By MARSHA MERCER
For a politician, nothing is worse than yanking away someone’s benefits in an election year.
It’s always easier to give than to take away, even if the budget is strained or the goodies are part of a health care reform law many Americans love to hate. It’s fine to hate a law as long as it’s in place, however tenuously.
With the Supreme Court expected to rule on the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, by the end of June, the scariest word in politics is If.
If the court overturns the law, what then?
The court has many options, and the consequences are uncertain. It could blow up the entire law, although most analysts think not. It could scrap the “individual mandate,” which requires almost all Americans to have medical insurance by 2014 or pay a financial penalty, and leave the rest of the law intact. It could strike the mandate and other provisions as well. It could let the law stand, as is.
Americans by substantial margins say they favor repeal, mostly because of the hated mandate. No matter that only 7 percent of Americans actually would be required to buy insurance and 93 percent would be covered through employer-sponsored plans and other exemptions, according to a study the Urban Institute released in March. The idea that Congress can compel the purchase goes against some grains.
At the same time, people love allowing children under 26 to stay on their parents’ insurance plans, closing the “donut hole” that requires some seniors on Medicare to pay more for their medications, and ensuring that people with pre-existing medical conditions get coverage.
The White House’s official position is that the court will uphold the law, so it’s making no contingency plans. Congressional Republicans have managed so far to play to both sides.
The Republican majority in the House has voted 29 times to repeal the law, knowing that the votes are all theater because the Senate would never go along. The Republicans insist they intend to “replace” the law but never explain which provisions they’ll keep beyond the most popular, including children under 26.
How the court’s ruling may affect health care is anybody’s guess, but the politics are clear. Come November, no one running for office wants to explain to the parents of a jobless college grad that their son is going to lose his health insurance.
No politician wants to tell Grandma she has to dig a little deeper for her meds or that her grandchild with a pre-existing condition may lose coverage because insurance companies can again deny coverage.
No one wants to tell some 32 million people near the poverty line who were in line for coverage under Medicaid that they won’t be covered after all.
The court could leave all this up to Congress to sort out. And that would put House Speaker John Boehner in a ticklish spot, trying to win House seats while appeasing the Tea Party set.
News reports say Boehner is quietly making plans for the Republicans’ next step, post-Supreme Court. He told the House Republican Conference behind closed doors Wednesday, “When the court rules, we’ll be ready,” Politico reported, relying on tidbits gleaned from those in attendance.
“If all or part of the law is struck down, we are not going to repeat the Democrats’ mistakes,” Boehner told his party, according to Politico. “We have better ideas on health care – lots of them. We have solutions, of course, for patients with pre-existing conditions and other challenges.”
Really? Let us see the solutions.
Ah, but that was in private. A day later, for public consumption on his House speaker blog, Boehner declared, “Anything Short of Full ObamaCare Repeal is Unacceptable.”
Once the court rules, Boehner said, the House will “work on step-by-step, common-sense legislation that will help lower health care costs for families and small businesses, and protect American jobs.”
It was a familiar refrain. He didn’t say what any of those steps might be.
It’s spring, and politicians tremble for what may come this summer. If the court overturns…
© 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Family values, fundraising, fairness -- and Obama's stance on same-sex marriage -- May 10, 2012 column
By MARSHA MERCER
To those who were shocked, shocked to hear that campaign politics might have figured into President Barack Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, I have bad news. It was ever thus.
Obama fired off a fundraising email the day after he said he personally supports same-sex marriage. Unseemly, yes, but hardly surprising. Political strategizing has been at the heart of the war over marriage equality since the Defense of Marriage Act was a glimmer in Bob Dole’s eye 16 years ago.
As President Bill Clinton ran for re-election in 1996, Dole, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, co-sponsored the Senate bill that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
Dole wanted to stir the “family values” pot, but Clinton grabbed the spoon.
As Dole shepherded the bill banning same-sex marriage through Congress, with the help of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the White House announced that yes, indeed, Clinton would sign it. And in September he did so, ignoring the outrage of gay supporters. The re-election campaign soon ran ads on Christian radio stations, lauding the president for fighting for “our values.”
Clinton sanded the edges off what Dole had hoped would be a wedge issue in that campaign. But the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, lives as the law of the land. Obama disavowed DOMA and has refused to defend it in court – but the law still blocks thousands of lawfully wedded same-sex couples from receiving benefits available to heterosexual couples. We’ve yet to hear how Obama proposes to change that.
In 1996, no state had legalized same-sex marriage. Today, six states and the District of Columbia permit it, but under DOMA no state must recognize same-sex marriages that are performed in another state.
Section 3 of the law specifies that for federal purposes ``the word `marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or wife.”
The law effectively cuts out same-sex married couples from more than 1,100 federal benefits, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people.
Married same-sex couples cannot file joint tax returns, take unpaid family leave, receive surviving spouse benefits under Social Security or receive family health and pension benefits as federal civilian employees.
Obama told Robin Roberts of ABC News Wednesday that, “For me, personally, it is important…to go ahead and affirm that I think that same-sex couples should be able to get married.” But he dodged questions about what he will actually do, saying the issue should be left to the states.
A day earlier, North Carolina became the 30th state to ban same-sex marriage, reinforcing current law with a constitutional amendment.
It’s difficult to imagine how Obama can stick to the stance that his views are merely personal when he says fairness and justice are at stake. He stood for fairness when he backed repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the policy that prevented gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military.
