Author Archives: cassandra_m

About cassandra_m

"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." -Shirley Chisholm

Mike Castle Taking Credit for Yet Another ARRA Project

A reminder to everyone following at home — Mike Castle proudly voted against the Recovery Act. And he would proudly vote against it today.

And yet, here he is — front and center taking credit — for helping Wesley College get a new piece of equipment.

Wonder why the NJ won’t ask Castle why he shows up for photo ops for a program he doesn’t support? Or why he is so interested in taking credit for funds he would have preferred to not see spent?

The NJ Propping Up KWS — Again

This week saw the NJ do quite the fluff piece on the IC’s Office newly rebranded effort to increase the Captive Insurance market here in Delaware and today it gives over space on the Editorial page for an effort that isn’t too far from the Press Releases sent out by the IC promoting this expensive rebranding.

We talked about this effort here. But here is the NJ’s description of the effort:

It’s an effort that has been talked about for years, but which is only now getting under way at the Delaware Insurance Commissioner’s Office, which has created a new division and hired a team of well-connected outside experts to help burnish Delaware’s image worldwide.

Well, no — this is an effort that has been underway at least since the Denn term as IC, where there was a consultant (William White) who was leading the effort. And as far as I can determine, he helped grow the number of captives domiciled in DE to 40. The current effort by the IC’s office replaces Mr. White with at least 6 people who have been named in their press releases. That’s why I call this a rebranding. No idea if there are more unnamed staff, but it would not surprise me. Then there’s this preciousness:

In the state’s view, it’s a prize that’s best sought with top talent — Kinion and the bureau’s new director of strategic development, Ed Ianni, are both attorneys with broad industry contacts. Under their contracts with the state, each will be paid $16,000 a month, including expenses, but receive no benefits.

As we’ve already seen, Kinion is an industry lobbyist for an insurance lobbying firm. Wonder why the NJ didn’t find this background important? Or the fact that Kinion was a major fundraiser for KWS during her campaign? Probably because this reporter started with the press releases and then just wrote down what KWS’ Chief of Staff had to say.

But today, this is what the Editorial Board has to say:

Some of these consultants are earning $16,000 a month, including expenses. It’s a hefty amount and obviously not a typical state salary. But Insurance Commissioner Chief of Staff Elliott Jacobson is quick to point out that money paid for insurance department contracts is generated from within by fees and assessments and doesn’t come from tax money. Still, we hope Commissioner Stewart gets her — and our — money’s worth.

Does this look familiar to anyone here? I am completely appalled that Elliott Jacobson is still saying this ans even more appalled that the NJ seems to think that there is nothing wrong in this. And what is wrong? The clear sense of entitlement to do what they want with money that does not belong to them. Whether that money comes from taxes, fees, or they found it at the bottom of the Delaware River, you are still talking about State funds that belong to the people of this state. Spending that money in an unaccountable way is just as bad as spending tax revenues in an unaccountable way.

Another editorial this morning has the NJ cheering on an effort to make teachers more accountable, yet they are more than willing to just cheerlead spending of revenues from the ICs office in an effort that they made no attempt to quantify either the cost or the overall revenue this effort would result in. This office has ramped up spending on this program in a major way and no one at the NJ thinks to ask what they think they’ll be generating in new revenues on a year by year basis. Accountability starts there, right? Accountability also includes wondering why it is that KWS is hiring her cronies and fundraisers.

But apparently, the NJ can only regurgitate KWS’s campaign resume, the spin of her Chief of Staff and urge the rest of us to cheer on a program that we still don’t know much about, much less whether it has any chance of making enough money to cover the massive amount of money being spent on it.

I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised — thinking the NJ is going to ever deviate from being a major enabler of The Delaware Way is probably insane.

