Browsing PBH By Articles

The Price Of Winning The Lottery

The Article: Lottery winner Craig Henshaw paid a big price for his millions by Sam Chung in The Toronto Star.

The Text: The shock of winning $21.4 million in a lottery was nothing compared to the jolts Craig Henshaw felt later.

They were not pleasant.

The story of Craig Henshaw, multi-millionaire, began one day last September when Craig Henshaw, high school teacher, went digging through his pockets for the $35 he had left to pay for some groceries. He had just enough cash to get him through the rest of the week, before the first paycheque of the new school year would come through.

He handed over the cash, plus a 2-month-old Lotto Max ticket. It had been plastered to the side of his fridge while he had spent the summer backpacking in Europe with his girlfriend.

Loud bells and alarms went off. The phone on the lottery machine began to ring.

“Initially, I thought I’d won $21,000,” Henshaw, 43, says. “Then the lady on the other end of the phone chuckled. It turned out that the digital readout on the ticket machine didn’t have enough space for all the digits.”

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America’s Idiot Rich

The Article: America’s Idiot Rich by Alex Pareene in Salon.

The Text: Some unknown but alarming number of ultra-rich Americans are now basically totally delusional and completely divorced from reality. This is now an inescapable fact, confirmed by multiple media accounts of billionaire thought and an entire special issue of the New York Times Magazine.

Here’s a brief list of insane things that are apparently common knowledge among the billionaire class:

-That President Obama and the Democratic Party have treated wealthy finance industry titans maliciously and unfairly.
-That the fact that they are perversely wealthy and growing richer during a period of mass unemployment and staggering debt is a sign that the economy is functioning correctly.
-That poor people, and not the finance industry, are responsible for the financial crisis and subsequent recession.
-That the ultra-wealthy are wealthy because they are smarter and work harder than everybody else, and that they are resented for their success.
-That the ultra-wealthy in general, and finance industry executives in particular, are the victims of widespread prejudice akin to that faced by ethnic minorities.

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A “Two-Option” Democracy

The Article: US elections: Why does the world’s greatest democracy offer just two choices? by Mark Mckinnon in The Telegraph.

The Text: The gauntlet was thrown down in duelling online videos last week. President Barack Obama’s campaign compared presumptive Republican challenger Mitt Romney to a blood-sucking, job-destroying vampire while he headed Bain Capital, a private equity firm. Romney quickly parried with a brutally effective video telling the heart-wrenching stories of just three of the 23 million unemployed Americans in the Obama economy.

The 2012 election campaign season is still young; the battle will grow only more bruising. And voters will become increasingly turned off. But, in America, we get only two choices, and often are left voting for what we believe to be the lesser of two evils.

Friends in Europe and elsewhere often lament their own forms of government which foster countless parties and voices, and create much noise and chaos. Ironically, in America, which we like to argue is the greatest democracy in the world, we are limited to just two choices: a Republican or a Democrat.

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2012: The Most Boring Election Ever

The Article: Is This the Most Boring Election Ever? by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone.

The Text: I was channel-surfing the other day, looking for something genuinely interesting on television, like maybe a repeat of the Big Ten Network’s Diamond Report or video of a wrecked Nazi tugboat, when my fingers got stuck on a news channel. There, lighting up an NBC broadcast with her smile, was New Hampshire’s Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte, talking about her Vice Presidential qualifications …

Who? That was my first question, but then my second obstacle was the sudden recollection that we were in an election year. I’d actually forgotten this was the case. Four years ago at this time, that would never have happened – we were in the middle of one of the most witheringly nasty primary fights ever, with people very nearly coming to blows depending on where you stood in the Hillary-Barack battle.

Back then there was great nervousness in the country even beyond the Democratic Party’s intramural mess, as the specter of the first black presidency was hanging over everything: People as diverse as Geraldine Ferraro and Jeremiah Wright were dragged into racial controversies, while whispers about Obama’s birthplace and “Muslim” heritage spread across the country like wildfire.

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A Tale Of Two Healthcare Systems

The Article: A Tale Of Two Healthcare Systems by Rosie Spinks in The Speckled Axe.

The Text: I’ve always hated going to the doctor. Something about sitting in those paper-thin gowns with the cold linoleum tile under my feet and harsh fluorescent lighting above my head gives me anxiety. Then there’s the fact that I’m usually at the doctor because something feels or appears wrong with me, which is never comforting.

The worst part by far though is the dreaded transaction that awaits Americans at the end of a visit: the co-pays, the deductibles, and the breath-withholding moments before you find out how much of your prescription is covered by insurance. If I wasn’t already feeling sick before I entered the office, I almost always am after I’ve paid.

My experience with health care changed radically for me recently when, upon moving to London thanks to my dual citizenship, I first received socialized medical care.

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