Irvine City Council overhauls oversight, spending on Great Park

Capping a raucous eight-hour-plus meeting, the Irvine City Council early Wednesday voted to overhaul the oversight and spending on the beleaguered Orange County Great Park while authorizing an audit of the more than $220 million that so far has been spent on the ambitious project.

A newly elected City Council majority voted 3 to 2 to terminate contracts with two firms that had been paid a combined $1.1 million a year for consulting, lobbying, marketing and public relations. One of those firms — Forde & Mollrich public relations — has been paid $12.4 million since county voters approved the Great Park plan in 2002.

"We need to stop talking about building a Great Park and actually start building a Great Park," council member Jeff Lalloway said.

The council, by the same split vote, also changed the composition of the Great Park's board of directors, shedding four non-elected members and handing control to Irvine's five council members.

The actions mark a significant turning point in the decade-long effort to turn the former El Toro Marine base into a 1,447-acre municipal park with man-made canyons, rivers, forests and gardens that planners hoped would rival New York's Central Park.

The city hoped to finish and maintain the park for years to come with $1.4 billion in state redevelopment funds. But that money vanished last year as part of the cutbacks to deal with California's massive budget deficit.

"We've gone through $220 million, but where has it gone?" council member Christina Shea said of the project's initial funding from developers in exchange for the right to build around the site. "The fact of the matter is the money is almost gone. It can't be business as usual."

The council majority said the changes will bring accountability and efficiencies to a project that critics say has been larded with wasteful spending and no-bid contracts. For all that has been spent, only about 200 acres of the park has been developed and half of that is leased to farmers.

But council members Larry Agran and Beth Krom, who have steered the course of the project since its inception, voted against reconfiguring the Great Park's board of directors and canceling the contracts with the two firms.

Krom has called the move a "witch hunt" against her and Agran. Feuding between liberal and conservative factions on the council has long shaped Irvine politics.

"This is a power play," she said. "There's a new sheriff in town."

The council meeting stretched long into the night, with the final vote coming Wednesday at 1:34 a.m. Tensions were high in the packed chambers with cheering, clapping and heckling coming from the crowd.

At one point council member Lalloway lamented that he "couldn't hear himself think."

During public comments, newly elected Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer chastised the council for "fighting like schoolchildren." Earlier this week he said that if the Irvine's new council majority can't make progress on the Great Park, he would seek a ballot initiative to have the county take over.

And Spitzer angrily told Agran that his stewardship of the project had been a failure.

"You know what?" he said. "It's their vision now. You're in the minority."

mike.anton@latimes.com

rhea.mahbubani@latimes.com

Read More..

Three top U.S. wireless carriers to embrace BlackBerry 10

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Three of the top U.S. cellphone carriers signaled this week that they would support Research In Motion’s BlackBerry 10 products, the first of which are due to be unveiled Jan 30, offering a hopeful sign for RIM’s comeback effort.

Executives at Verizon Communications , AT&T Inc and T-Mobile USA all said they are looking forward to the devices, which will be crucial for RIM’s chances of regaining lost ground from rivals such as Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics .

“We’re hopeful its going to be a good device,” Lowell McAdam, chief executive of Verizon Communications, majority owner of the biggest U.S. mobile service Verizon Wireless.

“We’ll carry it,” McAdam said in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

BlackBerry 10 is RIM’s next-generation mobile operating platform and it is preparing to launch new smartphones later this month. Word that major carriers will offer the devices is good news for RIM.

RIM, which once commanded the lead in the smartphone market, has rapidly lost ground to Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s line of Galaxy products, especially in North American and European markets, as customers abandon its aging BlackBerry devices.

It has been testing the new BlackBerry 10 devices with carriers so they can assess their compatibility with networks.

No. 4 U.S. mobile provider T-Mobile USA, a unit of Deutsche Telekom , also plans to carry the new BlackBerry 10.

“We’re extremely optimistic that it’s going to be a successful product and our business customers are extremely interested in it,” Chief Executive John Legere said.

AT&T has promised to support the BlackBerry 10 platform, according to Chief Marketing Officer David Christopher, but he would not discuss specific devices.

However, AT&T handset executive Jeff Bradley made it clear that the No. 2 U.S. mobile operator would carry the phone.

“It’s logical to expect our current (BlackBerry) customers will have the best BlackBerry devices to choose from in the future,” Bradley said.