Friday Afternoon Bacon Blogging — Double Down

Sort of bacon-blogging:
kfc_240318l

That’s the premise behind Kentucky Fried Chicken’s latest calorie-laden creation: the Double Down Chicken Sandwich, two chicken fillets hugging cheeses, bacon and sauce, sans the bun.

KFC hasn’t released actual caloric counts, but has told media outlets such as the Huffington Post that it estimates the sandwich to weigh in at roughly 600 calories. The Vancouver Sun, however, estimates the Double Down at nearly double that number, with 1,228 calories.

I have no idea why anyone would waste good bacon on KFC chicken fillets, for cryin’ out loud. That sandwich doesn’t even look appetizing.  But since you can only get these in Nebraska and RI right now, our bacon is safe.

So spend this weekend grilling corn-wrapped bacon and enjoy life!

h/t Rsmitty and anoni

Capitalism: A Love Story

Michael Moore has a new movie coming out October 2:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhydyxRjujU[/youtube]

I’m not a major Michael Moore fan, altho I do admire the work he did in Roger & Me and Sicko. That said, he knows how to rile up a crowd and Fahrenheit 9/11 (as very flawed as it was) certainly gave alot of folks the spine they needed to talk more forcefully about the real mess that was Iraq — and to push back against the knee jerk condemnation that you weren’t patriotic enough. And full disclosure — I went to Fahrenheit 9/11 opening weekend and took a whole crowd of people.

I’m definitely going to see this, but this trailer isn’t signaling one of Moore’s better efforts….

Annual Sussex County Jamboree!

Sussex County Dems and friends — make sure you get to the annual Sussex County Jamboree at Cape Henlopen State Park Pavilion (street address for your GPS units: 42 Cape Henlopen Drive, Lewes DE 19958) held this Saturday 29 August from 4:30 to dusk. Tickets are $20 and I presume can be had at the door. For more information, please contact Emory West at (302) 684-0611.

I’ve heard that this is a fun event — who is going?

NCCo Tries to Make Ethics Reports Harder to Get

According to the NJ, the NCCo Council is looking to provide itself some cover from having to release some of its ethics reports.

You read that right.

Paul Clark and George Smiley are working at a bank shot with this bill — trying to pretend that the work of the Commission doesn’t count with the public unless they find a problem:

The ordinance, drafted by County Councilman George Smiley, would prohibit the independent commission from releasing a “final order” unless its members have reached a majority opinion on whether an ethics violation has occurred.

This Final Order releases the results of an Ethics Commission investigation to the public — whether there was a violations finding or no. So if Clark and Smiley get their way, NCCo taxpayers would never know about work undertaken by this group. Unless this group determines that a violation has occurred.

Clark and this Council have very strong instincts for trying to retreat behind some protective covering. Especially since Clark himself has a habit of working to see what the limits might be of how far he can take conflict of interest behavior. Cutting off all sunshine to the work of this Commission lets him explore that line with impunity. And there’s this gem from George Smiley:

Smiley said some of the reports can make the subject of an investigation feel guilty even if he or she has done nothing wrong.

“It appears that, and I think quite unfairly, that the Ethics Commission is untouchable,” he said. “No one should ever question what they do because it would appear unethical.”

Well, heck. This is just all sorts of wrong. But lets start with the Ethics Commission — it isn’t worth much if it isn’t independent and free to operate in the light. It seems a fair compromise to let this Commission do their work and release their findings. I’d think that a released report that clearly vindicates someone ought to be a good thing, not a cause for retroactive guilt. And even if there is retroactive guilt — the process is the important part. And no one should question what the Commission does because it would be unethical? Is Mr. Smiley 15 years old?

The Ethics Commission exists to review the activity of those trusted to do the business of the County — to make sure that work is done within the ethical and conflict of interest regulations or guidelines set. It exists to make sure that citizens have some confidence in their government — a thing that Mr. Clark has been challenging pretty routinely all year. You can’t have confidence building or an airing of conflicts of interest in secret. Taxpayers should know what the results of this Commission’s work is — especially if it clears someone.

