Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2007 > December > 02 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USGrady ‘ransom’ merits healthy dose of scorn
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Any doubt that those who run Grady Memorial Hospital exist in la-la land was erased this week with a most astounding document agreeing to avoid suffocating its hostage — itself — if the business community and those who run Georgia pay a recurring ransom.
The governor reacted badly. “I have no intention of signing an unenforceable document that seeks to bind the state to a specific, annual appropriation,” said he.
The Speaker of the House — the state official farthest out on the Grady limb — received the news unsympathetically. “Today’s attempt by the board of Grady Hospital to control the Legislature is simply unacceptable.”
The lieutenant governor looked askance, too, declaring that state government’s Big Three “are not going to be bound by a governmental authority.”
The President Pro Tem of the Georgia State Senate, Eric Johnson of Savannah, upon receiving news of the hostage-holders’ demand that state leaders agree to fork over $30 million annually or it would hold its breath until it flat-out expired, inquired thoughtfully: “They didn’t require us to fund an ice cream cone for every patient?”
Picture this: Except for the brief three-year tenure of Dr. Andrew Agwunobi, who left this year for a private-sector job in California, Grady has been adrift for decades, always on the brink of financial disaster whether providing charity care, Medicare, PeachCare, Medicaid or private-paid.
Its problems, as the board resolution passed this week sees it, are the “result of decreasing public funds, adverse reimbursement policies and other factors beyond the control of the [Fulton-DeKalb Hospital] Authority.” As a consequence, “the Authority has suffered severe financial hardships and deficits in recent years that have threatened the system’s ability to continue to provide high-quality medical services …” to “increasing indigent and charity populations” in Fulton, DeKalb “and surrounding areas” in the face of “decreasing public funds.”
That is really quite an astounding declaration, replete with a heretofore unasserted responsibility to be the “primary provider of health care for the indigent and uninsured” in areas outside Fulton and DeKalb.
Please note that Georgia has not yet approved the medical use of marijuana — and, consequently, nobody in a health care environment should be in fantasyland, as this board clearly was as it resolved that:
• “No later than, and as a condition precedent to [turning day-to-day operations over to a management company], representatives of the business, charitable and philanthropic communities shall provide a written commitment for funds in the amount of not less than $200 million.”
• Before acting to save itself, “certain business and philanthropic leaders of the Atlanta community” will commit in writing to conduct a campaign “on a good faith, best effort basis” to raise an additional $100 million.
• Before this creation of the state agrees to do anything responsible to save itself — i.e., hire management help — “the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives each shall have provided written confirmation of their intent to support, in addition to amounts currently received from the State of Georgia for the benefit of the System,” not less than $30 million annually plus “necessary budgetary measures for the implementation and funding of the Statewide Trauma Network, which would provide additional financial support for the System,” and higher appropriated sums for medical education.
Now, keep in mind the top dog on the Grady board is State Rep. Pam Stephenson (D-Atlanta). Before coming to the General Assembly, she headed the state’s health planning division. In each capacity, as legislator and as agency head, she knows politics and process.
To allow her board to make blindly stupid demands on the top three officials of Georgia government — demands, incidentally, that would require them to usurp the authority of the entire General Assembly — is breathtaking. In more than 30 years of reading public documents, this is the most bizarre.
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Comments
By The Democratic National Committee-Atlanta Journal-Constitution
December 2, 2007 2:35 PM | Link to this
Hi get,
Howzit inde ‘Easy?
FYI, the peripatetic young Hannity doesn’t speak for Fox News; he speaks for conservative Americans, especially the GOP kind, and he’s completely open about it; moreover, that’s his job. The somewhat easier to take Alan Colmes, and the many Democratic associates FNN retains for their commentary, speak for the other side. (As it happens, I used to work with, and sometimes for, a couple of them, as well as with a couple of the GOP stringer-commentators.)
Brit Hume, and whoever on occasion substitutes in his chair, speaks for FNN. Has Mr. Hume, or one of his stand-ins, been up to something violative of your standards of veracity? Do tell.
