http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/ Yall Politics - The Definitive Guide to Politics in Mississippi en staff@yallpolitics.com Copyright 2010 2010-03-14T15:41:00-06:00 http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/cl_longtime_former_state_health_officer_seeks_factual_debate_of_federal_pro/ http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/cl_longtime_former_state_health_officer_seeks_factual_debate_of_federal_pro/#When:14:41:00Z Longtime former state health officer seeks factual debate of federal proposal Based on my past experiences in health care administration and current understanding of the proposed health insurance reform proposals, I would like to make a statement. The proposals are complex, but the problems addressed are just as complex and difficult to solve. The program has been described as a "government takeover of health care" or even worse as a socialist plot. On the other side, the proponents claim that it will solve all problems with the costs and availability of health care. Both sides are overstating what the actual outcomes will be. First, a few facts: The costs of health care in our country are on a non-sustainable upward spiral. The average family of four, with an annual income of $40,000 to $50,000 expends about $12,000 to $15,000 on health insurance. This amounts to approximately 23 percent of income. This cost is increasing about 6 to 10 percent each year. Our per-capita costs are about double those in other developed countries. Alton B. Cobb, M.D., of Jackson served as Mississippi's state health officer from 1973-1993. Clarion Ledger 3/14/10 Metro, Headlines, DC, ElectedOfficials, 2008 Presidential Race 2010-03-14T14:41:00-06:00 http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/cl_health_care_would_benefit_mississippi_even_though_barbour_says_we_cant_a/ http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/cl_health_care_would_benefit_mississippi_even_though_barbour_says_we_cant_a/#When:14:37:00Z CL - Health care would benefit Mississippi, even though Barbour says we can't afford it There is probably no single topic has been discussed longer and more often in Mississippi than the proposed federal health care reforms. Gov. Haley Barbour maintains that Mississippi can't afford the proposed Medicaid expansion contained in the U.S. Senate health care reform package. In December, Barbour said: "Such unfunded mandates would necessarily cause states to raise taxes or cut vital services like education and law enforcement - more than we already have. Mandating a one-size-fits-all solution for states and expanding a broken Medicaid system - without reform - is poor policy." Barbour maintains that the Senate proposal would cause Mississippi "to have to find some $200 million a year to support the expansion of Medicaid." ... The American health care system needs reform. There are more than 46 million Americans without health care insurance, mostly the working poor. It is too costly and continues to escalate. Any health care reform must cover the uninsured and control rising health care costs. Unlike Barbour, Cobb's position is that federal health care reform will benefit Mississippi in greater proportion than most other states in terms of health care coverage, which is a compelling argument. Clarion-Ledger 3/14/10 Metro, Headlines, DC, ElectedOfficials, 2008 Presidential Race 2010-03-14T14:37:00-06:00 http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/nyt_as_democrats_attempt_reconciliation_all_eyes_on_referee_parliamentarian/ http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/nyt_as_democrats_attempt_reconciliation_all_eyes_on_referee_parliamentarian/#When:14:31:00Z Headlines, DC, ElectedOfficials 2010-03-14T14:31:00-06:00 http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/wtok_snowden_defends_open_bill_amendment_requiring_officials_to_pay_fines_o/ http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/wtok_snowden_defends_open_bill_amendment_requiring_officials_to_pay_fines_o/#When:14:18:00Z WTOK - Snowden defends open bill amendment requiring officials to pay fines out of pocket State Rep. Greg Snowden added an amendment that forced those fines to be paid by the officials themselves, and not the taxpayers. House Judiciary A Committee chairman, Rep. Ed Blackmon, held up the bill, because he said Snowden should have added the amendment while it was in committee. The bill died for lack of action Thursday. "Apparently the real reason he let the bill die is because he didn't like someone offering an amendment on the floor," said Snowden. "And, you know, that's my job, to do those things when they are necessary. And I had the majority of the House agree with me. So I feel good about what I did, but I'm sorry the bill died." Blackmon said