Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, in an interview Monday morning with Fox News, stressed that hurricane-prone Florida is ready for the storm and played down any worries.

“We train for this every day all year long,” he said. “And we’re prepared for it.”

Republican officials, of course, will have to fight that much harder to make their now three-day event a galvanizing affair that sparks a new energy around their presidential nominee — without appearing insensitive toward what could be a damaging lashing from Isaac along the Gulf Coast.

“This is a huge opportunity to capture the attention of the American public and keep them focused for several nights,” said Juleanna Glover, a Republican strategist and co-founder of the Washington-based Ashcroft Group.

Weather aside, Glover suggested the challenge for the Romney team will be to refrain from trying to re-invent the candidate or going over the top, instead generating enthusiasm through trying to reinforce that Romney is a leader, a churchgoer and a family man.

Their biggest challenge may well be in convincing Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and private-equity manager who through the entire election cycle has argued his mission is to fix the economy, not win a popularity contest.

Romney’s favorability rating is now at 46 percent, according to an averaging of polls by the Real Clear Politics website. It was as low as 21 percent according to a CBS-New York Times poll in January and as high as 50 percent according to a CNN-Opinion Research poll this month.

While Glover suggests a plan that focuses on reinforcing Romney’s image, bolstered by wife Ann’s scheduled speech and the presence of their children, others have suggested the presumptive GOP nominee go further.

“He needs to sell himself, (Romney) the man, his vision for the country,” Jonathan Collegio, spokesman for the Super PAC Crossroads GPS, told Fox News on Saturday.

Party luminaries are still on tap to deliver major addresses from Tuesday to Thursday, despite the cancellation of the first day.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is expected to deliver his keynote address Tuesday night — which could give the convention the energy it needs to compete for attention with the storm.

From there, Paul Ryan will speak as the Republican vice presidential nominee, followed by Romney’s nomination acceptance speech late Thursday.

A statistical analysis of 36 years of monthly, inflation-adjusted gasoline prices and U.S. domestic oil production by The Associated Press shows no statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.

If more domestic oil drilling worked as politicians say, you’d now be paying about $2 a gallon for gasoline. Instead, you’re paying the highest prices ever for March.

Political rhetoric about the blame over gas prices and the power to change them — whether Republican claims now or Democrats’ charges four years ago — is not supported by cold, hard figures. And that’s especially true about oil drilling in the U.S. More oil production in the United States does not mean consistently lower prices at the pump.

Sometimes prices increase as American drilling ramps up. That’s what has happened in the past three years. Since February 2009, U.S. oil production has increased 15 percent when seasonally adjusted. Prices in those three years went from $2.07 per gallon to $3.58. It was a case of drilling more and paying much more.

U.S. oil production is back to the same level it was in March 2003, when gas cost $2.10 per gallon when adjusted for inflation. But that’s not what prices are now.

That’s because oil is a global commodity and U.S. production has only a tiny influence on supply. Factors far beyond the control of a nation or a president dictate the price of gasoline.

When you put the inflation-adjusted price of gas on the same chart as U.S. oil production since 1976, the numbers sometimes go in the same direction, sometimes in opposite directions. If drilling for more oil meant lower prices, the lines on the chart would consistently go in opposite directions. A basic statistical measure of correlation found no link between the two, and outside statistical experts confirmed those calculations.

“Drill, baby, drill has nothing to do with it,” said Judith Dwarkin, chief energy economist at ITG investment research. Two other energy economists said the same thing and experts in the field have been making that observation for decades.

The statistics directly contradict the title of GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s 2008 book “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less,” as well as the campaign-trail claims from the GOP presidential candidates.

Earlier this month, GOP front-runner Mitt Romney said of his solution to higher gas prices: “I can cut through the baloney … and just tell him, ‘Mr. President, open up drilling in the Gulf, open up drilling in ANWR (the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge). Open up drilling in continental shelf, drill in North Dakota, drill in Oklahoma and Texas.’”

On Wednesday, with President Barack Obama traveling to oil and gas production fields on federal lands, Crossroads GPS, a nonprofit arm of a super PAC supporting GOP candidates, released a new ad to air in the same states that Obama was visiting. It accused Obama of restricting oil development in America and concludes “bad energy policies mean energy prices we can’t afford.”

The late 1980s and 1990s show exactly how domestic drilling is not related to gas prices.

Seasonally adjusted U.S. oil production dropped steadily from February 1986 until three years ago. But starting in March 1986, inflation-adjusted gas prices fell below the $2-a-gallon mark and stayed there for most of the rest of the 1980s and 1990s. Production between 1986 and 1999 dropped by nearly one-third. If the drill-now theory were correct, prices should have soared. Instead they went down by nearly a dollar.

The AP analysis used Energy Department figures for regular unleaded gas prices adjusted for inflation to 2012 dollars, oil production and oil demand. The figures go back to January 1976, the earliest the Energy Department keeps figures on unleaded gas prices. Phil Hanser, an economist and statistician at the energy consulting firm The Brattle Group; University of South Carolina statistics professor John Grego; New York University statistics professor Edward Melnick and David Peterson, a retired Duke University statistics professor, looked at the analysis, ran their own calculations, including several complicated formulas, and came to the same conclusion.

When U.S. production goes up, the price of gas “is certainly not going down,” Melnick said. “The data does not suggest that whatsoever.”

The calculations “help make the point that U.S. production and demand have little to do with the price of gasoline in the U.S., and lend support to the notion that there is not a great deal we in the U.S., acting alone, can do to affect the price of gasoline,” Peterson wrote in an email. He pointed out that Energy Department figures show that gas prices in the U.S. seem to rise and fall similarly to gas prices in Europe, showing that it has little to do with American drilling.

And that’s the key. It’s a world market, economists say.

Unlike natural gas or electricity, the United States alone does not have the power to change the supply-and-demand equation in the world oil market, said Christopher Knittel, a professor of energy economics at MIT. American oil production is about 11 percent of the world’s output, so even if the U.S. were to increase its oil production by 50 percent — that is more than drilling in the Arctic, increased public-lands and offshore drilling, and the Canadian pipeline would provide — it would at most cut gas prices by 10 percent.

“There are not many markets where the United States can’t impose its will on market outcomes,” Knittel said. “This is one we can’t, and it’s hard for the average American to understand that and it’s easy for politicians to feed off that.”

If drilling activity rises around the globe for a sustained period of time, gasoline prices can fall as that new supply eventually finds its way to market, but the U.S. can’t do it alone, oil analysts say.