The main rationale for not defending DOMA in the courts was Obama’s determination that the law was unconstitutional, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. wrote House Speaker John A. Boehner in February 2011. Nevertheless, law is law, and the president ordered his attorney general to continue enforcing it.
House Republicans hired a lawyer to defend the law in the courts.
The Supreme Court likely will decide the issues at some point. For now, Obama has a campaign to run and pay for. One in six of his top bundlers, who have brought in $500,000 or more, have publicly identified themselves as gay, The Washington Post reported.
Obama is trying to walk a line between voters with strong feelings. He stressed in the ABC interview that he deeply respects pastors and others who believe in traditional marriage, and he indicated that same-sex marriage isn’t a current priority.
“I’m not gonna be spending most of my time talking about this, because, frankly, my job as president right now, my biggest priority, is to make sure that we’re growing the economy, that we’re putting people back to work, that we’re managing the draw-down in Afghanistan effectively,” he said.
But he’s not shy about using the issue to bring in campaign cash. For now, Obama’s strategy is to describe himself as a practicing Christian who believes in the Golden Rule.
“Treat others the way you’d want to be treated,” he said before boarding Air Force One for a trip to the West Coast for fundraisers, where his support of same-sex marriage could boost his haul.
©2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
To those who were shocked, shocked to hear that campaign politics might have figured into President Barack Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, I have bad news. It was ever thus.
Obama fired off a fundraising email the day after he said he personally supports same-sex marriage. Unseemly, yes, but hardly surprising. Political strategizing has been at the heart of the war over marriage equality since the Defense of Marriage Act was a glimmer in Bob Dole’s eye 16 years ago.
As President Bill Clinton ran for re-election in 1996, Dole, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, co-sponsored the Senate bill that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
Dole wanted to stir the “family values” pot, but Clinton grabbed the spoon.
As Dole shepherded the bill banning same-sex marriage through Congress, with the help of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the White House announced that yes, indeed, Clinton would sign it. And in September he did so, ignoring the outrage of gay supporters. The re-election campaign soon ran ads on Christian radio stations, lauding the president for fighting for “our values.”
Clinton sanded the edges off what Dole had hoped would be a wedge issue in that campaign. But the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, lives as the law of the land. Obama disavowed DOMA and has refused to defend it in court – but the law still blocks thousands of lawfully wedded same-sex couples from receiving benefits available to heterosexual couples. We’ve yet to hear how Obama proposes to change that.
In 1996, no state had legalized same-sex marriage. Today, six states and the District of Columbia permit it, but under DOMA no state must recognize same-sex marriages that are performed in another state.
Section 3 of the law specifies that for federal purposes ``the word `marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or wife.”
The law effectively cuts out same-sex married couples from more than 1,100 federal benefits, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people.
Married same-sex couples cannot file joint tax returns, take unpaid family leave, receive surviving spouse benefits under Social Security or receive family health and pension benefits as federal civilian employees.
Obama told Robin Roberts of ABC News Wednesday that, “For me, personally, it is important…to go ahead and affirm that I think that same-sex couples should be able to get married.” But he dodged questions about what he will actually do, saying the issue should be left to the states.
A day earlier, North Carolina became the 30th state to ban same-sex marriage, reinforcing current law with a constitutional amendment.
It’s difficult to imagine how Obama can stick to the stance that his views are merely personal when he says fairness and justice are at stake. He stood for fairness when he backed repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the policy that prevented gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the military.
The main rationale for not defending DOMA in the courts was Obama’s determination that the law was unconstitutional, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. wrote House Speaker John A. Boehner in February 2011. Nevertheless, law is law, and the president ordered his attorney general to continue enforcing it.
House Republicans hired a lawyer to defend the law in the courts.
The Supreme Court likely will decide the issues at some point. For now, Obama has a campaign to run and pay for. One in six of his top bundlers, who have brought in $500,000 or more, have publicly identified themselves as gay, The Washington Post reported.
Obama is trying to walk a line between voters with strong feelings. He stressed in the ABC interview that he deeply respects pastors and others who believe in traditional marriage, and he indicated that same-sex marriage isn’t a current priority.
“I’m not gonna be spending most of my time talking about this, because, frankly, my job as president right now, my biggest priority, is to make sure that we’re growing the economy, that we’re putting people back to work, that we’re managing the draw-down in Afghanistan effectively,” he said.
But he’s not shy about using the issue to bring in campaign cash. For now, Obama’s strategy is to describe himself as a practicing Christian who believes in the Golden Rule.
“Treat others the way you’d want to be treated,” he said before boarding Air Force One for a trip to the West Coast for fundraisers, where his support of same-sex marriage could boost his haul.
©2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
The fight against fat: You ain't seen nothin' yet -- May 3, 2012 column
By MARSHA MERCER
Few things rattle the Obama haters more than first lady Michelle Obama’s efforts to reduce childhood obesity.
For some conservative pundits, any government effort to encourage Americans to eat less and move more is an attack on personal freedom. They fulminate on the nanny state, busybodies and the food police, as in, how dare they tell me to put down my salty-fatty-sugary treat and go for a walk?
And they especially resent the first lady’s “Let’s Move!” initiative.
Perhaps that’s because unlike most people in Washington, she actually gets things done.
Mrs. Obama announced last fall that the parent company of Olive Garden and Red Lobster has agreed to add healthier choices for children by this July and to reduce sodium and fat 10 percent in five years and 20 percent over 10 years. Darden Restaurants is the country’s largest full-service restaurant chain, serving 400 million meals a year.
