Teapots, Earmarks and Foxx

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ABC’s Nightline did a piece on anonymous Congressional spending earmarks and about halfway through the piece they have an interview with our recently re-elected Congresswoman Virginia Foxx about an earmark she had inserted in a bill for a Teapot Museum in Sparta, NC.  Here’s some highlights from her comments:

  • She says that people are only making fun of the project because it’s called the "Teapot Museum" and really it’s an art museum.  (Ed. Note: Teapots are art?)
  • She also says that since this is the way the game is played (anonymous earmarks inserted in spending bills) that’s how she’s going to play it.
  • She says that she’s not embarassed about asking for the funding and if the rules were different she would gladly ask for the money in a more transparent manner.

Uh huh.  Here’s my reaction to that:

  • You didn’t have to insert it as an earmark. You could have publicly inserted the request for funding in the bill, but you chose not to.
  • Two (or more) wrongs don’t make a right.
  • Nice principles.  "I’m going to play fast and loose with taxpayer dollars because everyone else is."
  • Didn’t notice you standing on the House floor screaming for reform, but maybe I missed it.

Finally, it looks like the ABC interview was conducted at the recording studio of Triad Today either before or after her debate with Roger Sharpe.  Isn’t that the same debate from which she asked the Winston-Salem Journal to be banned?  Just asking.

I Knew Him When He Was Just Bill

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An old friend and brother in the Iota Xi chapter of Sigma Chi (George Mason U) is making a name for himself.  Bill "Will" Carter used to be Sen. John Warner’s press secretary and completely changed careers a few years back when he went to New York to try his hand at acting.  He’s in California now and is starting to get some juicy roles, including a role in Running with Scissors in a scene opposite Annette Bening and Gwyneth Paltrow.

There’s a nice article on Bill in the latest Mason Spirit alumni magazine, and it is absolutely awesome to see Bill making it after such a big gamble.  Still, he’ll always be "Billy from Appomattox" to me.

Blue Cross Could Have Sent Some Vaseline Too

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Remember the truism that nothing is certain but death and taxes?  I think that needs to be revised to state "nothing is certain but death, taxes and massive annual rate hikes from your health insurer".  Actually that last could probably be better stated as an "annual screwing from your health insurer".

We recieved a letter from our health insurer, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina (BCBSNC), that begins as follows:

Dear Valued Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Member:

Thank you for choosing Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) for your health insurance needs. We value your continued membership and want to let you know about some upcoming changes to your Blue Advantage premiums and benefits.

Most Blue Advantage subscribers will have a premium adjustment in 2007.   This will be your guaranteed premium until January 1, 2008, unless you switch plans, add dependents or purchase additional coverage.

Blue Advantage is the most popular individual insurance plan in North Carolina and currently serves more than 315,000 members. Your Blue Advantage premium adjustment is based on the health care costs of all Blue Advantage members and is impacted by factors such as where you live, your benefit design, your gender and your age. For example, if you had a birthday in the past year that put you in a new age-bracket category, it may have had an effect on your January 1, 2007 premium adjustment.  Your individual claims do not have an impact on your annual premium changes.

Here’s the thing: our premiums were about $595 a month this year, which was up about 10% over the year before.  This is a 35% increase from ’06 to ’07!  Celeste and I both turned 40 this year and so I went to the BCBSNC rate quote website and found that if I compared rates for us at the age of 38 and 40, the quote for age 40 was about 8% higher.  So where in the heck did the rest of the increase come from?

What kills me is that there are NO factors that say anything about our personal health choices.  Why can’t we get credit for exercise?  Why can’t we get credit for a healthy diet?  Why can’t we get credit for our general health?  They can lump us in with the rest of the people who are individually insured, essentially treating us as a group health plan, but they give us no control over how we might control costs.  This is BS!

Here’s something else that just pisses me off about this: BCBSNC is a non-profit that has been accused in the past of making too much profit and in fact they made a concerted PR push last year to point out that they were reducing their profits.  They were sensitive enough about it that they sued an advocacy group called ProCare over the group’s disclosure of what BCBSNC said were confidential business sources.  Of course that doesn’t mean that ProCare was wrong and one of the documents in dispute detailed how BCBSNC spent $478,000 to sponsor the US Open.  And my old employer, Atlantic Information Services, had a piece in ’05 about how states, including North Carolina, are going after the "Blues" for reserves that are too high.  The point is that non-profits have reasons for existing that go beyond profits which is why they get their special status and treatment from our friends in government, and I can tell you that if the non-profits I worked with spent money the way BCBSNC seems to they’d be in a heap of trouble.

