The Long Island Iced Tea Corporation's stock rose by 432 percent on Thursday after the company announced that it would be changing its name to 'Long Blockchain Corp.
Bloomberg
"Ed, I ran across this article while doing some research on Rep. Button. I did some checking into this Garland Council meeting and found this shocker: The guy questioning Button about the $900M shortfall (Jeffus) shows up on Button's payroll to the tune of over $60K in 2008 alone [Texas Ethics Commission filings and streaming video obtained from Garland City Secretary's Office]. This raises a question: A Dart Board representative works for the council that appointed them right? So was there a conflict of interest going on in 2008 with a sitting council member being on the payroll of a sitting board member the council appoints? Is there a statute of limitation for conflict of interest violations?"
Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) died today after a year-long battle with brain cancer. I found the following blog post in the archives that I think stands up as well today as the day it was written, May 20, 2008.
Jarrett Rush, in The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, breaks the news that Ted Kennedy has a malignant brain tumor. Rush's short blog post focuses on his and his generation's impression of Kennedy, not as the effective senior senator from Massachusetts, but as a punchline of late-night comedians.
Others of a slightly older generation remember Ted Kennedy challenging President Jimmy Carter to fight for universal health insurance. Kennedy inspired the Democratic mid-term convention in Memphis in 1978 with a passionate speech:
"There are some who say we cannot afford national health insurance. ... Sometimes a party must sail against the wind. We cannot afford to drift or lie at anchor. We cannot heed the call of those who say it is time to furl the sail."Today, thirty years later, Kennedy's goal is still unfulfilled, the country still adrift. Voters have the best chance in generation to elect a President and a Congress who can do something about that. The wind is shifting.
If you guessed that freeing the terminally ill Lockerbie bomber was due to Great Britain having socialized medicine, you'd be thinking along the same lines as David Smith, who published just that assertion in the Dallas County Republican Examiner. (Never heard of Examiner.com? It's more competition for The Dallas Morning News' online product.) David Smith lists no professional medical background of any kind in his bio, but according to him:
"The Scottish system issued a death sentence on this man because its Socialized health care system could not 'work him in.' And this is, once again, my point--that this will be the end product in our system if we allow such a Socialized, or public option, or government-run, government-mandated system of co-op's to become the system here."
It's ironic that this right wing commentator is simultaneously upset that Great Britain showed compassion for a terminally ill prisoner (by releasing him) and didn't show compassion for a terrorist bomber (by not giving him better medicare care). David Smith might want to learn a lesson from the epic FAIL of Investor's Business Daily, which also passed judgment on Britain's National Health Service (NHS). In a now infamous editorial, IBD said:
"People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K. where the National Health Service would say the quality of life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."Well, as Steven Hawking himself subsequently pointed out, he is British, he does get his health care from the NHS, and he is here today to rebut IBD because of that care:
"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."
Is it possible that Texas Instruments' shell of a wafer fab in Richardson just might, eventually, be equipped and brought online to start producing the world's first analog products from a 300mm line? It's just possible, according to this story from Virginia. If so, the promise of jobs and tax revenues might finally be fulfilled.
Carl Leubsdorf, former Washington Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News, predicts that last weekend's statements by President Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius mark the beginning of the end game for health care reform. Obama said a "public option" was just a "sliver" of health care reform. Sebelius said it wasn't the "essential" part of health care reform. Leubsdorf said he saw such compromises on substantive parts of health care reform coming three months ago.
Compromise is one way to see the end game playing out. But Leubsdorf's playbook suffers from the fact that Republicans, so far, show no interest in compromise, even if Obama does. Key GOP players were quick to reject even the insurance cooperatives that have been offered as an alternative to a public option. And I can't imagine any GOP softening later. The anger that those Tea Party protestors have been barraging Democrats with would be redirected in an instant at any GOP Congressman or Senator who broke ranks with the party of "no."
