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

The Threat to Wages from the Status Quo

From the Kaiser Family Foundation:
workerspercentbenefits-thumb-454x296

Since 1999 (through 2008), total premiums paid by employers for family employee sponsored health insurance has risen 119%; and the portion paid by the employees themselves has gone up 117%. And the smaller the firm you work for, the less likely you are to keep your coverage. In addition, out-of-pocket costs for employees have also gone up.

You know all of this already, but look at that graph. See the increased portions that employers pay? This is one of the major reasons why wages (except for bankers) are relatively flat. It is also a reason why some smaller firms either downsize to maintain insurance or they stop offering it altogether. Every extra dollar that you and/or your employer spend to keep up with insurance rates that are rising at a faster pace than inflation — rising at a faster pace than most people’s salaries — is a dollar that your employer can’t give you as a raise. Or a dollar that you can’t spend to put a new roof on your house.

This is the status quo that repubs and their teabagging armies want to keep in place. A world where your compensation is captive to the costs of medical insurance. Without a fix — even the beginning of a fix — these numbers do not slow down. And at what point does our economy become completely hostage to medical insurance and medical expenses?

So When Are the Carper, Kaufman and Castle Local Town Halls?

According to this Community News article:

For now, none of the three are holding public forums or town hall meetings before returning to the Capitol Sept. 8, according to their aides.

If you read further, all three pointedly note that they will meet with constituents (Rotary Clubs were mentioned by both Kaufman and Castle spokespeople) and will be available for individual meetings. Castle will still do his telephone town halls. But none of them seem to be on a track to hold a truly public meeting with their constituents.

These public forums or meetings don’t seem to be much of a habit here in Delaware for Congressional Delegation. I suspect that the reason is that it is easy enough to target and hit certain higher profile (and probably comfortable) groups here and still be able to claim that you’ve met with a good sample of constituents. I don’t think that this is an adequate approach — if you represent the public you should meet with them periodically.

So do you know of meetings that may be open to the public that any of our congressional delegation have planned for the month? I think that Paul Baumbach referenced a meeting that Senator Carper would attend (or has just been invited?) next week, what others have you heard of? Have any of you scheduled a meeting with any of these guys, or been invited to a telephone town hall?

In Which We See a Castle vs Biden Senate Race Becomes the CW

Tom Schaller over at Five Thirty Eight takes a long look at the possibility of a Republican taking the Senate seat previously held by Barack Obama. He cites an article written over at the Rothenberg Political Report notes that a seat held by someone who has gone to the White House (either President or VP) has flipped 50% of the time, but since the numbers involved are pretty small it is hard to know what that means. But before he gets to looking at the landscape of the Senate race in IL, he stops in Delaware first:

Let’s start with Delaware. As Gonzales points out, the only real possibility for a Republican winning there is if the state’s at-large congressman, Mike Castle, decides to risk his House seat to take on Vice President Biden’s son and current attorney general, Beau. But even that would be a tough challenge for Castle, because the young Biden will have not only the family name and the White House to bank on, but he will be a returning Iraq vet. If Castle runs, whatever happens you’d have to give him props for having the guts to take on the Bidens.

Am I the only one who is tired of hearing this story? Castle hasn’t decided on anything, and if Beau is to be in play here, the thing he needs to decide first is that he is going all in on the family business. A decision that it is nowhere clear to me (or some others I’ve spoken to) that he has made. Nor does this take into account that the political landscape here frequently is Castle vs Biden, if only by proxy. But I think that the thing that makes me really tired of hearing this over and over is the astonishing lack of any other names in the ring for this Senate seat for Delaware. I suspect the lack of other names is both about “whose turn is it now” AND that there may not be anyone beyond Beau who could credibly run for this seat.

There is nothing here that advances the story, and it is interesting that for one of the few Senate seats a R could win in 2010 that we’ve been stuck with the same narrative for so long.

Lobbyists to the IC’s Office?

