Coyote Blog

Don Boudreaux responds to UAW President Ron Gettelfinger's complaint that the US has a trade imbalance in autos with South Korea:

Well, duh - that's an
inevitable consequence of specialization...

General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler each have huge trade imbalances --
to be precise, huge and growing trade deficits -- with their workers:
these companies buy far more from their workers than their workers buy
from them.  Perhaps auto makers should hire workers only on the
condition that the trade in each case is "balanced": each and every
worker must agree to spend his or her entire salary on products made by
the auto maker.  For example, a G.M. worker whose total compensation in
2007 is $60,000 must spend $60,000 on G.M. products in 2007.  Any
worker who fails to do so will be fired because of the resulting
imbalance.

Update:  Sorry, forgot the link.  Added it.

Patterico has a link to this interesting account of a week in the life of Jarek Molski, who makes a living from filing ADA suits (emphasis added):

For example, in Molski v. El 7 Mares Restaurant, Case
No. C04-1882 (N.D. Cal. 2004), Molski claims that, on May 20, 2003, he
and significant other, Brygida Molski, attended the El 7 Mares
Restaurant for the purposes of dining out. Molski alleges that the
restaurant lacked adequate handicapped parking, and that the food
counter was too high. After the meal, Molski attempted to use the
restroom, but because the toilet's grab bars were improperly installed,
he injured his shoulders in the process of transferring himself from
his wheelchair to the toilet. Thereafter, he was unable to wash his
hands because of the lavatory's design.

Although this complaint appears credible standing alone, its
validity is undermined when viewed alongside Molski's other complaints.
In Molski v. Casa De Fruta, L.P., Case No. C04-1981 (N.D. Cal. 2004),
Molski alleges that he sustained nearly identical injuries on the exact
same day, May 20, 2003. In Casa de Fruta, Molski alleges that he and
significant other, Brygida Molski, patronized Casa de Fruta for the
purpose of wine tasting. On arrival, Molski was again unable to locate
van accessible parking. Once inside, Molski again found the counter to
be too high. After wine tasting, Molski again decided to use the
restroom, and again, injured his upper extremities while in the process
of transferring himself to the toilet. Thereafter, he was once again
unable to wash his hands due to the design of the lavatory.

This was, apparently, not the end of Molski's day. In Molski v.
Rapazzini Winery, Case No. C04-1881 (N.D. Cal. 2004), Molski once again
alleges that he sustained nearly identical injuries on the exact same
day, May 20, 2003. Molski, again accompanied by Brygida Molski, claims
he visited the Rapazzini Winery for the purpose of wine tasting. Again,
Molski complains that the parking lot lacked adequate handicapped van
accessible parking. Upon entering the establishment, he discovered that
the counter was too high. After tasting wine, he again needed to use
the restroom. In the course of transferring himself from his wheelchair
to the toilet, he injured himself yet again. Thereafter, he was again
unable to wash his hands due to the lavatory's design.

The Court is tempted to exclaim: "what a lousy day!" It would be
highly unusual "” to say the least "” for anyone to sustain two injuries,
let alone three, in a single day, each of which necessitated a separate
federal lawsuit. But in Molski's case, May 20, 2003, was simply
business as usual. Molski filed 13 separate complaints for essentially
identical injuries sustained between May 19, 2003 and May 23, 2003. The
Court simply does not believe that Molski suffered 13 nearly identical
injuries, generally to the same part of his body, in the course of
performing the same activity, over a five-day period. This is to say
nothing of the hundreds of other lawsuits Molski has filed over the
last four years, many of which make nearly identical allegations. The
record before this Court leads it to conclude that these suits were
filed maliciously, in order to extort a cash settlement.

The EU has an odd definition of the term "free trade."  Apparently, low taxes, in the EU's world, are irreconcilable with free trade.

