Healthcare hackers fix it in a few days!

Three tech geeks in their 20′s - George Kalogeropoulos, Ning Liang,  and Michael Wasser – didn’t like witnessing the abysmal rollout of the epic fail of a website that isHealthcare.gov, so they did what any self-respecting web gurus would do: Saw it as a challenge, and fixed it. On a few nights and weekends.

Said Liang;

“They’ve got it completely backwards in terms of what people want up front – they want prices… You come to our website, you put in your zip code… you hit ‘find plans,’ and you immediately see exchange plans that are available for that zip code.’

The result, which the trio built for free, is called HealthSherpa.com, and it’s working right now.

CBS News reports that;

“…using information buried in the government’s own website built by high-lpriced government contractors, they found a simpler way to present it to users.”


I love great art no matter the medium

Generous criminals - good PR and politics. By Greg Palast


Steven Cohen can't make his
Mommy's Monkey Jump
By Greg Palast for Truthout
Friday, 8 November 2013

[New York] Billionaire Steven A. Cohen's marriage was in hot water because his wife wouldn't tolerate the "other woman."   The other woman was Steven’s mother.
 
This week, Cohen's hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors will plead guilty to criminal charges of insider trading and pay $1.2 billion in fines and forfeitures.
 
Cohen says he’ll pay the $1.2 billion from his own pocket — but it’s a pretty big pocket.  His net worth just hit ($9.4 billion).  It would have been an even $10 billion, but last year he coughed up over half a billion for his company’s illegal trades.
 
Cohen himself is not accused of knowing the information he used was obtained by criminal means.  But, he still faces SEC charges of letting his minions operate like a high-finance NSA, sucking up and trading on illegally obtained information. And the US district attorney, when asked about imprisoning Cohen, said, in cryptic language, that unspecified criminal charges are yet to come.
 
And it's all Steven’s mommy's fault.  And her monkey’s.
 
Tip to young journalists: Billionaires' ex-trophy wives are a terrific source of information.  The blonder the better.  They have vengeance in their eyes and files under their mattresses.  And they want just three things:  money, revenge, and ...money.
 
Patricia Cohen is very blonde and very ex’d.  She split from the nona-billionaire in 1990 when he was still a poor, struggling nona-millionaire.  Or so he led her to believe.
 
Patricia claims she was robbed — and that she firmly deserves a little of the ice from Cohen's private ice-skating rink, the one in his garden next to his own cinema theater and indoor pool. 
 
So, Patricia, bent on justice, approached this reporter with a authoritatively detailed story of Cohen's first inside-trading scam, documents included. 
 
Now, I should say at the outset that, despite Patricia's selfless exposure of the pitiless facts about Cohen's suspicious trades, and despite the guilty plea and charges pending, I don't for a minute believe that Steven Cohen is anything but an innocent genius.
 
Indeed, Cohen's brilliance borders on the clairvoyant.  He knows which way a stock will move before God knows.  He knows your kid's name before you know you’re pregnant. 
 
How?  By using illegally obtained insider information?  Heavens no!
 
So how does Cohen know the cards in your hand before they're dealt? 
 
“Guessing,” says Cohen.  “I was pretty good at guessing which way those [stock price] numbers would go.”  In a drooling profile, Vanity Fair compares him to the “mathematical genius” in the film A Beautiful Mind.  However, as Cohen was a crap student in math, his uncanny ability to predict the market better than any other mortal is attributed to some otherworldly brain kryptonite that gives him, “a Rain Man–like gift for reading the stock ticker.”
The ex-Mrs. Cohen has a different narrative. We sat in the kitchen at her Upper East Side digs, close enough to Mick Jagger’s to borrow a cup of sugar, but not on a very high floor.  (Deprivation is a relative concept.)  Before jumping into the facts of finance flim-flam, I first wanted to know from her why she left Mr. Bullion Baggins. 
 
“He loved his mother.”  That’s no crime.
 
“Yea, but he really loved his mother.  Steven couldn’t take a poopie without calling Mommy.  Every week we’d go have dinner with her, and she would say to him, ‘All I know is, money makes the monkey jump!  Money makes the monkey jump!"
 
"And we'd leave and half the time in the car he’d be in tears about his mommy humiliating him."  No matter how many millions and billions he piled up, he couldn’t make his mommy's monkey jump.
 
As a reporter, billionaires are my beat. For The Guardian, I’ve covered the Brothers Koch,Paul "The Vulture" Singer, Adnan Guns-for-Hostages Kashoggi, and many others.  I'm often asked, "Why?  Why is two billion or nine billion or twenty billion not enough for these guys?"  Why would they play fast and loose with laws statutory and moral to make one more billion?
 
