Today in the Stranger
Friday, July 3, 2009
Books Things Are Looking Up
Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 4:23 PM
The Millions has a look ahead at the next year's worth of books scheduled for release, and the prospects actually look quite good: 2 from Dave Eggers, a giant non-fiction book that William Vollman refers to as "my Moby Dick," Lorrie Moore, Thomas Pynchon, Audrey Niffenegger, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Lethem, R. Crumb, J.M. Coetzee, Philip Roth (shocking!), Jonathan Safran Foer, Sam Lipsyte, Rachel Cusk, and many, many more.
This is an exciting look ahead. Good job, The Millions; way to focus on the bright side.
Politics Re: Palin to Step Down as Governor
Posted by Eli Sanders on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 3:58 PM
I know she's resigning, but... What the fuck did she just say for seven minutes? Love the bird sounds, though.
City Support Jason—Wait, Who's Jason?
Posted by Dan Savage on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 2:30 PM
"Sorry for the crappy photo," says Slog tipper Andi, "but there are people protesting outside of Jimmy John's on 3rd Ave with signs that say 'Don't eat here! Support Jason!' Who is Jason anyway?"
No idea. Labor dispute? Viral marketing? Anybody?
Politics Wailin' For Palin
Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 2:10 PM
Sarah Palin's announcement that she's resigning just made Mitt Romney's decade—he's the one to beat in the 2012 Republican primaries now.
But we don't need to speculate about elections right now, do we? It's July 4th weekend! It's time to celebrate! And what better way to celebrate than heading over to Conservatives4Palin.com and reading Palin fan reactions to her announcement?
Jane Austen said...what?!?!?!??! I don't understand. Is this a good thing or is she giving up politics for good????
July 3, 2009 3:26 PM
Anne said...GUYS - HELP ME HERE.
Why would she resign???
Seriously, I need insight!
July 3, 2009 3:26 PM
Jane Austen said...we need to pray.
now.July 3, 2009 3:27 PM
Chappy said...Chris Wallace on Fox can't understand why she would make this announcement just before the 4th of July weekend......but think about it......what will everybody be talking about at their BBQ's and at their Tea Party's?
They'll be talking about Sarah!
Smart lady!
July 3, 2009 3:30 PM
Tim said...guys.. I don't think she is resigning.. she is just saying that she is not seeking relection...
why are you trusting a liberal media source.. they make up stuff as they go along..
(and I say this as a liberal supporting Governor Sarah Palin)
July 3, 2009 3:32 PM
Much, much more schadenfreude after the jump.
Politics Palin to Step Down as Governor
Posted by Lindy West on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 1:17 PM
Via MSNBC:
WASILLA, Alaska - Sarah Palin announced Friday she plans to resign as governor of Alaska in a few weeks, saying she will try to "affect positive change" from outside government.She is handing the reins over to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who will be sworn in on July 25. Parnell and most of Palin's cabinet were present at the announcement.
"We know we can affect positive change outside government at this moment in time on another scale and actually make a difference," she said, adding that politics had become a "superficial, wasteful bloodsport."
Palin plans to leave behind the "superficial, wasteful bloodsport" of politics for more wholesome activities such as, say, AERIAL WOLF MURDER.
Retail My Favorite Blog Today
Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 12:22 PM
Slog Commenter and all-around great guy NaFun Twittered this blog yesterday, but I think today's a great day to explore it a little further: Not Always Right is a blog collecting particularly hellish interactions with customers.
I'm sure that some of you commenters (probably the ones who never worked retail before) are already getting huffy and pre-imagining your comments: "Why don't they get a better job instead of working retail like a punk?" I can hear you huff, before you huffily add, "People who work in retail deserve what they get and need to stop whining!"
To which I say: Calm down, Huffy. It's not a particularly whiny blog. I especially like this post:
Always Right, Even When Shooting Down A Helicopter
Golf Course | Finland(At the golf course where I work, it’s been a very a hot day and an older man unfortunately has a stroke/heart attack in the middle of the range. The course is at a remote location, so a medical helicopter is called in and lands in the middle of the range. Another golfer comes over, obviously upset.)
Golfer: “It’s my tee! I want to take my shot but the helicopter is blocking it.”
Me: “Sir, there’s a medical emergency on the range so you’ll have to wait for a little while.”
Golfer: “But it’s my shot! I pay good money to play here and it’s my shot!”
Me: “Sir, someone may be dying over there. Please have some patience. It shouldn’t take long until they lift off.”
