Scenes from late summer

If you live in the Finger Lakes, you've probably doing  this right now.  A high ladder, stinging insects, and dangerous chemicals are involved, so proceed with caution, have Benadryl and an EpiPen on hand, and good luck!

A progressive werewolf

There's world of  difference between the mainstream media's chosen Republican presidential candidate, Mittens Romney, and necessarily skyrocketing Texan Rick Perry. 

Born to wealth and position, the former Bay State governor was positioned to run a polite, all-holds-barred, necessarily losing camping against billionaire Warren Bufett's pal Barry Obama.  However, it now appears that the ouspoken Perry, son of tenant farmers, may send Mitt back to his new California beach house.  At The Other McCain, Smitty reacts to the controversy surrounding Perry's accurate description of Social Security as a Ponzi scheme.

...it’s long since time that we call the bluff on the Ruling Class cretins. The unicorn math doesn’t work outside the Beltway. The more Perry tells the truth, the more he paves the way for truth to leak into the settling pond of our current political discourse.

 Referencing P.J. O'Rourke, Smitty explains the importance of 2012.

O’Rourke famously noted that 2010 was not an election; it was a restraining order. 2012, therefore, will be liberty on trial, prosecuted by a Progressive werewolf in bespoke and Gucchis. Will conservatives rally around a McCotter, or even Palin? Or will they be deceived and support Romney, whose hair is perfect?

 Perfect hair, indeed.

Rick Perry

We're realists here in the Finger Lakes.  We've had to endure two Cuomos and a carpetbagger.  We understand that the perfect can be the enemy of the good, but we don't need no Romneycare.  So, watch this and let us know what you think.

Exciting cancer breakthrough

This sounds like goods news.

In a potential breakthrough in cancer research, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have genetically engineered patients' T cells — a type of white blood cell — to attack cancer cells in advanced cases of a common type of leukemia .

Two of the three patients who received doses of the designer T cells in a clinical trial have remained cancer-free for more than a year, the researchers said.

Experts not connected with the trial said the feat was important because it suggested that T cells could be tweaked to kill a range of cancers, including ones of the blood, breast and colon.

Future advances like this have been put at risk, of course, by the federal government's ongoing nationalization of healthcare.

A tiny health care victory

Congress has passed, on and Obama is expected to sign, the first mini-step in the repeal of nationalized heath care.  The widely despised 1099 requirement will be removed:

Congress sent the White House its first rollback of last year's health care law Tuesday, a bipartisan repeal of a burdensome tax reporting requirement that's widely unpopular with businesses. Even President Barack Obama is eager to see it gone

The Senate voted 87 to 12 to repeal the filing requirement, which would have forced millions of businesses to file tax forms for every vendor selling them more than $600 in goods each year, starting in 2012. The filing requirement is unrelated to health care. However, it would have been used to pay for part of the new health law.

Why is the 1099 requirement so unpopular?

Businesses already must file Form 1099s with the IRS when they purchase more than $600 in services from a vendor in a year. The new provision would have extended the requirement to the purchase of goods, starting in 2012.

The requirement would hit about 38 million businesses, charities and tax-exempt organizations, many of them small businesses already swamped by government paperwork, according to a report by the National Taxpayer Advocate, an independent watchdog within the IRS.

The 1099 requirement appeared bizarre from the start.  Your lawn service would need to keep purchase records for every gas fillup, every spark plug, every printer cartridge, and every box of envelopes they purchased, then send a 1099 form to each of those vendors,  and be able to produce those records for the IRS on demand.  

We're trusting souls here at South of 5 and 20, but a more cynical observer might think the 1099 rule was included in the 2000 page health care bill just so it could be removed later, allowing Obama to use that as proof of how reasonable he was, come 2012.

Finger Lakes town requests ambulance proposals

1956 Cadillac

Last week we advised Finger Lakes municipalities to embrace privatization of services, citing the Villlage of Minoa's plan to get out of the ambulance business.  Today the Ithaca Journal reports that the Town of Ulysses is requesting proposals from private sector EMS providers.

Ambulance service in the rural Town of Ulysses has long been provided under contract by the tiny Village of Trumansburg's volunteer squad.  As more demanding lifestyles made volunteer EMT staff harder to find, Trumansburg hired professional staff to provide 24-hour coverage.  

As goverment employees, the paid EMT crew quickly became very expensive and difficult for part time village officials to manage.  The volunteer service did not charge patients, adding to the financial stress.  When it was realized that many patients' heath insurance would pay for ambulance rides, a suggestion was made to begin billing for services.  This led to a protracted battle between  officials trying to deal with massive costs and local leftists who view free EMS service as the first step toward 100% government provided health care.

After years of debate and legal fees, Ulysses Town Board member Kevin Romer is leading an effort to consider privatization:

The town board will send out a request for proposals to provide ambulance and emergency medical service to ambulance providers to get a clearer picture of what the disparity in annual costs is between the Village of Trumansburg's EMS service and commercial providers such as Bangs Ambulance...

At the board meeting Tuesday night, board member Kevin Romer said the request for proposals is for comments only and to allow EMS providers to give feedback about their expectations of ambulance service. Romer said the village has so far been uninterested in privatizing, even if it would save money.

