A Prediction!!!!

 

I have praised them before and I will praise them again …

The folks at OhMyGov.Com come up with some great stories!

In a move that sounds like it was taken from either the pages of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 or the sands of an elementary school playground, Oregon Democrats tacked on (and later removed) language to a recent bill that would make a “yes” vote on a particular referendum be a vote against adopting the resolution and vice versa. 

I have learned over the years that bad ideas don’t die just once. They keep coming back and coming back and coming back.

If you scratched your head as you read the above language,  what it means is …  This was an attempt to put into law that a particular tax referendum would be worded so that a “No” would mean “Yes” and a” Yes” would mean “No”.

Legislators know there is a large number of voters who vote “No” on every referendum no matter what it is. So, let’s trick them.  It almost worked.

My prediction?

The seeds have been planted. This idea will come back.

Maybe not in Oregon …   but it will be back.

So, no matter where you live watch for it.

All publicity is good as long as they spell the name right?

 

Regular readers of this blog know that I have no love for Marshfield Clinic.

They just keep on giving me more reasons all the time not to like them.

Each year, Portage County spends thousands of dollars to prosecute defendants in criminal cases, and $10,000 of that is earmarked to pay for expert witnesses.

That money has typically been used to pay for the sort of specialists who must travel from afar to provide their expert opinion on a specific injury or piece of evidence.

That has changed in the last few years because of the Marshfield Clinic’s practice of charging the Portage County district attorney’s office fees for the testimony of local physicians directly involved in the treatment of crime victims, said Victim Witness Coordinator Carrie Davies.

While out-of-town doctors not involved in the treatment of a crime victim typically charge counties an extra fee, local doctors asked to describe a victim’s injuries and subsequent treatment are often described as “fact” witnesses. Davies said most local health care providers, such as Ministry Health Care, Aspirus and Theda Clark, rarely charge the district attorney’s office separate fees for such testimony, but Marshfield Clinic has made it regular practice.

According to Davies, the Clinic currently charges the county $495 for every hour a physician spends in court, on or off the stand, $495 an hour for a physician to testify by phone, $350 for every hour a physician spends reviewing a file, $350 for every hour Portage County District Attorney Thomas Eagon or one of the assistant district attorneys spends deposing a physician, and $245 for every hour the doctor spends traveling to court. The testimony of a witness with a doctoral degree costs $350 an hour; the testimony of a person with a master’s in social work goes for $245 an hour. The Clinic started charging the county such fees about five years ago, Eagon said.

Now that this story has come out expect more counties to come forward with similar tales.

Not that Marshfield Clinic cares what kind of publicity they get.

Another use for that there computer …

The good people over at Oh My Gov scan for local political items that I somehow miss.

They found this gem…

It seems that Mayor Shannon McShurley of Muncie, Indiana, has finally discovered some practical use for those newfangled computers.

The mayor announced that the city fire stations, which had previously been transporting documents to the chief’s office via $1,500-a-pop trips on a fire truck, would soon be investing in some low-cost computer equipment upgrades so they could send their weekly maintenance reports electronically.

Last year, the trucks made 6,066 runs, costing the city $9 million.Talk about an easy line-item to cut from the budget!

“If we are literally delivering every document from a fire station by fire truck, that is not an efficient operation,” said McShurley. 

Incredible huh?

And, you thought your city was behind the times!

Why is this abuse allowed to continue ..?

 

I agree that “something needs to be done” about health care. 

 Health care costs are crippling local governments.

It is a constant bargaining chip in wage/benefit negotiations.

Just when I am almost to the point of agreeing to a single payer government system, I am once again reminded how a government run medical system operates in the real world …

These bums are costing you a fortune.

Ricky Alardo, a homeless alcoholic nicknamed Ricky Ricardo, swigs cheap vodka by day at his favorite corner in Washington Heights, then calls an ambulance to chauffeur him to the hospital for a free meal and a warm place to sleep, courtesy of taxpayers who fund his Medicaid benefits.

For a chronic caller like Alardo — who phones 911 four or five times a week — the annual medical bill can be as high as $300,000. Over 13 years, the length of time he has been abusing the emergency room, he has cost the medical system an estimated $3.9 million.

In Midtown, another bum, Robert, has faked emergencies to get food and shelter in ERs about 40 or 50 times in the past three years — and taxpayers pick up his tab, too.

Ricky and Robert are among the dozens of “frequent fliers” who clog the 911 system, tie up city ambulances, crowd emergency rooms and burn through Medicaid money.

