Iowa: New York Times

Health Care Reform Update: Kudos to the Quad-City Times for Making Health Care Reform Real for Its Readers

by Alta Price, MD

When I sat down to Sunday morning breakfast with the Quad-City Times, it just about knocked my socks off. Wow! Front page coverage and story after story about how health care reform will impact real live people in my community.

The Quad-City Times interviewed local people with differing health care situations, detailing their problems with insurance, the costs they face, how health insurance determines their job choices, how they decide whether to buy insurance, and so on.

Former FCC Commissioner:  Congress, FCC Abandon Citizens - Appeal to Rupert Murdoch Our Only Hope

FromDC2Iowa

by Nicholas Johnson

"Rupert Murdoch, this Australian-born, 78-year-old media mogul, and 132nd richest person in the world, controls the News Corporation, which owns Fox. And today, unlike 1932, he can legally use his media to spew forth hatred-for-ratings of a sort that would have resulted in the loss of his licenses in the Commission's early days."

~ "Congress shall make . . . no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; . . .." So reads the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

"What part of 'no' do our judges not understand?" Justice Hugo Black, for whom I clerked, took the view that because the drafters knew how to use qualifiers, such as "unreasonable searches and seizures" in the Fourth Amendment, we should assume when they said "no law" they meant "no law.

Climate Bill Should Lose Loopholes for Big Coal

by Molly Regan

Below is an article from The New York Times, preceded by my comments.

If you have a drafty house where all the windows & doors & the roof leak, & you only fix the windows & doors, the biggest leaker...the roof...will still continue to leak heat in the winter & cooling air in the summer.
 
Don't be fooled by the logic of those who will put up with the cap on their polluting ways, but not the trade or offset.  Why don't the dirty coal emitting plants offset their nasty air pollution instead of wasting their resources /human & monetary/on helping others capture carbon?
 
Spock would say, "It is not logical, Captain.

Health Care Reform Update: Does Chuck Schumer Have the Solution to Iowa's Chuck Grassley’s Concerns About a Public Plan Option?

by Alta Price, M.D.

Last week I wrote about the positions of my Congressional delegation on the public plan option. Representative Bruce Braley and Senator Tom Harkin are in favor, while Senator Chuck Grassley has some serious concerns. And I do agree with Senator Grassley that a public plan could have unintended consequences. We need to define exactly what we mean by a government-run option to private insurance.

I’ll quote again from the email I got from Senator Grassley’s office on the issue:

“That is why I’m concerned about creating a public plan.