HEALTH CARE + DINNER AT 6PM:
Big bonus to the new health care plan that will start pretty much immediately — you can stay under your parents’ plan until you’re 26, which is awesome ’cause America told a lot of kids to go to college, and then they did. And then, post-graduation, these same kids saw that the jobs for college-educated kids they’d been told about no longer existed. Maybe they’d never existed. And Ramen noodles are way cooler as a figure of speech than as an actual thrice-daily meal. And maybe you liked learning way better than writing cover letters! The San Francisco Gate explains:
Starting this year, if you have an adult child who cannot get health insurance from his or her employer and is to some degree dependent on you financially, your child can stay on your insurance policy until he or she is 26 years old. Currently, many insurance companies do not allow adult children to remain on their parents’ plan once they reach 19 or leave school.
At The Daily Beast, there’s concern that the new health care rules extending privileges to under 26’ers will make kids just want to skip getting a job and move back in with their parents instead. Secretly though, I think a lot of kids do live with their parents these days, moreso than in the past. Independence just isn’t something many kids care enough to spend money on lately; it’s like a luxury item. (Not for everyone though. For many, it’s a necessity.) This quote is so good it’s hard to believe it’s real: “A lack of health insurance was the only thing that motivated me to get a job out of college,” one first-year analyst who works at a New York City bank told me. “Without that impetus, I would have been perfectly happy lounging on the couch, watching Golden Girls reruns. I mean, if I choke on the pretzels, I’m covered.”
Haha get it! He’s going to be lazy with pretzels! I think everyone should go home and sit on the couch and not have to buy your own groceries while you plot the revolution, if that’s what you’re into. Or not, if you aren’t. The option is nice! I wish they’d changed it two years ago bah!
DON’T ASK DON’T TELL:
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates will announce measures to make the enforcement of DADT occur in “a fairer, more humane manner” while the Pentagon is examining the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The New York Times reports that it would raise the standard required for evidence to be permitted in cases with initiated action from a general or admiral.
The guidelines would also raise the standard required for evidence to be presented in such cases, an effort to prevent “malicious outing” by a third party or jilted partner, officials said.
Or perhaps by police officers peering through your window ’cause when they’d gone to your work for info about your wife for an unrelated situation, you’d been uncooperative and they didn’t like that.
WEB 3.0:
If you read this whole question and entire answer (I know that’s a lot to ask), you’ll get to our basic ideas about what QueerWeb3.0 could be like, to some extent. (This is our idea that we say to each other at 2am; potentially does not make sense). Or just read it because it’s nice to hear someone say that although you should go outside as often as possible, it’s okay to not want to be social like the other kids:
Let’s consider the possibility that you’re basically anti-social, a moody loner, and there’s not going to be a “nice fulfilling social life” for you at all — not if you’re defining it by the routines of other 20-year-old college kids… [Like you] lots of people drink and type on the computer at night. I’m doing it right now… I regularly advocate for getting the hell away from the computers on a daily basis… but look, if you’re more comfortable hanging around message boards where some like-minded souls get together and complain, do that… get on your message boards and propose a pub meet-up around your campus or town… chances are they prefer typing and drinking to trying to fit at the parties for the social types, but would still like to know some people “in real life.”
MARIJUANA LAWS:
The LA Times reports that this November, all the good people of California will have the chance to vote to legalize marijuana! Then it can be sold & taxed and all the children will become crackheads and die! Pregnant! JK, that’s a lie they tell you on TV. Richard Lee, described as a “marijuana entrepreneur,” is the champion of this bill. He is pleased about the initiative and says, “We’re one step closer to ending cannabis prohibition and the unjust laws that lock people up for cannabis while alcohol is not only sold openly but advertised on television to kids every day.”
THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS:
This super nice man in New Orleans says that Constance can still have her gay prom there if she wants to! He said he’d take all the kids to and from New Orleans by bus. So basically he’s offering a free vaycay to her entire class, which is awesome, she should do it. (@wwl)
JOURNALISM:
Sometimes the desire to break a story overrides the desire to fact-check, and this guy says it’s not just because of the web that journalists do it — in the 1920s a lot of papers had multiple editions. Politico, the Atlantic, and the iffy memo they rushed to publish: “although pranksters have long hoaxed journalists, evolving technology keeps providing them with new tools to stage ever-more-elaborate scams. In the old days, a prankster had to steal letterhead to create a cheap counterfeit document. Now he can gin up fake letterhead with a laser printer and desktop software.” (@slate)
Woah, change Candace to Constance quickly before anyone notices!
I would love to stay on my parents plan during my awkward post grad years thank you very much! I have ramen in my kitchen right now and everytime I look at it I just feel depressed & not hungry anymore.
I have half a million dollars sunk into my education at this point (thankfully nearly all of it has been scholarships) and you know what? The best job I could find was a $12/hr 3hr-a-day job (granted it’s a job I LOVE and am still amazed every time I get a paycheck). And that was AFTER I moved back in with my parents. And I’ve been to two world class schools, just my degrees are now essentially worthless (BFA, what’s that?).
I find it really enraging that the assumption is that I’m here because it is easy. No, it isn’t. I left home when I was 15 because I couldn’t stand it. I needed independence, and now I’m back under my parents roof under necessity. I was forced into a graduate school program I didn’t really want to be in just yet because I needed the health insurance. The Daily Beast can go fuck itself. I’ve worked hard my whole life to be independent and I had it ripped out from under me because the douchebags in my neighborhood raped our economy. Wall Street is lucky I don’t live two blocks away anymore.
