Archive for November 2009
No Bid Contracts
Over the last several months Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Lanier Cansler at DHHS has handed out a couple of hundred million dollars in contracts – many of them no bid contracts – to his former clients from the days when he was a lobbyist. But, now, he’s done…
Read MoreA Painful Lesson
It sounded like The New Martin Nesbitt after Democrats picked him for majority leader: “I saw ’94 up close and personal. I saw how things can get out of control. There are very few things that I’m the most qualified for, but getting us through this election is one of them.” Anxious Democrats…
Read MoreA Three Ring Circus
Here’s another odd story about how the Department of Health and Human Services works. Early in the Easley Administration, when Lanier Cansler was Assistant Secretary, the department decided to ‘Reform Mental Health’ in order to save taxpayers money and provide better care. About the same time Assistant Secretary Cansler was handling bidding…
Read MoreHow Not to Solve a Legal Problem
Back in August in her rush to pass the budget and get the legislature out of town, it looks like Governor Perdue slipped up and pulled a number out of thin air. What the Governor did to balance the budget (at least on paper) was tell legislators she was going to cut the Department of…
Read MoreSell the Cars; Keep the Nurses
Back in 1984 when Governor Hunt fessed up to making political trips on the state airplane and reimbursed the state $180,000, Tom Ellis, the attorney running Jesse Helms’ campaign to defeat Hunt told me, You know, give a politician a free airplane and he’ll hang himself every time. It turns out – for…
Read MoreBoss Plunket Would be Proud
The famous Boss Plunket of Tammany Hall, explaining his singular talent for getting the most out of politics (and what he called “honest graft”), told his biographer, ‘I just seen my opportunities and took ‘em.’ At first glance Boss Plunkett, who was a colorful New York Irish politician, and DHHS Secretary Lanier Cansler, a…
Read MorePopulism Run Amok
I’m all for having regular guys and gals in high office. But this is too much. The New York Times reported this anecdote in a story about Federal Research Chair Ben Bernanke lobbying against bills aimed at the Fed: “At one recent meeting, Senator Sherrod Brown challenged Mr. Bernanke’s bona fides as a…
Read MoreThe Looniest Department in State Government
It turns out Craigan L. Gray, the MD and JD (lawyer) and newly appointed Director of Medicaid is pretty thin skinned. When Tim Rogers – head of the Association for Home and Hospice Care – asked Secretary Lanier Cansler to reconsider Gray’s cuts in a tiny Medicaid program that provides nurses to care…
Read MoreThe Looniest Department: CCME, Again and Again and Again
Right now if you’re a Medicaid patient or are a nurse or a nurse’s aide who cares for a patient you’re facing hard times – your medical care’s being cut or your hours are being cut or your pay’s being cut, by Craigan Gray Medicaid Director at DHHS. But if you’re one of the…
Read MoreThe Clinton Prescription
The Big Dog’s got the scent. Democrats should pay attention. For all his faults, Bill Clinton has one of the best noses in politics. And this week he gave Senate Democrats exactly the right strategy for passing health-care reform: It’s the economy, stupid. That is, reform will help the economy by slowing…
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