Code Neon Blue!

I think I am FINALLY done turning in all our data and resolutions and stuff from the County Assembly. I’ve also survived my son’s spring break. Today he’s back at school and I’m back on the ball (at least as much so as usual).

Reading about all the troubles some of the big counties had with their assemblies reminds me that being way out here in the boonies has much to recommend it.

We had 71 delegates and 5 alternates nominated at the county caucuses. We’d had the brilliant idea of checking up on their voting bona fieds BEFORE the night of the assembly, so our processing was only a matter of collecting for the meal (for those who had chosen to partake) and passing out a blue card with each delegate’s name on it. Still, it kept those of us at the check-in table busy enough that I missed Dan Slater’s speech. Dan’s the VP of the state party, and he was just passing through during his personal re-enactment of Amarillo (and back) By Morning. But he did take the time to drop by, and we all appreciated it.

Another cool surprise guest star was Governor Bill Ritter. Our neighbors in Bent County had already snagged him for a dinner that same night, but he had several events scheduled in Lamar on Saturday, and was spending the night in the same hotel where we were. So he popped in and spoke for a while, joking a little and just generally energizing the base.

Not that we weren’t energized already. What I’ve been noticing about our county party lately is that we’re really gearing up. In the past few elections we haven’t had a lot of luck finding people to run for local office, but this year they were popping up all over the place, and right now we have two candidates for the Board of Commissioners (Chris Wilkinson and John DuVall) and also one for the DA of the 15th Judicial District (Debra Gunkel).

Another sign that we’re lifting our heads and looking around with new eyes is that there’s a growing interest in celebrating our local party history. Darrell Seufer, who was a county commissioner for 16 years, THOUGHT he had been urged to attend the dinner so he could nominate Chris Wilkinson, but in reality, we lured him there to present him with a plaque honoring his service to the county and the party.

Once upon a time, Prowers County was mostly Democratic. I think we are heading that way again.

P.S. If you want to see the pics from the Assembly, just CLICK HERE.

I hope you were one of the people who watched Obama’s speech, either live or as one of the over a million so far on YouTube. Either way, you can tell your grands someday that you saw history being made.

If you aren’t offended by The Bad Words, here’s a hilarious ‘live blogging’ commentary on the speech by the infamous Rude Pundit.

10:59: Damn. We’re not used to this sort of honesty from a candidate. Can’t compute. Cynicism circuit shorting out.

It was crazy busy down here in Lamar on Saturday, particularly if you happened to be the governor of one of the more popular western states. (Hint and Google marker: That would be Bill Ritter and Colorado.)

His 11 am agenda item was the ground-breaking ceremony at Four States Feedyard for a new ethanol plant. Temps still hadn’t topped 40 degrees, but at least it was sunny and not too windy. After Bill and the other guest workers scraped away at the hardpan soil with their shiny gold shovels for a few minutes, the ground was declared broken and we all had a really excellent BBQ lunch.

It’s a big deal for Lamar and Prowers County, but usually the big city news types don’t pay much attention to us. So I was very pleased when I opened my email from the Rocky Mountain News this morning and found a link to a story about the new plant.

But then I read it. Four very short paragraphs, and, to paraphrase David Allen Coe, they never even called us by our name.

This:

“LiquidMaize, a Denver company that manages small-scale ethanol, broke ground Saturday on the plant north of this southeastern town.”

and a mention of Prowers County was the closest we got to state-wide fame.

Oh, well. I hear fame is over-rated anyhow.

It went great! I am weak and giddy with relief!

We had had 65 RSVPs by the day the Cow Palace needed a head count for the meal, but we took a leap of faith and said 75. They set the room up for 80 and it was within a couple of being EXACTLY RIGHT!

Our caucus count from Feb. 5th had been 5 for Hillary and 4 for Obama, but because not all the delegates could attend tonight, the presidential preference poll percentage (say THAT three times fast!) shifted to 6-3.

I am pleased to inform everyone that one of the Obama delegates to the state convention from Prowers County is…ME!!! And not just because I was one of the few willing to go, as in former years. We had to speak and be voted in and everything!!

I am also positively astounded to report that my cashew brittle brought FIFTY smackers! Although yes, it IS just that good. :)

Closing now, because I have two more events to attend tomorrow, and all the adrenalin is weari….

*

Wow, it’s FINALLY County Assembly Day, and I’ve made it this far without losing what little I have left of my mind!

In about 45 minutes I’ll head out to the Cow Palace to help finish with the set up for the dinner. We have a big crowd of citizens attending, plus various candidates and office holders. Governor Ritter is even expected to pop in, once he gets in from the assembly and dinner in neighboring Bent County!

