Why was it so easy for me to legally unlock my iPhone in Europe?

I recently changed my mobile service here in France so had to unlock my iPhone to transfer to the new service. In France (and reportedly elsewhere in Europe) this is an easy process. Though some providers in France claim that users need to wait until after six months, the law says that after three months the providers must provide you with this capability. It's 100% legal and in fact, it's done via iTunes. For me, the entire process took about 20 minutes and really, it could not have been any easier ad I don't have to worry about any new iPhone updates causing problems.

What I don't understand is why this is so difficult in the US outside of jailbreaking the phone. Jailbreaking may be legal, but it also can void your warranty. It hardly sounds fair yet somehow businesses are able to get away with this.

The kicker to this story is that my old plan - which was expensive and I regretted it almost immediately - was around €70 per month for a few hours of calls. (In France, you only pay for calls that you make, not for calls received.) The new plan is unlimited calls for about €20 (around $26) per month. If you are already a customer for their internet service, it's even less. And remember, high speed (fiber optic) internet services are cheap over here as well.

So why is it that in "socialist" France it is possible to have this yet in Apple's home country, it's so difficult? Consumers deserve a lot more, and the political class really needs to stand up for them rather than the entrenched business class such as AT&T or Verizon. Things in the US are generally easier but somehow, but in this case, it's painful and it needs to change. Read the rest of this post...

Easter ham will be more expensive this year

High feed costs and modernized (open) pens are apparently part of the reason according to the industry.

Ham will be the centerpiece of many Easter dinners this weekend, but the cost of that traditional main dish may make it harder for families to live high on the hog.

Ham prices have been higher than usual for the past two years because the cost of hog feed has gone up, and some major pork producers are spending millions to convert barns as they phase out cramped cages used to confine pregnant sows.

Ham has been selling wholesale for 75 to 80 cents per pound this spring, which is in line with last year's prices but well above the 55 cents per pound average for the previous five years.

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Video: Dog all tangled up in window blinds

At first I was going to write, how could someone leave their dog like this to get a camera. But you know, I'd do it. I suspect this isn't the first time this dog has done something this goofy.

Read the rest of this post...

Constituent: "Sam Arora is a liar"

For any of you who know Maryland Delegate, and former progressive, Sam Arora.  Read this. Read the rest of this post...

Bankers SuperPac to launch "surgical" strikes at enemies in Congress

From the American Banker (my emphasis and some reparagraphing):

Frustrated by a lack of political power and fed up with blindly donating to politicians who consistently vote against the industry's interests, a handful of leaders are determined to shake things up.

They have formed the industry's first SuperPAC — dubbed Friends of Traditional Banking — that is designed to target the industry's enemies and support its friends in Congress.

"It comes back to the old philosophy of walking softly and carrying a big stick," says Howard Headlee, the president and chief executive officer of the Utah Bankers Association. "But we've got no big stick. And we should. We have the capacity to have one, we just aren't organized [sic]." ...

"Congress isn't afraid of bankers," adds Roger Beverage, the president and CEO of the Oklahoma Bankers Association. "They don't think we'll do anything to kick them out of office. We are trying to change that perception."

Unlike traditional banking PACs, which target hundreds of House and Senate races, the SuperPAC instead is focusing on making a big difference in just a handful of close elections.

They explain how this will work:

"BankPAC [the industry's non-super PAC] is much broader and covers lots of different candidates. This is much more surgical," Packard says.

"If someone says I am going to give your opponent $5,000 or $10,000, you might say, 'Yea, okay.' But if you say the bankers are going to put in $100,000 or $500,000 or $1 million into your opponent's campaign, that starts to draw some attention.

Needless to say, a million dollars will swamp most House races.

That "fed up with blindly donating" comment above likely means Dems. The goal will be to pick off the hard-core bank-reform outliers, and frighten the rest.

I'm not sure another comment is needed; the story is pretty self-explanatory.

GP

To follow on Twitter, or to send links, click here: @Gaius_Publius. Read the rest of this post...

Should insurance pay an unlimited amount to keep someone alive?