The threat of slackers staying at home is just another scare tactic. I went to a from my parents’ houses like 4 times, alwasy when I had some financial troubles. It is funny for them to say we would stay at home and watch TV all day just because we had healthcare. How about this: I did live with my parents, had a job, and didn’t have healthcare.
Also, are we not giving any power to the parents who are totally allowed to say GET OUT! when we start eating all their pretzels and racking up the pay-per-view bill? My parents would never have standed for me not working and lounging all day. Parents need to use tough love and get these so-called slackers working or out fo their house!
In Finland even parents never do anything except lay on the couch watching Kotikatu, since everyone has free healthcare obviously. Also no one ever leaves the house except in an ambulance (I totally take the ambulance to school and shit). After all, why would I do anything at all when I am not threatened with impending death? If I choke on this liquorice some state employed sucker doctor (like my mom or my sister for instance) will just save my life, so what’s the point!
Bump. Wait does bumping work on blogs? It should.
Health care too often becomes a reason for taking or not taking a job, but these so-called slackers probably won’t consider the situation anyway.
I live with my Dad, but I pay rent and have my own healthcare. SO WHAT DOES THAT DO TO YOUR SCARE TACTIC? TAKE AWAY MY HEALTHCARE, BUT I WON’T LEAVE. But seriously, I think the stigma of living with your parents. Could I move out? Yeah. But my dad and stepmom are better roommates than I would probably find out there in the big wide world, so I’ll probably live them until I find a nice girl to Uhaul with.
And I think the idea that kids don’t want to be productive and have a job is just stupid.
It is stupid! My parents let all of my brothers live at home rent-free, but they told the 19 year old that if he quits his job or gets fired he will HAVE to start paying rent (not if he were to get laid off of course). He parties too much and was seriously going to get fired, but he still HAS a job only b/c he lives at home and my parents laid the smack down.
Seriously, the guy who made that quote sounds like a lazy jerk. I work at the very least 30 hours a week between two jobs without any benefits, and am in school full time (which I pay for). The only benefit I get from living at home is that I pay only a moderate rent rather than a sky-high San Francisco Bay Area one. And I know people who are on their parents insurance who DON’T live at home, and who rely on their parents for absolutely nothing, but can’t find/make time around school to get a job that offers health insurance.
AAAAAAAND, it’s as if all one had to do previously to get health insurance was ask. Hey I spend thousands of dollars a year on school just to get health insurance for free from my mum, and then once that’s over with I’ll just hop skip and jump over to my first AMAZING job using the degree I just got where they will give me an awesome PPO and no one will care that I have asthma or wtfever.
That healthcare deal is better than the one my parents have here. I’m covered until I’m done school, but then I’m on my own.
the moving-in-with-your-parents article also just kind of seems to be missing the point? like yeah, sure, you don’t want me to stay on my parent’s insurance; wouldn’t a good way to solve that problem be to make it easier for me to get my own? am i missing something? why doesn’t this guy just go ahead and get on that, then i’ll get up off this couch.
The true motivation for slacker post-grads to move back home has always been free laundry and ample supply of snacks. But I guess “Slackers Cheer Clean Underwear!” wasn’t as catchy.
Here in Australia it seems like a lot of people live with their parents for a long time. Even if they have jobs and stuff. My sister-in-law’s boyfriend’s 23, for example, and he still lives with the ‘rents despite his full-time job.
I dunno where I was going with this.
Canadians live with their parents for forever as well. My American friends comment frequently on how all of the Canadians they know never move out, ever.
I am obvs either Canadian or Australian at heart
It was a lot of fun watching these idiotic Republicans “warning” the Democrats that the passage of health care reform will cost them dearly at the polls in November.
“OH, PLEASE DON’T THROW ME IN THAT BRIAR PATCH, BRER BEAR!!”
It’s going to cost someone dearly, alright, but it won’t be the Dems. Former Bush 43 speechwriter Davin Frum put it perfectly yesterday when he said that it was the Republicans – not Barack Obama – who had met their “Waterloo”. The historical rule of politics, that an incumbent president’s party always loses ground in the midterm elections, will go out the window come November. They will be unable to win without the help of the moderates. At this moment the moderates are abandoning this sinking ship en masse. The extremism of people like Michele Bachmann and John Beohner is starting to scare the hell out of them. Gee, I wonder why!
Then there is the sticky situation of the Tea Party. By this late point it must be obvious to even the casual observer that this is an organization comprised of morons. It was formed as a protest movement against high taxes – immediately after President Obama passed the largest middle class tax cut in American history. There’s no denying it, these are not the brightest people on the planet. Their overt racism notwithstanding, they sure are funny! One self identified Tea Partier called into C-SPAN’s Washington Journal the other day asking the moderator where she could write to her congressman. When host Greta Brawner asked this idiotic woman what her congressman’s name was, she replied (I assume with a straight face) “He’s a Democrat. I don’t know his name.” Ya gotta love ‘em! Ya just gotta!
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Tom Degan
Historic statewide initiative in California to legalize, tax, and regulate cannabis. Help build national support for the movement. Sign up on the website, join the campaign! taxcannabis.org