September 30, 2013.

Obama and Ryan Stay on Sidelines on Budget

But if there was hope, it lay in the proles. You had to cling on to that. When you put it in words it sounded reasonable: it was when you looked at the human beings passing you on the pavement that it became an act of faith. The street into which he had turned ran downhill. He had a feeling that he had been in this neighbourhood before, and that there was a main thoroughfare not far away. From somewhere ahead there came a din of shouting voices. The street took a sharp turn and then ended in a flight of steps which led down into a sunken alley where a few stallkeepers were selling tired-looking vegetables. At this moment Winston remembered where he was. The alley led out into the main street, and down the next turning, not five minutes away, was the junk-shop where he had bought the blank book which was now his diary. And in a small stationer's shop not far away he had bought his penholder and his bottle of ink.

Each is the architect of his party's budget priorities, yet both President Barack Obama and Republican Rep. Paul Ryan have largely removed themselves from talks in Washington's latest standoff for reasons that help explain why the country has moved to the brink of a government shutdown.

He paused for a moment at the top of the steps. On the opposite side of the alley there was a dingy little pub whose windows appeared to be frosted over but in reality were merely coated with dust. A very old man, bent but active, with white moustaches that bristled forward like those of a prawn, pushed open the swing door and went in. As Winston stood watching, it occurred to him that the old man, who must be eighty at the least, had already been middle-aged when the Revolution happened. He and a few others like him were the last links that now existed with the vanished world of capitalism. In the Party itself there were not many people left whose ideas had been formed before the Revolution. The older generation had mostly been wiped out in the great purges of the fifties and sixties, and the few who survived had long ago been terrified into complete intellectual surrender. If there was any one still alive who could give you a truthful account of conditions in the early part of the century, it could only be a prole. Suddenly the passage from the history book that he had copied into his diary came back into Winston's mind, and a lunatic impulse took hold of him. He would go into the pub, he would scrape acquaintance with that old man and question him. He would say to him: "Tell me about your life when you were a boy. What was it like in those days? Were things better than they are now, or were they worse?"

The president and Mr. Ryan crafted the competing budget blueprints that Democrats and Republicans put before voters in 2012 elections. If only to replay the debates of that election, they would seem obvious choices to broker a way out of the impasse.

Hurriedly, lest he should have time to become frightened, he descended the steps and crossed the narrow street. It was madness of course. As usual, there was no definite rule against talking to proles and frequenting their pubs, but it was far too unusual an action to pass unnoticed. If the patrols appeared he might plead an attack of faintness, but it was not likely that they would believe him. He pushed open the door, and a hideous cheesy smell of sour beer hit him in the face. As he entered the din of voices dropped to about half its volume. Behind his back he could feel everyone eyeing his blue overalls. A game of darts which was going on at the other end of the room interrupted itself for perhaps as much as thirty seconds. The old man whom he had followed was standing at the bar, having some kind of altercation with the barman, a large, stout, hook-nosed young man with enormous forearms. A knot of others, standing round with glasses in their hands, were watching the scene.

For the moment, though, beyond public statements, Mr. Obama has played no inside role in the unfolding drama. And Mr. Ryan has been almost entirely silent. New players have emerged to fill the vacuum, notably Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and others in the GOP who want to undo the president's health-care law.

September 29, 2013.

U.S. Nears Shutdown as House Votes To Delay Health Law

"February your grandmother! I got it all down in black and white. An' I tell you, no number----"

WASHINGTON----The U.S. government moved to within hours of its first shutdown since 1996, as House Republicans redoubled their drive early Sunday to delay the new health care law and Senate Democrats stood firm against changing the law as a condition of funding federal departments.

"Oh, pack it in!" said the third man.

The standoff left little prospect that Congress could reach agreement on terms for funding the government by midnight Monday, when the current fiscal year expires. A shutdown would leave essential services operating but prompt federal agencies to suspend many functions and furlough hundreds of thousands of workers.

They were talking about the Lottery. Winston looked back when he had gone thirty metres. They were still arguing, with vivid, passionate faces. The Lottery, with its weekly pay out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made a living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the running of the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being nonexistent persons. In the absence of any real intercommunication between one part of Oceania and another, this was not difficult to arrange.

On a 231-192 vote, the House early Sunday passed a one-year delay of the health law, often called Obamacare, and attached it to a plan to fund the government through Dec. 15. The legislation now goes to the Senate. It also includes a provision repealing a tax on medical devices intended to help finance the health law, which the House approved on a 248-174 vote.

