According to Margery Eagan in today’s Herald, both Deval Patrick and Charlie Baker support “some type of road testing for the elderly.” Independent gubernatorial candidate Tim Cahill? Not so much:
“I don’t want to take away licenses from able-bodied people or force them to go through a driver’s test,” he said. What the Legislature did, he said, is “fine.”
Hey Tim… The point of road tests for the elderly people would be to figure out which people are not “able-bodied.” Anybody who can look at the string of completely avoidable accidents involving elderly drivers and think that this isn’t necessary is a moron. I don’t vote for morons.
The MBTA just spent $900,000 in federal stimulus money to buy 25 new buses for use along Route 28 (Mattapan Square to Ruggles Station). These longer, articulated buses don’t fit in the current bus stops, so the stops going to have to be enlarged, eliminating between 60 and 92 parking spaces along a stretch of road that has a heavy concentration of local merchants who rely on car traffic for their business.
Needless to say, the merchants are livid. According to the Boston Herald, here’s what Richard Davey, the General Manager of the T, had to say to justify the removal of parking spaces:
“… he said a survey of 500 Route 28 bus passengers found that 91 percent approved of it rolling out the state-of-the-art 60-foot articulated buses, even if it means losing between 60 to 92 parking spaces along its five-mile route…”
Yes, that’s right, the T asked people who don’t use the parking spaces whether it’s OK to get rid of them.
What’s next? Are they going to ask people who don’t ride the buses whether it’s OK run fewer of them?
The T is holding a public hearing at 6:00pm tomorrow at the Mattapan Public Library. They’ve publicized this hearing where? On the buses, of course. This calls to mind Arthur Dent’s experience in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when his house is slated for demolition to make room for a bypass road:
“But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.”
“Oh, yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.”
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur. “yes, I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked file cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’”
Also, wouldn’t want normally want to hold one’s public hearings before buying the new buses? What exactly is the T going to do with $900,000 worth of buses if it turns out they can’t use them because the public outcry is too loud for them to enlarge the bus stops?
Unless, of course, the public hearing is a sham and the removal of the parking spaces is a foregone conclusion…
The condition of our economy proves the absurdity of John Stossel’s argument that gambling should be legal because, “People are responsible for the consequences of their bad habits” (“Is it your choice to gamble? You betcha!” May 14). We’re digging ourselves out of the worst recession since 1929 because people took out mortgages they couldn’t afford. It’s costing us trillions of dollars to clean up from their “bad habits.”
Whether it’s Keno, a slots hall or a casino, any gambling establishment is a blight on the community, one that hurts those who patronize it and everyone else.
Yet another chapter in the saga of the political spam I can’t seem to put a stop to, courtesy of ex-Congressman Robert Wexler. I’ve just been spammed by Scott Maddox, who is running for Florida Commissioner of Agriculture & Consumer Services. Like I care!
My wife was involved in an auto accident last September which was not her fault — she opened the door of her parked car after confirming that no one was coming, and another driver came whipping around a corner and hit her door. Her insurance company found her liable for the accident and issued an SDIP surcharge, because the regulations state that the person opening the door is assumed to be at fault whenever an accident like this occurs (just like the person in back is assumed to be at fault whenever one car rear-ends another).
Everyone with whom my wife spoke about the surcharge told her not to bother appealing. Several people claimed to have waged unsuccessful appeals when they were not at fault. The prevailing wisdom seemed to be that the system is rigged against drivers. Nevertheless, I insisted that she appeal and even ghost-wrote her affidavit (we chose to appeal in writing rather than attending the hearing).
Today we received a notice that my wife “did demonstrate a showing necessary to rebut the governing presumption of the applicable standard of fault,” and the surcharge was vacated. Woohoo!
Here’s the affidavit I wrote for her which was successful at getting the surcharge overturned:
John Holiver, President
St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center
736 Cambridge Street
Brighton, MA 02135
Dear Mr. Holiver,
My wife, A… Kamens, was treated in your emergency room (ER) early in the morning on Sunday, January 17.
The doctor who treated her told her to seek follow-up care with her primary care physician (PCP), Dr. C… L…. He said he would call Dr. L… that day, but my wife should wait until Tuesday to contact her, because by then all the test results would be available in my wife’s electronic record, where Dr. L… would be able to access them.
