More Term Limits, Please.

Governor Cuomo is using his executive budget-making powers to force the legislature into a corner on ethics reform. Among other things, according to his 30-day budget amendments, he would:

• eliminate the $172 per diem paid to each legislator when they're in Albany, and instead have them file expense reports just like state employees are required to do;
• disclose all outside income over $1,000; not allow any compensation in connection with a bill or resolution; not refer lobbyists to any business the lawmaker is affiliated with; require lawyers, real estate agents and some others to provide a description for and the source of compensation; disclose any compensation of over $5,000 from a client/customer, as well as disclosing who the client/customer is, the work performed, and whether the services were related to any pending legislation; 
• change the rules so that pensions can be forfeited by those folks who were elected before the pension forfeiture law was passed in 2011; and make it possible for prosecution of legislators for filing a false instrument (such as their disclosure statement), including a ban on holding office for five years or more;
• expand the disclosure requirements on communications made with a certain number of days of a general, special, or primary election.

These budget amendments are in addition to or add clarity to changes the Sonofa Gov outlined earlier in February. And, in theory, these changes are fine.  I'm all for disclosure, and I've long been a proponent of eliminating the per diem  After all, we pay these folks $79,000+ per year; do we also have to pay them for showing up?

I have a few issues, however, with his approach.  This is the same governor, after all, who set up a fake Moreland Commission on ethics, and shut it down as soon as it got close to his end of the hall.  He's ignoring existing ethics venues that are already in place, which he could easily work to strengthen rather than ignoring them.

Further, I have a strong distaste for politicians who link unrelated items together (ethics and the state budget?) and for those who think that they're more important than the process as a whole, which is exactly what Cuomo is doing. I mean, what's your tolerance for a CEO who threatens to shut down the whole shebang if he doesn't get his way?

And have we been shown, in any way at all, that ethics reform is more important than the business of New York?  I don't believe we have.

Not only that, but his changes don't get at the heart of the issue, which is this: entrenched politicians, the ones who are around year after year after decade after decade, are really the cause of the ethics problem. It's the power that goes with all of that time in office, the power which is so attractive to outside influencers, and so susceptible to outside influence. If you have no power, you're harder to bribe.

Someone like Shelly Silver, for example, with his decades-long career, his big staff, fancy office, ability to bring legislation to the floor (or keep it from the floor), the ability to 'motivate' other members of the legislature to go along, and in return get nice assignments, bigger lulus, and so on -- that's the guy you want to have your hooks in if you're unethical, or as some like to say, "playing by the rules."

How do we stop them? Term limits.

Itemizing campaign contributions is good, eliminating the per diem is good, forfeiting pensions is good, but those things won't stop the madness that is inherent with entrenched politicians.

These were not intended to be lifetime jobs; people who think they are, are the problem.  And when they've been there so long that even the strongest made-in-New-York shoe horn is not enough to shake them loose, we need more than Cuomo's suggested reforms.

We need term limits. We need level playing fields so that all of the people who are elected to serve have a chance to do that, on equal footing with their gentle brothers and sisters from districts across the state.  We can no longer continue to have the system turned on its head by people who are allowed to stick around forever, who accumulate and wield a ridiculous amount of power based simply on longevity.

As we learned in seventh or eight grade, power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

More term limits, please.

Tuesday's Number: $229,279

Tuesday is the day my local paper, the Syracuse Post-Standard, publishes the weekly business section. In addition to special features, tips from stock experts, budgeting advice and the like, we get the judgment and bankruptcy listings.

Since mid-2012, I've been tracking health care related filings. I include anything that is clearly a debt owed to a hospital, nursing home, physician or physician group, medical supplier, and so on; I do not include filings by insurance companies, many of which are so diversified it would not be a fair assumption that the filing is related to medical care or health insurance. 

• This week, there were 15 new judgments to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers totaling $222,871. 
• There was one satisfied judgment, for $5,430.
• And there was one health care related bankruptcy, for $11,838.

