The incredible shrinking budget: Thanks to falling tax revenues and ballot initiatives that “could shave several hundred million more from state coffers,” Washington’s budget figures to shrink again. Plans discussed include “privatizing the issuing of licenses, such as drivers’ licenses.” Does that mean shorter lines?

Implications of the new state law on painkillers: In a shocker, critics of the new law say it’s more likely to stop people who need painkillers from getting them than people who abuse them. It’s as if this has never happened before with other draconian laws in America. If you love anecdotal evidence, this is the story for you!

Local investment scammer’s property goes up for auction: The auction brought in just over $166,000. My reaction: you conned people out of $12 million so you could buy a Dodge Charger and a Honda Element?

Repo men arrested in Snohomish County: Three men allegedly kidnapped a father and son at gunpoint as part of a repo operation. Hint: you’re doing it wrong. Sounds like these guys need to spend 90 minutes studying repo theory under Professor Emilio Estevez.

Iran reneges on reneging on releasing one of the captured American hikers: In an update from yesterday’s links, Iranian authorities are again willing to release hiker Sarah Shourd, this time on $500,000 bail. It’s still not going to be easy: “It was not immediately clear whether such a bail payment would violate U.S. trade sanctions or whether a special waiver would be required.”

Three-man Chinese submersible goes two miles below the waves: In a race for undersea oil and mineral access, the submersible staked China’s claim by planting a flag on the seafloor. By contrast, we once planted a flag on the moon and brought back some moonrocks. America gets the edge in cool points, but the Chinese win in the coveted area of “things that might actually make us money.”

Five Americans arrested for giving AIDS drugs to the poor in Zimbabwe: Authorities are holding them “on a charge of dispensing the medicine without the supervision of a pharmacist or proper licenses, their lawyer said.” According to their lawyer, the charges are bogus and licenses were in order. Even if they weren’t, arresting them doesn’t seem like the best way to fight a “severe” epidemic in a desperately poor country.

Multiple murder-suicide in a Kentucky trailer park: A man killed five women and then himself because he didn’t like his wife’s breakfast. One witness: “Over eggs? I thought that was crazy. I mean just because his eggs weren’t hot?” I really hope there was more to it than the eggs.

How manga will preserve Arabic culture: UAE computer nerd produces manga in classical Arabic and on traditional themes to save the children. Click through if you’ve ever wondered what a falconer in a keffiyeh would look like rendered in a Japanese cartoon.

14 replies on “Morning News”

  1. As sad as the story is about the jailed hikers, I’ve got to think: Why hike in an area with such a high degree of crazy? Why would you hike in Iraq/near Iran when you could hike in SO many other beautiful, exponentially safer places? Argentina, Nepal, the Yukon…why hike near Iran? That sounds like hiking in the woods out here (amongst the cougars) wearing a bacon suit.

  3. @1, they’re young journalists who’d traveled the world finding political things to write about and make personal documentaries from, and now they’re in a truly horrible situation.

    In other words, without the geopolitical frisson they wouldn’t have joined up to go hiking at all. Their hike was on an unstable border, but in another sense was a working trip along a well-trod publishing/media path, the experiential memoir-y documentary. (Think of the last time a book tour stopped in town with a young postgrad who donned local garb to hike through Afghanistan, and wrote a book proving that people very much like you and me are in fact there.)

    I found a website by one of the kids, shanebauer.net, and clicked on “current project” expecting it to be a prison release fund appeal set up by friends. Instead it hasn’t been updated since 2007 (obvs.) and is a plug inviting screening requests for movie he had in postproduction about jetting off to live with Darfuri rebels for five weeks. Plus a photo of him looking solemn with his wooden earring.

    I hope he gets a chance to screen that movie for somebody soon.

  4. “they fast-tracked a law, the first of its kind in the nation, to clamp down on prescribing opiates to chronic-pain patients.”

    In other words, brace yourselves for an increase the rate of death from opiate abuse, as legitimate patients are forced to turn to the illicit drug trade out of sheer desperation.

  5. I doubt privatizing the driver’s license offices will make the lines shorter. The lines at the privatized vehicle license offices here are as long or longer than then ones I saw at the socialized license offices in Michigan.

  6. Privatized driver’s license centers? Private prisons have proved to be money makers for the stockholders though they actually cost states more than the old system. The employees will earn less an hour an have poor benefits, which is unlikely to improve their attitudes. Rates will surely go up because profits must be made and a corporation can make only so much through down-sizing before reaching the point of diminishing returns. With more poorly paid employees they may be easier to bribe for false cards, though. That would be an upside; Ive alsways wanted an extra identity.

  7. Speaking as a former chronic pain patient, I have to say the new regulations will only harm those who really need treatment. It takes ages to get into a chronic pain clinic an there arn’t that many of them,Physicians are already very good at identifying drug-seeking behavior and minimizing it. There are a very few who over-prescribe for profit, so work on rooting them out. Making it more difficult for good doctors to prescribe properly for deserving patients will also greatly increase the cost of treatment. For example, if you suffer a severe injury or undergo a complex surgery and are only allowed a 2 day supply of pain medication you have to return to your doctor’s office in person for an evaluation each time you need a prescription. It overloads an already busy practioner’s schedule and is a chargelable visit, raising treatment costs, and creates a burden for the patient, who should be home recuperating.

  8. Emilio Estevez’s character (Otto) in Repo Man was the student of repo philosophy. The professor was Tracey Walter’s character Miller.

  9. @ 8, I’m not sure going with Tracey Walter would have endeared me any more to the people who have accused me of making obscure references in the past. But you do make a great point.

  11. Wow, Gus I had no idea. All of the stories I’ve read (admittedly, not very many) just called them hikers, I didn’t look into the background. Very sad.

  13. And yet there’s money enough for tunnels, bridges, and light rail.

    Sorry kids, that extra hot dog in the school lunch has to go…gotta feed the lions.

Comments are closed.