Warning: Trying to access array offset on true in /home/shermand/www/www/wp-content/themes/hybrid/library/functions/styles.php on line 77

Health insurance reform and college completion

I have yet to see anyone discuss the obvious relationship I see between health-insurance reform and education policy: health-related financial crises and college completion problems. There are many reasons why students leave or switch colleges, but one of them is the financial fallout from health crises of students and their immediate family members. Over the […]

Bowling for senators, dominoes falling, or some other inapt metaphor

Alyson Klein is reporting that Chris Dodd is probably staying with the banking committee, which leaves the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) chair to either Tom Harkin or (if he doesn’t take it) Barbara Mikulski. While the rest of the world (rightly) worries about Max Baucus’s control of/chokehold on health insurance reform, the HELP […]

Rebuttal to the president and the extension of the silly season

One of my Chicago friends, author and professional smart aleck Adam Selzer, has the best rebuttal to the President’s school comments today. The theme? “Responsibility is for squares. Slack off, buster!” (taken from one of Adam’s FB notes–not in his rebuttal, but it captures the essence) In the nutty wing of the loyal opposition, the […]

Alterknit educashun polticks

In the alternate reality where pundits and talk-show hosts live, Barack Obama is not going to say Tuesday that students have a personal responsibility to work hard in school. Somehow this is indoctrination, or maybe unseemly politicking for all the 7-year-olds who will be voting in 2012. Though Richard Whitmire and many others are scratching […]

Rising health-care costs are all my fault

It’s true. See what this “friend” wrote me some weeks ago: Oh, so you’re the guy who’s driving up everyone’s premiums with your insatiable demands for weekly colonoscopies. Don’t worry: the TMI in the full entry is about insurance companies, not what the doctors found.