Of course, things have changed under Obama

October 13, 2009

Like many people, I hope to see President Obama, his administration and a Democratic Congress achieve reform of financial regulations and health insurance, but I think it is truly preposterous of anyone to suggest Obama has not done much or for people to get their panties in a bunch over him winning the Nobel Peace Prize. As my friend said, it’s as if he awarded it to himself.

It’s also worth recounting how much has changed since George W. Bush was president. Remember when George W. Bush was president. Remember what that was like??

A few things that would not have happened one year ago:

Proposed rules to limit greenhouse gases from industrial plants would not have been introduced.

A federal “no-match” rule that threatened employers with prosecution if they continued to employ a person with inconsistencies between their social security and employment records would not have been rescinded.

California would not be allowed to enforce stricter standards for greenhouse gas emissions after the EPA grants it a waiver of preemption under the Clean Air Act. (California had fought the Bush administration EPA on this for years).

The EPA would not take a closer look at mining permits as part of a stricter review of surface mining projects to ensure that they comply with the Clean Water Act.

(Seriously, just do a google news search of “EPA” to see how much has changed in the past nine months).

Rich people who put their money overseas to evade taxes would not be faced with the threat of prosecution if they did not own up and pay fines, providing the U.S. government with an untold amount of revenue.

One could not walk through Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and see photos of the sitting president of the United States in nearly every store.

The president of the United States would not have even been a contender for the Nobel Peace Prize.

There are probably many other “administrative” decisions, rules and regulations that have been changed since January 20, 2009, most that we do not even realize, and whose impact will at least initially go little noticed. However, the good kind of change is one that incrementally betters our lives rather than jolts us suddenly. That is change we can believe in.

Leave a Comment » | Politics and Policy | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by elainemeyer

Remember…Bush era smugness?

September 22, 2009

I’m reading an interesting albeit aggravating article in GQ by a former George W. Bush speechwriter named Matt Lattimer who has decided that now is the time to come out and admit that the former president’s financial policymakers did not know what they were doing and that working on behalf of the Republic revolution and the Bush White House was a disappointment, “not at all what I envisioned.”

And yet, this guy still makes room for a jab at Jimmy Carter, which is pretty funny, considering Bush appears to have been ten times worse a president than Carter. Carter for all his faults, inherited a bad economy along with the after-effects of bloated defense spending on the unpopular Vietnam war.  Plus, he happened to be in office during an oil crisis well beyond his own control at a time when the United States had fewer sources of oil than we do today.

Bush, on the other hand, inherited a relatively stable economy–the tech bubble had burst, but it certainly did not bring down the whole economy. There were no major defense issues facing the United States when Bush became president, and the U.S. actually had a budget surplus. It seems really hard to remember that fact, but when Bill Clinton left office, things were pretty good.

So maybe, maybe, this Bush speechwriter could show a bit of humility about his own disastorous former boss, but no:

First the administration had had to seek out Carter’s help, and then the White House had been schooled on the economy by the president who’d brought you gas lines, an energy crisis, and high unemployment.

Why don’t they just start by saying “I’m sorry, America”?

Leave a Comment » | Politics and Policy | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by elainemeyer

Weekend in Brooklyn

September 21, 2009

A few happy encounters from one of my first weekends in new home, Brooklyn.

*I tried on a couple of dresses over my clothes at a flea market in Park Slope. The tiny Carribbean vendor seemed pretty determined to find me one that fit. She quickly rejected the first one, which I actually thought would have fit fine when it wasn’t worn over my day’s outfit. However, she took an immediate liking to the second one, which I thought looked too big when I caught a glimpse in the mirror.

“Too big?” she said, incredulous. “Yeah,” I said apologetically. Then, she started muttering words under her breath. She did not heed my continued explanation about how the sleeves were too long but just kept shaking her head and saying “too big” disgustedly. As I walked away, I could see her muttering and looking my way as if she were putting a curse one me.

*This morning, I went to visit my brother at a coffee shop that he works in a lot. One of the other regulars there, a middle-aged Hungarian guy, greeted us this way: “It’s the Chicago Mafia!”

*This evening, as I was returning from the store, I was greeted with a question I don’t get every day. “Are you Jewish?” a young Hasidic man who was standing on the street accompanied by a boy asked me. “Uh, yeah?” I said. “Can I blow the shofar for you?” he asked. “It will take two minutes.” Me: “Sure, right here?” Him: “Well we can go over there.” He pointed a few feet away from us.