In a move that is both remarkable and disturbing, the European
Commission plans to file a complaint - and threaten protectionist trade
barriers - because attractive Swiss tax policies are supposedly a
violation of a free-trade accord. The bureaucrats in Brussels are not
arguing that Switzerland is imposing barriers against EU products.
Instead, the Commission actually is taking the position that low taxes
are attracting businesses that might otherwise operate in high-tax
nations. The implications of this radical assertion are
breathtaking. It certainly is true that a nation with more
laissez-faire policy will attract economic activity from neighbors with
more burdensome levels of government. But if this migration of jobs and
investment is a "distortion" or trade, then the only "solution" is
complete and total harmonization of all taxes (and regulations,
spending, etc). If the Euro-crats succeed with this argument at the
European level, it will be just a matter of time before similar cases
are filed at the World Trade Organization.

Perhaps the central touchstone of the women's movement has been the ownership and decision-making for one's own body, starting of course with the freedom to choose an abortion, but extending into a number of other health and sex-related issues. 

What amazes me, though, is how quickly all this is chucked out the window when it comes to having the government take over health care.  Because many of the exact same people who have campaigned for the primacy of a person's decision-making for their own body are also strong supporters of government funded universal health care.  And I can't think of anything less compatible with individual decision-making for one's own body than having the government run health care. 

The demands for universal health care general come from two complaints:

1. Health care is too expensive and is more than I can afford
2. Health care quality is low.  In this category, by far the most common complaint is that "my insurance won't pay for X procedure that I want, or Y level of care, etc."

Neither is a surprising complaint, given how our health care system is currently set up, and both are highly related to one another.  The key problem in the US health care system is that, unlike just about any other product or service you and I purchase, the typical individual is not presented with a cost-quality tradeoff.   Since most of us have a fixed price insurance plan, we couldn't care less how much anything costs, and in fact, like an all-you-can-eat buffet, our incentive is to use as much as possible. 

This puts the insurance companies in the odd position of having to make cost-quality tradeoffs for us, via their coverage and treatment rules.  But when they try to cut costs by narrowing or limiting certain treatments, consumers tend to get the government involved to remove these limitations.  They either do this though legislation (many states now have onerous requirements on what procedures insurance companies must pay for in that state) or through litigation (the threat of lawsuits pushing doctors into expensive defensive medicine, asking that every conceivable test be conducted).  In other words, people take their dissatisfaction with #2 above to the government, who acts, pushing up costs and making problem #1 worse.

Until we find ourselves in a Strossian post-scarcity world, someone is going to have to make this cost-quality tradeoff for our health care.  Even if it is never discussed, this is the most important design factor in any health care system.  There are only three choices:

• Individuals make these choices for themselves, paying for their health care and making their own decisions about whether certain procedures are "worth it".  - OR -
• Insurance companies make these choices for us.  (I am not sure this is even a choice any more, as government micro-management seems to be pushing this de facto into the next choice). - OR -
• The government makes these choices for everyone

So, folks that are pushing for government-funded universal health care are in fact saying "I want the government to take over decision-making for my body."  Yuk!  Where are the feminists when we need them?

Beyond just ceding to the government decisions such as whether its really worth it for dad to get his new hip joint, there is another chilling factor, which I have written about a number of times.  Government health care will act as a Trojan Horse for nanny fascism.  Because, you see, if the government is paying to fix your body, then you can't be trusted to do whatever you want with your body.  By paying for your health care, the government has acquired an ownership interest in your body.  You want that Wendy's cheeseburger?  Sorry, but the government can't allow that if it is paying for your health care.  Likewise, it is not going to allow your kid to play dodge ball at all or to play soccer without a helmet -- can't afford to fix all those broken bones.   And no swing sets or monkey bars either!

Already, when its only affects us as individuals, the government is poking its nose into micro-managing our lives.  Just think what will happen when the government has a financial incentive, in the form of health care costs, to do so!  Eek! In fact, it is already happening:

People who are grossly overweight, who smoke heavily
or drink excessively could be denied surgery or drugs following a
decision by a Government agency yesterday.  The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) which
advises on the clinical and cost effectiveness of treatments for the
NHS, said that in some cases the "self-inflicted" nature of an illness
should be taken into account.