Golfer: “If they get hit, it’s their own fault.”
(The man then pulls a club out and before I can stop him, he swings and hits the helicopter.)
Me: “Sir! For God’s sake, stop!”Golfer: “It’s my tee! They can just blame themselves for being in the way. I don’t have time for this!”
(I ended up reporting him to the caddie master and range supervisors. His license was revoked and was banned from playing there ever again. Thankfully, the helicopter was not damaged and the patient was saved.)
People can be so incredibly awful sometimes, and often that awfulness is extra-hilarious. Take a look at the blog when you get a chance.
Homo / News Fort Worth: Mayor Calls for Federal Investigation
Posted by Dan Savage on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 12:04 PM
After initially defending "his" officers—and in the most offensive possible way—the chief of police in Fort Worth now says that Chad Gibson, who he accused of groping an officer, wasn't in the custody of the FWPD when he was seriously injured, but in the custody of officers from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. The FWPD and the TABC have both announced independent investigations into the raid on the Rainbow Lounge—and now the mayor of Fort Worth is calling on the feds to investigate:
Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief called on federal prosecutors Friday to look into last week’s bar raid that resulted in a serious head injury to one patron.Parallel investigations—one by Fort Worth police and another within the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission—are already under way into what happened Sunday at the Rainbow Lounge.
And, police chief Jeff Halstead has announced the indefinite suspension of bar checks conducted jointly by his department and TABC.
Sounds like Fort Worth is trying to throw TABC under the bus. Let's wait and see what the feds find out.
UPDATE: The mayor isn't calling for a federal investigation, as the report above suggests. The mayor's is calling on the feds to review the investigations currently being conducted by the FWPD and TABC once they're completed. Not sure what that accomplishes. Full text of the mayor's statement after the jump.
Video of the Day Lunchtime Quickie
Posted by Kelly O on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 12:00 PM
God Bless This Mess! Happy (almost) 4th of July... and I love you, YouTube, forever and ever.
Two-Block Radius / Chow For Your Stomach's Consideration: Dinner on a Hot Day
Posted by Bethany Jean Clement on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 11:15 AM
Have you been to the Tin Table yet? It's upstairs in Odd Fellows Hall, it's dim and cool and stylish (but not trying-too-hard stylish), they have lovely icy cocktails, the food is generally great, and it's almost weirdly inexpensive (and not for tiny portions, either). More on all that here.
If you're feeling a little more flush, the crudos—like an Italian version of sashimi, it's raw fish dressed with olive oil, salt, maybe citrus or vinegar—at Anchovies & Olives are a perfect summer supper. They're around $15 a dish; start with one per person (you might be surprised by how filling it is.) Most awesome right now: fluke with cold watermelon broth. And now they have sidewalk seating.
Photo of the Tin Table by Victor Ng for The Stranger.
Stranger Suggests Today The Stranger Suggests
Posted by The Stranger on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 11:00 AM
Music
Dirty Projectors
Dirty Projectors are the rotating-cast project of Dave Longstreth, a prodigious guitarist, acrobatic singer, and adventurous composer. Longstreth's guitar playing is something like Deerhoof relaxing into a Malian safari; his singing is an ideal, airy falsetto; his compositions are difficult to explain but easy to appreciate. Dirty Projectors' latest album, Bitte Orca (the follow-up to the deservedly lauded Black Flag reinventions of Rise Above), includes his stunning collaborators Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian, whose voices are like so many butterflies fluttering in Longstreth's nets. (Chop Suey, 1325 E Madison St, 324-8000. 8 pm, $12, 21+.)
ERIC GRANDYConflict of Interest / Architecture / Film Suddenly in Seattle
Posted by Charles Mudede on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 10:57 AM
If you are free in a couple of hours, my film Police Beat will make an appearance on a screen in the Northwest Film Forum. Afterward, I'll talk about cities and stuff with the novelist Matthew Stadler and the German urban planner Thomas Sieverts.
One Pot also has a Sievert's event this evening at the opening of the Suddenly Exhibition in Pioneer Square. These are things you might like to do.
Health Today in Posthumanism
Posted by Charles Mudede on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 10:46 AM
The future of human health:
The salamander is a superhero of regeneration, able to replace lost limbs, damaged lungs, sliced spinal cord — even bits of lopped-off brain.The motto of a future biotech corporation: Less Human than Human.But it turns out that remarkable ability isn't so mysterious after all — suggesting that researchers could learn how to replicate it in people...