On 30 July 2009, the Delaware Insurance Commissioner’s office sent out a Press Release announcing their “new” initiative for “the formation of a new revenue generating division within the Department of Insurance entitled the Bureau of Captive and Financial Insurance Products”. There was a subsequent Press Release, this time working hard at making the case that this is an economic development task for the state.

A bit of small print at the end of the first Press Release caught my attention:

The positions of director, director of business development, and director of strategic development are independent contractor positions subject to Delaware’s procurement law and open bidding process.

So that’s interesting, right? I mean, here we have a “new” department for Captive Insurance products touted as a way to get new revenue to the state, but that work is being outsourced? Managed by outside contractors? This leads me to wonder if this is the result of that really bad RFP that was put out by the ICs office earlier this year — the one we spent some time trying to get better details on and that the ICs office refused to provide. (In part saying that we had no standing to ask — not exactly an open bidding process.)

  • The previous Administrator of the Captive Insurance program was William White, who looks like a contract employee too — the DE checkbook shows his firm, Prism Strategies, received a total of $187,619.65 in FY 2009 — including what looks like monthly fees of 15K plus various travel reimbursements. He began there in August 2006 with a charge to grow this program here, and according to the Delaware Captive Insurance Association, the number of captive agencies domiciled here grow to 40 in 2008, with others in process. Mr. White returned to his consulting firm as of 31 July 2009. He was involved with the Delaware Captive Insurance Association, and provided an interview here and found himself in many pictures with the Association’s members.
  • The new admin, who is Steve Kinion, works for an Illinois law firm — Zack Stamp. A look at KWS’ campaign finance reports shows that Mr. Kinion provided her with an in-kind contribution of $900.00 for a breakfast fundraiser on 9/23/2008 and a $1200.00 (the maximum individual contribution) campaign contribution on 5/24/2008. He was also on that remarkably long and out-of-town list of people on her Transition Committee.
  • Zack Stamp is mostly a practice focusing on lobbying and insurance regulatory affairs issues. The link shows a list of some of their lobbying and regulatory clients.  One of the things that Mr. Kinion’s bio over at Zack Stamp highlights is:

    • As a regular attendee at National Association of Insurance Commissioners meetings, Mr. Kinion has developed relationships with insurance regulators in many states. He makes it a priority to be at the forefront of regulatory issues in the insurance industry.

    An insurance lobbyist? In charge of creating new business? Mr White’s background was directly in Alternative Risk Transfer strategies and “over thirty years of experience as an underwriter, consultant and regulator”. Putting an industry lobbyist in charge does seem to promise optimization of state revenues — it is usually a sign of a government getting ready to open the cupboards to industry.

  • I can’t find contracts for any of the new firms or consultants up on the OMB list of vendors. Interestingly, there appear to be NO consulting contracts or personnel contracts available for view there.
  • A search of the state checkbook shows that for FY2009, Zack Stamp Consulting got 5 checks for $16K each, for a total of $80K on June 19. There are no entries in the checkbook for Kinion. The checkbook also shows 2 payments for E M Ianni for a total of $31,086.03 on 6/23/2009. Anne Pruett shows a total of $63,211.99 since last August; no entries for the others.

So what is going on here? Did this contract change hands as a result of that horrific RFP that we spent time trying to get data on this past spring? A campaign fundraiser and contributor getting this pretty lucrative contract raises alot of questions. Then count in the claim that this was done in accordance with Delaware’s “open bidding process” — which if this was a result of the RFP that we wanted more data on certainly wasn’t open at all.  And in the process of changing hands, we went from one consultant to three.

Both of the Press Releases emphasize that captive insurance agency creation generates revenue. Which is true — Vermont is the current US leader in domiciling captive companies and their revenues are upwards of $25M per year on more than 800 firms. In comparison, Montana claims to have 38 companies (about the number of DE companies) who are projected to contribute $350K this year to their coffers. I am presuming that DE’s tax on Captive’s is fairly competitive and the $350K is in the neighborhood of what we collect. But to get to that we paid almost 200K with Mr White and seem on track to pay alot more with this new team of contractors.

