Neil deMause: The Website

The Stupak Amendment follows in the long, sad tradition of restricting abortion access by class:

Back when the debate over health care reform began — I believe it was a Tuesday, in the late Pleistocene — nobody expected that it would end up reviving the memory of Henry Hyde.

For those too young to remember, Hyde was a Republican Congressman whose career highlights included trying to impeach President Clinton over Monica Lewinsky at the same time as he was admitting to his own extramarital affair. Where his name will live on, though, is in the Hyde Amendment: Passed in 1977, when the paint was still wet on Roe v. Wade, it declared that though abortion might be legal, Congress wasn’t about to let Medicaid pay for any… [read more]

Sure, Brooklyn has become fashionable on Mayor Bloomberg’s watch, but can he make it livable?

A few years back, when the New York real estate market still looked within reach of, say, itinerant op-ed writers, I got to spend some quality time touring houses in a then-unfashionable part of Brooklyn.

My most vivid memory is of the basements. One had a warren of cubicles surrounding a filthy hot plate; in another, the landlord proudly showed off the tiny rooms he’d built (“That’s craftsmanship! This rent roll is a gold mine!”) in a windowless sub-basement 20 feet underground. It was a rare glimpse into the other New York, the one where its 1.5-million-and-growing poor live… [read more]

Still more on Coney Island, this time an analysis of how we got here for Metro:

It’s happy time in Coney Island! Sure, Astroland is still a vacant lot, as are the former batting cages and go-cart rides, and even the few remaining attractions are shuttered for the long winter.

But Joe Sitt, the developer who bought up most of the beachfront — and turned it into those vacant lots — has finally sold out to the city, and there is much rejoicing… [read more]

Why public schools need their own bailout. And pay no attention to that other guy who ripped off my topic today.

At my son’s elementary school, the news that Gov. Paterson is proposing $223 million in midyear cuts to city schools sparked about the same reaction you’d expect from telling a laid-off autoworker how the ice cap is melting: I’ve already got one crisis to worry about.

Last year’s cuts already cost our school its drama classes, a music teacher, and numerous aides. Library hours have evaporated. And the list of supplies that parents are asked to send in keeps getting longer… [read more]

Also pay no attention to the word “meltinger,” which was an editing error. If you want to read the original, slightly longer version, you can find it here.

There’s nothing like getting sick to make you appreciate the hazards of getting sick:

I caught a cold last week. No, it was not the swine flu. Though my head felt like it was going to explode, and I ran through enough tissues to deforest the Amazon, I was missing the two signature symptoms of the H1N1 virus — high fever and a racking cough — so I can rest assured I was laid low by some other, less headline-worthy bug…. [read more]

Not everybody who’s happy Chicago didn’t get the 2016 Olympics is a right-wing Obama-hating loon:

And so President Obama spent a day in Copenhagen for nothing: The 2016 Olympics will be held in Rio, not Chicago. Adding insult to injury, Obama’s adopted hometown didn’t even make it past the first ballot, being eliminated in the quick-fire round.

Leaving aside the inevitable questions about how the Olympic loss will affect Obama — I keep waiting to see articles analyzing what Jay Leno’s sinking ratings mean for the presidency — I have mixed feelings about the decision… [read more]

Concern about global climate change isn’t actually doing much yet to forestall disaster:

Remember global warming? It seems like only yesterday that we were watching bits of Antarctica flake off into the ocean — not to mention even less-gripping sights, like Al Gore with a laser pointer — and worrying whether humanity’s love of SUVs and air conditioning was going to doom us to extinction by midcentury… [read more]

My dead toaster, and what it means about big-box stores and the future of global capitalism. (And no, my toaster wasn’t the pop-up kind, but I guess the Metro headline writers are allowed their poetic license.)

My toaster just died. I push the button, and nothing happens: No light goes on, no toast toasts. It is an ex-toaster.

This wouldn’t be so surprising — our national motto these days should be “stuff breaks” — except it’s a Black & Decker, like my previous two toasters. Those lasted roughly ten years apiece; this one barely made it to its first birthday before giving up the ghost. And if Internet reviews are to be believed — hey, if Twitter can be a news source, so can Amazon.com — it’s a trend, with an epidemic of malfunctioning appliances littering our nation’s kitchen counters…. [read more]

If none of the options in the health reform debate strike you as particularly appealing, maybe that’s because one of the most popular options has been ruled off-limits by for consideration:

While Republican types freak out about the idea that government reform of health care will somehow involve government — economist Arthur Laffer’s “Just wait till you see Medicaid and Medicare run by the government!” was a classic of the genre — most people I know seem to be heading in the opposite direction. Why, they ask, is Congress spending so much time and money patching a system that is fundamentally broken?… [read more]

With the city council set to vote on the rezoning of Coney Island this week, I try to boil the issue down to 350 words:

On Wednesday, after a five-year battle that’s included everything from “giant rat” exhibits to protesters dressed as Norse gods carrying mermaid tails, the City Council will finally vote on a redevelopment plan for Coney Island. Since rezoning proposals don’t generally top most people’s summer reading lists, here are answers to some questions about the Battle of Coney… [read more]