Galleys

The 2nd issue of Galleys Online, barring any unforeseen circumstances, will be available soon …

"House Lights on Late" by Christopher Woods

Featuring debut poems by:

• Ward Abel
• Francis Blessington
• Michael Lee Johnson
• KJ
• Robert Lietz
• Sergio Ortiz
• S.C. Gray

Fiction by:

• Eugenie R. Freed
• Tom Mahony
• Timothy Raymond
• Gail Taylor
• Meg Tuite

and an Essay by Liz N. Clift

Plus, what can we learn from Franz Kafka’s The Trial?

Ken Pobo releases his new chapbook Trina and the Sky in late November through Main Street Rag. Order now to purchase at just $7.  (ISBN: 13: 978-1-59948-225-5, 40 pages, $10.)

Ken contributed “Venturing Forth,” along with 4 other poems, in the first issue of Galleys Online.

In response to a few emails I have received, I’d like to let everyone know we have not gone anywhere. Galleys Online is currently receiving, reviewing, and responding to submissions; I am accepting less than 50% of our submissions and offering feedback to the rest with the hopes that a revised draft will find its way back to Galleys Online in the future. I am excited by some of the poets who have contributed to our first issue, which will publish Monday, October 5.

Blogging is taking a bit of a slide of late, however, because we’re in the busy season at the Campaign Office. “Congressional races won’t face a vote for another 14 months,” you say? “Early fund raising decides what races will be competitive,” I reply.

If you’re unhappy with your current U.S. Representative, now is the best time to express that dissatisfaction monetarily. (If you approve of the job being done by your current Representative, a donation now will also help.) The FEC’s 3rd Quarter filing deadline is fast approaching, September 30.  Research who the opposition party’s candidate will be for your district, and make a donation. If you cannot afford a donation–and you should know $1 donations add up–volunteer some time.

In the perspective of each party’s National Congressional Committee, money and donors directly correlate to support; money legitimizes a candidate.  If a candidate raises funds that are competitive with the incumbent, the Party will recognize an opportunity to win that seat, and the NCCs will begin to support the candidate monetarily in 2010. The donation you pledge today helps lay a foundation for competitive races next year.

Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE), one of the fence-sitters on the current Health Care legislation, says on CNN that he would consider supporting a Public Option if it were triggered by the Private Sector failing to reform costs:

Well I think [the President] has to say that if there’s going to be a public option, it has to be subject to a trigger. In other words, if somehow the private market doesn’t respond the way that it’s supposed to, then it would trigger a public option or a government-run option. But only as a fail-safe backstop to the process.

Nate Silver, noting that “as with most things on health care, the devil is in the details,” explores what a trigger may look like:

The insurance companies would need to have real reason to fear the trigger. And that means having a public option that, if it were triggered, would be able to negotiate at Medicare rates, or perhaps Medicare rates plus a small premium of 5 to 10 percent. This is how the public option was originally envisioned — but the provision appears to have been stripped from the version of the House bill passed by the Energy and Commerce Committee, which arguably represents about the maximal bill that a sufficient number of Blue Dogs would be willing to accept.

Of course, insurance companies have real reason to fear the Public Option now.  Stripped or unstripped by Energy and Commerce, the Public Option will be a cheaper option for most employers–especially employers who will now need to offer health benefits to their part-time workforce. And it seems to be ignored that, Employers by and large control the Health Insurance market. Approximately 6/10 Americans receive their Health Insurance from an Employer offered Group Health Plan. (Admitted, this is lazy google research on my part. I’m taking the number from a Progressive site.)

When Politicians say that Americans can keep their current health insurance, they ignore that 180 Million insured Americans (6/10) will have that choice made for them by their boss.
Read More …

At McSweeney’s, John Spiers shares his “Early Semester Lesson Plan for a College Composition Class“:

Congratulate that one exemplary but shy student who always answers the question when no one else knows the answer and is coasting through the class on a cushion of talent and the bitterness that comes from having been too lazy to take the AP or placement tests to get out of the class in the first place, when he or she rolls her eyes and says “OK, I’ll read,” quietly. After he or she reads and the respectful silence has passed, nod with furrowed brow. Make a polite comment. Invite someone else to read. When no one else does, pose a rhetorical question and smile, softly.

I fail to see any comedy here. This is exactly what I do when I teach.