Developing new revenue sources are great, but you have to pay attention to ROI — the ICs office should not just say they are generating revenue with this move to hire more contractors, they should tell us what they are paid AND what their revenue generation expectations are. At the end of the year, the ICs office should tell us what revenue they actually generated so we can all see how effective this hire was — real openness, especially since a major campaign crony seems to have gotten this assignment. One again, I am reminded of the lockdown on spending that is supposed to be the new regime all over State government — and the ICs office does not seem to have to abide by this philosophy. Or at least does not have to provide detail that would show that this hire would translate into $XX of revenue.

Just like that really bad RFP that came out of the ICs office procuring something so secret that you couldn’t ask questions about it, this round of expensive hiring — including an election crony — does not line up with what is supposed to be much more careful spending and more openness. It also raises ethical questions.

I’m interested in your take on what is going on here, and why they would make the claim of openness when this has been anything but. There’s lots of unanswered questions. And if you need to comment very anonymously, you can hit us up via out tip line at the top of the page.

This is How It is Supposed To Work

The peripatetic Mike Stark went to a Town Hall Meeting held by Rep. Tom Perriello in rural VA, and found an interesting dynamic:

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

a gathering of people who may disagree and who even have some tough questions and no one got shouted down. Stark’s writeup of the event is worth the time. I have no idea if minds were changed, and that would be beside the point. Rep. Perriello had an opportunity to meet with some of his constituents where everyone got heard in a respectful manner. Meetings like this are probably what these guys had in mind this morning.

Briefing on the Progress of Health Insurance Legislation Tonite

There is an event tonite in Newark to providing up-to-date information and some training on the current state of the health insurance reform effort:

WHEN: Monday, August 10, 2009 at 6:30pm

WHERE: Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Newark, 420 Willa Road, Newark, DE 19711

WHAT:

Our request for a knowledgeable briefing on the state of the Health Reform legislation in Congress has been answered. Join us for this training and briefing meeting at the UUFN in Mackinnon Hall on
August 10, 2009.

This meeting is open to the public.

We invite especially folks from other Delaware groups also working on Federal Health Care reform. Organizing for America, Health Care for America Now, SEIU Change that Works, Delaware, MoveOn, and ACORN are among the groups who have been working together on this for the past several months. Join us this night.
Kathleen Stoll – Deputy Executive Director AND Director of Health Policy of Families USA will be at the UUFN at 6:30 PM on 10 August 2009 to provide a training/briefing on the state of the national Health Care Reform Legislation. The date of this meeting is such that the legislation developed by the US House of Representatives should have been completed. Kathleen D. Stoll is the Director of Health Policy at Families USA, a national nonprofit organization that is dedicated to the achievement of high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans. In this position, she oversees the organization’s formulation of health policy positions and the analysis of specific health care proposals. Ms. Stoll also oversees the delivery of technical assistance to state advocates and state legislators on health policy and programs.

I just saw this from a Paul Baumbach comment, so I apologize for how late this notice is, although I suspect our readers are already planning to go.

Now This is How It’s Done

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has an interview with CNN where she is asked about the idiot John Bolton — and she just laughs:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0Uk8mUW7_8[/youtube]

When they bring up their usual go-to pundits who are peddling the usual crazy and bamboozlement — you laugh at them. Treating them seriously just gets them more airtime.

ps. Bolton was on All Things Considered on Wednesday saying the usually atrocious stuff, some of it outright lies. They got alot of letters about that — excoriating them for fake balance. Good for them.

Is This All There Is?

…and the usual repub thuggery, of course. But Chuck Grassley took to the floor to for a ritual WTF? moment, and Jon Stewart deconstructs the tale Grassley so ineptly tries to tell:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Chuck Grassley’s Debt and Deficit Dragon
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Spinal Tap Performance

Medieval Times does just about cover it, I think.

Doof of the Day

Quote:

“If you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government.”

This choice bit of really dumb comes from the man who sold generations of repubs a version of modern alchemy — that “Tax cuts pay for themselves.”

Why wasn’t this guy just laughed off of the set?