Here's to Your Health

A provision of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) sought to extend insurance coverage to the uninsured through an expansion of the Medicaid program, the generally successful program that, for over forty years, has ensured that the poorest of the poor have some access to healthcare.  Seemed like a good idea at the time.  The Supreme Court, however, ruled that, since Medicaid is administered at the state level, individual states had the right to choose whether or not to allow such Medicaid expansion.  Now, as the ACA nears implementation, a number of states are balking at an extension of Medicaid, which means that, ironically, a number of uninsured people will find themselves too poor to receive financial assistance to pay for healthcare.

Now, the fact that the states planning to reject Medicaid expansion are all under Republican leadership should in no way suggest that the rejection is a political ploy to make Obamacare look bad.  This is purely about fiscal rectitude!  After all, the states reasonably point out that their own budgets are stretched already.  How can they afford to take on an unfunded mandate like Medicaid expansion?

Well, OK, it's not completely unfunded: For the first three years, in fact, the federal government will pick up 100% of the new costs.  But, still, what about when those three years are up?  Then--THEN--the states will find themselves stuck with all the costs for all those people who have become accustomed to not going bankrupt when they need to see a doctor!

Well, OK, they won't be stuck for all the costs, but the federal contribution to the state's coffers will shrink dramatically from 100%--all the way down to 90%!!!

OK, yeah, it's a political ploy to make Obamacare look bad.  Why do I even bother to be indignant?

Scouts Honor

Renowned sage and erstwhile diner owner Mr. Miyagi once pointed out, "If you walk on right side of road: safe.  Walk on left side: safe.  Walk in middle: squashed, just like grape."  Today, you could make a fine wine out of the Boy Scouts of America, who, by doing the partially right thing, will likely end up squashed just like Mr. Miyagi's proverbial grape.

Yesterday, the BSA leadership voted to rescind the organization's ban on openly gay scouts.  A welcome development that just goes to show that BSA executives read the newspapers.  Truly, in this day and age, it takes more courage for an organization not to welcome gay members--albeit the same kind of courage in the service of a distasteful cause displayed by bear-baiters and suicide bombers--than to embrace tolerance.  Still, good for them.  And, predictably, a significant number of scouts and their families are outraged.  They find something offensive about welcoming openly gay youngsters to the macho world of the BSA, where girls are not allowed, where young men sport short shorts and neckerchiefs, and where grown men impart to their youthful charges the fine arts of gardening and basket weaving.  Anyway.

But while the BSA lifted the ban on gay scouts, it retained its prohibition against gay scout leaders.  And so, while the scouts suffer condemnation from the right, they can not even bask in the adulation of the left, whose approval may be considered tepid at best.

What makes this truly ridiculous is the fact that you just know it's only a matter of time before the organization lifts the leadership ban as well.  They've explicitly acknowledged that homosexuality should not prohibit a young man from participating in the scouting life; simple logic (which I foolishly believe will ultimately prevail) indicates that homosexuality should not prevent someone from being a good scout leader.  Moreover, do the BSA leaders not realize that they have always had both gay scouts and gay scout leaders?  Do they not realize that, by promulgating their bans, they simply force young men to engage in lies, deceit, and shameful abnegation?  Those hardly seem like the sort of values the BSA wants to promote.

Congratulations Period

A Facebook etiquette (Fetiquette?) query:

A friend changed his profile picture today.  Now, this person is not a close friend--it's probably been about a year or so since I last saw or spoke to him--but he is someone I know in the real world ("Meatspace" as computer aficionados have been known to call it).  He used to work for me, as a matter of fact, as did his longtime girlfriend, whom I have likewise not seen or spoken to in about a year.  Anyway, this friend's new profile picture is quite clearly a wedding photo: He is wearing a very sharp suit, and he sits next to a very attractive woman in a spectacular wedding gown.  Now, I had no idea he had gotten married, nor did I even know he was engaged.  But more to the point, the bride is not the aforementioned LG..

My question: Assuming I want to acknowledge this updated profile photo at all, what do I say?  The obvious "Congratulations" seems somewhat misplaced--particularly as my impulse is not so much to say, "Congratulations exclamation point" as it is to say, "Congratulations question mark"  I mean, I assume this is a blessed event and all, but inquiring minds want to know what became of LG.  And it's not like I'm close enough to him that I can just dash off an e-mail and say, "Yo, Izzy [not his real name]!  What the hell happened to Gertrude [not her real name]?!?"

Any advice?

