Tina Dupuy

This was in the LA Daily News and The Beast.

Maybe it’s another Clinton running for president or maybe its American Gladiators being back on television or maybe it was the late night monologue jokes during the writer’s strike – but I’m suffering from some déjà vu. It’s all sounding vaguely familiar – I’ve seen this – heard it before.

The story is this: Young voters are being galvanized and energized…more than ever…this time.

Time Magazine ran a story of the youth vote on the cover, “Frustrated by feckless Washington, energized by the unscripted, pundit-baffling freedom of a wide-open race, young people are voting in numbers rarely seen since the general election of 1972.”

In 1970 congress extended the Civil Rights Act of 1965, it gave 18-year-olds the right to vote for federal offices. In the general election in 1972 between George McGovern and Richard Nixon young people for the first time were able to cast their ballots. The war in Vietnam was raging. There was, after all, a draft. The average age of a GI in that war was 19. They could go and die for their country but couldn’t have their vote counted. This was their moment. History was calling upon the young people of American to step up and change the course of history!

That year 1972 will forever be plugged as the year for ‘the youth vote’. It is the young voter’s election that all other young voter’s elections will be judged by.

What happened? Only half of those 18, 19 and 20 year olds that became eligible turned out to vote and Nixon won in a landslide.

Which poses the question: Why would we still want that demographics’ participation?

In 1992 when running against the first George Bush, Bill Clinton was roughly the same age then as Barack Obama is now. Early to mid-40’s. JFK’s age. Clinton, as a presidential candidate went on MTV. That had never happened before. President Bush at first refused. All the reports said that it was the most young people energized by an election since 1972. It was exciting. The numbers? According to the census bureau about 48% of young voters (18-24) turned out as compared to the 30 and over crowd, of 72.4%.

And let’s not forget the 2004 youth vote. “Vote or Die!” The word ‘blog’ was being used by pundits for the first time. Howard Dean and blogforamerica.com had excited the youth vote and there were more young people energized by an election since 1972! It was exciting! MySpace had just blown Friendster out of the water and grass roots had taken hold on this thing called ‘the internets’. What happened? Less than half (46%) of the youth voters turned out – way below national average of 61% of that year. And we re-elected a man that was nearly killed by eating a pretzel.

I’m not a cynic. I want all to be involved. Young, old – willfully uninformed – I say let’s all get together! I’m just cautiously optimistic. We as Americans have been stood up on prom night by young voters before. And then every couple of years we collectively forget, forgive and re-hype the next batch of flaky young people.

I know. I know. As we think every time we are about to get duped again. “This time it’s going to be different.“

On Super Tuesday I went to the polls half expecting the turn out to look like a Hannah Montana concert. When I got there it looked more like “Hannah and Her Sisters” reunion. There was a group of young Latino males exiting as I walked up. They had shaved heads and baggy pants. At first glance, they looked like gang bangers. As they approached I could make out their “I Voted” stickers on their hoodies. As we passed in the hall, one of them whispered towards me with a giddy skip in his step, ”Eh – vote Hillary!”

Different? Yep.

This ran in the LA Times.

As long as our elected officials have plush health insurance – the system will remain broken.

The other day, I admitted to a friend that I don’t have health insurance.

“What?!” he gasped. “But you’re married. Isn’t that part of the deal?” He reacted as if I had just told him that I believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the flat tax — something embarrassingly ridiculous. Because that’s what being uninsured is these days — a character flaw. It’s how you can pay taxes, volunteer, subscribe to public radio and still be considered a drain on society.

You may be wondering, “Seriously, how can you not have health insurance? Don’t you work? Are you illiterate? Do you have no self-worth whatsoever?!” The short answer is, my husband and I are both freelancers so we have no workplace insurance. And the $500-plus monthly premium? You might as well say our health depended on our adding a new wing to our apartment.

The uninsured are a puzzling group for California lawmakers. Telling the uninsured not to be uninsured, for example, is the solution they came up with. And taxing smokers (banking on their inability to quit but sufficient longevity to make it profitable) to pay for the poor is how lawmakers proposed to fund it. They called it ABX1 1.

This wasn’t good legislation. Good legislation has supporters; ABX1 1 had apologists. And it came to an ignoble end last week, killed by an 11-1 vote in a state Senate committee.

Even though I’m not for radical change, I do favor radical improvement. ABX1 1 was neither. It came around on its face: It appeared that the cure was the same as the disease.

Personally, we make above $47,000 a year, the cutoff for subsidized policies under the plan. We also live in a city where median home prices are still about half a million dollars. Now, while Countrywide Financial Corp. may have happily approved us for a loan a couple of months ago, that doesn’t mean we have any money. So the mandate to buy insurance would have fallen on a lot of broke ears.

Healthcare costs in this country, according to the World Health Organization, are the highest in the Western world. And the chasm between medical care for those with money and those without is potentially deadly. I once had a plantar wart that was near-fatal. True story. Some people gamble at casinos for kicks; I eat uncooked fish. There isn’t a moment that I don’t know that I am one accident or diagnosis away from complete financial ruin. Where are the riots? Where’s the outrage? Didn’t Michael Moore do a documentary on this?

The uninsured and the underinsured need true political advocates. There’s only one way I see that happening. We should force all our elected officials in California to live uninsured for at least 2 1/2 months of the year. Believe me, healthcare will get reformed quicker if their lives and livelihoods depend on it. One in five Californians are uninsured — so all our elected officials should be uninsured for one-fifth of the year until they fix the problem.

What good would that do? In 1993, San Francisco passed a nonbinding measure encouraging public employees from the mayor on down to take public transit at least twice a week. How’s that city’s transit system now? Among the best in the country.

People take vows of poverty to learn humility. People fast to learn gratitude for abundance. People live off the grid to learn — I don’t know — candle-making skills. Living uninsured can teach our elected officials to care for the healthcare system. (Lesson one — negotiate prices. There are more Californians on this planet than Canadians. Hint. Hint.) Call it a fact-finding mission. Make it sound heroic. It’s no more absurd than what they came up with.