She also persuaded retail giant Wal-Mart to reformulate thousands of packaged foods by 2015, reducing sodium 25 percent and added sugars 10 percent and by removing remaining trans fats. Wal-Mart also agreed to reduce the cost of fruits and vegetables.
If the planet’s biggest retailer demands packaged food with lower sodium and sugar, producers will comply and make changes across the board. We all could benefit.
Life is about to get a lot more annoying for the french-fries-are-my-friend crowd. More companies are charging penalties or higher insurance rates for employees who smoke and are overweight. About 40 percent of medium-sized and large companies reportedly plan to start charging penalties this year.
PepsiCo -- the company that brings us such health foods as Cheetos, Doritos, Fritos, Lay’s, Ruffles and Tostitos chips, as well as Pepsi and Mountain Dew – is charging employees who smoke or have weight-related health problems like hypertension or diabetes $50 a month.
Workers who agree to participate in programs to stop smoking or manage their conditions don’t have to fork over the pictures of Ulysses S. Grant.
Angry Teamsters at a bottling plant in upstate New York complained to the National Labor Relations Board, which is negotiating with the company on the workers’ behalf.
And there’s more bad news for those who want to be left alone with their Twinkies: It will be hard for anyone to miss the government’s new multimedia campaign against obesity.
Four documentaries aimed at turning the obesity epidemic around will air May 14 and 15 on HBO. “The Weight of the Nation” films are a collaboration of HBO and the Institute of Medicine in association with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.
There’s also a companion book, a three-part HBO Family series, a dozen short films, a website, a presence on Twitter and Facebook and outreach to more than 40,000 community organizations.
A two-day Weight of the Nation public health conference opens Monday in Washington. Plus, the Advertising Council and Clear Channel Media and Entertainment have launched a three-month series of radio ads about childhood obesity on 850 radio stations.
Some argue that Americans already know what to do to lose weight. It’s certainly true that the federal government has been urging healthy eating and exercise for decades. And it’s also just possible that the obesity crisis has peaked. Obesity rates in children and adults appear to have leveled off after steadily rising for 20 years.
Still, about 36 percent of adults and 17 percent of children are obese, according to the CDC. Even if obesity rates stop climbing, we’ll suffer with associated health issues for decades. The rate of type 2 diabetes in children – the condition that used to be called adult-onset diabetes – has soared. The CDC estimates that obesity contributes to about 112,000 deaths annually.
Michelle Obama should be commended, not criticized, for planting a garden at the White House, making exercise cool, borrowing the presidential bully pulpit – and admitting that she, like millions of Americans, has a fondness for french fries.
“I don’t believe in absolute ‘no’s’ to anything, because that wouldn’t make life fun,” she told an 11-year-old reporter for Scholastic News.
But we don’t have to say yes all the time either.
30
Few things rattle the Obama haters more than first lady Michelle Obama’s efforts to reduce childhood obesity.
For some conservative pundits, any government effort to encourage Americans to eat less and move more is an attack on personal freedom. They fulminate on the nanny state, busybodies and the food police, as in, how dare they tell me to put down my salty-fatty-sugary treat and go for a walk?
And they especially resent the first lady’s “Let’s Move!” initiative.
Perhaps that’s because unlike most people in Washington, she actually gets things done.
Mrs. Obama announced last fall that the parent company of Olive Garden and Red Lobster has agreed to add healthier choices for children by this July and to reduce sodium and fat 10 percent in five years and 20 percent over 10 years. Darden Restaurants is the country’s largest full-service restaurant chain, serving 400 million meals a year.
She also persuaded retail giant Wal-Mart to reformulate thousands of packaged foods by 2015, reducing sodium 25 percent and added sugars 10 percent and by removing remaining trans fats. Wal-Mart also agreed to reduce the cost of fruits and vegetables.
If the planet’s biggest retailer demands packaged food with lower sodium and sugar, producers will comply and make changes across the board. We all could benefit.
Life is about to get a lot more annoying for the french-fries-are-my-friend crowd. More companies are charging penalties or higher insurance rates for employees who smoke and are overweight. About 40 percent of medium-sized and large companies reportedly plan to start charging penalties this year.
PepsiCo -- the company that brings us such health foods as Cheetos, Doritos, Fritos, Lay’s, Ruffles and Tostitos chips, as well as Pepsi and Mountain Dew – is charging employees who smoke or have weight-related health problems like hypertension or diabetes $50 a month.
Workers who agree to participate in programs to stop smoking or manage their conditions don’t have to fork over the pictures of Ulysses S. Grant.
Angry Teamsters at a bottling plant in upstate New York complained to the National Labor Relations Board, which is negotiating with the company on the workers’ behalf.
And there’s more bad news for those who want to be left alone with their Twinkies: It will be hard for anyone to miss the government’s new multimedia campaign against obesity.
Four documentaries aimed at turning the obesity epidemic around will air May 14 and 15 on HBO. “The Weight of the Nation” films are a collaboration of HBO and the Institute of Medicine in association with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.
There’s also a companion book, a three-part HBO Family series, a dozen short films, a website, a presence on Twitter and Facebook and outreach to more than 40,000 community organizations.
A two-day Weight of the Nation public health conference opens Monday in Washington. Plus, the Advertising Council and Clear Channel Media and Entertainment have launched a three-month series of radio ads about childhood obesity on 850 radio stations.
