My latest piece is up at Global Comment. Some thoughts on healthcare, freelancing, racism at town halls, and equality.
For a country that relies on the bootstrap myth, the U.S.A. certainly has a health care system that punishes people who attempt to live that way. The self-employed, the small business owner, and most especially the scraping-by creative types—artists, designers, freelance journalists—have no easy way to get health insurance. We are stuck buying our own care on the “free” market, where a single person has very little bargaining power.
On Tuesday, September 1st, I became one of America’s 46 million uninsured. I have a graduate degree, a decent amount of published writing, and multiple regular freelance clients. There is a better-than-average possibility that I could pay my bills with my writing, except for that one problem. A survey by AHIP, the national organization of health insurance providers, reports that I can assume to pay an average premium of $4734 in New York state, where I reside.
Paul Krugman explains that employer-based health insurance is regulated by the government. Corporations can get tax advantages for providing health care for employees; benefits are not considered taxable income, so companies pay less in wages and make it up in health care. Krugman notes, “[T]o get that tax advantage employers have to follow a number of rules; roughly speaking, they can’t discriminate based on pre-existing medical conditions or restrict benefits to highly paid employees.”
Campus Progress reports that only 60% of the population is covered by employer-provided health care. 26 million small business owners or their employees remain uninsured despite having a steady source of income—because it simply costs too much.
Read on.
Greenwald has an excellent piece on Sonia Sotomayor (and as usual, rips Establishment media a new one for using anonymous sources in the process).
I know far, far less than he does about Sonia Sotomayor or about the relative fitness of judicial nominees for the job. I was far more qualified to talk about Sarah Palin and the attacks leveled at her for being an affirmative action hire, a pretty dumb chick whose appeal was solely prurient.
Rebecca Traister pointed out the obvious gender bias to the TNR piece in question, a bias that is only multiplied by her being of Puerto Rican descent, as Adam Serwer notes. She’s bossy! She doesn’t shut up! She’s not that smart–Obama is prioritizing diversity! (The Clarence Thomas arguments, of course, are too obvious.)
When Bush nominated Harriet Miers for the Court, we heard similar arguments about her intellectual ability–and we didn’t argue. When Sarah Palin got the Republican VP nomination, we giggled and made our own jokes. Now Obama’s nominees will face the same kind of criticisms, ones that would never be leveled at a white guy up for the same job, and what do we say?
It’s a double bind. We don’t want to be unable to criticize female nominees or people of color (*cough cough* Gonzalez–or closer to home, Roland Burris) but we need to be consistent in noting the difference between substantive attacks and gender or racially motivated ones. It’s entirely possible that Sonia Sotomayor is not the best choice for the Supreme Court, but I very much doubt that she’s any less “smart” than Thomas, Alito, or any number of federal judges that the Right (or the nominal left as represented by TNR) would have no problem with–because they’re white and male.
The fact is, when it comes to the Supreme Court, there are probably many lawyers and judges and law professors who would do as good or better jobs than the people already on there. There’s no one best person for the job, and it’s also fairly difficult to predict how justices will rule once confirmed (note that the retiring Souter was nominated by George H.W. Bush and became one of the reliable liberal members of the Court). So there’s absolutely nothing wrong with picking a qualified justice who comes from a different ethnic and class background than the rest of the Court for the sake of diversity.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey checks out. Meanwhile, hypocrites walk free.
Bill Clinton wrote in his memoir almost the same thing that Obama said the other day. Minus the B-word.
Read, laugh.
read more | digg story
