Year: 2009

WILL FERRELL, JON HAMM, ET AL

Sarcasm doesn’t always play well, but in this case I think it may. And they are right, of course: we should have a public option.

ARIZONA ALREADY DOES

From NPR:

As the public debates what might happen if the government enacts a public health care option, Arizona’s experience may serve as a touchstone.

A public option for small businesses has been in place there for decades.

Under the Healthcare Group of Arizona — the state’s publicly sponsored option for small businesses — employees have a $2,000 yearly deductible and have co-pays for doctor and hospital visits. But their premiums are less than half of what private insurance would cost. The insurance is portable; premiums are determined not by health conditions but by age, gender and business location.

“The public option has been working for me in comparison to what I can get,” says Susan Gamble, who owns a small business. Gamble pays about $3,000 per employee versus the $7,000 she would pay with a commercial insurer. And Gamble has a pre-existing condition, which might make private options more expensive— and more difficult to get.

BRIGHT, DIMMABLE, 6-WATT LED

So I’m sitting next to a guy named “Philips” whose great-grandfather started Philips Electronics, one of the world’s 200 largest companies, and he shows me a dazzling $35 third-generation 5-watt LED lightbulb that his own little start-up company began selling last month. Google bought 25,000 of them. How can something that draws just 5 watts emit such bright light? It’s way better than the LEDs I had previously purchased. He gave me one of the even more expensive 6-watt dimmable variety, which shines even as I type. The economics are compelling over the estimated 35,000-hour life of the bulbs (which come with a three-year warranty).

Should you wait until they’re discounted at Wal-Mart one day? Probably. But for the early adopters in the crowd, what could be more exciting? I clicked the link above and bought several more.

CHINESE ACROBIKERS

Even as the rest of the world economy is in various states of gloom, China is booming. This is a good thing, and could help revive the rest of the world. But the subject of this clip is girls on bikes. It just builds and builds.

TWITTELEH

This being the season of the Jewish holidays, and most of us – Jewish or not – having mothers, this quick video could prove helpful.

CLINTON GLOBAL INITIATIVE

When you make a list of terrific ex-presidents and vice presidents of recent memory, President Carter, through the Carter Center, Vice President Gore, most recently through the Repower America initiative, and President Clinton, through the Clinton Global Initiative that kicks off today at 4PM, have to top the list for a continued lifetime of amazing planetary good. That last link will save you the $20,000 contribution people make to attend: as in past years, you can watch it all for free.

And speaking of our 42^nd president . . . The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President hits stores at the end of the month, the product of 79 interviews Taylor Branch conducted over the course of those eight years when time allowed, usually late at night, for use long after his presidency was over. History/political buffs will find this fascinating – you get to know what the President was thinking right then and there, not later, with the benefit of hindsight, and not sanitized to avoid affecting current events.

5 WAYS OBAMA CHANGED HER LIFE

What presidents do matters. An example of this, for those who didn’t find time to watch it yesterday, is this 6-minute video. As I said yesterday, it just makes your day. Have a good one.

THE INFORMANT

One of the best things for me about this terrific movie is that I had no idea what it was about when I went to see it. So I’m not going to tell you, either. Just know that “The Informant,” with Matt Damon, based on a true story, is huge fun.

5 WAYS OBAMA CHANGED HER LIFE

There is so much positive energy in this 6-minute video, it will totally make your day. Yes, I wish she and her husband had stopped at two kids instead of three (although I’ll bet they’re great kids). And, yes, there are some cons to go along with the pros (mainly, the cost). But on balance, and in the context of 2009’s primary task – keeping the economy from going over a cliff – this has to make you smile. If you agree, spread it around. Note the new “share this” button in the box at left.*

*It lets you email the link to others, or Twitter it, etc. It doesn’t yet work on the archives, and is not yet “date specific” – still working on that – so for now, if you do ever want to share something here, probably a good idea to let ’em know the column date. As in “see the 5 WAYS OBAMA CHANGED HER LIFE from Sept 21.”

