Author: Serkadis

(NaturalNews) Given that the massive health care reform bill just passed by the House was one of the largest pieces of legislation in U.S. history, you might wonder why you didn’t get to vote on it. When it comes to federal legislation, your vote doesn’t count in America, didn’t you know? You are dictated to by a small band of the political elite who may or may not represent your interests (or even the interests of your fellow citizens).

Those people are called members of Congress. And as you’ll read here, they are essentially obsolete. Society no longer has any need for them. Here’s why…

Why Congress was created
Consider why the U.S. Congress was created in the first place: Back in the 1700s, there was no internet. There weren’t even telephones. Heck, this was pre-telegraph! Long-distance communication was simply impossible, so the people had a very practical need to send a representative to Washington to represent their wishes on the legislative front.

And so the idea of the U.S. Congress was born. Senators and Congresspeople would be representatives of the People from their home states and districts, and they would vote according to the wishes, desires and best interests of the people back home. They would essentially be proxy voters. Sounds good in theory, right?

Fast forward 230 years or so…

Now, instant communication is available to almost everyone. A new law being proposed in Washington could be instantly read — and voted on — by the People all across America. The internet has made the whole purpose behind the U.S. Congress obsolete… irrelevant. Why do Americans need someone else to represent them when we can all just read and vote on the bills ourselves? In an age of instant communications, Congress is no longer needed.

But of course, the current members of Congress would heartily disagree with that assessment. If there’s one rule about power, it’s that those in power always seek more power. And because only members of Congress can vote federal laws into existence — not the actual citizens of the country — they hold a tremendous amount of concentrated power… and they’re not about to let it go.

Corporations love the current system, too, because they can simply bypass the People and lobby Congress to pass the laws that favor their own interests. This is how the U.S. Congress has become a legislative auction house where new laws are passed to appease whoever raises more money for reelection campaigns. Meanwhile, the People have been abandoned in this equation, and the interests of the People that were supposed to be “represented” in Washington have been long forgotten.

Did you realize that 237 members of Congress are millionaires? (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29235.html) And seven of them have a net worth greater than $100 million. When lawmakers are rolling in that kind of cash, how can they possibly represent the interests of the People, of which 99% earn far less?

Further demonstrating detachment from the people they claim to represent, one new Congressman — just sworn in yesterday — managed to break four campaign promises in his first hour of office (http://www.gouverneurtimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7623:owens-to-break-campaign-promises&catid=60:st-lawrence-news&Itemid=175).

It’s time for Direct Democracy
In a Direct Democracy, the People directly participate in the debate and passage of new laws. All laws are publicly published for debate and discussion — unlike the current situation where 1,000-page laws like the Patriot Act or the new health care reform bill are covertly written, then often deposited in the federal register just minutes before a scheduled vote.

Today, we have a system of “ambush lawmaking” going on in Congress where even the members of Congress voting on the laws have little time to read the bills (much less understand them). In a Direct Democracy, however, all proposed laws are posted publicly so that the People can read them, debate them and vote on them.

After all, if the whole point of the U.S. Congress was to represent the votes of the People, in an age where people can now vote directly thanks to internet technology, shouldn’t the U.S. Congress step aside and just let the People vote for themseles?

How to disband Congress and give power back to the People
Disbanding the U.S. Congress would, of course, require a Constitutional amendment. That is extremely unlikely to happen, given that such an amendment requires an approval of the majority of U.S. states (and existing members of Congress happen to be quite influential in their home states). So to disband Congress, you’d have to convince hundreds of power-hungry people to vote themselves out of power. The odds against that happening are astronomical.

The other option is to just wait for the current U.S. system to collapse, and then replace it with a form of Direct Democracy that makes more sense. This is the more likely scenario, and it may be closer than you think: The financial blowout of America is well under way, and it’s only a matter of time before unbridled debt spending leads to runaway inflation and the disastrous demise of the dollar. The passage of the $1 trillion health care bill, in fact, will accelerate America towards financial collapse.