We can change our coverage options (higher premium, higher co-pays, etc.) to bring down our monthly premiums, and we might end up doing that, but we’re also going to seriously consider a Medical Savings Account.  We’ve been looking at MSAs for a while, but we were kind of scared off by the "newness" of them.  I also remember reading about UnitedHealthcare getting ready to offer individual health coverage in NC (right now BCBSNC has a monopoly in the state) and we’re going to check them out as well. BCBSNC has given us a lot of motivation to look at ALL of our alternatives. 

Here’s my final observation about these jokers and another truism in the realm of business communications: any letter that begins with "we value your continued membership" is the setup for a royal screwing and out of kindness should be accompanied by a small package of personal lubricant.

By the way, this experience just gives me further evidence that Dr. Feld is right about the need for true competition and free market reforms in the healthcare marketplace.

Meeting Gram in Fancy Gap

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A while back my daughter suggested to my mom that we could get together more if we met for dinner halfway between our home in Lewisville, NC and mom’s in Radford, VA.  Last night we tested the theory by meeting in Fancy Gap, VA for dinner.  It ended up being an easy one hour drive up I-77 for us and an easy one hour drive down I-81 and I-77 for Mom and Bert.

Lakeview_fancygap
We met Mom & Bert and the Lake View Restaurant (attached to the Lake View motel) and they even gave us our own private closet room.  Fancy Gap is right off the Blue Ridge Parkway on Rt. 52 and we decided to head home by heading south down 52 through Mt. Airy, the childhood home of Andy Griffith and my Aunt Judy. The first five miles of the return trip were downhill, as in literally downhill, so next time we’ll try and make it a lunch meeting so we can see the area in the daylight.  I have a feeling it’s beautiful.

Self Flaggelation

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Quit snickering, the title is self-flaggelation not self-flatulation.  Every time there’s an election I think of this term as it relates to one of my oldest friends, Dimitri (Jimmy) Kesari.  Jimmy and I went to high school together and from the go he was more involved in politics than anyone I’ve ever known.  He talked me into running for Student Body president my senior year, got me elected and got himself elected secretary.  Of course he then ran the student body behind the scenes while I stayed busy flirting with the girls on the student council.

Jimmy’s an arch-conservative and has walked the conservative walk his entire life.  He went to Grove City College which is so conservative that they proudly refuse to take any federal funding so they don’t have to play by the government’s rules (at least that’s what he said).  After college he started a solid wast recycling business in Northern Virginia and hired me to keep an eye on all the ex-cons running his heavy machinery.  I survived that for about six months before deciding I valued my life too much to continue dodging front loaders and hydraulic mulchers that mysteriously seemed to attack the only college kid in the yard.  Eventually Jimmy had a split with his business partner and he went into politics, which is where the self-flagellation comes in.

Jimmy became a campaign manager for a couple of different hard-right conservatives running for the House.  Even in conservative Virginia these guys were unelectable so Jimmy’s guys would get something like 12% of the vote. Each time I’d talk to Jimmy after an election he’d say things like, "The campaign was a big success.  The last time my guy ran he got 5% of the vote and this time we doubled him up to 10%."  The man is a conservative martyr.

Now Jimmy’s working for Right to Work and running their state level political operations.  I talked to him this summer and he was getting ready to spend a month away from his family in October working the hotbed states.  Although our politics are very dissimilar I know that in Jimmy’s case the conservatism is heart felt and he does walk the walk, which means I’ll enjoy disagreeing while never losing respect for him.  I can’t say that about a lot of people in politics these days.  I haven’t talked to him about it but I can almost guarantee you he’s not too happy with the way the Republican Party has steered its course of late.  For his sake I hope he’s back home right now enjoying his wife and kids and refueling for the next fight. 

Testing, Testing. Law of Unintended Consequences

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Anyone with kids in public schools knows about the rise in prominence of standardized tests.  Thanks to No Child Left Behind much school funding is put at risk when schools don’t have enough students pass the mandated tests.  On top of that school administrators can lose their jobs if their students don’t pass at appropriate levels, so you can imagine the "learning atmosphere" that this might create.

One consequence of the increased emphasis on testing is that you have teachers teaching to the test.  Our kids now come home with syllabi that clearly indicate when test preparations begin, which is usually one month before the test is administered.  And test preparation doesn’t just mean covering the subject matter, it also means test taking strategy.  Imagine spending a whole month getting ready for tests, and think about the ripple effect it has on the rest of the curriculum.

Another consequence of the new testing regime is that you have administrators and teachers fighting for their professional lives, and that leads them to do some rather strange things.  Exhibit A is the principal in Washington state who suspended a fourth grade student for five days because he refused to answer an essay question on the state exam.  You can read about it here.  The kid didn’t want to write the essay because he was worried that it would offend the principal (the same one who ended up suspending him) and he couldn’t be convinced that it was okay to write the essay.  The principal was so worried about the effect of his refusal to answer on the school’s average that she suspended him for "blatant defiance and insubordination."   Simply put, she’s off her rocker.