45,000 NEEDLESS AMERICAN DEATHS

When I was a senior in high school, traffic fatalities were taking roughly 45,000 lives a year. (The number would peak at just over 50,000 a few years later. With seat belts and air bags and Mothers Against Drunk Driving and a tough economy, which reduces accidents, they were “just” 37,000 last year.) Now comes a Harvard estimate that 45,000 lives are lost each year to lack of health insurance – that people without health insurance are 40% more likely to die of a given medical problem than people with it (after taking age, income, education, obesity, smoking, and drinking, into account). The uninsured are more likely to go without needed care; and to get inferior care when they do go for it.

So we lose to our current health insurance system each year nearly as many lives as we lost during the entire Vietnam War, and about 10 times as many as we’ve lost over 8 years in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Which, if it were necessary or unavoidable, would not be of much interest. Yet in Canada (oh, and in every other industrialized country on Earth), everyone does have health insurance.

CANADIAN HEALTH CARE – REALLY IS BETTER AND CHEAPER?

Well, according to this from Bloomberg news Friday – yes. In small part:

By Pat Wechsler

Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) — Opponents of overhauling U.S. health care argue that Canada shows what happens when government gets involved in medicine, saying the country is plagued by inferior treatment, rationing and months-long queues.

The allegations are wrong by almost every measure, according to research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and other independent studies published during the past five years. While delays do occur for non-emergency procedures, data indicate that Canada’s system of universal health coverage provides care as good as in the U.S., at a cost 47 percent less for each person.

“There is an image of Canadians flooding across the border to get care,” said Donald Berwick, a Harvard University health-policy specialist and pediatrician who heads the Boston-based nonprofit Institute for Healthcare Improvement. “That’s just not the case. The public in Canada is far more satisfied with the system than they are in the U.S. and health care is at least as good, with much more contained costs.”

Canadians live two to three years longer than Americans and are as likely to survive heart attacks, childhood leukemia, and breast and cervical cancer, according to the OECD, the Paris- based coalition of 30 industrialized nations.

Deaths considered preventable through health care are less frequent in Canada than in the U.S., according to a January 2008 report in the journal Health Affairs. In the study by British researchers, Canada placed sixth among 19 countries surveyed, with 77 deaths for every 100,000 people. That compared with the last-place finish of the U.S., with 110 deaths. . . .

Yet the Canadian “bogeyman,” as U.S. President Barack Obama called it at an Aug. 11 gathering in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, may have “all but defeated” the idea of a public option in the U.S., said Uwe Reinhardt, a health-care economist at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. . . .

Private insurers, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession fear the “market power” of a public plan, Reinhardt said. They “deployed certain think tanks to find horror stories around the world that can be used to persuade Americans a public health plan in the U.S. would bring rationing.” . . .

☞ Seriously? Private companies deploying think tanks to mislead the public? Sounds almost like the tobacco industry!

IF YOU CAN’T TRUST PHILIP MORRIS WITH YOUR HEALTH, WHOM CAN YOU TRUST?

Turns out Philip Morris played a key role in scuttling health care reform in 1993 – reform that Bob Dole now admits we probably should have passed, but his advisors told him that allowing it to pass would hurt his chances to become President so he killed it – and that the same key player the tobacco maker used then, former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey, is leading the charge to defeat it again this time. (Among other things, she invented “death panels.”) See and read it here, and in the October 1 issue of Rolling Stone.

You know, I was taking with a cab driver a few weeks ago and he summarized it very honestly: “You hear such conflicting things – you don’t know who to trust.” And I found myself saying, “Trust Obama.” Not that every judgment he makes, every action he takes, will be perfect. But can anyone think Philip Morris has the people’s interest at heart more than Barack and Michelle Obama? That the rightwing industry that would have scuttled Social Security and Medicare if they could, that would never have passed a minimum wage bill, that supported Bush so effectively for 8 years, that advised Bob Dole not to let health care reform pass the Senate – can anyone think that they have the people’s interest more genuinely at heart than Obama?

But first . . .