They plan on voting on this in September — but there is no note as to when they will vote on a replacement member or even if there are additional replacement members waiting for hearings or votes. If I were you Mr. Clark, Mr. Smiley and the rest of the NCCo Council — I’d make my first priority getting the Commission fully staffed rather than trying to hide their work.

The Question is Why

Redwaterlilly’s take on the CRI prison violence report. Just go there and read it — tell her what you are thinking about this.

And when you are done, go read Steve Newton’s post on CRI’s effort and RWL’s post. Both, I think have done a great job in advancing this discussion beyond whatever political damage CRI is intending to inflict by this.

No one here is going to endorse the kind of violence that pretty routinely goes on in prisons and certainly all prisoners must have access to adequate medical care. But RWL gets at the real conundrum of the system — that the kind of neglect shown in the CRI report is a feature of the system, not a bug. From overcrowding, to excessive demands on staff because you can’t (or won’t) hire more, to cutting corners on services, prison systems all over the US have become warehouses for people that society no longer wants any part of. And since society now expects its pound of flesh, we have an entire system set up whereby politicians are rewarded for how tough they can be on prisoners. So we send them off to abusive, violent (perpetrated by the inmates and some guards) institutions with little real possibility at the kind of self-improvement or rehabilitation that might help them stay out when released. What these institutions do offer is plenty of opportunity to hone your skills as a predator — and everyone is complicit.

It is a given — at least to me — that CRI is in this to try for as much political embarrassment as they can get out of this. But some of the real embarrassment ought to be found in the privatized medical services that never delivered on its promises or its service. They probably made their margin targets, though. The other real embarrassment ought to be for a political system that has demagogued the whole Law and Order business enough to have created an electorate who not only expects that prisoners will be treated harshly, but that they won’t have to pay for the “country clubs” that they’ve been led to believe these places are. Now they are getting queued up to demagogue the horrific treatment and conditions of the same prisoners they previously tossed aside.

Other than Senator Jim Webb, there’s no real leadership anywhere to advocate for the kind of systemic change that would make prisons more functional and certainly safer. And when do we talk about the one thing that would provide immediate relief to the entire problem — an end to the War On Drugs? Or how about we return judicial discretion to our justice system and end mandatory minimums? If CRI were a true nonpartisan organization, these questions would be asked. It is not and they are not.

Live Blogging Carper Tele-Town Hall

Going to try this, not sure I can stay on but will do what I can:

First time he ever did this.
We are all experts on health care because we all use it.
3 statements — true or false?
us spends more money on care than other countries
does not get better outcomes
14k per day lose their health care
press 1 if all three are true or 2 if any of the three statements is fase
wait for results – fear that they’ll be forced to another plan
No. Talks about the exchange large purchasing pool. Like the Fed health benefits program works.
18% all three statements true
82% thought that at least one was false.

1st question Clifford How we pay for this? His wife answered. She is scared of what will be taken from her she is 80, husband 83. More explanation so they are not so fearful Lots of misinformation.
Pharma has kicked in 80M to close the donut hole for the Medicare Part D. Says this fills in half the donut hole.
Waste fraud and abuse elimination

2nd Robert for Wilmington wants to know about tort reform and why we haven’t heard it.
Says Delaware has done alot of work for this reform.
More state driven than fed driven.
Knows about caps, not sure this is a good idea,
Other states have good ideas to look at and adopt
Sorry Works
Health Courts possibly

3rd (did not get name) Compassionate Care Act Hope he (Carper) is willing to defend it because it is needed and useful. Notes medical tourism from here. Very supportive of the public option and the the way other countries deal with insurance.
Carper — something in place that keeps insurance companies are honest whether it is public option or co-ops. Suggests the entire Fed Employee Health Benefit plan be opened up to everyone to increase the purchasing pool. Says that overhead are 3% per premium. Some repubs not interested in this. Health exchange would be similar to this to keep the overheard to 3%. Goes through the trigger option as a fallback.

