Yesterday, as Rush Limbaugh is announcing his eight-year, $400 million contract extension, the LA Times is announcing that it was cutting 250 jobs because of declining advertising revenue.

I think we need more Fairness Doctrine.

Thursday, July 3, 2008.

Just Another Politician™:

Shortly after joining the U.S. Senate and while enjoying a surge in income, Barack Obama bought a $1.65 million restored Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood. To finance the purchase, he secured a $1.32 million loan from Northern Trust in Illinois.

The freshman Democratic senator received a discount. He locked in an interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago. The loan was unusually large, known in banker lingo as a "super super jumbo." Obama paid no origination fee or discount points, as some consumers do to reduce their interest rates.

Compared with the average terms offered at the time in Chicago, Obama's rate could have saved him more than $300 per month.

Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said the rate was adjusted to account for a competing offer from another lender and other factors. "The Obamas have since had as much as $3 million invested through Northern Trust," he said in a statement.

"There is water at the bottom of the ocean..."

This is interesting, but could been seen coming for months:

Andrew Buffenbarger resigned from the Champaign County Nursing Home on Monday, only to start work there Tuesday.

As of Tuesday, he's an employee of Management Performance Associates of the St. Louis, which was hired last week at $15,000 a month to manage the nursing home.

As part of the deal, MPA was to supply an administrator acceptable to the county board, which actually pays his $88,150 salary.

No vote was taken at the most recent county board meeting on whether Buffenbarger was acceptable.

Discuss.

City of Champaign Township Supervisor Linda Abernathy, who is asking voters for a property tax increase this fall because she feels she doesn't have enough money to provide general assistance to township residents, somehow submitted a budget which inlcuded several thousand dollars in legal fees despite the City of Champaign providing free legal service for the Township.

Tension was higher than normal as the town of the city of Champaign Township debated their budget for Fiscal Year 2008-09 Tuesday night.

Though the township board eventually passed the budget, debate ensued about a $9,000 line item, of which a large portion was called "a supreme waste of money." An amendment was eventually added re-appropriating the $9,000 of the $688,668 budget. Originally, $3,000 of that money was allotted for professional fees such as membership to the Township Officials of Illinois, while the other $6,000 was appropriated for legal fees, which a number of the Board members had a problem with.

The legal fees were said to be used for outside legal counsel, despite the fact that the city of Champaign currently allows the township to use their attorneys.

"It sounds like there could be a fight on the horizon," said Board member Tom Bruno. "I don't want to suggest we get separate legal counsel if that's not the case. It seems like a supreme waste of money."

Township Supervisor Linda Abernathy said the counsel was not going to be used for any legal action brought up against the city of Champaign but rather to get advice about how to properly run the township and utilize its resources.

"This is not about a lawsuit," she said. "What (the board members) are doing is polarizing the issue."

Sheesh.

Tuesday, July 2, 2008.

The IRV advisory referendum will not be appearing on this fall's ballot in Cunningham Township after being defeated again last night.

It doesn't appear that Urbana voters will get a chance to weigh in on whether they would like to see city adopt instant-runoff voting for city elections.

At a special Cunningham Town meeting Monday night, a decisive majority of those in attendance, 98 to 43, rejected a proposed advisory referendum about whether the city should adopt instant-runoff voting for municipal primary and general elections.

Democratic regulars, along with some Republicans, jammed the 6 p.m. meeting and outnumbered instant-runoff-voting proponents headed by Urbana resident Durl Kruse. Any township resident who is a registered voter was eligible to attend.

I must admit that I find it both a little strange and very admirable that nearly 150 people care enough about an advisory, non-binding referendum effort to show up at a Township meeting on a beautiful summer evening.  The picture of the crowd voting at the meeting is just awesome.

From yesterday's News-Gazette:

Purchase of the Lo property means that, out of 19 properties, only one 7-acre piece would remain to be acquired. Schmidt said the local governments are likely going to have to use their "quick-take" eminent domain authority to obtain that property, which he said is owned by a defunct land trust. Under quick take, the city gets immediate control of the property while a purchase price is litigated.

The next phase of the Curtis Road project calls for building a four- and five-lane road for 1 1/2 miles from Wynstone Drive in Champaign to Wesley Avenue in Savoy. It will cost $12.1 million. Of that amount, $5.7 million will be federal funding, with the county paying $3.7 million and Champaign and Savoy paying $1.6 million each.

Discuss.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008.

Today would probably be a good day to not be in the Courthouse.   The County's new courts technology  program is launching and it will be remarkable if it goes smoothly. 

In 1998, when the 1/4 cent sales tax for public safety passed, $250,000 per year was allocated to improve the technology in the criminal justice system.  After reviewing a number of options, the County went with New World Systems with a so called "box" solution that would need to tailored to the needs of Champaign County.  Getting this product out of the box and installed and running in Champaign County has taken about 7 or 8 years. 

The system should incorporate the Sheriff's office, Circuit Clerk, Probation, State's Attorney, Public Defender, and Circuit Judges into one system. This will eliminate needing to reenter court records at each stage in the process.  In addition, the system envisions scanning court documents in order to eliminate transferring files to Courtrooms. 