Or here in the US:

New York City is at the forefront of this new public health movement. In
January, city health officials began
requiring
that medical testing labs report the results of blood sugar tests for all
the city's diabetics directly to the health department. This is first time
that any government has begun tracking people who have a chronic disease.
The New York City Department of Health will analyze the data to identify
those patients who are not adequately controlling their diabetes. They will
then receive letters or phone calls urging them to be more vigilant about
their medications, have more frequent checkups, or change their diet....

So what could be wrong with merely monitoring and reminding people to take
better care of themselves?  New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Friedan
has made it clear that it won't necessarily end there. If nagging is not
sufficient to reduce the health consequences of the disease, other steps
will be taken. Friedan
argues
that "modifications of the physical environment to promote physical
activity, or of the food environment to address obesity, are essential for
chronic disease prevention and control." Friedan envisions regulations for
chronic disease control including "local requirements on food pricing,
advertising, content, and labeling; regulations to facilitate physical
activity, including point-of-service reminders at elevators and safe,
accessible stairwells; tobacco and alcohol taxation and advertising and
sales restrictions; and regulations to ensure a minimal level of clinical
preventive services."

Read that last paragraph.  That's just the starting point for where the government will go when it starts paying for all our health care.

Postscript:   This is a very hard topic to discuss with people, because they are so ingrained with the way the market is set up today.  When I started working for myself, I told my wife that we needed a high-deductible medical plan, to protect us from a health disaster, but we would just self-pay for dental costs.  "What?"  She said.  "You can't pay for your own dental - you need insurance.  We can't go without insurance.  That's all you hear on TV, the problem of not having insurance.  We'll be one of those people!"  I patiently explained that it was almost impossible for us to face a dental problem that would bankrupt us, and that for any conceivable level of dental care, it was cheaper to just pay the bills than get dental insurance.  Eventually, she relented.

We have been paying our own dental bills for years now, and have saved thousands vs. the quotes I got for insurance.  The other day we had an issue that perfectly highlights why 3rd party payer systems cause problems.  My wife chipped a tooth.  She was presented with two choices:  To file it down for nominal cost, or to do a major repair which would cost $500.  She asked me my advice on which to do, and I said "its your mouth.  You know what else we might use $500.  You make the tradeoff."  I am not even sure what decision she made.  It is simply impossible to make this kind of decision for someone else.  Everyone will make it differently.  A government-payer system would only have two options:  1)  don't allow anyone to get the expensive fix or 2)  force taxpayers to pay for everyone to get the expensive fix.  Both solutions are wrong.  Such is the problem with all single-payer systems.

Yet another nutty jury has decided that it should be national policy to have warning signs every few feet on a railroad to warn trespassers against danger:

Jeffrey Klein and Brett Birdwell were 17 "when they trespassed onto
railroad property and climbed atop a rail car" because they wanted to
see the view from there. They were shocked by a 12,500-volt wire and
severely injured. The incident took place in Lancaster, Pa. but through
the miracle of forum selection the lawsuit against Amtrak and Norfolk
Southern landed before a jury in Philadelphia, a locality notably more
favorable for plaintiffs than Lancaster. An attorney said the railroads
should have posted signs for the benefit of trespassers warning of the
overhead hazard and also should have had the electricity turned off at
the time.

This is by no means the first such verdict.  I featured another here:

By the way, the exact wording on the complaint against the railroad is even better than I thought:

"The
[engineer] did not stop the train in a timely manner, and failed to
yield the right of way to a pedestrian walking along the tracks in
plain view"

A freight train's topping distance is measured in miles, even with full emergency braking.

She and her attorney's further argue:

that
the railroad was negligent for failing to post signs warning 'of the
dangers of walking near train tracks and that the tracks were actively
in use

Lets leave aside the obvious point
about individual responsibility, and ask what would happen if this were
the legal standard, to have such signs.  To make sure someone saw one,
you would have to have one say every 30 feet.  Since there are just over 200,000 miles of freight railroads in the North America that works out to a bit over 35,000,000 signs that need to be posted.  At $100 per sign this would cost $3.5 billion.

