Category Archives: Worth Reading

Why should childbirth bust a budget?

Posted on by
5

Image

American Way of Birth, Costliest in the World (New York Times)

From 2004 to 2010, the prices that insurers paid for childbirth — one of the most universal medical encounters — rose 49 percent for vaginal births and 41 percent for Caesarean sections in the United States, with average out-of-pocket costs rising fourfold, according to a recent report by Truven that was commissioned by three health care groups. The average total price charged for pregnancy and newborn care was about $30,000 for a vaginal delivery and $50,000 for a C-section, with commercial insurers paying out an average of $18,329 and $27,866, the report found.

Women with insurance pay out of pocket an average of $3,400, according to a survey by Childbirth Connection, one of the groups behind the maternity costs report. Two decades ago, women typically paid nothing other than a small fee if they opted for a private hospital room or television.

This is essential reading today.

Having a baby won’t just put you in debt; it could cripple you financially.

There’s a disconnect here that goes way beyond astonishing. Political and social conservatives across the country want to ban abortion and drastically limit or extinguish sex education and the availability of birth control.

Sex ed? Nope. Condom distribution? Nope. Plan B? Nope. Abortion? Nope.

Sounds to me like a prescription for a skyrocketing maternity rate.

So why aren’t conservatives rallying to do something about the skyrocketing cost of having a baby? Who’s going to take the lead on this?

Palin? Huckabee? Bachmann? Perry? Rubio? Cruz? Paul? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Worth reading, 07/01/13

Posted on by
Reply

Paid via Card, Workers Feel Sting of Fees (New York Times)

A growing number of American workers are confronting a frustrating predicament on payday: to get their wages, they must first pay a fee.

For these largely hourly workers, paper paychecks and even direct deposit have been replaced by prepaid cards issued by their employers. Employees can use these cards, which work like debit cards, at an A.T.M. to withdraw their pay.

But in the overwhelming majority of cases, using the card involves a fee. And those fees can quickly add up: one provider, for example, charges $1.75 to make a withdrawal from most A.T.M.’s, $2.95 for a paper statement and $6 to replace a card. Some users even have to pay $7 inactivity fees for not using their cards.

These fees can take such a big bite out of paychecks that some employees end up making less than the minimum wage once the charges are taken into account, according to interviews with consumer lawyers, employees, and state and federal regulators.

And the poor get poorer. But hey . . . it’s all so convenient and income-generating for the issuers.

This is disgraceful.

Worth reading II, 06/28/13

Posted on by
Reply

Image

Paula Deen’s slurs are a bitter pill to swallow (Eugene Robinson, Washington Post)

Paula Deen needs to give the self-pity a rest. The damage to her carefully built image is self-inflicted — nobody threw a rock — and her desperate search for approval and vindication is just making things worse.

Sorry to be so harsh, but come on. Deen is tough and savvy enough to have built a culinary empire from scratch, in the process becoming the most famous Southern cook in creation. She incarnates the whole “steel magnolia” archetype, with razor-sharp toughness beneath the flutter and the filigree.

Excellent piece by Eugene Robinson. Paula Deen has to stop playing the victim. She was smart enough to make $17 million a year. How could she possibly be so ignorant?

This was a self-inflicted fatal wound.

Good riddance.

Are you listening, Mr. President?

Posted on by
Reply

The Up-in-the-Air President (Timothy Egan, New York Times)

It was cool, as media moments go, when President Obama called from Air Force One to congratulate the plaintiffs in the California gay marriage case on Wednesday. They were in the middle of a live television interview when the voice of the president was delivered, via cellphone, from high over the Atlantic.

But it was also emblematic of the leadership style of this brainy, tightly drawn president: too often, he phones it in from 35,000 feet, far from the sweat, grime and blood of the battlefield of politics….

It’s the way he runs the executive branch, his fear of taking the fight to Republicans, that is so maddening….

