Legalectric

So here I am, the typical self-employed person without health “insurance” (because I’ll be damned if I’ll pay an INSURANCE company for “coverage” with a $5-10,000 deductible massive premiums every month and get nothing for it).  I’m excited about MNsure, ja, you betcha.

October 3, 2013.  I started to get ready, don’t cha know.  I have all my income info at the ready, I get online, and… NERRRRRRRRRRRK!  Reject, they can’t find info on me to set up an account.  I’m told I need to mail the form in by snail mail, and they’ll mail back info to get the account going.  I print it out, make copies of driver’s license and passport and mail it in.  (3+ hours)

December 31, 2013.  Info comes back and on New Years’ Eve, I get online again, fill out the application, and am told I can have the privilege of paying $1,106.74/mo for “coverage” with a $12,000 deductible (100% covered after that).  Or $1,380.93 for $6,600 deductible (60% covered after that), or $1,661.77 for $300 deductible (70% covered after that).  Oh, right, sure, OK… NOT!  I got on the horn with a major WTF, and they tell me it makes no sense, that I qualify for deductions and what not.  OK, fine, just get me there.  They can’t, said that I qualified for MN Care and they’d send me forms.  (6+ hours over 2 days)

January 2, 2014.  Happy New Year.  I get a letter in the mail, “Health Care Notice” which says over and over and over, “DOES NOT QUALIFY” “DOES NOT QUALIFY” “DOES NOT QUALIFY” “DOES NOT QUALIFY” “DOES NOT QUALIFY” “DOES NOT QUALIFY” “DOES NOT QUALIFY” “DOES NOT QUALIFY”  MNsure, I get your drift.  But you said I qualified.  More WTF moments, they said that I’d not checked the box for credits, deductions and what not, so I couldn’t get any.  She said I should request that the application be withdrawn.  OK, fine, what does that take?  ??? Doesn’t know.  EH?  Said I should call back in a week and they’ll see what they can do (4+ hours on phone).

January ?, 2014.  I call back.  I learn that not only do I not qualify, but Alan and I are not a household.  ???  It says “household,” and doesn’t say you have to be married to be a household.  NO WHERE IN THE APPLICATION DOES IT SAY YOU HAVE TO BE MARRIED TO BE A HOUSEHOLD.  Fine, whatever, what do I have to do to redo the application?  They can’t say.  Notice says “I’m supposed to receive another notice in the mail telling me the reason I don’t qualify.”  Nada…  I’m told, again, to call back in a week  (4+ hours on phone).

January 21, 2014.  I’m sick.  Really sick.  It feels like the last time my allergies went wacky and I couldn’t talk for two months.  More hours on the phone, to learn that they didn’t understand why I got that notice, issued 1/1 @ 12:19 when it says that as of 1/1 @ 1:39 p.m. I was covered.  WTF?  And I was supposed to just sit and wait, “you don’t need to do anything.”  And I says, I’m sick, I do need to do something, what do I do to see a doctor?  How can I get verification I’m covered somehow, somewhere?  They suggested I call Minnesota Care.  So I did, the folks at MN Care had no verification of me being in the system.  That only took over an hour to find out.  Back to MNsure.  By this time I’m writing down names, and spent about an hour before “Kevin” picked up the phone and told me that “No, you’re not covered by MN Care, I don’t know where they’d get that information, there’s nothing here about that.”  Great, now we’re getting somewhere… NOT.  I said that I’d been told I’d not checked the right box and needed to have my application withdrawn and start over, and I got the dead silence.  He said they’d check into it, and to call back in about a week.  OK, and if I die first, should the dogs handle it for me? (2+ hours, 1+ hour, 2+ hours).

Today, just now, Alan brought up the mail.  From Minnesota Health Care Programs, a “Giving Permission for Someone to Act on My Behalf.”  “Why am I getting this letter?  You asked to give permission to another person to act on your behalf.”  Ummmm… NO!

Tomorrow, Tuesday, I can go to the Care Clinic, and not only can I see a Dr. or Nurse Practitioner, but I can work with an “assister” on MNsure, and share the pain.

Now I’m going to bed to drink myself into a Nyquil stupor.  This kind of “care” I don’t need.