Alardo, 53, phones 911 so regularly, medics know which calls are likely his.

“When Ricky passes on, I’ll probably even go to his funeral,” said one medic who works in Washington Heights. “I’ve seen him almost every day for the last 13 years.”

And, absolutely nothing is done about this problem.

You’re going where on vacation?

 

I was talking with one of my golf league partners. He is going to be gone for the next two weeks and we need to get a sub. I asked where he was going.

“The Czech Republic”, he replied. He and his wife had hosted a couple different foreign students from the Czech Republic. He was really looking forward to seeing them again and playing tourist. I wish him a great trip and I am sure he will have an absolutely fantastic time.

It did bring back my desire to not go to the Czech Republic, or anywhere in Europe, or Asia, or South America, or …

I’m a U.S.A. kind of guy. I will never see everything I want to see here. I’ve seen quite a bit. I haven’t totally hibernated in NW Wisconsin without escape.

 

But, the Czech Republic?

Two Weeks?

No thanks.

P. S. In fact, I’m still not positive of trying to visit those last two stragglers …  Alaska and Hawaii.

Free Land! Lower Taxes! Apply Here!

Sometimes I run across local government items that are just plain wacky. No other way to describe them.

Son of a gun, here is another one…

RACINE — Two aldermen want to offer free land and lower taxes to city, county and school employees, to attract them to the city.

Aldermen Aron Wisneski and Terry McCarthy have been talking about how the city does not have a residency requirement for its employees. Instead of forcing employees to move to the city, the two of them started talking about incentives, Wisneski said.

Under their proposed program, City of Racine, Racine County and Racine Unified School District employees could receive a free deed to certain city-owned land if they promise to build a new home and live there for five years. The employees would also pay lower property taxes for their first five years.

So, in addition to the public employee benefit package they receive, they would be offered free land and lower taxes?

Wacky?

Or not?

How good is your County Website?

 

What did we do before the Internet? 

No really, what did we do before the Internet? 

I am speaking specifically about local government attempting to keep citizens informed.

Now, practically every unit of government has a website and if they don’t they should.

But, how good are those websites? Do they have the information on the websites that the public wants and needs?

Sunshine Online to the rescue! 

The My Government Website project evaluates the information governments post on their websites at the statewide, county, city and school districtlevel. We evaluate websites based on Sunshine Review’s transparency checklist, which checks for basic information such as meeting minutes, budgets, audits, and how to contact elected officials.

This project was recently completed evaluations for all 3,140 counties in the U.S.. Below are the 10 states with most transparent county governments; Arizona ranks highest at 65 percent. The scores reveal that all our communities need more transparency.

This website rates every county in the country as to how informational their website is for their citizens.

Look your county up. See how they are doing.

Happy reading!

 

 

Governed by Clowns

I wish I had said it. But, I didn’t.

Chris Rovzar said it.

… sometimes it’s just nice to remember that other places also repeatedly and willfully choose to be governed by clowns.

Who was Chris talking about? 

The choices are many and varied.

Give up?

Marion Barry.

You can pick your friends

 

Sometimes you just have to take matters into your own hands.

You can’t rely on anyone else to help you.

After a tax increase of 2,153%, that’s right over a 2000% increase on roll your own cigarette tobacco …

Don Carey took matters into his own hands.

Carey, 49, decided in April, when federal taxes on tobacco skyrocketed, to grow his own.

”I thought it was an April Fools’ joke,” he said of the tax increase that sent taxes on roll-your-own tobacco up 2,153 percent.

There is something ”fundamentally wrong about picking on the smokers all the time,” said Carey, whose experiment with growing tobacco comes as President Barack Obama last week signed the strongest anti-smoking bill in history. The measure gives the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco for the first time.

Carey went on the Internet and found places where he could purchase tobacco seeds.

Within about a week, he had received 40 types of seeds and his life as a tobacco farmer was planted.

Cary admits he has much to learn, but you have to admire his attitude.

Be it the Feds, the State or your Local Government … when the time comes to rise up against the establishment I want someone like Don Carey on my side.

How about you?

You want it done when?

Orrin Woodward and myself think alike.

Leaders make a habit of under-promising and over-delivering. The goal is not to satisfy, but amaze your customers.

As a Mayor I under-promised all the time. If a project was scheduled to be complete next week I said two weeks. I especially under-promised when I had little control over when/how something would happen.

And yes, the customers (citizens/taxpayers) were always amazed when there was an over-delivery on my promise.

After all,  how often does any politician over-deliver!