There's another ending to this game that is more likely. Without GOP support, the Democrats are going to have to pass this bill themselves. To put that in the best possible light, they'll need to be able to say they really tried to compromise but the Republicans would have none of it. The Obama administration's coordinated hints at compromise are the bait. If, against all odds, the GOP bites, Obama gets his bipartisan bill. If, as is much more likely, the GOP refuses to bite, Obama gets to say he tried to compromise but the GOP said "no." Either way, he wins, as the Democrats have enough votes to pass health care reform without any Republicans on board, even if takes the obscure budget reconciliation process to do it. So, expect the public option to be included in the final bill and pass by the skin of its teeth.
The final vote will be really close, by design. The final bill will be crafted to get maximum reform with just enough votes to pass both the House and Senate. Some Democrats facing particularly difficult re-election fights if they vote for health care reform will be allowed to vote no, but not so many as to send the bill down to defeat. Whose arms get twisted to stay on board and who are allowed to desert, that's where the end game negotiating will play out, among Democrats. But ultimate passage of the bill is assured, just like it's always been.
One risk with using the budget reconciliation process is that some provisions of the bill having only an incidental impact on the budget might get stripped out of the bill during the reconciliation process. How that plays out may not be possible to predict or control. So, Democrats are reluctant to use this route. But they will if Republicans (and just a single Democrat) force them to. Expect Republicans to do just that. And, Democrats being Democrats, expect at least one Democrat to do that, too. So, budget reconciliation it shall be.
P.S. Texas' representatives and senators are not players in this game. Their "no" votes are cast in stone. Texas is irrelevant. And likely will remain so as long as the likes of Kay Bailey Hutchison, John Cornyn and Pete Sessions represent us in Congress.
The Dallas Morning News editorial board weighs in on the health care reform debate. Not health care reform, but the debate. Only they don't call it a debate. They say,
"Health care reform is an enormously complex, vitally important issue, but it has become all but impossible to hold a civil discussion about it. These town halls have degenerated into ugly, obnoxious town hells."They got that right. Read the editorial, but stay away from the comments. There were 201 comments this afternoon. There are certainly more since then. Most of them by the irony-impaired, as "civil discussion" is rare and "ugly, obnoxious" is common. Here, for example, are the most recent few comments:
"Hitler had doctors working for him.""You can't spell liberal without l-i-e."
"No question as to where the DMN (Democrat Morning News) stands."
Perhaps the biggest irony in all this is that those "town hells" are making the politicians in Washington look thoughtful, dignified, even statesmanlike compared to the folks back home.
That quote is usually credited to Republican Senator Hiram Johnson (R-CA), who said it in 1918 in the midst of World War I. Now, we're in the midst of a political war over health insurance and Republicans are demonstrating they know well how to apply Johnson's aphorism.
Just when the "birthers," the delusional political partisans who insist that President Obama is not a natural born citizen, are losing their amusement value, they have morphed into "deathers," delusional political partisans who insist that President Obama is conspiring to kill old people. They aren't so funny in this guise, although The Daily Show satire of the deathers is pretty funny.
Today, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) joins New Gingrich and Sarah Palin as Republican Party leaders who are peddling that myth of "death panels" shamelessly. Grassley told a town hall meeting today, "We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma." Earlier, Sarah Palin decried Obama's "death panels" that were going to kill her baby. Gingrich defended Palin by telling George Stephanopolous, "You're asking us to trust the government when there clearly are people in the government who believe in establishing euthanasia."
All of this makes Pete Sessions (R-TX) sound relatively sane. The only outrageous falsehood he told at last week's town hall meeting in Texas was that the Democratic bill eliminates private insurance. Sessions didn't condemn the sign "Euthanize ObamaCare, Not Our Seniors" that was cheered by his town hall audience, but at least he didn't explicitly endorse it, either.
