Amid news that Henry S. Miller Commercial LLC will file for bankruptcy — whatever that means for an entity with “no employees and no operations” — it’s worth reviewing Kurt Eichenwald’s story for D about the mysterious trucker who scammed the Miller company.
UPDATE: Henry S. Miller Commercial issued the following press release late on Friday.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas yesterday issued its quarterly survey of agricultural credit conditions. Still doesn’t look that good for farmers and ranchers. Drought conditions persist, even with some recent relief. Bankers reported that loan repayment rates have fallen, and a greater percentage of them expect farmland values to drop over the next three months.
But what I found most interesting is that the bankers in North Central Texas (where we’re situated) used the most expressive language, and the most expressive punctuation (!), among any of the 13 regions of the Eleventh Federal Reserve District. Their quoted comments:
Producers are realizing that this drought, which started in May 2008 and has continued through September 2009, may rival the legendary drought of the 1950s. Cattle herd liquidation is in high gear. Crop yields are less than 50 percent of original projections, and farmers are still waiting for 2008 USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) government disaster payments.
I’m not the first one to mention this, but much buzzed about singer-songwriter Sarah Jaffe has signed to Kirtland Records. Look for her first full-length, Suburban Nature, sometime mid-next year. Here’s her playing live on KXT with Robert Gomez. Enjoy. I’m going to go take another handful of Sudafed.
Quick. Name Dallas’ billionaires. You’ll probably easily come up with Mark Cuban, Todd Wagner, Jerry Jones, Tom Hicks, both Perots, Ray Hunt, and Harold Simmons. If you’re following along closely, you could probably name Trevor Rees-Jones and Andy Beal. But how about Tim Headington? He made his money in oil and gas, and he owns the Joule. He’s also now getting into the movie business. He has produced a film called The Young Victoria, along with Martin Scorsese and Sarah, Duchess of York. It gets its U.S. premiere on December 18. At the Angelika, there will be a guest book so that you can drop Headington a personal note, now that you know who he is.
Texas is apparently suffering from a doctor shortage. But really it’s not so much a doctor shortage as a primary-care/family practice physician shortage. The University of North Texas says it wants to help this problem by opening a second medical school in Fort Worth.
Apparently they want an M.D. program, in addition to the existing osteopathic medicine college that they have over there. But here’s my question: D.O.’s have historically been more committed (a greater percentage of them make the choice) to going into primary care than have those with M.D.’s. From an old New York Times article:
One of osteopathic medicine’s most marketable features these days is its longstanding commitment to general medical practice, or primary care. Osteopathic education has historically prepared students exclusively to take care of patients rather than become specialists, academics or researchers. Osteopathic medical students generally spend considerably more time working as apprentices in clinics and private offices than their conventionally trained counterparts. ”We live with patients in the wild,” said Dr. Tyler Cymet, an osteopathic internist in Baltimore. ”We get
to see what they’re like.”Although the number of osteopathic doctors in primary care has fallen in the last 20 years, about half of all practicing osteopathic doctors are still primary-care doctors, Dr. Wood said, in contrast to only about a third of M.D.’s.
Sorry that article is about a decade old, but I think that’s still generally true. So if what you need is more primary care doctors, and osteopaths are more likely to make that career choice, why not push to expand the school you have, rather than create a whole new one?
The answer is that a D.O. still doesn’t command the same respect as an M.D.?
Hank Stuever is one of the best writers in the country. He’s a Pulitzer finalist. Works at the Washington Post. Smart guy. Funny. And if you’ve been following along at home, you know that he wrote a book called Tinsel, which is, on its surface, about Christmas in Frisco. But it’s really about suburban America and our consumer culture. Great book. We excerpted it in our December issue.
Steve Blow hasn’t read the book, but he has an opinion about it. Here’s a post he put up yesterday:
I’m sure Hank Stuever is a very talented writer. But ever since I heard about his book on how Christmas is celebrated in Frisco, I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to read it.
Well, after reading most of the excerpt in yesterday’s Washington Post, I stand by that judgment. I couldn’t even bring myself to finish the excerpt.
Maybe it’s all just too familiar to me but somehow deeply fascinating to outsiders.
The various exotic tribes and cultures covered in National Geographic probably find those articles boring and obvious, too.
Seriously. He wrote that. A newspaper columnist working in the fifth-largest media market in America actually wrote that.
You know what? As long as Steve Blow is working at the Dallas Morning News, none of the other stuff matters. The editors reporting to salespeople? It doesn’t matter. Because whatever changes are made there, they will all be overshadowed by the fact that one of the paper’s most high-profile writers is such an embarrassment.
1. Call it the St. Michael Melee. The All Angels Altercation. The Douglas Avenue Donnybrook. Two heavyweights of the Episcopal episcopacy go head to head early Saturday in a war of words, battling for the very soul of the church. And there will be free coffee and donuts. At issue: whether belief in Jesus is the only path to salvation.
2. The White Rock Marathon is on Sunday. Apparently when times get rough economically, people turn to their inner Forrest Gump: “There’s so much in life that’s negative,” said Chuck Dannis, the White Rock Marathon board’s chairman emeritus. “Running is a way to release those tensions. People feel good about themselves when everything else is falling apart.”
3. Wick killed Renegade Bus.