I also track filings for each of the four Syracuse hospitals. Here’s the breakdown for this week: 

• Crouse had four, totaling $21,610
• St Josephs had none
• SUNY Upstate had ten, totaling $178,824
• Community, part of Upstate, had none 

There were two filings, one judgment and one bankruptcy, for other medical facilities totaling $28,845.

This year, I’m subtracting the satisfied judgments from the overall totals and from the individual hospital totals; the likelihood is that they've already been incorporated into the numbers at some point now, since I’ve been tracking this for two and a half years.

The paper publishes only those accounts of at least $5,000.

Wondering, on Wednesday (v22)

In no particular order, here's the stuff that has me wondering, on Wednesday. Would any of these have made your list?

On a scale of one to 100, what are the chances that people will be as unhappy with the weather this spring/summer/fall as they have been about it this winter? Can't you hear it already?  Too much rain, too much mud, too cold, (March and April); too much rain, too much mud, too much wind, too cloudy (May and June); too hot, too humid (July and August); too much rain, too hot, too cold, too cloudy (September and October) and then before you know it we'll be right back into winter and starting all over again.

I'm wondering what would happen if, every time someone mentioned that it was cold outside, I asked "How cold is it?"

Speaking of 'too much', for the past several weeks, it seems, NBC Nightly News has done at least some kind of story every day on Chris Kyle, he of American Sniper book and movie fame. They've talked about the movie, and they've replayed the interviews that Lester Holt did with Kyle before he was tragically shot and killed by another veteran at a shooting range in Texas, and they've been covering the trial of Kyle's killer as well. 

All along I had assumed that they were spending so much time on the story because the movie was produced by NBC Universal.  Turns out that's not the case; the movie is from Warner Brothers.  So I'm wondering, why are they devoting so much time to this? And why aren't they devoting as much time and attention to Chad Littlefield?  You may not recognize that name, because it's so rarely mentioned in the media reports, but he's the other man killed by the same gunman at the same Texas shooting range in the same incident. Doesn't his life, and death matter? Don't All Lives Matter? 

A little over a year ago, I did a post encouraging Republicans - begging them, truth be told -- to stop talking about rape, to just shut up about it, to stop making themselves look like complete idiots. It would appear, sadly, that my pleas fell on deaf ears.  

Meet Brian Greene, Republican from Utah. Greene chimed in on a bill under discussion that would "clarify the definition of consent" to make it clear that a person who was unconscious could not consent to a sexual encounter.  Greene offered up this inexplicable stream-of-consciousness babble:

It looks to me now like sex with an unconscious person is, by definition, rape. I hope this wouldn't happen, but this opens the door to it: an individual has sex with their wife while she is unconscious - or he, the only other way around, if that possible, I don't know. But a prosecutor could then charge that spouse with rape.  I'm not at all trying to justify sexual activity with an unconscious person - it's abhorrent to me, but do we as a legislative body want to make that rape in every instance?  

I'm wondering.... heck, I don't even know what I'm wondering on this one. 

Tuesday's Number: $539,695

Tuesday is the day my local paper, the Syracuse Post-Standard, publishes the weekly business section. In addition to special features, tips from stock experts, budgeting advice and the like, we get the judgment and bankruptcy listings.

Since mid-2012, I've been tracking health care related filings. I include anything that is clearly a debt owed to a hospital, nursing home, physician or physician group, medical supplier, and so on; I do not include filings by insurance companies, many of which are so diversified it would not be a fair assumption that the filing is related to medical care or health insurance. 

• This week, there were 27 new judgments to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers totaling $539,695. 
• There were no satisfied judgments.
• And there were no health care related bankruptcies.

I also track filings for each of the four Syracuse hospitals. Here’s the breakdown for this week:

Crouse had ten, totaling $75,661
St Josephs had none
SUNY Upstate had eleven, totaling $400,428
Community, part of Upstate, had two, totaling $32,090

The were four other judgments to medical practices totaling $31,516. 