Some argue that Americans already know what to do to lose weight. It’s certainly true that the federal government has been urging healthy eating and exercise for decades. And it’s also just possible that the obesity crisis has peaked. Obesity rates in children and adults appear to have leveled off after steadily rising for 20 years.
Still, about 36 percent of adults and 17 percent of children are obese, according to the CDC. Even if obesity rates stop climbing, we’ll suffer with associated health issues for decades. The rate of type 2 diabetes in children – the condition that used to be called adult-onset diabetes – has soared. The CDC estimates that obesity contributes to about 112,000 deaths annually.
Michelle Obama should be commended, not criticized, for planting a garden at the White House, making exercise cool, borrowing the presidential bully pulpit – and admitting that she, like millions of Americans, has a fondness for french fries.
“I don’t believe in absolute ‘no’s’ to anything, because that wouldn’t make life fun,” she told an 11-year-old reporter for Scholastic News.
But we don’t have to say yes all the time either.
30
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Lonely Americans -- a high-tech problem? -- April 26, 2012 column
By MARSHA MERCER
Traveling solo as a newspaper reporter many years ago, I stopped at a café in Central City, Neb., on a Saturday night.
“We’ve had more lonely women eating here tonight,” the hostess announced in a flat, booming voice. I looked around, and the room was filled with couples.
“I’ll put you in the corner,” she said loudly. She felt sorry for me, but I was having the trip of my life, seeing America in a little red Nissan on the company dime.
It was hopeless in 1984 to try to explain the difference between traveling alone and traveling lonely – and it still is. Americans love independence and prize freedom. We fear and hate loneliness.
The Census Bureau’s report this week that “nonfamily households” – people living alone or with unmarried partners – jumped 16 percent from 2000 to 2010 prompted another wave of lamentation about our lonely society. A closer look revealed that households with people living alone rose just nine-tenth of 1 percent while unmarried partner households soared 41 percent during the decade, suggesting that people do still cuddle up.
We are knee-deep in books and articles about lonely Americans and the rise of social media. The Atlantic magazine stirred a predictable stew of anxiety with its May cover story, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” The answer from author Stephen Marche: not exactly.
“Loneliness is certainly not something that Facebook or Twitter or any of the lesser forms of social media are doing to us,” writes Marche. “We are doing it to ourselves.”
At the same time, “the more connected we become, the lonelier we are,” says Marche.
Nobody ever got poor telling Americans how miserable they are, but are we really that sad? Sociologist Claude S. Fischer at the University of California-Berkeley says reports of American loneliness are greatly exaggerated – and they’re nothing new.
While the headlines might indicate a loneliness epidemic, “we have received such diagnoses for generations,” Fischer wrote in Boston Review online. “The 1950s – the era of large families, crowded churches, and schmoozing suburbanites – brought us …the best-selling `The Lonely Crowd,’ which landed David Reisman on the cover of Time.”
Fischer debunks the idea that people have fewer close friends than ever. The 2004 General Social Survey that found that about 25 percent of Americans had no one with whom they discussed “important matters” – compared with only 8 percent in 1985 – reflected the way the questions were asked, not a dramatic decrease in closeness, he says.
As for blaming technology for declining sociability, the “Middletown” studies were all over that phenomenon in the early 20th century. In their 1929 book about life in Muncie, Ind., Helen and Robert Lynd reported “increasing isolation” and indications of “shallowing friendships.”
“The movie, the automobile and the radio” made men less dependent on friends in times of leisure, and women were more likely to talk to friends on the telephone than to see them at home, the Lynds wrote.
One woman told researchers, “I don’t see my friends at all…It was different with my mother. She and her friends were always in each other’s homes.” Another said, “I do very little visiting – mostly keep in touch with my friends by telephone.”
And those were the good old days. Substitute email or texting, and we could be talking about today. Someday concerns about our devices promoting isolation may seem just as quaint.
Worrying about technology makes us feel like victims of forces beyond our control. That could keep us from seeing – and reaching out – to the lonely people who live on our street, go to our school, or sit in the next cubicle.
The loneliness that should worry us, Fischer writes, is “the loneliness of the old man whose wife and best friends have died, the shunned schoolchild, the overburdened single mother, and the immigrant working the night shift to send money home.”
The hostess in that Nebraska café may have thought she was helping a lonely stranger by seating her off in a corner. But she was wrong. I wanted to hear her story and the life stories of the couples all around me.
©2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Traveling solo as a newspaper reporter many years ago, I stopped at a café in Central City, Neb., on a Saturday night.
“We’ve had more lonely women eating here tonight,” the hostess announced in a flat, booming voice. I looked around, and the room was filled with couples.
“I’ll put you in the corner,” she said loudly. She felt sorry for me, but I was having the trip of my life, seeing America in a little red Nissan on the company dime.
It was hopeless in 1984 to try to explain the difference between traveling alone and traveling lonely – and it still is. Americans love independence and prize freedom. We fear and hate loneliness.
The Census Bureau’s report this week that “nonfamily households” – people living alone or with unmarried partners – jumped 16 percent from 2000 to 2010 prompted another wave of lamentation about our lonely society. A closer look revealed that households with people living alone rose just nine-tenth of 1 percent while unmarried partner households soared 41 percent during the decade, suggesting that people do still cuddle up.