September 28, 2013.

Key Groups Have Love-Hate Relationship With Health Law

"Yes, it 'as, then!"

Health-insurance companies spent more than $80 million trying to defeat President Barack Obama's health-care plan. Having failed, they have spent the years since trying to kill a string of provisions they don't like.

"No, it 'as not! Back 'ome I got the 'ole lot of 'em for over two years wrote down on a piece of paper. I takes 'em down reg'lar as the clock. An' I tell you, no number ending in seven----"

And yet, it is those same insurance companies that are working harder than just about anyone to try to make the law succeed.

"Yes, a seven 'as won! I could pretty near tell you the bleeding number. Four oh seven, it ended in. It were in February----second week in February."

It is one of the paradoxes of the sweeping health-care law: Fierce critics can also act as supporters who are key to whether the law will work. With Mr. Obama's struggles in selling the law, their efforts have become even more critical to its success.

September 27, 2013.

Hospitals Give Health Law Real-World Test

He walked on. The bomb had demolished a group of houses 200 metres up the street. A black plume of smoke hung in the sky, and below it a cloud of plaster dust in which a crowd was already forming around the ruins. There was a little pile of plaster lying on the pavement ahead of him, and in the middle of it he could see a bright red streak. When he got up to it he saw that it was a human hand severed at the wrist. Apart from the bloody stump, the hand was so completely whitened as to resemble a plaster cast.

NEW YORK----Dale Johnson is Exhibit A for people who believe that the new federal health-care law has embedded in it the secret to better care for less money.

He kicked the thing into the gutter, and then, to avoid the crowd, turned down a side-street to the right. Within three or four minutes he was out of the area which the bomb had affected, and the sordid swarming life of the streets was going on as though nothing had happened. It was nearly twenty hours, and the drinking-shops which the proles frequented ("pubs," they called them) were choked with customers. From their grimy swing doors, endlessly opening and shutting, there came forth a smell of urine, sawdust, and sour beer. In an angle formed by a projecting house front three men were standing very close together, the middle one of them holding a folded-up newspaper which the other two were studying over his shoulder. Even before he was near enough to make out the expression on their faces, Winston could see absorption in every line of their bodies. It was obviously some serious piece of news that they were reading. He was a few paces away from them when suddenly the group broke up and two of the men were in violent altercation. For a moment they seemed almost on the point of blows.

Suffering from congestive heart failure, coronary-artery disease and diabetes, the 58-year-old former teacher was hospitalized five times last year at Mount Sinai Medical Center here and visited its emergency room 12 times. Cost to Medicare: $43,849.

"Can't you bleeding well listen to what I say? I tell you no number ending in seven ain't won for over fourteen months!"

This year----with the help of a team of doctors, nurses and social workers----Mrs. Johnson shows up for appointments, takes her medications and is managing her chronic conditions. She has been hospitalized only once and ran up only $6,796 in Medicare costs through late August.

September 26, 2013.

The New Asylums: Jails Swell With Mentally Ill

Suddenly the whole street was in commotion. There were yells of warning from all sides. People were shooting into the doorways like rabbits. A young woman leapt out of a doorway a little ahead of Winston, grabbed up a tiny child playing in a puddle, whipped her apron round it, and leapt back again, all in one movement. At the same instant a man in a concertina-like black suit, who had emerged from a side alley, ran towards Winston, pointing excitedly to the sky.

CHICAGO----The sound of clanging steel doors and agitated voices in the Cook County Jail bullpen was deafening. Amid the din, Robert Miller, who would turn 19 the next day, wept quietly. Anger and sullenness were common here. Uncontrolled crying was a sign of a bigger problem.

"Steamer!" he yelled. "Look out, guv'nor! Bang over'ead! Lay down quick!"

Mr. Miller was being held on a drug-possession charge and was waiting for his day in court. But his anguish caught the attention of a woman on the other side of the bars. Elli Petacque Montgomery, the jail's chief clinical social worker, listened as Mr. Miller spoke and shuddered. The teenager, who disputes the drug charge, said he had tried in vain to get help for his disabling episodes. Twice, he said, he had attempted suicide.

