PSN Op-Eds

With two landmark health care reform bills now on her desk, Gov. M. Jodi Rell has to decide whose side she is on -- small businesses and families struggling under the weight of high health care costs, or the state's health insurance industry, which has a big stake in preserving the costly status quo. Will she allow precedent-setting health care reforms to proceed, or will she, for the second year in a row, be the "Governor of No"?

Now more than ever, we need a rational and respectful dialogue about how to fix our country’s broken immigration system. But comments like Texas Representative Betty Brown’s recent assertion that legal Chinese American immigrants should adopt Anglophone names that are “easier for Americans to deal with” represents precisely the kind of divisive rhetoric that will keep us from such a levelheaded debate.

Brown’s callous suggestion that Chinese American citizens are not American is symptomatic of the veiled bigotry that underlies much of the immigration debate across the nation. It also begs the question of why state legislators across the country would want to associate with the organization that Brown helped found to propagate racially divisive policies.

In order to comply with new transparency requirements under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, state governments across the country are scrambling to report to the public how they spend recovery dollars. Unfortunately, no existing state government Web sites that are accounting for the recovery funds report the number of jobs created by private contractors. Without such data, the sites are close to meaningless.

Fortunately, Oregon is leading an effort to require contractors to report the number of jobs they create, as well as the hours worked and wages received by their employees. These proposed requirements would ensure Oregonians' tax money actually goes toward creating quality jobs.

If you've been following the presidential campaign the last few weeks, you've probably caught a glimpse of John McCain going on one of his well-rehearsed rants about the community organizing group ACORN and how its voter registration campaigns may amount to "one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country."

In this year's presidential primary, 1.7 million Massachusetts voters cast a ballot. That's over a million more than the number that voted in the 2004 primary. Such an increase in turnout is unprecedented in the state, and similar increases took place in states throughout the country. What made for such a jaw-dropping surge in democratic participation? The answer is simple: people in every state felt their voice mattered. Wouldn't it be great if Massachusetts voters felt that way in November as well?

Everyone knows that individuals and small employers face crushing health insurance costs when they try to buy coverage on their own. But state legislators in Hartford are about to take a simple yet far-reaching step to address the problem. By allowing municipalities and small businesses to buy into the group plan currently provided to state employees, the recently introduced Connecticut Healthcare Partnership would give working families the clout they need to negotiate a better deal for health insurance.

Turn on the news or open up the paper, and you'll read countless stories about how families and small businesses in Colorado are being hit hard by everything from rising gas prices to home foreclosures to the cost of health care. It seems like every sector of the economy is in trouble except, perhaps, the health care industry and health insurance companies in particular. They've never had it so good.

With toxic toys flooding American markets and with corporate and federal leaders doing little to address the crisis, it's time for Connecticut to stand up with other states and say enough is enough. The General Assembly will get a chance to do just that when the Act Banning Children's Products Containing Lead, Phthalates, or Bisphenol-A comes up for a vote. It should jump on the chance.

Everyone knows that individuals and small employers face crushing health insurance costs when they try to buy coverage on their own. But state legislators in Hartford are about to take a simple yet far-reaching step to address the problem.

By allowing municipalities and small businesses to buy into the group plan currently provided to state employees, the recently introduced Connecticut Healthcare Partnership would give working families the clout they need to negotiate a better deal for health insurance.

Published in the Baltimore Sun
March 6, 2008