And the answer is, They can't make their mommy's monkey jump.  In every twisted billionaire bamboozler I've investigated, I've found a hole in their soul which they are trying to fill with wads of dollar bills, but can't.
 
But then, "why" is for their shrinks and next wives to ponder.  My issue is "how."
 
According to Patricia Cohen, Steven began to have visions of future stock moves when he was just a small-change trader at Gruntal & Co. 
 
One night, Steven was again in tears, literally crying into his pillow, sleepless. Patricia claims he 'fessed to her that he'd secretly bought up a load of RCA stock, knowing the company would be taken over by General Electric.  She also claims that she was too blonde at the time to know Steven's RCA purchase was a crime.
 
But she did suggest that he go to his boss and tell the truth because, whatever money he would make on the deal wasn't worth the midnight tears.  "Is $9 million worth it?" he said to her.  Apparently, it was — because she ceased to suggest confession until she felt shafted by her divorce settlement.
 
Well, that's her story.  Steven's?  He won't talk to me about it — nor to the FBI (to whom he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination).
 
The pattern of activities in past and recent indictments, including those to which he has now confessed, and the known facts of the RCA deal, comport with Patricia’s accusation. But, given Patricia’s own motive for revealing her hubby's pillow talk, I wasn't ready to bite.
 
Nevertheless, we have to ask:  if his first big score, the RCA-GE merger, was more than a brilliant “guess,” then doesn't his entire $9.4 billion pot come from a scam?
 
In which case, he should give it up.  All of it.  All $9.4 billion. 
 
One afternoon, Cohen made a cool quarter billion dollars after telling one of his traders to contact a doctor consulting with Wyeth Pharmaceuticals whom Cohen knew had inside information on drug tests.  The trader comes back with the info, Cohen made the trade — though the government can’t (yet) prove that Cohen knew the info was obtained illegally.  Only the trader and SAC Capital were indicted for the crime.  
 
According to the SEC, that’s just a day in the life of SAC Capital.
 
But, according to Cohen’s puppies in the financial press, he is just a brilliant risk-taker, his firm forced to plead guilty to what one Wall Street Journal columnist described as a crime “with no victims, it actually helps people.”  CNN got all teary for Cohen, claiming he was the victim of a “longstanding anomaly in American law.”  Who was the real criminal?  “SAC Capital punished for the government's own failure” screamed their headline.  This is the same crew that told us that JP Morgan only paid a $13 billion fine last week as part of a government “anti-business witch-hunt.”
 
Really?  When a Cohen sells soon-to-swoon Wyeth stock to some schmuck who's not clued in, the "counter-party" loses his shirt.  When JP Morgan labels financial feces as “prime” mortgages and dumps it on Fannie Mae, the US taxpayer gets a hosing.  When Goldman Sachs and billionaire John Paulson sell the Royal Bank of Scotland "synthetic CDOs" that are as valuable as a chocolate kettle, the Bank of England pays and the people of England lose two million jobs.  When hedge fund predator Paul Singer mounts a vulture attack on the Congo and makes a killing, Oxfam says he's taking cholera medicine away from kids who are facing death.
 
In other words: There's no such thing as a victimless billionaire.
 
Nevertheless, our financial press lauds these predators. Paulson slicking RBS into buying turds painted gold was “genius.”
 
And just this week, a New York Times columnist lauded Paul Singer a “loving father and generous donor.”   Why?  Because Singer tosses an insignificant amount of his ill-making gains back to support gay rights in Africa.  There’s no mention that Singer has buttered “human rights” groups with cash to front his campaigns to discredit governments he has sued for billions.
 
Cohen is a “modern-day Medici.”  Witness his extraordinary philanthropy — the new Steven & Alexandra Cohen Children's Medical Center.  Hey, thanks, Mr. Generous.  Little Caesar might have avoided jail time and bad press if he'd only funded a wing of a Chicago's Cermak Prison Hospital called, “The Al Capone Center for Gunshot Wounds and Unfortunate Accidents."
 
Keep your hospital wing, Mr. Cohen.  Keep your "human rights" donation, Mr. Vulture.  If you'd let the sheep you fleece keep their skin, they wouldn't need your charity. 
 
As to your generosity, genius, and brilliant guesses — sorry, my monkey ain't jumping

I love great art no matter the medium

The Personal Manager who actually cares! Bob Lefsetz

You fire your manager AFTER your album stiffs, not before.

And that's where Lady Gaga's long player is headed, straight for the dumper.