Politicians — especially those in the party that’s not occupying the White House — have long harped on high gas prices when expedient. Then-Sen. Barack Obama said in 2008, when he was running for president, that “here in Ohio, you’re paying nearly $3.70 a gallon for gas, 2-1/2 times what it cost when George Bush took office.”

But Obama, who has seen gas prices go up 73 percent since he took office, was singing a different tune last week in his weekly radio address: “The truth is: The price of gas depends on a lot of factors that are often beyond our control. Unrest in the Middle East can tighten global oil supply. Growing nations like China or India adding cars to the road increases demand. But one thing we should control is fraud and manipulation that can cause prices to spike even further.”

The political party of the president doesn’t seem to matter to the price at the pump either. Since 1976, the average monthly gas price, adjusted for inflation, during Democratic presidencies has been $2.25; under Republicans it’s been $2.34. Obama had the steepest monthly average at $3.05 and Bill Clinton the cheapest at $1.68.

When Bush and running mate Dick Cheney campaigned in 2000, they argued that as oil executives they could get oil prices down, with Bush saying, “I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply.”

Yet it was during the last few months of Bush’s term in 2008 that gas prices hit their highest: $4.27 when adjusted for inflation.

———

Associated Press writers Dina Cappiello and Matthew Daly in Washington and Jonathan Fahey in New York contributed to this report. Via: ABC News

In Georgia, more than 650 government employees accepted gifts from vendors doing business with the state in 2007 and 2008, clearly violating state ethics law. The last time the state issued a penalty on a vendor was 1999.

A North Carolina legislator sponsored and voted on a bill to loosen regulations on billboard construction, even though he co-owned five billboards in the state. When the ethics commission reviewed the case, it found no conflict; after all, the panel reasoned, the legislation would benefit all billboard owners in the state — not just the lawmaker who pushed for the bill.

Tennessee established its ethics commission six years ago, but has yet to issue a single ethics penalty. It’s almost impossible to know whether the oversight is effectively working, because complaints are not made available to the public.

A West Virginia governor borrowed a car from his local dealership to take it for a “test drive.” He kept the car for four years, during which the dealership won millions in state contracts.

When representatives of a biotech company took Montana legislators out to dinner, they neither registered as lobbyists nor reported the fact that they picked up the bill. They didn’t have to — the law only requires registration upon spending $2,400 during a legislative session. And in Maine, one state senator did not disclose $98 million in state contracts that went to an organization for which he served as executive director. The lack of disclosure was not an oversight; due to a loophole in state law, he was under no obligation to do so.

The stories go on and on. Open records laws with hundreds of exemptions. Crucial budgeting decisions made behind closed doors by a handful of power brokers. “Citizen” lawmakers voting on bills that would benefit them directly. Scores of legislators turning into lobbyists seemingly overnight. Disclosure laws without much disclosure. Ethics panels that haven’t met in years.

State officials make lofty promises when it comes to ethics in government. They tout the transparency of legislative processes, accessibility of records, and the openness of public meetings. But these efforts often fall short of providing any real transparency or legitimate hope of rooting out corruption.

That’s the depressing bottom line that emerges from the State Integrity Investigation, a first-of-its-kind, data-driven assessment of transparency, accountability and anti-corruption mechanisms in all 50 states. Not a single state — not one — earned an A grade from the months-long probe. Only five states earned a B grade: New Jersey, Connecticut, Washington, California and Nebraska. Nineteen states got C’s and 18 received D’s. Eight states earned failing grades of 59 or below from the project, which is a collaboration of the Center for Public Integrity, Global Integrity and Public Radio International.

The F’s went to Michigan, North Dakota, South Carolina, Maine, Virginia, Wyoming, South Dakota and Georgia.

What’s behind the dismal grades? Across the board, state ethics, open records and disclosure laws lack one key feature: teeth.

“It’s a terrible problem,” said Tim Potts, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Democracy Rising PA, which works to inspire citizen trust in government. “A good law isn’t worth anything if it’s not enforced.”

Some of the results of the State Integrity Investigation seem more than a little counterintuitive. New Jersey emerges at the top of the pack, a seemingly stunning ranking for a state with a reputation for dirty politics. And there are other surprises: Illinois, hardly a beacon of clean governmental in recent years, comes in at a respectable number 10. Louisiana ranks 15th.

Many of the states at the bottom of the rankings, meanwhile, are sparsely-populated Western or Plains states like Idaho (40th), Wyoming (48th) and the Dakotas (North Dakota is number 43 and South Dakota comes in at 49). There, libertarianism roots, a small-town, neighborly approach to government and the honest belief that “everybody knows everybody” has overridden any perceived need for strong protections in law.

Peggy Kerns, director of the Center for Ethics in Government at the National Conference of State Legislatures, noted that ethics laws are shaped by the environment and culture of the state. “In smaller states, the culture is different,” she said. “It is harder to disobey the law and go against your own moral core if everyone knows you.”

And statehouses with a history of political corruption and scandal — like New Jersey, Illinois, and Louisiana — have been more likely in recent years to successfully implement reform.

“Legislators will react to a corruption scandal, and work to get political cover by enacting reform,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, vice president for state operations at the nonprofit advocacy group Common Cause.

That’s apparently the case in New Jersey, where a series of scandals helped bring about some of the strongest ethics laws in the country. According to the State Integrity Investigation, New Jersey’s strong points are clear: extensive financial disclosure requirements for the governor, a transparently-run pension fund, and an aggressive ethics enforcement agency. The state also boasts some of the nation’s toughest anti-pay-to-play laws for contractors.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, in an attempt to shed the state of its scandalous political history, enacted sweeping ethics reform legislation as one of his first acts in office back in 2008. Among the new laws: financial disclosure requirements for nearly every public official and caps on how much lobbyists can spend on meals and drinks.

States have taken the initiative on other fronts as well. Connecticut implemented a public financing system for elections. Alabama granted subpoena power to its state ethics commission. South Dakota unveiled an online database for campaign finance records. Florida bans all gifts from lobbyists to lawmakers. Citizens in Washington have easy online access to government records and data, including the final map on the state’s Redistricting Commission website (which also lists past meeting minutes, draft plans, and public commentary).

But advocates note that substantial reform efforts are more often the exception rather than the rule. And typically, even new laws often fall short of their goals. Hobert Flynn said she is often “disappointed by how far-reaching the reforms are, how the reforms are implemented, and how they are enforced.”
Measuring the states: The Integrity Index

There are many ways to gauge government integrity. By one recent measure, Chicago ranks as the most corrupt city in the nation. New York places first as the most corrupt state.