In this post I said:

I could spend all day discussing the follies of anti-trust law.  But
one of the memes that still seems to hang on is that anti-trust was
designed as a form of consumer protection, with the government
protecting consumers from the monopoly power of consolidated
enterprises.

I am not enough of a business historian to comment on whether
anti-trust has ever been used for consumer protection, but it is clear
that it is not any more.  That has been one very expensive lesson we
can all learn from the Microsoft anti-trust cases, both in the US and
Europe.

Here is further proof.  NicSand, who used to have 2/3 of the retail channel for sandpaper locked up with exclusive deals, is complaining that 3M has usurped them and has taken their market share.   NicSand enjoyed monopoly margins for years, finally faced long-overdue price competition from 3M, and lost a lot of the business.  So they sued for anti-trust.

Between 1997 and 2000, 3M entered into contracts to supply automotive sandpaper
to Advanced Auto, Autozone, CSK and KMart and did so at prices ranging from 10%
to 30% over NicSand's costs. But nothing about this sequence of events suggests
an antitrust violation. As to the market share that 3M garnered over these
years, "it takes one to know one" is hardly an accredited hallmark of antitrust
liability"”particularly when NicSand's apparent solution to this problem is not
to encourage the entry of other suppliers to this lopsided market but to
preserve its 67% market share. As to 3M's discounting, NicSand of course has no
right"”under the antitrust laws no less"”to preserve 40"“50% margins on a product
that (so far as the allegations are concerned) does not take any ingenuity to
make. One can fairly doubt the size of NicSand's and 3M's R&D departments
for automotive sandpaper.

Unable to argue that 3M's discounting amounted to anything but legitimate (and
apparently long-overdue) competition, NicSand focuses on the fact that 3M
entered into exclusive contracts with the four large retailers that switched
from NicSand to 3M. Yet according to NicSand's amended complaint, the retailers
made exclusivity one of the preconditions for doing business with a new
supplier. The complaint says that the large retailers (1) choose to carry just
one brand of automotive sandpaper for sale to consumers, (2) re-negotiate these
one-brand contracts just once a year, (3) require a new supplier to purchase the
retailer's existing supply of automotive sandpaper, (4) require a new supplier
to provide racks and other display equipment, (5) require a new supplier to
produce a full line of automotive sandpaper and (6) require a new supplier to
provide a discount on the retailer's first order. NicSand of course complied
with these requirements in obtaining the supply business it held in 1997, and 3M
complied with them in winning some of that business away. If retailers have made
supplier exclusivity a barrier to entry, one cannot bring an antitrust claim
against another supplier for complying with that precondition. Put another way,
NicSand did not sue 3M insisting that it had a right to share shelf space; it
sued 3M because it wanted that shelf space all to itself"”just as it had it in
1997. This is precisely the kind of all-for-one-and-all-for-one competitor claim
that the antitrust laws do not protect.

Anti-trust is not about the consumer.  It is about one company trying to use the government to sit on its competitors.

Update: Oh, and in case you thought liscencing of professionals was about consumers rather than protecting incumbent competitors, example number 439,126:

If you've spent as much time on farms as I have, you may imagine that
floating horse teeth has something to do with a backup of equine urine. It
actually refers to the time-honored practice of filing horses' teeth to prevent
them from getting uncomfortably long. At the behest of veterinarians (who
else?), the state of Minnesota is trying to limit
the service to veterinarians, and the Institute for Justice (who else?) is challenging
the protectionist regulations in state court.

Should you balk at going to veterinary school just so you can file horse
teeth for a living (a technique veterinary schools don't even teach), Minnesota
will give you a pass if you 1) have more than 10 years of experience or 2) pass
an exam given by the Dallas-based International Association of Equine Dentistry.
"To qualify to take the IAED's test," I.J. notes, "you must float the teeth of
250 horses under the supervision of an existing IAED member. Not only are there
no IAED members in Minnesota, it is illegal to float without a license. So, to
abide by the law in Minnesota, you must break it."