Isn't there someone who can calmly and rationally discuss end-of-life medical care? Someone interested in solving the health care crisis in our country and not just interested in scoring cheap, political points? Someone who might suggest something like this:
"More than 20 percent of all Medicare spending occurs in the last two months of life. Gundersen Lutheran Health System in La Crosse, Wisconsin has developed a successful end-of-life, best practice that combines: 1) community-wide advance care planning, where 90 percent of patients have advance directives; 2) hospice and palliative care; and 3) coordination of services through an electronic medical record. The Gundersen approach empowers patients and families to control and direct their care. The Dartmouth Health Atlas has documented that Gundersen delivers care at a 30 percent lower rate than the national average ($18,359 versus $25,860). If Gundersen's approach was used to care for the approximately 4.5 million Medicare beneficiaries who die every year, Medicare could save more than $33 billion a year."
What's that, you say? Someone actually did say that, in an essay in The Washington Post? And it wasn't a socialist, granny-killing spokesman for the Obama administration? It was former Republican Speaker of the House New Gingrich, you say? As recently as July 2, 2009? How fast Gingrich's story changed when he saw political advantage in encouraging the spread of fear, uncertainty and doubt. It turns out that the American public is right to fear euthanasia. Truth was its first victim in this war.
All three are getting the Richardson City Council's attention lately, but only one really matters.
In July, at the end of a long council worksession, the council discussed a proposed new utility fee to set up a dedicated fund for storm water drainage operations instead of paying for these operations out of the general fund. The council exhibited what I considered unseemly haste in discussing how they could repurpose the general fund, with redevelopment of the Spring Valley corridor a popular option. I voiced my distaste with the process. If storm water operations is better funded out of a dedicated utility fee than out of general fund, then the general tax rate ought to go down equivalently to make the shift revenue neutral. Anything else gives at least the appearance of a money grab despite all the protestations to the contrary. And if a redevelopment fund is called for, it ought to be presented to the taxpayers as the reason why the checks they write to the City of Richardson (for taxes and fees) are getting bigger.
I called for open discussion of the redevelopment of Spring Valley corridor. Let's give it all the time and attention it requires. Let's fund it openly.
In August, the city council spent nearly two hours reviewing a report on the operation of the city-owned Sherrill Park golf course. The conclusion: Sherrill Park is operating just fine. It's profitable. It's a great example of a public-private partnership.
This time it is Andrew Laska, of the Richardson Heights Homeowners Association, who is calling for more discussion of the redevelopment of the Spring Valley corridor. In an editorial in The Richardson Echo, Laska argues that the city council should quit trying to fix what's already working (Sherrill Park) and spend more time on "real problems" (Spring Valley). I welcome his call to get Spring Valley corridor redevelopment out in the open, on the table, and thoroughly aired. Over the next decade redevelopment is going to be the biggest issue facing Richardson, not our golf courses, not storm water management, not our landfill transfer stations, not transparency in government. The more Richardson taxpayers are educated about the need and involved in crafting solutions, the better for everyone who lives or works in Richardson.
Wick Allison, FrontBurner publisher, and Pete Sessions (R-TX) share what Allison describes as "one of life's great joys": they both have a Down syndrome child in their families. That makes it hard for me to say anything critical of what Sessions does to improve the government and non-profit resources available for his child and other disabled children. But it doesn't stop Wick Allison. In FrontBurner, he points out one very special case where Sessions makes an exception to his opposition to the health care reform now making its way through Congress. It's a bill introduced by Sessions to make it "so that his son (and my daughter) will receive every extra dollar of federal money that can be squeezed no matter what." Read the whole head-shaking story on FrontBurner.
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| Photo by Destiny |
If you've been paying even an ounce of attention to the health care reform debate, you know that there's a lot of misinformation being circulated out there. This blog highlighted one example by a local blogger, Trey Garrison, who distorted the White House's effort to dispel misinformation as a kind of Big Brother "Inform on Your Neighbor" policy. If you thought any effort, by anyone, to counter distortions and lies would be welcomed, you'd be wrong. Such efforts are threats to the opponents of health care reform and become targets of misinformation themselves.
