Mitch’s Blog

Today I registered for a networking event that’s taking place tomorrow night in downtown Syracuse. I received email a little later on saying that the event had already sold out. I couldn’t blame anyone but myself because the email came last week, but I had too many other things going so I didn’t get to the email until today.

How many opportunities are lost because we try to manage time rather than flow along with it? How many problems could have been eliminated if we had taken care of the infrastructure that could have kept things running smoothly?

Quite often, I’m called to go into a place to consult because something went wrong. There’s a lot of things I find, and these days I’m not surprised any longer when I discover a problem that shouldn’t have been one. A couple of times I’ve gone into hospitals that were in distress, on the brink of trouble, and had my part in helping them turn things around and moving towards positive results once again. So, when I sent out my marketing material, I often include references to being proactive, while knowing that many of the companies I’m sending things to are not only not being proactive, but probably don’t have an idea of where the problem is to begin with.

Have you ever missed the opportunity to tell someone you loved them because they passed away? Have you ever missed the opportunity to teach a child a lesson that could have saved them from harm later on? Have you ever missed the opportunity to teach an employee how to do something, and told them why it’s necessary, before they went and did something that harmed business in some fashion?

No one gets it right all the time, but we can all strive to get it right most of the time. I’m going to work hard to make sure I don’t miss another opportunity.

Sometimes, the pressure of going into another week actually shuts people down. They get the feeling that there’s these five days that are coming up that are going to have twists and turns and pressure that they’re not sure they’re ready for again. It doesn’t matter if you’re management or employee or working for yourself. It doesn’t matter if you’re a parent or taking care of a parent. There’s just something about the beginning of the week that many people don’t want to deal with.

Many times, I find that I need some kind of music to help alter my mood. Music has that kind of power, and everyone has their favorite kind of music that they’ll pull out to help them with their moods. I tend to favor disco, classical music, or showtunes, which makes me happy but stuns my wife, who prefers jazz.

Well, as something to help all of us start the week off nicely, how’s about a mix of showtunes and jazz? This clip is from one of my favorite movies of all time, A Song Is Born with Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo. In this clip are some of the top jazz musicians of the day, including Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Tommy Dorsey, and way too many others to try to name. And, there’s even a bit of comedy thrown in here. Music and laughter; I dare you to still feel bad after watching this:

Over the last few days I was at Turning Stone Casino in Verona, NY, which is only about 35 minutes from my house, at the HFMA Region 2 Fall Institute. It was actually a joint venture between three HFMA chapters in this state, the Northeastern NY Chapter, the Central New York Chapter (of which I’m a member) and the Northwestern NY Chapter.

The conference began with a reception Wednesday night in the Golfdome, which I didn’t quite know existed. I knew it was there, but the last thing I remembered being held there was a championship boxing match many years ago, where Laila Ali actually had one of her last fights against Joe Frazier’s daughter. I felt it was an important networking event for me to be at, and it turned into a load of fun, as I ran into people I hadn’t seen in years, and met a couple of new people also. The facility was impressive; that is, if you like golf. But the people at Turning Stone never stopped building, as they’ve already added racquet ball courts to it, and are in the process of adding both indoor and outdoor tennis courts to it; just amazing.

Thursday was the official signing in day, where we picked up our free gift from the Northeastern Chapter, an over-the-shoulder briefcase, which was sponsored by the CPA firm Fust, Charles, Chambers LLP; nice touch. There was a continental breakfast in the Exhibit Hall, where I ate nothing because I don’t eat at continental breakfast’s, then it was time to go into the main meeting hall where things were ready to begin.

Our first presenter was Jim Sheehan, the NYS Medicaid Inspector General. He gave a pretty good presentation on the state of the Medicaid program and what his office is trying to do to eliminate fraud against Medicaid. Next up was a panel discussion of three health care industry heavyweights, led by Daniel Sisto, president of the Health Association of New York State, and one other guy who was also to be the next speaker, someone I’ve talked about here before, none other than my friend David Goldsmith. What I found interesting is that Mr. Sisto pretty much agreed with my take on the health care plans of each candidate, showing obvious disdain for John McCain’s plan; who says I don’t know what I’m talking about? After a short break, David did his thing, which included picking on me a little bit (I am NOT a groupie!), and the crowd was once again thoroughly impressed; this was the largest crowd I’ve ever seen him interact with in person. I mention lunch coming afterward only because, at my table, out of nine people there, seven agreed with “us” and two believed we had gotten the details of the McCain plan wrong; that’s what America is all about.

