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Rapper and producer Sean "Diddy" Combs, director Robert Rodriguez, and basketball legend Magic Johnson each now has his own new cable TV networks. Their channels were part of a merger deal Comcast made with the FCC to give a shot to new networks owned by African Americans, Latinos and others.

Last month, Combs threw on his classic Puff Daddy alias to welcome millennial viewers to his new music network, Revolt.

"This is really happening, people," the rapper said at the launch. "A boy from Harlem is really standing on a stoop in Brooklyn launching a network worldwide. The revolution is now being televised."

Next month, Rodriguez will introduce young English-speaking Latinos to El Rey, on which he's partnered with Spanish-language network Univision to produce an action-packed lineup, including a new Latino James Bond-style series.

"El Rey is going to be the king of content," he says. "Iconic, addictive, exciting, visceral television."

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It's taken for granted that lobbyists influence legislation. But perhaps less obvious is that they often write the actual bills — even word for word.

In an example a week and a half ago, the House passed a measure that would roll back a portion of the 2010 financial reforms known as Dodd-Frank. And reports from The New York Times and Mother Jones revealed that language in the final legislation was nearly identical to language suggested by lobbyists.

It's been a long-accepted truth in Washington that lobbyists write the actual laws, but that raises two questions: Why does it happen so much, and is it a bad thing?

The House bill passed on Oct. 30 essentially sought to wipe out a financial overhaul known as the "push-out rule." The rule prevents banks from using your deposits to trade in derivatives — risky securities that many believe contributed to the 2008 financial crisis.

Marcus Stanley of Americans for Financial Reform says the regulation was a way to protect taxpayer money.

"The purpose of this part of Dodd-Frank was to basically say that Wall Street derivatives activities should be funded by private money and shouldn't get a public subsidy, and this bill kind of reversed that," Stanley says.

What the bill would do is exempt broad categories of trades from this rule.

And here's what really ticked off consumer advocates like Stanley. The New York Times and Mother Jones obtained draft language that lobbyists for Citigroup — one of the largest banks in country — offered to lawmakers. And it turns out that 70 of the 85 lines in the final House bill reflected Citigroup's recommendations. In fact, as The Times reports, two paragraphs were copied almost word for word — except lawmakers had changed two words to make them plural.

The House bill has slim hopes of passing the Senate.

'A Closer Look'

"It shouldn't be as a result of an investigative report by a newspaper that members of Congress find out that a bill put before them was actually written by one of the interests affected by it," says Democratic Rep. Daniel Kildee of Michigan.

Kildee says no one ever told him before he first voted for the bill as a member of the House Financial Services Committee that Citigroup had drafted so much of the language.

So later on the House floor, he voted against the bill.

"It should have been made clear to all committee members as to where this was coming from," says Kildee, "and folks may have taken a different look, or a closer look, at the language if we had known it had been written by and for a particular interest."

Citigroup declined to comment on its lobbying efforts, but in a May 2013 blog post it said that what it advocated was good for the whole financial system.

Privatizing Policy?

"To me," says Lee Drutman of the Sunlight Foundation, a government watchdog group, "this is just another tick-tock on a story that's been developing for a long time — that Congress has basically outsourced its policy expertise to the private sector."

As outrageous as this story seems, Drutman says, it's now unfortunately business as usual on Capitol Hill.

"People on the Hill don't stay as long," he says. "You don't get as good people on the Hill. The expertise on policymaking more and more has moved to the private sector, and it's moved to represent those organizations and companies who can afford to pay for it, which generally isn't you and me. It's big banks and Big Oil and big companies."

Drutman worked as a banking policy staffer in 2009 and 2010 handling financial overhaul issues. And what he saw around the Capitol was that congressional staff members were stretched incredibly thin.

Lobbyists know this, says Drutman, so what they offer lawmakers is an all-in-one package — they'll help a lawmaker round up co-sponsors for the bill, even write talking points, as well as the specific bill language.

"Sometimes it's two words. ... Sometimes you want to insert a 'not' or something," says Nick Allard, a longtime lobbyist at the firm Patton Boggs.

Allard says before you think lobbyists are running Washington, consider this: Word choices in a bill have to be vetted and approved by lots of eyeballs in a long lawmaking process. So it's the members of Congress who voted for the bill — not the lobbyists — who have to take ownership over the final language.

"So where it comes from — whether they see it on the back of a cereal box or on the Today show or on NPR or out of a lawyer who's acting as a lobbyist's word processor — doesn't matter, because if the member is proposing it, they are responsible for it and they have to make the case for why it's advisable," Allard says.

Several of the House bill's sponsors didn't respond to a request for comment.

And as for Kildee's concerns about transparency? Lobbyists aren't under disclosure requirements, so consumer advocates like Stanley say the public can't see what lobbyists have drafted for lawmakers — unless someone leaks it.

"It's a little different when the American Cancer Society gives you some technical assistance on a cancer funding bill versus when one of the largest banks in the world, which was just recently bailed out by the public, writes you a bill that will give it access to public deposit insurance to fund its exotic financial activities," he says.

And Stanley says the public has a right to know where policy expertise is coming from.