Today's example is more serious. It's by north Texas' own Congressman, Pete Sessions (R-TX). Sessions held a town hall meeting last Wednesday in Richardson, covered here. Sessions made a big deal over the fact that the health care bill being debated in Congress contains a section that allegedly would do away with individual health insurance policies. He even had a Powerpoint slide displayed on a screen behind him (see photo above or Destiny's video) that shows some text from the bill. Probably very few people in the room could read the text on the screen. Sessions urged the audience to read the bill themselves. Probably even fewer bothered to take him up on the challenge. I did. And what I found was that the alleged evidence that Sessions was displaying behind him not only didn't support his claim, but in fact was 180 degrees opposite from his claim.
That section of the proposed health care bill is a grandfather clause, protecting all individual policies written before health care reform becomes law. In other words, if you have health insurance, and you like your current policy, you can keep it, just like President Obama has said all along and exactly opposite of what Pete Sessions would have you believe. The bill goes on to say that insurance companies can continue to write individual policies, with new policies required to follow the new rules being enacted as part of reform. Rules like insurance companies can't deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Or insurance companies can't drop your coverage because your health care is costing them too much. You know, rules that protect the consumer.
That a member of Congress would so distort what's in the bill crosses the line into outright dishonesty. It displays a lack of good faith in trying to negotiate a bipartisan bill. It displays a lack of factual arguments against health care reform. Sessions' defense of the insurance industry status quo is so bankrupt that he is reduced to just making things up.
Pete Sessions held a town hall meeting in Richardson Wednesday evening. Grand Hall of the Civic Center. Inside, a festive atmosphere. An overflowing crowd. Every chair taken. People lined up two and three deep along the walls to the back and sides. Microphone connected to speakers in the room next door for people who didn't fit inside the Grand Hall.
The audience was dominated by vocal conservatives by at least a nine to one ratio. They were there for one overriding reason. To express hearty disapproval of anything smacking of health care reform. From the young man with the "John Galt" name tag to the old man marching down the center aisle with the sign reading, "Euthanize Obama 'Care' Not Our Seniors", it was clear that Pete Sessions had nothing to fear from this crowd. No one was going to ask him how holding fundraisers in Las Vegas burlesque houses is consistent with family values. No one was going to ask him how inserting earmarks for dirigible research at an Illinois company associated with a former aide is consistent with cutting government spending.
The crowd wasn't there to hear Pete Sessions. They were here to vent. Sessions played the crowd masterfully. He let everyone say their peace, speaking up mostly when someone left any doubt that Pete Sessions might not be one of them, but usually just letting the crowd do his work for him. And that they did. I don't have a recording of any of the proceedings, but here are snippets of what I remember. I use quotation marks for the audience questions, but loosely. I don't claim every quote is verbatim. (Reactions by the crowd or Pete Sessions are denoted in parentheses.) [My own editorial comments are in square brackets.]
It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who has been paying an ounce of attention, but there's a ton of disinformation about health care reform being spread. Trey Garrison, in his own blog, reports on a new White House request that Garrison calls an "Inform on Your Neighbor" policy.
More accurately, the White House asked Americans, not to "inform on their neighbor", but to help dispel "disinformation about health insurance reform out there." The White House doesn't care who your neighbors are. They care about what disinformation is being spread, so they can explain the truth. Trey Garrison's distortion of the White House request is an example. And he's a supposed professional journalist (albeit one with a PayPal donation button on his blog). Imagine the distortions, myths and lies being spread by unscrupulous opponents of health care reform. In his defense, Garrison does close by saying he's confused.
Semiconductor International, not the usual place you find a discussion about horse racing, takes us to Saratoga Springs to tell us a tale of two bets, one that paid off, one that didn't. The winner was New York's investment in semiconductor fabs in upstate New York. The loser was the state of Texas, whose subsidies for Texas Instruments' empty fab in Richardson have yet to yield results.
There are no lessons here to help us make better bets in the future, but maybe the story offers consolation to the taxpayers in Texas to learn that maybe it wasn't necessarily a stupid bet. Some horses pay. Some don't. That's how gambling works.
