Alas, another Rhode Island blogger has lost herself in the progressive fever-swamps because of the Military Commissions Act. Now Sheila Lennon of the Projo?s Subterranean Homepage News is claiming that the Military Commissions Act can be used to prevent American citizens from petitioning for a writ of Habeas Corpus…
Yes, anyone can not (sic, I think Ms. Lennon meant “now”) be “disappeared” at the pleasure of the President. This abrogation of the most basic right to challenge the legality of your detention is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court must overturn it.Her fears are based on Keith Olbermann’s inaccurate MSNBC rant against the MCA. But despite Olbermann’s delusions, it is not true that the MCA means that anyone can be made to disappear at the pleasure of the President, because…
- The MCA does not apply to American citizens.
- Everyone — even aliens — detained under the MCA has an express right to be represented by a defense counsel of their own choosing. This is from section 949c of the MCA…
(3) The accused may be represented by civilian counsel if retained by the accused, but only if such civilian counsel
(A) is a United States citizen;
(B) is admitted to the practice of law in a State, district, or possession of the United States or before a Federal court;
(C) has not been the subject of any sanction of disciplinary action by any court, bar, or other competent governmental authority for relevant misconduct;
(D) has been determined to be eligible for access to classified information that is classified at the level Secret or higher; and
(E) has signed a written agreement to comply with all applicable regulations or instructions for counsel, including any rules of court for conduct during the proceedings. - And nothing in the MCA prevents someone improperly detained under the MCA from challenging the claim (with the help of his or her defense counsel) that he or she is not an American citizen in a regular civilian court, outside of the MCA system.
I hope liberals are beginning to realize how much the hysteria over the MCA undercuts the claim that they are the reality-based community. But there is always hope! If bloggers like Ms. Lennon would pay more attention to the right-blogosphere, they would be less likely to make such gross errors of fact. [Open full post]
I’ve so thoroughly checked out of the current RI Senate race that I didn’t even realize there was a debate last night. Ah well….the ProJo has it covered.
I suppose no one can really be surprised that the conservatives hereabouts have taken, at best, lukewarm interest in a race between Patrician “A” and Patrician “B” in which both try their hardest to show how unconservative (ie; “anti-Bush”) they are.
Patrician “A” owes his current electoral viability to the political groundgame orchestrated by the advisors of the President he currently castigates. Meanwhile, Patrician “B” offers no really new ideas and has basically chiseled his whole campaign down to the core theme that a vote for his opponent is a vote for BUSH. It’s politics as a game of “I know you are but what am I?” It’s certainly not a debate over political ideas and is really all about winning political power for its own sake. That’s fine, but it’s not very interesting to me. But, heck, if you’re interested, feel free to comment.
UPDATE: Chuck Nevola is a more intrepid man than I and has more analysis here.
Question 9: Affordable Housing Bonds
Approval of this question will allow for the State of Rhode Island to issue general obligation bonds, refunding bonds, and temporary notes in an amount not to exceed $50,000,000 for affordable housing.
Project Costs – $49,800,000 in principal w/ $37,035,819 in Interest (6% over 20 years) plus approximately $349,000 in issuance costs. TOTAL: $87,184,557. {Source PDF}.
Do we need affordable housing? Most people, including both gubonatorial candidates, say yes.
Urging voters to pass the measure, Republican Governor Carcieri and his Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Charles Fogarty, were among more than half a dozen speakers at the kickoff for Vote Yes On 9, a campaign to support Question 9 on the November ballot.
“The goal of Question 9 is to jump-start the construction of affordable housing,” said Armeather Gibbs, chief operating officer of the United Way of Rhode Island, who emceed the event from the back porch of a newly renovated affordable house on Douglas Avenue.
Housing advocates say the $50 million would help Rhode Island to leverage some $450 million in federal housing subsidies and private loans, helping to create up to 2,000 affordable houses, condominiums and apartments over four years.
There are many economic and moral cases to be made for approving this bill (go here as a starting point). But the question must be asked: should current Rhode Island (and federal) taxpayers be asked to foot the bill? What factors contributed to this crisis and how do we correct them so that the problem doesn’t continue? Basically, this isn’t a housing shortage issue as much as it is a tax issue.