Those are the findings of a February report released by the University of Illinois’ Institute of Government and Public Affairs, based on public corruption conviction data from the Department of Justice. New York had a grand total of 2,522 federal public corruption convictions from 1976 to 2010, followed closely by California (2,345 convictions) and Illinois (1,828).

But some argue that using convictions as an indicator of which states are “most corrupt” is misleading. A hefty number of prosecutions may actually suggest the system is working — corrupt behavior is rooted out and perpetrators are punished. States with relatively low numbers of convictions are not necessarily more accountable, but perhaps less equipped to sniff out malfeasance and go after the bad guys. So the State Integrity Investigation takes a different approach by measuring the risks of corruption, as reflected in the strength or weakness of laws, policies, and procedures designed to assure transparency and accountability in state government.

Using a combination of on-the-ground investigative reporting and original data collection and analysis, the State Integrity Index researched 330 “Integrity Indicators” across 14 categories of state government: public access to information, political financing, executive accountability, legislative accountability, judicial accountability, state budget processes, civil service management, procurement, internal auditing, lobbying disclosure, pension fund management, ethics enforcement, insurance commissions, and redistricting.

Indicators assess what laws, if any, are on the books (“in law” indicator) and whether the laws are effective in practice (“in practice” indicators). In many states, the disconnect between scores on a state’s law and scores in practice suggest a serious “enforcement gap.”

In other words, the laws are there, just not always followed.
‘Hiding in plain sight’

There have been nods toward transparency almost everywhere. In this era of online, immediately accessible information, some government records are easier to retrieve than ever. Bill language is posted on websites. Top officials disclose personal financial interests. State candidates reveal donors. States devote entire websites to budget expenditures, allowing taxpayers to track government spending

There remain a few holdouts. Idaho, Vermont, and Michigan still have no financial disclosure requirements for lawmakers and executive branch officials. Maryland is the only state in the country that requires an in-person visit to the state capitol to request and view financial disclosure information.

Ed Bender, executive director of the National Institute on Money in State Politics, said that governments may seem transparent by making information available, but it is not always presented in a useable or digestible format. He said trying to compare data within a state — say, linking campaign donations to state contracts — can be nearly impossible, and is a huge barrier to transparency.

“It’s disingenuous, hiding in plain sight,” Bender said. “Governments say, ‘here it is,’ but they don’t tell the story.”

Maryland unveiled a series of data-centric government performance measurement and spending websites — like StateStat to track spending of stimulus funds — which Governor Martin O’Malley hailed as the “foundation for restoring accountability and for driving our progress.” But the state’s poor ranking on public access to information — it came in 46th — would suggest otherwise.

“They’re selective on what they share, how they share it, and who they share it with,” said Greg Smith of the nonprofit group Community Research, who said poring through the state’s spending databases can be a headache.

“You can only look at it particle by particle, atom by atom,” he said. When he requests entire databases from state agencies, they refuse, citing a lack of technological expertise to properly export the data.

In every state, citizens have the basic right to access government records. But nearly every law is riddled with holes. Vermont’s Public Records Act boasts more than 260 exemptions, one of which almost always seems to apply to a request for information. Virginia’s law excludes the State Corporation Commission, a regulatory agency that oversees all businesses, utilities, financial institutions, and railroads in the state. Louisiana includes an exemption for records that are part of the “deliberative process” in the governor’s office, which could mean anything from budget negotiations to communications between the governor and his staff. Wyoming lawmakers excluded themselves from the state’s open records policy to prevent citizens from having access to the early bill-writing process. In effect, draft legislation and all related documents are withheld from the public.

In Massachusetts, the barriers to access are especially daunting. Not only are the legislature, governor, and courts exempt from public records law, but legislative votes are not even recorded in committee.
Lax enforcement, zero oversight

Across the board, enforcement is weak. States rarely check the accuracy of campaign finance records or asset disclosures unless prompted by a complaint. Penalties are insignificant or never issued. Violators of the law suffer little more than a slap on the wrist.

Arizona legislators admitted to violating the state’s financial disclosure policy when they failed to report trips paid for by the Fiesta Bowl. Neither the Senate nor House Ethics committee followed with an investigation.

New York’s Board of Elections oversees campaign finance, but can only fine violators $500 for missing filing deadlines. At one point, Senator Pedro Espada owed the state about $13,000 in fines for misfiling records (while also sitting on about $60,000 in fines from the New York City Campaign Finance Board).

Earlier this year, a North Carolina judge ruled that the Secretary of State could not impose a $30,000 fine on a lobbyist who failed to register. The judge cited ambiguous language in the law and decided the Secretary did not have the proper authority.

Forty-one states have an agency tasked with overseeing ethics laws in the state. But many of these agencies are crippled by shortages: inadequate funding, tiny staffs, and limited powers. Delaware’s two-person Public Integrity Commission can hardly keep up with enforcing rules for about 48,000 government employees. In South Carolina, the State Ethics Commission’s budget has been slashed six times in the past three years. When legislators in Alaska leave required information off their financial disclosure forms, the Alaska Public Offices Commission simply does not have the capacity to track down the missing details.

“There’s an inability to enforce the laws on the books,” said Hobert Flynn of Common Cause. “It creates a real crisis and the illusion of strong laws in place.”

In Pennsylvania, said Potts of Democracy Rising PA, the amount of money allocated for enforcement of ethics rules is considered “budget dust.” Governor Tom Corbett cut funding to the state’s ethics commission by five percent in his most recent budget plan, even though the state sits on a surplus that Potts said could “fund all public integrity enforcement for a decade.”

And in states where the financial outlook is still grim, watchdog agencies are often among the first to get cut, consolidated or eliminated entirely. In Connecticut, nine independent agencies were moved under one umbrella organization, the Office of Governmental Accountability. Advocates claim the move saves money and improves efficiency, but critics point to a massive reduction in staff and loss of enforcement power — the agency will likely audit only 10 lobbyists this year, compared with 40 lobbyists the year before.

While there are many examples that highlight a lack of resources, others assert that political factors may also be at play.

Georgia’s legislature slashed the ethics commission’s budget, eliminating all investigative positions and eventually forcing out its two top staffers. The former executive director claimed the funding cuts came with ulterior motives; at the time, the agency was pursuing an investigation against Governor Nathan Deal for improper use of campaign funds and exceeding campaign finance limits. Deal said the cuts were in line with what happened to other agencies. The state’s inspector general followed with an investigation, but found no evidence to support the claim of the commission’s former executive director.