"Steamer" was a nickname which, for some reason, the proles applied to rocket bombs. Winston promptly flung himself on his face. The proles were nearly always right when they gave you a warning of this kind. They seemed to possess some kind of instinct which told them several seconds in advance when a rocket was coming, although the rockets supposedly travelled faster than sound. Winston clasped his forearms above his head. There was a roar that seemed to make the pavement heave; a shower of light objects pattered on to his back. When he stood up he found that he was covered with fragments of glass from the nearest window.

Ms. Montgomery scribbled notes on a clipboard. At the jail, she routinely sees people with conditions ranging from severe depression to schizophrenia.

September 25, 2013.

America's Toilet Turnaround

"'Yes," I says to 'er,  'that's all very well,' I says. 'But if you'd of been in my place you'd of done the same as what I done. It's easy to criticize,' I says, 'but you ain't got the same problems as what I got.'"

PERRYSVILLE, Ohio----In previous management jobs, Jim Morando watched Chinese imports engulf the U.S. market for vinyl tiles, wood flooring and window blinds.

"Ah," said the other, "that's jest it. That's jest where it is."

Now, as president of Mansfield Plumbing Products, a toilet manufacturer here, Mr. Morando says he has decided to "stand and fight."

The strident voices stopped abruptly. The women studied him in hostile silence as he went past. But it was not hostility, exactly; merely a kind of wariness, a momentary stiffening, as at the passing of some unfamiliar animal. The blue overalls of the Party could not be a common sight in a street like this. Indeed, it was unwise to be seen in such places, unless you had definite business there. The patrols might stop you if you happened to run into them. "May I see your papers, comrade? What are you doing here? What time did you leave work? Is this your usual way home?"----and so on and so forth. Not that there was any rule against walking home by an unusual route: but it was enough to draw attention to you if the Thought Police heard about it.

After decades of losing out to foreign rivals, U.S. manufacturing of toilets is making a surprising, if modest, comeback----mostly under foreign ownership.

September 24, 2013.

Iranians Rebuff U.S. Offer to Meet at U.N.

VIII

From somewhere at the bottom of a passage the smell of roasting coffee----real coffee, not Victory Coffee----came floating out into the street. Winston paused involuntarily. For perhaps two seconds he was back in the half-forgotten world of his childhood. Then a door banged, seeming to cut off the smell as abruptly as though it had been a sound.

UNITED NATIONS----President Barack Obama told world leaders that an agreement with Iran to contain its nuclear program should be achievable, but Iran decided against an anticipated meeting of the U.S. and Iranian presidents at the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.

He had walked several kilometres over pavements, and his varicose ulcer was throbbing. This was the second time in three weeks that he had missed an evening at the Community Centre: a rash act, since you could be certain that the number of your attendances at the Centre was carefully checked. In principle a Party member had no spare time, and was never alone except in bed. It was assumed that when he was not working, eating, or sleeping he would be taking part in some kind of communal recreation: to do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity. But this evening as he came out of the Ministry the balminess of the April air had tempted him. The sky was a warmer blue than he had seen it that year, and suddenly the long, noisy evening at the Centre, the boring, exhausting games, the lectures, the creaking camaraderie oiled by gin, had seemed intolerable. On impulse he had turned away from the bus-stop and wandered off into the labyrinth of London, first south, then east, then north again, losing himself among unknown streets and hardly bothering in which direction he was going.

The Iranian decision stalled what had been building as a potential diplomatic advance between Washington and Tehran after more than 30 years of conflict.

"If there is hope," he had written in the diary, "it lies in the proles." The words kept coming back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity. He was somewhere in the vague, brown-coloured slums to the north and east of what had once been Saint Pancras Station. He was walking up a cobbled street of little two-storey houses with battered doorways which gave straight on the pavement and which were somehow curiously suggestive of ratholes. There were puddles of filthy water here and there among the cobbles. In and out of the dark doorways, and down narrow alley-ways that branched off on either side, people swarmed in astonishing numbers----girls in full bloom, with crudely lipsticked mouths, and youths who chased the girls, and swollen waddling women who showed you what the girls would be like in ten years' time, and old bent creatures shuffling along on splayed feet, and ragged barefooted children who played in the puddles and then scattered at angry yells from their mothers. Perhaps a quarter of the windows in the street were broken and boarded up. Most of the people paid no attention to Winston; a few eyed him with a sort of guarded curiosity. Two monstrous women with brick-red forearms folded across their aprons were talking outside a doorway. Winston caught scraps of conversation as he approached.

A step forward is planned for Thursday, when Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif as part of a larger meeting between Tehran and global powers during the annual U.N. meeting.