Within a few short years, there may be an opportunity to “reboot America” and create a smarter society to replace the corrupt, outmoded system of government that’s failing the American people right now. I support the idea of a Direct Democracy that eliminates the entire U.S. Congress. Of course, there would need to be some sort of process for deciding which proposed laws get put on the public website for discussion and voting, but even that process can be crowdsourced to some degree.

It’s time to decentralize power in Washington and distribute it back to the People. In one sense, it’s the most politically progressive idea yet proposed, but at the same time, it’s also about preserving personal freedom, liberty and responsibility. So it appeals both to progressives and conservatives (Libertarians, too).

The point is, it’s time to give back to the American people the power they once granted to their representatives out of practical necessity. Besides, the People can do a far better job debating and voting on proposed laws than the U.S. Congress ever did. Many of the comments I’ve read about the health care bill on discussions boards are far more intelligent than the debate that took place in the House. The People deserve the right to directly vote on laws that deeply impact their lives and finances.

After all, if the United States is supposed to be a government of the People, by the People and for the People, then why not let the laws be directly voted on by the People?

We the People don’t need Senators and Congresspeople to make our decisions for us. What we need is the freedom to vote for ourselves. If we continue to allow Congress to make our decisions for us, they will drive America into the dirt, leaving us all penniless, diseased and neck-deep in debt. (Actually, we’re sort of there already…)

Congress promises freedom but delivers financial slavery. It promises to take care of us but then it sells us out to the corporations. Congress puts the corporations first and the people last, and it’s time to advance to a better form of Democracy where individual participation in our democratic lawmaking process is the norm.

Now, I know what the main critics of this idea will say: “The People aren’t qualified to vote on legislation!” It’s a fair question. But I answer, “Are the members of Congress any better qualified?” I’m willing to bet that not 1 out of 5 members of Congress can even cite the Bill of Rights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights). They are nutritionally illiterate. They almost universally have little or no knowledge of the banking system or how the Federal Reserve really works. How are they any more qualified to vote on health care than you or I?

Truth is, they aren’t. The hard-working, tax-paying people of the United States of America could do a much better job voting on legislative bills than members of Congress.

Congress has become a big part of what’s wrong with America today. Disbanding Congress and invoking a Direct Democracy might be the only remaining way to save America from destruction at the hands of greedy corporations, powerful lobbyists and contemptible Congresspeople.

(NaturalNews) Genetic analysis is essentially useless in predicting a person’s risk of cancer, heart attack or other common diseases, according to a set of commentaries published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The decoding of the human genome in 2003 led to a flood of research into the contributions that genetic variation might make to the risk of various chronic diseases that tend to develop late in life, such as diabetes, heart disease or cancer. Since then, a number of for-profit companies have begun offering genetic screenings and disease risk assessments.

“With only a few exceptions, what the genomics companies are doing right now is recreational genomics,” said David B. Goldstein of Duke University, author of one of the commentaries. “The information has little or in many cases no clinical relevance.”

A few diseases, such as sickle cell anemia or Tay Sachs disease, can be caused by a mutation on a single gene. Most diseases, however, are much more complex, and develop due to an interaction between environmental factors and the contributions of a variety of genes.

In order to calculate the genetic contribution to these diseases, geneticists developed the technique known as genomewide association study, in which the genomes of groups of healthy people are compared with the genomes of those with a certain disease. The hope among researchers has been that this analysis could point out genetic differences between the groups that might be linked to disease risk.

While genomewide analysis has successfully identified some differences between the genetic codes of healthy and diseased patients, these differences provide little information about disease risk. Researchers expected to find a small number of common genetic variations that were responsible for each disease. Instead, common gene variants appear to contribute to disease risk only very marginally.