Political loyalties can be a potential problem, especially since many ethics agencies are staffed by gubernatorial or legislative appointments.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo revamped the state’s ethics agency as part of a comprehensive overhaul of state ethics laws. But he stocked the newly-formed Joint Commission on Public Ethics with political allies, including a fundraiser for his reelection campaign and a former staffer. Most recently, he tapped Inspector General Ellen Biben to be the commission’s executive director. Biben, though widely respected in government circles, also served as Cuomo’s deputy in the attorney general’s office, prompting some New Yorkers to question her independence from the administration.

Members of the Alaska Personnel Board are appointed by the same entity they are charged with overseeing — the governor’s office. The Texas Ethics Commission is comprised of appointees by the governor and legislature, which not only presents an inherent conflict but often leads to gridlock. Commissioners are typically split along party lines, but in order to pursue an investigation, at least six of the eight commissioners must agree.
Conflict? What conflict?

Without effective oversight by an independent agency, states frequently rely on a system of self-reporting. The onus falls on public officials to decide for themselves whether their decision-making ability has been compromised. In some cases, the language of the law allows for exceptions; Montana requires legislators to disclose a conflict only if they stand to gain a “direct and personal impact” from the relationship. Often consequences are modest or nonexistent. In Illinois, a legislator should avoid a “substantial threat to his independence of judgment” — but if that line is crossed, there is no penalty.

Kerns of NCSL said it is difficult to implement strong conflict of interest laws, especially for citizen legislatures in which lawmakers almost always hold outside jobs. She doesn’t see anything inherently wrong with that — their background and expertise can be helpful for making policy decisions — unless the lawmaker stands to gain financially from the decision.

“That defies logic,” she said. “People should have better sense.”

Michigan’s conflict of interest laws are largely undefined, so recusal is rare. In 2011, Senate Democrats challenged the notion that lawmakers with a financial interest in limited liability corporations could vote on a tax reform plan. The lieutenant governor ruled that it was up to the lawmakers to decide for themselves if they had a conflict, and no one abstained.

A Hawaii representative, also working as a lobbyist for the American Chemistry Council, was allowed to vote on a bill that would implement a 10-cent fee for plastic bags. The House Speaker defended the decision: “Just because he represents that company does not mean he cannot vote up or down on the measure.”

For state judges, it’s a similar situation. Nearly all states have rules, codes, or regulations outlining recusal requirements, but again they leave it up to the judges to decide their own impartiality.

“There’s a longstanding principal that no judge should be the judge in his or her own case,” said Charlie Hall, director of communications for Justice at Stake, a national organization that promotes a fair and impartial court system. “There’s a strong sense by many that if one party asks a judge to step aside, there’s something not satisfying by the judge saying, ‘I think I can be impartial. I can make the decision.’ ”

Nine states don’t require judges to disclose outside assets, making it almost impossible to determine if a judge has a conflict at all. And in states where judges run for election, the potential for conflicts to arise is even greater.

“Special interests have discovered judicial elections and the money is pouring in,” Hall said.

Spending on judicial elections more than doubled in the past 20 years. From 2000 to 2009, special interests funneled about $206 million into court elections, up from about $83 million in the previous decade.

Hall said many states are moving forward, albeit slowly, to develop more transparent processes for judicial recusal. But in at least one state — Wisconsin — the courts took what some believe to be a huge step backwards. In 2010, the state Supreme Court ruled that judges need not recuse themselves from cases involving their own campaign donors.
The devil’s in the details: Where the loopholes are

Even the strictest of rules has unforeseen consequences. And when it comes to money, influence, and power in state government, interest groups and big-money donors will find ways around just about any limit.

In South Carolina, corporations and individuals can donate only $1,000 to local House and Senate races or $3,500 to statewide seats. But multi-millionaire Howard Rich skirted the limits by funneling contributions through separate LLCs. He also made the contributions during a “blackout period” — two weeks right before the election when candidates can hold off making donations public until after the election.

Illinois, which passed campaign finance limits for the first time in 2009, places no restrictions on donations by a corporation’s affiliates. So although a corporation is restricted by a $10,000 limit on donations to individual candidates, it can easily multiply that amount through individually incorporated entities.

New York donors can also give freely to “housekeeping accounts,” ostensibly reserved for political party headquarters, staff, and events not affiliated with a particular candidate. Big-time donors, corporations, and trade organizations have donated $11 million to these accounts in the past two years.

Gift bans seek to prevent lobbyists from wining-and-dining legislators to influence policy. Some states, like Missouri, place no restrictions on dollar amounts of gifts, as long as all gifts are disclosed. Other states have much more stringent rules, like in Florida, where lobbyists are banned from buying lawmakers even a cup of coffee.

But even when the laws have been retooled and seem airtight, lobbyists find ways around them. In Oregon, where the gift laws were reformed in 2007 and again in 2009, the language of the law has become so specific in noting exemptions that it’s easy to skirt: entertainment excursions can technically be billed as “fact-finding” missions, for example, which is acceptable under the law. In 2006

North Carolina passed a ban on lobbyists buying meals for individual legislators. So instead, lobbyists bankroll receptions for groups of lawmakers. Florida has a strict ban on lobbyist gift giving, but the state’s definition of lobbyist allows for gaps — not everyone who lobbies is considered a lobbyist under the law — and much of the spending can go unreported.

The lobbyist-lawmaker relationship is a close one in many states, where part-time legislators who meet for short sessions often rely on outside expertise to guide their policy decisions. Those relationships become even stronger when ex-legislators move almost immediately into the private sector, exerting influence over their former colleagues. “Cooling off” periods — the length of time between when a legislator leaves office and when he can register as a lobbyist — aim to diffuse those relationships.

But in some states, there’s no such waiting time. In Idaho, a former legislator, after losing her reelection campaign, was quickly hired as the lobbyist for a property developer — a move not only accepted, but recommended by the House Speaker.

The same holds true in Nebraska, where at least 16 former lawmakers are now registered lobbyists. There, as in other states, term limits push lawmakers out into the private sector, so it is not unusual for former legislators to represent special interests like Big Tobacco and health insurance companies.
Closed to the public

California faced a $23 billion budget shortfall in 2011. The state opens up the budgeting process to the public — but only to a point. Citizens can participate in forums and meetings leading up to final budget negotiations, when the “Big Five” (the governor and four legislative leaders) take the discussion behind closed doors to finalize the bill.

