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No place to hide on health bill |
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Written by PARRY TEASDALE
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Thursday, 11 March 2010 12:34 |
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"My goals for health care remain the same as when we started this discussion last year. We need to fundamentally change the system to bring costs down for our families and small businesses, hold insurance companies accountable, and increase access to quality health care. When we have a bill to vote on, I will determine whether it goes far enough to fix the incentives in our health care system and if it is going to help the people of the 20th District."
--Rep. Scott Murphy (D-20th)
THE QUOTE ABOVE comes directly and in its entirety from Rep. Murphy's Washington office. His press spokesman provided it in response to the question of whether the congressman, whose district includes all of Columbia County, has decided how he will vote on what's called “reconciliation” of the Senate health insurance reform bill. A Yes vote supports health insurance reform.
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Remembering two colleagues |
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Written by PARRY TEASDALE
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Thursday, 04 March 2010 14:22 |
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THE COUNTY LOST two people in the last few days who helped us understand who we are and what makes Columbia County tick. Vicki Simons, the former editor of a newspaper called The Independent died Monday evening at her home in Ghent. Bob Mitchell, a reporter who wrote for The Independent and the Register Star, and was the county's public information officer, died Saturday at Albany Medical Center.
Both did more than cover the news, and their obituaries, which appear in this issue, list their public accomplishments. But we knew them as colleagues, and we respected them as people who cared deeply about sharing information with their friends and neighbors.
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Written by PARRY TEASDALE
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Friday, 26 February 2010 23:08 |
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HOW'RE YOU FEELING? If you live in Columbia County, you probably feel a little healthier than your neighbors in, say, Ulster or Rensselaer counties. Unless you're dead, of course.
As a matter of fact, you are likelier to be deceased sooner here than in most other counties in the state. This cheery news comes from the County Health Rankings study, part of a project of a joint effort by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
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Did somebody say 'dysfunctional'? |
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Written by PARRY TEASDALE
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Thursday, 18 February 2010 14:33 |
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LISTEN, CHILDREN, AND REMEMBER this lesson: Good ideas always start at the top; those of us who pay the taxes and do the work will never be smart enough to figure out what's best for us. That's what government is for. Now go to sleep….
That apparently sums up the attitude of the state Department of State, according to local school officials. The school boards and administrators from the Ichabod Crane and Schodack school districts applied for a state grant last October, asking for money to study what they called “functional consolidation.” The two adjacent districts wanted to preserve their traditional identities but find ways to share services and save taxpayers some money.
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Will we learn from the Kohl's deal? |
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Written by PARRY TEASDALE
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Thursday, 11 February 2010 13:54 |
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START WITH A SIMPLE PREMISE: Everybody would like a tax break. Rich, poor or somewhere in between, all of us feel the bite and would welcome a little relief.
In theory this country has a progressive tax system--the more a person or a company earns, the more the person or company pays in taxes, up to a point; and while some get rich, money should move up and down the economic ladder. But over the last few decades, people who already had a lot of money have accumulated an even bigger slice of the pie, so that 20% of the population now controls 85% of the nation's wealth.
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Page 1 of 3 |
Columbia Paper editorial