PHONE FOR HEALTH

Here‘s a concrete way to help pass health insurance reform. Look! We’re turning you into a radical!

And now . . .

PROGRESS

The new Tampa police chief is a woman. She wouldn’t be allowed to serve in the military or marry (she’s gay), but she was the pick to manage Tampa’s homeland security program and to be named ‘law enforcement executive of the year’ by the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives . . . and now this. (Oh, and let us not forget the sheriff of Dallas County, Texas, who would also be banned from the military, but was handily reelected last year.)

IF THE GOP HAD BEEN RUNNING AGAINST A TRUE BLEEDING HEART LIBERAL

Hermano: ‘This ad should be recycled every election year. Just change the name of the Republican candidate.’

☞ Wow. Well, it’s irreverent (skip it if you’re offended by irreverence!), but spot on.

Which leads us to . . .

THE VIDEO CLIP OF A TRUE BELIEVER

Here, at WouldJesusDiscriminate.org.

And thus to . . .

CHURCH BILLBOARDS IN TEXAS

Now here‘s something different.

I realize I am preaching to the converted, for the most part. But a Happy New Year to one and all.

60 SECOND BRAIN GAME

This 60-second game take about three minutes to learn and then complete. It’s a teaser to interest you in sharpening your brain fitness – not that you seem in any way slow to me. Full disclosure: as long-time readers know, I own a sliver of the company that makes these products (and sells them with a 90-day money-back guarantee).

The truth is, if my own brain were fitter, I’d have remembered to post these next two items late last month, when they were freshly responsive. (As you may recall, I had said something dismissive about speedboats, which led to a little nautical banter . . . and, separately, we had been talking about “how to know how much to bet,” which led to a book recommendation. Sound familiar? No? Well, here they are anyway, three weeks delayed.)

DON’T BUY A BOAT

Bill B: “Speaking of boats . . . reading your chapter on what to do if you inherit a million, or better yet, two (fortunately I did!), and advised, emphatically, ‘Do not buy a boat.’ For me, no further explanation was necessary, as I have been around boats all my life, and know how expensive and maintenance extensive they are. . . . In spite of your advice, I bought a boat! It has been a joy to live aboard my 56-foot motor yacht for the past twelve years, and I wouldn’t have missed it. But, alas, your words come back to haunt me when I am writing checks to maintain, insure, and pay slip rent for it. I figure it is at LEAST twice as expensive as living ashore comfortably, but I am stuck on the lifestyle even though it is vastly more expensive than even I imagined. I jokingly advise friends who have large boats to never add up all the costs, for they will want to sell immediately. When I tell people I live on a boat they almost always comment what a relief it must be not to have to pay property taxes. Believe me, I would much rather pay property taxes! . . . I do not regret the decision I made years ago. The pleasures of boating are well worth the cost as long as you can afford it comfortably. Lately, however, I have been keeping a close eye on my (floating) housing budget. One thing I did not consider when I purchased the boat is what a letdown it will probably be to move ashore again. I try to discourage my nieces and nephews from becoming too fond of boats.”

PLAY MONEY

Stephen Willey: “Until we were barred in 1979 from Resorts International, Bally’s Park Place and Caesars in Atlantic City, I used to play blackjack with the late Ken Uston and others. He, you might already know, was a stock trader and vice-president of the Pacific Stock Exchange before becoming a full time card counter. Anyway, Edward O. Thorp from MIT [the subject of the book you recommended, Fortune’s Formula] was indeed the grandfather of counting and his theories were further developed by Stanford Wong (not real name), Lawrence Revere and Ken Uston. One of the most critical concepts was called the ‘element of ruin’ factor which we continuously needed to calculate as our bankrolls fluctuated in order to determine our maximum bet size. Despite our advantage over the house in the long run, if we bet too much, we still might end up bankrupt if short run fluctuations went against us. What we called the ‘element of ruin factor’ is what you call ‘playing with money you can truly afford to lose.’ ”

…(third estimated tax payment due today)…
here’s the form

MOVIES

Fun, fun, fun:  Inglorious Basterds (if you’re not more than normally horrified by violence), In the Loop (if you don’t mind laughing until you hurt), Taking Woodstock (if you lived through the Sixties).

