Yesterday, I filed to become a candidate for Kettering School Board in November’s election. I turned in my petitions to the Montgomery County Board of Elections, with a total of 231 signatures, and I paid the required $30 filing fee. I thought I had 232 signatures, but I discovered that the election rules prohibit candidates from signing their own petition and, so, I had to scratch out my own name.

The Board of Elections will announce on Tuesday, August 25, the names of all of the certified candidates in the county. 150 signatures are required to be verified in order to be certified by the Board of Education as a candidate for election to the Kettering School Board, so I have 81 extra signatures; 35% of the signatures I turned in could be discarded and I would still meet the 150 requirement, so I should make it. But I’ll know for sure on August 25.

Several people said, flat out, they never sign anything and refused to sign. But these were the rare exception. Overall, everyone I spoke with was overly friendly and encouraging. I enjoyed walking the neighborhood, and, a side benefit, on the hot and humid days as I walked the walk, I must have lost five pounds.

I was surprised that at two houses the person answering the door asked, “Are you a liberal or are you a conservative?” It is interesting how pervasive the liberal / conservative frame of reference has become. I felt pressed for time, but in both case I took the time to explain some of my views about the purpose of public education and about how public education might be improved. “But are you a Democrat or are you a Republican?” one man demanded. You can’t expect your efforts to make a better world to be appreciated by everyone, I guess.

An interesting web-site called ProgressivePunch describes itself as, “a non-partisan searchable database of Congressional voting records from a Progressive perspective.” The site says that it tracks the performance of members of Congress within 160 different issue categories.

Progressive Punch gives John Boehner (OH-8) a score of 2.59% and a ranking of 406 out of 434 possible members. It gives Mike Turner (OH-3) a score of 14.25% and a ranking of 288 out of 434 members. It gives Dennis Kucinich (OH-10) a score of 88.96% and a ranking of 143 out of 434.

Here is how Progressive Punch rates Mike Turner according to specific categories:

• Aid to Less Advantaged People, at Home & Abroad (17 subcategories) 8.33%
• Corporate Subsidies (14 subcategories) 1.67%
• Education, Humanities, & the Arts (3 subcategories)  7.27%
• Environment (15 subcategories) 8.15%
• Fair Taxation (6 subcategories) 2.31%
• Family Planning (2 subcategories) 5.88%
• Government Checks on Corporate Power (31 subcategories) 5.31%
• Health Care (15 subcategories) 4.59%
• Housing (2 subcategories) 21.62%
• Human Rights & Civil Liberties (10 subcategories) 1.80%
• Justice for All: Civil and Criminal (7 subcategories) 1.20%
• Labor Rights (8 subcategories) 7.21%
• Making Government Work for Everyone, Not Just the Rich or Powerful 8.14%
• War & Peace (18 subcategories) 2.42%

Interesting article at Truthdig. Joshua Holland of AlterNet outlines ten benefits that health care reform should bring. Holland writes, “Understanding what’s actually contained in the legislation leads to an unavoidable conclusion about the anger we’ve seen in recent weeks: it’s doubtful that at anytime in the history of our nation have a group of people been so furiously opposed to something that would so obviously be an improvement over what they now have. It’s nothing less than a testament to the power of industry propaganda.”

Here is an abbreviated version of Holland’s Ten Reasons To Pass Health Reform:

1. The First Thing That Will Happen Is Absolutely Nothing. At least that’s the case for a lot of people who now have quality health insurance. … Your current insurance company would have a harder time screwing you over if you get sick. That’s because, although your policy wouldn’t change, it would be governed by new public-interest regulations for the entire health insurance industry.
2. New Protections for Consumers. New regulations would take effect in 2010 that would go a long way toward curtailing the insurance companies’ worst abuses. … The legislation (especially the Senate HELP bill) creates new tools for fighting insurance fraud and abuse.
3. Medical Bankruptcies Would Plummet. One of the most significant of these regulations is in the House bill: a cap on out-of-pocket expenses. … In 2007, Harvard researchers studied thousands of bankruptcy filings and found that medical causes played a role in more than 6 in 10.
4. People Who Could Never Get Decent Coverage Will Finally Be Able To.  So far, one of the great victories for the anti-reform movement has been convincing many small-business owners that health reform will put them under.  The reality is that small-business people, their employees, independent contractors, freelancers, entrepreneurs, part-timers and the “marginally employed” would be the biggest winners from the legislation if it passed as currently drafted. Small business owners and their employees—as well as those other groups—would, for the first time, be able to get decent coverage at a fair price, and if eligible, both employer and worker would be able to get extra help paying for it.
5. (Almost) Everyone Gets Covered. That brings us to another “controversial”—but ultimately commonsense—piece of the puzzle, the “individual mandate.” It means that (almost) everyone would either have to buy health insurance or pay a modest penalty that would contribute to the system. In the House bill, the penalty would max out at 2.5 percent of income. Waivers would be available in the cases of economic hardship or for those who have religious objections.
6. Those Who Can’t Afford the Premiums Will Get Help Paying. Ultimately, even if the public exchanges were to succeed in bringing the price of health insurance back to earth, a lot of people would still be priced out of the market. All of the Democratic plans come with subsidies to help those at the lower end of the economic ladder get access to decent health care. The most generous are in the House bill, and how extensive the subsidies will be in the final legislation will be a point of heated debate.
7. No Free Lunch for Businesses. Currently, large employers that rely on low-skilled workforces usually offer little or no health coverage, and much of these workers’ health care is already subsidized by taxpayers in the form of Medicaid and Medicare payments, other public programs and unpaid bills for emergency-room visits. Under the proposals in Congress, medium and large firms would face a simple choice: Offer their employees decent coverage or pay something into the system to offset the burden their employees’ health needs impose on the American taxpayer.
8. More Low-Income Workers Eligible for Medicaid.   All of the plans being considered by Congress make more of the working poor eligible for Medicaid by lifting the income limits on eligibility.
9. Some Things Will Change, But You’ll Never Notice. There are measures that would impact the way doctors are paid, allocate additional dollars for developing the health care workforce and bring new technologies online. …Ordinary people looking for health coverage are not going to notice anything different about their health care.
10. Over Time, the System Will Become Healthier.  Everything depends on what the final legislation entails. But if it were done right, those systemic changes—greater competition, tighter regulation, technological improvements, a greater emphasis on prevention, the buying power and efficiency of less-fragmented insurance pools and an end to treating the uninsured in emergency rooms—would gradually “bend the cost curve” of health coverage and offer insurance to tens of millions of people who today struggle with the health problems and stressful economic insecurity of living without insurance.