JonLowder.com

The Week That Was

This has been an interesting week.  I spent a couple of days in Raleigh for the day job and had my first opportunity to get a first hand look at the NC legislature in action.  Here's my takeaways from the experience:

• Compared to the US Capitol the state legislature is very casual.  It's nothing special to bump into a state rep or senator and give them your two cents while walking to a meeting or getting on an elevator.  Heck, it's expected.
• There's no security to speak of;  no line to go through a metal detector and no one standing at the door to wand you.  Of course there are security guards but I've seen tighter security at a day care center.
• With some exceptions their offices are tiny. I'm talking room for a desk and two chairs.
• The legislators, and their staffs, were very responsive.  When I contacted them last week to try and schedule appointments I heard back from most in a matter of hours, which I found pretty impressive given the amount of work they're doing right now.

The other thing that made this week interesting was the hometown drama known as the downtown baseball stadium.  While I could probably write dozens of pages of thoughts on the whole situation, I'd rather just ask the leaders of Winston-Salem some questions:

• What the heck were you thinking when you broke the multi-million dollar news on Friday and told the public they had a whole weekend to share their thoughts and give you their feedback before a probable vote at a special city council meeting on Monday night? 
• Were you trying to make it look like you were railroading the thing? 
• Were you trying to make people even more suspicious than they already were? 
• In short, were you trying to be obtuse?

Seriously, the city's leadership couldn't have tried to make this deal look any worse.  I'm really not sure what the motivation could have been to handle it this way, but whatever it was I can't imagine that it balances out the negative taste that this left in the public's mouth.  Put it this way: Mayor Joines and the city council spent a whole lot of their political capital to get this done and while they were going to take a hit no matter how they handled this, I think they at least doubled the damage by handling it in the manner that they did.  It will be interesting to see what happens with the next economic development deal that comes along.

Foot, Meet Mouth

Whoever said, "Bad press is better than no press", was obviously never a CongressCritter who completely mischaracterized a murder while speaking from the House floor with the murder victim's mother in attendance.  Even in uber-conservative NC-5 (the district in which I reside, BTW) where it's normally safe for a politician to take any anti-gay/lesbian stance, Rep. Foxx clearly stepped over the line when she said what she said on the floor yesterday. She's paying for it in the press and she's also getting smacked around on Twitter.  I don't think this will hurt her in the next election because, first, no one will remember it next year, and second, this is a very conservative district and while most of her constituents may feel she made a mistake they won't think it's that big a mistake.  On the other hand this won't do her much good in building a leadership position for herself in the House.

How Sin Taxes Would Work Better in NC

Some geographers at Kansas State University had a little fun and mapped the Seven Deadly Sins throughout the US.  It appears that we North Carolinians are an envious, lustful, proud, wrathful and gluttonous bunch.  Especially gluttonous.  Maybe instead of increasing taxes on alcohol and tobacco we should look at upping the taxes on guns and BBQ.

Hat tip to Ed Cone for the pointer.

How's That Recession Treating You?

Truliant Federal Credit Union surveyed its members to see how the recession has affected their behavior and over 3,000 shared their thoughts. Some of the results are highlighted in this press release.  Anyone who's seen all the restaurants shuttered recently won't be surprised by this one:

Q: If you have cut back on spending, what areas are most affected? 

73% - Dining Out 
70% - Entertainment 
64% - Travel, vacations 
59% - Clothing 
55% - Home Electronics 
45% - Auto (buying/leasing a new vehicle, repairs) 
35% - Home Appliances 
22% - Cell Phones and/or calling plans 
5% - Other 

From the “other” category, popular items that were mentioned include groceries, medications, food and club memberships. Another trend that the “other” category highlighted is that more of Truliant’s member-owners are starting to purchase generic products to help them save money.

Walking the Tightrope With No Safety Net

Ed Cone points to an article on the front page of the Washington Post that highlights the dire straits that many (25%) of North Carolinians are in with health care.  Literally 1/4 of all adult North Carolinians, or 1.8 million people, are living without health insurance and an additional 9% are underinsured. 

On a related note one of the doctor's from Lewisville Family Physicians wrote a Letter to the Editor at the Winston-Salem Journal pointing out that the terms "health insurance", "health-care coverage" and "health care" are incorrectly used interchangeably.  He says that instead of looking for health care reform we should be looking for health insurance reform.  From his letter:

Health insurance has become exorbitantly expensive. Insurance companies continue to raise premiums while at the same time reducing benefits. They can do this with impunity because they know that policy holders have no other choice but to pay what they demand, or choose to go without coverage. They also refuse to increase payments for services, continuing to pocket the growing difference. More and more people are taking the gamble and choosing to go without coverage.