BOOKS

Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America by Helen Thorpe.  Not their fault that their parents entered the U.S. illegally.  Yet the author does come to understand, if not share, the views of Tom Tancredo, the former Congressman and 2008 Presidential candidate who would deport millions of illegals (and does not accept Darwin’s theory of evolution).  Malcolm Gladwell says “Helen Thorpe has taken policy and turned it into literature.”  Read a review here.

PARS

Well, you win some and you lose some.  Yesterday, it was announced that PARS’s drug failed to beat the placebo.  The stock – that I had hoped might hit $2 or $4 or even $6 – dropped from the 29 cents where I first suggested it in July, let alone the 41 cents or so where I continued to suggest it, to 18 cents yesterday.  Better than zero, but then it’s only Tuesday.

The little basket of three baby drug stocks I suggested someone might bet on with money she could truly afford to lose has failed to make us in any way rich.  AVNR did report marginally good results that briefly doubled its stock – but it fell back too fast for many to take big gains and is now a little lower than when we started.  My guru is unexcited by its prospects.  JAV failed to score and the stock dropped a bit, but has some other stuff in the pipeline.  We’re holding on.

If you had put $1,000 into each of these three, you’d probably have about $2,000 now, unless you were nimble with the AVNR, and all I can say is that – having bought more than $1,000 worth of PARS myself – I’m sorry it didn’t work out.

That said, it was nice to see BZ up tenfold, and the BZ warrants up 24-fold, since being suggested last October (after having previously been suggested much higher, so only on the last purchases would you be sitting on these gains) . . . and to see the NAQ warrants close at 90 cents, up from 27 cents as noted August 11 (again, having been purchased previously at higher prices).

But in case you can no longer truly afford to lose whatever funds you may have been playing with here – sell.  And even assuming it remains play money, it’s always a good idea to sell enough so that, from here on, you’re essentially playing with “the house’s money.”

BLAME THE MEDIA

Things were different when my friend Bryan Norcross was running the news department of a network-affiliate decades ago.

Were the news still reported today as it was back then, 70% of Republicans would not have believed Iraq attacked us on 9/11.  And only a true lunatic fringe would have believed “that Barack Obama is a noncitizen brought here by people who hate this country and had the foresight to plant a birth notice in a Hawaiian newspaper 48 years ago, just in case they ever needed it” (to quote Gail Collins’ wonderful column).

I asked Bryan to elaborate for us:

JOURNALISM HAS LEFT THE BUILDING
By Bryan Norcross

This past Saturday’s network TV news programs led with coverage of the protests in Washington earlier that day.

Each network’s story – handled by seasoned reporters – was substantially a compilation of inflammatory statements by people in the street and behind the podium.  The accuracy of the statements was not important in determining which ideas were included.  If you were provocative or clever, you got on TV.

One guy’s complaint was about the “communism that’s in Washington, DC.”  A woman on CBS said that the president’s “agenda is actually to destroy this country.”  A guy from New York blamed Obama for Chrysler’s pulling his Jeep franchise.  A woman was upset about the Muslims in the government (a clip deleted from the online version of the story).  Senator DeMint from South Carolina misquoted the president.

The problem is this: people expressing inflammatory and provocative opinions, and making mostly inaccurate statements is NOT news. Even worse, replacing real news coverage of the rally with a compilation of vitriolic personal sentiments is detrimental to viewers’ understanding of the complex issues facing the nation.

The protest march would have been an excellent opportunity to shed light on the reasons the people interviewed were boiling over with emotion, fear, and mistrust.  Did their fear come out of zealotry, ideology, or simply misinformation?  Wouldn’t a discussion about the man’s fear of communism make good TV?  Where do ideas like that come from?  Obama’s proposal to increase taxes on the rich?  If so, Eisenhower was an extreme example of a communist president.

