Lawmakers attempt to target elective cosmetic surgery to pay for health reform in the United States. Simply an inviting target? The idea isn't that new, it was shelved once before. Now it's back. There is opposition as botox sales have already been dropping off.
posted by IvoShandor on Nov 20, 2009 - 31 comments

The House of Representatives just passed the health reform bill in a vote of 220-215.
posted by reenum on Nov 7, 2009 - 425 comments

Liquor before Beer... In the Clear
In case you thought anything has changed since the Global Financial Crisis, Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn delivered a remarkable speech at the Value Investing Congress Monday [background, excerpts] wherein he lays out what's still wrong with (the culture that is) Wall Street and Washington: "the consequences will be seen during the lifetime of the leaders who have pursued short-term popularity over our solvency." On a related note, the BOE's Mervyn King concurs with Einhorn: "To paraphrase a great wartime leader, never in the field of financial endeavour has so much money been owed by so few to so many. And, one might add, so far with little real reform."
posted by kliuless on Oct 22, 2009 - 26 comments

Michelle Cottle takes a look at the rise of Betsy "Death Panels" McCaughey - No Exit: The never-ending lunacy of Betsy McCaughey: Since her earliest days in the spotlight, McCaughey has presented herself as a just-the-facts-please, above-the-fray political outsider. In reality, she has proved devastatingly adept at manipulating charts and stats to suit her ideological (and personal) ambitions. [more inside]
posted by IvoShandor on Oct 7, 2009 - 48 comments

Nearly 1 in 5 young adults is out of work. Student debt is the highest its ever been. With a 10 year job growth of negative 230,000 jobs, the pool of available jobs is the lowest its ever been as a ratio to available college grads. And even with this dwindling tax base, in order to sustain Medicare and Social Security by 2020, we will need to tax 1.5 workers for every retiree. [more inside]
posted by Acromion on Sep 19, 2009 - 83 comments

Senate Finance Chair Max Baucus has released the "chairman's mark" (his draft) of health-care legislation, America's Healthy Future Act. [more inside]
posted by Hypnotic Chick on Sep 16, 2009 - 81 comments

The healthcare debate explained on the back of 4 napkins. Napkin 1: The health care equation. Napkin 2: It's not about health care. Napkin 3: The plans on the table. Napkin 4: What's it mean to me?
posted by lunit on Aug 26, 2009 - 95 comments

Healthcare reform has agitated right-wing extremists and moneyed interests in the United States for some time — during the presidencies of FDR and Truman as well as Clinton and Obama, most recently — but where do the objections originate from, and particularly those which are known to be based on complete untruths? Some of these lies start with or are repeated by well-known right-wing media personalities, but there are other people who get the ball rolling, who are perhaps less well-known. Elizabeth "Betsy" McCaughey originated one of the current myths more commonly known as "death panels", but despite her attempts to market herself as a folksy voice fighting for the well-being of senior citizens, she has been an effective advocate for the interests of private health insurance companies since the early 1990s. [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Aug 22, 2009 - 167 comments

The Second Amendment of the Constitution of United States of America gives us all the right to bear arms. It means that as Americans we can keep fire arms without governmental infringement. A few days ago many Americans chose to exercise this right at political Town Hall meetings on health care reform throughout the United States. Some are defending these actions. Others are not. The NRA is remaining quiet.
posted by Mastercheddaar on Aug 20, 2009 - 255 comments

With the vote on Health Care Reform pushed back to september, Ad campaigns are revving up, both for and against. The DNC has given the 13 million e-mails Obama collected during his campaign to Organizing For America. And our old friends Harry and Louise are back. [more inside]
posted by tylerfulltilt on Jul 27, 2009 - 136 comments

"Growing up, I never told anyone about not having my papers, but one day, just when I finished high school, I just had to tell people." The bi-partisan DREAM Act creates a path to citizenship for the estimated 65,000 undocumented youth who graduate high school each year. "Papers is the story of undocumented youth and the challenges they face as they turn 18 without legal status" (trailer). Alienated: Undocumented Immigrant Youth (video, 8 minutes). [more inside]
posted by OverlappingElvis on May 27, 2009 - 29 comments

Mark C. Taylor, the chairman of the religion department at Columbia, offers a radical proposal in The New York Times for the restructuring of the American university system. Two key components of the proposal entail ending tenure and shuttering academic departments—replacing disciplines with problems, and then tackling them with a cooperative and multidisciplinary approach, e.g. The Department of the Future of Water made up of geologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and ethicists. Should we End the University as We Know It?
posted by Toekneesan on Apr 27, 2009 - 84 comments