Freedom Industries, has filed bankruptcy.  Yes, it’s the same Freedom Industries which contaminated water in the Elk River, in West Virginia, and now all that contamination is drifting downriver to Ohio, making water unusable for how many hundreds of thousands of people, animals and plants for how long?  And it’s not over yet, not by a long shot.

Bankruptcy?  How dare they.  It’s time for them to go to jail.  NOW!

Freedom Industries Files Bankruptcy After Elk River Spill

Freedom Industries files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy; lawsuits against company on pause

Freedom Industries Files for Bankruptcy Protection

Some of the gory details in the West Virginia Gazette:

Freedom Industries files for bankruptcy

January 17, 2014

By Kate White

By David Gutman

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Freedom Industries, the company that fouled thousands of West Virginians’ water with a chemical leak last week, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today.

The company’s assets and liabilities are “unknown,” according to the filing.

Under the bankruptcy code, Chapter 11 permits a company to reorganize and continue operating. Chemstream Holdings Inc. is the sole owner of Freedom Industries, according to the filing. Gary Southern, who is identified as Freedom’s president, signs all of the bankruptcy documents.

Mark Freedlander of McGuireWoods LLP in Pittsburgh is representing Southern. Documents in the filing allege that a water line break adjacent to the Barlow Drive facility may have contributed to the ground beneath a storage tank to freeze during frigid temperatures in the days immediately preceding the incident.

“The debtor and investigative authorities have taken note of the hole in the affected storage tank that appears to have come from an object piercing upwards through the base of the affected storage tank. Investigations by multiple agencies are ongoing with full cooperation by the debtor,” bankruptcy documents state.

Freedom owes $3.66 million to its top 20 unsecured creditors, according to bankruptcy documents.

Topping the list at $648,221 is Atlanta-based FloMin Coal Inc. Freedom owes Silverlake Holding LLC of Evansville, Ind., $615,954.

Eastman Chemical, the maker of “Crude MCHM,” the chemical that spilled into the Elk River, is owed $127,474, documents show. Eastman, headquartered in Tennessee, is named, along with Freedom and West Virginia American Water, in a federal lawsuit filed earlier this week.

Freedom also faces about 25 lawsuits filed in Kanawha Circuit Court.

For quite a while now we’ve been wrestling with how to assure “financial assurance” so that silica sand operators won’t shut down and leave the area looking like the moonscape.  Obviously this was not done successfully on the Range where mines closed, leaving barren piles, abandoned buildings and sites, and pits overfilling with water, we need to learn from that mess.  So we’ve been talking about it, even to the extent of getting reclamation legislation, which in my mind is in large part to assure “financial assurance” to enable the ability to do reclamation:

Sec. 105. RULES; SILICA SAND.

(b) The commissioner of natural resources shall adopt rules pertaining to the reclamation of silica sand mines. The rulemaking is exempt from Minnesota Statutes, section 14.125.

Add to that the DNR head’s very scary statements regarding PolyMet mining:

“If we ever get to a point in time where (pollution from the PolyMet site) can’t be handled, (it’ll be) because humanity changed, because World War Z came along and zombies took over. As long as there are people, there’ll be people to fix it,” Landwehr said.

The people who destroyed it are the ones who need to fix it, not the “As long as there are people, there’ll be people to fix it…”

So how to do it?  Well, it turns out there is foundational language already in the rules for landfills — something we can use as a starting point.  DOH!  Why is this just coming out now, in the EQB’s DRAFT?  Yes, it’s good to know (sorry, folks, I do not know what’s in every rule in the state) (and apparently I’m not the only one!), but shouldn’t this have been brought out early on when all the local governments started wrestling with this?

The DNR and the DNT are tag teaming in a PR effort that is so offensive.  And in writing this, I’m reminded of my past life working at HCMC, where DNR was “Do Not Resuscitate” and DNT meant “Do Not Treat.”

Apparently the DNR has been touring Minnesota setting up the scene for the PolyMet hearings on the Environmental Impact Statement, and based on DNR handling of the public at a previous hearing.  Remember where they held a “hearing” and rather than have a public comment session, they ushered people off behind the curtain to testify to ONLY a court reporter, who took down their testimony?  WOW.  And now it appears that they’re afraid of what’s coming at the hearings Thursday and through the rest of the month.