[H]e’s defensive, forced to defend his presidency as still being alive and well. Obama doesn’t have to be Lyndon B. Johnson, twisting elbows to shape history. But maybe he can hire an L.B.J. Leaders find a way.

This is essential reading today, because Egan is right on every point. Is it too much to hope that Obama finds time to read it?

Worth reading, 06/28/13

Posted on by
Reply

The Service of Snowden (Roger Cohen, New York Times)

So what is Snowden? A self-aggrandizing geek who betrayed his country and his employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, exposed the United States to greater risk of terrorist attack, and may now — wittingly or unwittingly — have made his trove of secrets available to China and Russia, nations that are no longer enemies but are rival powers?

Or a brave young American determined to fight — at the risk of long imprisonment — against his country’s post-9/11 lurch toward invasion of citizens’ lives, ever more intrusive surveillance, undifferentiated data-hauling of the world’s digital exhaust fumes (for storage in a one-million-square-foot fortress in Utah), and the powers of a compliant secret court to issue warrants for international eavesdropping and e-mail vacuuming?

As the old Miller Lite ad used to say, I feel very strongly both ways.

This is an excellent analysis. Make sure to read this today.

You can’t make this stuff up

Posted on by
Reply

Image

San Diego Protester Faces Vandalism Charges for Sidewalk Chalk Drawings (Reuters)

SAN DIEGO — A protester is standing trial on criminal vandalism charges in San Diego, and faces a sentence of up to 13 years in prison if convicted, for a scribbling a series of anti-bank slogans in chalk on a city sidewalk.

Mayor Bob Filner has denounced the prosecution of Jeff Olson, 40, a man with no previous criminal record, as a waste of taxpayer money and an abuse of power that infringes on First Amendment free speech protections in the U.S. Constitution.

“This young man is being persecuted for thirteen counts of vandalism stemming from an expression of political protest that involved washable children’s chalk on a city sidewalk,” the mayor said last week in a memo to the City Council.

The city attorney, Jan Goldsmith, defended his pursuit of the case in remarks published on Thursday in the U-T San Diego news website, saying: “We prosecute vandalism and theft cases regardless of who the perpetrator or victim might be.”

If writing on the sidewalk with chalk is vandalism, punishable by up to 13 years in prison, then let’s just put every American kid in prison now and save ourselves the wasteful cost and effort of millions of trials.

Seriously . . . Is this prosecutor out of his mind? What on earth might he be thinking?

I’m feeling so guilty right now. I confess . . . When I was a kid, I used to write all sorts of stuff in the streets of Brooklyn. With chalk. I made bases and home plates for games of stickball and punchball. I made boxes for games of scully. (I have no idea why it was called scully, and I couldn’t begin to tell you how it was played, except that you needed bottle caps. And chalk.)

Thank goodness the cops never caught me. I reckon I did it enough times to warrant a life sentence.

Memo to San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith:

Get a life.

Must read

Posted on by
Reply

George Takei: A defeat for DOMA — and the end of ‘ick’ (Washington Post)

Takei, one of the most delightful people on Facebook, offers his opinion today on the Supreme Court’s ruling. It’s essential reading. One graf really caught my eye.

To help justify the “ick,” many, like that judge in Loving, turn to the Bible, perhaps because science doesn’t lead to the conclusion that homosexuality is unnatural. As one popular saying goes, homosexuality is found in more than 400 species, but homophobia in only one. But references to the Bible or other religious texts are not a solid footing on which to base notions of traditional marriage. Concerns about the separation of church and state aside, traditional marriage has never been what its homophobic proponents believe. As author Ken O’Neill reminds us, the fact that you can’t sell your daughter for three goats and a cow means we’ve already redefined marriage.

Now read the rest.

And now a word from the other side

Posted on by
1

Supreme Court issues two illegitimate decisions on same-sex marriage (Brian S. Brown, FOXNews.com)

In the interests of fairness and balance, we offer this opinion from the president of the National Organization for Marriage.