Would that the ClintooN Network or the yet undead MSNBC or the DNC-AJC so scrupulous about “balance” as is FNN. Instead it is the other cable networks and e.g. the DNC-AJC which exploit illusory balance as legerdemain, just exactly as the supermarket tabloids preserve their tax status and gird themselves for the inevitable libel claims by running, on advice of counsel, the occasional obligatory public service announcement on breast cancer, in league with whatever profligate sham charity they can cynically buy off with publicity to legitimate the media brand.
And just as Jim Wooten, God bless him, is the DNC-AJC’s token Republican, a concession necessary to the proper husbandry of the paper’s Cobb circulation. As far as the DNC-AJC editorial staff are concerned, Jim’s an amiably articulate and amenably house-trained dupe of the right who’s effective at protecting their revenues by keeping the ascendant conservatives who still bother to read the paper supplied with daily catch phrases. That’s why it matters not whether the stylistic devices are any good, technically or even morally.
You like to watch media dishonesty, get, and more power to you, brother. I’m just saying it’s right under your nose. It’s here.
Legally, the AJC is publisher of everything posted here, as well as everything else found within or via DNC-AJC.com. It is they who are foremost liable.
They certainly do not want you to know this, and in fact their school of proud correspondence-school sharks is largely oblivious to it, but there it is and here it is, right here and at Mike’s Place, their very Achilles’ Heel.
You’re it, get. We’re all it, whether we know it or, as per usual, not. And to the extent that we do democracy on this site and that Jim fully exercises his sovereign liberties in his column, they’ll come after us. Try it a little more daringly and accurately than you have been doing, and you’ll see.
Just don’t let them stop you. On the contrary, give ‘em hell, get, from the Capitol Hill to this recondite out-post. Give ‘em all hell.
You don’t have to bother with cable if you don’t want to. You can just stick with today’s lies and smears in the AJC. They’re always here, because the people who publish this journal of record are invertebrate and inveterate traffickers in daily deceit.
They actually get off on the sheer lipsticked derring-do of getting away with it in every section of the paper every day. They suffer from the same adrenal addiction that led Winona to shoplift and Gary Hart to run wild in Bimini. And the results are, as always, as exceedingly banal as yesterday’s DNC-AJC. [A trade secret: dishonest writing is always bad writing, so by the day’s fruits shall ye know the DNC-AJC.]
Except for Jim and a few of the investigative types and sports and feature writers, this addiction more than Starbucks is what helps them out of bed in the morning. Tust me, they live for it, the smug and self-important off-Bleecker hacks and the fifth-rate ambulance chasers upon whom they necessarily rely.
Luckily for us, they can “select in” the DNC-AJC’s content but they can’t bring themselves to “select out”, so we’re free to call them on their diarrhetic stream of daily manipulation—what you might call DailyHos.
Should you turn your notably sensitive antennae toward the DNC-AJC, you’ll have at your side the several of us here who are old hands in this very trade in lies, the newspaper Back Forty of the Fourth-Rate Estate. What’s more, several of us are as well trained in Con Law as is the redoubtable jbm. My gut tells me that together we’ll cover your back no matter what you post, and as long as you’re trying to get it right—which is far more than DNC-AJC does on a regular basis—they won’t be able to shut you down without sending you up. So either way you win.
Weren’t the framers a bunch of friggin colonial geniuses? For God’s sake have at it, get, and put some real sabre-toothed fang into it, too.
It’s too bad the ribbon-wearers of all hues outwear the word “celebrate” in the manner of the beaded backwater college primitivist who concocted Kwanza in Oakland a few years ago; too bad, because the word “celebrate” is something that a Mailer or a Mencken would find indispensable here, as in:
Celebrate your Whitmanesque freedom, your Carlinesque refusal to swallow swill, your Ferlinghettesque resistance to any abuse of the national charter that declares you the free-born citizen that you damn well are!
While you’re at it, kindly remember also what Richard Jewel taught the judicial system and the rest of us, excepting this newspaper,at great expense to himself, the courts, and the paper: that the DNC-AJ-Constitution can no more distinguish the real Constitution from a street slur than it can tell a hero from a self-styled terrorist.
