This suggestion may prove to be politically popular, but it privatizing state functions is as foolish an idea as Jon Corzine’s proposal to sell the N.J. Turnpike.
Let’s be clear, privatization is only the public-worker version of outsourcing, which offers some nominal upfront savings in the private sector but ultimately costs more in morale and connection to the work.
The coverage of Patrick Kennedy’s spot-on assault on the Washington press corps this moring was more bemused than substantive, as if his red-faced tirade was more interesting for being loud than being right.
But Kennedy was correct in his assessment of the misplaced priorities of the press corps — focusing on Massa ad nauseum (coverage of the Massa fiasco is warranted, but not to the extent that we’ve seen) at the expense of Afghanistan, worrying about the politics of healthcare at the expense of healthcare, ignoring the nearly every issue of real importance to focus on fluff and nonsense.
So, go get ’em Patrick.
Dispatches — my second-straight healthcare column, this one on coverage of the debate — is available here.
Run number two for the week took place on a treadmill at the gym because of the threat of rain. I managed four miles in 36:44 (actually 4.2 in about 37:30). I finished with some oblique crunches on a 45-degree angle bench.
Music: Frightened Rabbit's outstanding 2008 release, The Midnight Organ Fight.
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Information is power, as they say. For gay and lesbian couples, the official U.S. Census now underway may just offer the kind of information needed to generate enough political power to end the charade that keeps them from getting married under civil law.
The Census, “for the first time,” will give same-sex couples “the opportunity to call their union a marriage in an official government document.”
In a policy shift experts say could radically reshape demographic profiles of the gay community, the U.S. Census this year will let same-sex couples label themselves as husband or wife even if their relationships are not recognized by law.
The move could have wide-ranging policy implications, as Gary Gates, a demographer with the University of California, Los Angeles, said in today’s Star-Ledger. It could “offer a rich source of data about how same-sex couples describe themselves, as well as their family structure.”
And that should change the debate from one based on misinformation and innuendo to one based on fact.