What did the guy who lost the Jeep franchise think would have happened if Chrysler had simply died without the government-led bankruptcy process?  I would like to know.  Maybe he has a point, but maybe he doesn’t.  We’ll never know because the stories didn’t cover the cause of the fire, just the flames.  In fact, from these reports, we don’t even know what’s burning.

There is no doubt that crazy people saying crazy things makes good television.  Sane people saying inflammatory, provocative things can also be good television.  Both belong on the Leno show, not the evening news without follow up and explanation.  Art Linkletter had a segment in his show decades ago called “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”  What the kids said wasn’t news either.

In the cases above, a reporter challenging the statements about communism, the Chrysler bailout, or the Muslims in government, to understand the root of those opinions, would have made good television too, and it would have been enlightening.  Dealing with the depth of the emotion on both sides of the issues of the day is, in some ways, as important as the issues themselves.

Thirty years ago I was a news manager during a time of major change in the local news business.  We dressed up the presentations, picked up the pace, added stories on a wider range of topics, had great ratings success, and made the mature journalists of the era extremely nervous.  In time, however, even the most seasoned reporters came around to the understanding that style and substance can coexist in the same news presentation.  Adding production values did not compromise the fairness, completeness, and accuracy of the news.  Good storytelling can include a dash of spice, as long as it doesn’t confuse or mislead the viewer.

We learned that some production or story-telling techniques produced a more visceral response in news viewers.  People better remember and attach more value to stories that keep them interested.  It’s an attribute of humans that can be exploited when news stories are crafted, but there is no requirement that completeness and accuracy be abandoned when these modern production values are employed.

Unfortunately, news coverage today has too often degenerated, as Saturday’s network stories demonstrated, into all production, no content.  The marchers’ aggressive assertions of opinion and emotion were not leveraged to illuminate a complex subject, but instead, solely to create a visceral viewer reaction – exactly what the capital-J journalists of the 70’s were afraid of.

When Walter Cronkite ended his newscasts with, “and that’s the way it is,” he meant, “you now have knowledge of, understanding of, and perspective on the issues we presented, to the best of our ability.”  Perspective being the most important, and the missing ingredient in Saturday’s reporting.  Without perspective, a journalist’s story can be true, but can never be accurate.

Any news report that concentrates on the shrillest voices, by definition, lacks the perspective necessary to paint an accurate picture of the events or the issues involved.  Cronkite would have covered the 20 screaming people at an event involving thousands; but if they were crazy, he would have said so. 

The only institution in our society that can inform the uninformed, correct misimpressions, clarify complex topics, and provide a forum for honest and responsible debate is the media.  Even we neo-journalists of the 70’s felt the weight of that responsibility.  Many news organizations of today have gone off the road . . . and must find their way back.  Only our country is at stake.

Bryan Norcross
President & CEO – America’s Emergency Network
Former Senior News Producer and News Director

REAL ESTATE INDICATOR

A friend just bought a home on Miami Beach. It sold for $1.2 million in 2007. He and his partner paid $280,000. I would guess the bottom for that particular home has been reached.

MEDICARE FOR ALL

Writing in yesterday’s Washington Post, George McGovern asks: “We know that Medicare has worked well for half a century for those of us over 65. Why does it become ‘socialized medicine’ when we extend it to younger Americans?”

DOCS FOR REFORM

Last summer, pediatrician Alex Blum wrote eloquently of his work to help elect Obama. Now, in this LA Times op-ed, he writes of a 12-year-old who arrived in his emergency room having suffered a massive – preventable – life-ruining stroke, and urges passage of the President’s health plan.

HEALTH CARE IN WISE, VIRGINIA

Every summer, Governor (and DNC Chair) Tim Kaine goes with his wife to visit the Wise health fair in the Southwest corner of Virginia. It gets bigger every year as the word spreads. This year, he says, he counted license plates from 16 states. People sleep in their cars, waiting all week to begin signing up Friday for free medical, dental, and optical care. The care is all volunteer (as described here) – a program like the ones they do in Africa. Governor Kaine tells of seeing all this and wondering what country we are living in. He really wants to see Congress pass the President’s plan.

