Marathon Pundit: November 2009

Monday, November 30, 2009

British ObamaCare update: Late cancer diagnosis kills 10,000 a year

Does any rational person believe that government can do a better job at health care than private hospitals?

The Daily Mail reports on the latest British government-run health care failure.

Late diagnosis of cancer needlessly kills up to 10,000 patients every year, the Government's director of cancer services has revealed.

Professor Mike Richards will this week unveil a shocking study of the three deadliest forms--lung, bowel and breast cancer--showing that early detection could save twice as many lives as previously thought.

He blamed the 'unacceptable' situation on both GPs and patients who fail to seek medical attention in time.

Professor Richards said: 'Efforts now need to be directed at promoting early diagnosis for the very large number of patients--over 90 per cent--who are diagnosed as a result of their symptoms rather than by screening.'

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Detroit runners' deaths: Heart issues

In Detroit two last month three male runners died within minutes of each other. Two were entered in the Detroit Free Press Marathon, the other was running in the Flagstar Half Marathon.

Both of the marathoners died of heart attacks, one was 36, the other man was 26. The half marathoner was 65, his cause of death was listed as heart disease.

When runners die during a race, particularly men, heart attacks are usually the cause.

As for heart disease as a cause of death for a race entrant, that's unusual. The assumption--and remember, I am not a doctor--is that someone suffering from heart disease would not be able to withstand the training regimen and make it to the starting line.

Rest in peace.

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GOP comptroller candidate Kelly calls for resignation of McPier CEO

I went running after I wrote my latest story on the troubles--mainly self-inflicted--of Chicago's once massive convention industry, and during that effort, I wondered, "When is a 2010 candidate for office going to take on this problem?"

A few hours later I got my answer. William J. Kelly, a Republican candidate for state comptroller, has stepped up to the plate. As comptroller, I don't believe he'll have any input in the decision process, but as a concerned citizen, he has as much input as I do.

And I second his notion. Oh, McPier is the nickname for Chicago's convention apparatus, the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority.

From a Kelly campaign press release:

William J. Kelly, Republican candidate for Illinois comptroller has issued this statement calling for the resignation of McPier CEO Juan Ochoa:

After the loss of four major conventions and counting, it is clear that McPier CEO and Blagojevich crony, Juan Ochoa needs to resign immediately. As is well-known, Ochoa won his $195,000 post after raising campaign cash for our disgraced former governor. Especially after the loss of the 2016 Olympics, what we need now are major conventions to help stimulate Illinois' economy and create much needed jobs. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported recently, I had the opportunity to speak with RNC Chairman Michael Steele about bringing the Republican National Convention to Chicago in 2012. But in order to bring the RNC and restore our lost convention business from Florida, Nevada, and Texas to Chicago, it is time for Juan Ochoa to go.

Thanks to the mismanagement of the long-line of political hacks like Ochoa & Co., the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority will soon be yet another wasteland and a new drain on Illinois taxpayers. As has been reported, McPier's projected operating losses will grow eightfold to $28.8 million in the fiscal year that started July and the State of Illinois will be on the hook for millions more to cover shortfalls in tourism taxes. To counter McPier's shortfall, Chicago Tribune reports that the state’s general sales tax fund was tapped for $18.8 million this year and will be tapped $34 million in 2010. Reports indicate that McPier's cumulative funding gap is expected to exceed $500 million by 2020.

Illinois and Chicago's economic climate are collapsing under its long-standing culture of corruption, nepotism, and cronyism and McPier is the latest example of this. This kind of backroom double-dealing, price-gouging, greed, and incompetence cannot be allowed to continue – not when Illinois businesses and families are stuck with the tab and not when more Illinois jobs will continue to be lost. Today, I am calling on Governor Pat Quinn and Mayor Richard Daley to demand the immediate resignation McPier CEO Juan Ochoa.

William J. Kelly is running on a platform to be Illinois' first "activist" comptroller. He is the former executive director of the National Taxpayers United of Illinois. He is also an entrepreneur with an Emmy award-winning TV production company and currently hosts the multi-state sports TV series, "Sportsaholic." For information, visit www.friendsofwilliamjkelly.com.

In short, Ochoa must go-a.

We lost the Olympics, but let's bring the 2012 Republican National Convention to Chicago, and stop exodus of conventions from Chicago. Unless of course McPier wants Chicago to be the city of empty hotel rooms, unemployed waiters, idled cabdrivers, and boarded up souvenir shops.