Over the course of the next day and a half were educational sessions, three at a time so we all had something to choose from, and some of them were pretty good, though I’ll admit that I begged out of the last one on Friday to come back home. The highlight of the event was supposed to be an appearance by Michelle Paterson, wife of the governor of New York, who has a health care background, and I was so keyed that I left home earlier than I probably needed to (getting very little sleep in the process) because I wanted to make sure I would get in early enough to not be hassled by the police protection I knew she would have. Alas, no buzz, and no Mrs. Paterson, which, unfortunately, left the early morning presentation a little bit flat, even though someone else stepped in at the last minute and gave a credible presentation on such short notice.

I’m not sure how successful networking was, but I did meet some new people, made some impressions on others, though most of those people were vendors, as myself, and got reacquainted with some old friends. I got a request for an article and a possible speaking engagement out of it, which is never a bad thing, and I even managed a little bit of poker. A quick side story is that I was sitting at one table when, suddenly sitting next to me, is my lawyer; will wonders never cease. And, had I sat at that table just 45 minutes longer, I’d have gotten to share more than $44,000; oh well,…

That’s my update on this year’s HFMA Regional Conference. I’m glad I went, and I’m looking forward to next year.

This is going to be a relatively short post, based on my normal standards. Of course we have an election coming up here in America, and one topic that’s big on the list is health care. Since I’m a health care finance consultant, I have to give my little audit on what each candidate wants to do with it, and how they want to pay for it. There’s a lot of spin that everyone has probably heard; here’s the truth.

The John McCain plan calls for tax cuts for individuals and families so they can purchase their own health care plans that will always follow them around. However, you only get the tax break if you purchase health care coverage. To pay for it, he’s going to tax employers who presently pay something for health care coverage for their employees, as they’ve been getting tax exemption on that piece for, well, decades. At the same time, he expects that tax to be alleviated by the tax breaks he’s going to give to businesses and wealthy business owners. He expects his plan will give everyone an equal opportunity.

The Barack Obama plan calls for mandatory health care coverage for every child in the nation, and an expansion of health care benefits of some type for individuals that don’t have insurance now. To pay for it, he’s going to increase the taxes on individuals and businesses that make more than $250,000 a year, with a bigger hit on the super wealthy. Obama’s plan does not plan on taxing small businesses to pay for it, as it’s been announced, but it does call for tax credits to be issued to those companies that pay for better health benefits for their employees.

What’s my general take on this? Both plans are deficient for different reasons.

McCain’s plan is deficient because most people aren’t going to use the tax credit to purchase their own health coverage, and it’s unfair to tax businesses that provide health care coverage to their employees. If I’m the companies, I stop coverage the day McCain takes office, I’m under no obligation to increase the salaries of any of my employees, and I don’t have to worry about those taxes one bit.

With Obama’s plan, there’s just not enough money that’s going to come from the rich to fund this plan as he believes. There’s child health programs provided by Medicaid in each state now, as well as Federally Qualified Health Centers in every state, that helps to cover people who can’t afford alternative health care. We already know that taxes are going to have to go up, and they do, because we have a massive deficit in this country now, and it’s got to come down. Higher taxes create their own problems for some businesses, and may trigger more companies moving parts of their businesses out of the country again. If that happens, there’s fewer dollars to be taxed, which means less money.

Still, if I had to choose one over the other, I’d choose Obama’s plan, mainly because of the caveat of taxing businesses that provide health care coverage. I like much better the encouragement of asking business to not only pay for health care coverage for their employees, but good plans. Medical debt is dragging this country down, and even Suze Orman stated on Oprah a couple of weeks ago that she’d rather people drink water and live on bread than give up health care coverage. In my mind, more people will be covered in some capacity under Obama than under McCain; history has already proven that with individual medical savings plans.

This isn’t a political position I’m taking; it’s a purely health care financial position.

A few days ago, I wrote on Twitter and asked a question that has been bothering me for weeks. That question is, if Obama was a Muslim, why would that automatically disqualify him in the eyes of some people. I also added the second question, which is why people who are saying that don’t see themselves as racist.

