Main Street

Interesting Things Around the Internet

• Want to know what employers would be required to offer health care under the House plan vs. the Senate plan? What the minimum package of benefits insurers would be required to offer? How a public insurance option would compete with private insurers? The New York Times has a nice interactive side-by-side comparison.
• Steelworkers President Leo Gerard:
  

  It turns out a Texas windmill farm developer’s request last month for nearly half a billion in stimulus funds to create 2,000 jobs in China doesn’t rank first on the audacity scale.

  Shockingly for American taxpayers, and sadly for the staggering 10.2 percent of Americans who are unemployed, it doesn’t even rank second.

  That’s because Washington already has doled out hundreds of millions in stimulus funds to foreign renewable energy firms. Of the $1.05 billion in clean energy grants awarded by D.C., $849 million — 84 percent — went to foreign wind companies, according to an analysis by Russ Choma of the Investigative Reporting Workshop.

  So we can add that to what I said before about how green jobs need to be good jobs—they also need to be in this country, at least if our tax money goes into creating them.

• If spending the holidays with your family means tension and arguing, you’re not alone.
• A food safety bill is moving forward in the Senate, but—surprise!—progress is slow.
• Remember how the Chamber of Commerce was going to pay a “respected” economist to do a “study” showing that health care reform was going to steal your lunch money and spit on your grandmother? They’re now not so interested in talking about whether they’re going to go through with that. They’re saying they haven’t decided. Yeah, right.
• The city of Philadelphia is trying to keep foreclosed homeowners from losing their homes. Apparently there are criticisms that the program doesn’t go far enough, but at least it’s an effort with a few teeth.