Legislation has been introduced in the U.S. Congress to repeal mandatory minimum sentences associated with drug offenses. If passed, the federal government would join eighteen other states in abandoning the "tough on crime" stance of the 1980's when it comes to drug offenders. State reforms include including New York's legislative repeal of the Rockefeller Drug Laws, Michigan's repeal of 650 lifer sentencing, North Dakota's repeal of one-year mandatory minimum sentences for first-time drug offenders, Arizona's Proposition 200, which required probation and treatment for nonviolent drug offenders, Louisiana's decision to restore eligibility for parole and probation to nonviolent offenders, and the Kansas Sentencing Commission's recommendation for mandatory treatment for nonviolent offenders. [more inside]
posted by Law Talkin' Guy on Apr 26, 2009 - 46 comments

For Their Own Good. "They were screwed-up kids, sent to the reform school in Marianna for smoking, fighting, stealing cars or worse. The Florida School for Boys -- that'd straighten them out." A well-written and heartbreaking feature from the St Pete Times. Includes an extensive list of supporting news links (going back to 1932) and a gallery of portraits by Edmund D. Fountain.
posted by grabbingsand on Apr 17, 2009 - 37 comments

With so many of our citizens in prison compared with the rest of the world, there are only two possibilities: Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing something different--and vastly counterproductive. Obviously, the answer is the latter.

Sen. Jim Webb takes on the real third rail in American politics, the entire criminal justice system.
posted by empath on Mar 30, 2009 - 112 comments

Twilight Of The Autocrats: Will the global economic downturn usher in a new era of democracy, or will things only get worse? [first link via]
posted by Inspector.Gadget on Mar 24, 2009 - 16 comments

“There is nothing like this in the United States," said Leone. "We’ve looked." The Workhouse Arts Center near Occoquan, VA opened in September 2008 on the grounds of a former prison that was founded by President Theodore Roosevelt as a rehabilitation facility for Washington, DC criminals. Its extensive agrarian projects were intended to put them in touch with nature, but by 1917 security tightened and suffragettes protesting before the White House endured harsh treatment there. The city continued sending inmates to the overcrowded facility until Congress ordered the prison to be shuttered. For years it stood empty, but now the historic buildings are being transformed into studios for local artists (previously).
posted by woodway on Mar 11, 2009 - 11 comments

“There has been a failure of risk management to a point that is mind boggling." Obama advisor Paul Volker and the Group of 30 have issued a deceptively simple framework for fixing our financial problems.
posted by up in the old hotel on Jan 15, 2009 - 29 comments

The Dark Side of Literacy - Indian education reform organization Shikshantar, who aims to encourage concepts of "Swaraj", or self-rule in local education, argues that current education and literacy models do not take into account local cultures and languages and gives too much credit to the Western alphabet. They also argue that there are many serious flaws in what they describe as UNESCO's campaign of "McEducation For All".
posted by divabat on Jun 13, 2008 - 46 comments

Official transgender blessings -- Kulanu -- the newly-revised manual for LGBT issues and ceremonies put out by the Union for Reform Judaism (1.5 million US Jews are Reform) now includes 2 blessings (written by a Rabbi now male) for those transitioning and who have completed the change, alongside the already existing same sex marriage liturgy and other documents and procedures. A first? (blessings text inside)
posted by amberglow on Aug 9, 2007 - 50 comments

The British Transform Drug Policy Foundation has recently released their 2nd guide After the War on Drugs: Tools for the debate. Described as a guide for prospective and current policy reform advocates, it enumerates the points typically brought up against reform, and offers strategies to rebut them. Somewhat of a counterpoint to the US DEA's Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization.
posted by daksya on Aug 9, 2007 - 48 comments

China’s veteran voices of reform by Li Datong (李大同). Li is the former editor of Freezing Point, an influential Chinese weekly supplement to the China Youth Daily. His frequent clashes with his superiors and bold publishing stance there led to his sacking and the temporary closure of the magazine, but he now has a regular column in English at openDemocracy. Here, Li looks at how Party elders are using the pages of the journal 炎黄春秋 (Yanhuang Chunqiu "Chinese Chronicles") to promote a reform agenda quite daring in the Chinese context, making reformists hopeful about the upcoming Seventeenth National Congress of the CCP.
posted by Abiezer on May 19, 2007 - 3 comments

Maryland joins the ranks of states attempting to thwart the electoral college. Maryland's General Assembly approved a bill [PDF] to ignore the U.S. Electoral College [official website] in presidential elections, instead awarding the state's 10 electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. [via | previously on MeFi | more inside]
posted by terrapin on Mar 30, 2007 - 71 comments

