Last year, Ellen and I quietly took an unpopular position with our friends and supported the Covell Village development, largely because it required a minimum 1 kw photovoltaic system on each single family home in the village. This is as close to environmentally sensitive as development gets, and it seems to us that development is an almost unstoppable force, Measure J or no. For those of you who remember, Measure J was passed in response to the Mace Ranch development, which happened over the objection of the Davis City Council. Needless to say, Mace Ranch is now part of Davis because:

"The County decided it needed development fee revenue and was
about to allow Ramos to build Mace Ranch whether the City liked it or
not. Subsequently, then-Mayor Dave Rosenberg led the effort to create
an agreement with the County designed to prevent such a dilemma from
ever happening again" (Ken Wagstaff).

Now the Yolo County government is at again, struggling to make Measure J irrelevent and putting up the county land in Davis up for development.

According to former Mayor Ken Wagstaff, Yolo County wants to, "set in motion the removal from agriculture an area the size of 11 "Covell Villages" and convert it to an urban use designation, which would allow many kinds of development including residential tracts. At build-out, the County by its own action, without any expression by the people of Davis or by their City Council, will have almost doubled the size of Davis."

So, my friends, the question for all of you who nixed Covell Village is this: Will you head out to the Yolo County Supervisors' meeting on July 17 and stop this development threat as well? Otherwise, by stopping Covell Village, you will have helped to create more Mace Ranches. Good luck and see you at the meeting.

Once again, it is play season, that time in my life when my social life disappears to be replaced by slightly awkward teenage thespians. If any of you are interested in a creative staging of Shakespeare's "The Tempest," seeing another "Mr. Holt play," seeing what middle schoolers can do with guidance and effort, or you just want me to like you more, by all means come. No, really, I will like you better just for coming... if that matters.

Anyhow, here's the details.

The Tempest

Thursday, January 25 7:00 PM
Friday, January 26 7:00 PM

Thursday, February 1 7:00 PM
Friday, February 2 7:00 PM

Address: 1600 Vallejo Way, Sacramento, CA 95818

Last Thursday my students and I wrapped up our production of "Oedipus Rex." For those who do not know the play, it is a 2,400 year old examination of what happens when we run away from our fears. Oedipus runs from his fear of Apollo's prophecy that he will murder his father and have children by his mother, only to discover that his real parents had tried to have him murdered as a baby because of the same prophecy. In the climactic scene, he discovers the truth of his adoption and realizes that his rise to the throne of Thebes has left him married to his own mother, and that he had murdered his father years earlier at a fork in the road. It is a harsh play that depicts human weaknesses in stark terms. Denial, excessive pride, false hope, and the fear at the root of them all "strut and fret" their way across the stage like so many "poor player(s)."

Watching the students grapple with roles is one of the great joys of my life. As they struggle to find the emotional center of the characters, they expose their unconscious minds to their conscious selves. They connect their lies over hidden report cards to Jocasta concealing the truth from Oedipus. They explore how fears shape them and how denial can bend us to breaking points. We talked about the way sons compete with their fathers, and they are still at that point where they lose the wrestling matches with their dads. I would argue that this awareness is a gift. It is the thespian's gift and the director's gift, and it is one that we need at this juncture in history.

Look at how denial plays out with the burgeoning civil war in Iraq and American support of the Israeli struggle with Hezbollah. We are involved each day, yet we go on with our lives. Look at our denial each time we start our car and drive off on a summer road trip. Even in the record-breaking heat of this summer, we live in denial. We cannnot admit our fear, so we cannot change our behavior. Look at George Bush sending our troops to Iraq in a vain attempt to make his father's Desert Storm into a mere precursor to his own greatness. Look at its failure. We cannot avoid these mistakes without knowing ourselves, our fears, and our contradictions.

My hope is that my students gain insight early and it develops into something beautiful. My hope is that my work matters, that it is something more than a second grade grammar pageant in which I play the question mark. I work hard, designing lighting suites, soliciting donations, and delving into roles with young adults because I believe they create both a great performance and a new awareness each time. My fear is that it doesn't really matter, that it is just a middle school play. But if I really believed that, I wouldn't be able to do my job...

People get really ideological over universal health care, or what I called "socialized medicine" after my favorite uncle got back from a foray to Scandinavia. My softhearted ninth grade self felt that depriving people of medical care was simply wrong. Maybe it was the asthma that sent my mom and I running willy-nilly to the hospital, or my sister's cleft palate. In my heart of hearts, I just knew that sometimes people need medical care. It is also true that an insurer would have gone broke trying to make a profit on my family. Fortunately, my father worked for a large organization that had a commitment to the welfare of its employees, namely ministers in the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. As a child I always wondered how medical bills were paid. Later in life, I learned about the miracles of statistics, actuarial tables, and Medicare. I've even got to say that I became a big fan of capitalism in a way. The array of goods and services it provides is truly astonishing, as is the wealth it creates. That said, people still need health care, and the way we run the health care system now, it is a burden to everyone but the insurance industry.

