Mid-week

Stephanie got to the New Albany rendezvous late, but arrived in Nashville - having stopped at Cracker Barrel on the way for lunch with her four colleagues (another is already there) - at 2 p.m. Central time, to find that her conference is at the Grand Old Opry resort, site of a weekend Food Network event starting Friday (Stephanie's last day there).

Vincent met with his counselor for the first time in three weeks Wednesday, and she said she congratulated him on the break-up with Samantha and urged Stephanie and me to give him until Sunday to finish his on-line classes (well, really, she means the Senior English class - there's no way in the world he could finish that - including the research paper of the same sort that tripped him up when he was taking this class in the classroom - AND his math class) and said that - while we spoke by phone - he was on his way home to work more. He has completed four additional job applications - Skyline Chili, a local bakery, a Speedway gas station, and Taco Bell - but has turned down offers from us to drive him to deliver them. He received an e-mail this week that the soon to be reopened local Target store - with hundreds of jobs - would not be hiring him. My idea is that we offer a chance to put him under computer room arrest - he stays in the room to work on his classes without going out except with us to look for jobs or go to the gym or to go to counseilng or the doctor's - until he finishes the two classes (unless he gets a job and starts making utility contributions?) - Otherwise, we suggest he take and mail in the GED pre-test and give him the number of a YMCA program that helps find places to live for 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds to live or $60 to take the Greyhound Bus to Columbus, presumably to right back with his father.

Wednesday I also read that in the morning the Southern IN Congressperson whose campaign I've volunteered for - and whose office several dozen people and I demonstrated at Tuesday (see below) to push him to back the president's health care reform proposals - is one of four (out of a total of seven) Blue Dog Democrats on the House Commerce Committee - who has OKed a compromise that would get the proposal out of the committee this week - but not onto the House floor until September - and would also complicate the public option, lower the penalties and raise the size threshhold of requirements that businesses insure employees, and limit the power of the federal government to lower health care reimbursement rates. The time change gives opponents more time to organize against whatever proposal comes out, and the other changes probably limits both the universal access and cost-cutting impacts of the proposal. Whether Baron Hill ends up voting for a bill and, if so, if he can still gets re-elected, remains to be seen.




Also Wedneday I got a scary, chain e-mail from exactly the kind of person who health care reform should attract - a sales professional who lost her job and has been without health insurance for more than a year, partly because - with her house not foreclosed yet and without a child and a good 15 years short of 65 - she doesn't qualify for Medicaid or Medicare, and so slips through the cracks. Yet she was disseminating conservative criticism of reform proposals - much of it misleading at best - apparently without any recognition of her vested interest in reform. If she had said - even though these reforms would help me, I oppose this in principle because . . . then at least I would have taken it as well-informed principle, but . . . On the whole, not a great sign for prospects for reform.

-- Perry