Lucky you’re in the Crescent, getalife, because the rest of us here have to fend without the aid of Sonny Purdue or this lastingly disreputable and enduringly discredited newspaper-with-a-record.
All the best,
Glenn Gilbert
By getalife
December 2, 2007 2:47 PM | Link to this
“Despite trumpeting the success of the occupation in Iraq all along and now trying to claim otherwise, John McCain on this morning’s Face the Nation explained that reason the surge hasn’t resulted in the political reconciliation it was supposed to is because “there are no Thomas Jeffersons in Iraq.”
“Dec 2, 07: The detention by US troops of the bodyguards and son of Adnan Dulaimi, the leader of the largest Sunni Arab bloc in parliament on Thursday night has now led to a walk-out of the 44 members of the Iraqi Accord Front”
“If only Iraq had a Thomas Jefferson.”
Geez.
By Luckoduh
December 2, 2007 2:51 PM | Link to this
{{{{By getalife December 2, 2007 11:52 AM I am going to pull a “duh” and ask for a word limiter on this blog.}}}}
al-Gitmo: Did you just have to let out a whine or did I interrupt your slack jawed fascination with Polly’s mindless marathon of the mundane?
Just scroll past it, sweetheart.
~~~~~
{{{{By AmVet December 2, 2007 12:10 PM LuckaSchmuck, yesterday at 6:13, what the Karl Rove are you thinking, you draft dodging, cutting and running neo-anderthal?! You sure are one major league, industrial strength possee comode-atatus obtuse obfuscator!}}}}
DimWet: Since you are obviously not prepared to participate in a serious discussion of the issues, I, at this moment, will cease providing evidence to back up my claims, and I shall also, like you, descend into the pointless exercise of just rejecting your argument offhand without offering any proof of my position.
You know, the way a simpleton would do it.
I am also debating whether I should start an immature taunt of childish name calling and making terroristic threats upon other blogger’s families, like you do.
No, wait, I can’t do that because I’m better than you are.
Never mind.
I’ll just let you take the low road.
By getalife
December 2, 2007 3:04 PM | Link to this
Just scroll past it, sweetheart.
Of course and stop hitting on me.
Speaking of Craig:
“David Phillips. Mike Jones. Greg Ruth. Tom Russell.
Four gay men, willing to put their names in print and whose allegations can’t be disproved, have come forward since news of U.S. Sen. Larry Craig’s guilty plea. They say they had sex with Craig or that he made a sexual advance or that he paid them unusual attention….
But the Statesman’s investigation, which included reviews of travel and property records and background checks on all five men, found nothing to disprove the five new accounts. The men offer telling and sometimes similar details about what happened, or the senator’s travel records place him in the city where sex is alleged to have occurred, or his accusers told credible witnesses at the time of the incident.
See the complete story and more in Sunday’s Idaho Statesman.”
The gay old party.
Geez.
By Dusty
December 2, 2007 3:07 PM | Link to this
Well, Jim Wooten, when I read your editorial,I am sad to say that one thought came to mind: This Grady ‘ransom’ demand could only be the work of Democrats.
Since you mentioned Pam Stephenson as one of the ‘top dogs’ on the board, I looked up her own bio on Google. And, sure ‘nuff, she is (D)Lithonia HD 92 and a “successful attorney”.
Her community involvement mentions her role as President of 100 Black Women Decatur DeKalb Chapter.
The bio mentions that she is heavily focused upon quality of life issues, particularly quality education, environmental justice and adequte affordable healthcare for all Georgians.
All this sounds sublimely good, but how did she and others totally forget the limits of their own board? Did they decide to become the government of Georgia to save Grady? Sounds like it.
Would someone call Dr. Andrew Agwunobi and ask his advice? Maybe he could give this Grady group something that makes sense. Grady is in critical care so call the doctor.
I am all for saving Grady. But this board is going to kill it. Would someone call Dr.
By Glenn
December 2, 2007 3:24 PM | Link to this
Disingenuous Dem Ain’t No Tiny Luckodamnsure,
Finally I geddit. Sheesh! Took me long enough.
You’re a shill for the editorial call girls! That’s why you presume to judge the worthiness of each and every substantive post! That’s why you daren’t have so much as a blog pseudonym. Of course! Shoulda known.