Does it bother anyone else that the only complaint voiced in this article about government requirements for building in surveillance backdoors into the Internet is about the cost?

Oh, and by the way, note the date on the act in question.  1994 makes it a Clinton-era law crafted after the first attempt to bomb the WTC.  All of you Democrats who feel smugly certain that civil liberties will be safe if only your party was in charge should note how closely the Patriot Act resembles Clinton's proposed anti-terrorism bill.  Just as Republicans have found that politicians shed their small government talk once they are in charge, our country's leadership tends to abandon any past queasiness about trampling on civil liberties once in a position of power, no matter what party they represent.

Jason McBride was arrested for selling gasoline at too high of a price during the shortages that followed Katrina, under an Alabama anti-price-gouging law.  What was the legal price he violated?  Well, the law doesn't actually set a price maximum, it just makes you liable to be arrested if a random government bureaucrat feels like your price is too high.  Mr. McBride followed up with more information on his original story to Christopher Westley at the Mises Blog:

I recently heard from Jason McBride, who was the subject of my last Mises.org
article, "The Right to Set Your Own
Price". McBride, a gas station owner from Aliceville, Alabama, was arrested
for violating Alabama's "anti-gouging" law on the day that Hurricane Katrina
slammed into the Gulf Coast.

Jason told me that there was more to the story than what had been reported in
the newspapers. He said that the price he charged for a gallon of gas that day
was actually $3.49 (not the $3.69 that was reported) and that he purchased that
gas that very day for $3.29 a gallon. He said that this information was provided
to the district attorney during his investigation.

But there's more. Jason told me that he sold gas for only three hours at the
$3.49 price until he received a call of complaint from the D.A.'s office. His
response was to shut down his pumps until the the State of Alabama contacted him
with a "correct price." His pumps were shut down for 18 hours until the
state told him he could sell gasoline for $3.09 a gallon. This happened in the
midst of a crisis when consumer demand for gasoline increased dramatically.

Despite his bending over backwards to comply with the law, and despite zero
evidence of malicious intent, the district attorney's office still arrested him.
His picture was on the front page of a state newspaper the next day (while, he
pointed out, a report on a murder was relegated to page 6).

While the "she was asking for it" defense has thankfully been purged from most rape trials (at least those involving strangers), it seems to be alive and well in the civil trial world.  Last week, a jury held that the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 were only 32% responsible for their actions.  The real villain in this terrorist attack was ... the Port Authority, owner of the facility, who so thoughtlessly allowed themselves to get bombed.  More via Volokh and Overlawyered.  Based on joint and several liability, the PA now is on the hook for the entire $1.8 billion verdict.

By the way, the "smoking gun" in the trial was apparently a recommendation the PA received (one of hundreds and perhaps thousands of suggestions of wildly varying quality) to close the parking lot to cars to prevent car bombs.  This helps reinforce my earlier point of why litigation insanity like this actually works to make the world less safe, because such litigation provides a strong disincentive for an entity to have any internal discourse on safety, since notes from this discourse can be held against it later. 

It is always useful to think about what consistently applied policy would have satisfied the jury that the PA was not liable.  In this case, the jury's verdict was clearly "they should have closed the garage to prevent car bombings."  Now, lets apply that everywhere consistently.  This would basically mean that we close every car parking garage in the country, since they are all equally vulnerable to a car bomb.  Applying this further, wouldn't this same standard also result in closing all tall buildings to prevent airplane attack, closing all airports to prevent hijackings, and closing all government buildings to prevent bombings (well, maybe thats not so bad).  I have posted before about finding the absurdity from translating a jury's civil verdict into a consistent policy.  Here is one example:

the exact wording on the complaint against the railroad is even better than I thought:

"The
[engineer] did not stop the train in a timely manner, and failed to
yield the right of way to a pedestrian walking along the tracks in
plain view"

A freight train's topping distance is measured in miles, even with full emergency braking.