According to the Employment Policy Institute, there are "45 million people—representing 16 percent of the population—who are uninsured. The increasing number of uninsured Americans is a concern because these individuals are less likely to receive adequate medical care. For example, studies have shown that the uninsured are three times more likely than those who are insured to delay seeking health services due to their expense" (www.epionline.org/study_detail.cfm This is a problem, and one that seems a little absurd given that Americans spend $5,267 a year per person on health care, according to good, old Paul Krugman at the New York Times. That means that the quality of care people seek and receive is radically different based on what kind of health coverage they have.

Some make this debate into a rich vs. poor issue, a class issue, for ideological reasons. Research shows, however, that this is not the case. It is not so much a matter of income as it is a matter of the size of the firm one works for. There is a striking correlation between
insurance loss and employer size. Once again, the Employment Policy Institute tells us, "Employees working in the smallest firms have the highest likelihood of insurance loss compared to those at larger firms. Movement into employment at a small employer is associated with higher than average rates of health insurance loss and much higher rates than those faced by employees moving into employment in a large firm. (www.epionline.org/study_detail.cfm Is this our idea of fairness? The size and stability of the firm is how we decide justly who is employed and people just get what they deserve? Given the increasing instability of large firms like General Motors most voters would do well to avoid this standard, as should the public employees who currently enjoy generous tax-payer subsidized private insurance. The situation also makes me think of the daycare my mom runs, and how her small firm struggles to meet its health care obligations. This is because smaller businesses pay higher premiums to their insurance companies than do large firms. Of course, even large firms are having trouble paying their obligations for the boomers' health care costs. So health care is unstable for the middle class at best, and the great determiner of care is the size of the firm people work for and the system, despite taking 13% of the GDP leaves 16% of Americans uninsured (OECD Health Data, 2002). So far, this does not seem like a triumph of private industry's vaunted efficiency.

This lack of efficiency carries over into the growth of health care costs. A comparison of average annual per enrollee growth rates since 1970 reveals that Medicare spending grew at an average annual rate of 9.6 percent, slower than the average annual growth rate of 11.1 percent for private health insurers (www.urban.org/publications/900595.html). Now Medicare is a huge program. The sheer size gives it the ability to negotiate with hospitals effectively and it has enough "subscribers" that it is spreading its risk in a way that insurance companies have little incentive to do.

Now it is the truly poor get Medicare, and I much prefer my own cushy, private plan that the Teachers' Union negotiated to it, but the system does have much to commend itself, especially when one considers that Medicare is an insurer of last resort. Apparently Medicare's policy of cost containment works and the poor do not abuse it, contrary to earlier posts in this thread. "Medicare's long-term success in holding down spending is partly a result of its structured payment systems and regulatory controls," said Marilyn Moon, senior fellow at the Urban Institute. " Boccuti and Moon compared Medicare and private insurers' cumulative growth in per enrollee payments for personal health care from 1970 to 2000. They note that by 2000, "the private insurers' index was 44 percent higher than that for Medicare." (www.urban.org/publications/900595.html). This may be one of those exceptions to private industry being more efficient than the government, or more likely, the insurance companies' profits do not depend on them controlling costs. The Boccuti and Moon report does, however, highlight that government-sponsored health care need not be less efficient than private industry. The odd efficiency of government sponsored health care exists even more markedly outside the United States. The US spends more than double per person what Canada, the UK, and Taiwan spend on their universal health care programs, yet has the highest infant mortality rate. The US also has the shortest life span of all these countries, except for Taiwan. The differences between the US and Japan are even more striking, as the health y Japanese live on average to the ripe old age of 80.6, and Americans tend to kick off at 76.7(www.hsph.harvard.edu/phcf/Pa...le.pdf).

Apparently, government provided health care is less expensive than the American system. It seems that even in America the government is a more efficient provider of health insurance than industry. It is also more moral, as universal coverage ends our shame of having 45 million people uninsured in the world's wealthiest nation. But I have another reason for supporting universal health care. It's good for American industry.

According to a recent New York Times article, $1500 of the price of each vehicle it sells goes to health care. Small business owners are terrified of Gavin Newsome's plan to bring universal health care to San Francisco because they know already know that small firms pay higher premiums. My mom's daycare has the same problem. When companies large and small can't function because of the insurance industry, when the needs of both the corporate citizens and the people are the same, it should not be hard to get a reform passed. However, the business owners fear regulation, even when it will help them compete. Consumers fear lack of choice, even though no one likes reading the insurance plans their employers off. Company and consumer alike need to cast aside these aversions and take the government's help. It will get health care spending under control. It will take care of companies and people, and taking care of companies does mean jobs, and universal health care means my 14 year old self can finally rest easy knowing more people are getting the medical care they need.