There can be little doubt that the governmental policies of “Tax Hell” Rhode Island carry a large amount of blame for the housing pinch. RI’s past tax policy helped convince many manufacturers to move out of state, taking their relatively well-paying jobs with them. The service jobs that have filled the void don’t measure up. To make matters worse, RI’s high tax reputation scares businesses in growing sectors, such as technology or pharmaceuticals, that may offer higher paying jobs.
If young or median-income earning people continue to move out of state, it will only make the fiscal problems–both in RI government and for average RIers–worse. Of course, that may be exactly what is needed before RI politicians and the voters who continue to enable them wake up to the fiscal reality that the current high tax burden is untenable. In short, this bond question asks that RI taxpayers subsidize a problem that was caused because of a bad tax policy.
The politicians are asking us–the taxpayers–to bail them out for their fiscal mistakes instead of getting to the root cause of the problem: they have to lower the tax burden in the state and make it more attractive to businesses. More businesses will make a more competitive job market with higher wages resulting. Subsidizing affordable housing is a case of treating a symptom and not the actual illness. It would be nice to do what we can to alleviate the symptom, but I fear that doing so will allow our politicians to get away with not treating the illness that caused it.
As I was putting together the previous item on Beacon Mutual, I stumbled across a book titled The Politics of Automobile Insurance Reform: Ideas, Institutions, and Public Policy in North America by Edward Lascher. I’m not sure if its table of contents should make Rhode Islanders laugh or make us cry…
[Open full post]
- Introduction: Why We Should Care about the Politics of Automobile Insurance Reform
- Explaining Policy Choices: Pressure versus Ideas
- The Profiteering Story and the Pogo Story
- Reform Enacted: Pennsylvania
- Reform Stymied: Rhode Island
- Different Reform Regimes: Ontario
- The Parliamentary System Difference
- Conclusion: Learning from Automobile Insurance Reform
In today’s Projo, Lynn Arditi and Mike Stanton report on the indictment of David R. Clark on charges of conspiracy and insurance fraud in connection to his role at Beacon Mutual, Rhode Island’s state-established workers’ compensation insurer…
A Rhode Island grand jury yesterday indicted a former top executive of Beacon Mutual Insurance Co. on charges of conspiracy and insurance fraud….Revelations earlier this year about unfair pricing practices and preferential treatment of some of the state’s big businesses tainted Beacon, which recently has been trying to regain the confidence of state political leaders and the business community.The word that keeps recurring in the description of the crime that Mr. Clark is charged with is “favoritism”…
The Beacon executives referred to in the indictment are “paid enormous sums of money to protect the public’s interest,” [Attorney General Patrick Lynch] said. “This is a betrayal of trust [involving] favoritism that has caused injury directly to small businesses across Rhode Island”….But if there is agreement that favoritism in the insurance business is a bad thing (whch I think there is), then why in the past year was the legislature trying to rewrite the law in a way that would have made Beacon Mutual’s ability to practice favoritism substantially easier — perhaps even making favoritism legal?
The Giuliani report, released in April, found evidence that Beacon gave breaks to some large companies with policies of more than $10,000….The Giuliani report also found that Beacon executives maintained a VIP list of about a dozen companies, some of which received favorable treatment that resulted in lower workers’ compensation rates….
The two counts of insurance fraud, which Lynch said involved “favoritism” of certain policyholders, include one count of insurance fraud and another count of conspiracy to commit insurance fraud….
The excerpts that follow are from Senate Bill 2009, sponsored by Senators Roger Badeau (D-Woonsocket/Cumberland), Dominick Ruggerio (D-Providence), Frank Ciccone (D-Providence), David Bates (R-Barrington/Bristol), and John Revens (D-Warwick), which would have established Beacon Mutual as an independent non-profit corporation. The bill was passed by the full Senate last year, but failed to pass the House. In these excerpts, the “corporation” and the “fund” both refer to Beacon Mutual.