It all makes sense. And here I thought you were another Peter Sellars, so psychotically mimetic that there’s no actual you. So it’s not, after all, just that you’re a bitter pedantic washed-up schoolmarm hack from some offshore netherslum.
It’s that Angela Tuck—whom heretofore we’d thought was merely a non-entity like Sonny—in fact died and made you ombudsman!
Well whatever you say, Nordic sir! We’ll be sure to be on our best behavior from now on, in accordance with your late-MacArthuresque commands. Yes SIR!
As I’ve long advised, you tedious superficial adolescent tagger, go Phuk Ng try to edit democracy somewhere else.
You’re perfectly extraneous.
Heh, heh. I’m LOLlygaggin’! What a maroon.
By TW
December 2, 2007 3:32 PM | Link to this
Following 9/11, this country made the mistake of allowing Faux News to drive. That anyone associated with that network can stand up today without a bag on their head is laughable.
Memo to Faux News:
With political egg all over your smiling face, you stand knee deep in American Soldier Blood.
Game over - sit down.
By getalife
December 2, 2007 3:41 PM | Link to this
Sex on the City IMAGES
Bwa.
By Disenfranchised Democrat
December 2, 2007 3:42 PM | Link to this
{{{{By Glenn December 2, 2007 3:24 PM Disingenuous Dem Ain’t No Tiny Luckodamnsure,}}}}
Polly: Now I’m baiting you-
{{{{By Glenn December 2, 2007 12:04 PM Like, were I to post here what I heard the other day—and happen to know is true—about Neal Boortz being an unconvicted serial felon who should be fined for everything he owns and thrown into jail, do you think that would cross the line with them?}}}}
Sucker.
Oh, and like you got room to talk.
Geez.
By David Paul
December 2, 2007 4:00 PM | Link to this
Millions and millions of Americans from all parts of the country are coming together in support of a new nationwide movement called, “The United States of America IS a Democracy Movement”. They are calling for the presidential candidates to swear all of their campaign promises under oath. It picked up steam on the “Warren Ballentine Show”, a nationally sydicated radio program, last week. The author of the following text claims to be the greatest thinker in modern history. He challenges any creature born of a woman to come up with a better idea. If he or she cannot…
ONE MAN’S CHALLENGE TO THE WHOLE OF MANKIND
At the risk of sounding arrogant and/or self righteous, I will have to say, that by me putting this out, I would have to be the most intelligent human being that has ever lived in this country. Now, I have no problem totally digressing if someone else could prove that they had this idea first. Of course then, the question would become, “why were you sitting on an idea like this?’ If you did have this idea before, your failure to put it out could and should be considered treasonous. With all of the filth that is being put out these days, do you mean to tell me that we do not have time to consider this? I have always hated hearing fairy tales so what kind of fool would I be if I lived one….I refuse to. I am tired of all the games people play and all of the empty talk. What you are about to read is the answer to end all of the political questions forever. I challenge anything that exists on this earth that was born of a woman to top this. If you cannot, what does that make me?
The United States of America IS a Democracy Movement
COULD YOU?
WILL YOU?
…..VOTE FOR A PERSON WHO REFUSES TO MAKE HIS OR HER CAMPAIGN PROMISE TO YOU UNDER OATH
Every candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America shall swear under oath 7 campaign promises to each of the individual racial groups that coexist in the aforementioned country.
That way they will have to choose between jail and money, because they are going to be tempted in such a way that even the most steadfast man or woman, would lose his or her composure and succumb to a promise of the fulfillment of selfish carnal endeavors.
Each such oath shall be separate and apart from each other.
Each such oath shall address each issue submitted by each of the racial groups that coexist in the aforementioned country, in such away as to leave no doubt as to whether a particular action taken by the successful candidate violates any of the oaths made to that particular racial group.
Any individual racial group has the right to reject any oath or all oaths that to them are construed as vague and indeterminable.
No individual racial group shall have any say so whatever with regards to any matter concerning another individual racial group’s issues and/or oath satisfaction requirements.
