The Culture Land Museum, where the past and the future meet in one giant 32sq block of dead things and live fun, welcome to the world of “STIFFS” where you will see anything and everything except people working (that’s just boring).Fall down the rabbit hole into Wonderland with Fred, Wood, Dude, Jah’mel and Chiba the talking dog as they fight to live in a world filled with, Gold-digger, ,wanna-be pimps, Rude customers, Deviant T.V. icons ,Half-wit Management decisions ,High prices and Low wages in a never-ending quest to get laid, goof off and still get paid for it
One New York Times Bestseller Per Year Will Barely Keep You Above The Poverty Line
Paranormal romance author Lynn Viehl bared all last week — she posted her complete royalty statement from her publisher, for her New York Times bestselling book Twilight Fall. And the details might make you reconsider a career as a novelist.
Twilight Fall was a top 20 bestseller on the New York Times mass market paperback list — so, not the main fiction bestseller list, but still impressive. According to Penguin Group, the publisher, the book has sales of 89,142 copies, minus returns of 27,479, for total sales of 61,663 copies. (As far as I know, the books are counted as sold until the bookstore chooses to send them back — but I could be wrong about that.) The publisher is holding back reserves against royalties for another 7,350 copies to be returned.
In any case, the bottom line is that Viehl got a $50,000 advance for Twilight Fall, and she's unlikely to earn it out for up to a year — which means no royalty payments. After taxes, expenses, and her agent's cut, she gets to keep about half that advance. As she notes:
My income per book always reminds me of how tough it is to make at living at this gig, especially for writers who only produce one book per year. If I did the same, and my one book performed as well as TF, and my family of four were solely dependent on my income, my net would be only around $2500.00 over the income level considered to be the US poverty threshold (based on 2008 figures.) Yep, we'd almost qualify for foodstamps.
It's pretty great of Viehl to share her royalty statement with the world — apparently the last time she did that, she got some flak online, and here's hoping that doesn't happen this time. The only caveat I'd toss in there is that most of us don't reckon our incomes on an after-tax basis — if we did, I suspect we'd all be horribly depressed. So if you leave taxes out of her estimation of her income, she's probably making closer to $35K or $40K per book, rather than $25K. [Straight Goods]
Send an email to Charlie Jane Anders, the author of this post, at charliejane@io9.com.
Health care: Most wouldn't have public option
Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Thursday, October 29, 2009
(10-29) 04:00 PDT Washington - --
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's gambit to include a government-run insurance option in health care legislation has given a fresh tailwind to the idea despite opposition from conservatives.
But lost amid the ideological battle for or against a public option is a key overlooked fact: The vast majority of Americans would have no access to a public option even under its most expansive versions.
House and Senate bills limit the option to the smallest businesses and to individuals who cannot get insurance, or whose health care costs exceed 12.5 percent of their income. Even seven years into an overhaul, an estimated 90 percent of Americans, including nearly everyone who has employer-based coverage now, would be shut out of a public option.
Those currently in other government programs, such as Medicare and the Veterans Administration, also would be excluded.
The public option under all bills would be offered through insurance exchanges, a Web-based market for health plans. But most people who are unhappy with the insurance they have now would be locked out of these exchanges, leaving many Americans who are watching the debate in for a big surprise.
Only a handful of senators, such as Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Mary Landrieu, D-La., have focused on widening the exchanges where a public option might be available. Wyden wants everyone who now has employer-based coverage to have access to the exchange if they don't like their insurance companies, but his efforts have been lost amid the narrower fixation on the public option itself.
"When you ask people in a poll, 'Are you in favor of a public option that would be available to everybody,' they say, 'Yes,' " Wyden said. "I don't think they're going to feel the same way about a public option available to only 10 percent of the population."
Wyden, an iconoclastic liberal, questioned the basic assumption by his fellow Democrats that such a limited public option will provide adequate competition to private insurers.
"People are going to want choices, public choices and private choices, available to everybody, because that's how you're going to hold the insurance companies accountable," he said. "You can't expect that having 10 percent of the American people getting the public option will force major changes with the other 90 percent who aren't subjected to choices, public or private."
He pointed to another surprise that awaits the public: Even those who would have access to a public option may not be able to afford it.
Citing estimates that a family of four earning $66,000 could pay an estimated 19 percent of its income on health care under some bill versions, Wyden said, "I can tell you, Americans are not going to consider 19 percent of their income affordable coverage."
Many health care experts agree. "I'm afraid rude surprises could be around a lot of different corners in this debate," said Marian Mulkey, senior program officer for the California Health Care Foundation, an independent philanthropy group based in Oakland.
Mulkey said the public option has been "dominating the discussion to an extreme extent" and that its importance as a principle to liberals and conservatives may outweigh its actual effect, at least in the short run.
A public program might face the difficulties private insurers have in holding down costs. "It's not entirely clear that just because it's a public program, it will be able to negotiate lower payments to providers or somehow develop more efficient benefits in a way that will yield a more affordable plan," she said.
Health care consultant Robert Laszewski, head of Health Policy and Strategy Associates in Washington, said that even if a public option is 25 percent cheaper than a private plan, which averages $13,000 a year for a family of four, it still will cost $10,000 a year.
Under subsidies in the House bill, a family earning $55,000 would pay the first $5,500 of any premium, public or private, he said.