We are knee-deep in books and articles about lonely Americans and the rise of social media. The Atlantic magazine stirred a predictable stew of anxiety with its May cover story, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” The answer from author Stephen Marche: not exactly.
“Loneliness is certainly not something that Facebook or Twitter or any of the lesser forms of social media are doing to us,” writes Marche. “We are doing it to ourselves.”
At the same time, “the more connected we become, the lonelier we are,” says Marche.
Nobody ever got poor telling Americans how miserable they are, but are we really that sad? Sociologist Claude S. Fischer at the University of California-Berkeley says reports of American loneliness are greatly exaggerated – and they’re nothing new.
While the headlines might indicate a loneliness epidemic, “we have received such diagnoses for generations,” Fischer wrote in Boston Review online. “The 1950s – the era of large families, crowded churches, and schmoozing suburbanites – brought us …the best-selling `The Lonely Crowd,’ which landed David Reisman on the cover of Time.”
Fischer debunks the idea that people have fewer close friends than ever. The 2004 General Social Survey that found that about 25 percent of Americans had no one with whom they discussed “important matters” – compared with only 8 percent in 1985 – reflected the way the questions were asked, not a dramatic decrease in closeness, he says.
As for blaming technology for declining sociability, the “Middletown” studies were all over that phenomenon in the early 20th century. In their 1929 book about life in Muncie, Ind., Helen and Robert Lynd reported “increasing isolation” and indications of “shallowing friendships.”
“The movie, the automobile and the radio” made men less dependent on friends in times of leisure, and women were more likely to talk to friends on the telephone than to see them at home, the Lynds wrote.
One woman told researchers, “I don’t see my friends at all…It was different with my mother. She and her friends were always in each other’s homes.” Another said, “I do very little visiting – mostly keep in touch with my friends by telephone.”
And those were the good old days. Substitute email or texting, and we could be talking about today. Someday concerns about our devices promoting isolation may seem just as quaint.
Worrying about technology makes us feel like victims of forces beyond our control. That could keep us from seeing – and reaching out – to the lonely people who live on our street, go to our school, or sit in the next cubicle.
The loneliness that should worry us, Fischer writes, is “the loneliness of the old man whose wife and best friends have died, the shunned schoolchild, the overburdened single mother, and the immigrant working the night shift to send money home.”
The hostess in that Nebraska café may have thought she was helping a lonely stranger by seating her off in a corner. But she was wrong. I wanted to hear her story and the life stories of the couples all around me.
©2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
`Hopefully' fought the law -- and won. Now what? -- April 19, 2012 column
By MARSHA MERCER
The bad news came in a tweet.
“Hopefully, you will appreciate this style update…We now support modern usage of hopefully: it’s hoped, we hope.”
The message couldn’t have upset the grammar police more had the Associated Press’s Stylebook instead said that we now find starting a sentence with “me and him” or describing something as “very unique” acceptable.
My immediate reaction: You can have “we hope” when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Wrong is wrong, I grumped. Hopefully means in a hopeful way, as in, he hopefully began his audition. Not, we hope, as in, hopefully the Nats will win the World Series.
Is using hopefully wrong a modern phenomenon? Undeniably. So is hearing little children spout words that once would have earned a mouthful of soap. Hearing something frequently doesn’t make it right.
I know, I know, far more important changes take place in society every day. But I’m a purist, if not a word prude, an English major. Like a Marine, once an English major, always an English major. Most people don’t keep dictionaries in almost every room of their home. Most people lead happy, productive lives misusing hopefully, in the modern way.
The AP Stylebook calls itself the journalist’s bible, and it’s the law in matters of spelling, word usage and punctuation for most newspapers and many other publications. If it says to spell out whole numbers below 10 and figures for 10 and above, journalists do. In March 2011, the stylebook decreed that henceforth we would omit the hyphen in email -- but keep it in e-commerce and e-book. That was a big day.
But hopefully? Stylebook editors tried to hold the line, reminding writers and editors in a 2009 tweet: "`Hopefully’ means in a hopeful manner. Do not use it to mean it is hoped, let us hope or we hope.”
That fine distinction vanished this week. Several major dictionaries have acknowledged the new usage, and the AP decided it was time.
My “New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary” – in the den on the first floor -- says hopefully came into use in the 1600s, but the modern usage that “some find erroneous” popped up between 1900 and 1929. Aha, something else to blame on the 20th century.
When The Washington Post ran a story about the stylebook’s capitulation, more than 600 readers commented online. Many were relieved that they can stop worrying about the silly rule. Others were appalled that the grammar scofflaws have won. Again.
To accept the modern hopefully is to be a clear-eyed realist. I know from personal experience, teaching writing to college students and adults, that no single topic prompts more bewilderment than the rule on hopefully – none, that is, except not relying on spell check.
Speaking of which, the AP’s surrender on hopefully came just days after the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication announced it was scrapping the requirement that students pass a spelling test before graduation. Starting this fall, the school will test grammar skills and word usage, but not spelling.
Everybody has and uses spell check, the reasoning goes. Yes, but spell check will break your heart.
My copy of “The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage” – in my home office on the third floor -- warns, “In the sense of ‘let us hope,’ this adverb inflames passions,” because many writers and teachers hew to traditional usage.
“So writers and editors unwilling to irritate readers would be wise to write `they hope’ or `with luck.’ With luck, writers and editors will avoid wooden alternatives like ‘it is hoped’ or ‘one hopes,’” the Times’s manual advises.