Goldstein suggests that the genetic component of chronic disease risk might arise from a large number of rare genetic variants, making genetic screening far less helpful in predicting risk. If only a small number of variants are involved, they might provide information on the biological pathways that lead to the development of the disease. If many different variations are implicated, however, this would tell researchers nothing except that an error in the functioning of nearly any bodily system can contribute to disease risk.

“In pointing at everything,” Goldstein wrote, “genetics would point at nothing.”

Based on the failure of more than 100 genomewide studies — carried out on thousands of patients in a number of different countries — to deliver useful results, Goldstein suggests that the approach should be abandoned as a waste of resources. Genomewide analysis is only effective at uncovering common variations with large effects, Goldstein says. Discovering rare variants with smaller effects is “beyond the grasp of the genomewide association studies.”

A single genomewide analysis study costs several million dollars to carry out.

In addition, as more such studies are carried out, each one will deliver less new information on gene-related disease risk — a problem of diminishing returns.

Also writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers Peter Kraft and David J. Hunter of the Harvard School of Public Health disagree with Goldstein that the studies are incapable of providing useful data. They agree, however, that they have provided no clinically useful information to date.

Kraft and Hunter warned that any risk estimate based on genetic analysis is likely either too low or too high, because researchers simply do not have enough information on genetic contribution to disease. Risks that are calculated as lower than they actually are will likely never be reported to patients. This means that any genetic risk a patient actually gets told about is probably an overestimate, and only likely to cause unnecessary alarm.

Sources for this story include: www.nytimes.com.

(NaturalNews) For years, baby formula manufacturers have been fortifying and reformulating their blends in an effort to poise their products as equal or superior to natural breast milk. Beginning in 2002, many producers began supplementing their mixtures with synthetic forms of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and arachidonic acid (ARA), the long-chain fatty acids naturally present in breast milk. Evidence is now showing that the synthetic versions are detrimental to the health of children, despite their continued usage in almost every available brand of infant formula.

The idea behind fortifying infant formula with DHA/ARA was substantiated based upon the fact that a mother’s breast milk naturally contains these polyunsaturated omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. They are vital components to human eye and brain development, particularly in the formative infant years. The primary distinction is that the form of DHA/ARA being used in infant formula is structurally incompatible with the form found in human milk.

Martek Biosciences Corporation, the company who produces synthetic DHA/ARA, extracts the oils from laboratory-grown fermented algae and fungus using hexane, a demonstrated neurotoxic chemical. Identified as a hazardous air pollutant by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), hexane resides in the same category as other serious toxins that are linked to causing cancer and other serious health problems.

Developed primarily as a marketing tool, Martek’s 1996 DHA/ARA investment promotional material states that even if the additive had no demonstrable benefit, it would nevertheless allow manufacturers to market their formulas as being the “closest to human milk”. Formula manufacturers quickly jumped on the bandwagon despite definitive evidence proving the additive’s safety.

Recently implicated in causing severe reactions in some babies, including breathing problems, gastrointestinal upset, and other illnesses, synthetic DHA/ARA is on the hot seat. Parents and professionals alike are questioning why the additive is still being used in almost every available brand of infant formula and why the companies using the additive are being allowed to claim that their product is superior to human breast milk, despite the hundreds of mounting FDA adverse event reports indicating its dangers.

Whether the culprit is the DHA/ARA itself, the hexane extraction residue, or both, it is anyone’s guess since no formidable scientific safety studies were conducted prior to the additive’s introduction into the formula market. Prior to hitting the market, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expressed concern to Martek about the safety of the new additive, indicating that the agency desired to convene a formal meeting to address the issue. Martek denied this request and, shortly thereafter, the FDA reversed its previous stance and approved the additive’s use despite the lack of any independent scientific safety review.

Since that time, Freedom of Information Act requests have revealed hundreds of FDA adverse event reports that have gone unnoticed by the FDA who has failed to act in conducting an investigation. Typically, a few well-documented adverse event reports are reason enough to conduct a product investigation; several hundred would indicate an immediate need for scrutiny.