I don’t agree with any of it, but it’s a reasonable opinion . . . or it was until I got to this:

First, a homosexual judge in a long-term gay relationship was assigned the case, and refused to disclose his relationship before declaring that marriage is unconstitutional. 

And that is just plain offensive. By Brown’s logic, a homosexual judge is incapable of making a fair and just decision on a case involving homosexuality. Would he say that black judges shouldn’t be assigned to racial cases? That religious judges shouldn’t be assigned to cases involving religion? Wouldn’t the same supposed bias be attributed to a heterosexual judge in this case?

Implying that the judge who ruled on this case was incapable of doing his job responsibly is an affront to the judge, the judiciary, the citizens of California and pretty much every other decent-thinking American.

That comment is a disgrace. Shame on the writer.

Must read

Posted on by
Reply

Wendy and the boys (Gail Collins, New York Times)

The Texas filibuster rules are suitable for a place that regards steer wrestling and bronco busting as the official state sport. We made a big fuss when Rand Paul stayed on his feet for 13 hours in the U.S. Senate to filibuster over drones. But that was a walk in the park compared with what [State Sen. Wendy] Davis went through. Paul got help from his friends, who orated while he rested his voice. And U.S. senators can speak about anything when they filibuster. (Paul read from Alice in Wonderland.) Davis was supposed to stick to her subject.

The crowd was reasonably quiet until Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst ruled that Davis had to sit down because she had gone off topic by referencing a state law requiring that women who want abortions must show up a day earlier for an ultrasound.

A wonderful read today by Gail Collins. Of course. Don’t miss this.

This isn’t atheism

Posted on by
5

Image

Some nonbelievers still find solace in prayer (Washington Post)

My friend Mark sent me this piece because he knew I’d find it interesting. Boy did I ever.

The caption on the photo above reads:

(Linda Davidson/ The Washington Post) – Atheist Sigfried Gold, his wife Galia Siegel, and children Beatrice Gold, 2, and Solomon Gold, 8, say a serenity prayer at dinner at home Tuesday in Takoma Park, Md. Gold launched a regular prayer schedule to comply with a 12-step program for food addiction.

And the story goes on to say . . .

Each morning and night, Sigfried Gold drops to his knees on the beige carpeting of his bedroom, lowers his forehead to the floor and prays to God.

An atheist, Gold took up prayer out of desperation. Overweight by 110 pounds and depressed, the 45-year-old software designer saw himself drifting from his wife and young son. He joined a 12-step program for food addiction that required — as many 12-step programs do — a recognition of God and prayer.

Four years later, Gold is trim, far happier in his relationships and free of a lifelong ennui. He credits a rigorous prayer routine — morning, night and before each meal — to a very vivid goddess he created with a name, a detailed appearance and a key feature for an atheist: She doesn’t exist.

While Gold doesn’t believe there is some supernatural being out there attending to his prayers, he calls his creation “God” and describes himself as having had a “conversion” that can be characterized only as a “miracle.” His life has been mysteriously transformed, he says, by the power of asking.

And then the story goes on to talk about all these atheists who pray.

It’s a fascinating piece . . . and I’m really happy for this guy Gold, who apparently has found a successful way to lose weight.

But he should stop calling himself an atheist.

If you want to believe in a big invisible man in the sky or a “vivid goddess” whom you’ve actually created with a name — fine with me. Knock yourself out. Whatever floats your boat.

Just don’t go calling yourself an atheist.

Among other things, it’s insulting. And more than a little condescending. It’s like calling yourself a Christian and telling everyone that you don’t believe in God and you don’t believe Jesus ever existed, but they should nonetheless consider you a Christian because you say you are. It belittles what true Christians believe.

Same as saying you pray every day and you’re an atheist. That’s baloney, which this guy Gold must know is fattening.

I welcome your thoughts.