asking public officials who are not well-paid in some small towns to pay a fine would put an unfair financial burden on them. WTOK 3/14/10 Metro, Headlines, ElectedOfficials, Legislature 2010-03-14T14:18:00-06:00 http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/ha_d_ward_killed_animal_cruelty_bill_so_he_could_write_his_own_version_for_/ http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/ha_d_ward_killed_animal_cruelty_bill_so_he_could_write_his_own_version_for_/#When:14:14:00Z HA - D-Ward killed animal cruelty bill so he could write his own version for 2011 Hewes said he was disappointed about the situation. "It's ironic that we have a statute on the books creating a felony for the mistreatment of livestock but we don't have anything for dogs and cats," Hewes said. Once the bill passed in the Senate, it was sent to the House where House Speaker Billy McCoy double-referred it to the Agriculture Committee and to the Judiciary B Committee. The bill never left the Agriculture Committee. MS-FACT members claimed on their site, ms-fact.org, that the Mississippi House Agriculture Committee Chairman Greg Ward, D-Ripley, killed the bill because he wanted to work on an animal cruelty bill personally. Ward told The Hattiesburg American he believed SB 2623 was somewhat confusing, and he hoped to write a more clear and simple bill and introduce it in the 2011 legislative session. Ward said he almost has the legislation written, and it will be concerned with only cats and dogs and no other animals. Hattiesburg American 3/14/10 Metro, Headlines, ElectedOfficials, Legislature 2010-03-14T14:14:00-06:00 http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/newsweek_liz_cheney_excites_las_vegas_crowd_more_than_haley_barbour_or_lind/ http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/newsweek_liz_cheney_excites_las_vegas_crowd_more_than_haley_barbour_or_lind/#When:14:07:01Z NEWSWEEK - Liz Cheney excites Las Vegas crowd more than Haley Barbour or Lindsey Graham When the Republican Jewish Coalition hosted its annual winter conference at Las Vegas's splashy Palazzo hotel earlier this month, party luminaries such as Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham showed up to hobnob with some of the GOP's most generous donors. But the guest who seemed to excite the audience the most was a diminutive, former mid-level State Department official who has never held elected office. Introduced by Miriam Adelson, wife of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Elizabeth Cheney delivered a rousing attack on Barack Obama's foreign policy that won her a standing ovation. It was an impressive performance by Cheney, a policy wonk, law-school grad, and mother of five who may now be bidding to establish America's next political dynasty. Newsweek 3/14/10 Headlines, DC, ElectedOfficials, 2008 Presidential Race 2010-03-14T14:07:01-06:00 http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/sh_cochran_wicker_deaf_to_gop_call_for_earmark_freeze/ http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/sh_cochran_wicker_deaf_to_gop_call_for_earmark_freeze/#When:14:03:00Z WASHINGTON — Mississippi’s GOP senators, prolific users of earmarks, will not be going along with the House Republicans’ one-year moratorium on directed federal spending. “I do not agree with the efforts in the House to impose an earmark moratorium,” said U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “Earmarks are not about how much the government spends, but about who decides how appropriated funds are used. The Constitution gives Congress the responsibility to decide how to allocate federal funds.” Similarly, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, who was a member of the House Appropriations Committee before moving to the Senate, defended the use of earmarks. “I support shrinking the size of the federal budget,” Wicker said. “But once spending levels are determined, elected officials who are accountable to the public should be able to direct spending to projects with the most need and potential for economic impact. The alternative is to leave those decisions to bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., who are unaccountable to no one and know very little about local needs in communities across the country.” Sun Herald 3/14/10 Metro, Headlines, DC, ElectedOfficials 2010-03-14T14:03:00-06:00 http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/vicksburg_post_voters_wont_toss_thompson_but_pelosi_could/ http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/vicksburg_post_voters_wont_toss_thompson_but_pelosi_could/#When:14:01:00Z Voters won't toss Thompson, but Pelosi could U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., has escaped blame in the same ethics inquiry that has at least temporarily cost