Such is a common practice in many states, where open meetings and public testimony occur, but usually for the sake of appearance only. The real decisions are made when no one is looking.

According to the Index, California ranks near the bottom on budget transparency, losing points for citizen access to budget expenditures and public input at hearings.

New York, which faced a shortfall of $8.5 billion, falls a few places below California. Again, the public can view budget documents and comment at hearings on the front end, but the final bill is quickly pushed through, giving citizens little opportunity to react. The final budget often includes a few surprising compromises that were made behind closed doors.

Redistricting, a notoriously opaque and politically-tainted process in many states, is actually where California stood out. It received top marks for redistricting transparency, due largely to its new Citizens Redistricting Commission that gave power to a randomly-selected group of Californians instead of the legislature.

In other states, though, the redistricting process largely remains a mystery to constituents. Although the redrawing of district lines directly impacts voters and communities, the public is usually left out of the process. In a worst case scenario, maps are redrawn by the very legislators who are seeking reelection, allowing them to ensure the new district lines fall in their favor.

Many states are finding ways to include, or at least educate, the public on this process by holding meetings, making census data available online, or encouraging citizens to submit their own maps. But even if the state goes through those motions, it does not guarantee the public commentary will be taken into account in the final map.

Other states don’t even try. During the 2011 redistricting session in Wisconsin, Republican legislators unveiled map proposals, held one public hearing, and passed their plan in two weeks. In Oklahoma, meetings were held within days of census data being released, giving the public no real chance to provide strong input.

“The government belongs to the people,” said Common Cause’s Hobert Flynn. “They should have full access to the process and how decisions are made.”

It’s a noble goal, to be sure. But as the State Integrity Investigation reveals, it is one that’s rarely met.

Via: iWatch news

Countries with more totalitarian and centralized governments tend to have a tighter grip on news sources. Saudi Arabia is notorious for decent-quality news with a strong nationalistic bias.

The US is certainly not exempt. If you have a day available and feel like a project, head to your local library and dig up newspaper articles about the Iraq War from its start until now. Pick 4 or 5 different newspapers which vary fro liberal, moderate and conservative. Note the language used; freedom, liberation, soldiers (for the US) and insurgents or terrorists (for the Iraqis). Even the liberal papers will be biased.

The best way to circumvent this bias is to get your news from multiple news agencies based in many different countries and world regions.

Some of Santorum’s remarks came in a speech he presented in Michigan on February 25 at a meeting of Americans for Prosperity, a group the Washington Post fairly characterizes as part of the Tea Party movement. Santorum wasn’t the only speaker at the event. Mitt Romney, Michelle Malkin, and Andrew Breitbart also addressed a crowd of about 1,200. But Santorum’s remarks stole the show. The minute and a half video of the point where he characterizes President Obama as a “snob” is worth watching, but here’s the literal transcription:

…get value in the marketplace for their skills.

And I know what it means to have those manufacturing jobs at those entry levels that get you in there and gives you the opportunity to accumulate more skills over time and rise so that you can provide a better standard of living for your family. And that those opportunities for working men and women… Not all folks are gifted in the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands; some people have incredible gifts and use them–and want to work out there making things.

President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college.

What a snob. (Laughter, applause)

There are good decent men and women who go out and work hard every day. And put their schools to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor that is trying to indoctrinate them.

Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college.

He wants to remake you in his image.

I want to create jobs so that people can remake their children into their image, not his.

This wasn’t a one-off excursion on the topic of higher education for Santorum. He has visited the subject fairly often, perhaps most famously at a speech at a Baptist church in Naples, Fla., on January 25, when, as CBS News reported it, he said:

It’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go to college. The indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America. And it is indoctrination. If it was the other way around, the ACLU would be out there making sure that there wasn’t one penny of government dollars going to colleges and universities, right?

If they taught Judeo-Christian principles in those colleges and universities, they would be stripped of every dollar. If they teach radical secular ideology, they get all the government support that they can possibly give them. Because you know 62 percent of children who enter college with a faith conviction leave without it.

And he urged his audience not to give money to college and universities that are “undermining the very principles of our country every single day by indoctrinating kids with left-wing ideology.”

Rosenberg’s Contumely

He has made more remarks in this vein and will continue to press his case. Scott Jaschik at Inside Higher Ed earlier this week cataloged some of Santorum’s more memorable lines in “Santorum’s Attacks on Higher Ed.” Jaschik also drew further attention to the already widely noted statement, “What to Do About Rick Santorum?” by the president of Macalester College, Brian Rosenberg, published in the Huffington Post. Rosenberg set aside his own principle that college presidents shouldn’t engage in partisan politics to declare,

So with all due respect to my responsibilities as a fundraiser and as a guardian of open discourse on my campus, I am prepared to make the case that stating publicly that I am appalled by the views of Rick Santorum is not only my right but my responsibility.

I am appalled by the views of Rick Santorum.

Rosenberg cited two of Santorum’s views in particular as breaking this particular social compact:

It is not much of a stretch, I would submit, to see the claims that (1) wanting to see more students attend college is bad for our country and (2) colleges are indoctrination mills, as ones with which a college president should publicly disagree, and that a presidential candidate who makes such claims is at least as much a threat to our collective mission as any law or court ruling.

Rosenberg brushes aside the notion that his college or any like it could be an “indoctrination mill.” The very idea! But indeed Macalester College comes as close as any contemporary liberal arts college to giving substance to such a label. I have written elsewhere (“‘Collective Certainty’ at Work“) about President Rosenberg’s mixing of calls to civility with sneers at the ignorant Tea Party masses which he says the folks at Macalester “are constantly striving to rise above.” And I took note (“Macalester Preps for World Domination“) of the college’s vigorous embrace of that distillation of contemporary illiberal liberalism, “global citizenship.” Macalester has an institute devoted to its promotion. This matches about as closely as anything could to Santorum’s idea of indoctrination.

There is much more in this vein. I happen to be in touch with the head of a politically moderate group of Macalester alumni who make a point of their centrism by calling their organization the “MacMods.” They find the college’s current curriculum to be ideological and one-sided. I am also friends with an active emeritus professor at the college who sends me little updates on the campus follies. “Indoctrination” is a pretty strong word for the groupthink that characterizes the college, and probably not the word I would choose. But it is close enough.