And deserted exhibit halls.

Related posts:

Electrical services costs at Chicago trade show "four to eight times" what they were in Orlando
Dallas wins out over Chicago for new trade show
Chicago's mounting trade show woes
Chicago Tribune: A third major trade show may bail on Chicago
Union "tyranny of the few" drives Plastics Show from Chicago
Marathon Pundit on CBS 2 Chicago
Agency that runs Chicago's convention centers "in deep financial hole"
Union extortionists may drive another trade show from Chicago

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MidnightBlue reviews Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue"

Click here to read MidnightBlue's review of Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue." I haven't gotten around to reading it. Yet.

Related post:

Libs afraid of Sarah Palin

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WashPo: ObamaCare "cure" not addressing deficit problem

Did President Obama call for a health care reform plan that is deficit neutral?

He did.

The Reid health care plan just might be deficit neutral. Just might. But as the Washington Post reports, with a massive deficit "already driving the nation toward bankruptcy," the Senate ObamaCare bill doesn't address the deficit issue.

Optimists say the $848 billion package drafted by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) contains all the most promising ideas for transforming the health-care system and encouraging doctors and hospitals to work more efficiently. They say it would eventually reduce both private premiums and the swelling cost of government health care for the elderly and poor.

Even pessimists don't necessarily disagree. But they see scant evidence that those ideas would quickly bear fruit, and in the short term they fear that the initiative would leave Washington struggling to pay for a new $200 billion-a-year health program even as existing programs require vast infusions of cash to care for the aging baby-boom generation.

Those concerns were magnified by the release of Reid's bill, which the Senate will begin debating on Monday. Democrats were thrilled when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that the package was fully "paid for" -- meaning lawmakers had identified spending cuts and tax increases sufficient to cover the cost of expanding coverage to 30 million additional people.

But the measure would not deliver on Democrats' most ambitious claims, the CBO found. While the package would not worsen the nation's record deficits, it would not significantly improve them, either now or in the future. Reid's bill would shave less than 2 percent from deficits projected to top $9 trillion over the next decade. And it would make only "small reductions" after that, the CBO said -- about 0.25 percent of GDP -- to deficits projected to balloon to roughly 14 percent of the economy by 2035.

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Electrical services costs at Chicago trade show "four to eight times" what they were in Orlando

Union apologists in Chicago have been telling anyone who will listen that it is not the fault of organized labor that it cost $345 to transport four cases of Pepsi from the front doors of McCormick Place to an exhibitor's booth at the International Plastics Show in June.

I'm not buying their explanation, nor are a lot of trade show exhibitors.

But the electricians at McCormick Place, Chicago's mega-exhibit hall, are unionized, so I'm curious about how they'll respond from this passage in Tradeshow Week about the Healthcare Information & Management Systems Society Annual Conference & Exhibition. It chose to bypass Chicago in 2012 for more labor-friendly Las Vegas.

The fast-growing health care IT show took place in Chicago in April for the first time in the 24-year history of the Chicago-based association event.

"We wanted a central destination," Malone said. "We knew it would draw well for us, and it did."

The only problem: invoices for electrical services that were four to eight times what exhibitors paid a year earlier in Orlando.

As someone who worked as a convention service manager at several Chicago hotels, I'm aware of the arguments in favor of having a knowledgeable electrician involved with all electrical hook-ups--and I generally agree with them. Cords do get frayed, especially ones that are constantly being packed and unpacked from cases. I've had several, shall I say, "discussions" with exhibitors who insisted on using two-wire (not compliant with Chicago's electrical code) instead of safer three wire extension cords.

And yes, Chicago's first McCormick Place did burn down to the ground. The cause of the fire is believed to have been a faulty electrical cord.

That being said, how do the apologists explained Orlando having far cheaper costs for electrical services? I have no reason to believe that Orlando's electrical code is much different than Chicago's code.

My answer: In Chicago, it's the electricians' union that is responsible for the radical difference in costs.

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Climategate scientists: A sweaty polar bear ate my homework

Isn't it a basic rule of ongoing scientific research not to throw out data?

But the scientists at the University of East Anglia have their own guidelines.

And have these chaps ever heard of peer review?

Or there is this possibility: A sweaty polar bear the Climategate scientists' homework.

From the Times of London:

Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

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