She and her attorney's further argue:

that
the railroad was negligent for failing to post signs warning 'of the
dangers of walking near train tracks and that the tracks were actively
in useLets

leave aside the obvious point
about individual responsibility, and ask what would happen if this were
the legal standard, to have such signs.  To make sure someone saw one,
you would have to have one say every 30 feet.  Since there are just over 200,000 miles of freight railroads in the North America that works out to a bit over 35,000,000 signs that need to be posted.  At $100 per sign this would cost $3.5 billion.

Here is the serious point:  Never would any legislature
pass a law that said there had to be warning signs every 30 feet on
railroads.  It would be way too costly for little benefit.  At grade
crossings today, we have signs and flashing lights and even gates and
still thousands of people a year drive in front of trains on grade
crossings.  So, if we would never require it legislatively, how have we
gotten to a point where a jury might effectively retroactively require
such signs, and assess a multi-million dollar penalty for not doing it?

I have often criticized Aspiring Governor Eliot Spitzer for his overreaching tactics aimed more at keeping himself on the front page (and in the hearts and minds of voters) than in really catching bad guys.  However, one of the reasons Spitzer gets support for his tactics is that there seems to be an enforcement vacuum at the SEC in pursuing corporate and banking fraud.  The Adelphia case brings us a great example, courtesy of Professor Bainbridge.  It appears that the Rigas family is going to get off with forfeiting some of the assets they plundered - no jail time and no fines!

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that it and the United
States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (USAO) reached an
agreement to settle a civil enforcement action and resolve criminal charges
against Adelphia Communications Corporation, its founder John J. Rigas, and his
three sons, Timothy J. Rigas, Michael J. Rigas and James P. Rigas, in one of the
most extensive financial frauds ever to take place at a public company.

In its complaint, the Commission charged that Adelphia, at the direction of
the individual defendants: (1) fraudulently excluded billions of dollars in
liabilities from its consolidated financial statements by hiding them on the
books of off-balance sheet affiliates; (2) falsified operating statistics and
inflated earnings to meet Wall Street estimates; and (3) concealed rampant
self-dealing by the Rigas family, including the undisclosed use of corporate
funds for purchases of Adelphia stock and luxury condominiums. The USAO also
announced that it had entered into a Non-Prosecution Agreement with Adelphia and
had settled forfeiture claims against Rigas family members.

Under the settlement agreement, which is subject to the approval of the
District and Bankruptcy Courts for the Southern District of New York, the Rigas
family members will forfeit in excess of $1.5 billion in assets that they
derived from the fraud, including the Rigas family's interests in certain cable
properties.

This is absurd.  The stay-at-home wife of the treasurer of Enron is in the slammer right now but the Rigas's get to walk?  Note that the Rigas's last year were convicted of numerous criminal charges, but there sentencing was delayed so they could negotiate.  I guess they negotiated pretty well.  In my understanding of the cases, this is a much worse case of fraud than Enron.  These guys looted the company for personal gain, and raped their minority stockholders.   Shame on the SEC.

I really didn't want to go here again, but after some thought, I am really amazed at all the disdain for the Oscars coming out of the conservative blogs(CQ,Powerline,LaShawn Barber,LGF).  As I posted here, I thought Rock did an OK job, and for once all the awardees kept their speeches focused on movies rather than their own lame political views. 

However, conservative blogs have pointed out that most conservatives probably got turned off during Rock's monologue, particularly his jabs at GWB, and tuned out.  I am confused just what Rock said that was so horrible.  First, it is expected that monologues like this take some shots at whoever is in the White House.  And Rock certainly did so, but he also took shots at prominent liberals and Hollywood luminaries as well.

