The Rake Magazine

Just when I thought it was safe to cancel my Strib subscription, they surprise me and put something on the front page that actually 1) contains information that I care about; 2) contains information that elucidates a larger story; and 3) nudges at least one piece of television-like spot news dreck out of the paper. (Actually, I’m only guessing about point number 3.)

Today, there was a good piece by Dee DePass about the slump in car buying in the Twin Cities. It seems new car and truck buying was down 14.5 percent last year. Used car sales were also down—by 12 percent.

Of course, these were sales by dealers, and if there’s one thing we should have learned over the past few years is that we don’t need dealers anymore of almost any type. We have the internet, and sites like Carsoup and Craig’s List, make it a lot easier to sell your car yourself and cut out the dealer’s commission.

So, perhaps the numbers are a little skewed, but a table accompanying the story gives some detail that is relevant. (Sorry if you read the story online. The table wasn’t attached to the online version of the story. Is there a worse web site in the world than the Strib’s?)

The table showed basically that the sales of American brands are down, for the most part, 15 to 20 percent. On the other hand, Toyotas, Hondas, Volkswagens, and other efficient foreign models were up. Not down less than Americans. Their sales were actually higher.

Is there anything to be inferred from this? I’m going to go out on a limb and say Americans have wised up way faster than their automobile company executives and noticed that gas prices are rising and are making adjustments such as buying smaller more efficient cars.

This is a roundabout way of getting to presidential politics. Recently, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain have called for a temporary reduction of the gas tax. Because of course, we want to do everything we can to encourage Americans to drive more, take no responsibility either on the personal or political front for the idiocy of our national energy policy, and just keep paying out to our pals in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

This at the same time as they laughingly call for a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. It just gets funnier.

It's not any surprise to those who've followed the sordid history of UnitedHealth Group to see that the company is being sued by the Attorney General of New York for manipulating the reimbursement rates for their insured who go outside of the network for their care.

It seems United reimburses its customers based on a formula which calculates the "customary" charges for services in the New York area. Of course, the "customary" charges are calculated by a third party. In this case a company called Ingenix, which happens to be owned by UnitedHealth.

An investigation by the state showed that a "customary" charge for a doctor visit in New York City was $200. Ingenix said it was $77. I don't know if any of you have been to the doctor lately, but the charge in Minneapolis passed $77 quite some time ago. I'm fairly certain that I read somewhere that New York is more expensive to live in than Minneapolis.

As NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said, “We believe there was an industrywide scheme perpetuated by some of the nation’s largest health insurers to deceive and defraud consumers.”

Ya think?

 

Here's the headline from yesterday's Strib: "Girl, 6, is grazed by bullet, leaving community hurt, too."

It's tempting just to let that stand as one more blob in the insipid lump of goo that is the Star Tribune. OK, I will, but with just one comment: Doesn't every bullet that hits a six-year-old hurt our community?

I wish I had such an overstaffed news room that I could send a reporter out to the scene of a shooting to ask everyone who lives near the incident what they think of a little girl getting shot. What do they expect people to say? "Hey, no big deal. People get shot here all the time. What really makes me mad is the Twins letting Johan Santana get away."

Actually, there was one detail of the Strib story that's kind of funny. The assailant's gun went off because his pants were so loose that the gun slipped down his pants leg and discharged when it hit the floor. How much funnier would the headline have been if the gun had hit with the muzzle pointed straight up?

"Man, 20 or so, grazed by bullet, leaving future generations hurt, too."

I hope you all noticed the bold initiative of the Star Tribune, as expressed on their editorial page on Sunday. Yup, they put their heads together, snorted and wheezed with the Herculean effort, pressed hard on their temples to concentrate the intellect, and made their endorsement regarding tomorrow's "Super Tuesday" nationwide primaries and caucuses.

And you thought they were too timid to actually make an endorsement without doing a focus group first of what they could get away with without offending their ever shrinking base of readers and advertisers.

Well, the joke's on you. The Strib editorial board ain't afraid of nobody or no thing. Not nobody. Not nohow.

And just to prove that, they threw caution to the wind, damned the torpedoes, hurled themselves once more into the breach and endorsed...voting.

As they put it, "Super Tuesday, Too important to miss." If that weren't endorsement enough, they even said,"It could be a transformative moment in American politics."

That's some bold talkin' there.

So whatever you do, don't miss Super Tuesday. It's too important AND it could be transformative.

And speaking of "Super", how 'bout them Giants? They made the top of the Strib's front page today, right above the coverage of the candidates.

I've been thinking a bit about Mike Huckabee. Of course, I've mostly been thinking about what a disaster for the country it would be to follow the idiot currently in the White House with another. But you've got to admit Huckabee would be funny.

For example, let's consider his performance on the Confederate flag in South Carolina issue. First, he obviously considers whether South Carolina wants to erect a racist lightning rod over its capitol a states rights issue. I couldn't agree with him more. But, if South Carolina can have its states rights issues, what's Huckabee's problem with, say, Massachusetts permitting gay marriage or California having stricter air quality standards for cars?

And then there's that whole remark he made about the flag poles. In case you missed it, here it is: "If somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole. That's what we'd do."

I'm going to take a wild guess as to what Baptist preacher Mike was talking about and say "shove the pole up their ass." Do you think? (Do Baptist preachers really talk like that?)

Ok, but somebody's going to have to explain to me why Mike's so all fired anxious for some people who might be visiting Arkansas to shove a pole up their ass and he's so dead set against people who happen to live in Massachusetts doing the same thing.