This year, when there are any, I’m subtracting the satisfied judgments from the overall totals and from the individual hospital totals; the likelihood is that they've already been incorporated into the numbers at some point now, since I've been tracking this for two and a half years.

The paper publishes only those accounts of at least $5,000.

When in the Majority: Express Disapproval

Congress has left town for their President's Day recess, without solving the problem of how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will be funded.

You'll recall that the budget deal that was worked out last year funded the rest of the government through September but left out DHS, because the Republicans wanted to make a statement about their dissatisfaction with President Obama's executive action on immigration.

Orange John Boehner and Grumpy Old Mitch McConnell, or their minions, came up with this great plan to push the Dems against the wall and force them to vote separately on DHS, which the Rs would castrate with anti-immigration language.  Because castration, as we know, is something revered in Congress now.

So the budget passes and we go into January, with an end of February deadline looming on DHS funding, and what does the Republican controlled Congress do?

• Vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which they did some 50 times while in the minority, with exactly equally dismal chances of happening. 
• Vote to pass the Keystone XL Pipeline, which "will help secure our energy independence" by taking crappy dirty Canadian tar sands, run them in pipes through the center of the country down to the Gulf of Mexico, where they will be refined and sent to Europe and China. The bill will almost certainly be vetoed by President Obama, the Boehner signing ceremony notwithstanding. 

With that auspicious start to basking in the overwhelming majority given by the 37% of people who weren't too fed up with the process and actually voted in the mid-terms, the Rs are off to the races. Except on the DHS funding.

Senator Kelly Ayotte, the New Hampshire Republican, noted that

We need to resolve it. We need to fund DHS and also find a legislative mechanism to express our disapproval with the President's executive order. 

Here's a thought: do exactly what you say you need to do. Both houses need to work together  to pass a clean DHS funding bill; don't pull a Cruz and shut any part of the government down.

And  then, draft an immigration bill. Get your party together and come up with an immigration plan that the majority of you in both houses can support, and that will entice some Dems to participate with you. Allow reasonable debate and related amendments in both houses, and pass an immigration bill.

If you want to express legislative disapproval on the President's executive order, try and pass a bill that limits executive actions.

Or, if that's not 'disapproval' enough, or too risky, since it would limit your own guy should you ever find one who's electable, start every session (in both houses) with a vote on a statement of your disapproval.  Here's some draft language for you:

We, the minority-elected Republican majority in the [House] [Senate], hereby express our strongest disapproval of Executive Actions taken by President Obama and all of his predecessors on immigration, believing as we so strongly do that only we have the right and the duty to make laws on this issue.  So say we all. 

Read the darn thing into the Congressional Record, and then get to work.

Wondering, on Wednesday (v21)

Almost exactly a week ago I was in the middle of writing this post.  

I was talking about Shelly Silver stepping down as Speaker of the Assembly here in New York, but vowing to fight to keep his seat as a member of that august body in the face of federal corruption charges.  And I had touched on SU throwing in the towel in the face of their NCAA investigation, and giving up the right to have Coach Boeheim's unranked guys play in any games after the end of the ACC's regular season.  And thinking gee, what a great year to give up post-season play, since the team has struggled in so many games already, with more losses than we are accustomed to in these parts.

And I was just starting to focus in on Andrew Cuomo, our Sonofa Gov, and his threats to forgo an on-time budget deal if he doesn't get ethics reform.  And then, well, then My Sweet Baboo decided to take a knee and propose, and I never did get around to finishing the post.  (I said yes, by the way).

So now, as I'm listening to the SU/Boston College basketball game, and casting a loving and appreciative eye towards the ring on my finger, here's what has me scratching my head tonight. 