Hat tip to Pris Hayes. Follow her on Twitter.
I went out for dinner Wednesday night to an old restaurant under new management called Gary's. I ordered an appetizer, a salad, an entree and a glass of wine. The total came to $40, which I considered affordable, but not cheap. The food and wine were good, the restaurant location superb. At the end of the evening, I was satiated. I reached into my wallet, pulled out two twenties and placed them on the table. Then, the waiter, a nice young man named Dan, came with the check and a special offer. He said that if I allowed him to place my $5 glass of wine on a separate bar bill, that would free up $5 on my meal bill for me to order dessert. It sounded like a free dessert to me, so I reached back in my wallet, pulled out a five, placed it on the table on top of the two twenties already there, and picked up the dessert menu. Later, in the car, my dinner companion asked me if I knew what that extra five dollars that I pulled out of my wallet had just paid for. I said my glass of wine. She said it was my dessert. It caused a bit of an argument between us, but now I'm wondering. Was she right? Was Dan's offer just some fast talking?
Signed,
$5 Poorer in Richardson
Ian McCann, in The Dallas Morning News Richardson blog, does as good a job as possible presenting the City of Richardson's case for a new utility fee to pay for projects related to storm water drainage. Unfortunately, the explanation just doesn't hold up.
In short, Richardson has been paying for drainage-related operations out of the general fund. Because "greater obligations are looming in the future," the city council wants to create a dedicated fee for such operations, presumably to raise more money to pay for these greater obligations.
On the surface, it sounds straightforward, but follow the money and it begins to look like a shell game. It looks like a way for Mayor Gary Slagel to finance a new "redevelopment fund" by imposing a new storm water drainage utility fee. With a new utility fee in place, there will be $1 million in the general fund no longer needed to pay for storm-related operations. Instead of reducing the tax rate a like amount, mayor Gary Slagel proposes keeping the tax rate and putting the million dollars into a "redevelopment fund" that McCann describes as "more fuzzy than the utility spending itself." The net result? Richardson residents will be paying, on average, $3.50 more per month and the council will have a million dollar redevelopment fund to disperse.
No wonder the topic was saved for the last item on a long night's budget session agenda. No wonder the utility fee is being left out of the budget. Look, I'm inclined to support a dedicated storm water utility fee. It's good for residents to see exactly how much they are paying for what. I'm also inclined to support a redevelopment fund. Richardson needs significant redevelopment, especially in the Coit/Spring Valley area and along the southern part of Central Expressway. What I'm not comfortable with is how the city council is selling this to the residents of Richardson. The juggling of fees and funds may be a necessary, if messy, part of any budget-making process. But sleight of hand shouldn't be part of it.
Jim Schutze nails it again. Whether he's reporting on the Trinity Tollroad or the downtown convention center hotel or, in this case, DART, he offers an insight that you just don't get from The Dallas Morning News, the mayor, or, in the words of Schutze, "the tiny group of business people who make decisions about downtown Dallas."
In this case, he gets his insight from John C. Tatum Jr., a downtown developer from way back who has a vision of downtown as the region's biggest "transit-oriented development." But only if Dallas avoids bottlenecks and facilitates riders transferring between lines.
The most likely route for a second downtown DART line diverts away from the Pacific Avenue route of the existing line, taking it way to the south in order to go past the proposed convention center hotel. Like most people, I was inclined to favor that route. If we're going to build a hotel, it only makes sense to have light rail access. But Tatum explains persuasively why such a route, although friendly to the convention center hotel, is likely to be the worst possible route to foster transit-oriented development downtown.
Why? Because two separated lines guarantees a bottleneck where they cross, where congestion is sure to result, where the experience of transferring between lines is bound to be unpleasant. Instead, Tatum proposes running the second line down Elm Street (or, rather, under Elm Street), with multiple connections to the Pacific Avenue line like rungs on a ladder. This creates multiple intersections, all just an escalator ride away. It also expands the zone of maximum development potential along a spine the length of downtown, instead of at a single intersecting point.