(Reporting By Sinead Carew; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Three top U.S. wireless carriers to embrace BlackBerry 10
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/three-top-u-s-wireless-carriers-to-embrace-blackberry-10/
Link To Post : Three top U.S. wireless carriers to embrace BlackBerry 10
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

'Lincoln,' 'Les Miz' look for big Oscar haul

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Crusaders for good, old-fashioned Western democracy look to be the key figures vying for this year's Academy Awards.

Best-picture favorites for Thursday morning's Oscar nominations include the history-based "Lincoln," ''Zero Dark Thirty," ''Les Miserables" and "Argo." Among other prospects are "Django Unchained" and "Life of Pi."

This year's nominations come earlier than usual in Hollywood's long awards season, leaving the awards picture a bit murkier. By the time Oscar nominations come out most years, the Golden Globes already have given their trophies, helping to sort out prospective front-runners for show business' biggest night.

The nominations this time precede the Golden Globes ceremony, which follows on Sunday.

Thursday's nominees will be announced at 8:40 a.m. EST by Emma Stone and Seth MacFarlane, the host of the Feb. 24 Oscar show.

Read More..

Americans Under 50 Fare Poorly on Health Measures, New Report Says

Younger Americans die earlier and live in poorer health than their counterparts in other developed countries, with far higher rates of death from guns, car accidents and drug addiction, according to a new analysis of health and longevity in the United States.

Researchers have known for some time that the United States fares poorly in comparison with other rich countries, a trend established in the 1980s. But most studies have focused on older ages, when the majority of people die.

The findings were stark. Deaths before age 50 accounted for about two-thirds of the difference in life expectancy between males in the United States and their counterparts in 16 other developed countries, and about one-third of the difference for females. The countries in the analysis included Canada, Japan, Australia, France, Germany and Spain.

The 378-page study by a panel of experts convened by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council is the first to systematically compare death rates and health measures for people of all ages, including American youths. It went further than other studies in documenting the full range of causes of death, from diseases to accidents to violence. It was based on a broad review of mortality and health studies and statistics.

The panel called the pattern of higher rates of disease and shorter lives “the U.S. health disadvantage,” and said it was responsible for dragging the country to the bottom in terms of life expectancy over the past 30 years. American men ranked last in life expectancy among the 17 countries in the study, and American women ranked second to last.

“Something fundamental is going wrong,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, who led the panel. “This is not the product of a particular administration or political party. Something at the core is causing the U.S. to slip behind these other high-income countries. And it’s getting worse.”

Car accidents, gun violence and drug overdoses were major contributors to years of life lost by Americans before age 50.

The rate of firearm homicides was 20 times higher in the United States than in the other countries, according to the report, which cited a 2011 study of 23 countries. And though suicide rates were lower in the United States, firearm suicide rates were six times higher.

Sixty-nine percent of all American homicide deaths in 2007 involved firearms, compared with an average of 26 percent in other countries, the study said. “The bottom line is that we are not preventing damaging health behaviors,” said Samuel Preston, a demographer and sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who was on the panel. “You can blame that on public health officials, or on the health care system. No one understands where responsibility lies.”

Panelists were surprised at just how consistently Americans ended up at the bottom of the rankings. The United States had the second-highest death rate from the most common form of heart disease, the kind that causes heart attacks, and the second-highest death rate from lung disease, a legacy of high smoking rates in past decades. American adults also have the highest diabetes rates.

Youths fared no better. The United States has the highest infant mortality rate among these countries, and its young people have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy and deaths from car crashes. Americans lose more years of life before age 50 to alcohol and drug abuse than people in any of the other countries.

Americans also had the lowest probability over all of surviving to the age of 50. The report’s second chapter details health indicators for youths where the United States ranks near or at the bottom. There are so many that the list takes up four pages. Chronic diseases, including heart disease, also played a role for people under 50.

“We expected to see some bad news and some good news,” Dr. Woolf said. “But the U.S. ranked near and at the bottom in almost every heath indicator. That stunned us.”

There were bright spots. Death rates from cancers that can be detected with tests, like breast cancer, were lower in the United States. Adults had better control over their cholesterol and high blood pressure. And the very oldest Americans — above 75 — tended to outlive their counterparts.

The panel sought to explain the poor performance. It noted the United States has a highly fragmented health care system, with limited primary care resources and a large uninsured population. It has the highest rates of poverty among the countries studied.