Victorian Workhouses
I sometimes look up at the bit of blue sky
High over my head, with a tear in my eye.
Surrounded by walls that are too high to climb,
Confined like a felon without any crime...
posted by Miko on Sep 18, 2006 - 14 comments

Canadian musicians protest file-sharing lawsuits. The Barenaked Ladies, Broken Social Scene, Sloan, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, and many other Canadian artists have formed a coalition to protest the hard line taken by the recording industry against file-sharers, and call for copyright reform. Is there a better way to protect intellectual property rights than suing file-sharers?
posted by Johnny Assay on May 5, 2006 - 35 comments

Massachusetts is about to pass a "nearly" universal health care plan. It's an ambitious and innovative piece of public policy that mixes tax incentives to insure yourself if you can afford it to direct government subsidies to health care insurers to help cover the poor. Businesses will be fined if they are not going to cover their workers. It still does not cover escalating costs or malpractice wildness. And, it still will leave 5% uncovered. Nor, is it the plan specifically endorsed by Physicians for a National Health Plan (who favor a single payer system) or the AMA (who favor much greater reform of insurance providers). Still, it's a start from making us "the only industrialized nation in the world" to not, well you know.....
posted by narebuc on Apr 5, 2006 - 71 comments

Great local investigative piece on the GOP's "point man on lobbying reform". (check out the video) Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)'s "charity" has spent almost half as much on "unexplained" T&E as it has given out to the needy. What's more, the treasurer of this organization is not only treasurer of his re-election campaign, but is also the the treasurer of Americans for a Republican Majority, the PAC run by Tom DeLay, who is no stranger to lobbyist scandals.
posted by mkultra on Mar 10, 2006 - 12 comments

Medical Malpractice Myth explores the idea that it's not litigious patients, ambulance chasing lawyers and runaway juries behind the rising costs of medical malpractice insurance. It's the increasing occurrence of medical malpractice that's driving those insurance rates up.
posted by jperkins on Dec 18, 2005 - 105 comments

Sunday the National Conference on Media Reform featured the first public speech by Bill Moyers since he left PBS. "I always knew Nixon would be back, again and again. I just didn’t know that this time he would ask to be Chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting."
posted by john on May 16, 2005 - 41 comments

Blogs contribute to political reform in Iran (New York Times): Former vice-president of Iran, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, said that he learned through the Internet about the huge gap between government officials and the younger generation. "We do not understand each other and cannot have a dialogue," he said. "As government officials, we receive a lot of confidential reports about what goes on in society. But I have felt that I learned a lot more about people and the younger generation by reading their Web logs and receiving about 40 to 50 e-mails every day. This is so different than reading about society in those bulletins from behind our desks."
posted by hoder on Jan 16, 2005 - 7 comments

"After the War on Drugs - Options for Control is a major new report examining the key themes in the drug policy reform debate, detailing how legal regulation of drug markets will operate, and providing a roadmap and time line for reform." It's concise and reasonable, but is this report from the Transform Drug Policy Foundation (Google News lookup) really "the first practical road map for a benign drug policy that must follow the collapse of drug prohibition"? ... "No countries have yet legalised any drug covered under the U.N. convention" - will anything change anytime soon?
posted by mrgrimm on Nov 2, 2004 - 10 comments

By the way, you'll earn 30% of each donation you bring in for the RNC. The people who brought you fun customized campaign posters return for an encore with an affiliate program for fundraising. Rather than relying upon real grassroots fundraising, why not just offer commissions to anyone who'd like to promote your candidate? Just how many ways can the Internet come up with to violate campaign finance law? Ready ... set ... link!
posted by bclark on Jul 7, 2004 - 20 comments

Canada considers electoral reform. The Law Commission of Canada just released a report that recomended a Mixed Member Proportional system much like that one that New Zealand recently adopted. Along with the steps being taken at the federal level, the provinces are at various stages in the process. The government in Quebec has proposed a similar MMP system for the province, a commission in PEI recomended the same system, BC has convened a Citizens Assembly, Ontario now has a Democratic Renewal Secretariat, and Saskatchewan and New Brunswick are considering changes as well. For more information visit Fair Vote Canada.
posted by Octaviuz on Apr 26, 2004 - 25 comments

The Alexandria Declaration. Between March 14 and 17, 2004, intellectuals, scholars, economists and activists from around the Arab world met at the new Alexandria Library in Egypt for the Arab Reform Conference. Among the recommendations of the conference was that all Arab governments should ratify "all international conventions on the rights of women providing for the abolition of all forms of discrimination against them."
posted by Ty Webb on Mar 29, 2004 - 5 comments

