July 12, 2007 Issue
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Classified Chestnut Hill Local Online Editor Don't Miss an Issue, Tell us what you see or Winner of Two |
Opinion
A hot summer started to look like it was going to get a lot hotter on Monday. After weeks of threats, an impasse over the state budget triggered a partial shutdown that closed driver’s license centers, state parks and kept thousands of “non-critical” state workers home. (Of course, state liquor stores and casinos stayed open, showing that we do indeed have a keen eye for what really is critical in PA.) Monday night, however, the showdown was over. A deal was announced at 11:00 p.m. Everybody would be back to work. Everything would be open. The shutdown was the work of Gov. Ed Rendell who promised to let the state close if he did not get a deal on a number of things he was asking for, including an ambitious energy plan, funding for public transportation and a smoking ban. Many so-called political insiders have offered, in print, the opinion that Rendell misread the political landscape. In Tuesday morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer, oft-cited analyst G. Terry Madonna, political science professor at Franklin and Marshall College, said, “I think he underestimated the backlash from the pay hike. This is an anti-pay-hike legislature, with 55 new members, new leaders in three out of the four caucuses. In the past, he could trade for things — he’d give the Republicans what they wanted and get what he wanted. But these Republicans won’t go there.” The thinking is that fiscally responsible, reform-minded Democrats and Republicans who were swept into office following the 2005 pay-hike fiasco would not allow Rendell to raise taxes or spending for his agenda, regardless of the merits of the ideas behind them. Also quoted in the Inquirer was Sen. Gib (that’s short for Gibson) Armstrong (R., Lancaster), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “Republicans stood fast,” he said. “We achieved something that in February I didn’t think was possible.” Republicans stood strong; Rendell didn’t win this one. As a long-time political observer in Philadelphia, where Rendell seemed to have a nearly magical ability to make right political decisions, it’s hard to imagine him making a big blunder. Particularly when you look at the results: Rendell did not get his smoking ban, and his energy plan was put on hold but he did get what he called “a historic transportation agreement” that will provide $900 million in new funding every year for highways and public transportation from tolls on Interstate 80 and bonds. If the plan can indeed provide SEPTA with some relief and fend off disastrous fare hikes, it will be a pretty big victory for Rendell, a victory that will likely not hurt his popularity in southeast Pennsylvania (where most of the votes are.) Perhaps, Rendell wasn’t thinking politically, though (also, I understand, hard to imagine). He hasn’t announced intentions to run for political office when his second and final term as governor is up. Maybe he was just doing the right thing… Until he announces a bid to run against Arlen Specter, we won’t know for certain. Pete Mazzaccaro
Vacation: Not What to Wear, What to Read … We drove to Montreal for a long weekend, timed to coincide with the Jazz Festival and Canada Day. I’m usually a capable packer, but this year, in a fit of derring-do that backfired, I took only one book with me. I’d counted on buying books as I ambled about that lovely and very walkable city. That was a mistake. There was no need to pack lightly. We were driving. In the past we’d taken Amtrak’s Adirondack Special up the Hudson Valley, along Lake Champlain and across the Saint Lawrence. In theory, an ideal way to travel. Romantic. Unstressed. Time to read, watch scenery. A great American tradition. Except the trains are run by Amtrak. They’re always late. The employees snarl and begrudge assisting. Returning, the train gets into New York on average two and a half hours late making us miss our connecting train to Philadelphia. But here’s the real problem: I cannot read on a train. The clickety-clack may be a soothing sound but the train pitches, yaws, and vibrates so vigorously I feel like I’m resting my book against a jackhammer while I try to read. Within an hour, the toilets are already filthy. Near the border in Cantic, Quebec, there is an almost two-hour customs delay. Coming back, the customs stop is Rouses Point, N. Y., and it’s equally slow, tedious, tense and time-consuming. So this year, for the first time, we drove. Going north took 11 hours, partly because we made the mistake of leaving on a Friday, mostly because a highway accident in the Catskills stopped traffic. We crept along for an hour and a half outside Poughkeepsie and moved only one mile closer to Montreal. At home I had left 12 promising books from the Free Library of Philadelphia queued and waiting for me. I wanted to bring one book only and buy the rest in Canada. I decided to try an author recommended in a recent New Yorker article. Andrea Camilleri is a Sicilian who writes of small town crimes and