Given the atmosphere that school administrators are working in these days it’s no wonder you have a few whackos going too far.  In an effort to bring accountability to education what No Child Left Behind has actually done is change a learning environment into a test factory producing Scantron-completing robots (our kids).  I’m all for making sure our teachers and school administrators are held responsible for doing their jobs, but there has to be a better way than this.

Manly Shopping

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I almost used the title "Man Shopping" for this post and then realized that it was, well, kinda gay.  BTW, did you see that story a week or two ago about the football announcer on ESPN who said something like "That guy has hands of stone, not like a receiver who has to have soft hands to, you know, soft hands to caress balls….okay, that was gay."  I think he was fired. Sheesh.  I didn’t even know that calling something "gay" was considered offensive.  Good thing no one listens to anything I say.

Xmaswishlist
Anyway, I’ve found the ultimate shopping site for me.  Actually I think most guys would like this site: Duluth Trading.  All kinds of good, practical stuff.  Anyone interested in buying me a Christmas gift, or any gift, need only go here and buy anything you find.  For practical reasons I really like the Twill Presentation Jacket pictured to the left, or the Fire Hose Canvas version (BTW I’m an XL).  Utilitarian, wearable in business casual and putzing around town situations, doesn’t wrinkle, coffee stain resistant and lots of pockets.  What’s not to love?

Xmaswishlist2

Oh wait, I’ve found a neoprene six pack beer tote.  I know these guys understand me simply from their tag line: "Beer is best swilled when chilled".  I’m in heaven…yes indeedy, manly shopping.

Easy to Criticize, Hard to Do

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A while back I left a comment on someone else’s blog (can’t find it or I’d link to it) in which I said some rather critical things about TV reporters and their writing abilities.  Lenslinger quickly, and rightly, took me to task.  He pointed out how hard it is to write stories on the fly, match it to video and then get it even semi-coherent for the air.  That was just one reminder about how easy it is to criticize and how much harder it is to actually do anything.

It’s easy to critique an author’s book, but incredibly difficult to write your own.  It’s easy to tell a waiter how to do his job, but when’s the last time you carried five plates on your arm without spilling?

I was reminded of this by Lenslinger’s post "Ten Things I’d Teach News Reporters."  You get an appreciation for how much goes into a nightly newscast, even when it doesn’t go well.  Of course we can, and should, criticize anyone who can do good work but doesn’t, just as we can be criticized when we don’t do our jobs well.  These folks choose to do their jobs in public and as a result they open themselves up to criticism by a far larger audience than the rest of us can even imagine, but that’s the road they chose.

There are other jobs that open the practitioners up to public criticism.  Professional athletes come to mind, and on this election eve so do politicians. I’m sure that politicians’ jobs are harder than we’d like to admit, but at the same time the power they wield demands that we be highly critical of them.  If TV reporters screw up the worst thing we get is bad TV (who’d notice?), and if professional athletes screw up they get check mark in the "L" column, but if politicians screw up we get, well, screwed.

While reading Lenslinger’s piece I remembered how pissed I got the first time I got a negative comment on this blog, and I remember how agitated I was when some troll got on here and started giving me hell.  I also remember thinking, "How do public people do this every day?"  So, yes I’m appreciative of the thick skin that all people in public life must have and I wonder why they do it.  I’m also trying harder to appreciate the hard work that goes into what these folks do, but I’m also not going to give anyone a free pass when they don’t do their jobs well.  In the case of a bad on-air report I’ll probably just laugh and say something like "that was inane", but in the case of politicians I’m gonna squeal like a stuck pig and demand better.

And, oh yeah, I’m gonna try and toss the rascals out.

Heckuvajob Rummy

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How is it that the one guy who can be held directly responsible for much of what’s gone wrong in Iraq still has his job?  "Heckuvajob Rummy" is still the Secretary of Defense, still getting his panties in a twist whenever someone questions him and still putting our military in a lose-lose position.  The worst part is that there was information out there, war game results from 1999 (Desert Crossing), that should have warned him that he needed to think twice about the invasion and to plan very carefully for the after-action occupation.  These war games were conducted by US Central Command (CENTCOM) under Marine General Anthony Zinni who even called CENTCOM in 2002, when it was apparent we were going to war, to remind them of the existence of the Desert Crossing report. 

Among other things the report found that there would need to be a minimum of 400,000 troops in Iraq and even then things would be messy.  Army General Tommy Franks, who took over CENTCOM after Zinni’s retirement, proposed 385,000 troops for Iraq in his original operational plan for the war but Rumsfeld insisted on a sharply reduced number and approved only 160,000.

Even with the 400,000 troops that the war game report recommended the authors anticipated many of the problems we have in Iraq today.