Education also played a role. Americans who have not graduated from high school die from diabetes at three times the rate of those with some college, Dr. Woolf said. In the other countries, more generous social safety nets buffer families from the health consequences of poverty, the report said.

Still, even the people most likely to be healthy, like college-educated Americans and those with high incomes, fare worse on many health indicators.

The report also explored less conventional explanations. Could cultural factors like individualism and dislike of government interference play a role? Americans are less likely to wear seat belts and more likely to ride motorcycles without helmets.    

The United States is a bigger, more heterogeneous society with greater levels of economic inequality, and comparing its health outcomes to those in countries like Sweden or France may seem lopsided. But the panelists point out that this country spends more on health care than any other in the survey. And as recently as the 1950s, Americans scored better in life expectancy and disease than many of the other countries in the current study.

Read More..

Consumer bureau to unveil new mortgage standards

In sweeping new rules aimed at fixing the home lending market, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday will define a "qualified mortgage" — one a borrower can actually be expected to pay back — while in effect banning a slew of dicey loans at the center of the financial crisis.

The regulations, among the most important handed down yet by the 18-month-old agency, also aim to loosen the choking loan standards that have prevailed since the housing crash. They do so by limiting bankers' liability for prime loans that can be sold to government-backed mortgage giants such as Fannie Mae.

The rules, to be phased in over the coming year, aim to improve access for creditworthy borrowers to today's historically low-interest loans and to create a stable and predictable housing finance system for banks and their customers alike.

Complying with the rules would provide a "safe harbor" shielding lenders from being sued for one of the most frequent and bitter complaints of the subprime era: sticking borrowers with unaffordable loans, then selling off the loans — and the risk.

One leading consumer advocate said the bureau had gone too far out of its way to accommodate bankers, whose loose lending had triggered the foreclosure crisis and the worst economic collapse since the 1930s.

The bureau's action "invites abusive lending and erodes the progress made by Dodd-Frank," the landmark regulatory reform bill passed after the financial crisis, said Alys Cohen, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center.

"The safe harbor the bureau has afforded for prime loans provides absolute shelter to lenders who knowingly make unaffordable loans, in direct violation of congressional intent," said Cohen, who was to appear at a home lending forum Thursday in Baltimore with bureau officials.

The safe harbor provision shields lenders only from lawsuits over borrowers' ability to pay. Consumers would still be able to pursue claims that lenders violated other laws, such as those governing deceptive advertising or wrongful foreclosures.

The rules met with relief from mortgage bankers, who had feared Draconian restrictions from the bureau, created by consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren. The former Harvard law professor, newly sworn in as a U.S. senator, was so at odds with the industry and congressional Republicans that President Obama backed away from appointing her to head the agency after tapping her to set it up.

"The goal of this regulation, ensuring that borrowers receive loans that they can repay, is in everyone's best interest. We cannot, and should not, go back to the high-risk lending environment of the early 2000s," Debra W. Still, chairwoman of the Mortgage Bankers Assn., said in a statement.

Consumer bureau Director Richard Cordray, who was scheduled to formally unveil the rules Thursday, said the aim was to achieve "the true essence of 'responsible lending.'"

"The American dream of homeownership was shaken to its foundations," Cordray said in prepared remarks. "But, in the wake of the financial crash, we have been experiencing a housing market that is tough on people in just the opposite way — credit is achingly tight."

The qualified mortgage rules rest on the principle of ability to pay, the goal Congress told the bureau to implement in the regulatory reform law passed after the financial crisis. Senior officials at the consumer agency briefed reporters on it Wednesday.

The rules notably limit a potential borrower's total payments, including those for property taxes, fire insurance and non-housing debt such as credit cards, to 43% of gross income.

During the housing boom, aggressive lenders had set the bar at 50% or higher for mortgage payments alone — disregarding other debt — and then allowed borrowers to qualify by merely stating their incomes, with no documentation.

The rules simultaneously aim to ban mainstream use of the riskiest practices of the housing bubble, such as loans made without checking tax returns and pay stubs; loans with payments so low that the loan balance rises instead of falls; and qualifying borrowers based on low "teaser" rates instead of fully adjusted payments.

Certain subprime loans to borrowers with credit problems could be qualified mortgages, but not the loosely underwritten loans that helped fuel the housing boom and bust.