Many empirical reports indicate that sick babies who were taken off formula containing synthetic DHA/ARA almost immediately recover from any ailments induced since starting the formula. This indicates a practical connection that deserves further investigation by the agency appointed to perform such analysis, the FDA.

Not only is Martek’s DHA/ARA supplement being used in baby formulas, it is now being added to a whole host of foods and nutritional supplements for adults, lauded as a great vegetarian alternative to animal-based oils of the same variety. Since the extraction method involves a known chemical neurotoxin, it is best to avoid this additive anyway.

With or without synthetic additives, no baby formula can replace the amazing nourishing properties of a mother’s breast milk. It is the perfect, natural blend of immune-building, brain-developing goodness that cannot be matched or replicated. While some natural formulas may seem to come close, breast-feeding continues to be the superior method of nourishing a baby and should be utilized whenever possible.

Sources:

Replacing Mother – Imitating Human Breast Milk in the Laboratory – The Cornucopia Institute

Dangerous Hype: Infant Formula Companies Claim They Can Make Babies ‘Smarter’ – AlterNet

Products containing life’s DHA – Martek Biosciences

About the author
Ethan Huff is a freelance writer and health enthusiast who loves exploring the vast world of natural foods and health, digging deep to get to the truth. He runs an online health publication of his own at http://wholesomeherald.blogspot.com.

(NaturalNews) Many popular brands of personal care products use words like “organic” on their product labels or company names, but the products they’re selling don’t meet organic standards. So the Organic Consumers Association (www.organicconsumers.org) has been waging a public campaign to expose “organic cheaters” and encourage consumers to boycott those brands.

Late last week, a significant victory was achieved for organic consumers: the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) voted 12 to 1 to require personal care products touting the word “organic” to actually meet organic standards. (Previously, this was not required.)

This is big news because it means the USDA will now start cracking down on non-compliant brands that inappropriately use the word “organic” on their product labels.

“Brands that are using the word organic improperly should be on notice that USDA enforcement is imminent. Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan has said that she is going to get ‘tough on crime’ in the organic industry,” said Ronnie Cummins, Executive Director of the OCA. “I expect them to make organic cosmetics fraud a top priority. In the meantime, retailers should start cleaning up their body care isles. Whole Foods Market, for one, was a big supporter of the NOSB recommendation.”

Boycott these “organic cheater” brands
NaturalNews encourages readers to join the Organic Consumers Association in its boycott of these brands of personal care products:

• Desert Essence Organics Body Care
• Organics by Noah’s Naturals
• Giovanni Organic Cosmetics
• Nature’s Gate Organics
• Amazon Organics
• JASON Pure Natural and Organic
• Avalon Organic

Until these companies clean up their labels and achieve full compliance with new USDA organic standards, this boycott will remain in effect. It’s all part of the OCA’s “Coming Clean” campaign that seeks to end labeling fraud in the personal care products marketplace.

Read more about the “Coming Clean” campaign at: http://www.organicconsumers.org/bodycare/index.cfm

NaturalNews encourages readers to keep personal care product manufacturers honest by avoiding the purchase of any product labeled in a false or misleading way. Stay up to date by following the news on organic products at www.OrganicConsumers.org

Democrats have little time to savor the narrow passage of their historic heath care overhaul in the House of Representatives as attention turns to the deeply divided U.S. Senate. Majority Leader Harry Reid’s challenge is to corral enough votes to bring a companion bill to the floor of his chamber before a White House-imposed Christmas deadline.

The Nevada Democrat, facing a tough re-election back home, threw Senate negotiations into turmoil recently when he embraced a public insurance option.

The option is a key component of the newly minted House bill, but is opposed by a handful of moderate Senate Democrats, as well as Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent.

And Reid needs the support of all 58 Senate Democrats, as well as Lieberman and fellow independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, to secure the 60 votes necessary to block a Republican filibuster.