U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., his Ways and Means Committee chairmanship. Both men accepted a Caribbean junket paid for by some of the big corporations they usually profess to loathe. It was a clear violation of the latest set of House rules, but both also employed the familiar “plausible deniability” claim, saying they didn’t know who picked up their tab. As the organizer, Rangel, who said his staff might have known but didn’t tell him, took the hit. Thompson and other members on the trip were given a pass. Commendably, it appears House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-N.Y., might actually be trying to keep her pledge to “drain the swamp” of congressional corruption, which has no party lines. She faced down a defiant Rangel, which was no small feat. For his part, Rangel faces six other ethics inquiries, most related to his admitted failure to pay taxes owed on vacation properties, also in the Caribbean. Thompson has one additional complaint pending — specifically that he, as Homeland Security Committee chairman, threatened hearings against credit card companies in order to receive campaign contributions that were, in fact, paid before the hearings were canceled. Thompson says the allegation is pure rubbish and that, as usual, he is completely above reproach. Mississippi Democrats did not offer an alternative candidate for this fall’s election in the 2nd Congressional District. Thompson advances to the November ballot to face one of three Republicans and a smattering of independents. Most see him as a shoo-in once again. So the biggest career threat he faces could be from his fellow House Democrats. If he becomes more of a liability than an asset, they’ll toss him overboard. If he doesn’t believe it, he can ask Charlie Rangel. Vicksburg Post 3/14/10 Headlines, DC, ElectedOfficials 2010-03-14T14:01:00-06:00 http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/nmc_jim_hood_comes_out_against_having_qualified_forensic_pathologists/ http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/nmc_jim_hood_comes_out_against_having_qualified_forensic_pathologists/#When:22:48:00Z Jim Hood comes out against having qualified forensic pathologists There’s a state statute that allows counties to group together to form a district and have a medical examiner from that pool of counties as a district. Several county coroners asked Jim Hood for an opinion whether they could form a district and hire Dr. Hayne (well, hire a hypothetical doctor) even though he was not on the state list. Hood obligingly opined that, because the statute provides that such a district medical examiner will have the same powers as the state medical examiner, those district examiners are not subject to the authority of the state medical examiner and therefore didn’t have to qualify by being on the list of qualified pathologists. This effort was the subject of an excellent article by Radley Balko at Reason, and was virtually ignored in Mississippi media (except for some parts of the blogosphere). I’ll interject here that the hypothetical doctor apparently didn’t have to meet the qualification for state medical examiner– that the examiner “be certified in forensic pathology by the American Board of Pathology” (Miss. Code Ann. § 41-61-55), a qualification Dr. Hayne does not hold. The opinion also threw in that this “district” examiner could use the state morgue facility, which would be reimbursed the costs of using the facilities, equipment, and supplies. I’ve made this all sound almost rational. But look at what is being done here: We have a list of qualified forensic pathologists, established by the Department of Public Safety. The county coroners (elected officials who are required to hold no more medical qualifications than I hold, or, for that matter, than my English setter holds) would be allowed to end-run around that by hiring a district medical examiner who did not have to be on the list and did not have to meet the qualifications for state medical examiner (that is, of being board-certified in forensic pathology). And it was all to the end of putting back into business the doctor responsible for debacles like this. So, as noted at the head of this post, a bill almost passed the legislature to close this loophole (and block disgraced former pathologist Stephen Hayne from reentering the business) and Attorney General Jim Hood is attempting to kill it at the last moment. I hope he fails. NMC 3/12/10 Headlines, ElectedOfficials 2010-03-13T22:48:00-06:00 http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/joe_tegerdine_speaks_to_coast_group/ http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/joe_tegerdine_speaks_to_coast_group/#When:22:45:01Z YouTube 3/11/10 hattip MIM Headlines, DC 2010-03-13T22:45:01-06:00