Anyone from Western, NY can sing the little ditty and I am sure all of you have your own ambulance chasers in your towns. But this is Happy News week, isn’t it?
Aren’t these jingles really neat? I cannot stop thinking about ’em. I still have this one totally stuck in my head from when I was little growing up in the 80s. “We’re not candy, even though we look so fine and dandy, when you’re sick we come in handy, but we’re not caaaannnndddyyyyy!!!!”
Nice.
On a slightly more serious note, in the Cellino and Barnes commercial I heard on the drive home last night, they were arguing that (and I paraphrase) “insurance companies do everything they can to not pay people who get into car accidents.” While it is clear why they like to advertise this fact (regardless of its truth), aren’t there millions of customers of insurance companies who benefit when insurance companies aren’t paying claims willy-nilly? If insurance companies are “stingy” with claims (again, granting the argument that they, in fact, are stingy) then this keeps premiums down for everyone else. And as many insurance companies are mutual companies, if their stinginess is intended to raise profits, it is raising them for all of its customers.
Of course, if it were the case that an insurance company systematically screwed over its customers by refusing to pay legitimate claims, that would present an enormous profit opportunity for insurance companies that make good on their commitments. Wouldn’t it?
In other random happy news, here’s a neat new invention for my backpacking friends among you.
And in other news, while ThinkProgress seems to be reporting this as “bad” news, the fact that frackers have won bids for water in drought stricken Colorado provides a way for water owners to understand what the highest value uses for their water are – and this of course can include keeping it instream for recreational use if people deem that valuable. It will also encourage farmers and ranchers to steward the resource, improve farming practices and have another income stream than may enable them to stay farmers when they might otherwise face additional pressures to sell their land.
And in other news, Alan Salzman is a water person. Here is his company’s investment in technology to clean the water that is part of the fracking process (which by the way, the wastewater issue is THE major issue with fracking). What would Coase say?
Oh, so much good news, but I want to make sure I keep my 6 readers. I am afraid you need some more doom and gloom to keep you interested!
I have to admit that I’ve been taken aback by all the good news on the site this week. Then I realized it’s probably that Wintercow’s spirit has been embiggened by Loyalty Day:
http://reason.com/blog/2012/05/01/barack-obama-hereby-declares-may-1-loyal?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reason%2FHitandRun+%28Reason+Online+-+Hit+%26+Run+Blog%29
I wonder if there were people waiting outside that speech wearing jackboots and screaming “PAPERS!!!” at people leaving.
I read all about Loyalty Day in yesterday’s copy of Völkischer Beobachter.
Hey, this is May 1, not April 1. This can’t be on the level. It’s a joke, right?
I think you have this mixed up with Obedience Day. On the news they said there was a dominatrix down in the Wall Street area yesterday, in solidarity wit da Obfuscate Wall Street people.
On the subject of fracking, I can’t wait for the mesothelioma attorneys to have their non-attorney spokespeople say, “I’m Doug, and I have frackenwaterthelioma. Call the number below and at least twenty shysters from Texas will explain to you that you have already been named as a plaintiff in a frackenwaterthelioma lawsuit and that you might get a teeny weeny bit of money after the lawyers bringing this case on your behalf get their cut, which is estimated to be at least 85 percent of the damages claimed as long as those damages are $5 trillion or more, which itself is a pittance compared to the excess profits of the oil industry. You can collect on Loyalty Day, 2017. Good luck.”
Call Binder & Binder, who will get you on disability and take a third. They’ll deal with the government. OWS folks, take note, if you have not already.