PSB: Progressive Illinois Politics - Recent Comments

is this Howard Stern's shtick?

Carl Nyberg — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:32:29 GMT

Sex, vulgarity and off-the-cuff pontificating about politics?

Who

maven — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:34:03 GMT

will watch? Journalists? In this day and age?

Honestly, watching a City Council meeting on video on any given day seems like one of the circles of hell -- unless you were particularly looking for some part of the discussion.

OTOH

maven — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:31:41 GMT

I think it might be a great business model to intersperse anti-government rants with porn!

Surprising

maven — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:30:21 GMT

that the librarians are going along with it: they're usually fiercely protective of the First Amendment. They were hit pretty hard by the Patriot Act. Many libraries purchased software that automatically deleted book records as soon as the item was returned, so they would have no data when the FBI came calling.

From the ALA's website:

"The American Library Association (ALA) opposes any use of governmental power to suppress the free and open exchange of knowledge and information or to intimidate individuals exercising free inquiry...ALA considers that sections of the USA PATRIOT ACT are a present danger to the constitutional rights and privacy rights of library users."

http://www.ala.org/Template.cf...

Actually, it's possible to find porn accidentally

Books Alive — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:55:39 GMT

In looking for a movie trailer, I once omitted the hyphens between words. I was not pleased with what came up! Resorting to Wikipedia, it was Ang Lee's 1999 "Ride with the Devil," which I eventually saw (on a bus riding to a Civil War battlefield) and didn't care for at all.

about a week ago I saw a CPL ad on the "L"

Carl Nyberg — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:31:37 GMT

Disparaging the idea of getting information online. It depicted a somewhat slovenly guy with a laptop as being an unreliable source of information.

Unreliable compared to what? The Tribune?

I'll stack my local journalism against the Trib's journalism on the Iraq War any day.

But CPL buying ads trashing the Trib would get some pushback, eh?

three ways that money could be used to improve CPL

Carl Nyberg — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:28:13 GMT

1. Buy books of Chicago authors.

2. Improve speed at which materials move through the system as part of inter-library loan.

3. Buy Patrick Collins' book, Challenging the Culture of Corruption: Game-Changing Reform for Illinois.

I've recently sought without finding books of two Chicago authors I know personally, Richard Chwedyk and Obi. CPL should have a program to ensure that it has at least one copy of every book written by a Chicago author.

I recently obtained a DVD through inter-library loan and it took over a week from when it left one library and when it arrived in my branch library. Two business days should be the norm with occasional slip-ups taking three business days. The system of identifying and pulling the materials is particularly inefficient too.

Not one copy of Patrick Collins' book in the whole CPL system? Really?

Reply

wathomasson — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:52:46 GMT

1. Where do the drug companies come into this? You said that the government can save money by negitiating rates with Hospitals and doctors (Medicare Parts A and B) rather than saying, "Here's waht we're going to pay. Take it or leave it." I would expect negotiation to result in higher rates, not lower.

Drug companies come in only under Part D, which is an entirely separate program. I'm not sure anybody is talking about a buy-in to Part D. Absent the tax subsidy it rather looks to me like you might be better off paying directly out of pocket.

2. Self-employed people, who probably represent the majority of the individual market, can buy health insurance with pre-tax dollars. (That is, their taxable incume is reduced by the amount of the premium. See line 29 of the 2008 form 1040.) Probably the same should be true for people who work for an employer that doesn't provide health insurance. Although maybe the government figures that would discourage employers from offering health insurance.

3. Under Medicare, of course, you would only be paying for yourself anyway. These are all individual policies. It wasn't obvious that the people you were referring to were those with a particularly healthy lifestyle.

4. Actually, it's the state that knows when you're unemployed. The current program to subsidize COBRA premiums for unemployed people is administered through the states. IF that program is continued, as it probably should be, it would likely include people whose coverage during their employment had been a Medicare buy-in. But that's not what I heard you saying when you tied income-based premiums to unemployment.

Hmmm

wathomasson — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:07:26 GMT

Trying to figure out what you're saying and what relation it has to what I said. Frankly, not having much luck. The Heritage Foundation blog is all about disputing the historical accuracy of what Obama said. No obvious relation to correcting a widespread misinterpretation (which, until a few days ago, I shared) about what the court had actually ruled.

I'm not sure we'll get that many candidate ads from corporations. My personal guess is that we'll get more from unions, which have a history of actively supporting candidates. And one implication, of course, is that we need to make sure that our candidates, and the organizations that support them, have the money to run opposing ads.

