🔷 Open Thread

My hope is that there is some MIT or Harvard kid who will some day start The Next Big Thing and is reading this and stores it in the back of their mind.
 
Mmm. That's clever and funny!

I lost enthusiasm, however, for jokes about cheap buses after the Megabus disaster. New York magazine had a great article about it; the injuries and deaths were horrific.
 
There's a special place in Hell for whomever got the idea to pull this bullshit.

http://campaign2012.washingtonexami...tial/seiu-siphons-dues-mich-medicaid-payments

SEIU siphons 'dues' from Mich. Medicaid payments
byJoel Gehrke Commentary Staff Writer

If you're a parent who accepts Medicaid payments from the State of Michigan to help support your mentally-disabled adult children, you qualify as a state employee for the purposes of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). They can now claim and receive a portion of your Medicaid in the form of union dues.

Robert and Patricia Haynes live in Michigan with their two adult children, who have cerebral palsy. The state government provides the family with insurance through Medicaid, but also treats them as caregivers. For the SEIU, this makes them public employees and thus members of the union, which receives $30 out of the family's monthly Medicaid subsidy. The Michigan Quality Community Care Council (MQC3) deducts union dues on behalf of SEIU.

Michigan Department of Community Health Director Olga Dazzo explained the process in to her members of her staff. "MQC3 basically runs the program for SEIU and passes the union dues from the state to the union," she wrote in an email obtained by the Mackinac Center. Initiated in 2006 under then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich., the plan reportedly provides the SEIU with $6 million annually in union dues deducted from those Medicaid subsidies.

“We're not even home health care workers. We're just parents taking care of our kids,” Robert Haynes, a retired Detroit police officer, told the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. “Our daughter is 34 and our son is 30. They have cerebral palsy. They are basically like 6-month-olds in adult bodies. They need to be fed and they wear diapers. We could sure use that $30 a month that's being sent to the union.”

According to the Mackinac Center, the theoretical public employer for whom the Haynes' work is the Michigan Quality Community Care Council (MQC3), an entity within the DCH that continues to operate, even though the state legislature has defunded it. Even the MQC3 calls the families hiring in-home health care providers "employers of providers," but these health care providers are also treated as employers of MQC3 when it comes time each month to take dues out of their Medicaid payment and send it to the SEIU.

Mr. and Mrs. Haynes, of course, are both the parents (the employer) and the health care providers for their children, but they still lose money to the SEIU every month, despite having no interest in joining the union. They have been arbitrarily classified as state employees so that the union can take money from them.
Gov. Rick Snyder, R-Mich., already ended a similar scheme to provide unions with new "public employees" in the area of child care. His predecessor, Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich., had classified in-home daycare providers as public employees -- a designation that forced them to pay union dues but conferred no other benefits upon them. Snyder's director of the Department of Human Services ended that program. "[We] will stop all funding and, because these providers are not state employees, will also cease collecting union dues,” DHS director Maura Corrigan said at the time.

Michigan's state House has already passed a bill to prevent this sort of rent-seeking by public-sector unions, but it has stalled in the state Senate.
 
I got a commendation from my editor and editor-in-chief on my school paper thanks to some dude named Kent Xie. Wonder who that guy is. Hmm.
 
Original thread is locked so just throwing this here:

Big ‘W’ for builder
Judge OKs hotel tower’s bankruptcy exit
By Thomas Grillo | Tuesday, November 15, 2011 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Real Estate


The developer of the W Boston Hotel and Residences won court backing yesterday to exit bankruptcy, but it still must unload 71 unsold condos in the Theater District luxury high-rise to settle its debts.

U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Joan Feeney approved SW Boston Hotel Venture’s reorganization plan over strong objections from top creditor Prudential Insurance, which had ponied up more than $181 million for the project.

“(The ruling) will allow all of our creditors to get paid in full,” Carol Sawyer Parks, CEO of SW Boston and daughter of Hub taxi magnate Frank Sawyer, said in a statement.

SW Boston built the 123-unit condo and 235-room hotel tower in October 2009, but went bankrupt in April 2010 after struggling to sell condos and keep cash flowing into the Stuart Street project.

Prudential tried to foreclose on the 26-story glass structure last fall, but Feeney rejected that bid along with the company’s opposition to the reorganization plan. Prudential attorney Emanuel Grillo could not be reached for comment.

Using proceeds from condo sales over the next three years, SW Boston will first pay back the $52 million it still owes Prudential, then repay its $10 million loan from the city of Boston along with lesser amounts of money owed to other creditors, according to the reorganization plan.

SW Boston said it has sold 52 units and has another eight under agreement. Feeney noted the developer managed to sell 22 units, netting nearly $25 million, during an eight-month stretch amid the bankruptcy proceedings.

“The credible evidence submitted at the confirmation hearing compels a finding that the (reorganization) plan is feasible,” she wrote in her 50-page ruling. “The projections for the sales of condominiums are realistic and workable.”

In June, as part of its financial overhaul, SW Boston sold the hotel to an affiliate of Pebblebrook Hotel Trust for $89.5 million.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/business/real_estate/view.bg?articleid=1381048
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Abandoned, half-built amusement park outside Peking. (Pictures & video.)

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2011/11/abandoned-disneyland-outskirts-beijing/496/

largest.jpg
 
God damnit. I already spend waaaay too much time online.
 
jass said:
Personally, Ive always thought we should steal the people from railroad.net and make this the authoritative MBTA forum.
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Don't even get started with rail fans. That is a box of shit you DO NOT want to open.
 
RailRoad.net's moderators remind me of some authoritarian colleges from the USSR. You do not want them here. I would have been banned from ArchBoston years ago with them in charge.
 
Lurker said:
RailRoad.net's moderators remind me of some authoritarian colleges from the USSR. You do not want them here. I would have been banned from ArchBoston years ago with them in charge.
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LOL! Incredible amounts of truth.


However, site ownership has changed, and I feel moderation has since become more lax. Of course, there's still some lingering restrictions, but definitely no up-your-ass-on-every-single-little-topic-diversion.
 
Alan Shepard, astronaut, was asked what he was thinking before his spaceship took off before its first flight.

He replied, 'The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder.'"
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Whenever asked what archBoston should do to expand I always thought it should have a blog in the Curbed fashion. Looks like we finally got beat to the punch.

http://boston.curbed.com/
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So JohnAKeith, did you get the gig or what?

Van did suggest shifting the site towards a Curbed-like blog a few years ago. It probably could have worked but would have involved a lot work by a devoted staff of content producers and such. The site would likely have to have been monetized. I also thought it would change the site into a more of a passive, content-consumption type of place and kill the participatory nature of the board, where anyone can freely contribute whatever. I thought it would kill the spirit of the board.
 
I think I discovered part of the problem of why retail doesn't want to be in the historic parts of Boston (DTX, GC, etc) tonight -- Everything closes at 8PM, even on Saturdays (mind you, this was also a special high-traffic saturday because of the Marketplace Center Christmas Tree lighting). I needed to go to CVS on my break at AE, but of course the GC one (in 1-2-3 Center Plaza) closes at 8. Same with the CVS at DTX. This is really absolutely ridiculous. Burger King in 123 isn't even open on weekends. Starbucks (Kettle) closes early as well. The Au Bon Pain on State St also closes at 6:30 everyday. It's no wonder why people go shopping at suburban malls - they're physically forced out of the city because it closes down. This doesn't make any sense and is an extreme inconvenience to the people that work in the retail stores that are open until 9PM and the shoppers as well.

Its stupid things like this that make me miss working at CambridgeSide and South Shore Plaza.
 
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