Columnist Clyde Haberman, in his “The Day” blog on the Times site, wrote that Philip B. Corbett, the paper’s associate managing editor for standards, said there will be no change in policy regarding hopefully for now.
It’s up to all of us to be our own word standards editors. The AP isn’t ordering anyone to use hopefully in the modern way. With luck, we can carry on. Let us hope.
© 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
The bad news came in a tweet.
“Hopefully, you will appreciate this style update…We now support modern usage of hopefully: it’s hoped, we hope.”
The message couldn’t have upset the grammar police more had the Associated Press’s Stylebook instead said that we now find starting a sentence with “me and him” or describing something as “very unique” acceptable.
My immediate reaction: You can have “we hope” when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Wrong is wrong, I grumped. Hopefully means in a hopeful way, as in, he hopefully began his audition. Not, we hope, as in, hopefully the Nats will win the World Series.
Is using hopefully wrong a modern phenomenon? Undeniably. So is hearing little children spout words that once would have earned a mouthful of soap. Hearing something frequently doesn’t make it right.
I know, I know, far more important changes take place in society every day. But I’m a purist, if not a word prude, an English major. Like a Marine, once an English major, always an English major. Most people don’t keep dictionaries in almost every room of their home. Most people lead happy, productive lives misusing hopefully, in the modern way.
The AP Stylebook calls itself the journalist’s bible, and it’s the law in matters of spelling, word usage and punctuation for most newspapers and many other publications. If it says to spell out whole numbers below 10 and figures for 10 and above, journalists do. In March 2011, the stylebook decreed that henceforth we would omit the hyphen in email -- but keep it in e-commerce and e-book. That was a big day.
But hopefully? Stylebook editors tried to hold the line, reminding writers and editors in a 2009 tweet: "`Hopefully’ means in a hopeful manner. Do not use it to mean it is hoped, let us hope or we hope.”
That fine distinction vanished this week. Several major dictionaries have acknowledged the new usage, and the AP decided it was time.
My “New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary” – in the den on the first floor -- says hopefully came into use in the 1600s, but the modern usage that “some find erroneous” popped up between 1900 and 1929. Aha, something else to blame on the 20th century.
When The Washington Post ran a story about the stylebook’s capitulation, more than 600 readers commented online. Many were relieved that they can stop worrying about the silly rule. Others were appalled that the grammar scofflaws have won. Again.
To accept the modern hopefully is to be a clear-eyed realist. I know from personal experience, teaching writing to college students and adults, that no single topic prompts more bewilderment than the rule on hopefully – none, that is, except not relying on spell check.
Speaking of which, the AP’s surrender on hopefully came just days after the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication announced it was scrapping the requirement that students pass a spelling test before graduation. Starting this fall, the school will test grammar skills and word usage, but not spelling.
Everybody has and uses spell check, the reasoning goes. Yes, but spell check will break your heart.
My copy of “The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage” – in my home office on the third floor -- warns, “In the sense of ‘let us hope,’ this adverb inflames passions,” because many writers and teachers hew to traditional usage.
“So writers and editors unwilling to irritate readers would be wise to write `they hope’ or `with luck.’ With luck, writers and editors will avoid wooden alternatives like ‘it is hoped’ or ‘one hopes,’” the Times’s manual advises.
Columnist Clyde Haberman, in his “The Day” blog on the Times site, wrote that Philip B. Corbett, the paper’s associate managing editor for standards, said there will be no change in policy regarding hopefully for now.
It’s up to all of us to be our own word standards editors. The AP isn’t ordering anyone to use hopefully in the modern way. With luck, we can carry on. Let us hope.
© 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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Thursday, April 12, 2012
Stop doing three things at once. Really. -- April 12, 2012 column
By MARSHA MERCER
Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell may be widely respected as a politician, diplomat and businessman, but at home he’s just another dad on the losing side of the tech battle.
When his young daughter does her homework, she listens to music on her iPod and watches television at the same time.
“How can you do three things?” asks perplexed dad.
“Daddy, it’s different now,” she replies. “We can do that. You can’t.”
Mitchell, 78, told the story at a Washington conference the other day, adding, “I don’t think that’s true, but it’s something that a person thinks she can do three things at the same time and do them all well.”
And who doesn’t multitask? It’s the way of modern life, a necessity, and we all think we’re great at it. Researchers, though, say we’re not. Yes, we’re doing more things at the same time – but badly. In fact, the people who think they’re the best at multitasking usually do it more poorly than others, research shows.
The message is starting to sink in. “The Distracted Mind,” a special, is airing on PBS, and last month’s South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, devoted a session to “Your Brain on Multitasking.” The most-read Harvard Business Review blog post for the last 30 days has been “The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time” by bestselling author Tony Schwartz.
Schwartz writes: “Tell the truth: Do you answer email during conference calls (and sometimes even during calls with one other person)? Do you bring your laptop to meetings and then pretend to take notes while you surf the net? Do you eat lunch at your desk? Do you make calls while you’re driving, and even send the occasional text, even though you know you shouldn’t?”
All those ordinary activities actually cost us productivity, he says, citing research that when we split our attention, we increase the time it takes to finish a task by 25 percent.
Schwartz advises business managers to cut meeting time, stop demanding instant responses and encourage staff renewal through afternoon yoga classes, group walks or even naps. It’s nice to think about such things, but few of us live in a world with approved naps on the job.
