the amounts of money involved, but it has to be the biggest financial fraud of all time,” says Adrian Blundell-Wignall, a special adviser to the secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. “Libor is the basis for calculating practically every derivative known to man.”..

Some former regulators say they were surprised to learn about the scale of the cheating. “Through all of my experience, what I never contemplated was that there were bankers who would purposely misrepresent facts to banking authorities,” [facepalm] says Alan Greenspan, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006. “You were honorbound to report accurately, and it never entered my mind that, aside from a fringe element, it would be otherwise. I was wrong.”

Sheila Bair, who served as acting chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the 1990s and as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. from 2006 to 2011, says the scope of the scandal points to the flaws of light-touch regulation on both sides of the Atlantic. “When a bank can benefit financially from doing the wrong thing, it generally will,” Bair says. “The extent of the Libor manipulation was eye-popping.”..

Manipulating Libor was a common practice in an unregulated market big enough to span the world though small enough for most participants to know one another personally, investigators found.

The source link at Bloomberg is long and detailed.   Via Reddit.

Who will suffer from the new tax increases?

First, look at the data in the cartoon above, published several weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal.  The numbers can be assumed to be correct.  Think about and decide where your sympathies lie.  The Wall Street Journal article notes that "the new law's effects will be highly individualized—and in some cases highly painful."

Then (if you want) you can read a rant about the WSJ article at Hullabaloo:

The Onion couldn't top this. Whether it's the sad faces of all these put-upon dejected rich people, or the elderly minority couple who is depressed despite not paying extra taxes (or was that the point?), or the distressed single Asian lady making $230,000 who might not be able to buy that extra designer pantsuit this year, or the "single mother" making $260,000 whose kids presumably have a deadbeat, indigent dad just like any other poor family, or that struggling family of six making $650,000 including $180,000 of pure passive income and wondering how to make ends meet, mockery is almost superfluous...

Beyond mockery, though, that the Wall Street Journal would even dare publish such a thing without irony is indicative of the reality that the wealthy don't live in the same country as the rest of us... They're people who see a single individual making $230,000 as struggling to get by, and severely put upon by the loss of a couple thousand dollars to help pay for decrepit infrastructure and basic healthcare for the indigent.

More at the links.