A couple of years ago, a bump grew on my forehead. It didn't hurt, and by the time someone noticed it, it had stopped growing. Concerned friends and relatives began to push me to see a physician, fearing it might be cancer or some other dangerous condition. Finally I relented and my worst fears were realized — I had taken time out of my all-too-limited life to find that what I had was nothing more than a bump on my head. This didn't satisfy anyone, and I continue to be bothered about getting it removed. The question is whether I should do so, and whether everyone else should help to pay for it with tax dollars.

I spoke with my health insurance company, which said I would have to go to the doctor who would confer with the company on whether a removal was "medically necessary." My observation is that for purposes like this, "medically necessary" depends in part on how hard one is willing to push, and how adept at working the system one is. I also observe that if the procedure were not covered by insurance and I paid for it myself, I would probably pay less that the insurance company would be charged.

Pick Hit

Chris Owens and the DDDB Hallelujah Chorus: Tis The Season (NIMBY Single ’06).

Sez Bouldin: “At the risk of Gatemouth sharpening every one of the knives in his drawer, here you go"

Sez Gatey: Don’t be callin’ me Ebenezer!

Chris has filled out and so has his voice; put a tatoo of the side of his face, and he could almost be Aaron Neville (although if he doesn’t lay off on the latkes and jelly donuts at his maternal family’s Chanuka party, next year’s comparison could be to Solomon Burke), and the performance itself is the funniest Christmas song by an African-American since Chuck Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run”, although in this case, not all the laughs are intentional (although, surprisingly enough, some are).

My objections are as follows:

http://www.cafepress.com/bluegreenred.71542210

I'll bet it's a limited edition of five (which is probably five more votes than those attained by the person who will eventually get the job).  

Fresh off of a spirited challenge for the 10th Congressional District this past summer, New York City Councilmember Charles Barron is now considering a run for Public Advocate in 2009. This morning, Barron informed me that given his frustration with the institutional responses to the “police brutality” issue, he believes that he could use the office of the Public Advocate as a platform for seriously dealing with issues like police abuses, racial discrimination, black-unemployment, and the like. He said that my recent challenge to him to run for public advocate, as a way of fighting for address to some of his hot-button issues, makes a lot of sense and he is now considering it. He said also that running for citywide office is so much more difficult than running for a congressional seat that he has to give it long hard thought. He will make a final decision sometime late next year, but intends to start exploring it with his main supporters and his organization “Operation Power”, ASAP.

With the release of details about who is responsible for which member items, there is likely to be a great deal of discussion of the member items per se. But the nature of what they fund is not their true significance.

While the amounts of money involved are not small, neither are they large in the context of overall state and local government spending in New York. And while most of the services funded with these grants are not useless, few are essential, or incapable of being funded locally if thought to be worth the money. Some parts of the state may be treated unfairly in the distribution of these grants, but the effect of this is not likely to be siginificant either in terms of the taxes they have to pay or the services most of them receive. The real importance of member items (and, at the federal level, earmarks) is that this sideshow is virually the sole focus of most of our elected representatives. And, it is the sole focus of elections for state legislature and Congress.

With the release of details about who is responsible for which member items, there is likely to be a great deal of discussion of the member items per se. But the nature of what they fund is not their true significance.

While the amounts of money involved are not small, neither are they large in the context of overall state and local government spending in New York. And while most of the services funded with these grants are not useless, few are essential, or incapable of being funded locally if thought to be worth the money. Some parts of the state may be treated unfairly in the distribution of these grants, but the effect of this is not likely to be siginificant either in terms of the taxes they have to pay or the services most of them receive. The real importance of member items (and, at the federal level, earmarks) is that this sideshow is virually the sole focus of most of our elected representatives. And, it is the sole focus of elections for state legislature and Congress.

In August, I wrote an entry criticizing John McCain's flip-flop on the issue of Ethanol under the headline –

John McCain – Just Another Pol

This week's New York Magazine has Bloomberg doing the same –

"He even singled out John McCain, whom he generally respects, for abandoning his position against ethanol subsidies as he prepares to curry favor in 2008 with Iowa caucusgoers."

Back on April 29th, I made some observations concerning how the NYS budget process actually works, which seemed so ludicrous and absurd that some people thought I was making the whole thing up. As one can now see, this story in today’s (12/3/06) New York Times pretty much confirms the process I’d outlined.

Before the release of the motion picture bearing his name, the character “Borat”, portrayed by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, was most famous for a sequence on Cohen’s TV series, "Da Ali G Show", where, at an amateur night in a Country and Western bar, he performs a song where he advocates "Throw[ing] the Jew Down the Well’’ to an appreciative audience of rednecks.

In an interview in “Rolling Stone”, Cohen, a Sabbath-observing Jew, admitted that the audience may not have been anti-Semitic, but merely humored the character to be polite. He nonetheless pointed out that such polite indifference and conformity to anti-Semitism led to the Holocaust.

About ten years ago I happened to be one of three guests on a television show, along with present NYC councilmember Charles Barron and activist-attorney Colin Moore. The name of the show was “Caribbean Roundtable”, one of the better Caribbean-American talk shows still around. The hostess (Verna Smith) was a Jamaican-born journalist, who just happened to be quite active in Brooklyn’s Caribbean-American political circles; thus her questions were not of the powder-puff variety; not at all, since Verna can be a tough interviewer at times. On Sunday mornings, you can usually catch the show on Cablevision, and at other times on Time Warner cable. The gist of that show was basically an analysis of the results of the 1997 Democratic primary elections, which had taken place a few weeks before. Just before the show ended, the topic of “police brutality” crept in. Given that Barron and Moore brought to the table, tremendous knowledge in this area, they immediately jumped on the issue, offering some insight into the whys and wherefores. When it was my turn to speak, I got a few things off my chest that I had wanted to say publicly for quite some time. My opinions riled both guests. I wasn’t really surprised. The events of last weekend brought back memories of that roundtable exchange. I will get to that in a second.