Anthem Blue Cross was hacked by someone (perhaps the Chinese) and information including names, addresses, email addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers, employment information - all the stuff you'd ever need to set up some big time fake identities - may have been compromised for as many as 80 million people. And we were told on the news that, almost immediately after the breach was announced, all kinds of people who roam the netherworld were offering to buy the Anthem data. 

I'm not caught up in this one, at least so far. I was tagged in the Target breach (I shop there maybe once a year) and on a site where I shop for a necessity that is not available locally. For both of those, my card number was compromised, but nothing like what was taken in the Anthem case. I was offered free credit monitoring, which is what Anthem is offering folks. But  I'm wondering, is a few months of credit monitoring enough for the folks caught up in this massive breach? And if you're a crook, wouldn't you already plan on waiting more than a couple years, so as to get past the common free monitoring periods? I guess I'm thinking if you're smart enough to hack and steal this info, you'd be smart enough to know when to use it.  

And speaking of breach,  Brian Williams has been suspended by NBC without pay for six months, which amounts to about a $5 million hit in income and what is likely a lifetime ban as a newsman.  There's been a lot of analysis on why this might have happened (all the while the investigation is continuing, supposedly now expanded to include his expense accounts, as if an RPG hit might materialize there).  Lots of people are talking about what makes people embellish their records, inflate their value, exaggerate what happened to them, and why they would 'violate our trust' like this.  

But lots of people aren't talking about why, for example, NBC didn't appear to think much about trustworthiness when it hired the daughters of former Presidents Bush II and Clinton, as if they were real reporters? Chelsea Clinton did 'Making a Difference' stories and was reportedly paid some $650,000 for her troubles. Jenna Bush I think has become the official Bush Family Reporter, having done interviews with her dad, grandfather grandmother, mother, dog, childhood dolls... OK, maybe not the dog but you get the drift. 

What Williams did was wrong - but the network is not as trustworthy as they'd have us believe. 

Finally, the Supreme Court refused to stay an Alabama law allowing gay marriages.  This was an odd decision, in many people's eyes, because SCOTUS is going to decide on marriage equality before the end of the term. Clarence Thomas was up in arms about this one, as was Antonin Scalia.   

So: was a line crossed here by the Court? Was this a breach of protocol, or just a breach of Thomas's sensibilities? Can we no longer trust the Supreme Court? Has anyone really trusted them lately?

And now I'm left wondering, on this Wednesday, if that's really the crux of the issue: is the breach of trust really a big issue, if there's so little trust to start with? 

We Not Playing: The Poetry of Kanye West

The Grammys

If they want real artists to keep

coming back
they need to stop playing

with us.
We ain't gonna play
with them
no more.

Because what happens
is when you keep on
diminishing
art

and not respecting
the craft

and
smacking people
in
the face...

you're
disrespectful

to inspiration. And
we
as
musicians
have to inspire
people

who go to work every day...

Like no,
we not playing
with them no more.

Tuesday's Number: $462,451

Tuesday is the day my local paper, the Syracuse Post-Standard, publishes the weekly business section. In addition to special features, tips from stock experts, budgeting advice and the like, we get the judgment and bankruptcy listings.

Since mid-2012, I've been tracking health care related filings. I include anything that is clearly a debt owed to a hospital, nursing home, physician or physician group, medical supplier, and so on; I do not include filings by insurance companies, many of which are so diversified it would not be a fair assumption that the filing is related to medical care or health insurance. 

• This week, there were 30 new judgments to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers totaling $525,597. 
• There were seven satisfied judgments, totaling $89,986. 
• And there were three health care related bankruptcies, for $26,840.

I also track filings for each of the four Syracuse hospitals. Here’s the breakdown for this week: 

• Crouse had 17, totaling $19,236
• St Joe's had three, totaling $38,278
• SUNY Upstate had 17, totaling $390,270
• Community, a part of SUNY Upstate, had none 

The remaining $14,667 in new judgments were for a surgical center and a physical therapy group.  

