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Sen. Ben Nel­son (D-​​NE), image from Google search

This is Sen. Ben Nel­son, a con­ge­nial old Demo­c­rat from Nebraska. Many of us got to know him over the sum­mer and into the fall when he refused to sup­port health care reform.

This is Nel­son explain­ing to a reporter why he isn’t going to vote on a pro­posal to cap ATM fees:

“I’ve never used an ATM, so I don’t know what the fees are,” Nel­son said, adding that he gets his cash from bank tellers, just not auto­matic ones. “It’s true, I don’t know how to use one.

“But I could learn how to do it just like I’ve … I swipe to get my own gas, buy gro­ceries. I know about the holograms.”

By “holo­grams,” Nel­son clar­i­fied that he meant the bar codes on prod­ucts read by auto­matic scan­ners in the check­out lanes at stores such as Lowe’s and Menard’s.

“I go and get my own seat­ing assign­ment on an air­plane,” Nel­son said. “I mean, I’m not with­out some skills. I just haven’t had the need to use an ATM.”

Thank you, Sen­a­tor. And thank you Alex Balk, as usual.

1. A one-​​bed room new con­struc­tion in Bush­wick, six or seven min­utes walk from the near­est train, is priced at $296,000. [38Wilson]
2. While the actual cost an ATM trans­ac­tion costs around 36¢ to con­duct, the aver­age fee at an ATM is $2, with some banks charg­ing as much as $5 at some of their machines. [myFOXny]

From today’s New York Times