He offers more plausible tips for individuals to boost their productivity. Do the most important thing first in the morning, preferably without interruption, for 60 to 90 minutes. Schedule thinking time. Take real and regular vacations.
Schwartz isn’t alone in encouraging people to stop and smell the roses -- without taking a picture and tweeting it.
At South by Southwest, author and business consultant Peter Bregman offered a tough-love plan to reduce multitasking. Changing habits means changing your environment, he began. Put the cell phone out of reach – not just on the back seat but in the trunk. Or leave the cell at home when going out with the family for the evening.
Kill the Internet connection to avoid constantly checking email. When you do multitask, make sure the tasks are compatible, he said. Bregman bikes around Manhattan, getting a workout while he travels where he needs to go.
Multitasking works efficiently when the tasks call on different channels of the brain, David Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, explained.
It’s easy to fold up laundry and listen to the weather report on the radio because the tasks call on different brain channels. Driving and texting rely on the same channel, and that’s dangerous.
Multitasking skills do improve with repetition, said Dr. Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, who hosts “The Distracted Mind.” But, multitasking and other cognitive skills peak at about age 23, he said, and it’s downhill from there.
So, it’s true that younger people are better than older people at multitasking -- but not preteens like George Mitchell’s daughter. Sorry, kids.
And let’s give Mitchell credit for knowing he can’t do three things well at the same time. Even in the digital age, father knows best.
(c) 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell may be widely respected as a politician, diplomat and businessman, but at home he’s just another dad on the losing side of the tech battle.
When his young daughter does her homework, she listens to music on her iPod and watches television at the same time.
“How can you do three things?” asks perplexed dad.
“Daddy, it’s different now,” she replies. “We can do that. You can’t.”
Mitchell, 78, told the story at a Washington conference the other day, adding, “I don’t think that’s true, but it’s something that a person thinks she can do three things at the same time and do them all well.”
And who doesn’t multitask? It’s the way of modern life, a necessity, and we all think we’re great at it. Researchers, though, say we’re not. Yes, we’re doing more things at the same time – but badly. In fact, the people who think they’re the best at multitasking usually do it more poorly than others, research shows.
The message is starting to sink in. “The Distracted Mind,” a special, is airing on PBS, and last month’s South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, devoted a session to “Your Brain on Multitasking.” The most-read Harvard Business Review blog post for the last 30 days has been “The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time” by bestselling author Tony Schwartz.
Schwartz writes: “Tell the truth: Do you answer email during conference calls (and sometimes even during calls with one other person)? Do you bring your laptop to meetings and then pretend to take notes while you surf the net? Do you eat lunch at your desk? Do you make calls while you’re driving, and even send the occasional text, even though you know you shouldn’t?”
All those ordinary activities actually cost us productivity, he says, citing research that when we split our attention, we increase the time it takes to finish a task by 25 percent.
Schwartz advises business managers to cut meeting time, stop demanding instant responses and encourage staff renewal through afternoon yoga classes, group walks or even naps. It’s nice to think about such things, but few of us live in a world with approved naps on the job.
He offers more plausible tips for individuals to boost their productivity. Do the most important thing first in the morning, preferably without interruption, for 60 to 90 minutes. Schedule thinking time. Take real and regular vacations.
Schwartz isn’t alone in encouraging people to stop and smell the roses -- without taking a picture and tweeting it.
At South by Southwest, author and business consultant Peter Bregman offered a tough-love plan to reduce multitasking. Changing habits means changing your environment, he began. Put the cell phone out of reach – not just on the back seat but in the trunk. Or leave the cell at home when going out with the family for the evening.
Kill the Internet connection to avoid constantly checking email. When you do multitask, make sure the tasks are compatible, he said. Bregman bikes around Manhattan, getting a workout while he travels where he needs to go.
Multitasking works efficiently when the tasks call on different channels of the brain, David Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, explained.
It’s easy to fold up laundry and listen to the weather report on the radio because the tasks call on different brain channels. Driving and texting rely on the same channel, and that’s dangerous.
Multitasking skills do improve with repetition, said Dr. Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, who hosts “The Distracted Mind.” But, multitasking and other cognitive skills peak at about age 23, he said, and it’s downhill from there.
So, it’s true that younger people are better than older people at multitasking -- but not preteens like George Mitchell’s daughter. Sorry, kids.
And let’s give Mitchell credit for knowing he can’t do three things well at the same time. Even in the digital age, father knows best.
(c) 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Mind reader could have told feds not to buy shrimp at $4 each -- April 3, 2012 column
By MARSHA MERCER
Nobody ever woke up to a front-page news story about government frugality. That would be a dream.
It’s not news when federal workers actually do their jobs and are careful stewards of the people’s money. But this week Americans learned that federal bureaucrats at the General Services Administration had willfully blown through nearly a million dollars on a conference at a posh resort near Las Vegas in October 2010.
“GSA rocked by spending scandal,” read the headline on the lead story in Tuesday’s Washington Post.
The “Management Deficiency Report” by GSA’s inspector general describes in exquisite, and maddening, detail the excess of managers in the Public Building Service while they planned and put on the four-day conference. An administrator insisted that the meeting be “over the top,” bigger and better than any before, and ignored suggestions of ways to pare costs.
Three hundred employees of the western regional offices of the Public Building Service, the agency that manages federal workspace, gathered at the M Resort Spa and Casino for supposed training that included lavish receptions, dinners and party favors. And that was after federal managers paid a consultant $12,000 to find possible locations for the conference. The managers also took repeated trips to scout out the venues. Planning alone cost $136,500.