The Book of Nature

Santorum has inflamed yet other sensibilities by characterizing President Obama’s worldview as rooted in a “phony theology” promoted by “radical environmentalists.” This comes from a speech the candidate gave in Columbus, Ohio, on February 18, here summarized by the Huffington Post. His jab at churches that blend trendy environmentalism with Christianity under the rubric of “stewardship” provoked some strong responses, including an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times by the paper’s former religion writer, Larry Stammer, who in “The Greening of Faith,” said Santorum is “as wrong on his theology as he is on the science.”

Santorum’s criticisms of colleges and universities and his dismissal of radical environmentalism are, let’s say, not unconnected. Two of the tent posts of the liberal orthodoxy in higher education are that college education is, in some form or another, good for everybody, and that people today face an existential threat from climate change which can best be met (or perhaps can only be met) by drastic changes in our carbon-based economy.

Some 674 colleges have signed on to the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment which takes as given the so-called “scientific consensus that global warming is real and is largely being caused by humans.” And proceeds from there to a pledge by the 674 institutions (representing a third of American college students) to the “development of a comprehensive plan to achieve climate neutrality as soon as possible.”

This is, to be sure, not a “phony theology” or a theology at all. It is mere scientism. But you don’t have to look very far on campus to find environmentalists who indeed take the next step into a woozy sort of Earth worship. My favorite example from a few years ago is the Emory University anthropologist, Peggy Barlett, who in an article in the journal Current Anthropology called for a flat-out repudiation of the ideals of disinterested intellectual inquiry and their replacement by a “re-enchanted” nature that would lead to “wonder, delight, awe, and meaning linked to both personal and political spheres of action.”

But when Larry Stammer in the LA Times objects to the phrase “phony theology,” he has a point. Stammer notes that there are

many environmentalists who see their activism as deeply rooted in scripture and faith traditions.

He cites contemporary examples, but he could just as well have gone back to John Calvin, who argued that humanity has direct knowledge of God because it is “sown in their minds out of the wonderful workmanship of nature.” Calvin made the “book of nature” central to his theology. It was there that ordinary people could see “God’s workmanship in his creation.”

Calvinist theology is not an accidental antecedent to contemporary environmentalism. Various observers have noted that the movement has deep roots in this branch of Protestantism. Many of the movement’s founding figures, such as John Muir and Dave Foreman (the founder of Earth First!), were raised in the Calvinist tradition, and though they became de-churched and skeptical of theology itself, brought a great deal of the logic and ethos of Calvinism into their new pursuit. Robert Nelson hit upon the perfect phrase for this when he described this strand of modern environmentalism as “Calvinism Minus God.”

Nelson’s book, The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion vs. Environmental Religion (2010) offers a rich historical account of Calvinist contributions to environmentalism. But Nelson is hardly alone in observing that contemporary environmentalism is a redemptive creed, with its own versions of sin, repentance, atonement, damnation, and apocalypse–especially apocalypse. The movement, of course, has a side that sticks to the claim that it is science, not theology. But the theological side is never far away. When Foreman was organizing Earth First! in 1980 he laid out a “Statement of Principles” that concludes, “Earth is Goddess and the proper object of human worship.”

That’s not a “phony theology.” It is theology plain and simple. And as it happens, Goddess Earth has plenty of votaries on the contemporary campus.

Cocoons

I am not enchanted with Santorum’s tone in these matters, but his points warrant more serious attention than academics are likely to give them. His statements are not just howls of anti-intellectualism or attempts to play to Tea Party resentments. They are part of a cogent view that accurately registers aspects of the dominant campus culture that academics themselves are disinclined to acknowledge, let alone discuss.

Americans are indeed way oversold on the value and importance of higher education. As a result, millions of students who possess no real aptitude for disciplined intellectual inquiry or abstract thought; who are bored with books, art, and music; and to whom science is an impenetrable mystery, troop off to college to acquire nothing much more than excess spare time and a lot of student-loan debt. But if Americans are oversold on higher education, they are also getting suspicious. A form of cultural defection is taking shape. It is evident in the disproportionate number of males who opt out of traditional college programs to go directly into the workforce, and it is evident in the rapidly growing online sector of higher education, where students can bypass most of the the ideologically bedizened parts of the curriculum to focus on skills-oriented transactional courses.

Santorum worries about the “62 percent” of college students who lose their faith. True to form, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni replies in “It’s a College, Not a Cloister,” that a losable faith wasn’t worth having in the first place:

What good are ideas formed and fortified in a protective cocoon, without exposure to other ways of thinking?

A nice question. If the idea is, say, global warming, the answer from at least 674 colleges and universities is a ringing affirmation of the wholesomeness of intellectual cocoons. The collective voice of American higher education favors no exposure to other ideas at all.

Some faiths are, as Santorum suggests, protected.

But if the idea is faith in traditional forms of Christianity or Judaism, there is a felt urgency on the part of many faculty members to rip that cocoon to shreds. There are lots of reasons for this hostility to traditional religion and the attempt to demonize it as the enemy of critical thought. But fairly high on that list in the last decade has been the unwillingness of traditional Judaism and Christianity to accommodate the new liberal consensus on homosexuality.

In his Times article, Bruni enunciates a view of higher education that is perfectly familiar these days. The job of college is to undo the “indoctrination that has sometimes occurred around the kitchen table.” Colleges are supposed to rescue young men and women from the views, assumptions, and values that they grew up with. Education is liberation, not so much from the trammels of their ignorance of higher things, as from their first eighteen years of immersion in the values of their families and communities.

American higher education has, by and large, adopted an adversarial stance to American culture. Its larger project is to redefine that culture in its own image by installing a new, supposedly more sophisticated one in its stead.

A Cogent Critique

The sophistication of this alternative is often spurious. Students aren’t seduced away from their families’ faith traditions or their positive attitudes towards American life in general by reading Aristotle or Bertrand Russell, or by a profound new ability to peel back the layers of theological arguments. It is way easier than that. Students are intellectually insecure. They don’t want to look dumb and they crave the approval of their peers and their teachers. Once students catch on that those rewards fall like ripe fruit at the feet of those who invoke the holy trinity of race-class-gender in their humanities and social-science courses, their “transformation” into newly initiated members of the smart is well on its way.

The trellis of secular ideology is firmly in place. Of course, there are lots of other inducements. “Leadership” in areas such as the pursuit of “diversity” and “sustainability” reinforces the sea-change.

Santorum’s various remarks about higher education evoke these matters rather than explain them. His purpose after all is to connect with a reservoir of popular resentment against the politicization of higher education and it would be beside the point to develop his points as an extended analysis. Those points are, however, part of a cogent critique of American higher education.