Bob Dole wants to see us take action as well.

Remember former Senate Minority leader and 1996 Presidential candidate Bob Dole? Who helped kill the Clinton health care bill?

As New York Times reported Saturday:

When former Senator Bob Dole was the Republican minority leader, he helped deep-six President Bill Clinton’s health care plan. This year, Mr. Dole, 86, who left the Senate in 1996 to run for president, is working behind the scenes to help resurrect one.

His motivation comes partly from experience. After his body was shattered during World War II, he underwent seven operations in veterans hospitals and three years of rehabilitation. “I had good treatment and it’s probably why I’m still around,” he said in an interview. He has been working on the issue since the 1970s, and admits now that “we probably should have passed the Clinton bill, but it got so politicized.”

It seems he got a memo from Bill Kristol advising that allowing the reform to pass would kill his chances. It was just more important to defeat Clinton than to provide coverage to the millions of uninsured.

Now, for so many, the key thing is to defeat Obama. So they come up with all kinds of truly crazy things (communism! Nazism!) . . . and other things not crazy, just untrue, designed to confuse and concern.

(I heard Texas Senator John Cornyn on TV Saturday morning talking about the “trillions” the Obama plan would add to the deficit and hours later found myself on the same flight, from Austin to Dallas, only a few feet away. If we had been sitting together, it would have been a lively conversation. The Obama plan will not add to the deficit, let alone “trillions” – see below.)

THE PRESIDENT’S PLAN

Here it is (with a little copy-editing on my part):

If You Have Health Insurance,
the President’s Plan:

• Prevents insurance companies from dropping you when you get sick.
• Caps out-of-pocket expenses so you don’t go broke when you do get sick.
• Eliminates charges for preventive care like mammograms, flu shots and diabetes tests.
• Eliminates the “donut-hole” gap in coverage for prescription drugs.

If You Don’t Have Insurance,
the President’s Plan:

• Makes it available even if you have a pre-existing condition.
• Creates a new insurance marketplace – the Exchange – so you can compare plans and buy insurance at “group rates.”
• Helps low-income citizens pay for it.
• Offers new, low-cost coverage through a national “high risk” pool to protect people with preexisting conditions from financial ruin until the new Exchange is created.

For All Americans,
the President’s Plan:

• Won’t add a dime to the deficit and is paid for upfront.
• Requires additional cuts if savings are not realized.
• Implements a number of delivery system reforms that begin to rein in health care costs and align incentives for hospitals, physicians, and others to improve quality.<?b>
• Creates an independent commission of doctors and medical experts to identify waste, fraud and abuse in the health care system.
• Orders immediate medical malpractice reform projects that could help doctors focus on putting their patients first, not on practicing defensive medicine.
• Requires large employers to cover their employees and individuals who can afford it to buy insurance so everyone shares in the responsibility of reform.

HOW DO WE PAY FOR IT?

There are two big costs: insuring the uninsured; improving benefits.

Some of that cost we already bear – emergency room treatment that we already provide the uninsured. That cost is not added, just shifted (and perhaps reduced by handling it more sensibly).

How do we pay for the rest?

First, by wringing inefficiencies out of the system – see the three bold-faced items above. We devote more than 16% of our GDP to health care. None of our industrialized competitors comes even close – yet the health of their people is generally as good as or better than ours.

Second, through a new emphasis on preventive care. Consider the 12-year-old boy who arrived at Alex Blum’s emergency room with a massive stroke, as recounted above. He will be a “burden on society” for what could be the next 50 years. If his mother had been able to afford to follow doctor’s orders after his first (mild) stroke, those next 50 years might well have been productive, self-sufficient, and tax-paying.

Third, if needed, through taxes. There is nothing sacred about the 15% top marginal tax rate levied on $100 million-a-year hedge fund managers – when their plumbers face marginal rates well over 40% (Federal income tax plus FICA). I know Joe the plumber is desperate to see his hedge fund manager’s tax rate stay low; but does he really speak for all the other plumbers out there? And while this is an extreme example to make the point, the truth is that a very modest increase on taxes at the top – on folks who can really, truly, afford to chip in a little more, as they always used to – would be enough to make up any shortfall that efficiencies could not.