Greetings from Part of the Problem

Despite her famous conversion from conservative to liberal, Arianna Huffington still displays some unreconstructed attitudes toward labor.  Specifically, she seems quite content to allow most of the The Huffington Post's content providers to toil away in unpaid semi-obscurity.  Not to bash Arianna: She's not the only media mogul to take advantage of unpaid labor and probably not the most egregious offender either.  One could fairly point out that many--if not most--if not all--of these uncompensated scribblers are only too happy to see their writing published (or re-published) in so prominent a venue.  Hell, if La Huffington saw fit to purloin any portion of my meager output, you can bet that HuffPo's virtual ink would scarcely have time to dry before I promptly slapped a link on my Facebook page and updated my CV to boast of this unexpected honor.  And therein lies the problem.

It's become a truism that the Internet has virtually (pun intended) destroyed journalism.  No longer can The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other bastions of the Fourth Estate serve as defenders of journalistic integrity.  They can no longer serve as gatekeepers, protecting the reading public from shoddy reporting or even bad grammar.  How can they, when anyone with an iPhone and a few minutes to kill can become a cut-rate Cronkite, reporting late-breaking events in his hometown or expounding her more-or-less informed views on ObamaCare?  Even if the major news outlets took it upon themselves to cleanse the internet of ill-conceived or blatantly false incidences of attempted journalism, they would be playing an unwinnable game of Whac-a-Mole.  The Internet has become a journalistic thrift shop: Thousands of items, mostly worthless, with the occasional gem waiting to be found if one is willing to look hard enough.

But we really shouldn't blame the technology for destroying journalism and impoverishing journalists.  The technology simply enables the legions of writers willing--and eager--to work for free to serve as a sort of standing scab army for un- or semi-scrupulous publishers.  While a trained, professional writer may often do a better job than a dabbling blogger, such is not always the case.  And why should a publisher buy the cow, so to speak, when the cow is willing to write a 1,000-word commentary on drone warfare for free?

As a writing teacher, I can't help but derive a small amount of pleasure from the fact that an  apparently limitless number of people exist who so love the written word that they are willing to devote large chunks of unremunerated time to their passion.  But I am also a firm believer in the importance of paying the writer--I'll take any contributions anyone happens to throw my way.  I agree with the notion that journalism, especially, should maintain its elements of professionalism, but I am at a loss as to how this can be done when the Internet has allowed amateurism--in its literal sense of doing something for love--to flourish.

Great Moments in Dubious Editing

I don't know what it is with Times' editors and their penchant for allowing alliteration.  Today, we read of Japan adopting a "radical policy path after years of political paralysis."  Am I too persnickety?  Well, OK, yes.  But still!  Am I the only one who feels certain effects stick out like the proverbial sore thumb?  (And why do people stick out their sore thumbs?  Shouldn't they keep sore thumbs tucked away so they don't bump into things?)

I once employed a writing tutor who fancied himself a great stylist.  He'd had articles published in local newspapers, alumni newsletters, and similar venues.  He took great pride in showing me his pieces.  And while these were always written competently--which came as a relief to this supervisor, at least--this man had the most compulsive need to alliterate that I have ever seen.  It didn't matter what he was writing: an opinion piece for the college paper, a humorous story, a eulogy.  Practically every other sentence would feature forced formations of plodding purple prose.  I could tell he took great pride in what he doubtlessly deemed riveting writing.  And no matter how earnestly I endeavored to enjoin him to eschew this stretching and straining for effects at best empty and at worst emetic, he would simply smile sweetly and soldier on. 

If you're feeling the urge to punch someone in the face, welcome to my world.

As a writing teacher, I enjoy working with students who write well and come to me in search of greater knowledge.  I find it rewarding working with people who don't write well and who show improvement after a course of instruction.  But working with people who think they know how to write can be nothing short of exasperating.  So says the Solipsist.

And His IP Address is "Freely"

I realize that cybersecurity is no laughing matter, and I suppose I should be up in arms at the news that the Chinese military has once again unleashed its elite hacker unit upon targets far and wide.  Still, it's hard to get too worked up about this, particularly when you hear that US counterintelligence has been engaged in an all-out effort to thwart people with "names" like "UglyGorilla" and "SuperHard."  The best part?  UglyGorilla's real name, apparently, is Wang Dong!  So I guess UglyGorilla actually sounds comparatively imposing.

Give Us Your Healthy. . . And We'll Mess That Up

I have been unfair to Republicans.  Here I thought their knee-jerk resistance to immigration reform was based on nativist prejudices or a desire to pander to their basest base.  Turns out, they were simply concerned for the well-being of immigrants.  A front-page article in today's Times reports on the health risks faced by immigrants, who have inordinately high rates of heart disease, diabetes, and--I don't know, let's say rickets--especially when compared to their foreign-born relatives.  I guess when people move to this country, the sudden availability of high-calorie, high-fat foods is too much to resist; or maybe immigrants just want to blend in with the girthy native population.  Either way, it turns out those conservatives really are being compassionate.