You know about the wall between church and state? Also known as the Chinese wall? I'm not talking about constitutional law or geography here, I'm talking about journalism. The time was that there was an impenetrable wall between the advertising and editorial sides of the newspaper or TV station. It's always been a bit more porous in TV, but the ideal remains.

I was watching the local news on WCAX tonight, and it appears there's a little problem there. They were doing a story about some football game that was going to be on tonight, and an argument about whether the NFL was going to let the regular viewers watch it, or just the people who are paying for the NFL Network, which is owned by the NFL.

Earlier this week it was announced that after pressure from a variety of people, including Senator Leahy, the NFL relented and agreed to allow the game to be broadcast on network TV. Naturally, since it's a big game, CAX was going to cover the story.

But, here's what they said:

Thanks to a last minute decision by the NFL network, fans all over Vermont will be able to watch the undefeated Patriots take on the New York Giants tonight right here on Channel 3… The simulcast of the NFL Network feed is a major concession by league officials, who repeatedly said they would not show the game anywhere but on their network. But the NFL faced mounting pressure from politicians, including Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy who had threatened to reconsider the league's antitrust exemption if it didn't make games available to more viewers. Fans we spoke with are pumped for the game…

Notice something? “right here on Channel 3.”

In fact, the game was showing on both CBS and NBC, so you could have watched the game either on WCAX or their competitor, WPTZ.

So what, you say? This is supposedly a news program, and when you're watching a news program you expect that you'll get the whole news, not just the part of the news that will be financially advantageous to the station for you to know.

Maybe it's not the biggest story in the world, but this does seem like a failure of journalistic ethics. 

I'm not an expert on health policy. There's just too much to pay attention to, and I've pretty much decided to let lots of other people handle that.

 Still, every so often something breaks into even my consciousness that seems to be meaningful, and this week it was the front-page story at the Freeps. The headline, Paying but not completely covered, encapsulates the thesis of the story: the preexisting condition exclusion in Catamount Health screws people out of needed health care, including the very attractive pregnant couple on the cover and people who need some very expensive HIV/AIDS treatment. They sure have a point. The people featured in the article make a persuasive point that if they could have known that they wouldn't be covered there would have been no good reason for them to sign up and start paying premiums. 

 I think this is a great illustration of a big problem with this program, and it does seem like something that can be fixed when the Legislature returns next month.

Still, this may be a case where the Free Press didn't just bury the lede, they completely didn't see it.   

At the bottom of the story there is a text box with a bunch of statistics in it.         

The problem is, I think they left out the most important statistic.

Here are the latest enrollment figures:
APPLICATIONS: 1,837 people have applied for one of the Catamount plans offered by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont and MVP Health Care.
APPROVED AT FULL COST: 150 Vermonters have been approved for coverage paying the full monthly premium — $393 for an individual.
APPROVED WITH SUBSIDY: 1,251 Vermonters have been approved for coverage paying a partial premium, depending on their income, with state and federal dollars making up the difference. The minimum monthly payment is $60 for an individual.
PENDING: 335 applications under review.
DENIED: 86 didn't qualify.
DECLINED: 14 decided against enrolling after seeing the cost.
ENROLLED WITH EMPLOYERS: 349 Vermonters were added to their employers' health plans, with the state paying a share of their premiums. For uninsured people who work where insurance is offered, this option is checked first before they can apply for Catamount.

It's so dense with figures that you don't immediately get it, so let me pull something out:  

APPROVED AT FULL COST: 150 Vermonters have been approved for coverage paying the full monthly premium . . .
APPROVED WITH SUBSIDY: 1,251 Vermonters have been approved for coverage paying a partial premium . . . 

If you add those two figures together you get 1,401 Vermonters getting coverage through this program, with maybe another 349 getting it through their job.

By digging around on the Web you can find another important number: the number of Vermonters without health coverage. It's 65,416. This isn't even a dent in the problem. At this rate, how long will it take to cover everybody who needs coverage, even assuming they don't drop out when they can't afford the premium or don't want to pay for a plan that doesn't provide the services they need?

 Maybe you don't think this is a joke, but how much of the $387,000 that they're paying to advertise the program will they have to spend to counteract stories that publicize what a rotten deal it is?

We can all be glad that Chris Dodd had the courage to stand up to the President, the rest of the Senate, and his own majority leader to block the retroactive amnesty of the new FISA legislation. Here's a post that goes into detail about how it happened, and what it means for our political work.

Peter Welch has announced that he is not going along with a deal apparently being brokered by the Democratic leadership in Congress that would let the Bushies do what they want with the money appropriated for the war:

“I think it’s wrong on the substance and wrong on the procedure. We should not give blank check funding for continuation of a blank check war policy. I favor Congress using the power of the purse to fund an orderly withdrawal of the troops and bring them home.”