But if we’re smart, efficiencies alone will do the trick.

These Republicans are a pretty tough bunch. Who are they?

REPUBLICAN GOMORRAH

I may not find time to read the book . . . Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party (I suffer the curse of the slow reader) . . . but this interview transcript is completely fascinating – mainly, for the backround we didn’t know on the base of today’s Republican Party, and its origins (but also for the number of times the author can insert the title of his book, Republican Gomorrah).

THE FAMILY

This one, Jeffrey Sharlet’s The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, I am definitely going to read. Get a taste of it here.

Meanwhile, on a more upbeat – and more truly redemptive – note . . .

RESCUING JUVENILE DELINQUENTS

This lesson from Missouri suggests we truly can do better. Reports CNN: “Young people are really turning their lives around and becoming productive citizens,” said Tim Decker, director of Missouri Division of Youth Services. “We’ve redefined what’s possible in the juvenile justice system.” Learn how they did it.

THE SPEECH

I like the idea of guaranteed access to health insurance regardless of any preexisting conditions I may have. And without fear of non-renewal if I should get sick. And without lifetime caps if I should get very sick.

I hope we do get a public option. I think the President may have allayed some fears when he explained that it would not be taxpayer subsidized.

Here is one way of looking at it – a 51-second pro and con.

And on the subject of death panels . . .

We already have health care rationing and “death panels” – California’s Real Death Panels: Private Insurers Deny 21% of Claims. We are already denying health care to desperately ill teenagers. (Just so you know.)

And now, picking up a couple of threads from yesterday . . .

KRUGMAN

Don Coffin: “Tom Anthony wrote: ‘A person entered a university planning to study economics. But once he got there and asked about the questions on the exams that he would face, his advisor told him not to worry since the exam questions in economics were the same every year, only the answers changed ….. so the student switched to engineering.’ Speaking as an economist . . . when I was in school we told this joke about psychology.”

WHERE’S MINKSY?

Don Coffin (again): “On his blog, Krugman has this to say: ‘Some fairly extensive sections had to be taken out – for example, I wanted to include material about Paul Samuelson’s 1948 textbook, which reads very well in the current crisis, but had to cut it. Hyman Minsky also got crowded out. Sorry.’ For what it’s worth, Minsky is about as Keynesian as one can get.”

MAYBE IT IS A HAMMER

Bill Briggs: “I believe it is a hammer. It looks to me like a long-handled sledge hammer. Also, the end of the handle only comes up to the hip of the man holding it. A shovel handle would be longer. But that does nothing to clarify what the point of this rant is. I guess it is that he takes any art as propaganda if it suits his imagination.”

William A. Wood: “It’s all on the Rockefeller Center Web site. There is a detailed analysis of each piece.”

☞ Turns out, according to that web site . . . it’s . . . a . . . SHOVEL. (“One figure holds a shovel, symbolizing industry . . .”) That said, looking at it again (and again and again), I can definitely see what Bill Briggs is saying. A reasonable person – or in this case, Glenn Beck – could definitely see a sledge hammer. Maybe that IS what it is.

But for the record, the Soviet hammer and sickle is a distinctive emblem – and it does not include a sledge hammer. But why are we even talking about this? Beck himself says nobody notices this 1937 “propaganda” – so if nobody even notices it, what is his point?

Richard Bliss: “My favorite line in his rant: the unnamed Italian artist ‘who did a lot of the art in New York.’ If someone tells Beck that the artist, Attilio Piccirilli, also did the bust of Jefferson in the Rotunda of the Virginia State Capitol, perhaps his head will explode.”

Carl Granados: “Is Glenn Beck really crazy? Don’t be so sure. Glenn wants to be number one at Fox. The only way he can do that is by outdoing the other right wing crazies on the network. At stake are additional millions of dollars in yearly salary and the power to affect votes, national dialogue, and get public officials fired for no valid reason. Is this a great country or what?”