This year, I’m subtracting the satisfied judgments from the overall totals and from the individual hospital totals; the likelihood is that they've already been incorporated into the numbers at some point now, since I've been tracking this for two and a half years. That explains the very low number for Crouse this week; all of the satisfied judgments were credited against their new judgment total. 

The paper publishes only those accounts of at least $5,000.

The Irony Board: Personal Freedoms

Gee, the Republicans are running into a bit of backlash on their whole "people have the right not to vaccinate their kids" talking points. That whole personal freedom thing is a little more complicated that they thought, it seems.

For a while now, the R's have inserted little lines into their state party platforms, like this excerpt from the Texas GOP platform in 2014:

All adult citizens should have the legal right to conscientiously choose which vaccines are administered to themselves, or their minor children,without penalty for refusing a vaccine.  We oppose any effort by any authority to mandate such vaccines or any medical database that wold contain personal records of citizens without their consent. 

Obviously, personal freedoms, particularly personal medical freedoms, are very important in Texas and in many other red states.

The same folks who believe that people have the right to vax or not vax don't seem to have any problem with kids who are not vaccinated hanging out with other kids in school, day care centers, playgrounds, Chuck E Cheeses, bounce houses and birthday parties and all the rest, even if the personal choice of a parent can in fact jeopardize other people's children. And when there is no way of knowing whether the kids present have been vaccinated or not.

And there's no legitimate reason for the government to jeopardize anyone's right to participate in society, to go freely about their lives as a citizen, exercising their personal freedoms, right?

So where on the personal freedom continuum, do some of these typically Republican-supported ideas, regulations, and strongly held beliefs fall?

• Limiting the right of a person to vote, by reducing hours at urban polling stations, or requiring government-issued ID to allow a person to vote, but not automatically issuing said government ID (and vehemently opposing a national ID card), or not allowing a person to leave a voting line once they're in it, or other foolish steps that have been taken under the guise of preventing virtually non-existent in-person voting fraud in America? (Joe Biden would have said 'literally non-existent' and he wouldn't have been far off.)
• Forcing women to undergo invasive medical procedures like trans-vaginal ultrasounds? 
• Keeping people on life support against the wishes of the patient and family?
• Extending benefits to one class of Americans that you would refuse to pass to another class of Americans because they exercised their own personal freedom of speech?
• Declaring that judicial candidates must have a 'biblical' world-view but also insisting that certain religions assimilate or referring to them as a 'cancer' ? 

Chris Christie, who put a healthy, symptom-free Ebola worker in a plastic bubble in New Jersey, until she could leave the state (and go into forced quarantine in Maine), apparently doesn't see the irony between that action and his statements in England about 'personal choice' when it comes to vaccines.  But if he was right on Ebola, can he also be right on vaccinations?

Well, of course, silly! As the blustery,belligerent Governor of New Jersey, he has the right to protect the people of his state.

And as a blustery, belligerent potential presidential candidate, he has to protect the state of the people on the Right. 

Tuesday's Number: $12,976

Tuesday is the day my local paper, the Syracuse Post-Standard, publishes the weekly business section. In addition to special features, tips from stock experts, budgeting advice and the like, we get the judgment and bankruptcy listings.

Since mid-2012, I've been tracking health care related filings. I include anything that is clearly a debt owed to a hospital, nursing home, physician or physician group, medical supplier, and so on; I do not include filings by insurance companies, many of which are so diversified it would not be a fair assumption that the filing is related to medical care or health insurance. 

• This week, there were two new judgments to hospitals, doctors, or other medical providers totaling $12,976.
• There were no satisfied judgments.
• And there were no health care related bankruptcies. 

I also track filings for each of the four Syracuse hospitals. Here’s the breakdown for this week: 

• Crouse had both of the judgments this week.  

This year, I’m subtracting the satisfied judgments from the overall totals and from the individual hospital totals; the likelihood is that they've already been incorporated into the numbers at some point now, since I've been tracking this for two and a half years.