And indeed, this Hasidic Jew proceeded to blow a small shofar for two minutes and then, when he was through, go through the reasons Jews blow shofars on Rosh Hashanah. It was all coming back to me: Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac, God creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh and something else. As this young man left to go to his synogogue fifteen minutes away, I felt a little less guilty about not going to one myself this year.

2 Comments | Brooklyn | Permalink
Posted by elainemeyer

An NYC high school filled to 250% its capacity

September 20, 2009

Queens high school teacher Arthur Goldstein has taught his students in a trailer and in a room the size of a New York studio apartment. His 1,800 person capacity high school building has 4,700 students enrolled. And one of his colleagues teaches a gym class of 156 students. Read more about it here in the New York Daily News.

I talked to Goldstein last year when I was looking into education stories in NYC, and I remember thinking then that it was only a matter of time til he started getting his experiences out to the wider education community and New York City in general. Now he is appearing regularly in the Daily News and Gotham Schools.

2 Comments | Education and Academics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by elainemeyer

My health insurance letter to my Congresspeople

September 10, 2009

I usually don’t write Congresspeople these days or even send those automated messages, but after Obama’s health care speech tonight, I was pretty moved to write the following. I hope others in my generation will write as well, because I feel we are pretty underrepresented in the health care debate, even though it greatly concerns us.

Dear Senator Gillibrand,

I recognize that you have supported efforts to provide a public option to millions of Americans who do not have health insurance or have unaffordable insurance, and I thank you for that. I am writing you tonight to remind you what is at stake for myself and other members of my generation, who are underrepresented in the current debate.

As I write this, I can safely say that many of my friends are looking for work. They are people who just finished college or graduate school but are having trouble finding jobs in industries that were affected by the recession.

Many of my friends have some kind of income but cannot get insurance because they do not have fulltime jobs with benefits.

Those of us in our twenties face many of the usual anxieties that our parents and our grandparents faced—what kinds of careers to embark upon and whether and how to make big life changes, like relocating for a job or school, or starting a family.

However, we are embarking on these potentially unstable life changes in a backdrop of very unstable times. Young people shoulder education loans today the likes of which my parents’ generation never knew. Because of deceptive credit and debit card practices, young people are often encouraged to take on debt that they cannot afford, or, we have no choice but to charge costs like medical bills to high interest-bearing credit cards. What’s more, we just ended a presidency that brought us the highest deficits in American history, money that my generation will have to pay down.

And more and more, we feel that we are in this on our own. I know from reading about past times of struggle in America’s history that our government has had to bring its citizens together to prevent against the possibility of even greater instability. We have to do this today for my generation, which faces great uncertainty in so many areas.

If I lose my current job, I know I will have trouble getting affordable health insurance because of past health problems. This has happened to a number of people I know. People often say the young elect to go uninsured because we don’t get sick. The only people I know who are uninsured did not elect to go uninsured. If they forgo it, it is because they are considered sick, that is, having preexisting conditions by insurers, due to psychological or physical problems. The sorts of costs we have to bear in the prime of our lives, when we should be saving as our parents could for future families or home purchases or travel, have become or threaten to become exorbitant and stultifying.

I believe private enterprise works for many things. It works especially well when businesses compete to bring better options to consumers. The problem is, insurance companies have become strong enough that they have figured out a way to profit off of the hardship of others. In this case, private enterprise is not working for consumers.

I actually do not think most people in my generation are skeptical toward government and its abilities to do this. After all, the huge organizations that give us the biggest grief are private lenders, private insurers and private credit card companies.

I know that there are certain things individuals like me cannot expect from a public option: we cannot expect a plan to conform perfectly with our ideologies. We cannot expect to get health care for free. Health care always has a cost, but those costs should be manageable. I welcome a serious discussion about how to fund expensive medical procedures and which ones to fund, and I welcome politicians coming before constituents with some of these choices. I don’t want you to think that because I am young, I am naïve and expect free health care.

However, I would like to see the adults in Congress set an example for the younger adults like me by providing a public health insurance option and standing up to the people who are misrepresenting what this option is all about.

Sincerely,

Elaine Meyer

4 Comments | Economy and Consuming, Politics and Policy | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by elainemeyer

No loyalty from fee-happy banks

September 9, 2009

One thing that really gets me is seeing how banks have no mercy toward customers who make simple but costly mistakes.