...Based on experiments on genetically modified axolotl salamanders, the researchers show that cells from the salamander's different tissues retain the "memory" of those tissues when they regenerate, contributing with few exceptions only to the same type of tissue from whence they came.
Standard mammal stem cells operate the same way, albeit with far less dramatic results — they can heal wounds or knit bone together, but not regenerate a limb or rebuild a spinal cord. What's exciting about the new findings is they suggest that harnessing the salamander's regenerative wonders is at least within the realm of possibility for human medical science.
Pic by furryscalyman.
Drunk World of Warcraft Freakout… Now with a Convenient Remix!
Posted by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 10:44 AM
Remember the kid who completely lost his marbles when his mom took away his World of Warcraft privileges? Well, he's back… thanks to this HEEEEE-LARIOUS remix starring the Kirby music from Super Smash Bros.! (I'm telling you, this tune is the Benny Hill/"Yakkety Sax" of the new century!)
Please stop putting that in your butt, and hat tips to Buzzfeed.
Books Reading Tonight
Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 10:22 AM
There is only one reading today, at Fremont Place Book Company. S.G. Browne reads from Breathers: A Zombie Lament, a book about a "nebbish" of a zombie named Andy who finds a lady zombie named Rita and falls in love. You can read a preview of the book above.
I really like Fremont Place Book Company, and, to my knowledge, this is the first reading they've hosted in at least a year, so we should support this sort of behavior by attending the reading. And also hit up Ophelia's Books across the street, too. It's a bookventure!
The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here. And if you're planning on staying in and you're looking for personalized book recommendations, feel free to tell me the books you like and ask me what to read next over at Questionland.
Homo / Sports / Theater / The Ladies Overheard in the Office
Posted by Bethany Jean Clement on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 10:06 AM
Yesterday I had a sad conversation with Dan Savage. "Do you know what the term 'triple threat' refers to?" I asked him (ungrammatically). "It's a person who can sing, dance, AND act," he said. It's not a sports thing? I wondered; no, he was sure. Then I had to go and check, after which I had to inform him that heteronormative Merriam Webster is at odds with his rainbow-colored worldview.
Religion So How's Your Creepy Christian Pedo-dar?
Posted by Dan Savage on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 9:46 AM
Yesterday I tested your creepy Christian pedo-dar. I asked Sloggers if this teacher—arrested for soliciting one of his 12-year-old students for sex—solicited a male student or a female student.
The results of the vote...
And a majority of Sloggers got it right: It's a girl...
A First Baptist Church School teacher is accused of soliciting a 12-year-old student for sex. Charleston County Sheriff's investigators charged Charles "DJ" Fishburne Rhodes III of Charleston with criminal solicitation of a minor.An affidavit says the victim told investigators that Rhodes began text messaging her on her cell phone after school let out for the summer. The two talked through texts for about two to three weeks when Rhodes wrote and asked her to "come over." One text asked her to perform oral sex on him, the affidavit says.
Rhodes waived his rights and admitted in a statement that he engaged in the sexual conversation with the student, the affidavit says.
So it turns out that Sloggers' creepy Christian pedo-dar is pretty accurate. Congrats!
Politics California Here We Come
Posted by Dan Savage on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 9:22 AM
Bankrupt budgets, political paralysis, collapsing schools, shuttered parks: Tim Eyeman's latest assault on state government—Initiative 1033—makes the ballot and could remake Washington state in the image of California. Goldy breaks it down:
I-1033 is a “TABOR” initiative, one of many, similarly constructed spending-cap measures that have been peddled in the initiative states nationwide, and have been funded by a shadowy network of ultra-wealthy, right-wing extremists. Thus, unlike most of Eyman’s initiatives, don’t be surprised to see a fair amount of out of state money flooding into Washington to fund the “Yes” campaign.The Washington State Budget and Policy Center has a great analysis of I-1033 and its consequences, and I encourage you to watch their slideshow, but don’t think it an exaggeration to summarize the measure as the end of Washington state government as we know it.
I-1033 caps government spending at the previous year’s spending, plus population growth and inflation, and while that may appear to be a formula for fiscal stability, it is in fact entirely and intentionally the opposite.
Read the whole thing here.
Housekeeping Light Slogging Today
Posted by Dan Savage on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 9:09 AM
It's a holiday and our offices are closed, so Slogging is going to be light today. That's bad news or good news, depending on your feelings about Slog. But we can all agree that the impending return of Pony—picture via CHS—is damn good news.