The finale of the evening will be our traditional fund-raising dessert auction. I’m bringing cashew brittle.

In the interest of fair disclosure, I hereby share my recipe with y’all:

Microwave Nut Brittle

You can use any kind of shelled nuts in this recipe. My family loves it with cashews or mixed nuts!

1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup white corn syrup
1 1/2 cups roasted salted nuts
1 teaspoon butter (I only use real butter for candy)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda

In a 1-1/2 quart microwave safe bowl, stir together sugar and syrup. Microwave on HIGH 3 minutes.

Stir in nuts. Microwave on HIGH 3 to 5 minutes or until brown.

Add butter and vanilla, blend well. Microwave on HIGH 1 to 2 minutes more.

Add baking soda and gently stir until light and foamy. Pour onto lightly greased foil lined cookie sheet. Let cool, then break into pieces. Store in air tight container. Makes about 1 pound.

Hints: In my experience, it doesn’t come out right if you try to double the recipe. Also, cooking times may vary by microwave, so you should plan to make an experimental batch or two before you make a ’good’ one for gift-giving. Don’t worry, if your family is like mine, the extra will NOT go to waste!

At the end of January our area hospital, Prowers Medical Center, officially announced they were in trouble. They ended up over a million dollars in the red for 2007, part of a downhill financial slide that has been going on for some time.

Like most hospitals, PMC uses a management company, Quorum Health Resources. Quorum helped PMC come up with a ‘100 day plan’, which started with laying off 12 workers (only 2 of whom were not clinicians of some kind). (No one actually asked, but how much do you bet Quorum gets their fee off the top every time a payment period comes around? I’m just sayin’.)

Naturally this announcement and action kicked the local rumor machine into high gear. So on Tuesday night an open meeting was held to let the public ask questions and find out what was being done to meet the crisis.

The Cultural Events room at the library was packed, with dozens of people lining the walls. Members of the current hospital board gave a presentation of current findings before opening the floor to questions.

We were told PMC had to write off approximately $2 million in charity/unpaid charges for 2007. Only about 1/3 of the patients it sees have private insurance. Medicare pays only 1% above cost on the bills charged to it, and Medicaid pays a mere 35% of what is billed to it. The average cost of a patient’s hospital treatment has doubled over the past few years to $10K. Therefore the basic problem is that most of the self-paying and Medicaid patients that the hospital treats represent a loss that private insurance payments and current government funding can’t cover. Hence the bleeding of red ink.

So you might think it was GOOD that the average number of hospital patients on any given day has dropped to under 12. But that’s not the case. Although some patients from the region are treated elsewhere because they get “flighted out", others make a choice to seek care elsewhere. Maybe because of a perceived drop in patient care quality here, maybe because they need special care PMC can’t offer. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it’s the private payers who can afford to make that choice. The ones who stay here to be treated are the patients who are on Medicare/Medicaid or who (like at least 40% of all US citizens) have NO insurance coverage.

The way I see it, the current hospital board went wrong mainly by being way too optimistic way too long. Someone at the meeting actually stated that people are not coming to PMC for treatment as much because the local population is HEALTHIER than it used to be. Also, ‘more people are being treated at home instead of in the hospital.’ (See what I mean about the overly optimistic viewpoint?)

Later they did touch on some more realistic problems. Lamar lost 4 doctors in 2007 to retirement or relocation. That’s four docs not treating people and sometimes admitting them as patients. Lamar has also not yet recovered from losing the bus manufacturing company NEOPLAN and its 300-400 jobs which offered insurance benefits.

Other issues NOT addressed that I personally feel add to the problem are the declining US economy and the lack of health insurance coverage which affects thousands in Prowers County and millions nationwide. I don’t quite see how the PMC board has missed hearing about these two situations – it’s been in all the papers – but there was no mention of either at the meeting. And seriously, they are in deep enough trouble with the citizenry that they should be offering all the excuses they can come up with, in my opinion.

One of the things PMC is doing to try to help its bottom line is to raise its rates, the same way many medical places are these days. This look at the overall numbers of just one rural hospital shows clearly that this only works because it will bring in more from the insurers. Who will in turn raise their rates, causing more people to be unable to afford insurance…bubble financing, anyone?

I do agree with board member George Gotto, who said the PMC board is “all good, decent people trying to do something for the community.” To their credit, they are standing up to take responsibility for the current crisis, and trying to do something about it (besides raise rates, which is a temporary stop-gap at best). For instance, they’ve found ways to cut costs for supplies, for up to $500K in savings over a year’s time. Another proposal is to start a walk-in clinic that sees people on evenings and weekends, so someone with an inconveniently timed health problem won’t have to go to the expensive ER for help.

