Here are updates on some of the stories that I've been following.

Anthony Maio

I've written several blog posts about the Anthony Maio case including ones on jury selection and attending the trial.

On Tuesday, the New Haven Independent which has had great coverage of this trial reported that the jury cleared Maio. From all that I've read as well as my one day at court during the hearing, if I had ended up on the jury, I would have concurred with the jury. It has been fascinating to watch not only the trial, and the news coverage, but follow some of the discussions online about the case.

Anthem

About a month ago, I wrote a blog post about Anthem's request for a rate increase. In my blog post, I noted a list of notable politicians that came out in opposition to the rate increase. In spite of the numerous objections, the state insurance commissioner approved the rate hike.

Yesterday, the Attorney General's office issued a press release announcing that the Attorney General, the Healthcare Advocate, and the Insurance Committee Co-Chairs are proposing sweeping reforms of the health insurance rate hike approval process. One of the co-chairs is State Sen. Joe Crisco representing my state senate district. I have written him applauding his efforts. There is a great need for health care reform in our country. We can argue about whether the current public option plan is a good reform, whether we need a single payer method, what should be done to change aspects of interstate health insurance and so on. However, it does seem clear that there is not currently enough oversight of the health insurance industry. This proposal appears to be an important step in getting better oversight of that industry.

Marriage Equality

Some people have claimed that if we allow gay people to marry, it will destroy traditional marriages. Perhaps there is some truth to this. Now that people who have been in long term committed relationships with their same sex partners are marrying in Connecticut and other States, it seems like there are more and more high profile conservative politicians whose mixed-sex marriages are failing. While I don't believe there is any causality here, there is correlation.

Others have suggested that if you give gay people civil rights, everyone will start wanting civil rights.

I like reframing the discussion about marriage equaltiy to talking about those of use who are in mixed sex marriages. Recently, over on Communications Exchange, there was a discussion about mixed marriages. The blogger was talking about marriages between PC users and Mac users. I hopped in and talked about mixed marriages between men and women.

Public Relations and Alleged Racism at the Sheraton Kansas City Sports Complex?

Another story I've been following closely is the allegations of racism in the when the Dixwell Drill Team was evicted from the Sheraton Kansas City Sports Complex. Like the Maio case, this has stirred a lot of comments. What I thought would be most interesting would be to find the response by Starwood Hotels, which owns the Sheraton chain. Last Friday, I sent an email to their public relations department asking for additional information. I wanted to get both sides of the story. I received a brief phone call back letting me know that they had not seen the news stories that I cited but that they had been contacted by another news organization asking for details about the same time that I contacted them. They said they were investigating the incident and would get back to me. That was nearly a week ago, and I have not heard any additional information, although I have sent a followup email asking for details.

It may well be that they are simply being quiet and hoping the whole thing passes over.

Other stuff

I was in New York yesterday for Digiday: APPS. I hope to have some followup blog posts about this shortly. It was a great conference and I have much that I hope to write. My laptop is still crippled and I have too many things going on at the same time. Meanwhile, I've been playing Mr. Mom today and dealing with quite a few random other issues.