"How many families earning $55,000 a year do you know that have an extra $5,000 in their checking account?" he asked.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a big advocate of the public option, acknowledged that most people won't have access to it. The exchanges were kept very narrow, he said, because of the way the Congressional Budget Office analyzes budget costs.
"We have to live with CBO's numbers and that creates some constraints," Whitehouse said. "I hope that quickly the public option will begin to demonstrate that those concerns were not justified and those constraints can be lifted and we can extend the option to everybody, because that's what makes sense."
Ironically, the power of the exchanges to dismantle the current system of employer-based health care, which many economists cite as the root source of exploding costs, could raise budget costs if more people move onto the exchanges and possibly into a public option.
But whatever effect a public option may have on the government's costs, there is little disagreement that giving individuals more choices - public or private - through the exchanges would inject powerful competitive forces into the system that could lower costs for everyone.
House to reveal overhaul today
After months of tense negotiations and setbacks, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, will unveil a sweeping health care overhaul plan today, with a vote possible in the House as early as next week.
Pelosi is in an all-out push to move the legislation, which will have a government-sponsored insurance plan available to some people but not the "robust" version tied to Medicare rates that Pelosi and liberals favored.
Instead, it will have rates negotiated by the secretary of Health and Human Services, as swing-state "Blue Dog" Democrats preferred. Leaders are also working furiously to assure moderate Democrats that no public funds would be used for abortion.
House and Senate leaders have cleared the calendar for a possible weekend session Nov. 7 and another possible House session just before Thanksgiving, and canceled a planned Veterans Day break.
House Democrats said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's move to include a public option in the Senate bill Monday made it easier for moderate House Democrats to vote for a public option.
The health care reform legislation approved yesterday by the Senate Finance Committee is “deeply flawed.” In full-page ads in the Washington Post, Politico and other dailies, union leaders say that comprehensive health care reform that brings down costs, improves quality and guarantees coverage for all “is closer than ever.”
But we aren’t there yet. The Senate Finance Committee bill is deeply flawed.
Not only does the Finance Committee’s bill tax workers’ health care benefits, it does not include a public health insurance option. This summer, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) approved health care reform legislation that includes a public option and does not tax workers’ health care benefits. Senate negotiators are now trying to merge the two bills into a finished product for a vote by the full Senate.
The ad spells out the unions’ “bottom line” for a final health care reform bill.
A public health plan is essential for reform.
Health care reform has to ease cost burden on individuals and families, not worsen it.
Employers have to pay a fair share of costs.
Health care can’t be paid for by a new tax on middle-class benefits.
As the ad points out, a public option would lower premiums for everyone, reduce the cost of health care reform by $100 billion and set up competition
to break the stranglehold of a handful of big insurance companies that have made 96 percent of metropolitan markets uncompetitive.
Health care premiums have climbed by 300 percent and insurance company profits have soared by 1,000 percent over the past decade. The Finance Committee bill requires individuals to obtain coverage, while employers face few incentives to provide coverage.
Penalties on individuals who cannot obtain coverage, should not be more than what employers are required to pay.
Workers and employers who do provide health coverage to their employees also are footing the bill for uninsured workers whose employers do not offer health coverage, says the ad. More than $1,000 of each family premium goes to cover the cost of the uninsured.
The only fair way to cover the cost for all is to include an employer responsibility provision that requires all employers to provide health coverage or contribute a truly meaningful sum to help pay for subsidies.
Starting in 2013, the Finance Committee bill would levy a 40 percent excise tax on what could be as many of 40 percent of all heath care plans, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. That tax, says the ad, would most likely “hit plans with people who are older or sicker or those who work for small employers.”
A new tax on the middle class is unacceptable.
The ad warns lawmakers:
Unless the bill that to goes to the floor of the U.S. Senate makes substantial progress to address the concerns of working men and women, we will oppose it.
I NEED TO SAY TWO THINGS, FIRST I NEED TO TAKE TWO WEEKS OFF TO TAKE CARE OF SOME FAMILY BUSINESS. FORTUNATELY THE TIME OFF WILL GIVE ME TIME TO WORK (A WORKING VACATION ☹) ON A STORY LINE THAT I’VE BEEN SITTING ON FOR OVER A YEAR THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF “DONKEY DOO AND HIS PREHISTORIC FRIENDS" WHICH I WILL START RIGHT AFTER THIS SMALL BREAK
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NOW WHILE I’M GONE YOU HAVE HOMEWORK TO DO , IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOURS TRULY HAS BEEN DOING, THEN TELL A FRIEND, AND TELL THEM TO TELL A FRIEND AND SO ON, ☺ I’M TRYING TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD HERE PEOPLE AND I CAN’T DO THAT WITHOUT YOU HELP
It may not be F-U Friday, but the dosen't mean I don't have new treats for you. Below is the promo videos for the t.v. show Skins, a amazing show from out of England that just wrapped up a eye-opening season over here in the states on BBC America.It stars Nicholas Hoult of About a boy fame and Dev Patel from the Oscar winner, Slumdog Millionare.The videos below capture the vibe of the first two seasons of the show,as it goes from party all the time to real deep and grown up issue,the DVDS of the first two seasons are in the store "NOW" so "GO BUY"! not rent yourself a copy you won't be disappointed