The inspector general concluded that “many of the expenditures on this conference were excessive and wasteful and that in many instances GSA followed neither federal procurement laws nor its own policy on conference spending.”
The chief of the GSA fired two deputies and then resigned, and several managers were placed on administrative leave.
There will be more to this story. It is after all an election year, and Congress and the White House were shocked, shocked. To be fair, we’ve not seen much in the way of federal spending scandals in the Obama term. But this is a doozy. President Barack Obama was outraged, and senators and representatives decried the waste and abuse.
For the taxpayers who foot the bills and pay the salaries, the scandal broke at a sensitive moment. Preparing our tax returns, we inevitably think about what we’re getting for our money. I don’t know about you but when I’m looking at how much I’m paying in federal taxes, I focus on the National Institutes of Health and the National Park Service.
“Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society,” 20th century Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, and his words are inscribed on the Internal Revenue Service building in Washington. Alas, Holmes’s fine words ring hollow this week.
Civilized society? No, taxes are what we pay to entertain federal workers -- $32,000 for a mind reader, $44-a-person breakfasts, $6,000 on specially minted commemorative coins, $75,000 for a team-building exercise that involved assembling two dozen kids’ bicycles. Really, I want my money back.
We don’t get to choose how our tax dollars are spent, of course. We have to trust the government to get it right. The sad truth is, we don’t.
Trust in government is at rock bottom, and the new IG report offers 822,751 new reasons for Americans to distrust their government. That’s how much GSA spent on the conference, $822,751.
In Holmes’s quote – “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society”—“we” implies a shared commitment to a common vision for society and a shared belief in the power of government to help.
That sense of community and that fundamental compact between people and government are threatened. Too much of our language is aimed at separating us, focusing on what makes us different rather than united. We need leaders who will help us refresh and renew the compact.
The good news in all this is that the inspector general’s office did its work. It devoted a year to find out what really happened, and the investigation had consequences. People did lose their jobs, something that occurs rarely in the federal government.
But we never will be able to retrieve the money we burned for 300 shrimp at $4 apiece in a rich resort outside Las Vegas. Taxpayer dollars were squandered there, and so was taxpayer trust.
© 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
Nobody ever woke up to a front-page news story about government frugality. That would be a dream.
It’s not news when federal workers actually do their jobs and are careful stewards of the people’s money. But this week Americans learned that federal bureaucrats at the General Services Administration had willfully blown through nearly a million dollars on a conference at a posh resort near Las Vegas in October 2010.
“GSA rocked by spending scandal,” read the headline on the lead story in Tuesday’s Washington Post.
The “Management Deficiency Report” by GSA’s inspector general describes in exquisite, and maddening, detail the excess of managers in the Public Building Service while they planned and put on the four-day conference. An administrator insisted that the meeting be “over the top,” bigger and better than any before, and ignored suggestions of ways to pare costs.
Three hundred employees of the western regional offices of the Public Building Service, the agency that manages federal workspace, gathered at the M Resort Spa and Casino for supposed training that included lavish receptions, dinners and party favors. And that was after federal managers paid a consultant $12,000 to find possible locations for the conference. The managers also took repeated trips to scout out the venues. Planning alone cost $136,500.
The inspector general concluded that “many of the expenditures on this conference were excessive and wasteful and that in many instances GSA followed neither federal procurement laws nor its own policy on conference spending.”
The chief of the GSA fired two deputies and then resigned, and several managers were placed on administrative leave.
There will be more to this story. It is after all an election year, and Congress and the White House were shocked, shocked. To be fair, we’ve not seen much in the way of federal spending scandals in the Obama term. But this is a doozy. President Barack Obama was outraged, and senators and representatives decried the waste and abuse.
For the taxpayers who foot the bills and pay the salaries, the scandal broke at a sensitive moment. Preparing our tax returns, we inevitably think about what we’re getting for our money. I don’t know about you but when I’m looking at how much I’m paying in federal taxes, I focus on the National Institutes of Health and the National Park Service.
“Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society,” 20th century Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, and his words are inscribed on the Internal Revenue Service building in Washington. Alas, Holmes’s fine words ring hollow this week.
Civilized society? No, taxes are what we pay to entertain federal workers -- $32,000 for a mind reader, $44-a-person breakfasts, $6,000 on specially minted commemorative coins, $75,000 for a team-building exercise that involved assembling two dozen kids’ bicycles. Really, I want my money back.
We don’t get to choose how our tax dollars are spent, of course. We have to trust the government to get it right. The sad truth is, we don’t.
Trust in government is at rock bottom, and the new IG report offers 822,751 new reasons for Americans to distrust their government. That’s how much GSA spent on the conference, $822,751.
In Holmes’s quote – “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society”—“we” implies a shared commitment to a common vision for society and a shared belief in the power of government to help.
That sense of community and that fundamental compact between people and government are threatened. Too much of our language is aimed at separating us, focusing on what makes us different rather than united. We need leaders who will help us refresh and renew the compact.
The good news in all this is that the inspector general’s office did its work. It devoted a year to find out what really happened, and the investigation had consequences. People did lose their jobs, something that occurs rarely in the federal government.
But we never will be able to retrieve the money we burned for 300 shrimp at $4 apiece in a rich resort outside Las Vegas. Taxpayer dollars were squandered there, and so was taxpayer trust.
© 2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
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