A nice story about how Obamacare helped this family.  But after the excerpt, I want to ask a few hard questions for folks.  I'm not sure how I feel about it, so am curious what you all think.  From Salon:

Mason is my 14-year-old son, who is adorable and funny, and happens to have a very stubborn and large brain tumor. We discovered the tumor four years ago, and we have been monitoring and treating it with the help of some of the finest doctors around. Mason has lived a somewhat “normal” life, despite frequent MRIs and even chemotherapy. He did his homework and hung out with friends until the fall of 2010 when his headaches became debilitating. Scans revealed that Mason’s tumor had grown for the first time since we had discovered it. Then days before we were scheduled to meet with the neurosurgeon to discuss a surgery we had tried to avoid, Mason had a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

My boy spent 65 days in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) at one of Northern California’s best hospitals; during that time he underwent two brain surgeries, along with operations to insert a tracheostomy and a feeding tube. We stayed with him 24 hours a day, my husband, Alan, and I, his grandparents, and his 16-year-old brother, watching his oxygen levels on a screen, tracking his heart rate in beats per minute. The doctors kept him sedated, but every morning they turned down the propofol (Michael Jackson’s drug of choice) when the neurosurgeons came to do their examination. Three to five doctors circled Mason’s bed, one of them yelled his name into his ear. When he didn’t wake up right away, they apologetically pinched him and yelled louder.

When I was alone with Mason I put a white earbud into his ear and tuned my iPod to a song I knew he liked, “Airplanes” by B.O.B. I said it was time to wake up. “You need to come back, now,” I told him in my firm mommy voice.

During our first three weeks of hospitalization Mason racked up $1.1 million in medical bills. I worried about butting up against the $5 million lifetime limit on Mason’s health insurance policy. We had a good policy with a good company. We always paid our premiums on time and in full. But Mason wasn’t getting out of the hospital at any time soon, and there were months of rehab ahead. My then 13-year-old son would have reached his lifetime limit of health insurance had such limits not been eliminated by Obamacare on April 1, 2011. That date felt like a birthday or anniversary, something to be celebrated, when it finally arrived and we weren’t yet dropped by our health insurance company.

I've read some confusing things about if and when the lifetime and annual limits expire. It seems some are grandfathered in and won't go away. I wish this was all so much clearer (and yes I read the online material available, and it's still not clear if my plan's annual limits will be going away or not).

On another matter, I was talking to a friend the other day about these lifetime limits, and he asked an interesting question that I really couldn't answer. Why should we be paying more than $5m to save someone's life. My gut told me we shouldn't let anyone die, but is that really true at any cost? Should insurance be required to cover $10m to save a person, even $100m? The Republicans like to talk about their nonexistent death panels in the health care bill, but does anyone have a good argument, least of all the Republicans, for why insurance, either private or public, should spend an unlimited amount of money to save one life? I'd be curious to hear the arguments. Read the rest of this post...

Google Glasses II: A new way to hurt yourself

Google is a consulting client of mine so I left posting the Google Glasses video to John. This video from Tom Scott shows the possible drawbacks:



I still want a pair. So much better than the last one I tried:



Update: The Eye-Fi video is a Saturday Night Live spoof from way back. Read the rest of this post...

Greek senior kills self in busy Athens square; suicide rates jump across Europe, US

As you might have guessed, he cited the financial problems of Greece as the reason for his suicide. He was a retired pharmacist so he should have been living a reasonable retirement. The bankers meanwhile continue to prosper, as governments trip over themselves to make sure they don't anger them enough to pack their bags and leave. (As if.) Those who caused the crisis are somehow to valuable to lose, but the others are merely cannon fodder.

Nice environment that the bankers created.  From CNBC:

A Greek retiree shot himself dead in the busiest public square in Athens during morning rush hour Wednesday, leaving a note police said linked his suicide with the country's acute financial woes.

Hours later, more than 1,500 anti-austerity protesters gathered in the square, responding to social media calls for peaceful demonstrations accusing Greek politicians of driving people to despair with harsh cutbacks implemented to secure vital international bailouts.

The 77-year-old retired pharmacist drew a handgun and shot himself in the head near a subway exit on central Syntagma Square which was crowded with commuters, police said. The square, opposite Greece's Parliament, is a focal point for public protests.