Reid has said that the public insurance option he supports would allow states to opt out of the program. An analysis of the cost of the proposed Senate plans by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is expected later this week.

The House has proposed paying for its plan by increasing taxes on wealthy Americans. The Senate versions have favored taxing generous insurance benefit plans — anathema to union members, and opposed by House leaders.

Reid must first reconcile two competing Senate health care bills in the weeks ahead before moving to a vote. Then the House bill and any health care legislation from the Senate would have to be merged by a joint congressional committee before being sent to President Obama for his signature.

Reid avoided any promises about Senate action. In a statement released after the House vote, he said, “We realize the strong will for reform that exists, and we are energized that we stand closer than ever to reforming our broken health insurance system.”

Democrats Celebrate

On the House floor, announcement of the 220-215 vote was greeted by wild applause from the Democratic side of the aisle. Afterward, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, a Democrat from Rhode Island, invoked his recently deceased father. During his four decades in the Senate, Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy made health care reform his life’s work.

“My dad was a senator,” Kennedy said, “but tonight his spirit was in the House.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to preside over the House, managed to overcome the defection of 39 Democrats to the “no” column and attract a lone Republican to give her just two more votes than the 218 she needed to get the overhaul legislation passed — and to hand the president a big win for his top domestic priority.

“I thank the president for his tremendous leadership, because without President Obama in the White House, this victory would not have been possible,” Pelosi said at a press conference immediately after the vote.

“He provided the vision and the momentum for us to get the job done for the American people,” she said.

In a brief appearance Sunday afternoon at the White House, Obama said he was grateful for “courageous” legislators who voted for the House overhaul given “the heated and often misleading rhetoric around this legislation.”

“Now it falls on the United States Senate,” he said, to deliver the “change we promised to the American people.”

“I am absolutely confident it will,” he said in an earlier statement, “and I look forward to signing comprehensive health insurance reform into law by the end of the year.”

Victory Came With A Cost

But the struggle for passage in the House, after a full day of rhetorical scuffles and contentious debate, came at some cost to Democrats who support a woman’s right to have access to legal abortion — presaging what will likely be a topic of considerable debate in the Senate.

To win the votes of conservative party members who oppose abortion, House Democratic leaders endorsed an amendment to their legislation that bars the use of government subsidies to buy any insurance plan that covers the procedure. The move angered many in the party’s 190-member House pro-choice caucus, who said they viewed it as an invasion of women’s medical privacy. The amendment, however, ensured the politically necessary support of some Roman Catholic lawmakers and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Conservative Democrats won the hard-fought chance to offer the abortion restriction amendment during debate, and with the support of all but one House Republican, it passed by a vote of 240 to 194. Arizona Republican John Shadegg voted “present” to the amendment.

With such close margins and the struggle over the abortion issue, it had been uncertain if Pelosi could gather the votes needed to pass the bill — even though Democrats enjoy an 81-vote edge in the House. But with passage secured, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer joked, “For all of my friends in the press who’ve been assaulting me in the hallways, asking if we have the votes, the answer is yes.”

Earlier Saturday, President Obama, in an unusual weekend visit to the Capitol, personally urged lawmakers to “rise to the moment” and “finish the job.”

The House Democrats’ plan would cost close to a trillion dollars over the next decade, and would mandate that most employers cover their workers. It also requires people who are not insured through their employers to buy coverage, and it expands government programs to help them pay for that. The bill bars insurance companies from denying coverage to people based on pre-existing conditions, and includes other insurance industry reforms.

Freshman Rep. Joseph Cao of Louisiana was the lone Republican to vote for the bill. He represents a heavily Democratic district, and faces an uphill re-election battle next year. His fellow Republicans were united in the reasons for their opposition. “The American people need to understand this is about a government takeover of the whole health care system,” said Georgia Rep. Paul Broun.