Not only did the ER doctor not call Dr. L… on Sunday as promised, he never called her at all.
Not only were my wife’s test results not available by Tuesday as promised, they were not available until January 26, nine days after my wife’s ER visit.
Last November, I posted on my blog a copy of a letter which I faxed to Congressman Robert Wexler, in which I chastised him for giving my email address (which I gave him when I made a donation to his campaign, so that he could send me a receipt) to another politician’s campaign and demanded that he remove my address from all lists and databases under his control.
A friend, Michael Burstein, commented on that blog entry, “Wexler is a good guy, so I can’t I imagine that he and his staff won’t take steps to fix this. Let us know once he has.”
Alas, my friend was incorrect. I received no response from Wexler or anyone on his staff, and today, I received another piece of spam at the email address I had given to Wexler, from the campaign of yet another politician, Ted Deutch. Although the spam came from “campaign@tedforcongress.com”, the letter in it was signed by Congressman Wexler, making it all the more clear that he provided the mailing list to Deutch.
Many are saying that one of the reasons why the Democrats lost yesterday’s special election in Massachusetts is because they are acting like elitist snobs. I’m not fan of the Republicans and I voted for Coakley yesterday, but I can absolutely understand why people feel that way. I think there’s a lot of truth to it, and I think that this unrepentant spamming from Wexler is a symptom of it.
Congressman Wexler: What you have to say to me is not so important that you get to say it when I’ve told you to leave me alone. Your fellow Democratic politicians are not so critical to the future of this country that you get to share my email address with them when I’ve never given you permission and indeed asked you not to. You are not so high and mighty that you get to ignore my letters to you with impunity. You, sir, have lost my trust, and you will not soon regain it.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a convoluted(*) unemployment insurance system, under which employers are required to make various quarterly and annual filings and quarterly payments involving at least two different state agencies.
This system is administered by the Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA), who decided to replace their old, paper-based system with a Web-based system called QUEST (“Quality Unemployment System Transformation”). The DUA promised QUEST would bring countless improvements: one-stop shopping, filings for all agencies in one place, faster filings, less wasted paper, reduced printing and postage costs, reduced data entry costs, no more data transcription errors, etc., etc. You’ve no doubt heard it all before.
QUEST went live at the beginning of 2010. As of the go-live date, the usage of QUEST for all employer unemployment insurance transactions was mandatory; paper filings were no longer permitted. I.e., the DUA went straight from paper filings only to on-line filings only, with no transition period or overlap.(**)
It would be an understatement to say that the QUEST go-live is not going well; in fact, it is a disaster. (more…)
I’ve just sent the following letter, with minor variations, to Sen. Kerry, Rep. Capuano, State Sen. Tolman, State Rep. Honan, and Martha Coakley (who will almost certainly soon be Sen. Coakley). If you’re as fed up as I am with this state of affairs (the incident described below is not the first time we’ve been charged a large ER copayment for something which really, truly, required an ER visit), please contact your elected representatives and ask them to do something about it.
Dear Senator Kerry,
Recently, my wife was woken in the middle of the night by persistent abdominal pain so intense (she described it as much worse than natural childbirth) that it caused her to vomit and prevented her from sitting up. Of course, I drove her straight to the emergency room of our local hospital.
Thirteen hours later, she was diagnosed with a kidney stone and discharged. This diagnosis was confirmed by her primary care physician in a followup visit several days later. Both the ER staff and my wife’s PCP confirmed that going to the ER was both necessary and appropriate.
Several days later, I received a bill from the hospital for the $100 ER copayment required by my insurance company. Herein lies the crux of the issue about which I am writing.
Congressman Robert Wexler
2241 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Fax: (202) 225-5974
Dear Congressman Wexler,
In May 2008, a letter from you to one of your supporters was forwarded to the Jews for Obama listserv with the introduction, “As you all know, Congressman Wexler has been a strong Obama supporter and advisor to the campaign. Please help him in his re-election bid. Thanks.”
In response, I sent a donation to your campaign, one which I couldn’t really afford given how much I had already spent to help Obama.
When I donated to you, I specified a unique email address, [elided]. Today I received an email message to that address from “Marcy Winograd for Congress”. Since the only time I’ve ever given out that email address to anyone is when I donated to your campaign, the only way Winograd’s campaign could have gotten the address is from you. Shame on you.
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