Illinois takes a stand on nonprofit hospitals

Last April, I commented on the increasing problem of nonprofit hospitals shirking their duty to provide some percentage of services for free.

Yesterday, The Chicago Tribune described the current situation in Illinois, where this issue recently came under the spotlight. Public hospitals turned away patients who couldn't pay and then received statewide attention. Now, it has become a state issue and, in Illinois, it will be up to the court to decide how much charity a nonprofit hospital must provide to maintain it's tax-free status. Though this is a positive step because it will draw attention to the problem and possibly encourage hospitals in other states to take a closer look at their annual charity rates in comparison with their bottom line, it is compounded by the fact that the courts have no precedent for how to set a fair "charity quota."

Vendor Power!

Great new video by Internets Celebrities on the state of the street vending market in NYC- take a look:



12 minute video, but definitely worth the watch.

Probably OFN, but here it is...

So, many of you may have already seen this (and other) videos of this kid in the red shirt with the dance moves (that are either totally awesome or just... proof that he is destined for failure in life).



Regardless, this video might make you wonder, "what's gonna happen to this kid if he's this awesome/not awesome now?" Never fear. Some dear friends have answered that very question for us here with Dance Moves that Rock (15 Years Later...):





Ok, now you can berate me for never actually posting on Raamin's blog and for posting old, worthless news. blah blah blah.

So Kanye ain't so bad

I recently lost the bulk of my music collection, so I'm having a good time rebuilding it with stuff that I find online. Lately, I've found that the bulk of my music is coming from the always-entertaining Kanye West, on his surprisingly excellent blog. In addition to putting up some really incredible art and design, Kanye uploads some of what I presume are his top music pics at any given moment.

You get gems like this:

Diddy's Group Dirty Money Releases "Angels" Music Video from the.LIFE Files on Vimeo.

Along with some other incredible tracks like these (click through to listen:
KID CUDI "PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS" (FEAT. MGMT & RATATAT)
KID CUDI "SOUNDTRACK 2 MY LIFE"
FOREVER

Check out his blog online at KanyeUniverseCity.com/blog


Anybody else got any good blogs they regularly pull music from?

Slate's News Dots

From the "just became my homepage" department:

Slate's got this new thing they call "news dots" that's basically a relationship map for news stories of the day. They pick about 500 news outlets and submit them to Calais, which tags them. It then takes those tags and plots the relationships out, and the result is pretty interesting:



Check it out at Slate. It's like playing 6 degrees of separation with Barack Obama (who is by the way only 2 steps away from Milwaukee).

Week roundup

So here's what I've been wasting my time with recently- because you've all been deprived of my ramblings for close to a week now.

HT to the lovely Jasmine for this one:
Michael Jackson medley- all sung by this one guy



CANABAULT- this may be the best flash game in the history of the world
Canabault
My high score is ~3900. I'm still pissed that Adam managed to kick my ass with ~4200. If you top me, let me know and I'll punch you in the face.

The new Modern Warfare 2 Trailer- this one needs a few comments
1) either these guys are playing against total scrubs or that battle shield the teammate is carrying is way overpowered
2) throwing knife kill at the end is INCREDIBLE
3) "Modern Warfare" was CoD:4, so I'm definitely calling this game "Call of Duty 4:2".



HT to Shyam- this one's just hilarious



So I've been researching law schools this past week- and HT to Connor for this one. The 10th edition of the Thomas Cooley School of Law's official rankings are out! And Thomas Cooley ranks... (drumroll please)... 12th! Up from 16th last year! Wow! Great job, Cooley! Let's take a look at the top 15:

1- Harvard University
2- Georgetown University
3- New York University
4- University of Virginia
5- University of Texas
6- University of Michigan
7- Northwestern University
8- Columbia University
9- Yale Law School
10- George Washington University
11- University of Minnesota
12- Thomas M. Cooley Law School
13- Fordham University
14- University of California-Los Angeles
15- American University

Well, I guess Stanford and UPenn aren't that good anyway, right?

Watch this space for more in this next coming week- I've got classes again, which means abundant time to blog. woot.

Is the US government better than a hedge fund?

So it looks like the TARP didn't end up being as much of a tarp as we thought it would be... According to Slate, it looks like TARP might actually end up breaking even, if not actually making money. What started out as a $700 billion line item expense on last year's budget is starting to produce returns- better than hedge funds in some cases. FTA:

Morgan Stanley, which borrowed $10 billion in October 2008, redeemed the preferred shares in June and purchased the warrants for $950 million on Aug. 12, giving taxpayers a return of 12.7 percent, according to SNL Financial.

Not bad, Morgan Stanley. And they're not the only ones, either:

For the 21 companies that bought back the shares and the warrants, the taxpayer received an annualized return of 17.5 percent—which is better than most hedge funds have done in the past year.

You go, government! Show those hedge funds what's what!

Now granted, the group of institutions that have paid back the bailout funds is going to suffer from serious self selection bias, but even so the results are encouraging. The market making its slow recovery has even been helpful for the government-

Treasury in July converted the initial $25 billion CPP loan to Citi into common stock, at a price of $3.25 a share. The U.S. taxpayer now holds 7.69 billion shares. Given its close Thursday at $5.05, taxpayers have reaped a $13.8 billion paper gain from this investment—a 55 percent return in about a month.

Damn. I wish I could manage my own money that well, but I'm happy Uncle Sam is doing his job well. It looks like we could end up making money on TARP, which seems better than even the more optimistic projections that were made during the height of the crisis. Still, it's important to keep in mind that any money we make is just icing on the cake. Counselor to the Treasury Secretary Lee Sachs said it best:

"Dividends: 5 percent, equity warrants, 2 percent. Financial system not going into total abyss: priceless."

via Slate