News The Morning News
Posted by Lindy West on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 8:09 AM
Yeah. Great Idea, Assholes. Iran plans to try British embassy employees for "fomenting and orchestrating protests."
Are You Talking About Afghanistan or Wizards of the Coast? "Nawa is quiet, too quiet. Something is eerie. The enemy has gone to ground, shuras [councils of elders] are being set up."
I'LL PAY YOU BOCK. Arnold Schwarzenegger begins issuing I.O.U.s to California taxpayers.
There Is Absolutely No Local News Today: Sonics, still gone. Green Day, coming. Zombies, coming. Traffic, coming. Water taxi, scoot scoot scoot.
Do You Like Claustrophobia AND Dizzying Heights? Good news! Statue of Liberty hot sardine can of death crown observation deck to reopen on July 4th.
Reject This Friend Request. That mom who cyber-bullied that girl to death gets acquitted.
My Parents Are Flying to Romania Next Week on a Goddamn Air France Airbus. "Investigators said the Airbus 'descended vertically' and dropped 35,000ft in a matter of seconds, hitting the water in its exact flying position."
Hottie With a Naughty Body. Mark Sanford's soulmate-mistress-lady REVEALED!
Not everything is stupid. Some things are gay. What the internet feels like sometimes:
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Homo / Religion Defense Of Marriage Asshole
Posted by Dan Savage on Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:14 PM
David Klinghoffer discovers a shocking truth about my marriage: like Mark Sanford's, Eliot Spitzer's, Bill Clinton's, John Ensign's, Larry Craig's, and several of Newt Gingrich's, my marriage isn't strictly monogamous. But unlike Clinton's, Ensign's, Sanford's, et al., mine is honest. The boyfriend and I are non-monogamous, as as I wrote The Commitment, the book where I cleverly buried this shameful secret about my marriage five years ago, but we're more non-monogamous in theory than we are in practice. So I'm sorry to say that my marriage isn't quite the raging fuck fest that Klinghoffer imagines it to be. (Or Slog trolls, for that matter.)
Hope that doesn't spoil the massive jack-off session you've got planned for tonight, David.
Once again: you don't have to be monogamous to be married or married to be monogamous. Straight people have been demonstrating that for millennia. The Hebrew Bible that David's always humping away at is shot through with examples of non-monogamous heterosexual men. (How many concubines did that King David person have again?) There's an organized movement of heterosexual swingers in the country and plenty of disorganized-but-honest straight non-monogamy going on out there too. So no one has to, as David encourages us to do, "imagine a man and a woman, of impeccably heterosexual tastes, with an open marriage on the Dan Savage model." There are lots of men and women out there with thoroughly heterosexual tastes who are in successful, long-term, open relationships—"marriages on the Dan Savage model"—that allow for varying degrees of outside sexual contact. Straight couples have been doing the legally-married-but-not-monogamous thing for a lot longer than gay couples have, David, so if anyone is modeling their marriage on anyone else's, gay people are modeling their open marriages on the open marriages of straight people.
Sorry, David, but monogamy isn't natural and men are particularly lousy at it—and for most of recorded human history, men weren't required or expected to be monogamous. Sixty or seventy years ago, in a moment of mass delusion, humanity decided to put the monogamy at the center of our marriages and, gee, how's that working out for us? I know this hard for monogamy fetishists to grasp, but here goes: Allowing for some outside sexual contact—being realistic and successfully negotiating some degree of openness—defuses one of the leading causes of divorce. It's pro-marriage, pro-stability, pro-family. It is a good and decent thing, not a threat to all things good and decent.
And my goodness, David, are you really so stupid as to invoke the story of Lot in defense of monogamous heterosexual marriage? You're going to point to Lot as an example of "modesty where private expressions of passion are kept private," David? After offering up his daughters to a mob to rape, Lot flees Sodom with the wife and kids. God turns Mrs. Lot into a pillar of salt for having the gall to take a peek over her shoulder at the fireworks, and then... Lot's daughters get their father drunk and have an incestuous threesome with dad and nine months later they present Lot with two sons/grandsons. My sexual "adventurism" may shock you, David, but I've never done anything so depraved as that lot.
Do open relationships hurt women, as David insists? Not according to the straight women I know who're actually in them. (Needless to say David doesn't know any women in open relationships—he doesn't seem to know they exist at all.) But who should these women believe? Their own life experiences or David "You're Doing It Wrong!" Klinghoffer? "Every woman with a brain in her head knows that in [an open] relationship," David writes, "she's likely to be the one who gets hurt." I guess that means that no one gets hurt in a closed relationship. Let me check with Mrs. Sanford, Mrs. Spitzer, Mrs. Clinton, et al., about that.