It is the individual racial group’s own responsibility to ensure that those 7 issues are received by the such candidate’s headquarters in a timely manner, by whatever means by them they deem appropriate.
The 7 issues submitted by each group shall be made available to the public by the noon December 8, 2007.
The 7 promises made to each of the particular racial groups shall be made public by close of business December 23, 2007 as that marks the 94th anniversary of the day the United States of America was sold into slavery.
Any candidate who fails to respond to any particular individual racial group’s issues shall have no power to govern over any individual in that individuals racial group as government gets its just power from the CONSENT of the governed.
It is a foregone conclusion that no consent will be given any such candidate.
Each such candidate may add to their oath sworn campaign promises made the each of the individual racial groups.
This is the new way to run for public office in the United States of America. Why should a candidate spend millions of dollars on commercials when they can spends hundreds or less to make sure that all of his or her sworn campaign promises get known to the American public?
Suppose a man or a woman told you that they promise to do this, that, and the other for you but when you asked them whether they would say that under oath, they respond with a firm and resounding, “NO!” What would you think about that person’s integrity then? Do not let a human being, born of a woman just like you were, regardless of race or gender deceive you, unless you like people driving your life while you are sitting in the back seat of your own life-mobile, wondering where you are going?
Q: Where does government derive its just powers?
A: From the consent of the governed. The people that have come together as a nation choose the people they think will best protect their ability to enjoy those God given inalienable rights including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
By jbmlaw
December 2, 2007 4:35 PM | Link to this
Good afternoon all. Odd, someone sucked all of the vitriol out of the website today, probably Glenn with that opening post. So, ever one to drag down standards, I wll dispute the foundation of David Paul’s well-developed 4:00 PM argument originally proffered by someone named Warren Ballentine. Collectivization of racial groups, even if well-intentioned, is incompatible with freedom. In every instance - note the absolutism in that preface - it creates a zero-sum game, to subordinate one group in favor of another. These are the core flaws of 20th century socialism, the rejection of the individual as the sovereign of our government, and the implicit stereotypes perpetuated by the collectivization. The simple oath presently used is better.
As long as we are adopting big-picture cures for what ails us,I think we may do better to adopt a Constitutional amendment that would allow any county to secede from the union.
By Luckoduh
December 2, 2007 4:36 PM | Link to this
Maybe this is why the pinkos want to stop global warming so bad:
{{{{GREEN scientists have been accused of overstating the dangers of climate change by researchers who found that the number of people killed each year by weather-related disasters is falling.}}}}
{{{{Their report suggests that a central plank in the global warming argument – that it will result in a big increase in deaths from weather-related disasters – is undermined by the facts. It shows deaths in such disasters peaked in the 1920s and have been declining ever since.}}}}
No wonder they’re all hysterical about it too.
More of you rubes are living and that cramps al-Gore’s style.
By jbmlaw
December 2, 2007 4:37 PM | Link to this
By the way, I violated my own rule in failing to comment on the topic. My neglect is excusable, I think Jim is spot-on.
By Glenn
December 2, 2007 4:42 PM | Link to this
Whilst our Caesar columnizes, meanwhile what is Georgia going to do before and after the dry-spiggot working date of January 15th?
The DNC-AJC’s almost as useless as Sonny on this front. In five to seven weeks it’ll be every blogster and hipster and flipster for herself.
Here’s a tiny foretaste: Since the power plants have first dibs on most of the remaining water, there will have to be rolling brown-outs, followed if necessary by standing ones and, absent rain, in all likelihood rolling blackouts. So it’s not just about your sprinklers and taps and toilets; it’s also about, for starters, power.
If the myopic state government hasn’t made proper plans, then regardless of e.g. FEMA’s and CDC’s and NOAA’s and the Corps’, Sonny & Friends will launch into an energy-buying frenzy that could make CA’s Enron-driven $30 Billion tab look like a bargain. (And think of the money to be made, my Republicans!)
Got your D-batts? Your Sterno and bottled water and evacuation plan? Because at some point the bureaucratic ratcheting alone will degrade our dehydrated existence more than the weather will, and it will look favorable to them what can leave, to leave.
