Ward on Words

71-year-old Bernie Madoff was just sentenced to 150 years in prison. For all of us, a sentence like that is a death sentence. He will not, of course, be put to death by the state, but if all goes to plan, if he is not paroled in an inexcusably short period - say like in 18 months - or five years or - in a decade - he will die in prison. Madoff had been stealing money from people for more than two decades. Only instead of robbing banks, in the public and flamboyant way of a Dillinger, Madoff worked his criminality in secret. He stole billions by offering the lure of easy money to his investors. The great dream of America. Money for next to nothing. He was an equal-opportunity rip-off artist, stealing from millionaires and the middle class and also from Holocaust victims. His investment advice ruined many couples who dreamed of an easy retirement. For some of the investors who believed Madoff's promises, their retirement now consists of working multiple jobs, livi...

Atul Gawande wrote one of the most talked-about stories on health care - his story on the over-use of medicine in McAllen, Texas. (You can find it here .) I sent off a bunch of my questions to him and received a thoughtful response from him not long after. His comments on why he selected Medicare costs to develop "the baseline scenario" are instructive: "We do need broader data than medicare but there are so many fragmented private insurers one cannot gather easily a comprehensive picture of the US practice patterns." That is a key issue, in my view. A major roadblock to real reform, in fact. We are setting out on a tumultuous journey to control costs in medicine, but because of the fragmented nature of the private sector, it is impossible to gain this "comprehensive picture of the US practice patterns." There is a problem using Medicare as the example of the cost conundrum. Medicare pays at a lower rate than private insurers pay. There are ...

I am a rebel, I suppose, a van-driving soccer mom of a rebel - one who works as a freelancer, who married a freelancer. We work out of our basement, I as a writer, my husband as a photographer. We love what we do - we love the clients we have the good fortune to work with - we love the fact our careers make us more available (sort of) to our children. The price for our rebellion against the corporate way of working is that we must buy our own health insurance plan for our family. We pay $600 a month for a the privilege of paying for the first $4000 in medical costs. It's a major medical crash and burn plan. It's what we can afford. We are healthy. We see the doctors primarily for annual check ups. Occasionally, a child has an illness that requires us to head over to the doctor. Otherwise, we see little of the medical establishment. My twins had their five-year-old check up recently. Required for school, as are eye exams (not sure of cost yet) and dental exams ...

"It's surreal out here," said a soccer dad to my husband at our village fair this weekend. The soccer dad works in print advertising, so you can imagine the surreality of his existence. He had to lay off seven people last week - and is concerned about the longevity of his own position. One neighbor we know just laid off two people in his department. It sickened him to do so - he himself had been a victim of downsizing a few years ago and knows how it wreaks havoc on the soul, the psyche and the bankbook. A Cub Scout dad we know used Facebook to post his "success story" in temporarily keeping his job, which was to be terminated right around the end of the school year. His corporation, despite the leadership of a man now being paid more than $10 mil a year, is on very shaky ground and may not be around much longer. Downstate, things aren't much better. A neighbor of my in-laws, a developer, is in bankruptcy right now. Another person they know con...

It is supposedly "required reading" in the Obama White House - and many of the blogs I read point to it as "the" source for answers on the health care crisis in America. It's Atul Gawande's story on the "cost conundrum" of providing medical treatment in McAllen Texas, which appeared in the June edition of The New Yorker magazine. Tonight, I finally had the chance to read the story. And it left me with more questions than answers. Gawande points to McAllen as what’s wrong with American medicine today, but takes pains to point out that McAllen is actually the second most expensive health care market in America – coming in behind Miami. So why is McAllen – the “outlier” – actually proof of what is wrong? It is an extreme example of the problem, not necessarily a reflection of the ordinary, every day “average” world of the garden variety medical practitioner. Gawande compares McAllen to El Paso – in that they have similar demographics (pove...

Seems if you want to open a store in Detroit these days, you really are a "fool for the city." According to a story in the WSJ , retailers are fleeing the Motor City as if inspired by the V8 engine, fast and furious. Just four Starbucks remain within the city limits. (In my little Chicago suburb of 20,000, we have nearly that many 'Bucks to visit.) The affordable luxuries that bring happiness to so many appear beyond the reach of most Detroit residents. I went to Detroit once, about 15 years ago. One of my friends had grown up in Detroit (the city proper, not an affluent suburb on the ring of it) and her mother was moving out of the family house. Back then, in the early 1990s, it had sold, this little house in Detroit, for about $5,000. You couldn't get a Chrysler for that price in those days. I'm sure there were houses in Bloomfield Hills where you couldn't get a door for that price.... The house was on a block that had "changed" abo...