Second, just what did he make fun of?  He made fun of going to war and not finding WMD.  Now, I am certainly bright enough to know that the argument for war was more nuanced (heh heh) than just WMD's, but if I was a conservative, I would LOVE it if someone made fun of GWB every day for our WMD intelligence.  If such jokes at his expense occur frequently enough, maybe he will get mad enough to do the real thorough house cleaning of the CIA which is desperately overdue.

The other thing Rock poked fun at Bush for was the growing deficit.  Hey, conservatives out there, what's wrong with that?  Again, I am smart enough to understand there are valid reasons for deficits - wars and recessions are two of them.  Also, I understand that if you want to cut spending, you usually have to cut taxes first, drive the budget into deficit, and use that as a lever for getting spending cuts.  However, Bush has done NOTHING in four years to try to reign in domestic spending, and has done several things (e.g. prescription drug benefit) that greatly increase spending.  Reagan ended up with large deficits but only after putting up a valiant fight with a Democratic-controlled Congress to cut spending.  GWB has a Republican Congress and hasn't even tried.  So what's wrong, even for conservatives, with taking a poke at GWB on deficits?

Oh yes, the blogs have one other complaint - that he said "ass".  You know, whenever I hear this kind of complaint, it just reminds me of Beavis and Butthead going "heh, heh heh, heh -- he said ass -- heh, heh"

I have been looking for a good feed reader for a while.  I don't like the online solutions, for the same reasons I don't like web-based email clients  - they are slow and awkward to navigate.  I tried one or two that were supposed to integrated into IE, but they crashed my system, and I am trying to move to Firefox anyway.  I have not yet tried the new Mozilla email client called Thunderbird, but I am told it has a feed reader in it.

FeedDemon is a third party standalone app that is a combination of feed reader with tabbed browsing to pursue links in feeds.  The embedded browser can be switched between IE and Firefox, but even with the IE code, it has tabbed browsing!  I have been very happy with it.

The only complaint I had was that it was difficult to synchronize my already-read feeds between home and work.  For a week or so, I carried a usb memory key back and forth with the cache, but this was a Kluge.  Fortunately, the FeedDemon 1.5 beta has (almost) fixed this.  By integrating with bloglines, I do not get repeats at work of feeds I read at home.  There are only 2 downsides to this:

• You have to go online to bloglines to add a new feed to your reading list, though this is pretty fast
• Feeds downloaded at the office do not show up at all at home.  This is not what I ultimately want.  What I really want is to be able to download and have on my computer all feeds in both locations, but with the read/un-read status synchronized.  This may already be possible, but I can't figure out how.  Since this is a beta, I am sure more improvements are to come.

30 day free trial.  Recommended.

For those who still hold out belief that the tort system today is still primarily about justice rather than just hijacking deep pockets, read this post at overlawyered.com.  From an online ad:

We will show you how to prove you had taken Vioxx, to prove that you had related side effects, and to find a good lawyer to win your case. There are still places selling Vioxx after the recall, you can find them online. Merck is still 100% fully responsible for any side effect. If you purchase Vioxx now, not only you can sue Merck, you can also sue the pharmacy store for selling recalled products. The purchase is risk free, as Merck will pay you every penny you spend on Vioxx including tax and shipping fees.

Quick, buy some before they take it off the shelf, so you too can get in on the lawsuit!

By the way, this little tidbit, also via Overlawyered.com, gave me a chuckle.  A woman is suing a railroad for hitting her when she was walking down the railroad tracks.  In part, she is suing the train for "failure of its engineer to...yield the right of way".  LOL - I can't believe the train didn't swerve out of the way.

UPDATE #1

Legal Underground has a post critical of this article:

As grist for its anti-lawyer message, Overlawyered.com is featuring this obvious Internet hoax: "Get Your Million Dollars from Vioxx Lawsuit."  Does Walter Olson really think his readers are so gullible?

In the comments section, I responded as follows:

Hmmm. I am one of the listed disciples (lol). I am willing to believe the ad is non-serious, meaning that it was aimed more at getting traffic and probably was not written by a law firm, and am posting an update as such with a link to this site.