4th Dave from Newark. Does not want illegal aliens to be able to join the plan. Carper says that the plan does not cover undocumented folks and no plan to.

5th Harry and Linda from Newark. Question about rationing — (Van Jones is a radical communist!!!) many wingnut talking points. Wants to know why they believe that the gov won’t ration.
Carper notes that there is rationing now. Guy disagrees saying his mom had medical issues and no one rationed her care (she had Medicare for cryin out loud!) Carper does push back on this — that insurance companies decide what care people get all of the time.

6th somebody from Magnolia Tim Murray — doesn’t want things to change too much. Does not want 51 votes (1). Wants repubs to participate so everyone is represented.
Carper talks about reconciliation process. Finance still working on this — 3 Dems 3 repubs talked with Olympia Snowe who is still working and thinks that this should be a bipartisan bill.

7th A Doctor calling asking about cost control. Wants a phased approach to see spending cuts first before doing all of this.
Carper compares process to immigration reform — multiple steps and decided not to do that approach. This process needs to rein in costs (it is bankrupting companies and states), extend coverage to everybody. Talked about Geisinger, Mayo Cleveland non-profits who are doing such a great job. Primary care, wellness, chronic disease management, no fee for service, excellent results for less money. Wants to incentivize that for Medicare.

I asked a question! Asked how you get serious competition — one that gets the insurance companies to rethink their business model without a public option.
Says that it will work just like the Fed plan. Sys that the fall back public plan hasn’t been used and still claims that there is competition and successful. Drug plan under budget.

9th someone from Selbyville asking about deminishment of his Medicare benefits with this plan and also asks about a costly arrangement for renting a nebulizer.
Carper says no just provide better care, better outcomes, cover more people. Talks about the VA system and that this is more functional than lots of what we have.

10th from Harrington (?) Asking about pre-existing conditions. Can’t leave your job if you have a pre-existing condition, we have single payer via Medicare and we have socialized medicine via the VA. Also wants Dems to do better about countering the lies on Fox News.
Carper likes going on Fox (the lions den) and says that you can only set the record straight when you can. Thinks that medicare could learn something from the VA system. Talks about the exchanges again — this time talks abut this as a REGIONAL exchange — but pre-existing conditions won’t be germane in this exchange. One page insurance forms.

11th Irene from Wilmington wants to know if he has read the bill (?) . Explains that there are lots of bills plus the President’s proposal. He won’t read all of the bills. Will read the Finance bill.

12th from Seaford — if illegals don’t get covered how will they be handled (wasn’t on the call). Wants to send message that we are not paying for health care for undocumented workers but this does not stop people from going to the emergency room.

13th — explain co ops. Says that thes are not unlike credit unions (?). Some successful some not. Puget Sound successful — says that Geisinger, Mayo Intermountain Health, Cleveland are good models (even tho they are NOT coops Tom). Invokes VA as one of these models.

14th from Shelbyville — wants to know about the cost of the program and the deficit. How to pay for it when we pay 1B per year to China, 1B for medicare and we are cutting $500M from Medicare.
Invokes his Treasurer’s hat. Ran up as much new debt in the last 8 year as we did in the previous 208 years. admits not sustainable. Says that medical costs are a major portion of the GDP and more growth is not sustainable. Doug Elemendorf — house bill increases defict, others did not. (This is a glib answer) GM Chrysler in bankruptcy in no small part because of medical costs. Goes back to the nonprofit models to control the costs.

15th Reverend Cherry (?) from Dover wants to know why people are so afraid of Living Wills. She just got hers done a few days ago and want to know why this is such an issue. Carper asked her to explain what the process she went thru was, but she could not hear. Carper says his mom had one and explains how this works — that you are making your end of life choices now, when you are clear thinking and not leaving the decision to family of doctors or nurses. Says that death panels are CRAZY.