Take Peter Means, who is described in an article in the New York Times today by Ron Lieber and Andrew Martin about debit cards. Means used his card for several small purchases in one day not realizing he did not have enough in his account. For each charge he made, for small amounts like $4.14 and $6.50, Means was charged $34. By the end of the day, he had racked up $238 in fees, which his bank would not back down on when he disputed them.

Granted, there are a few lessons Means could and I’m sure did take from the experience: know how much is in your bank account, perhaps try to use cash for more purchases, etc.

But charging $238 for one day of mistaken debiting is draconian. It cannot possibly cost the banks that much to handle overdraft, and as, the Times article points out, the threat of such hefty fees is what banks use to drive consumers to buy overdraft protection, itself an additional expense.

There is a wider trend of banks and other service providers, like telecom companies, leveling dubious fees against consumers–either the fees seem too high for the cost of the transaction or their whole basis is questionable. Yesterday, for instance, I wrote an article about a lawsuit by two users of T-Mobile against the cell phone provider for charging $3.49 for any user who wanted to receive a paper copy of his/her bill.

The bank’s argument in defense of  debit fees in the Times article is that they will have to pass on costs to consumers who do not incur the fees, in the form of yearly debit card membership fees. This would not be the worst thing. I rarely if if ever use my debit card, because it is more susceptible to damaging ID theft than credit cards (thanks, dad, for pointing that out to me).

But regardless, it makes me livid at the way banks expect continued profits while charging consumers draconian fees when many people are in the midst of financial hardship. It seems questionable for large banks to profit while individuals shoulder debt from medical expenses, education, and home loans. It will probably take our leadership to try to encourage us to pull together and take some mercy on people who are undergoing hardship, but when people are forced to go it alone and default on debts and such, it rocks the system just as badly, if not worse, for banks to seek to collect dubious fees.

Anyway, this tangent all occurred because of relatively small debit fees, but it does all seem to be related.

Leave a Comment » | Economy and Consuming | Permalink
Posted by elainemeyer

Entrepreneurialism is not the drive to accumulate wealth

August 23, 2009

Although it is difficult if not impossible to sympathize with the super-rich who are portrayed in this article by the New York Times, I think that multimillionaire John McAfee, one among their ranks, makes a good point when he  somewhat remorsefully says this in the Times comments section:

The Entrepreneurial spirit is what made America great. But we have over time equated entrepreneurism with the drive to accumulate wealth, which is a perversion of this spirit.

And this is why we have every reason to approach with skepticism those who suggest that investment bankers are owed the kind of pay and bonuses they have gotten–by the American taxpayer, no less. Figuring out ways to accumulate wealth is not entrepreneurship. Inventing or selling a good or service that improves other people’s lives is. Though certain investment instruments like the 401(k) might fit this bill, using opaque investment instruments to bet on risk does not.

2 Comments | Economy and Consuming | Permalink
Posted by elainemeyer

Trade-offs necessary for health care

August 21, 2009

I think that the infantile turn that the health care debate has taken has been such a surprise to many of us, because of the urgency of our health care problem. As we all know, there is a growing uninsured population and a decline in the ability of employers to pay for health insurance because of increasing costs. At the same time, individual insurance is incredibly expensive, which gives people the incentive to go uninsured.

And yet, knowing that we need change, we have a debate that has been marred by crazies at town halls. The problem with it, which is a larger problem with discourse in this country, is the unwillingness of those involved to address reality or even worse, to totally ignore it. When Republicans say that the government will start making health care decisions for us if we have a public option, they have no clue what they are talking about.  The government plans, Medicare and Medicaid, dispute fewer health claims than private insurance companies do, which means that private insurers, not government insurers, assert more power over health care decisions. The Republicans who rail against government insurance, like the UK’s NHS, as if we have unlimited health care choices under our current system, are just off-base.

At the same time, supporters of a public option have not assuaged reasonable fears that the plan in its current state will not control costs. The cries from people who believe health care is a right–as if we as a country have an unlimited capacity to pay the costs of keeping a race of people alive until we are in our 80s and 90s–is naive. The country needs to control costs if it wants to guarantee insurance for all. It is a problem that France has because it does not have strong mechanisms for controlling costs. Yes, town hall crazies, there is a universal health care system that actually results in its citizens getting too much medical care!

