It costs too much to be poor. Percentage of those earning $75,000 or more whose employers offer health insurance: 83. Of those earning $25,000 or less: 26 (Kids Count, published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation).
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Last May, 24 Illinois state senators voted against their governor, Chicago mayoral brother William Daley, and the SBC lobbying machine when it steamrolled the legislature and Governor Blagojevich into passing SB 885. According to the Citizens Utility Board (“CUB Voice,” Summer), the law “dramatically rewrites the state’s telephone laws in a way that could have negative, long-term effects for Illinois consumers” by making it harder for other companies to compete with SBC for local phone service. Michigan U.S. representative John Conyers called the bill a “national embarrassment,” and it’s now on hold pending judicial review. Voting against it were 17 Republicans: downstaters John Jones, David Luechtefeld, Dale Risinger, Dan Rutherford, Todd Sieben, Dave Syverson, and Frank Watson; and suburbanites Pamela Althoff, J. Bradley Burzynski, Dan Cronin, Wendell Jones, Chris Lauzen, William Peterson, Edward Petka, Steve Rauschenberger, Peter Roskam, and Dave Sullivan. Seven Democrats also voted against the bill: downstaters Bill Brady, John Sullivan, and Patrick Welch; suburbanite Susan Garrett; and Chicagoans Barack Obama, Carol Ronen, and Ira Silverstein.
Hey, we won! I think. “Marriage was once thought to be about a social union; it is now about personal preferences,” writes sociologist James Q. Wilson in “Family Ministry” (Spring), quoted in Martin Marty’s newsletter “Context” (August 15). “Formerly, law and opinion enforced the desirability of marriage without asking what went on in that union; today, law and opinion enforce the desirability of personal happiness without worrying much about maintaining a formal relationship. Marriage was once a sacrament, then it became a contract, and now it is an arrangement. Once religion provided the sacrament, then the law enforced the contract, and now personal preferences define the arrangement.”