16th from New Castle from C. Whitfield re: the military in this process. She sells insurance. She thinks that we need tort reform first. Says that there are enough doctors in the military system, 2 months to get a prescription refilled, have to go to other bases at expense of time to get to doctors and services. Walter Reed problems.
Carper — Walter Reed not a VA but nothing to make anyone proud. Do not have enough primary care doctors anywhere including the military. Continues to talk about how good the VA is — electronic health record. Goes back to talk about his mom — she had 5 doctors providing various services and the absence of an electronic health care would have let her have much better coordinate d care. Gates has ordered electronic health records for active military ASAP. Not so good of an answer.

17 C. Pruitt from Milton — wants to know about uninsured people crowding emergency rooms. She has TriCare and VA and she is happy with it. Wants to reduce the number of people going to emergency rooms since everyone with insurance pay for the people in emergency rooms because they have no insurance. Carper says this is true. That people with insurance pay about 1K per year to cover uninsured costs. Talks about the Insurance Exchange again.

18 R. Henry in Smyrna This may be the last question. How can this new coverage be deficit neutral. Carper says that the President says we cannot increase the deficit so they have been working on this. Carper won’t vote for this if it increases the deficit or if it does not begin to control costs.

He is wrapping up. Says that he is trying to share the correct info and get past the misinformation. Says there are about 1000 people on this call. Thinks that he may do this again within the week.

Says that everyone will not be happy, but he wants to pass something that will be of the greatest use to the most number of people.

OK it is over and I am exhausted. This is hard work! Anyway, I left a voicemeail message to ask about whether he would commit to voting for the public option. I should have asked that, but I really want to know how he thinks that a health exchange would provide the competition needed to start bringing down insurance costs.

UPDATE — Comment Rescue: Open Questions on Ramifications of Sports Betting

This is from RSmitty, who inexplicably wasn’t going to comment today:

Sports gambling in DE aside, this really has me burning. How did an injunction hearing before a panel of three circuit court judges suddenly turn into a legal decision on the entire case, that was supposed to be heard later? I obviously don’t have a legal background, so how in the hell did that happen?

When will the NCAA lift their playoff-hosting ban against DE schools?
When will the NCAA ENACT their playoff-hosting ban against NV schools?
When will someone have the balls to challenge the anti-trust exemption of the NCAA?
When will the NCAA lift their athletes above a poverty-level lifestyle, given the revenue stream they receive via their highly-favorable anti-trust exemptions?

When will the NFL address their LICENSED media affiliates glorifying point spread predictions?
When will the NFL pull their LICENSING of their team logos to various state lotteries for $20 scratch off tickets?

When will the NBA address the owner of the Sacramento Kings who also has partial ownership of a Las Vegas casino?

Ungh. Freaking g-damned hypocrites!

I don’t know how to answer his first question — it certainly seems that there is a fair amount of surprise at this decision and I haven’t dug into this to find out why. Perhaps DD can chime in here.

What would be really fun is if the State could figure a way to challenge the NCAA on some of these questions, which (again) I have no idea if they have standing to do. Much less having the money for legal costs.

Clearly, though, ramping back the bets to parlays only blows a pretty big hole in the budget gap that betting was supposed to fix. And, frankly, I always wondered how much revenue you really could expect from this — how much repeat business is there in driving to one of our racinos to place a bet? Why not stay in your neighborhood or office and bet with your local bookie? In any event, I’m very curious as to how the budget gets papered over AND I’m very curious to know how soon the racino lobbyists get fired up to start agitating for the State to cover more of their costs for this thing.

UPDATE: RSmitty notes in the comments that he posted his questions over at Allan Loudell’s blog and he, Allan and LG have been having an interesting discussion of the state of play. Make sure you go over and look. Allan seems to be trying to get NCAA people to be interviewed, so if you post some questions there, perhaps Allan can get you an answer.