Lawmakers should have little patience for town hall crazies’ contribution to the debate. Everyone else, meanwhile, should be asked to participate in a serious discussion over how best to prioritize care in our system. How much should we spend on procedures for people who are nearing death? Where are the most expensive health care charges happening, what is the reason for them, and how can we control them? How can we make sure reimbursement rates that the public option would negotiate with insurers would not put doctors off of a public option plan or deter them from medicine altogether (some Medicare reimbursement rates are pretty low–some of them actually do not even cover the cost of a procedure).

And in the larger picture, we should keep in mind that all of our systems have flaws, and that we always make trade-offs. Our political debate these days lacks an appreciation for this. Anyone who dismisses Canada’s or France’s or Germany’s or the UK’s health systems as terrible has no idea what they are talking about. For one, the systems differ quite a bit among each other. But all of these systems, including ours, have advantages and disadvantages. They help some people at the expense of others. And ours continues to rank lower than others on World Health Organization lists because not enough people are served by our higher quality care.

As my dad said, he voted for Obama because he was hoping that Obama would face Americans with the awful truth, i.e. reality, when making serious policy decisions. So far, that has not happened. (This blog was inspired things he has said).

1 Comment | Politics and Policy | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by elainemeyer

The Book Title Road Trip Game

August 18, 2009

During our West Coast road trip, my brother invented a car game where the driver lists then fictitious book titles that he has made up and the two passengers invent plausible-sounding subtitles for those books.

Here are ten titles that my brother Arthur came up with:
Inch by Inch
Capone
From the Inside Out
Morgan’s Turn
Shop Class
Indigo
Hurry, Hurry! The Cows are Coming!
Geronimo
Musica
Pretend Lovers
Monroe’s War

And here are the subtitles I came up with, a few of which I am quite proud of:
Inch by Inch: A Community Garden Grows in Gritty Detroit
Capone: The Psychological Life of America’s Most Notorious Gangster
From the Inside Out: Confessions from the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Years
Morgan’s Turn: The Rise of an American Tycoon
Shop Class: Life Lessons from Dad
Indigo: The Hidden Dangers of Clothing Die
Hurry, Hurry! The Cows are Coming! The Story Behind the Filming of ‘Green Acres’
Geronimo: The Heroism of the 42nd Infantry Division in World War II
Musica: A Catalogue of Sensual South American Sounds
Pretend Lovers: The Charles and Diana Story
Monroe’s War: The Birth of an American Foreign Policy

1 Comment | Books and Film, Travel | Permalink
Posted by elainemeyer

‘Mad Men’ Inflation Calcuator

July 24, 2009

Along with many other Americans, I have become engrossed by the show “Mad Men” on AMC. It is enjoyable on many levels. It is filled with seamy affairs and internecine rivalries that threaten to unravel in just about every episode. It is also taut and evocative of the early 1960s. Everyone abides a tacit appreciation for discretion that seemed to be a hallmark of social, professional and familial interaction during this time. Because of this air of secrecy, each episode brings with it a new revelation about a character that moves the plot along. For instance, the dashing Roger Stirling, head of the show’s fictional advertising agency Stirling Cooper is in fact revealed to be succumbing to some serious health problems. Earnest secretary Peggy has a knack for writing clever advertising copy. Anyway, anyone who watches the show knows the rest, the even darker secrets that these characters hold.

Another neat thing about the show is getting a sense of what it was like to live and work in New York in the late 50s and early 60s, and sometimes it seems not too different from today. Corporate ad man Don Draper has a funny confrontation with a beatnik who seems not much different in attitude than today’s New York hipsters one meets in Williamsburg. Snivelly junior ad guy Peter Campbell buys a penthouse with his wife on the Upper East Side, with help from her parents. Today, a Peter Campbell would have likely done what the yuppies here do and bought a similar place in the East Village or Chelsea, but you get the idea.

Curious, I consulted an inflation calculator to figure out how much that $30,000 penthouse would have cost today. Amazingly enough, it would only be $215,766, which is not actually that much for an Upper East Side condo. Campbell’s salary of $3,500 on the other hand would be a meager $25,173 today, probably less than the average starting PR person makes. No wonder he was reluctant to buy the penthouse.

Leave a Comment » | Arts and Entertainment, New York, Urban and Regional Issues | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by elainemeyer

« Previous Entries