I should add that, though I am offering a defense of Santorum’s statements on higher education, I am not endorsing him or anyone else in the presidential race.

Via: The Chronicle

If Smith believe such disregard of investors is unique to Goldman, he doesn’t know the rest of Wall Street. In the late 1920s, National City Bank, which eventually would become Citigroup, repackaged bad Latin American debt as new securities which it then sold to investors no less gullible than Goldman Sachs’s. After the Great Crash, National City’s top executives helped themselves to the bank’s remaining assets as interest-free loans while their investors and depositors were left with pieces of paper worth a tiny fraction of what they paid for them.

The problem isn’t excessive greed. If you took the greed out of Wall Street all you’d have left is pavement. The problem is endemic abuse of power and trust. When bubbles are forming, all but the most sophisticated investors can be easily duped into thinking they’ll get rich by putting their money into the hands of brand-named investment bankers. Moreover, finance has become so complex that investors don’t even know when they’re being taken for a ride, and so can’t possibly hold a brand-name bank responsible for their losses – or for gains that are a fraction of what they might otherwise have been.

That’s why we have regulations. After millions of investors lost everything in 1929, the federal government stepped into the breach with the Securities Acts of 1933 and 1934 and the Banking Act of 1933, sponsored by Senator Carter Glass and Representative Henry Steagall. But starting in the 1970s and 1980s, Wall Street made sure these and the regulations issued under them were steadily watered down – which contributed to the junk-bond and insider trading scandals of the 1980s, the dot-com scams of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Wall-Street enablers of Enron and other corporate looters, and the wild excesses that led to the crash of 2008.

Wall Street’s shenanigans have convinced a large portion of America that the economic game is rigged. Yet capitalism depends on trust. Without trust, people avoid even sensible economic risks. They think that if the big guys cheat in big ways, they might as well begin cheating in small ways. And when they think the game is rigged, they’re easy prey for political demagogues with fast tongues and dumb ideas.

The Street has only itself to blame. It should have welcomed new financial regulation as a means of restoring public trust. Instead, it lobbied intensely against the new Dodd-Frank Act and refused to resurrect Glass-Steagall. The cost of such cynicism has leached deep into America, finding expression in Tea Partiers and Occupiers and millions of others who think the Street has sold us out.

Via: Robert Reich

Republicans cannot just attack President Barack Obama and his policies — they have to put forward bold new ideas of their own if they are to win the next election, House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan tells Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview.

Too many in the party want to take the easy way out, he added, but that is simply not a good enough strategy.

“There are people who would say Barack Obama is not popular, the economy’s not doing well, let’s just run against that,” said the Wisconsin Republican. “That, to me, is not good enough.

“First of all you are subjecting yourselves to circumstances outside of your control, like the economy. Second of all, we have great ideas. We believe in these principles that built this country, we should be proud of that and we should be proud to defend the morality of free enterprise, of freedom, of the American idea and tell the country specifically how we can reclaim those things.

“That to me is uplifting, that to me is inspiring, that to me is what most Americans want. We should exercise the courage of our convictions, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because it is the politically wise thing to do.

“But there are always those who counsel, ‘Play it safe, don’t take risks. If you put out ideas you are simply giving the other side a target for the other side to hit you with.’ Well, they’re going to hit us anyway, so we might as well be telling the people exactly what we hope to do if they give us the opportunity to lead the country.”

Ryan was speaking to Newsmax shortly before taking the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. He said there is plenty to attack in the Obama agenda – which he called a path of “debt, doubt and decline” – and Republicans have to highlight the dangers of a “European cradle-to-grave welfare state.”

“I would basically say that we want, and have an affinity for, the American idea in this country. Our rights come from God and nature, they’re natural; they come before government.”

He said society should be “one in which we enjoy our freedoms to make the most of our lives and we believe in growth and prosperity and upward mobility.

“That is the kind of vision that we have prided ourselves on. But the president’s direction and the vision and philosophy he applies to governing is contrary to that, it takes us away from that.

“So I believe we need to sharpen these contrasts and go to the country and let them choose what kind of country they want to have, what kind of people they want us to be for the 21st Century. Give them the choice of two futures and I would argue, in this center-right country that we are today, we’ll win that exchange.

“If we win that kind of election, an affirming election, then we have the right and the moral responsibility to actually save the country and fix these problems.”

Ryan was the author of last year’s Republican budget plan, which gained high praise because of the amount of money it would have cut from the national debt. He says a growing coalition of Republicans and moderate and conservative Democrats are coming round to his views.

“I’ve got 57 Democrats on my bill, so what I see in the making here is a bipartisan coalition to fix a lot of these problems,” said the seven-term congressman.

“I see bipartisan consensus on … Medicare reform,” he added. “I see bipartisan consensus emerging on tax reform, lower tax rates, broader-based, getting rid of loopholes.

But he said the problem is that Obama and his supporters are not part of the consensus. “What I hope we can achieve is a center-right coalition in this country, where Republicans, who are hopefully in a leadership position, invite conservative Democrats and moderate Democrats into this coalition to fix these issues.

“There is a consensus developing on fixing these things. The president is on the outside looking in, though.”

Ryan said his committee has already agreed to four out of 10 reforms for the budgeting process, one of which is to allow the president a line-item veto, whereby he can send “boondoggle spending projects” back to the House for a second look.

He described the current budget system “biased toward pork-barrel spending, toward higher taxes and overall more spending.”

“We want a budgetary process that’s more accountable, more responsible, more transparent and helps us get back to a more limited government, free enterprise system which is what we are trying to achieve, but I would argue the budget process is making it more difficult.”

He accepted that Obama’s approval ratings have started to inch up as the economy has shown slight stirrings, but that Congress’ remains at rock bottom, but said there are reasons for that.

“Number One, the president bashes Congress a lot and he’s got the bully pulpit. Number two, people don’t really distinguish between the House and the Senate. We’ve got 30 bills sitting over in the Senate that are for economic growth, the Keystone pipeline, things like that.

“We passed a budget last year. We’re going to do a budget again this year. The Senate hasn’t passed a budget in 2010, 2011, they’re not going to do one now. They are not doing anything over there. People cast a broad brush at Congress when they don’t really look at the huge difference between the Republicans in the majority in the House and the Democrats in the majority in the Senate.”

But he said if Republicans can capture both houses in November, change will come, pointing out how the House GOP caucus has moved rightward since he was first elected.