Once upon a time, in the midnineties, the label could function as the manager. But that was back when most of your revenue came from recorded music, when overpriced CDs were flying out of the store. Once the Internet took hold and Napster eviscerated recording revenues, the manager became king, if he wasn't before, and right behind him came the agent, because that's where so much of the money is, on the road.

And in endorsements and private appearances and everywhere but the nonexistent record shops that alta kachers are lamenting have disappeared.

That's what I want to do... Get in my car, fight traffic, pay to park and then sift through a limited selection of product all so I can "learn" from the clerk and keep the store in business. What a load of crap that was. I love the Internet, with everything available at my fingertips. As do labels...because when a superstar dies, product is immediately available, you don't have to worry about manufacturing and shipping before the public moves on, which is especially true in the fast-moving world of today. What, we're gonna reminisce about Lou Reed for another week and then forget about him?

I think so.

As for those ridiculous figures quoting the jump in sales of Mr. Reed's music... A 600% increase means nothing if it's a multiple of bupkes.

But Mr. Reed was always more influential than commercial.

But Gaga was both.

But when your dreams come true, your identity fractures, you're not sure who to be anymore.

Was she a homely girl with a nose job singing from the depths of her soul?

Or a gay icon?

Or the individual responsible for bringing dance music to Top Forty?

Or the manipulator of the Internet?

Or the last credible artist in a sea of sellouts?

All of these.

Let's recount history. Her album is jumping up the chart, she's got a gig opening for Kanye West, he drops out and she goes on the road anyway, underplaying and undercharging, losing money all the while. Want to endear people to you? What a great paradigm.

But then she raises her prices and releases a turkey.

It's tough to follow up an unexpected hit. Just ask Alanis Morissette. She's been unable to do it for twenty years. It's all "Jagged Little Pill" and nothing else.

But didn't anybody in Gaga's camp tell her her new single was a remake of Madonna's "Express Yourself"?

Madge did. It was a moment for the unrecognizable as her self as a result of too much plastic surgery has-been to come down from the perceived mountain top to give Gaga crap.

Then again, remakes of old classics seem to be de rigueur, just ask Robin Thicke and Pharrell, the former of whom now appears to be a one hit wonder.

And is Gaga next? One gigantic album and then toast?

Maybe.

And the only person who could have helped her was Carter.

Someone who knew her well and protected her and navigated the waters for her.

Could someone do as good a job? Possibly. But loyalty matters when it comes to management, because without trust life is truly lonely at the top.

And we know what happened here, because it's always the same story. Carter said something Gaga didn't like. And her lover took issue with it.

You want to keep your charges single. Beware of significant others. They rule the stars, they become their sounding boards and confidantes. They've got their ear 24/7. But if a lover were such a great manager they'd be one. But they never are. Just hangers-on who suddenly have an opinion the star is listening to.

Were mistakes made?

Of course. Not only the stiff follow-up album, but the endless world tour.

The music business lives online. Period. If you're not online creating and talking and being the subject of news items, you're fading away. Meantime, others are vying for your spot on top and the audience is aging every single day. Your devoted teen fan now has a baby and a job and can't spend all her time mooning over you, looking at your punim plastered all over her wall.

Furthermore, at the end of the day it's about music.

Gaga became about fashion. Unwalkable shoes. The meat dress. Your best bet is to strip it down and show you have chops. But Gaga kept looking in the rearview mirror at Madonna, needing to top herself. But all Madge had was her marketing skills, she's not much of a singer or writer, and she slings a Les Paul over her shoulder but she truly cannot play. Gaga's the opposite. She can write, play and sing, but she became overwhelmed by her trappings.

Could she have found her way out of this quagmire?

Maybe. With Troy Carter by her side.

Alone?

Of course not.

And anybody new is only about the money. That's the dirty little secret of the famous managers, they don't take on starving clients. They want commissions. Whereas the person you grew up with is more three-dimensional.

In other words, Gaga can hire someone to grab cash, but she's gonna have a hell of a time finding someone who can strategize.

And maybe it's all untrue.

The story broke a few hours ago, and it's an echo chamber of the original post. But now even "Us" has gone on it:

http://usm.ag/1b7QkWE

And I'd say that makes it true, but today's news outlets are so worried about being left out of the click-through advertising tsunami, fact-checking is out the window.

I could e-mail Troy and find out the truth.

But I'm not gonna do that. I'm not one of those vultures who swoops down to rape the injured for information.

But Troy, I know you're out there, know it's her, not you!

And it's hard to find another hit artist, but you're a king of tech.

And there's a whole hell of a lot more money in that.

I love great art no matter the medium