"All this is just to get information on what it would cost (for a private company to provide ambulance service in town)," Romer said.

Romer said Bangs Ambulance gave him an unofficial rough estimate of $243,000 annually for providing ambulance service based in the village, while the village's total EMS budget hovers around $450,000, he said.

Romer said he's frustrated by how little progress has been made on the issue since he became involved. He said the EMS Task Force, a joint-municipal committee formed to solve the issue, hasn't even met in five months, although it does have a meeting scheduled this month. (bold added)

Many (but apparently not all) Finger Lakes taxpayers are struggling to keep their homes in the face of some of the highest property taxes in the country.  Yet even as those taxes increase every year, our local governments are reluctant to consider new ideas for providing basic services.  Part of the problem is that busy families are often unable to keep up with these issues, only to be shocked yet again when they open their tax bills.  This blog intends to raise awareness.  Please discuss with your neighbors.

Have a flexible spending account?

Are you one of the millions of Americans who use a flexible spending account to pay some of your health care costs?  If so, you're among the first to understand that Obamcare is really a huge tax increase disguised as the destruction of the world's best health care system.

Drs. Pelosi, Reid, and Obama's prescription is already unleashing a clown carload of unintended consequences.  Frustrated flex plan members, no longer able to use their pre-tax savings accounts to purchase common over-the counter medications, are asking their physicians to write prescriptions for common remedies like aspirin, decongestants and antacids.  Although it's only March, enough havoc has already ensued that the Wall Street Journal has published a lengthy article on the phenomenon:

Sandy Chung is grappling with a new kind of request at her pediatrics office in Fairfax, Va.: prescriptions for aspirin and diaper-rash cream.

Patients are demanding doctors' orders for over-the-counter products because of a provision in the health-care overhaul that slipped past nearly everyone's radar. It says people who want a tax break to buy such items with what's known as flexible-spending accounts need to get a prescription first.

The result is that Americans are visiting their doctors before making a trip to the drugstore, hoping their physician will help them out by writing the prescription. The new requirements create not only an added burden for doctors, but also new complications for retailers and pharmacies. 

"It drives up the cost of health care as opposed to reducing it," says Dr. Chung, who rejected much of a 10-item request from a mother of four that included pain relievers and children's cold medicine.

Though the new rules on over-the-counter drugs amount to a small part of the massive overhaul of the health-care system, the unintended side effects show how difficult it can be to predict how such game-changing legislation will play out in the real world.

We all need to know about this.  We're talking about aspirin today, but soon your pregnancies, heart stents and cancer treatments will  be included in the mayhem.  Read the whole thing, call you congressman, and tell your friends.

New solutions for municipal services

Tuxedo, NY, 1956

As awareness of economic reality belatedly sweeps the Empire State, every government service must make its case for continued taxpayer funding.  A case in point is provided by local "volunteer"ambulance services.

When smiling donors posed for the above photo in 1956, an ambulance was not much more than a horizontal taxi designed to rush victims to the emergency room.  Beyond basic first aid, little care could be provided at the scene.  While hospitals and funeral homes often provided ambulances to transport city residents, remote areas had to fend for themselves.  As suburbs grew, locals began to purchase their own ambulances, which could be staffed by volunteers who sprinted from their farm, factory, or storefront when called to an emergency.  

Inside a modern ambulance

Fast forward to 2011.  Medical technology has improved to the point where the ambulance has become a mobile extension of the hospital emergency department.  Ambulance crews now consist of highly trained medial technicians, regulated by multiple layers of government authority.  We all benefit from the most advanced emergency medical services in the world, but continuing to provide that level of service on a local, 24-hour, "volunteer" basis has become a challenge that is leading to the end of volunteer squads.

We place "volunteer" in quotes to reflect current reality.  Local ambulances and squad facilities are are often owned and maintained by taxpayers.  In addition, the difficulty of recruiting, training and retaining enough qualified volunteer emergency medical technicians had led some localities to hire full time EMT staff to assure 24-hour coverage.  Adding local government employees in today's environment defines "unsustainable".

As costs and taxes spiral out of control, Central New York municipalities are looking for new solutions:

The village of Minoa is investigating whether it would save money by eliminating its village-run ambulance service and contracting with another provider.

The village issued requests for proposals to several other providers, including EAVES, WAVES, NAVAC, Fayetteville, TLC and Rural Metro. The proposals are due today, and the village will decide what to do by next month, Mayor Richard Donovan said.

The village needs to cut costs, and this one measure being evaluated, Donovan said. Minoa is facing a budget gap of as much as $300,000, Donovan said. It already has trimmed many costs, he said.

Finger Lakes county, town and village governments must quickly move to privatization of basic services, or loose those services entirely.  Minoa's approach to ambulance service is the correct one.  Solicit several proposals, then ask community members to rip each proposal apart until the best one survives.  Precedents abound - in addition to providing ambulance service to Rochester, Syracuse and 400 other cities around the country, Rural/Metro Corporation also provides fire departments to 25 municipalities.  Indeed, readers may be surprised to learn that in "progressive" Ithaca, ambulance service has long been provided by for-profit Bangs Ambulance, Inc.