More from CBS about suicide rates spiking across Europe, with a smaller increase in the US:

Before the financial crisis first began, Greece had the lowest suicide rate in Europe at 2.8 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to Eurostat. That has now almost doubled and is rising at an alarming rate. A Greek Ministry of Health study found the suicide rate in the first half of 2011 was 40 percent higher than the year before.

Similar increases are being seen across the hardest hit areas of Europe. Portugal's suicide rate in 2009 was almost double what it was at the start of decade. Ireland saw a 13 percent increase in suicides among people under 65 between 2007 and 2008. Another study in Lancet found the overall increase in suicides across the EU since 2007 corresponded to increases seen during other severe economic downturns.

The U.S. has also seen a significant rise in suicide since the crisis began. In 2000, there were 10.5 suicides per 100,000 people. By 2009 it had increased to 12 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Read the rest of this post...

Romney criticizes Obama for spending "too much time at Harvard" when Romney spent more

AP reporter Kasie Hunt just tweeted the following about Mitt Romney's speech in Pennsylvania, happening now:

Romney says Obama has "spent too much time at Harvard, perhaps." Romney spent more time attending Harvard than Obama did.

In fact, Obama spent 3 years at Harvard getting a law degree, while Romney spent at least 4 years there getting a JD and an MBA.

So to recap:

1. Romney criticizes Obama for spending too much time at Harvard.
2. Romney has spent more time at Harvard than Obama.

This is all part of Romney lying and flip-flopping about pretty much everything in his past, which is something you generally have to do when you run for president as a Republican after spending a lifetime as a flaming liberal from Massachusetts. Romney seems to have gotten advice that he should try to paint Obama as everything that Romney already is. Towards what end? Maybe the adviser thought he waters down Romney's negatives into a he-said-he-said ("well, you know, Obama changes his story too"). Read the rest of this post...

Pink Slime hamburger-maker BPI quadrupled lobbying since NYT article

You've been reading a lot about Pink Slime lately (my capitals; our backgrounder here).

Ground zero, I think, for Pink Slime awareness is this 2009 New York Times article "Safety of Beef Processing Method Is Questioned":

Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling to remove potentially deadly E. coli from hamburgers when an entrepreneurial company from South Dakota came up with a novel idea: injecting beef with ammonia.

The company, Beef Products Inc., had been looking to expand into the hamburger business with a product made from beef that included fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil.

Here's a pic of the vats this is done in. Pink Slime has elsewhere been described as (get ready):

the rejected fat, sinew, bloody effluvia, and occasional bits of meat cut from carcasses in the slaughterhouse were a low-value waste product called 'trimmings'.

"Trimmings." Like ... "parts." Maybe BPI stands for "Beef Parts Inc." Ya think?

That Times article is the reason most people even know this ammoniated tripe exists (oops, "sludge"; I don't want to defame tripe). In fact, that Times article caused a problem, a corporate profits problem for BPI:

[G]rocery stores pulled beef containing the filler off the shelves and BPI closed three of its four plants for lack of demand[.]

And we all know the solution to a corporate-profits problem, don't we? You got it — a big-money lobbying & PR campaign.

Which brings us to investigative reporter Lee Fang at Republic Report. Here's Fang's latest on Pink Slime and its small army of well-paid friends (my emphasis):

At the core of the controversy over “pink slime” is a story about corporate corruption. ... Why doesn’t the USDA require school lunches, grocery stores, or restaurants to disclose which food products contain this mystery meat? And if it’s perfectly safe, why have pink slime companies lobbied against bills that would allow industry whistleblowers to speak up?

The answer, again, relates to the influence of money in politics. Beef Products Inc., the top producer of pink slime, has ramped up its lobbying spending since the New York Times helped blow the lid off the controversy in 2009: [chart here] ...

Beef Products Inc. retains a team of lobbyists from the firm Olsson, Frank & Weeda. One lobbyist employed by the firm is Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, a former congresswoman from South Dakota and leader of the “Blue Dog Caucus” of pro-corporate Democrats.

Sandlin recently circulated a letter among congressional insiders to defend her client and warn against efforts to bring greater scrutiny to pink slime:

“Dear colleagues, letters have started to circulate on the Hill which perpetuate serious, misleading [sic] information attacking BPI and its product [...] I respectfully request that the senator/representative not sign such letters and also urge their colleagues to get more complete information beyond what recent sensationalized ‘news’ stories have provided.”