And when you talk about messages opposing healthcare reform, it's important to note that would presumably be an issues-oriented ad, not a candidate-specific ad. The two are quite distinct. I'm not sure -- not my area of expertise -- but I think corporations and their trade associations have always ahd the right to run issues-oriented ads.

Not there yet - logical extreme wise (or is that extreme dumb?)

wegerje — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:07:58 GMT

There is an opportunity here for the government to make money off of this reality. Namely cut out the middle-man. Why have corporations duke it out in the media when we could simply sell off (ok more properly rent out) say the Senate to the highest bidders.

Each two years a third of the Senate would go out for bid. I see seats going for billions and maybe even tens of billions of dollars.

To answer your remarks..

razorgirl — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 18:46:19 GMT

1. You don't see how negotiating prices may bring about lower prices? Or, for that matter, allowing drug companies to keep their patents for five additional years on drugs whose early development and R & D were mostly funded with public money?

BTW, every government agency suffers when an administration comes in with an ideological commitment to the idea that government can't work.. FISA and the VA are to recent other examples..

2. Every plan offered through an employer is subsidized - all are tax-free (why can't individuals in the private market get that deal?).

3. EVERY premium set by any company will be vastly above costs - as a single, vegetarian, non-smoking female with no kids, My demographic subsidizes everyone else... at least I won't worry about being denied coverage for some BS reason...

4. Most of us average our yearly salary or profits (or quarterly). And the Feds will know if I'm unemployed.

I'm trying to suss out the truth, and I have constitutional scholar Obama...

BobB — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:41:06 GMT

on one side, and the Heritage Foundation on the other.
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/...

If you want to write a different diary on why you don't think more stuff like this will flood the empty 'newsholes' of the average voter, with little independent counteraction from a nearly obliterated MSM, please do. I think we'll get increasing things like this;
http://www.citizensunited.org/
and with the aforementioned average voter (the ones who voted for Scott Lee Cohen, for example, because ONLY 2 million was dropped; a small amount, for say, UnitedHealth, to, say, oppose health care) bombarded with self-serving messages drowning out less self-serving messages, please go ahead. I'll listen, but I still think it was disastrous in reality, if innocuous in theory.

Court decision

wathomasson — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:09:30 GMT

I've just read the executive summary of the Congressional Research Office's report on possible legislative responses to the court decision, and it turns out that the court didn't say what the media led most of us to think it did. Restrictions on corporate and union political contributions are still in place. What the court said was that you can't restrict the right of corporations and unions, acting independently of any campaign, to run ads directly supporting or opposing a given candidate. These are analogous to the ads run by Move-On or DFA (although, as PACs, such organizations have always had the right to run these ads).

wa I really appreciate

wegerje — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:35:07 GMT

the time and patience you spend on answering health care comments from your direct experiences and long study of the field.

Thanks once again.

Well ...

wathomasson — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:04:28 GMT

Medicare woud not be in crisis if we just undid the damage Bushco. did ... get rid of Medicare advantage and allow the government to negotiate rates.

Not correct. There's no question that Bush's unwarranted subsidies to private insurance companies have made the situation worse, but if you had been paying attention you would have known that Medicare was looking at trouble before this was ever passed. And I don't see how having the government negotiate rates, rather than setting them by fiat as it does now, would help the financial situation. The real solution -- which is actually being looked at, although neither the press nor the politicl community is paying attention -- is to find better, more efficient ways to deliver health care.

[Medicare] has a higher satisfaction rate than private insurance.

Only because of the tax subsidy. If I had to pay the full cost, rather than just a small Medicare premium plus a rather larger premium for the essential private supplement, I would not be particularly happy. Among other things, the need to deal with two separate policies would be a definite negative. But to give the devil its due, Medicare pays my doctor much faster than any private insurance company I've ever encountered.

Letting people like myself buy into Medicare would vastly improve its financial foundation.

How?? The only way I can see that happening is if your premiums were set well above actual cost. And I see no real reason why they should be.

I wouldn't have to worry about losing insurance if I lose my job (if the premiums are tied to income), and the government plan won't deny coverage.
Though I'm insured in the individual market right now, I would happily buy into Medicare.

Given the current state of the individual insurance market I don't doubt that you would be. Fixing the individual market -- ideally with inclusion of a public option as one of the choices -- is a major goal of healthcare reform. But what we're talking about is not Medicare as an alternative to individual private insurance but Medicare as an alternative to a more comprehensive public option that wouldn't require supplemental insurance.

Incidentally, I don't see how premiums could be tied to monthly income. The government doesn't know your monthly income. It only knows your annual income when you file your tax return at the end of the year.