1. Maybe I’m reading too much into this first point; however, the current law governing Beacon Mutual requires them to have a “protocol” for imposing higher rates on individual companies deemed to be risky…
(3) Notwithstanding any law to the contrary, the fund may establish and apply a premium surcharge protocol. The protocol shall provide for higher premium and surcharge payments by insured who present higher than normal risks within a class, including the ability of the fund to assess from time to time a premium surcharge of up to three (3) times its applicable premium rate, as it deems appropriate to further the public purposes set forth in this act…The legislature wanted to remove from the law the language requiring a formal and consistent protocol for setting surcharges…
(4) Notwithstanding any law to the contrary, the corporation may establish and apply a premium surcharge of up to three (3) times its applicable premium rate for policyholders who present higher than normal risks within a class.With the protocol requirement removed, wouldn’t the rule be the rule that anything goes, so long as it could be slipped past the Director of Business Administration?
2. The old law made no mention of being able to offer discounted workers compensation policies. The new law, however, would have allowed Beacon Mutual to grant discounts, again without legally mandating a consistent process…
The corporation may also establish and apply discounts to the policyholders who present lower than normal risks within a class.If this new version was in effect, wouldn’t Mr. Clark be able to offer a defense based on the fact that the law expressly gives Beacon the discretion to offer lower rates to preferred customers?
3. Beacon wasn’t going to be required to use the same “uniform classification system” for setting rates that other workers’ compensation insurers operating in Rhode Island would be required to…
The corporation shall not be required to adhere to the uniform classification system or uniform experience rating plan required under section 27-7.1-9.1 in effect from time to time after the approval by the director of the department of business regulation of the corporation’s own classification plan, experience rating plan, manuals, schedules and rules…Section 27-7.1-9.1 of Rhode Island law sets up the uniform classification system that all workers compensation insurers in Rhode Island (at the moment) have to use…
Sec. 27-7.1-9.1 (c) Every workers’ compensation insurer shall adhere to the uniform classification system and uniform experience rating plan as submitted to the director and which is presently in effect. The experience rating plan shall be the exclusive means of providing prospective premium adjustments based upon measurement of the loss-producing characteristics of an individual insured.What was the intended purpose of establishing two sets of rules, one for Beacon, and one for everyone else? Wouldn’t this allow for the possibility of Beacon hardwiring favors for their friends into a specialized classification system?
The questions are 1) Would the “favoritism” that David Clark is accused of practicing still be illegal if the legislature had gotten its way on Beacon Mutual in this past session and 2) Is there be some valid public policy purpose for the apparent loosening of Beacon Mutual’s rate setting procedure, or this case of the legislature looking to give an advantage to their friends? [Open full post]
Republican candidate for Attorney General William Harsch has released his four-point plan for attacking public corruption if elected Attorney General…
- The formation of a Public Corruption Unit within the Attorney General’s Office.
- Stiffer penalties for public officials convicted in corruption cases.
- Creation of a Joint Commission on Election Fraud with the Secretary of State’s Office.
- The implementation of an anonymous Public Corruption Tip Line.
This is the third set of specific policy proposals that Mr. Harsch has released as part of his campaign.
[Open full post]According to Edward Fitzpatrick in the Projo, Attorney General Candidate Bill Harsch has complained to the state Board of Elections about incomplete campaign finance reports filed by current Attorney General Patrick Lynch…
J. William W. Harsch, the Republican candidate for attorney general, yesterday sent a complaint to the state Board of Elections, accusing Democratic Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch of failing to fully report employment and/or address information for about 43 percent of those who have contributed to his campaign since 2003….The Projo provides some examples of donors who provided incomplete information…
Harsch cited a state law requiring that campaign-finance reports contain the name, address and place of employment of each person or source that contributes more than $100. Harsch’s campaign coordinator, Tom Shevlin, said Lynch’s campaign omitted employer and/or address information for 922 contributions dating to January 2003.
- Charles A. Blixt, who donated $250 to Lynch in December 2005, as general counsel/executive vice president of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco.
- J. Russell Jackson, who donated $1,000 in December 2005, as a lawyer who has represented Anheuser Busch as a partner in the Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom law firm.
- Peter H. Cressy, who donated $250 in December 2005, as president and CEO of The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, an industry advocacy group.