... With a regulatory battle looming over disclosure of pink slime in our meat...

One can only hope.

There's more at the Republic Report, including information on indirect lobbying as well, and the frighteningly named "Meat Institute." Do read. There's more on the politics of Pink Slime in this from John and Chris as well.

I think this story isn't going away. It's not drone warfare and dead babies, but it's a perfect emblem of so much that's so wrong — and it has all the elements, a really nasty name (Pink Slime, eww) and the perfect poisonous household cleaner (deadly ammonia) as a key ingredient.

If persistent progressives can't ride this horse to victory, I'm not sure what they can do. After all, even Obama has already half-folded. Let's get the other half.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius) Read the rest of this post...

Google Glasses is awfully cool

Is awfully cool?  Are awfully cool?

Google is working on a project to put the Internet into a pair of glasses.  They released a preview today, and it's pretty darn cool.



I have to admit, I was intrigued when I first heard about this project, and also a bit confused as to how you might use the new Google Glasses. After watching the video, I'm sold.

I'm not entirely sure how I'd feel walking down the street wearing these things.  Once people know what they are, maybe, but first adopter?  Not sure I'm ready to be mistaken for a character on Deep Space Nine.  Also, will this be better or worse than a cell phone, in terms of taking people's attention off the road while driving and walking?  I also worry about someone running by and yanking this off your face - my glasses are expensive but not very useful to a thief.  This little toy, more so.

I watched the Google video, above, and felt like I was watching the future.  It makes me think of my friend Skip who used to work at Apple on all sorts of cool things, including the iPhone (he died last fall in an accident).  He was quite literally helping to build the future, and he knew it, and he loved it.  Not that we're not doing the same, in politics and with activism.  But there's something that's always particularly excited me about technology.  Nothing and no one can make me wake up early (thus the message from my mom earlier this week, at 10:40am, asking if I was still in bed), but the chance to go to my high school computer room, a few hours before class, and play computer games, even if it was that funky Star Trek game from the late 70s, there was no way I was gonna say no to that, even if it meant waking up a few hours early.

I know some people find some technology frivolous, and dehumanizing.  And I'm sure some of it is.  But technology can also change the way you think about, and see the world.  In this case, quite literally. Read the rest of this post...

US to ease sanctions against Myanmar

There are certainly plenty of positive signs from the Myanmar government that can justify this action. Whether it will continue is another story. BBC News:

The United States has announced that it will ease some sanctions against Burma.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said some travel and financial restrictions would be relaxed, with Burmese leaders allowed to visit the US.

European Union leaders had said earlier on Wednesday that they may lift some sanctions.

Read the rest of this post...

France tops, US last in preventable deaths

As much as many wanted more from Obamacare, it is still a good start compared to the previous chaotic system that left out millions of Americans. Despite all of the silly right wing talk about "socialism" it should be an embarrassment to any American that the US healthcare system is consistently ranked lower than other industrialized countries. (Being tucked between Costa Rica and Slovenia should be a wakeup call.) The "me first and forget about everyone else" attitude of the Christian right is shameful. Besides being ranked #37 by the WHO for healthcare, the US is last at #19 for preventable deaths in the industrialized world.

Why does the right continue talking so much about being American, when they don't care at all about their fellow Americans? Forget about the name calling and bashing of foreign healthcare systems, because the problem is the US system. Handing over control of the system to the insurance and the pharmaceutical companies is not the answer and it's not clear why the GOP thinks it is. There's enough of a track record to show that the US system is on the rocks and needs reform. Socialism this:

France did best -- with 64.8 deaths deemed preventable by timely and effective health care per 100,000 people, in the study period of 2002 and 2003. Japan had 71.2 and Australia had 71.3 such deaths per 100,000 people. The United States had 109.7 such deaths per 100,000 people, the researchers said.

After the top three, Spain was fourth best, followed in order by Italy, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, Greece, Austria, Germany, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Britain, Ireland and Portugal, with the United States last.

The researchers compared these rankings with rankings for the same 19 countries covering the period of 1997 and 1998. France and Japan also were first and second in those rankings, while the United States was 15th, meaning it fell four places in the latest rankings.

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