Homebrew coder Infantile Paralysiser has recently released a new version of MoonShell, the ever-popular media application for the Nintendo DS. The lat…

Romulus Capital, a seed-stage investment firm focused on student-run startups in the Boston area, has closed its debut fund, according to its website. No financial information was disclosed, although a recent regulatory filing indicated that Romulus was seeking up to $1.2 million. www.romuluscap.com

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A few days ago AT&T filed suit against Verizon for its “There’s an App for That” ad campaign. Verizon’s response? Welcoming the iPhone to the Island of Misfit Toys in a new commercial that embodies the Christmas Spirit. Hit the break to check out the main attraction as well as two side shows.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Software, biotech firms and others who develop new ways to do business will be watching closely on Monday as the U.S. Supreme Court hears a case that could determine if such innovations can win patent protection.

The case itself involves a small Pittsburgh company called WeatherWise, founded by Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw, to sell services based on hedging methods that allow users to make fixed energy payments even if usage or energy prices vary.

But when they tried to patent the hedging method, the U.S. patent office rejected it in 2000. The patent board upheld the rejection in 2006.

The battle continued up to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which in 1998 had broadened the definition of what was patentable to anything except laws of nature and abstract ideas.

But, after hearing the Bilski case, the court, which specializes in patent appeals, sought to set limits. It ruled that the hedging method could not be patented because it was not tied to a machine and did not result in a transformation.

The Federal Circuit decision threw doubt on tens of thousands of business method patents, like software patents and medical diagnostic patents. One of the best-known examples of a business method patent is Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) one-click process to buy goods on the Internet.

“I did some math this morning and the market cap of the companies that filed (friend of the court) briefs is $1.2 trillion,” said Marc Pernick, a patent attorney with law firm Morrison Foerster.

Some, like software and biotechnology companies, want the definition of what can be patented to be as broad as possible because they license out those processes. Others, like some financial institutions, want business method patents to be restricted to avoid getting sued.

RULING EXPECTED IN 2010

The Supreme Court justices are scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case on Monday, beginning at 1 p.m. EST. A decision is expected by the end of June.

Patent experts agree that, however the court rules, it will not simply affirm the Federal Circuit decision.

“The track record is that when the Supreme Court takes a case from the Federal Circuit that they see something they want to change,” said Pavan Agarwal, a patent attorney with law firm Foley and Lardner.

When the court has ruled on patent cases recently, it has tended to rule unanimously or nearly unanimously.

The high court ruled unanimously in 2008 in Quanta v. LG Electronics that patent rights were exhausted once a product was sold. A company could not sue a downstream purchaser for infringement.

In 2007, in KSR v. Teleflex, the court unanimously made it easier to show that an innovation was an obvious improvement on existing technology and, thus, should not have been patented.

In MedImmune v. Genentech, the court ruled in 2007 that a patent licensee need not stop paying royalties or otherwise breach a licensing agreement before challenging the validity of a patent. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented.

A 2006 Supreme Court ruling, eBay v. MercExchange, made it harder to win an injunction in the case of infringement.

WeatherWise co-founder Rand Warsaw estimated losses to his small company, because it could not patent the hedging method, at about $5 million a year.

“This lack of patent protection has given rise to competitors and given rise to companies who have taken our intellectual property. For other small companies this could have been a death blow,” he said.

Warsaw said the future of biotech medical processes could depend on what the Supreme Court decided.

“Processes are cheap to replicate,” he said, arguing that it could hypothetically cost $1 billion to develop a biotech medical process to prevent a birth defect but just $1 million to set up a competitor who stole the idea.

“If I were a big biotech company or Harvard Medical School, somebody who does fundamental research, (I’d say) ‘Why am I putting hundreds of millions of dollars into something that I’m going to lose?’” said Warsaw.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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Got tiny milk?

[Individual OreoOreo-cake and stand from Williams Sonoma via The Daily What and Bem Legaus]

NEW YORK, Nov 8 (Reuters) – Defense contractor Northrop Grumman (NOC.N) has agreed to sell its TASC consulting unit to two buyout firms, General Atlantic and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., for $1.65 billion, the companies said on Sunday.