- Brennan Dawson, who donated $250 in December 2005, as senior vice president of The Tobacco Institute, which represents major cigarette manufacturers in the United States.
Lynch said it’s “humbling” that thousands of people have donated to his campaign since 2003. “We’ve recorded every contribution that we’ve received and comply with every applicable campaign-finance law,” he said. “My opponent’s latest attack is just a desperate attempt to bring life to his stagnant campaign in the last 21 days.”But Rhode Island law is pretty direct on this matter. The relevant section is section 17-25-7(a)…
17-25-7 Contents of reports to be filed by treasurers of candidates and committees. — (a) Each campaign treasurer of a candidate, each state and municipal committee of a political party, and each political action committee shall keep accurate records and make a full report, upon a form prescribed by the board of elections, of all contributions received by it in excess of a total of one hundred dollars ($100) from any one source within a calendar year, in furtherance of the nomination, election, or defeat of any candidate or the approval or rejection of any question submitted to the voters during the period from the date of the last report, or in the case of the initial report, beginning on the date of the appointment of the campaign treasurer for state and municipal committees and political action committees and on the date a person becomes a “candidate”, as defined in Sec. 17-25-3(2) for individual candidates. The report shall contain the name and address and place of employment of each person or source from whom the contributions in excess of one hundred dollars ($100) were received, and the amount contributed by each person or source. The report shall be filed with the board of elections on the dates designated in Sec. 17-25-11. The campaign treasurer of the candidate, or committee reporting, shall certify to the correctness of each report.We can argue about whether these laws are good things or not, but it seems silly for an Attorney General to be arguing that he is complying with the law when he clearly isn’t.
And isn’t the office of Attorney General an office that should be filled by someone who pays attention to the details? [Open full post]
The comments to my most recent post on same-sex marriage rapidly branched off into discussion of a Westerly Republican politician who is, apparently, homosexual. Having not researched the man for myself, I won’t presume to offer analysis; I’ll merely explain that the initial question posed by a commenter, Bryan, was: “How can a man who lives with his male lover properly represent all of the values that I feel so strongly about.” Thus inspired to investigate, Bryan (and others) have discovered multiple questionable items in the politician’s past, such as frequent party switching, audience-specific dishonesty about his sexual orientation, and even a possible lie about having been in the World Trade Center on September 11.
Again, until I’ve had a chance to do the research, I’m not going to comment further on the specifics. A more broadly applicable question has emerged within the discussion, however, and it’s certainly one worth consideration. From commenter Rhody:
If somebody hadn’t raised a red flag over his being gay, would any of this other stuff (the party registrations, 9-11, etc.) have ever come out? Just curious.
If conservatives like Bryan start giving hetero candidates the same level of scrutiny (and raising red flags on legitimate issues), something positive will emerge from this debate.
Perhaps it’s my recidivistic naiveté, but I find it to be a curious notion that, while it would be unnotably legitimate for, say, a Republican to plumb the background of any given Democrat, it is somehow dubious of a citizen to do the same on the basis of significant moral and social disagreement. In the latter case, he who makes the inquiry opens himself to accusations of bigotry and intolerance; in the former case, he is merely pursuing political interests. Funny that raw political interests should be considered less suspect than an honest difference of opinion.
The reason, it seems to me, is that those who would make sexual orientation a protected class even when it comes to political disagreement do not wish to permit that opinions can differ. (And, of course, any number of current issues could be substituted for homosexuality.) But perhaps that’s yet another advantage of our political system: We can do political battle within the system without bringing irreconcilables into every debate and every vote.
Furthermore, perhaps that’s yet another indication of why our political system — particularly in Rhode Island — is currently so corroded and viciously polarized. In a healthier system, political (rather than ideological) opponents would ensure that every candidate’s background is plumbed, both in primaries and in general elections, thus allowing “innocent” investigation by those on both sides of the ideological divide.
To understand why universal coverage won’t work for a certain segment of healthcare delivery, consider a fictional extension to your auto insurance policy. You are given the option of buying “gasoline insurance”. Instead of paying for what you buy when you go to a gas station, you will pay a premium at the beginning of each week. In return for buying into the program, you can put up to $36 of gasoline into your car per week at any participating gas stations (after paying a $1 deductible).