A few years ago I did an author visit at an overcrowded junior high school in a rougher part of San Antonio. I write young adult novels that feature working-class, "multicultural" characters, so I'm frequently invited to speak at urban schools like this.

As is often the case, the principal and I talked as the kids filed into the auditorium. The student body was mostly Hispanic, he told me, and over 90 percent qualified for free and reduced lunch. It was an underprivileged school, a traditionally low-achieving school, but they were working hard to raise performance.

The principal then pointed out a particular student, seated near the back. "That one's a real instigator," he told me. "But don't worry, we'll remove him if he starts acting up. It wouldn't be the first time Joshua blew an opportunity like this."

As the librarian introduced me to the school, I studied this kid. Joshua. He was bigger than everyone else. He had neck tattoos and a shaved head. He kept smacking the kid next to him in the back of the head and laughing. A nearby teacher shushed him.

I started my talk by describing my own early struggles in school. I was nearly held back in second grade because I "couldn't read," which shattered my confidence. For a long time after that experience I viewed myself as unintelligent — and the most difficult definition to break free from, I told the students, is self-definition.

Joshua began to pay attention.

Even though I was a reluctant reader in junior high and high school, I found myself writing poems in the back of class. Secret spoken-word-style poems I never shared. They were about girls, mostly. And my neighborhood. And the confusion I sometimes felt about growing up racially mixed. I wasn't able to express myself the way I truly wanted to, though, until I was introduced to multicultural literature in college which led to me falling in love with books.

After the session, Joshua came to the front of the stage and asked to speak with me in private. He told me he was born in a prison and that he'd been held back in school. Twice. He didn't belong in junior high anymore. It made him feel like a loser. But he wanted me to know that he wrote stories sometimes. About San Antonio gangs. When he asked if I'd be willing to read the one he'd just finished, I told him I'd love to. "But you'll have to get it to me quick," I said. "They're about to shuttle me to the next school."

He sprinted off toward his locker on the other side of campus.

The librarian told me she was stunned as we both watched Joshua disappear into the halls. It was the first time she'd seen him engage in anything school related.

A few minutes later he was back with thirty typed pages. He was sweating and out of breath. He handed me his story and told me I was the first person he'd ever let read his writing. I gave him one of my books in return, and we shook hands. He called me "sir."

That night I read Joshua's words. They were beautiful. And ugly. And sad. They were full of heart. This Mexican kid, who was a thug, who was not pretty and felt like he was too big for his grade, too old — he had all these feelings he didn't know what to do with. So he wrote them into stories.

Owning One's Creativity

This is not an isolated case. A surprising number of teens I meet in rougher schools around the country find refuge in novels and creative writing. It's not always the usual suspects either, the high achievers. Sometimes it's the second-string point guard on the basketball squad. Or the girl bussed in from a group home. Or the kid who's twice been suspended for fighting. The one constant I find? Many of these teens — especially the ones from working-class families — do their reading and creating in secret.

Young-adult author John Green has done an amazing job mobilizing a generation of readers and writers through his "nerdfighter" campaign. Kids from all around the country shout from the rooftops that they love to read and learn and make art. One day Mr. Green will undoubtedly win a MacArthur Fellowship, or something similar, for the groundbreaking online community he's created (as well as for his fiction). But not every kid is able to own his or her creativity in this way. In many working-class neighborhoods, the "nerdfighter" label just isn't gonna fly. Self preservation won't allow for it. I'm sensitive to this because it's the way I grew up, too.

I'm ashamed to admit this, but I didn't read a novel all the way through until after high school. Blasphemy, I know. I'm an author now. Books and words are my world. But back then I was too caught up in playing ball and running with the fellas. Guys who read books — especially for pleasure — were soft. Sensitive. And if there was one thing a guy couldn't be in my machista, Mexican family, it was sensitive. My old man didn't play that. Neither did my uncles or cousins or basketball teammates. And I did a good job fitting myself into the formula.

But there was something missing.

The health care exchanges may be open, but there's no question they're still kind of a mess.

"The rollout has been excruciatingly awful for way too many people," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius conceded to the Senate Finance Committee last week.

But mess or not, the law is going forward, people are trying to use it, and they have questions. Here are some of yours, and our answers.

Fran Heyman of Westchester, N.Y., wants to know, "If you are self-employed, is there a cap to how much you can make to use the Affordable Care Act insurance?"

No. There's no upper limit to how much you can earn and still be able to buy health insurance on the exchange. But there is an upper limit on how much you can earn and qualify for a subsidy to help offset the costs. That upper limit is 400 percent of the federal poverty level — about $46,000 in modified adjusted gross income for an individual and about $94,000 for a family of four. If you earn less than those amounts, you can qualify a subsidy that will lower your premiums. Earn more than that, you'll have to pay full freight.

Barbara Lorell of Bremerton, Wash., has the opposite question – what happens if you earn too little? She's a self-employed pet-sitter, and she says her income fluctuates a lot during the year. She wonders what happens if she signs up for a plan on the health exchange and gets federal subsidies to help pay her premiums, but then doesn't end up earning enough and should have been on Medicaid instead. Will she be expected to pay those subsidies back?

“ If you are self-employed, is there a cap to how much you can make to use the Affordable Care Act insurance?