It glitters like a jeweled crown rising out of the prairie - a towering tribute to muscle and hustle, sweat and tears. It is Chicago's Loop - the city's downtown - where buildings that emerged from the ashes of the Great Fire in the 19th century are dwarfed by the architectural accomplishments of the 20th century. And for children who grow up in many of the neighborhoods that surround the Loop, it is as remote a place as Mars. Poverty makes it seem unobtainable. The poverty that surrounds the glittering beauty and power of the Loop is as desperate and as extreme as you'll see anywhere in the country. Each year, approximately 12,000 children drop out of Chicago public high schools. What's the best ticket out of poverty? Education, of course. Which means that dropping out of high school makes it that much harder to rise above poverty. Last night, Kanye West, one of Chicago's very own, a very famous and wealthy rap star, the child of an educator, gave a fr...

Just the other day, the payroll firm ADP issued a report that said more than 500,000 people had lost their jobs in May. They also revised their April unemployment records upward - to 545,000 from the previous estimate of 491,000. Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued their report with a much sunnier view of the labor landscape - "nonfarm payroll employment fell by 345,000 in May, about half the average monthly decline for the prior 6 months." Not sure how the two organizations came up with different numbers but both estimate unemployment to be at 9.4 percent (which, as some have noted , is a worse scenario than depicted in the Fed's stress tests, but we all know those were rigged, right?) As you can imagine, the numbers cited by the BLS are happily received by the MSM. Some links to stories about this topic follow.... Denver Business Journal story on the BLS report WSJ story on BLS report MarketWatch story on ADP report

We live in a world where people in the financial community have turned “bonus” into a debacle – who insist that there’s no reason to work at a place if you can’t make astronomical sums of money, who quit when large bonuses are not paid out to them by a bankrupt company. (Click here for a glimpse into that world...) I am a mother of three small children, and what has been hardest for me, with regard to the collapse of our economy, is reconciling the lessons I teach my children with the situation we have today. I teach my children to share, to help others, to work with others and to become stewards of our community. I see that to succeed in America today, these lessons are fraught with contradiction. Sharing is out of the question. Greed is inevitable. Bonuses are structured so that performance is irrelevant. Really smart people use their intelligence to wrest the most money for themselves. Money is the end, not the means to an end, of our labor in this life. I sound naiv...

I'm not sure when "pre-owned cars" replaced "used cars" as a commodity, but certainly, "pre-owned" was a fabulous way to rebrand something that had long been associated with getting ripped off. In Chicago, we have unleashed a new euphemism for getting fleeced - "replace the receipt." Here's the story from one of my Chicago spies who was in the city yesterday, trying to find some street parking at one of the highly controversial new parking meters.... The new meters not only have cost the city nearly a billion in future income (according to Chicago's Inspector General ), they don't work . My spy dutifully inserted his credit card into the new meter (they've recently installed credit-card loving meters - replacing the need to lug around a small bank filled with quarters - the private company was asking for 28 quarters for two hours of parking - it's a mess, I tell you, a mess!) The meter noted that payment had been r...

Gas prices in my 'hood are now at $2.75 $2.89 a gallon, up nearly a dollar since a few weeks ago (and up 14 cents since yesterday morning.) The ADP National Employment Report provides no solace. More than 532,000 people lost their jobs in May - more than some analysts expected; less than what others had anticipated. Still, more than a half a million more people were shed from productive employment last month. Small businesses - the ones not big enough to qualify for a bailout - have been hit hard by the economic downturn, according to the ADP report: "Since reaching peak employment in January 2008, small-size businesses have shed 2,125,000 jobs." Unemployment is likely to rise to 9.2 percent for May. From this point in early June, summer looks to be long and hot, especially for those with no income coming in. Let's hope the stimulus kicks in with a breeze that cools down the unemployment figures. Here's the ADP summary of their report: "...

We live in a culture driven by the automobile (the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler, notwithstanding.) You'll find densely packed cities to be densely packed with cars, in addition to people. As a city dweller in Chicago, I'd perfected the art of parallel parking my tiny car into the tiniest spaces. Parking is a premium commodity in Chicago. And in the Loop, one has become accustomed to paying dearly for the privilege of parking. But in Chicago these days, finding a place to park your car has become embroiled in scandal. In his quest to fill up empty city coffers, Mayor Daley and his rubber-stamping city council have been trying to sell off city assets like there's no tomorrow; thus, with the gleam of gold in his eye, Daley leased the parking meter commodity for the next 75 years to a private firm (somehow, Morgan Stanley is involved in this deal, not sure how!) for the sum of $1.5 billion. The deal meant parking rates would go up dramatically, leaving Chicago wi...

Dick Cheney has placed himself prominently in the public eye once again, this time as an advocate for gay marriage. Speaking at the National Press Club yesterday, he said, "people ought to be able to enter into any kind of arrangement, (but) that it ought to be left up to the states." He is consistent, I'll give him that. He's long been a steadfast supporter of torture - and he's been a voice for gay marriage since at least 2004. Cheney did not focus his thoughts only on the rights of gays to enjoy matrimonial life. While at the podium at the National Press Club yesterday, he also took the time to: - Defend the war in Iraq, despite the lack of evidence that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11. - Say that the White House's refusal to declassify CIA memos on detainee torture was "foolish, deeply unfair and sets a dangerous precedent..." - Call the closure of Guantanamo prison "a terrible mistake." - Let the world kn...