The flaw in this system is obvious. If everybody puts their full allotment of gas into their cars each week, everyone will end up paying more than 35 dollars for 35 dollars’ worth of gas; everyone will have to pay for the cost of their gas plus the administrative costs of running the gas insurance program. Savings under this program are only possible if a large number of people consistently use less than their allotment of gas, but people who consistently use less than their allotment are unlikely to stay in the program.
The point is that insurance doesn’t work as a way for paying for something that is frequently used. I don’t think that that is too controversial a starting point…
Now, move to an example closer to healthcare. Consider dental insurance. Do you believe that everyone should visit their dentist twice a year for a cleaning? If so, for the same reason that it makes no sense to pay for gasoline through insurance, it makes no sense to pay for routine dental care through insurance. If everybody goes for their twice-a-year cleanings, paying for those cleanings through insurance offers no advantage over paying the dentist directly. Everybody’s dental premium could be dropped by the cost of two cleanings, people could use the premium savings to to pay for their cleanings, and everything would stay about the same (except of course for the insurance companies, who would lose out).
The dental example is very relevant; many current healthcare proposals involve using preventative medicine and regular check-ups to catch problems early when they are easier to correct. And if we are talking about regular, recurring care, just like with dental cleanings, it makes more sense to pay the provider directly (maybe with the help of a health-savings account) rather than through an insurance program. If preventative medicine is to be an important part of the public healthcare system, the design of that system must assume that everyone uses their full allotment for wellness care and check-ups and, therefore, that paying providers directly will be as effective and as efficient as paying them through insurance.
I still don’t think I’ve said anything too controversial. However…
What about the person that can’t afford the costs regular dental cleanings or wellness check-ups? Doesn’t the government have a responsibility to provide for them somehow? Isn’t that the real purpose of universal health coverage?
Certainly if you believe that preventative medicine is an important part of the healthcare system, providing for regular care for the poor is a concern, but it is not a question of how to offer universal healthcare insurance, but a question of how to offer healthcare subsidies. The difference, you ask? In an insurance system, everybody who is covered pays into the system. In a subsidized system, only some pay into the system based on their “ability to pay”; people towards the upper end of the of the ability-to-pay scale pay for both their own care and for the care of the people with less ability-to-pay, while people at lower end of the scale pay for only a fraction (down to 0%) of their own care. (Michael Kinsley discusses some of the differences between insurance and subsidies in this Slate magazine article).
But the fact that some people need subsidies to pay for regular, recurring careis not a reason to put everyone into a uniform, government-run universal system for delivering it. There is no medically justifiable reason to force people to spend their healthcare dollars in a certain way just because they are also the ones who are covering the costs of subsidies for others. If there are private insurance plans, or HSA’s, or direct fee-for-service plans that are preferable to the government plan (and experience shows us that there almost certainly will be better plans than the government plan — unless the government creates regulations to make them impossible) then why shouldn’t people be free to choose those other options for themselves?
Some people will provide an ideological answer to this question. They believe that everyone should be in the same system to make everything fair, or to remove a stigma of receiving subsidized payments, or because they believe that government programs are inherently superior to private ones. These are all terrible rationales for using universal health insurance to provide subsidies for wellness care. Once the designers of the healthcare system make anything other than delivering the best possible care using existing resources their top priority, it is unlikely that the system will deliver the best possible care.
If people are serious about providing regular wellness and early-intervention medicine to as many people as possible, it cannot rationally be done through a “universal” insurance system. This is the realm where health-savings accounts will be most effective. The insurance system should be reserved for accidents and illnesses and major costs that are truly unforeseeable.
Anchor Rising readers are invited to use the comments section of this post to give their own real time reactions to tonight’s Rhode Island Gubernatorial debate between Donald Carcieri and Charles Fogarty (WPRO 630AM, The Dan Yorke Show @ 4:45 pm).
Insightful comments, witty comments, and even comments that spin like a original Mercury astronaut undergoing initial training are all welcome, but personally insulting or crude posts will be deleted as soon as I see them.
The comments are open now!