There is also an election upcoming in May for new board members. Twelve people have stepped up to run for three open seats, and the current board is requiring them to sit in on the interviews of the six finalists for the currently vacant CEO job, so whoever is elected will have some idea of what needs to be be expected from the new CEO.

The bottom line is that, contrary to the rumors, they aren’t closing the hospital down YET. Whether that will happen in the future, though, is anybody’s guess.

I hope many of the people who were at Tuesday’s meeting will take George Gotto up on his suggestion and start making it a habit to attend the open meetings of the hospital board. I’m going to try to, I know. It’s no longer smart or sensible to just laze back and assume Someone is looking after all the situations that affect our daily lives.

If it ever was. But that’s another rant for another day.

I’ve seen people saying that 2008 is going to be like Christmas all year long for the Dems. I’m starting to think that’s true for more than the obvious reasons.

Christmas, while it has many good points in its favor, is also known for being a bit stressful to those who are mainly in charge of making it happen. I know I tend to heave a sigh of relief on December 26.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be feeling just as relieved as soon as we get our County Assembly done. I still have about a dozen delegates to call, because the Cow Palace would like to have a head count of those attending the dinner by…hmm, tomorrow. There are a few other little odds and ends to get done for the assembly as well. But hey, I volunteered, so I can’t really complain. Much.

Of course the Law of Task Attraction has kicked in. Having this major event to work on means a swarm of other tasks and responsibilities have noticed me. So last Saturday I had to drive to Pueblo for the training for members of Judicial Review Commissions, and then come home to prepare for an unexpected visitor. Tonight there’s a meeting about how we can maybe keep our area hospital from shutting down…and then there’s the ongoing parade of Pop-Up Tasks, like eye appointments and school schedule revisions due to the vile and accursed CSAPs.

I keep telling myself it’s lame to make EXCUSES all the time about not blogging regularly. But…is listing REASONS legit?

Please nod yes.

I can’t help hopping on to celebrate the good day I’m having. Please bear with me while I get the “SQUEEEE!” out of my system.

As you may recall, the one thing I’d never really liked about the look of CodeNeonBlue.net was the gray color of the text and the double-spacing. I’d tried to adjust it when I set it up, but I couldn’t figure out where to change those two attributes.

Then today I happened on a link to FireBug for Firefox. It’s a tool for web designers that lets you do Many Fabulous Things. More things than *I* understand, for sure. BUT it was just intuitive enough that I was FINALLY able to change my textual areas to single-space with black lettering. As God intended.

The other cool thing was that I figured out how to combine two separate video clips I filmed last weekend, and then upload them to YouTube. They were shot in honor of TrainBoyMike, of course. So you needn’t click through unless you have a serious hankering to see a couple of RTD light-rails go by the Denver Convention Center at about 10 on a Friday night.

Although it IS rather amazing how big and clear the picture is…I think I’m starting to get the hang of my new camera!

There’s good news and bad news regarding my plan to Get Organized and Get More Done Around Here, Dangit.

Good: I AM getting more done.

Bad: You can’t tell it by looking.

Oh, well. Plans are moving forward like a rocket sled for our County Assembly, so that’s a plus. New projects and old ones with growing pains keep popping up in the local papers, so I won’t run out of things to write about any time soon.

The Lamar Ledger had an interesting bit the other day concerning the city’s new plan to let people pay utility and other municipal charges via plastic.

I was indecently delighted to read that the city tech guy’s first choice of a credit service vendor was — Paypal! (And I think it was a good one — I use them for my business and find them very reliable.)

But seeing as how this is City of Lamar stuff, the City Council figured they REALLY ought to do what they endlessly nag the citizenry to do, and try to give Lamar the business first. (Wait, that came out wrong….)

Happily, by using the threat of the more cost-effective Paypal as a *constructive illustration*, the tech guy, Thomas Sanchez, got a local bank to offer better terms, so all is cozy and safe again, with Lamar spending being done here at home as God intended.

Last April, the CDP had a training session for county committee people at a really neat facility in Georgetown. OF COURSE I took a bunch of pics. I was there and breathing, wasn’t I?

Last week our local paper started a weekly photo contest. I decided to start with something I thought was sure-fire, wildlife. The Georgetown facility is not only a meeting and wedding site, but a mini wolf sanctuary, and I had scored this great shot:

I was totally chuffed to find out this morning that I won for this week!

PS: Clicking here will take you to the page with all the pics from that event, if you want to see them.

PPS: The JJ Dinner was great, and I have pics from there too. Which I will upload soon pretty soon eventually.