This is looking bizarre to me:

“If we ever get to a point in time where (pollution from the PolyMet site) can’t be handled, (it’ll be) because humanity changed, because World War Z came along and zombies took over. As long as there are people, there’ll be people to fix it,” Landwehr said.

Looks like Minnesota should put Landwehr in charge of nuclear waste!

… and the Duluth News Tribune “view” is more than a little offensive, foreshadowing in the first sentence is disgusting…  “The coming chaos” … “expected to feature busloads of high-volume opposition,” … oh, really…

When I google “PolyMet Hearings January” what is the first thing to pop up:

PolyMet backers plan bus convoy to hearing January 16

So it sounds like the big push in process is by PolyMet for “busloads of high-volume” BACKERS.

Get it right, Duluth News Tribune.  Your “Insist on civility” sounds more to me like a pre-emptive attempt to quash constitutionally protected comments and dissent!

Here are the hearing times and places:

Thursday, January 16, 2014
DECC – Duluth Entertainment Convention Center
350 Harbor Dr, Duluth, MN 55802
5:00 p.m. – open house
6:45 – 10:00 p.m. formal presentation and public comment period

Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Mesabi East High School
601 N 1st St W, Aurora, MN 55705
5:00 p.m. – open house
6:45 – 10:00 p.m. formal presentation and public comment period

Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Saint Paul RiverCentre
175 West Kellogg Blvd, Saint Paul, MN 55102
5:00 p.m. – open house
6:45 – 10:00 p.m. formal presentation and public comment period

I just sent this LTE in response to their editorial below:

Get it right, Duluth News Tribune.  Your “Insist on civility” editorial was offensive on so many levels, baiting and fear-mongering included.  Beginning with the first sentence, you foreshadow opposition to PolyMet and with “Minnesota not-so-nice” you attempt to quash it and delegitmize constitutionally protected speech.  You show fear of “busloads of high-volume opposition” but when I googled “PolyMet hearings January” the first thing to pop up is an article entitled “PolyMet backers plan bus convoy to hearing Jan. 16.”  Just who is rounding up the volatile busloads of high volume people?  An editorial like yours is irresponsible, with an impact of lighting a match and throwing gas on it.  A more responsible approach would be to urge people to exercise their right to a hearing and their right to speak their mind.  Attempts to quash speech and opinions usually has the opposite effect.

Here it is, the Duluth News Tribune editorial, with the PolyMet backers plan bus convoy to hearing January 16 article below:

Our view: Insist on civility at PolyMet hearings

The coming chaos, fueled by years of pent-up emotions and expected to feature busloads of high-volume opposition, has been fully expected, ever since the trio of public hearings was announced to gather comments on the environmental review of a proposed PolyMet copper-nickel mine on the Minnesota Iron Range.

So who could blame Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Landwehr for making the rounds last week to urge civility and calm and to try to set a positive, productive tone for the meetings, the first of which is scheduled Thursday at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center? Landwehr and staffers met with MPR, TV news reporters, Iron Range editors, the News Tribune and anyone else, it seemed, who’d listed to a plea for peace.

“The thing I want people to understand is this is not a referendum on mining. If you want to make your opinion known about mining, the capitol is the right place to do that. This is an analysis of the project, and what we’re looking for are people’s thoughts on the analysis,” Landwehr said during his meeting with the News Tribune, including members of the editorial board. “If you want to bring a bunch of people here to get up and say, ‘I hate mining,’ it’s not really going to help the process. … We want people to understand what the project is. I would argue that’s the primary purpose of these meetings, just to educate people on what the project is.”

Read the rest of this entry »

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission has just issued the:

Notice Of Comment Period_20141-95340-01

Initial Comments are due by January 29, 2014 at 4:30 p.m.

Reply Comments are due by February 19, 2014 at 4:30 p.m.

That’s plenty of time to say what needs to be said, and scoot in a little trip to a warmer clime before it comes up at the Commission (in March?).

And best of all, the range of issues before the Commission:

So get to writing those comments!

Send comments via email — and be sure to write both docket numbers in the subject and body, i.e., “Comments for Dockets 11-152 and 12-113” — send to:

PublicComments.PUC@state.mn.us