The deal is the latest in a spate of buyouts, as the financing markets improve. On Thursday, the biggest leveraged buyout of the year was signed, when private equity firm TPG and the Canada Pension Plan struck a $4 billion deal to buy IMS Health Inc (RX.N).

Northrop hired investment banks to sell the unit, which advises government military agencies, a few months ago, drawing interest from a number of private equity firms.

Sources told Reuters in September that a sale, originally expected to fetch about $2 billion, would more likely be around $1.5 billion.

The deal is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter.

Financing commitments for the acquisition are comprised of senior secured credit facilities and senior subordinated notes, the companies said in a press release.

The credit facilities will be provided by Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE), RBC Capital Markets and CPPIB Credit Investments.

KKR’s Capital Markets unit arranged the senior subordinated notes with Highbridge Mezzanine Partners as the lead investor.

Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank and RBC Capital Markets advised General Atlantic and KKR.

By Megan Davies

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When someone says “portable,” what do you think? I think “fits in a bag or pocket,” but some people would go the “portable” generator route and say “is not physically fixed in position.” That seems to be the “portable” that the creators of the SNEGENES had in mind when they said their device was so. Now, I don’t want to detract from the obvious glory of what has been created here: a (technically) handheld device that will play cartridges from NES, SNES, and Genesis — but really, that thing is about as portable as my bathtub.

Note that in the video above, everything is flipped left-right. While this would make for an interesting twist on some of your old favorites (imagine running left in Sonic), it is in fact just a video issue (shot in Photo Booth, I believe).

Now, as we’ve seen with the handheld Genesis I reviewed just a few weeks ago, you an easily put a Genesis and some games on a chip and it’ll work great. But if I’m not mistaken, the actual hardware and PCBs of all three systems (clones, but still) are integrated into the construction of this grotesque gaming Cerberus. Again, this somewhat affects its portability.

Yet, that said… why do I want one so bad?

[via Technabob and Gizmodo]

A core feature of the health overhaul proposal unveiled by House Republicans – and of GOP plans for years – would allow individual health insurance policies to be sold across state lines. Currently, consumers can buy policies only from insurers licensed by the states where they live.

Congressional Republicans have proposed the idea in the past and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., embraced it as part of his presidential campaign last year. Advocates say it would give the more than 17 million Americans who buy individual coverage a greater choice of plans and the possibility of lower prices.

The measure does not apply to the 159 million non-elderly Americans who obtain insurance through their employers. Some insurers support the GOP approach, as does the National Federation of Independent Business, which says it would help the self-employed and also hopes lawmakers would give small employers the opportunity to buy workers’ insurance this way.

But critics — including consumer watchdog groups and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners — say the provision would erode many state government consumer protections, leave policyholders with inadequate coverage and could actually lead to higher premiums for some people.

The Republican health plan was rejected by the House Saturday evening, 176-258. Just one Republican, Rep. Timothy Johnson, R-Ill., joined the Democrats to vote against the legislation. Nonetheless, advocates are expected to push for a similar provision when, and if, the full Senate takes up its health bill.

Here is a short primer on the issue.

Q. What currently restricts insurers from selling policies outside of their home states?

States have primary regulatory authority over insurance. As a result, insurers are allowed to sell policies only in states where they are licensed to do business. Most insurers obtain licenses in multiple states. States have different laws regulating benefits, consumer protections and financial and solvency requirements.

Q. What do advocates say are the main advantages to allowing insurers to sell across state lines?

The individual health insurance market is dominated in many states by just a handful of companies, so this provision would allow consumers to shop broadly for cheaper policies, supporters say. “You want to have greater competition in the insurance market and this does that,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and top health advisor to McCain during his presidential campaign.