criminals in his country. His sleuth is the cunning Inspector Salvo Montalbano. Generally, I don’t regard mystery books as a good use of reading time. I can nearly always detect the author deliberately creating the mysterious shadows that move across the page. This problem, not wanting to read a book that doesn’t seem “true,” or “real,” is common to many readers. Often they bypass fiction altogether. I sympathize. A false note with dialogue, a too-cute plot twist, or a bogus narrator will prompt me to quit a work of fiction, especially a mystery, within 25 pages. However, an author’s mastery of place can captivate me. Andrea Camilleri, in his The Shape of Water, intrigued me with his behind-the-scenes views of small-town Sicilian manners and mores — “ … people who spoke an incomprehensible dialect consisting not so much of words as of silences, indecipherable movements of the eyebrows, imperceptible puckerings of the facial wrinklings.” The troubles began the first night. We had a great dinner, walked around Saint Catherine Street and Sherbrooke Boulevard and returned to the hotel. I started reading The Shape of Water and didn’t stop till I finished at 2 a.m. A good read. But then, as I turned out the light, the most awful thought a reader can have hit me: I have nothing to read for tomorrow. Like a junkie enjoying tonight’s buzz, but knowing he has to find tomorrow’s fix, my mind would not rest. I yearned for the glorious stack of books beside my bed back home, a mere 500 miles away. Well, Hugh, you might say, just rouse yourself early and go buy a book. Sounds easy, but Montreal is French-speaking. Though nearly everyone who lives there is bilingual, I am not. English language bookstores are decidedly in the minority. Saturday. We drive to a suburb named Saint Eustache to browse what we’ve been told is the biggest flea market in Quebec — Mathers Parc Cine, a converted drive-in cinema. St-Eustache, they said, is about 20 to 30 minutes away. We’ll assure the next person in line that it took an hour of driving highly congested freeways. The flea market is huge and arranged like a chambered nautilus that spirals out and away from a mere half dozen dealers carrying older, collectible things. I spent a pleasant ten minutes thumbing through a tray of old studio photographs and bought three. That was my only purchase. For the next four hours we walked under a hot sun admiring the wonders, once again, of how things are reincarnated at flea markets. Tops for the day was a pair of thick, almost obese, prosthetic limbs, the old full-leg kind that would come up to a person’s hips. We saw books, but mostly of the Jackie Collins-type — in French. I wondered if anything marked this flea market as distinct from U.S. ones. The ubiquitous country music one always hears at country markets echoed from many booths, with very few songs in Canadian French. The browsers were regular working people, blue collar, not at all chic, even the young. Like the U.S., most flea market vendors are selling new merchandise. Socks, T-shirts, flowers, cheap cutlery, gaudy jewelry, tools, shirts and CDs. Like the U.S., the most common used merchandise was simply used versions of the items just mentioned. Wonderfully enough, I saw no one wearing T-shirts with USA-style messages of profanity, implied violence or political urgency. One boy of about 10 was wearing an Iverson 76ers shirt, which seemed odd in the setting. Equally surprising was a disheveled man decked out in a Terrell Owens Eagles long-sleeved jersey, good old number 81 now going long in Saint Eustache, Quebec. Back to the hotel. Dinner. Everything closed in most shopping streets because Canada Day is tomorrow. We walk the streets. No bookshops on the streets we chose. Saturday night. No book. Desperate, I re-read the Montreal street guide. Sleep comes mercifully soon to “knitteth up the ravelled sleeve of care.” Sunday. Canada Day. Forget it. Nothing’s open except the tattoo parlor on Saint Catherine. This would be a good week to start kicking the reading habit and turn on the telly I’m sure is hiding behind that mahogany console that also shelters the mini-bar. No, we’ll go visit Ex Libris Books on Cote De Neiges. Always a good place to spend a few hours. By luck, Mr. Campbell, the proprietor, is present. I buy a shopping bag’s worth of books, all used or rare, nothing I particularly want to read. This shop does not carry the sort of book I’m in the mood for reading on this vacation. That evening, we wander the street portion of the jazz festival for hours. Warm, light rain falls briefly every now and then, adding to the charm. Although they sell beer, I see no clusters of young men walking the streets looking to clobber someone. The cultural diversity, the good manners, and the fashionable chic of the crowd are so extensive and so seemingly taken for granted, that the charm of an already-dazzling city is heightened. No books though. After enjoying the music and crowd and another evening’s walk home, we return to the hotel. I read a brochure about St. Lawrence River tours and rock myself to sleep. Monday. Still a national holiday. We drive out to Outrement, a