Is media reform a pipe dream? Schechter: "One email I received recently asked: "What do we do when our TV and newspapers tell us lies but insist we should regard this information as truth? What do we do when the vast majority of people in our society accepts these lies as truths and ridicule us when we call these statements lies?""
posted by skallas on Jan 2, 2004 - 48 comments

The Simplified Spelling Society. Finally, a cause I can really get behind. More.
posted by srboisvert on Jun 9, 2003 - 63 comments

Is the U.S. suffocating reform in Iran? "'Despite sporadic verbal concern with the condition of human rights in Iran, the U.S. is protecting and providing clandestine support to the right-wing conservatives in Iran,' says Sayed Ali Asghar Gharavi, a member of the banned but tolerated Iran Freedom Movement (IFM), the country’s leading opposition party. 'The U.S. government in no way favors the coming to power of the reformist groups in Iran and is secretly supporting the religious conservatives.' Government insiders in Iran allege that the deal, first proffered by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, is simple: If the hard-liners quietly support the United States in Iraq, Washington will quietly support them. U.S. State Department officials declined to comment." It seems unlikely that the Bush administration would side with the mullahs, but considering the U.S.'s troubled history with Iranian democracy, it's not inconceivable. Perhaps this is why Michael Ledeen's cries of alarm aren't being heeded.
posted by homunculus on Feb 6, 2003 - 25 comments

Let the people decide. There's lot's of initiatives trying to push Direct Democracy, like Philadelphia II, as a solution to all of the problems inherent in the political process. A few places like Switzerland, ancient Athens, and some New England towns already have it that way. A lot of them want electronic and phone voting to pave the way. Is it possible, or was Machiavelli right to believe that politics is best left to the politicians. That's what the electoral college is for.
posted by destro on Nov 10, 2002 - 39 comments

It seems likely that we'll be hearing a lot more about tort reform, especially medical malpractice tort reform, over the next couple years. Sadly, many don't even know exactly what a tort is, let alone how the tort system works, although most have heard about individual lawsuits through the media. Conservatives tend to focus on capping damages, reigning in juries, and allowing businesses to contract out of tort liability. Liberals generally oppose these proposals, and some have a few ideas about reform as well. Of course, we could always follow the example of New Zealand and scrap the tort system altogether. Maybe the Supreme Court will give the GOP some suggestions about reform in their latest tort case.
posted by boltman on Nov 7, 2002 - 32 comments

If You Want to Talk About Class Warfare... Molly Ivins gives it to 'em: Some days, you have to believe that right-wing ideologues have lost touch with reality completely. Their latest proposal to prevent future Enrons is - ta-da! - cut the capital gains tax. And exactly what does that do to prevent future Enrons? Nothing.
posted by Ty Webb on Aug 15, 2002 - 9 comments

Government admits spying on drug reform advocates. Not to be snide, but why are these people even surprised? You can't even get photocopies made these days without being ratted out.
posted by tankboy on Mar 18, 2002 - 15 comments

House set to vote on campaign finance reform It would be the biggest overhaul of the nation's campaign finance laws since Watergate. "We should win it," Shays, R-Conn., said Monday. "We've had the votes in the past and, frankly, I think our cause is just." Some people are against it.
posted by kliuless on Feb 12, 2002 - 30 comments

The No Child Left Behind Act is probably the most sweeping educational reform to pass in a long time and it seems to be pretty bipartisan in its content, it passed the Senate today and Bush will be signing it into law. Holy cow, have the politicians done something right for a change?
posted by owillis on Dec 18, 2001 - 30 comments

Patient confidentiality vs. cancer research. New rules on patient confidentiality prevent "research that recognises dangerous side effects of treatments and it would prevent research that would recognise avoidable causes of diseases and death. " What is more important: 'medical progress' or 'your medical file'?
posted by nonharmful on May 19, 2001 - 2 comments

The House has passed the bankruptcy reform bill that Clinton vetoed at the end of the last session. I'm mildly optimistic that it won't pass the Senate, given that the Democratic vote in the House was split. But should we be worried at all? At first glance, it doesn't seem like a bad idea. But so many consumer groups are against it, and it seems to benefit credit card companies while hurting individuals, so I'm inclined to think we should leave things as-is. Especially since personal bankruptcies are down and credit card issuers' profits are up. Anyone know more about this?
posted by aaron on Mar 1, 2001 - 7 comments

Bezos and O'Reilly teamed up with a new approach at Patent reform. And if you can prove someone else had this idea first, they will give you $14k.
posted by th3ph17 on Oct 19, 2000 - 0 comments

Those following British politics know that there is a serious push towards reform of the House of Lords. The Royal Commission on Reform has HM Government's complete plan for reform. Also online is the current bill, House of Lords Bill.
posted by tdecius on Sep 21, 1999 - 0 comments