Sunday, February 25, 2007

To The Point with Governor Granholm



Video from WOOD- Governor Jennifer Granholm talks about the budget crisis the state faces, and her proposals to fix it.



The Governor takes Rick for a ride once again- watch in the very first question as she runs away with the conversation. I don't know how the poor guy keeps up. (after seeing Skubick in action, my appreciation for Albin has gone up immensely. Doesn't mean I won't call him out when he's being a jerk though.)



I would transcribe some of this, but the Governor talks about 300 miles per hour, and "Casablanca" is on and I'm missing it.



There was one interesting point towards the end when they discussed privatization of the prison system-



Granholm: There absolutely have been problems, and those problems are being addressed. In fact, one of the problems is that we... frankly John Engler privatized the health care delivery system, and I'm not blaming him, that was one of the things that was done in order to try to manage it better, but that system, and a federal district judge has said that it is poorly run, particularly with respect to mental health, and so we are doing a whole internal review process.



She goes on to talk about the prison review, but in that moment she is speaking of CMS- recently featured on 60 Minutes making our state and Patricia Caruso look very, very bad, and has been the the subject of various investigations across the country (Delaware and Missouri for starters) for their alleged neglect of prisoners. Jeff Gerritt of the Free Press reported last fall that this neglect is actually costing us more money as ignored medical problems become serious.



A report to the Legislature indicates that our contract with CMS expires on May 1st, but "negotiations are currently underway" to extend it to 2008.



I wonder if this is still true, given the light shed on this issue by 60 Minutes, and, well, the media across the country.



Can we afford to jettison CMS? Can we afford not to?



Inquiring minds want to know.



Back to you, Rick.