But whenever you involve this many offices in such a large project there are likely to be problems.  While each of the offices works together, each also has it's own way of doing things.  Because so many of these people are elected officials in their own right, they also don't necessarily have to go along with the program.  For example, if a judge still wants the entire paper court record brought to his courtroom, that's what's going to happen. 

I have little doubt that in the end, hopefully within weeks, the system will be running smoothly.  But the transition could give some  heartburn to more than a few people.  From a public perception, Circuit Clerk Linda Frank stands front and center on this project.  It is her staff that is going to have to inform legal secretaries that  their filing which would have sufficed last week may be lacking this week.  Or that someone with a traffic ticket has had their case postponed because the data didn't make it into the new system.  I give a lot of credit to Linda for pushing forward on this in an election year.  It would have been easy to put off this launch for six months to place it outside the political debate.

One positive for the public is that Linda fought for continued free access to the docket sheets as she has been providing for years.  Some enterprising officials apparently would have liked to go to a pay system.  That free system also is in transition, so don't be surprised if your access this week is sporadic.

No doubt some readers will be at the Courthouse this week.  I'd like to hear comments.

Monday, June 30, 2008.

I still don't have a working laptop, so blogging will be light until I do.  Maybe (hopefully?) later today.

Thanks.

I'm having technical difficulties, but for once it has nothing to do with the server.  My laptop is having an episode of the vapors, and it's probably going to take me until Monday to get everything formatted and re-installed and restored from backup.  Luckily, I don't think I've lost anything except a weekend.

So I hope you're enjoying yours!

Friday, June 27, 2008.

Once again, the Supreme Court has ruled that, in politics, money equals speech, but once again they apply it only narrowly, saying that contribution and spending restrictions on wealthy candidates and their opponents are unconstitutional infringements on free speech.

I applaud the ruling, but I wish they'd be a little consistent and just strike down McCain-Feingold entirely.

Who are the needy?  Or the poor.  However you want to phrase it. 

That's been a big part of the debate regarding the viability and profitability of the Champaign County Nursing Home.  The debate has been generally focused on Medicaid vs. private pay patients.  Those on medicaid are thought to be poor and more in line with what should be the Nursing Home's mission as a public institution to help those in most need.  Those private pay people can go anywhere and the public nursing home ought not be overloaded with such people.

The reality is much different.  Clearly, a Medicaid resident should be classified as poor.  A few accounting tricks over a lifetime might give you a life of relative affluence while having minimal assets, but this is certainly not the norm.

Private pay individuals are those people that have assets that allow them to afford care.  But many of these people are truly poor, and will only be able to afford care for a limited amount of time.  Here's an example.

Let's say you have income from Social Security of $1200 per month, you've saved $50,000 in IRAs and other retirement funds,  and you've sold your home for a net gain of $100,000.  Under this scenario,  of $150,000 in assets and $1200 in fixed income, I believe that you're a private pay individual.  I'll leave others with more knowledge to fill us in on just how far you  have to "spend down" your assets, but I'm pretty sure it's well below $150,000. 

So your income amounts to about $2,000 per month when you include return on your investment.  Not too bad if you're in assisted living at $2500 per month.  That will last you about 15 years.  But if you're going into a nursing home at $4,000 a month, you'll be tapped out in four years. 

Clearly that person who is private pay is far from being rich.  Not destitute, but clearly a person that fits into the mission of the public Nursing Home to help the "needy".

My experience has been that within the admissions process, assets and income are both given by the prospective resident.  I think this part of the population, those with assets, but undoubtedly on their way to Medicaid, should be included in the discussion on what our mix should be between private pay and Medicaid patients.

Thursday, June 26, 2008.

OK, IP has already stated he doesn't much care for soccer, so I will hope for info from other readers here.

Is there a good place in town to watch a soccer game, a place where the serious fans show up (and where I can get lunch at the same time)?  I have tried Guidos and Buffalo Wild Wings, and each had the radio on and TV volume down.  I want to go somewhere tomorrow to watch Russia v Spain and really enjoy myself.  Any ideas?

As I've been saying since February, I think that the great question of the 2008 campaign will be whether Barack Obama can unite Democrats to a great enough degree to win.  (Corollary to that is the question of whether John McCain can unite Republicans enough to take advantage of any Clinton-Obama fallout, and to overcome the massive partisan advantages of Democrats this year.)

Real Clear Politics takes a stab at answering the question of how many Clinton supporters will support McCain, using current (very early!) polling:

Luckily, we have some data from Quinnipiac's recent swing state survey that gives us some indication of how Clinton primary voters in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are feeling. As you can see, Florida closely mirrors the national numbers but the trend is more pronounced in Pennsylvania and especially Ohio, where the net change (drop in support for Obama/increase in support for McCain) reaches 22 and 29 points respectively:

Again, it should be noted that Obama increased his lead over McCain in every Quinnipiac state poll, indicating that despite whatever lingering fallout exists with Clinton supporters, Obama is more than making up the difference with gains among other groups.

Still, it should give the Obama campaign a bit of a pause to see that, at least for the moment, one in four Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries in both Ohio and Pennsylvania indicate they will crossover to vote for McCain in the fall.

I really need to sit down and do my own analysis on this.  I keep waffling on whether Obama is doing a great job winning Clinton supporters and I just haven't had a chance to compile and drill down into any real data yet.  But I wanted to share this anyway.