Again, WHAT TO DO?
By Dusty
December 2, 2007 4:47 PM | Link to this
What goes today? First, we got the name calling. Now we got some long winded guy trying to start a new political party.
In case no one has noticed, the subject of the day is GRADY. You know. The hospital in downtown Atlanta. GRADY! The hospital with big problems? GRADY ! A place where the sick and injured go for help! GRADY! Suppose you comment on GRADY. That’s it. GRADY! Did I miss anything? No. The subject is GRADY.
By Glenn
December 2, 2007 4:47 PM | Link to this
David Paul,
That’s exciting and overdue in a way, but were I a candidate, God forbid, I would not be able to sign such pledges, and in fact would take McCain’s and Richardson’s position of rejecting litmus tests from self-important interests.
Trouble is my faith tradition forbids such asseveration, as it’s called in archaic civil and canon legalese. If my yes does not mean yes to you, nor my no, no, then I don’t deserve your vote.
By jbmlaw
December 2, 2007 5:03 PM | Link to this
Dear Luckoduh @ 4:36, a related idea that crossed my mind this weekend, as our northern tier suffers the first blizzard of the winter - why is it that the portion of the country that would benefit most from global warming is the section that anguishes most about the possibility? Even if you accept AlGore’s apocalyptic view of the likely effects of a few extra degrees, wouldn’t it make the other Duluth a much nicer place to live, both in summer and winter?
By Glenn
December 2, 2007 5:33 PM | Link to this
Dusty,
As usual Jim changed the SUBJECT from important and timely SUBJECTS to another important and timely SUBJECT. That’s all.
BTW, liked your Sudan riff of yesterday. Oh, but that’s not about GRADY, which teacher sez we are to discuss in lieu of e.g. considering the implications of the working D-Day January 15 for Metro Atlanta’s spiggot to run dry.
Even getalife’s ducked that one, showing how totally frivolous that adorable ingenue is when it comes to turning deadly serious public issues into unintentional parodies of the childish DailyKos.
As for Grady, Marshal, the state needs to occupy the matter completely and immediately before the bench federalizes it. The state must let a no-bid contract to an outside third party operation, for example Hopkins or Mayo or Harvard Med. or UCSF/Cal, capable of sending in a strike team, replete with fiscal experts, at once.
This new undertaking will stave off the courts. It should include both a formative (advance) and summative program evaluation by yet another third party (Harvard, if not used for the strike team, would be ideal, as would the Haas School of Management be).
The evaluation report should contain proposed actions going forward and recommendations for consequences for those whose malfeasance has told so far. Neither the strike team nor the evaluators should be discouraged from recommending Grady’s closure and alternatives pursuant to that. Both should report to, at a minimum, the Governor and General Assembly, the Grady Board, the bench and the feds.
Stat.
[Rudy 08]
By getalife
December 2, 2007 5:37 PM | Link to this
Well, it is pouring down here.
Want to buy some water?
$100 a gallon.
Geez.
By jbmlaw
December 2, 2007 5:37 PM | Link to this
Dear Glenn @ 5:33, great argument, I’ll sign onto that. Hey, Jim, problem solved, next issue.
By Luckoduh
December 2, 2007 5:41 PM | Link to this
{{{{The latter point is relevant because CNN’s noxious laundering of this question through the goofy YouTube mechanism quite clearly was designed to embarrass Mitt Romney — who happens to be a Mormon — and, secondarily, to help Mike Huckabee — who, as a Baptist minister, had a ready answer, and who happens to be television’s campaign flavor of the month.}}}}
{{{{Beside considerations like these, CNN’s incompetent failure to weed out Democratically connected questioners pales.}}}}
{{{{In any event, CNN has failed in its responsibilities to the political process and it’s time for the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties to take the network out of our electoral affairs.}}}}
What would we do for laughs then?
By Luckoduh
December 2, 2007 5:48 PM | Link to this
{{{{Insurgents are having a rough time if the American military is more welcome in Fallujah than they are. How shattering it must be for them. Imagine if Iraqi insurgents were more welcome in New York City than the Marines.}}}}
Who are the democrats trying to surrender to, anyway?
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