Here's the story I wrote for this year's queer issue that David just can't bring himself to link to.
Film I'm Pretty Busy Murdering Arthouse Cinema With My Bare Hands at the Moment...
Posted by Lindy West on Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 4:54 PM
...but I guess I can spare a little time to write this post. There's something of a tiny, furious lynch mob forming, of people who think I should be fired and put out to pasture with all the other ponies who know nothing about film criticism (stupid ponies).
So even though I'm REALLY BUSY (there are a lot of meaningful documentaries out there that need ignoring, you guys!), your persuasive skills have prevailed: I shall now address these concerns.
Alex Williams writes:
LINDY WEST IS KILLING ART HOUSE CINEMA IN SEATTLEDear Editor, why is Lindy West still in charge of your film section? Yeah, she's funny and would probably make a great partner for drunken karaoke, but her lazy lack of interest, knowledge and coverage of what's showing in Seattle's independent cinemas is astounding.
Good point. I am funny; however, though I am great at being drunk, I do not enjoy karaoke.
This week: MUNYURANGABO got only rave reviews in NYC and now it's playing in Seattle; any review or recommendation from The Stranger? Nope. Likewise for NOLLYWOOD BABYLON, a 2009 Sundance-featured documentary on the Nigerian film industry that's having its US theatrical premiere at the Grand Illusion. So what films did get The Stranger's feature reviews this week? The new Michelle Pfeiffer vehicle, the latest Cameron Diaz film... and a big front-page piece about the new TRANSFORMERS movie. With editing choices like these, Lindy might as well be film editor at the Yakima Herald Republic. Hey Lindy: YOU ARE THE FILM EDITOR OF THE STRANGER NEWSPAPER IN SEATTLE! Get with it or get out.
Eli Drake writes:
Do you realize that your film section is a joke? Under the helm of Andy Spletzer and Annie Wagner, this part of the paper was a nationwide example of alternative film criticism and the place in Seattle to get the pulse on local work. Lindy West is driving your film section into the ground, and taking the local cinemas with her. Her coverage displays her utter inability to notice trends and achievements in filmmaking both worldwide and in the region. It's not only an embarrassment, but a threat to Seattle filmgoers and filmmakers who used to rely on the Stranger for intelligent, thoughtful and knowledgeable commentary and coverage. Ms. West clearly prefers gossip and pop culture to true film criticism; why force her to cover serious dramas and meaningful documentaries she is unable to appreciate? Bring back someone who cares.
And an anonymous person who has gone so far as to create the e-mail address LindyWestSucksAtHerJob@hotmail.com wrote to complain about the lack of coverage of Treeless Mountain, Munyurangabo, Adoration, and others.
People, you are heard. We don't have unlimited resources here at the paper (this isn't the most fruitful time for newspapers in general), but we cover as much as we have time for. When we don't manage to review something in time for the print edition, I try my hardest to follow up on the web. Some things are always going to go without coverage, and I'm sure we'll disagree in the future about what I choose to include and what I don't (and, like I said, it's not always a choice).
Be warned: I'm not going to stop liking celebrity gossip and I'm not going to stop covering mainstream films. I deny the charge that I have some sort of vendetta against all things meaningful, however. And I'm planning some changes for the section that will make our "arthouse" coverage—which tends to get lost in Film Shorts—more visible. Stay tuned in the next couple of weeks.
Also:
Here is my review of Munyurangabo.
Here are two different reviews of Treeless Mountain, both of which ran in the print edition.
Here is my review of Atom Egoyan's Adoration.
Here is my review of Made in U.S.A.
Here is my review of In a Dream, which played at Northwest Film Forum a few weeks ago.
Here is my review of The English Surgeon, which also played at Northwest Film Forum last month.
Here is Brendan Kiley's review of The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle.
Here is a review of Evangelion 1.0, which plays at the Grand Illusion this week.
There's also, you know, our giant fucking 2009 SIFF Guide.
Etc., etc., etc.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. In closing, because I do, in fact, love pop culture (till I die, bitchez!), I would like to leave you with this picture of David & Victoria Beckham being absolutely batshit insane, as usual. I fucking love them.