The downside? It isolates the the convention center. And the mayor, the city council, the newspaper, the business people who make decisions about downtown, all have much invested in that hotel. DART is being used to help make the hotel successful, rather than using the hotel and DART together to make downtown successful.
This may not have been Jim Schutze's insight, but maybe it takes someone like him, with no personal financial interest in DART, the hotel, or real estate tracts on the far southwest side of downtown, to talk to someone like John Tatum and recognize his vision as being what's in the best interest of Dallas as a whole.
On The Dallas Morning News Transportation blog, Rodger Jones asks, "Should Dallas HOV drivers turn in cheaters?" Seattle runs a program where drivers report offenders who then are mailed educational materials about rules and regulations for use of the HOV lanes. Opinions about the effectiveness of the program are mixed, but it is popular with the driving public.
HOV lanes are a popular source of complaint. Some drivers can't find them (e.g., on US 75 north of LBJ). Some drivers find the frequently broken pylons a driving hazard. Some drivers just hate to see open lanes when they are stuck in traffic. Some drivers think that building more lanes open to all would do more to relieve congestion.
There's some validity to these complaints. But the bottom line is that America's love affair with the automobile running on imported oil can't go on forever. Some combination of car-pooling, public transportation, denser development and alternative fuel development is essential. Wishing HOV lanes would just go away is just that -- wishful thinking. Even if they did, our transportation problems wouldn't be solved. We've got HOV lanes now. Let's make the most of them.
So, should Dallas HOV drivers turn in cheaters? Sure. Not because it necessarily increases compliance, but because it will make the law-abiders feel better. The cheaters probably have been deriving some satisfaction from flouting a hated law. Now, if the law-abiders were to derive some satisfaction with sticking it to someone else, so be it. Why should the cheaters have all the fun?
Once we're all having fun, how about we get on with those other, better solutions: public transit and alternative fuel development?
Steve Blow and Sam Johnson both address our current health insurance crisis, but from different angles. Blow, in The Dallas Morning News, reports how his wife switched from her husband's employer's policy to her own employer's policy and was subjected to months of red tape rigmarole. Blow concludes:
"We're in the midst of a great debate over reforming our health care system. And I know that change is scary. But frankly, I'm not that big a fan of what we've got now."Blow has it exactly right. Health insurance in this country is mired in insurance company bureaucracy. As infuriatingly complex and redundant and repetitive much of the insurance paper chase is, it's business for the insurance companies. Getting rid of it means getting rid of a revenue source for them, so expect them to fight change and fight to preserve the existing system. Which is what they are doing.
Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas), according to a The Dallas Morning News Neighbors story, takes issue with Democratic plans to place an employer and individual mandate on Americans to have health insurance. He argues:
"If you like your health care plan, you should be able to keep it. Surely we can make health insurance more affordable, more accessible and more available without the government taking over the health care industry and Big Brother bulling people and employers. In essence, the Democrats are telling the American people that they must have health insurance -- or else. That's not right."Johnson does three things in this short paragraph to mislead his constituents.
First, notice how Johnson implies that Democrats are threatening to take away your private health insurance. In truth, they are offering to give everyone the same opportunity that those with insurance already enjoy, although "enjoy" isn't the right word as Steve Blow's earlier comments explain.
Second, notice how Johnson says we can make health insurance more affordable and accessible. Don't expect solutions from Johnson. If he had any, they would already be in place. Johnson was in the Congressional majority for a decade and didn't do what he says we can do now. Instead of offering a plan to do that now, he obstructs those who are trying to do something now.
Last, he says requiring everyone to have health insurance is not right. Why not? Everyone will get emergency medical treatment when he or she is in a car accident or suffers a heart attack, whether or not he had the foresight to have health insurance or not. President Bush in 2007 even argued that that emergency rooms constitute a form of health insurance for all. Why is it wrong to require that everyone pays for it?