These things are always in flux, but it’s possible that this deal is unraveling. Still, whether he wins this fight or not, I give Peter credit for standing by his promise.

Recent police search attempts appear to be broader than those in the past, without suspicion of illegal use by any one individual. The lack of “individualized” suspicion is troublesome. Dragnets that scoop up both the innocent and possibly guilty are invasive and usually ineffective.

You may remember the story about the governor and the prosecutor. Once upon a time there was a dedicated State’s Attorney, elected and re-elected by his county, who decided to take a different approach to drug law enforcement. When the big, bad Governor heard about this different approach, he got so mad he told his state police not to play with the State’s Attorney.

After all, the Governor thought the marijuana law was so important that it would never be okay to let someone caught with lots and lots of marijuana to go through the diversion program, so the only right thing to do was to keep marijuana prosecutions away from Bobby Sand, because he can’t be trusted to throw the book at pot smokers.

“This is not a small amount. It’s a very substantial amount,” Douglas told WPTZ-television, which reported the order on its Wednesday news broadcast. The governor said no other county prosecutor agreed with the way Sand handled the case.

“We have to make sure our drug laws are taken seriously and I think this step will ensure that in all counties of this state, they are,” Douglas said.

Or, as he told the Valley News last month, “This is a message to people who want to possess a large amount of controlled substances that you can go to Windsor County and get a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

Well, apparently that isn’t quite true. The Valley News had the story yesterday: NEWS:   No Criminal Charge for 110 Pot Plants; No Problem for Douglas The print edition goes on to say:  

“But just days before Douglas’ rebuke, a case involving 110 marijuana plants in neighboring Orange County was also sent to diversion. That case, and the Republican prosecutor who declined to seek criminal sanctions, escaped Douglas’ scrutiny.”

There’s more tonight on WCAX: CHELSEA, Vt. (AP) – A marijuana suspect allegedly caught in possession of 110 pot plants has been referred to court diversion, but Governor Jim Douglas – who intervened in a similar case because he considered the move too lenient – says he’s OK with it.

So why the change of heart? Yesterday in the Valley News, “Douglas spokesman Jason Gibbs said the two cases are not comparable.” Why not? Because of the appearance of preferential treatment to a lawyer in the Windsor County case, and the fact that Sand is known to disagree with Douglas’ opinion on how marijuana should be dealt with.

In other words, he decided to attack Bobby Sand and not his counterpart in Orange County, Republican Will Porter, for purely political reasons.

So how important is it to prosecute pot smokers, and how important is it to pick out a political enemy to attack?

I’m just wondering.

(New information from Chris & Lise.

– promoted by Brattlerouser)

Chris & Lise have an update on the lawsuit. Check it out for the latest.

Today's Times Argus has a piece about the iBrattleboro story that's worth a look. The story gives the outline of what's happening and examines the legal and constitutional issues about free speech on the Internet.

News of the iBrattleboro lawsuit this week hit the Vermont blogging community like a storm.

"I'm pretty comfortable that the suit is without merit based on the case law out there," said John Odum, the main blogger behind Green Mountain Daily. "I just didn't want there to be any wiggle-room. This is dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's."

The story also quotes our friend Charity, who takes a similar pro-free-speech position: 

"I am afraid this could lead to more censorship," Tensel said. "I don't want to remove this format, which allows for discussion and debate."

Needless to say, even those of us who are confident that the suit against iBrattleboro is groundless will be watching it with great interest. 

Speaking of sustainability, take a look at this diary about creating sustainable holiday observances.

Green Christmas

Let's make it happen people.

"Share traditions rather than gifts."

    Don't hear that very often, do you?

On the other hand, how often does a racist dog like Trent Lott announce he's retiring from the Senate?

Just as a reminder, here's what he said:

 Lott said Mississipppi voters were proud to have supported Thurmond when he ran for president on a segregationist platform in 1948, and added: “If the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either.”

You've undoubtedly read 1984, although it was probably a long time ago, and you undoubtedly remember Newspeak, the 1984 lexicon in which war was redefined as peace, and so forth.

Guess what, it's still happening. It shouldn't be surprising that a regime that is dedicated to wiping out dissent by making independent thought impossible would use the perversion of the English language (“oldspeak”) to carry out its aims.

 For example, under the Bush administration we have PATRIOT, a law dedicated to wiping out the American values of liberty, privacy, and dissent.

Here's the latest:  Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information.

 Yes, I'm not kidding. Privacy means that the government is carefully monitoring everything you do and say, and guarding that information.

If you don't like it, go talk to the Minstry of Truth.