The Republican bill says consumers may be able to buy “less expensive” policies in other states because of variations in laws and regulations. While some states may require insurers to pay for a particular treatment of autism, for example, others don’t. Insurers bristle at many of these mandates, saying they drive up costs, but studies generally show their impact on rates is limited.

“This is absolutely a way to get around some of those state mandated benefit laws that are counterproductive and drive up insurance costs,” said Merrill Matthews Jr., executive director of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, which represents companies selling individual health insurance.

Q. Why is there skepticism about the Republican measure?

“It always sounds appealing to offer more choice,” said Kenneth Thorpe, an Emory University health policy expert and a Health and Human Services official in the Clinton administration. “But if you do look at it more closely, it does raise issues of regulation.”

Regulation is important, critics of the GOP proposal say. In addition to requiring coverage of certain problems and treatments, some states require insurers to sell policies to all applicants and price them uniformly within the same geographic area regardless of individuals’ health status.

If insurers can sell beyond state lines, the concern is that consumers would be attracted to the least comprehensive policies because they’d be cheapest. “You get what you pay for in these policies (and) consumers won’t realize it until they are sick and it’s too late,” said Jerry Flanagan, health care policy analyst for Consumer Watchdog, a California consumer health group.

The states with the most comprehensive policies often mandate that coverage – for example, one state could require that insurers cover diabetic testing supplies, another might not. Critics say that – at best – selling insurance across state lines might not save much money, and point to a 2005 CBO report that says: “if only those benefit mandates imposed by the states with the lowest-cost mandates were in effect in all states, the price of individual health insurance would be reduced by about 5 percent, on average.”

There are also fears that consumers dealing with out-of-state companies would have difficulties resolving disputes. While the bill would require, in large type, consumer disclosure statements spelling out, among things, that the policy is “not subject to all of the consumer protection laws or restrictions on rate changes” required in the buyer’s home state, “You should carefully review the policy and determine what health care services the policy covers and what benefits it provides, including any exclusions, limitations, or conditions for such services or benefits.”

Critics say insurers selling across state lines would market policies to younger, healthier individuals. Older and sicker individuals would face ever-rising rates – or face being turned down – because their insurers would have fewer healthy people to spread risk. And, since health costs vary geographically, insurance purchased in one state might not cover as much of the cost of care in a more expensive state. 

Q. Do the Democratic bills allow some form of insurance selling across state lines?

Yes, but with much tighter restrictions than are in the Republicans’ plan. The House Democrats’ bill would allow states to form compacts enabling consumers to buy policies from insurers licensed in any of the states governed by the agreement. A consumer’s home state would retain authority to handle disputes. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, which represents state regulators, would have primary authority to develop rules, but if it failed to do so, the job would fall to the HHS Secretary.

The Senate Finance Committee bill would enable insurers to create nationwide plans. Insurers would have to be licensed in each state where they sell these plans, but would have the authority to offer only those benefits mandated by the majority of states. Thus, benefits required by relatively few states would not have to be in the plans. States, however, could decline to make such plans available to their residents.

 

 

Watching this video, it doesn’t seem very much more than a demo for a rather anonymous-looking little touchscreen device, a PMP prototype maybe. Then you find out that the whole thing is running an 8-bit processor with 4KB of RAM. Touchscreen tricks like scrolling momentum are implemented perfectly well, and there appears to be little or no lag. Pac-Man runs at 60fps, which is more than I can say for the version on my G1.

The touchscreen is salvaged from an off-brand PMP, and the CPU is a 12Mhz Atmega644 — not something I’m familiar with, but I trust the author when he says it’s about 3% of the speed of an iPhone. And it’ll render a polyhedron (though I doubt it can texture it).

The question this brings up for me is why aren’t all interfaces so snappy at this point? I understand there’s more going on under the hood in a smartphone than in a demo application like this thing, but seriously, I’m going to have lag when I hit the home button on a CPU faster than the one I had in my PC a few years ago? Make it better.

[via MAKE]