I can tell you from our family's perspective it's hard to argue with him.  When we're spending over $8,000 a year on premiums alone, and we're doing pretty well compared to other families we've talked to, then you know there's something out of whack with the system.  It's also easy to understand how so many people end up having to live without insurance in the first place.  

Our Friends to the East Get Their Own American Viticulture Area

Most of us in the Winston-Salem area know about the burgeoning wine business in the Yadkin Valley.  Heck, Westbend Vineyards, one of the oldest wineries in the state is just down the road from me in Lewisville.  Well there's now a new official American Viticulture Area to our east in the Haw River Valley.  Here's a press release about the announcement and here's a link to the Haw River Wine Trail brochure.  Looks like there's an event called Art on the Haw River on May 2-3 that could be interesting too.

Apparently America's Top Model Search NOT Coming to W-S Journal Newsroom

In what appears to be an ill-fated attempt to buck up the morale in the Winston-Salem Journal newsroom managing editor Ken Otterbourg had this to say (found in an Arizona Republic article about how reporters are depicted in movies):

"Reporters are always better-looking in movies than in real life," said Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor of theWinston-Salem Journal, in North Carolina. "There's a phrase I use to describe most people who work at newspapers - myself included, all genders - which is 'newsroom pretty,' which is a lower grade of pretty than real-world pretty." 

Oh snap! But let's be fair and share the Big O's other quote in the story:

"In real life," Otterbourg said, "the sort of revelatory scoops on which movies are made rarely happen. It's more of a series of steps and monk's work at a courthouse or the like. And most reporters - even the good investigative ones - tend to have better social skills than the lone wolves of the movies. . . . Being a journalist is about getting people to talk with you, and nobody is obligated to talk to us. You can't do it by being a jerk."

To sum it up: reporters are really friendly, yet homely folks who toil in the bowels of places like the courthouse.

In defense of the Big O I should also point out that in the movies the actors are better looking than whomever they're depicting, whether it be reporters or lawyers.  The most notable exception, of course, would be any film in which Dustin Hoffman was the actor.

A Stupid Criminal Story With a Unique North Carolina Flavor

The news story from Davidson County is one of those "stupid criminal" stories we get fairly regularly; a woman tried to pay her bail with counterfeit money.  Here's the part that gives it that distinct North Carolina flair: she was arrested at her home on Nascar Fan Alley.  

Layoffs = No Insurance or Crappy Insurance

News that should surprise no one: North Carolina has the fastest growing population of people without health insurance.  Since North Carolina is also a leader in lost jobs this isn't exactly shocking news.  The report referenced in the story contains an estimate of 1.75 million people in the state who don't have health insurance.  The US Census shows North Carolina's population in 2007 as 9,061,032 so that means that the percentage of people in North Carolina without health insurance is roughly 19%.  

As scary a number as 19% is, I'm wondering how many of the other 81% are under-insured?  I can tell you from first hand experience that it's very expensive to buy insurance that offers decent coverage and I suspect that there are plenty of people who have purchased what can only be termed "crappy" insurance in order to keep their premiums affordable.  Having purchased some crappy insurance myself in an effort to battle premiums that jumped 30% one year I can tell you what the results were:

• Our insurer basically disputed every claim.
• Our riders that were supposed to provide a certain number of office visits at no additional cost basically did nothing.  We still ended up paying out of pocket. 
• Our coverage was almost impossible to understand which means we started avoiding the doctor for fear that it would cost us $120 to find out one of us had a simple soar throat. 
• Luckily we didn't experience any major illnesses, but if we'd kept that coverage I think we might have ended up with undiagnosed illnesses because we tried to avoid the doctor.  

Basically we started to view our insurance as "armageddon coverage", only to be used in case of a catastrophe and I'm not entirely confident it would have covered us even in those circumstances.  My point is that if even 10% of the 81% of insured North Carolinians has similar coverage then we're probably looking at close to 700,000 people that could be living with easily treatable illnesses that could grow into major health crises because they're afraid to see the doctor and who might not then be covered adequately when they end up in the hospital.  Add that to the 1.75 million people without any insurance and you have a really frightening number of people at risk for financial devastation if they get sick.

North Carolina Ahead of the Curve

It might be hard to believe right now, but we here in North Carolina might be leading indicators for the US economy.  Just as we started feeling the brunt of the recession before most of the rest of the country we might also be the first to feel the 'bottom' and see a recovery.  This occurred to me when I read that foreclosures in February were down almost 50% compared to February of last year in North Carolina, but the rest of the country experienced a 30% increase in foreclosures.  Yeah, yeah this is just one indicator and it's surrounded by other negative stories like the sales of existing homes in Greensboro falling 38% in February, but since foreclosures were a key factor in the start of our economic collapse it would seem that a decline in foreclosures would be a good sign that the bottom might be near.

Call be a pie-eyed optimist, but I'll take good news anywhere I can get it.