neighborhood near Mont Royal and walk to a used book store we’d noted in the phone directory. The store offers mostly English language used books. The clerk is on the phone when we walk in, talking loudly and a bit too personally to a friend. When visiting a bookshop I nearly always make a courtesy purchase to help a dying trade. I browse a while. Nothing tempts me. The clerk’s phone chatter is annoying me. I leave empty-handed, though I fear a bookless evening awaits. On the way back to the hotel we glance a shop sign that says Librairie something. Hit the brakes, find parking, walk down into the store. Charming, crammed like Philadelphia’s Joseph Fox Books with wonderful, tasteful, interesting new books. Except, everywhere I look, French, French, French. I know better than to visit a foreign country and expect to find books in my own language, but I was hoping. C’est la vie. That night, still book bereft, I read the Montreal Gazette cover-to-cover. Mercifully, sleep came shortly afterward. The following morning we drove home. Waiting beside my bed were my books. I looked at them and wondered if I should keep my negative momentum going. I’d managed three nights without a bedtime story. Wasn’t easy, but now I’m convinced I can quit anytime. Maybe tomorrow. Hugh can be reached at Gilmorebooks@yahoo.com.
Opinion: Sicko Sicko, Michael Moore’s new movie, does an excellent job in dramatizing some of the shameful inadequacies of America’s healthcare system but it says little about what we must do to correct them. We must now move beyond vague talk of “single payer” and “universal coverage” and begin to confirm the specific architecture of a more fair and equitable healthcare service. Here are some obvious guidelines: Everyone must share in the cost. The central problem with our 46 million uninsured is not that they go without care. They get lots of it from the most expensive system in the world, but it’s the rest of us who pay for it. And it’s not only our lower income citizens who are uninsured. Most of our uninsured are the unemployed and the younger members of our middle class who figure they’re healthy and gamble on coverage. Consider the college graduate in his first job who is pondering the choice between monthly payments for health insurance or a new car. There must be a universal, compulsory system with premiums based on ability to pay as an integral component of our federal income tax. Yes, this will be a tax increase, but it will be primarily instead of, not in addition to, the premiums we now pay to private insurance companies. The only true cost increase will be for the 46 million of us who have been “free loading” the system all along. With everyone contributing, premiums should go down for those who have been paying for those who have not. Phase employers out of the system. The only reason employers are in the health insurance business is World War II, when the government imposed strict controls on wage increases but put no limitations on “fringes.” I was in the labor movement at the time and we spent many happy days negotiating health insurance and pension plans for our members. Big mistake. There are gross inequities in healthcare insurance among industries, even among companies within industries and there is no portability of coverage from firm to firm. Low-paid employees in the retail and service industries are lucky to have any coverage at all. More important, employers are under no obligation to provide health insurance in the first place, and despite union contracts, are free to terminate it as they choose, even for retirees, as General Motors, United, US Airways and others are doing now. Further, the employer costs of these plans are obviously passed along to all of us. The average price of a new GM car now includes $1,200 for employee healthcare coverage. Build on our existing public-private partnership. Forget about “single payer.” That’s “socialized medicine” and it will never fly politically. (Remember the “Harry and Louise” ads?) Further, it makes no sense, financially or operationally, to try to replace the multi-billion dollar infrastructure now managed by Blue Cross, Aetna and the other private insurance companies. More to the point, the healthcare lobby will never let that happen even if it did. This may come as a surprise to some, but a government healthcare system of universal, compulsory coverage built on existing working partnerships with providers and insurers is already in place. It’s called Medicare, America’s largest, most successful and universally accepted human service program. Let’s expand that system incrementally to cover everyone, beginning with children, who are now the most at-risk among the currently uninsured. In that way, (a) all of us will be equally entitled to care, (b) consumer choice among private providers and insurers will be retained, (c) the per-capital cost of healthcare should go down, (d) employer costs and consumer prices should also be reduced and (e) private insurance companies will be able to expand into a huge new market of some 46 million enrollees. Why can’t we do this?
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