Love,
Lindy
Books Starting Off on the Bad Foot
Posted by Paul Constant on Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 4:24 PM
A Federal Way man named David McKenzie has won the 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which is a yearly challenge to write the worst first line of an imaginary novel.
Here's McKenzie's winning sentence:
Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.
That is some fine, awful work, Mr. McKenzie. You have made Washington proud. Seattle is home to a winner, too; our own Stuart Greenman won the Fantasy subcategory of the awards:
A quest is not to be undertaken lightly—or at all!—pondered Hlothgar, Thrag of the Western Boglands, son of Glothar, nephew of Garthol, known far and wide as Skull Dunker, as he wielded his chesty stallion Hralgoth through the ever-darkening Thlargwood, beyond which, if he survived its horrors and if Hroglath the royal spittle reader spoke true, his destiny awaited—all this though his years numbered but fourteen.
And here is the winner of the Detective Fiction subcategory of Bulwer-Lytton. The author is not local, but I found this sentence to be particularly awesome:
She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.
That last sentence is the only one that makes me want to read the rest of the novel. You can read all the runners-up and other categories here.
Health The Lesson of Group Health, in Parts
Posted by Eli Sanders on Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 3:28 PM
3.
There are other, and probably far more important, problems with using Group Health as a model for what the co-op compromise could deliver all over the nation.
Among them: the idea that Group Health provides a structure that can be quickly replicated to great positive effect. Don Mitchell, a retired physician and the chair of the Western Washington chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, pointed out that it has taken "years" (62, to be exact) to get Group Health to its current level of service and national stature. You can’t just create a bunch of federally-chartered, citizen-run health care concerns all over America and expect them to be high quality on day one.
But perhaps the biggest problem has to do with size. Group Health achieves efficiencies and economies of scale—which in turn lead to cost savings, a Holy Grail of health care reform—precisely because it’s not small.
Size matters quite a lot in cutting health care expenses. That, by the way, is the whole point of the public option: to create a government-backed national health care plan that’s so big it will be able to compete nationwide and bargain for lower costs all over the country, all at once. “Because [co-ops] would be at most state-wide in scope and not be national,” Mitchell said, “they would lack the bargaining clout that a national organization would have in terms of driving down costs vis-à-vis private health insurance companies.”
This is why, even though the Commonwealth Fund recently placed Group Health among the nation’s “shining examples of co-operative health care,” Dr. Karen Davis, blogging for the group, nevertheless described the idea of filling the country with Group Healths as a “difficult” and “uncertain” proposition.
Bottom line: Group Health has found a way to work well in the Pacific Northwest after 62 years of operation. But it’s not the small, easily-replicated co-op that Maria Cantwell and others want it to be. In fact, one important lesson of Group Health ends up being exactly the opposite of what advocates of the co-op compromise seem to want to hear: it takes a big entity with experience in the health care market and significant financial clout to push the industry in the right direction.
An entity like, you know, the federal government—which, under the public plan, would be doing just that at the national level.
Housekeeping / Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz The Good, the Bad, and the Twitter
Posted by Paul Constant on Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 3:20 PM
I wrote this week's feature about Twitter on Twitter, in 140-character chunks. It makes for a read that could be weird if you didn't know about the conceit:
On January 16, 2009, when US Airways Flight 1549 crashed into the Hudson, Twitter was the first to know, and it knew the most for hours.Faster than they told YouTube, people told Twitter what was happening.
In breaking news, eyewitness reports are almost always more valuable and interesting than a journalist's accounts.
Watching New Yorkers tell their stories on 9/11 was more compelling, more real, than anything else CNN could relay.
Most viewers would rather follow the bearded biker who shouts, "It came out of nowhere!" than return to the smiling, phony telejournalist.
It goes on from there. But one of the more unique (and also, for me, mildly embarrassing) things about this particular feature is that you can read the first draft of the essay as I wrote it, over at this Twitter feed. (As always with Twitter, you have to start from the very bottom and read up.) There weren't a whole lot of changes from first to final draft (although I had to make some time-sensitive and topic-relevant additions to the very end of the feed), but there are some. For instance, I blathered on in an extended and highly unnecessary beginning to the story that got cut and rearranged into the piece (I always have trouble with beginnings to long pieces and I almost always have to cut them out when I'm done writing.)
But if you want to see how I use Twitter on a daily basis, my regular Twitter feed is over here. And, of course, a bitter old man has hijackedThe Stranger's Twitter feed and has been holding it hostage for several months now. And now I will shut up about Twitter for at least two hours. You're welcome.
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