“We have people who came here for a cause not a career. That dynamic is occurring over in the Senate. You’ve got Marco Rubio and Ron Johnson and Jim DeMint. Hopefully, we will have another eight or 10 people like that over in the Senate in our majority next time, so we have a real majority of conservatives.”

Read more on Newsmax.com: Paul Ryan: GOP Must Not ‘Play It Safe’ in Taking on Obama
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama’s Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

This year’s SRLC is expected to be one of the largest multistate events, outside of the national convention. SRLCs, also, have a tradition of providing opportunities for networking and relationship building among conference sponsors, attendees, and speakers. With over 2,000 attendees projected for the 2012 event, the conference has grown in size and influence and is considered a must attend Republican event focused on an array of national issues, interests, and candidates.

Republican presidential candidates have a long tradition of addressing, attending, and actively participating in this conference. Additionally, this year, CNN will partner with the SRLC in airing a presidential debate to be broadcast live. SRLC 2012 has an added twist, as it ends on the Saturday of South Carolina’s “First in the South” presidential primary. This year’s unique timing makes SRLC 2012 one last chance to reach Republicans across the South before they start to vote.

Doctors in America are harboring an embarrassing secret: Many of them are going broke.
This quiet reality, which is spreading nationwide, is claiming a wide range of casualties, including family physicians, cardiologists and oncologists.
Industry watchers say the trend is worrisome. Half of all doctors in the nation operate a private practice. So if a cash crunch forces the death of an independent practice, it robs a community of a vital health care resource.
“A lot of independent practices are starting to see serious financial issues,” said Marc Lion, CEO of Lion & Company CPAs, LLC, which advises independent doctor practices about their finances.
Doctors list shrinking insurance reimbursements, changing regulations, rising business and drug costs among the factors preventing them from keeping their practices afloat. But some experts counter that doctors’ lack of business acumen is also to blame.
Loans to make payroll: Dr. William Pentz, 47, a cardiologist with a Philadelphia private practice, and his partners had to tap into their personal assets to make payroll for employees last year. “And we still barely made payroll last paycheck,” he said. “Many of us are also skimping on our own pay.”
Pentz said recent steep 35% to 40% cuts in Medicare reimbursements for key cardiovascular services, such as stress tests and echocardiograms, have taken a substantial toll on revenue. “Our total revenue was down about 9% last year compared to 2010,” he said.
“These cuts have destabilized private cardiology practices,” he said. “A third of our patients are on Medicare. So these Medicare cuts are by far the biggest factor. Private insurers follow Medicare rates. So those reimbursements are going down as well.”
12 entrepreneurs reinventing health care
Pentz is thinking about an out. “If this continues, I might seriously consider leaving medicine,” he said. “I can’t keep working this way.”
Also on his mind, the impending 27.4% Medicare pay cut for doctors. “If that goes through, it will put us under,” he said.
Federal law requires that Medicare reimbursement rates be adjusted annually based on a formula tied to the health of the economy. That law says rates should be cut every year to keep Medicare financially sound.
Although Congress has blocked those cuts from happening 13 times over the past decade, most recently on Dec. 23 with a two-month temporary “patch,” this dilemma continues to haunt doctors every year.
Beau Donegan, senior executive with a hospital cancer center in Newport Beach, Calif., is well aware of physicians’ financial woes.
“Many are too proud to admit that they are on the verge of bankruptcy,” she said. “These physicians see no way out of the downward spiral of reimbursement, escalating costs of treating patients and insurance companies deciding when and how much they will pay them.”
Donegan knows an oncologist “with a stellar reputation in the community” who hasn’t taken a salary from his private practice in over a year. He owes drug companies $1.6 million, which he wasn’t reimbursed for.
Dr. Neil Barth is that oncologist. He has been in the top 10% of oncologists in his region, according to U.S. News Top Doctors’ ranking. Still, he is contemplating personal bankruptcy.
That move could shutter his 31-year-old clinical practice and force 6,000 cancer patients to look for a new doctor.
Changes in drug reimbursements have hurt him badly. Until the mid-2000′s, drugs sales were big profit generators for oncologists.
In oncology, doctors were allowed to profit from drug sales. So doctors would buy expensive cancer drugs at bulk prices from drugmakers and then sell them at much higher prices to their patients.
“I grew up in that system. I was spending $1.5 million a month on buying treatment drugs,” he said. In 2005, Medicare revised the reimbursement guidelines for cancer drugs, which effectively made reimbursements for many expensive cancer drugs fall to less than the actual cost of the drugs.
“Our reimbursements plummeted,” Barth said.
Still, Barth continued to push ahead with innovative research, treating patients with cutting-edge expensive therapies, accepting patients who were underinsured only to realize later that insurers would not pay him back for much of his care.
“I was $3.2 million in debt by mid 2010,” said Barth. “It was a sickening feeling. I could no longer care for patients with catastrophic illnesses without scrutinizing every penny first.”
He’s since halved his debt and taken on a second job as a consultant to hospitals. But he’s still struggling and considering closing his practice in the next six months.
“The economics of providing health care in this country need to change. It’s too expensive for doctors,” he said. “I love medicine. I will find a way to refinance my debt and not lose my home or my practice.”
If he does declare bankruptcy, he loses all of it and has to find a way to start over at 60. Until then, he’s turning away new patients whose care he can no longer subsidize.
“I recently got a call from a divorced woman with two kids who is unemployed, house in foreclosure with advanced breast cancer,” he said. “The moment has come to this that you now say, ‘sorry, we don’t have the capacity to care for you.’ ”
Small business 101: A private practice is like a small business. “The only thing different is that a third party, and not the customer, is paying for the service,” said Lion.
“Many times I shake my head,” he said. “Doctors are trained in medicine but not how to run a business.” His biggest challenge is getting doctors to realize where and how their profits are leaking.
“On average, there’s a 10% to 15% profit leak in a private practice,” he said. Much of that is tied to money owed to the practice by patients or insurers. “This is also why they are seeing a cash crunch.”
My biggest tax nightmare!
Dr. Mike Gorman, a family physician in Loganvale, Nev., recently took out an SBA loan to keep his practice running and pay his five employees.
“It is embarrassing,” he said. “Doctors don’t want to talk about being in debt.” But he’s planning a new strategy to deal with his rising business expenses and falling reimbursements.
“I will see more patients, but I won’t check all of their complaints at one time,” he explained. “If I do, insurance will bundle my reimbursement into one payment.” Patients will have to make repeat visits — an arrangement that he acknowledges is “inconvenient.”
“This system pits doctor against patient,” he said. “But it’s the only way to beat the system and get paid.”