Lenders would still have to determine that borrowers could afford to repay such loans, which would carry significantly higher interest rates than prime mortgages. They also could be challenged more easily in court — for instance, by borrowers claiming a lender gave them a loan that left them too little money to live on, even though their debt payments were only 43% of their incomes.

Lenders are expected to continue lending outside the guidelines in some cases. For example, jumbo mortgages — those too big for purchase by Fannie and Freddie — are often written to affluent borrowers who for a variety of reasons choose to pay interest only for a period of time. There's no reason that practice should stop, senior consumer bureau officials said.

Lenders will be given a year to phase in compliance with the new rules. Some question certain limits imposed by the regulations, such as limits of 3% on points and fees that borrowers could be charged upfront, and the 43% cap on total debt payments.

The 3% fee limit would be hard to meet in some cases, said the mortgage trade group's Still.

Laguna Beach mortgage broker Richard Cirelli said that the debt ratio could pose problems, especially in expensive real estate markets.

"Capping the debt limit at 43% is going to create some problems," Cirelli said. "Especially for first-time buyers in California. It's still pretty expensive here."

scott.reckard@latimes.com

Read More..

Judge rejects bid to shut Oakland pot dispensary

OAKLAND — The nation's largest medical marijuana dispensary won a round in federal court this week, with a judge rejecting efforts by Harborside Health Center's landlords in Oakland and San Jose to immediately shut down operations.

The property owners have been under pressure since federal prosecutors last summer threatened to seize the buildings, arguing that pot sales were in violation of federal law. But in her ruling, Chief Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James said that "any argument about the urgency of stopping Harborside's activity rings hollow" — since the landlords had known for years that it was a medical cannabis dispensary.

Allowing Harborside to stay open while a fuller legal airing of the issues took place, James continued, would not cause the landlords irreparable harm.

In her ruling in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, James also found that the property owners had no legal standing to seek an immediate end to sales at the dispensary by contending they violated the federal Controlled Substances Act.

Harborside — which serves more than 108,000 patients — now will have the opportunity to battle the federal civil forfeiture actions in court.

"We look forward to proving our case in front of a jury, and continue to believe we will prevail," Harborside's executive director, Steve DeAngelo, said in a statement.

The city of Oakland also has sued to prevent the property forfeiture, contending that federal prosecutors had missed a five-year statute of limitations and misled city officials with promises that they would not go after dispensaries complying with state and local laws.

In her ruling, James ordered Oakland's case be coordinated with the forfeiture cases.

Monday's ruling sets the stage for what could be a precedent-setting battle over clashing federal and state marijuana laws.

Cedric Chao, an attorney for Oakland, has argued that closure of the dispensaries would deprive the city of tax revenue and force Harborside's patients into the underground market, driving up crime.

"The city of Oakland could not be more pleased" by James' ruling, Chao said. "The patients can continue to get the medicine. They won't be thrown in the streets. There won't be an immediate public health crisis. There won't be a public safety crisis."

The U.S. attorney's office repeatedly has declined to comment on the ongoing litigation. Prosecutors have filed a motion to toss Oakland's suit, contending the city has no legal standing to weigh in. That issue will be heard at a hearing on Jan. 31.

lee.romney@latimes.com

Read More..

The next CIA’s director’s challenges

qWhat John Brennan faces after confirmation

I see no reason why the Senate won’t confirm John Brennan, President Obama‘s chief counter-terrorism adviser, to be the next director of the CIA. There will be pro forma inquiries into his past entanglements with the NSA’s domestic surveillance program and his knowledge and approval of the CIA’s “Greystone” torture protocols, but he will have ready answers for the questions and he will say plenty in private to sooth the concerns of those whose concerns need to be soothed.

Assuming Brennan becomes the DCIA, as he will thenceforth be acronymed, he’ll inherit a powerful spy agency facing a set of tough questions. Actually, every CIA director since the advent of the age of Al Qaeda has more or less dealt with these same issues. The daily demands of the job require tactical thinking and leave little room for attention to the bigger picture.

SEE MORE: Why Django is better than Lincoln

# Is the CIA a paramilitary force? Should it go back to its roots as a source of intelligence and warning?  You see this question phrased as such a lot, but it ignores virtually all of the CIA’s history, except for a period in the 1990s when the “Peace Dividend” and director John Deutch pulled back significantly on the agency’s ambit. The CIA has always been both and will always be both. From the start, the agency has very broadly and probably (in an affront to the original understanding of the National Security Act of 1947) interpreted its mandate to do stuff to further American interests abroad, even and often to the point of violence, as Adam Elkus reminds us today. The question really is one of authorities and chains of command: how are American resources properly allocated? Are the mechanisms of accountability sufficient? Is there really anything better than an ad hoc framework for determining whether combined CIA-military operations are really CIA operations or military operations?