I’ve been fairly non political this year because the one thing that’s a waste of time is getting into political discussions when people have already made up their minds. Sure, every once in awhile you can possibly tell a person something that may make them question some things, but rarely do they change their minds. I know who I’m voting for, and that’s pretty much that. However, I also mentioned a couple of posts ago that I will point out something that bothers me during the campaign, and this is one of those issues.

So, you can’t imagine how happy I was when Colin Powell was on Meet The Press on Sunday morning and said the same exact thing I did, and told the story of one young man whose father was killed in the 9/11 attacks in 2001, and how he waited until he was old enough so he could join the military and go to fight for America against terrorism.

Muslims get a bad rap in this day and time, and yes, there are a lot of acts committed by Muslims. However, basically it’s the same Muslims over and over. This isn’t endemic to the population; after all, Timothy McVeigh certainly wasn’t a Muslim when he bombed the Federal Building, and all those hijackings of airplanes that occurred in the 70’s weren’t by Muslims. The IRA bombings in England also weren’t carried out by Muslims. That, plus the estimate that there are close to 1.61 billion Muslims around the world, should pretty much show that the percentage of Muslims committing acts of violence are fairly low.

Of course, one can find almost anything on the web, so I was gratified to see a Republican supporter of McCain get his comeuppance by a large group of other McCain supporters, many of whom were also McCain supporters. What do you know; some Muslims are actually supporting McCain, even with all the inferences. Below is that encounter; enjoy.

Back in March, I wrote a post on the upcoming Opus Movie, a motivational movie that, in its own way, follows up on The Secret, one of my favorite movies of all time.

Well, it’s finally been released, though it’s possible it’s been out for awhile and I just didn’t know about it. It’s being sold through Canada, and with shipping it cost me around $36.50, but with the exchange rate for America you’ll end up getting it for around $30 if you purchase today; you know how exchange rates are changing these days. You can click on Opus Movie to go to their sales page; in the first line you’re taken to my original post where you can view a very short promotional video of it.

As y’all know, I’m big on motivation to begin with, and I love motivational movies of all types. On my favorite links page I have many links that take you to either audio or video clips of motivational things. I used to run the Johnny The Bagger here, but was surprised by the amount of controversy it garnered, which I thought was unjustified, and rather than trying to defend the concept of it instead of wondering whether it was real or not, I decided to remove it. However, the link to the video is there now.

How many of you come across motivational videos and the like that you’d like to share with others? Put a post here, if you’re so inclined, because I’d love to check them out. Just don’t be trying to make me cry.

First, the latest issue of the T. T. Mitchell Consulting Newsletter, Good Customer Service Doesn’t Trump All, is available.

This morning I was at a board meeting for one of the groups I participate in. I was describing something I specifically noticed at the SOHO Show (Small Office/Home Office), an annual event in the Syracuse area. It seems that the show went back to something I guess they used to do more often in the older days, which is to have a high number of very attractive women “manning” the booths. Not that I haven’t seen attractive women in previous years, but this year the numbers skyrocketed, and it was something to behold for sure; hey, I’m a guy.

Anyway, I commented on how I noticed, and outside of their being attractive, wondered why I had actually paid attention to it. At that point one of the other board members, the only black woman in the group and on the board, “outed” me by saying that, like her, I probably always count how many black people are in a room when I go to an event and, because I count that, I probably count many other things, also like she does.

I told her laughingly not to give away an inside secret, but then I thought about it and decided to not only go with it, but reveal it to the general public. Yes, I count. For instance, I can tell you that at the conference I went to last week in Chicago, myself and one other person were the only two black males who were there for the event, not because we accompanied our wives. On the other side, there were 4 black women who attended the event. This was out of almost 450 people, by the way. I can tell you how many black people there were on each of the flights I took. I can tell you how many black people there were in every restaurant I went to that wasn’t a conference event. For that matter, I can tell you how many women were in half the restaurants I went to.

Counting isn’t necessarily something that’s instilled in black people, and it may be disappearing in today’s world, but it was something that came naturally in my youth. Whenever a black person was going to be on TV people would get on the phone and call each other. If a black performer was coming to town, the same thing would happen. Whenever we watched the news, we’d be hoping that the really bad stuff wasn’t being done by a black person because we knew that the next day we’d be the ones who’d be asked about it. Even now, we notice what we deem “code words” in this election year as it pertains to Barack Obama’s run for the presidency; if they weren’t code words, there wouldn’t be so many apologies and explanations after the statements were said (and all of them are pretty hollow sounding, by the way).

