Entries for September 2007

It takes a lot to be shocking online anymore, but Italian fashion designer Nolita (short for Northern Little Italy) has accomplished this feat. The firm celebrated Italian fashion week with a series of billboards and newspaper ads sporting a naked anorexic model.

Let me state for the record the following:

1. The expansion of federal funding for children's health insurance is by far not the most costly item forcing the United States into record deficit territory. The Los Angeles Times reports that the U.S. treasury secretary has asked once more to raise the debt ceiling (the amount the United States can borrow, mainly from abroad) beyond its current $8.96 trillion (with a "t") level.

With SCHIP (the State Children's Health Insurance Program) set to expire next week, the Democratic Congress and President Bush are locked, pitbull-like, in a nasty debate over funding for uninsured children.

Sure it's a tear-jerker. No one wants to see children go without healthcare. But we as a nation must step back during this face-off to ask why is it that, absent a resolution to the debate, some 10 million American children (more than 6 million already on SCHIP and an additional 4 million whom congressional Democrats would like to add to the program) will be left uninsured? And what can we do to prevent future generations from becoming uninsured?

I'm all for cutting taxes, and I'm all for making it easier on hardworking, middle-class Americans. But there are some major-league rubs in Sen. Barack Obama's plan. 

The first question with Democrats is always, how do they define middle class? For Obama, it seems to be families making up to $75,000 per year. A family of four living on that much money in Fallon, Nev., would qualify as upper middle class if not, in some circles, as upper class. But a family of four trying to live on that amount of money in Manhattan or Los Angeles or San Francisco or Chicago would not be making it, period. In other words, Democrats' definitions of "middle class" must be thoroughly examined and radically altered to be brought into reality.

Democratic primary voters now have a clear choice: subsidized taxes to provide healthcare for all Americans versus lower taxes on the middle class. Barack Obama's promise this week to deliver up to $85 billion in annual tax relief for middle-class Americans is the type of plan that has the potential to stop the so-called unstoppable Hillary Clinton.

The gut of Obama's plan is to offer a $1,000 annual tax credit for middle-class American families with two earners. This, he says, would cut taxes for 150 million Americans, or roughly half the population.

I had the pleasure recently of meeting one Ginny Gong at a chichi reception honoring women in the arts. Gong is national president of OCA, the Organization of Chinese Americans. She kept me rapt for about a half-hour, comparing the health and habits of Asian-American women with those of other American women.

She informed me, for example, that Chinese women and indeed Chinese-American women do not experience menopause. According to Gong, they do not exhibit the same symptoms (hot flashes, weight gain, thinning of the skin) that American women typically endure when their periods stop. Why?

This week, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story about a gender bias lawsuit filed against a data-storage company by two saleswomen.

Headlined "Tech and Testosterone; a Data-Storage Titan Confronts Bias Claims," the story recounted what it's like for women to work in the testosterone-laden technology sales industry.