# There is no such thing as secrecy anymore, at least not in the way that the CIA has understood the term. We live in an era of open source everything, which means that the agency’s crown jewels have very short lifespans and that public interest in what the CIA does is bound to increase exponentially. The agency has to figure out a posture on the New Secrecy that satisfies its mission while accepting the Open Source reality. Younger analysts have different expectations of how to gather and collect information and are less satisfied with the complicated and fairly broken traditional secrecy rules.

# Similarly, it is exceedingly difficult for would-be spies to come to the CIA without significant social media trails, and it is very hard for them to work in the world without leaving electromagnetic detritus for everyone to exploit and discover. How can the CIA’s case officers maintain their cover identities? Is the era of fully-fledged cover identities over? Will the CIA continue to rely (and over-rely) on foreign intelligence services for critical human intelligence operations? 

# The same Open Source world that hinders CIA secrecy also provides the agency with far more data than it ever imagined having. The CIA will never face a problem of not having enough intelligence. It will face the problem of having too much and not knowing what it has or how to use it.

View this article on TheWeek.com Get 4 Free Issues of The Week

Other stories from this section:

Like on Facebook - Follow on Twitter - Sign-up for Daily Newsletter
Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: The next CIA’s director’s challenges
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/the-next-cias-directors-challenges/
Link To Post : The next CIA’s director’s challenges
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

'Twilight' finale leads Razzies worst-of list

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The "Twilight" finale had better reviews than the franchise's previous four movies, but you'd never know it from the Razzie nominations singling out Hollywood's worst of the year.

"The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2" led the Razzies lineup late Tuesday with 11 nominations, including worst picture, lead-acting slots for Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, and supporting-acting nominations for Taylor Lautner and Ashley Greene.

Other worst-picture nominees are the naval action tale "Battleship," the family flick "The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure," Adam Sandler's raunchy dud "That's My Boy" and Eddie Murphy's comedy flop "A Thousand Words."

A spoof of the Academy Awards, the Razzies announcement came a little more than a day before Thursday's Oscar nominations. Winners for the 33rd annual Razzies will be announced Feb. 23, the night before the Oscar show.

The final installment in the supernatural romance involving vampires, werewolves and a moody schoolgirl, "Breaking Dawn — Part 2" also had nominations for worst director for Bill Condon, plus worst sequel, screenplay and screen ensemble. It picked up two nominations for worst screen couple — for Stewart and Pattinson and for Lautner and child co-star Mackenzie Foy.

Stewart's worst-actress nomination came for two performances in 2012, her Bella Swan of "Twilight" and the title role in "Snow White and the Huntsman."

Earlier "Twilight" movies have been regular nominees for the Razzies but have not come away with any key worst-of awards. But the finale seems to be the one Razzies voters have been waiting for, the way Oscar voters were waiting for the last "Lord of the Rings" film, the one that finally won the big prize.

"That's the analogy we're making, that this is the Razzies' flipside," said Razzies founder John Wilson. "This is our equivalent to 'The Lord of the Rings.' It's our members' last chance to razz 'Twilight.'"

Here's how Razzies organizers describe the "Twilight" finale in the nominations announcement: "The ultimate installment of the inexplicably successful series focuses on Shirtless Werewolf Jacob and his creepy relationship with the daughter of Sparkly Vampire Edward and Gloomy Goth Gal Bella. Together, the four face a final showdown that will determine the fate of Romantic-But-Boring Monsters everywhere."

Sandler — whose "Jack and Jill" made Razzies history last season by winning a record 10 awards, sweeping every category — remains a Razzies favorite this time. "That's My Boy" ran second with eight Razzie nominations, among them worst actor for Sandler and supporting actor for both Nick Swardson and Vanilla Ice.

Tyler Perry was nominated for both worst actor ("Alex Cross" and "Good Deeds") and actress ("Madea's Witness Protection," in which he reprised his cross-dressing title character).

Along with Sandler, Pattinson and Perry, worst-actor contenders are Nicolas Cage for "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance" and "Seeking Justice"; and Murphy for "A Thousand Words."