The paper publishes only those accounts of $5,000 or more.

A Time for Re-Education

If you've been paying even a little attention to the news over the past year or so, whether you're a parent of a school-aged child or not, you're likely familiar with at least some of the topics below :

• Common Core and Race to the Top (and before that, No Child Left Behind)
• Teacher evaluations, teacher effectiveness, teacher tenure
• Discipline, school violence, restorative justice
• Standardized testing, teaching to the test, treating all kids the same
• Property taxes, state aid, and education funding 
• Charter schools
• Drop out and graduation rates 
• Parent/guardian involvement

There are defenders and detractors for each of these, all of whom would tell you that they have the best interests of the students in their hearts and minds -- and most of them probably honestly think that they do. The problem is that, while the adults go back and forth on these issues, sometimes changing their minds with each shift in political winds (and money), millions of students are being impacted.

As I noted last fall, the students are the canvas on which all of the rest of us paint. 

Some of them really want to learn, really want to get an education, really want to have a career or go to college (or both), really want to be successful. At the same time, there's another portion of the student population that cares much less about those things, and may be only going through the motions, passively waiting to age out, or actively seeking to get thrown out. 

If you plot the students that thrive and the ones who truly don't want to be in school on a bell curve, they're likely going to be the top and bottom five-to-fifteen percent.  And in between them are the 70-90% for whom our educational process can be a deal maker or a deal breaker. The ones who could go either way.

The ones for whom caring, engaged parents/guardians, good teachers, a strong curriculum focused on concepts and practical applications of them, options for different learners instead of cookie-cutter programs, safe and well-designed classrooms and facilities, and fair educational funding, can truly change their lives for the better. The same students, when faced with the opposite of those things, can just as easily go the other way.

Most teachers, administrators, Boards of Education, and yes, even bureaucrats and politicians, know that not all students learn the same way, have the same aspirations, take tests equally well, come from equal socioeconomic backgrounds, or attend schools that offer equal opportunities.  And yet, it seems that what we hear about is exactly that, the cookie cutter approach that does treat all kids the same, setting many of them up for failure.

Locally, we face the challenges listed at the top of this post, as well as others. Many are common to other large urban districts, such as poverty, crime, school violence, higher than acceptable dropout rates and lower than acceptable graduation rates.  But there's more:

• The local teachers union has zero confidence in the superintendent, and demonstrated this very publicly by walking out of a school board meeting last year. City officials, on the other hand, tend to support the superintendent. And there's been some flux on the Board of Education as well. 
• The Syracuse City School District (SCSD) has been accused of institutional racism, with African American students suspended at rates much higher than their overall representation in the district. 
• About half of all properties in the city are tax exempt, and we've got a huge inventory of abandoned properties, seriously limiting property tax collection.
• Programs have been introduced to encourage teachers and other 'role model' professions to live in the city, but those programs, not surprisingly, face an uphill battle in the current environment.

Frustration is running high on all sides. And for those of us not in the official stakeholder buckets outlined a couple of paragraphs above, but who are interested in the future of our city and our schools, it's hard to discern if there is a 'right side' to these issues.

I'm not affiliated with the SCSD, not a teacher, not a politician, and don't have kids. I'm just a long-time city resident working with some others to get a better understanding of community sentiment around the SCSD, and perceptions around the key challenges the district faces and where to look for solutions.

A confidential survey has been created, and we are looking for feedback from parents, community members, district employees, students and former students -- all local residents are encouraged to participate, including those who live in any of the suburban school districts.

You can access the survey here.

For readers outside the immediate Syracuse/Onondaga County area, I'm very interested in the state of education where you are. What challenges are your schools facing? What successes can you share?  What are your opinions on the issues outlined at the beginning of this post? Has your district solved any of them?What scares you or encourages you?

Educate us. Re-educate us.