Private equity companies absolutely do not have to increase the value of a company to make a profit. They can end up making a profit on their investment even if they take the company into bankruptcy and leave it much worse off than it was before the takeover.

A poll of Massachusetts residents found that regular people in Massachusetts understand why their health care is so extremely expensive. It’s because they have to pay too much for drugs, insurance and hospital care, compared to what other nations pay.

Lisa was told to be on a phone call with NPR and WDAV Thursday morning, but NPR canceled the call without telling her, as she waited by the phone. NPR’s Anna Christopher Bross tells me that NPR spoke with WDAV about how to handle Simeone.

National Public Radio on Wednesday discovered that a woman named Lisa Simeone who produced a show about opera called “World of Opera” had been participating in a nonviolent occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., organized by October2011.org. That same day, NPR persuaded a company for which Simeone worked to fire her, cutting her income in half and purging from the so-called public airwaves a voice that had never mentioned politics on NPR.

Time to beat up on really really bad news reporting. The stock market doesn’t tell people why it does what it does. We have commentators who bloviate on what they think caused the market to rise or fall, but they don’t really know and they could be completely wrong.

But meet and shake hands with this Evil Bun? No thanks.

Video don’t lie. Ask ACORN. Ask Shirley Sherrod. Ask NPR.

The NPR program Planet Money this week had a very interesting segment about the economics of illegal drugs in which they interview a former drug dealer. The best part of the segment is that it starts with an honest admission that the economic data clearly shows drug prohibitions have been a total failure.

In this time of government retrenchment, bombing people overseas is still considered thrifty.

• In Japan, it just keeps getting worse.
• NATO about to strike back?
• Krugman: the forgotten millions.
• Still not working on “the people’s priorities.“
• Please do not feed the troll.

A couple updates on various legislation in Congress. The House of Representatives passed their bill defunding NPR today by a 228-192 vote. One Republican, Justin Amash (R-MI), voted present, and seven Republicans voted no (Duffy, Gibson, Hanna, LaTourette, Reichert, Tiberi, Woodall). Not one Democrat voted for the bill. The full roll call is here. The White House statement of Administration policy strongly opposed passage, but did not mention a veto. I can’t see the Senate taking this up, however.