- Game on: Patrick vs. legislature in various areas: Pre-K funding, more cops, and closing those loopholes. Patrick says go to the phones and hit up the legislators. Here’s what I’d ask: “Legislator X, do you support A. closing the corporate tax loopholes, or B. dipping further into the rainy day fund to close the budget gap this year?” The lege likes B.
Oh, and be sure to watch the Michael Widmer contortion act continue:
“The bottom line,” he continued, “is that most of his initiatives they’ve rejected, and I doubt they are going to get much support on the floor. I think it will be important to hold the line on spending and (reject) the temptation to add to the bottom line in any significant way because we are already drawing on reserves.”
Widmer, naturally, supports the lege’s approach, which is to draw down on the reserves considerably more than the Governor. Make sense?
- The other shoe dropped on Correction Commissioner Kathleen M. Dennehy today:
Responding to a Globe Spotlight Team report yesterday about a series of sentence miscalculations, Public Safety Commissioner Kevin M. Burke called the mistakes unacceptable and said the state Department of Correction violated its moral and ethical obligation by not notifying the inmates about the errors.
“None of this is acceptable,” Burke said. “There is no reason for any kind of error given the system and the numbers of lawyers who examine these cases. And the governor feels the same way.”
Burke said he was puzzled by Correction Commissioner Kathleen M. Dennehy’s explanation for why one inmate, Rommel Jones, was not informed that he had been kept four years beyond his lawful sentence. Dennehy said that because Jones had a mental illness, she was concerned that he would not be able to fully understand what had gone wrong. She wanted him to learn of it after the department’s lawyer contacted his lawyer.
Maybe that’s why the governor didn’t want to talk last week, Jon.
- Don’t miss Alice Dembner’s two articles yesterday on the continuing effects the new health care law: Some terrific, some scary. I know that the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”, but Dembner really does an excellent job of humanizing the issue, getting at the real flesh-and-blood reality, beyond the measured corporate-speak of the various interest groups.
My summation: The “socialized medicine” parts of the law are doing great: folks who are heavily subsidized by the state are finally getting the care they’ve needed, and doubtless will become healthier, happier, and more economically productive. Seriously: How wonderful! It’s the personal-mandate part that’s scaring people at the ground level. Score one for the socialized-medicine crowd.
Socialized-financing for health insurance coverage (one of components of the new MA health reform law targeting the poor and near-poor) is not the same as “socialized-medicine”. Financing and delivery of services can be a combo. of public financing and private delivery, such as the single payer financing with private delivery system used in Canada.
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Socialized medicine is the model used in England where both the financing as well as the delivery component are publicly controlled (and where most healthcare professionals are employed by the government). btw both these countries spend considerably less per capita than we do and both have better health outcomes for their populations.
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Here in MA there is a bill filed and supported by many leges including Rep. Jamie Eldridge to create a Mass. Health Care Trust that expands on the social insurance financing approach. It would create single payer financed universal coverage for all of us. This is the smartest, most cost effective path to achieving long overdue cost controls and to sustaining quality affordable healthcare for all.
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If you don’t want to take my word for it then maybe you’ll be open to hearing about it from a high-tech CEO in PA (where their current health reform efforts are about where MA was 2 years ago…)
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To learn more and get involved in MA reform visit MassCare & Alliance to Defend Health Care and for reform on the national level visit HealthCare-Now!
between Keller’s post last week and the Globe story today. As of 5:43pm today, Keller hasn’t posted anything that lets us know he sees a connection.
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Imprisoned beyond his lawful sentence? It strikes me that, if he was imprisoned beyond his lawful sentence, without a civil commitment order to a mental facility, that is false imprisonment, and Dennehy should be charged for such. I am not an expert in civil commitments for the mentally ill, but it strikes me that the authorities would have to go before a judge in order to get one, and if the inmate were civily committed, the inmate would probably be transferred to a facility such as Bridgewater, not kept in prison.
What happened to the days of a second hand suit and ten bucks and a ride to the county line?
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Jes’ because the guy is nuts, doesn’t mean we should be feedin’ him. So WHAT if he couldn’t be brot into a heerin’ cause he was too out of it to participate? Let ‘im STARVE in the forest like things should be!
Are you seriously suggesting that I would have a different opinion if the Correction Commissioner’s name had been Kenneth M. Donnehy?
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Don’t be silly.
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If the state wants a civil committment, go through the process. Don’t pretend to hold him longer in prison than the state statute and the court sentence require for the crime that he was convicted of.
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Odd, I had been led to believe that Republicans are all for the rule of law. I guess–and I really do know this–that I was wrong.