Joining Stewart and Perry in the worst-actress lineup are Katherine Heigl for "One for the Money"; Milla Jovovich for "Resident Evil: Retribution"; and Barbra Streisand for "The Guilt Trip."

___

Online:

http://www.razzies.com

Read More..

Economic Scene: Health Care and Pursuit of Profit Make a Poor Mix

Thirty years ago, Bonnie Svarstad and Chester Bond of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison discovered an interesting pattern in the use of sedatives at nursing homes in the south of the state.

Patients entering church-affiliated nonprofit homes were prescribed drugs roughly as often as those entering profit-making “proprietary” institutions. But patients in proprietary homes received, on average, more than four times the dose of patients at nonprofits.

Writing about his colleagues’ research in his 1988 book “The Nonprofit Economy,” the economist Burton Weisbrod provided a straightforward explanation: “differences in the pursuit of profit.” Sedatives are cheap, Mr. Weisbrod noted. “Less expensive than, say, giving special attention to more active patients who need to be kept busy.”

This behavior was hardly surprising. Hospitals run for profit are also less likely than nonprofit and government-run institutions to offer services like home health care and psychiatric emergency care, which are not as profitable as open-heart surgery.

A shareholder might even applaud the creativity with which profit-seeking institutions go about seeking profit. But the consequences of this pursuit might not be so great for other stakeholders in the system — patients, for instance. One study found that patients’ mortality rates spiked when nonprofit hospitals switched to become profit-making, and their staff levels declined.

These profit-maximizing tactics point to a troubling conflict of interest that goes beyond the private delivery of health care. They raise a broader, more important question: How much should we rely on the private sector to satisfy broad social needs?

From health to pensions to education, the United States relies on private enterprise more than pretty much every other advanced, industrial nation to provide essential social services. The government pays Medicare Advantage plans to deliver health care to aging Americans. It provides a tax break to encourage employers to cover workers under 65.

Businesses devote almost 6 percent of the nation’s economic output to pay for health insurance for their employees. This amounts to nine times similar private spending on health benefits across the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, on average. Private plans cover more than a third of pension benefits. The average for 30 countries in the O.E.C.D. is just over one-fifth.

We let the private sector handle tasks other countries would never dream of moving outside the government’s purview. Consider bail bondsmen and their rugged sidekicks, the bounty hunters.

American TV audiences may reminisce fondly about Lee Majors in “The Fall Guy” chasing bad guys in a souped-up GMC truck — a cheap way to get felons to court. People in most other nations see them as an undue commercial intrusion into the criminal justice system that discriminates against the poor.

Our reliance on private enterprise to provide the most essential services stems, in part, from a more narrow understanding of our collective responsibility to provide social goods. Private American health care has stood out for decades among industrial nations, where public universal coverage has long been considered a right of citizenship. But our faith in private solutions also draws on an ingrained belief that big government serves too many disparate objectives and must cater to too many conflicting interests to deliver services fairly and effectively.

Our trust appears undeserved, however. Our track record suggests that handing over responsibility for social goals to private enterprise is providing us with social goods of lower quality, distributed more inequitably and at a higher cost than if government delivered or paid for them directly.

The government’s most expensive housing support program — it will cost about $140 billion this year — is a tax break for individuals to buy homes on the private market.

According to the Tax Policy Center, this break will benefit only 20 percent of mostly well-to-do taxpayers, and most economists agree that it does nothing to further its purported goal of increasing homeownership. Tax breaks for private pensions also mostly benefit the wealthy. And 401(k) plans are riskier and costlier to administer than Social Security.

From the high administrative costs incurred by health insurers to screen out sick patients to the array of expensive treatments prescribed by doctors who earn more money for every treatment they provide, our private health care industry provides perhaps the clearest illustration of how the profit motive can send incentives astray.

By many objective measures, the mostly private American system delivers worse value for money than every other in the developed world. We spend nearly 18 percent of the nation’s economic output on health care and still manage to leave tens of millions of Americans without adequate access to care.

Britain gets universal coverage for 10 percent of gross domestic product. Germany and France for 12 percent. What’s more, our free market for health services produces no better health than the public health care systems in other advanced nations. On some measures — infant mortality, for instance — it does much worse.