Hoax? In my mind, its a hoax only if the legal advice is wrong or if you think no one would respond to the plea. I can't tell you if Vioxx can still be bought nowadays (that may be a hoax). However, if it was still on the shelf somewhere, ask yourself two honest questions:

1. Is there a lawyer out there who would happily try to make the case that a person who bought Vioxx after the recall can still be awarded damages?  Even if the attorney knew the person bought the Vioxx mainly to get in the class action?
2. Are there people out there who, if they thought it would get them in on a big class action, would go out today and load up on Vioxx solely to get a chance at having a lawsuit?

The honest answer is yes to both (just read the billboards in Florida). I mean, I would bet about any amount of money that someone out there has read this on the Internet and has tried to go buy Vioxx to get in on the jackpot. Guaranteed. Would any of you take the other side of this bet?

The fact that this ad may not be from a real lawyer does mean that I may have overstepped in painting law firms as being this bad (sorry), but I don't think its being fake in any way hurts the case that the notion of individual responsibility is on life support in this country.

By the way, after looking at Walter Olson's original post, I think he was pretty careful not to claim that the page was from a real law firm, and basically pointed to the same issues with the page's provenance that Legal Underground pointed out.

In the companies I have run, I have spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with a few really ridiculous lawsuits.  Here are two examples (that happened to companies I ran - this is not Internet hearsay or friend of a friend):

1. A visitor to one of our facilities claims to have stepped, while walking in his bare feet, on a nail that was on the ground.  He did not come to us for first aid, but called us later after he had left our facility.  He never could produce the nail, nor could we ever find one in the area, but we agreed to pay any small bills he had -- we assumed he might have gone to the emergency room for a tetanus shot or maybe to get a band-aid.  It turns out he eventually claimed that the injury caused him to - get ready -  experience sexual dysfunction, which he eventually sued us over when we refused to pay any treatment costs.
2. A woman came to our office at our facility limping, claiming to have fallen down the stairs and saying that we were gonna pay.  Despite the fact that it was a crowded area, no witnesses could be found.  We offered her a ride to the hospital which she refused.  Several of our employees thought we saw her come into the facility limping already.  Within the week, she was threatening to sue us for the cost of her knee operation.  Fortunately, since our employees saw her limping coming in, we did some more research, and members of her family told us she was also suing a restaurant she had visited the week before for the same injury.  It turns out she was uninsured, and had hurt her knee elsewhere, and was out trying to find some public business that she could get to pay for her operation. 

Given this experience, I am not going to apologize for believing that the referenced ad might be real.

UPDATE #2:

By the way, I don't think that Legal Underground was calling the train story a hoax, only the Vioxx.  By the way, the exact wording on the complaint against the railroad is even better than I thought:

"The [engineer] did not stop the train in a timely manner, and failed to yield the right of way to a pedestrian walking along the tracks in plain view"

A freight train's topping distance is measured in miles, even with full emergency braking.

She and her attorney's further argue:

that the railroad was negligent for failing to post signs warning 'of the dangers of walking near train tracks and that the tracks were actively in use

Lets leave aside the obvious point about individual responsibility, and ask what would happen if this were the legal standard, to have such signs.  To make sure someone saw one, you would have to have one say every 30 feet.  Since there are just over 200,000 miles of freight railroads in the North America that works out to a bit over 35,000,000 signs that need to be posted.  At $100 per sign this would cost $3.5 billion.

Here is the serious point:  Never would any legislature pass a law that said there had to be warning signs every 30 feet on railroads.  It would be way too costly for little benefit.  At grade crossings today, we have signs and flashing lights and even gates and still thousands of people a year drive in front of trains on grade crossings.  So, if we would never require it legislatively, how have we gotten to a point where a jury might effectively retroactively require such signs, and assess a multi-million dollar penalty for not doing it?

Two of my blogging interests in one - ACME and litigation. This is a reprint of an article by Ian Frazier years ago in the New Yorker, but it is still funny. The complaint in the case of Wile E. Coyote v. ACME. ACME's response is here.