Politics a Usual by Jim Baron

We’ve really got to get a grip. Really, we do.
It snowed out on Friday and Rhode Island lost its collective composure, none moreso than our elected officials.

They opened up the Emergency Management Agency, for Pete’s sake. There was a press conference at the command center with the National Guard represented. The National Guard! For about 8-10 inches of snow. Major Gen. Robert Bray said the same level of coordination would go into Friday’s battle with less than a foot of snow as is the case with, and I quote, “a hurricane or pandemic.” Pandemic!
Schools announced they would be closed Friday on Thursday afternoon. As it turned out, no snow fell on Friday until most school days would have been over anyway. Districts could have closed the elementary schools early and had the buses back in time for regular-time dismissals of middle and high schools.
Businesses were asked to let employees go home by noon — on the Friday before Christmas! — even though not a flake fell until about 2 p.m.
Providence instituted a 9 a.m. parking ban — on the Friday before Christmas! — five hours before precipitation commenced. That was, well, precipitate. Even though the plan was to pre-treat the roads before the snow started, 9 in the morning still seems early. Cars were towed and numerous lucrative tickets were issued.
I guess the term “hardy New Englander” has become an anachronism.
Because this was hardly a massive blizzard or nor’easter. It snowed for a few hours.
Don’t get me wrong: I hate snow. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate shoveling it. I hate driving my car on it, I hate walking and too often falling on it and the ice it inevitably becomes. I like nothing about it. It is not pretty. It is not romantic. It is not fun. Any moron who I hear singing “Let it Snow,” this holiday season risks a serious beat-down.
But it is one thing to quietly despise the snow or loudly rail against it. It is quite another to let it severely disrupt your life, the way state and local governments did last Friday. When you do that, the snow wins.
The snow sure won last Friday.
Because just as surely as the snow was going to cover the ground, the bureaucrats were determined to cover their backsides.
They remember Dec. 13, 2007. The now-infamous “December Debacle.”
You would think that a state that bore the brunt of the Blizzard of ’78 would see that as the standard against which snowfalls should be measured. Not to get all old codger on you, but THAT was a snowstorm.
But nowadays a crummy eight inches in the afternoon qualifies as an out-and-out calamity. That mindset has to change.
This is New England and it is winter. We can’t ramp up the Emergency Management Agency apparatus and get the National Guard involved every time it snows.
But as the recent storm neared, all you could hear about was the December Debacle.
On that day, people took to their cars to start the evening rush hour a little early and created traffic jams that stranded the snowplows and sanders that were supposed to be treating and clearing the streets. Also stranded were some school buses, which were stuck on roads and highways for hours giving time for the local TV news stations to blow their predicament out of all journalistic proportions. Those clips of the stuck buses were run over and over and over again given even the flimsiest excuse and it succeeded in getting the populace all riled up at the incompetence of the official response to the situation. It was our own little Katrina aftermath, although nobody to my knowledge was ever told that he or she was doing a heck of a job.
Thus a run-of-the-mill snow event transmogrified into a disaster of epic proportions.
If you recall, it almost touched off a constitutional crisis because Governor Carcieri was in Iraq visiting local troops at the time, and Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts was unsuccessful at getting anyone to pay attention to her and at least some members of the General Assembly attempted to amend the Rhode Island Constitution to address issues raised by a modest snowfall.
So what was it about the December Debacle that so captured the attention of public officials, what made that so-called crisis so different than so many of the other disasters the state is facing? The state budget is a third of a billion dollars in deficit for the year ending next June and nearly a half-billion in the red for the year following and we have effectively done nothing about it. We sure haven’t done anything effective about it, and we have known about it for several weeks to a couple of months. The legislature has not deigned to meet about it.
But eight inches of snow is coming and we get the National Guard in motion? Why?
Because in the wake of that December storm last year, people lost their jobs. High-level bureaucrats lost high-paying jobs. The state EMA director — fired. The Providence EMA director — fired. The controversy greased the skids for then-Providence Supt. of Schools Donnie Evens to get pushed out the door. With the budget and numerous other state issues crumbling at our feet, where else are you seeing anyone get fired over it?
That’s what was different about the December Debacle — heads rolled.
And it may have jeopardized Providence Mayor David Cicilline’s upcoming bid to become governor. You know his opponents are going to bring it up once the campaign starts. General Treasurer Frank Caprio, who also is an all-but-declared candidate for governor, paid for everybody’s parking tickets in Cicilline’s Providence that day. A coincidence? I think not.
Therefore the commitment that: We’re not going to let that happen again. Call out the Guard if you have to. The people who replaced the people who were fired were certainly not going to allow a replay of the debacle, lest they get plowed to the curb along with the slushy snow.
Not only was the gross overreaction to last week’s storm defensive on the part of the bureaucrats and politicians, it was offensive as well. 
After getting schools closed altogether, and after getting businesses to dismiss employees before the snow started falling and after scaring the bejeezus out of everyone so nobody but a fool planned to drive his or her car after noon, now those in charge can point and say: See what a good job we did!
Never mind that this never should have been a big deal in the first place, officials are going to paint themselves as the best thing to happen to winter storm response since the invention of the snow plow. 
Don’t buy it.

Bad Medicaid news
Bad news struck Rhode Island at about the same time the snow hit on Friday.
The federal government approved the state’s so-called “Global Medicaid Waiver” application.
If you are saying: “Wait a minute, isn’t that GOOD news?” then you are not old or sick or poor.
If one or more of those descriptions apply to you, then you are in what the president’s father calls “deep doo-doo.”
This means the state will accept a set amount of money for Medicaid for the next five years in exchange for the state getting to make up many of its own rules about who is eligible for what. Those rules are going to be determined by budget and not need.
As Governor Carcieri put it in a press release: “This agreement will put us on a sustainable path for growth in Medicaid while also maintaining services for those most in need.”  
What that tells me is that people who are VERY MUCH in need without being “most in need” are going to be shunted to the side. They are going to have to get sicker or poorer, or both, before the state of Rhode Island will do anything for them.
And there is no recourse.
The General Assembly is supposed to have veto power over the waiver, but they can’t exercise it. Even if the legislature examines the waiver and finds it to be lousy or worse, there is nothing they can do because if they veto the waiver, it dunks the state’s head almost $70 million deeper in red ink this year alone. Legislators won’t have the guts to reject it; at least this way they can blame whatever happens on Carcieri.
Whether this waiver is a great idea or a turkey, Rhode Island is stuck with it.
If you are in a nursing home, soon will be, or otherwise receive Medicaid benefits, may God’s love be with you. You might not have much else.