In a way, private delivery of health care misleads Americans about the financial burdens they must bear to lead an adequate existence. If they were to consider the additional private spending on health care as a form of tax — an indispensable cost to live a healthy life — the nation’s tax bill would rise to about 31 percent from 25 percent of the nation’s G.D.P. — much closer to the 34 percent average across the O.E.C.D.

A quarter of a century ago, a belief swept across America that we could reduce the ballooning costs of the government’s health care entitlements just by handing over their management to the private sector. Private companies would have a strong incentive to identify and wipe out wasteful treatment. They could encourage healthy lifestyles among beneficiaries, lowering use of costly care. Competition for government contracts would keep the overall price down.

We now know this didn’t work as advertised. Competition wasn’t as robust as hoped. Health maintenance organizations didn’t keep costs in check, and they spent heavily on administration and screening to enroll only the healthiest, most profitable beneficiaries.

One study of Medicare spending found that the program saved no money by relying on H.M.O.’s. Another found that moving Medicaid recipients into H.M.O.’s increased the average cost per beneficiary by 12 percent with no improvement in the quality of care for the poor. Two years ago, President Obama’s health care law cut almost $150 billion from Medicare simply by reducing payments to private plans that provide similar care to plain vanilla Medicare at a higher cost.

Today, again, entitlements are at the center of the national debate. Our elected officials are consumed by slashing a budget deficit that is expected to balloon over coming decades. With both Democrats and Republicans unwilling to raise taxes on the middle class, the discussion is quickly boiling down to how deeply entitlements must be cut.

We may want to broaden the debate. The relevant question is how best we can serve our social needs at the lowest possible cost. One answer is that we have a lot of room to do better. Improving the delivery of social services like health care and pensions may be possible without increasing the burden on American families, simply by removing the profit motive from the equation.

E-mail: eporter@nytimes.com;

Twitter: @portereduardo

Read More..

Disneyland fights multiday pass abuse by photographing holders

Workers at Disneyland and Disney California Adventure Park took photos of visitors entering the parks Tuesday as part of a new crackdown on abuse of multiday passes.

The photographing of guests — including children — delayed visitors' getting into the park by about 45 minutes, parkgoers said.

"They delayed literally thousands of people in line to do this process," said Bob Shoberg, a San Jose resident who visited Disneyland with his wife, daughters, in-laws and grandchildren.

Disneyland officials denied that guests suffered significant delays and said only multiday pass holders were photographed.

Disney has been struggling to stop several ticket brokers in Anaheim from buying multiday park passes and then "leasing" or "renting" them to visitors for individual days.

The scenario works like this: A ticket broker buys a three-day "park hopper" pass for $205 and rents the ticket to three guests for $99 a day. The broker makes a profit of $92, and the guests, who would otherwise pay $125 for a one-day "park hopper" ticket, save $26 each.

Disneyland prohibits visitors from sharing multiday passes, but the practice does not violate local laws.

To help stop the practice, Disneyland workers a few months ago began adding the names of parkgoers to the passes and requiring that they show identification at the front gate.

On Tuesday, Disneyland took the latest step of photographing visitors who are using a multiday pass for the first time, park spokeswoman Suzi Brown said.

When the pass is used a second time, Disneyland workers at the park turnstiles will see a photo of the guest pop up on a computer screen, she said. If the person at the turnstile is not the person shown on the screen, Brown said the guest won't be allowed to use the ticket.

Disneyland officials declined to say what percentage of visitors use multiday passes, but Brown said only a "very small percentage of guests" were photographed, and that did not cause a significant delay.

"So that our guests are not taken advantage of, we strongly advise that they only purchase tickets at Disneyland Resort, at our hotels or through an authorized seller to ensure that tickets are valid," Brown added.

Brown said the parks realized the problem was growing when park workers noticed ticket brokers waving signs hawking discounted passes on the streets around the park.

One business, Bestticketshere.com, says on its website that it rents multiday passes for Disneyland and Universal Studios. The website said the business guarantees its tickets will be accepted or customers will get a full refund.

In response to an email request for comment on Disneyland's new crackdown, the company wrote: "Is the ultimate goal to shut these companies down so everyone has to pay full price?"

Most theme parks take photographs of people who buy annual passes and affix them to the pass.

Universal Studios Hollywood uses fingerprints and cross-checks the names printed on the annual passes to ensure that the tickets are not shared, park officials said. At Raging Waters in San Dimas, annual pass buyers are photographed and their photo is affixed to the pass.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

Read More..