The results of Desert Crossing, however, drew pessimistic conclusions            regarding the immediate possible outcomes of such action. Some of these conclusions are interestingly similar to the events
which actually occurred after Saddam was overthrown. (Note
1) The report forewarned that regime change may cause regional
   instability by opening the doors to "rival forces bidding for power" which, in turn, could cause societal "fragmentation along religious and/or ethnic lines" and antagonize "aggressive neighbors." Further, the report illuminated worries that secure borders and a restoration of civil order may not be enough to stabilize Iraq if the replacement government were perceived as weak, subservient to outside powers, or out of touch with other regional governments. An exit strategy, the report said, would also be complicated by differing visions for a post-Saddam Iraq among those involved in the conflict.

The war game findings were declassified in 2004 and became public as a result of a FOIA request by George Washington University’s National Security Archive and their posting of the document on their website on November 4, 2006. 

The full report can be found here.

It’s one thing to screw the pooch, but when you do it even after the pooch has growled a warning you deserve a special medal of incompetence.  What’s the opposite of a Silver Star?  Whatever it is we should give it to "Heckuvajob Rummy".

**Update 11/8/06** Rummy’s resigning. President Bush thought he was great until the House was lost to the Dems and the specter of Congressional investigations loomed.  I doubt Bush even had to push very hard to get Rummy to the end of the plank.

Winston-Salem Forsyth County School Bond Proposal

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Tomorrow we citizens of Forsyth County will have the opportunity to vote for a $250 million school bond.  Of the $250 million about $125 million will be used to build seven new schools, $90 million will be used to renovate 14 schools and $4 million will be used for wireless internet connections in all 74 schools.  The school system is growing and there’s a rampant fear that our students will be increasingly educated in trailers.

The NAACP is against the proposal because they see it furthering the supposed segregation that the school system has developed since neighborhood schools were introduced back in the mid-90s. Their argument is that schools with a high percentage of minority, low income students are underperforming and that it is an inequitable situation. They feel that we need to return to forced integration of the schools so that there is an equal demographic balance in the schools.

Here’s my take on the situation:

First, I absolutely agree that school buildings need to be safe, clean and sanitary so any necessary renovations to old buildings should be made.  On the other hand there are many worse environments in which you can learn than an air-conditioned trailer, and I’ll bet that if you asked a student if he’d prefer a clean, warm (or cool), dry trailer or a leaky, drafty, dirty bricks and mortar building he’d take the trailer any day.  And you have to ask yourself is a state of the art, brick and mortar building the most critical component of providing a good education?

Second, most of the schools are segregated by demographics because the parents, rich and poor, minority and white, choose it to be that way.  Are you really going to tell them they’re wrong?  If they don’t want their child bused halfway across town in order to meet the system’s ideal demographic breakdown then you have to respect their position.  You also have to ask what you’re truly trying to accomplish by integrating the schools.  Is it to bring up the poorer students’ academic achievement by associating them with richer, better students?  If that’s the case aren’t you just as likely to bring down the richer, better students’ academic achievements?  Instead of looking at forced busing don’t you think you should address the core issue, which is sub-standard academic performance by the students?

To me, the solution to my first question, "Is a state of the art, bricks and mortar building the most critical component of providing a good education" and my last question, "Instead of looking at forced busing don’t you think you should address
the core issue, which is sub-standard academic performance by the
students" is more teachers.  We should spend every dime we can on recruiting and retaining more teachers and keeping the student-teacher ratio as low as possible.  I’d rather build a trailer village of education with a 10-1 student-teacher ratio than a castle of learning with a 30-1 student-teacher ratio.

The Journal had a feature story about the school bond that addressed the segregation issue and in it they mention that the new high school, Carver, in the poor part of town was set up as a magnet school with all the latest, greatest equipment but no parents from outside the district want to send their kids there.  My argument would be that instead of worrying about getting other kids there you worry about educating the kids that are already there.  You don’t throw money at the hardware, you throw money at the talent.  In other words, forget the fancy equipment and double your teaching force.  Make sure each kid gets tremendous individual attention and do it in the schools that need the help most.  Before long you’ll have kids achieving beyond imagination and you’ll probably have to set up a lottery system to deal with the parents clamoring to get their kids in the new school.  That’s when you start doing the same for all the schools.

Unfortunately this school bond is continuing the trend of spending money in the wrong place.  I’d like to see more money spent on talent and less on hardware.  Spend the $90 million on renovations, but take that $125 million and expand the existing schools and vastly expand the teaching ranks.  Also look at more creative thinking.  For instance:

  • Why not use some of the empty commercial space out there for classes?
  • Why not get more active with online learning initiatives?

You’d think that with three kids in the school system that I’d be a rubber stamp for the bond initiative.  I would be if I thought they were spending on the right things, but they’re not so I won’t vote for it.