I count black people in movies; I count them in commercials. I’m not alone. And, it’s not endemic to black people either. Women will count how many other women are at a traditionally male event. White people will count how many other white people are at a predominantly black event. I’m sure other minorities count whenever they’re in a crowd. It’s typical to count when you feel a sense of “onlyness”, if you will. Sometimes it makes one feel uncomfortable; sometimes it just goes with the territory.

Early this week there was a buzz created by a black man named James T. Harris, who appeared at a John McCain event and literally “begged” McCain to bring the attack to Obama. He received a lot of hate email and calls, which was uncalled for in my opinion, but that wasn’t really what struck me. What struck me is that, in an interview he later gave to CNN, he himself indicated that he wasn’t a plant in the audience, as many had claimed, but that he had been ushered to the front of the room once he was inside because there weren’t more than a couple other black people in the audience, and he knew that they wanted to project a sense that there were more minorities in attendance than there were. So, even though his off the cuff remarks on video weren’t scripted, he knew he was being used as a pawn and went along with it. I thought about it some more as I realize that there are events I go to where I’m asked if my picture can be taken, so that it can be put into magazines or news articles to try to show that there was more minority participation than there actually was, and I’ve gone along with it.

The issues of race and gender are scary to deal with. It’s going to happen when the sides aren’t truly equal. I’ve come to terms with my counting issue, and I hope others realize that, indeed, they’re also counting, even if on a less frequent level. I was outed earlier today; now I’ve just outed myself to everyone else. What do you think?

I encountered real poverty head on when my dad went to Vietnam back in 1969. For some reason, when he went overseas we couldn’t live in on base housing; I never learned the reason why. So, last minute we ended up moving to Kansas City, Missouri, to live with my grandmother.

When my grandmother had bought her house in 1957, it was considered a nice, middle class black neighborhood. As the years went by the neighborhood deteriorated, and by the time we got there it was on the fringe of the slums. By fringe, I mean that on our immediate street on the block there were still some fairly nice looking houses, my grandmother’s house included, but in between there were some squalor houses. At the front end of the block was a former Red Ball Moving Company lot, with the remnant of a trailer on a rock lot that had been torched and tortured to the point that you knew what it had been, but it had obviously been used for other purposes. The rock lot was chopped up, as if someone had taken a sledge hammer to it, and the building was empty, though all the windows had been broken out of it.

The front end of the block offered some salvation, in its own way. If you turned right on that main road and drove about 15 or 20 minutes, you were in downtown Kansas City, where all the tall buildings were; if you went 15 or 20 minutes to the left, you ended up closer to the suburbs, where there was a Boys Club and actual fast food restaurants, none of which existed where we lived. There was a little general store one block to the left, and two blocks up was the elementary school I went to. The back end of the block began the true slum part, houses with boarded up windows with people still living in them; trash in the yards, beaten up old cars and no real place for kids to play except the streets. There was no baseball or football, or even basketball; the only basketball court was at the school, and it was fenced off except during gym class. It had to be; this was a dangerous neighborhood where fights and gunshots went off all the time. The Black Panthers had a purple van with a black paw that they used to drive down the streets from time to time. And we even saw a man running from the police this one time, who decided to run down the side of our house, and as the police officer pulled his gun and yelled something at the man, we all thought the gun was being aimed at our window and we jerked back; talk about being scared as a 10 year old kid.

At my school, at least a third of the kids came to school often wearing the same clothes every day. Our teacher, Mrs. Johnson, used to spend the first 45 minutes to an hour taking kids into the bathroom, which each classroom had, and washing them up; she didn’t believe that being poor meant you couldn’t be clean. Some kids had holes in their clothes and in their shoes. Many kids didn’t have money for either lunch or breakfast, but this was before they started having school breakfast programs; luckily, we did have a school lunch program, and for many of these kids, it might have been the only real meal they got during the day. The school was way behind me, so I got no attention in school, but it didn’t matter. There was no homework ever, because the school didn’t want to take a chance on the books not making it back to school. They had a library that was rarely used, mainly because they had a hard time teaching many of the kids to read. They weren’t dumb kids, they were just unmotivated; what did they know? What did they see everyday when they went home?

I learned a big lesson one particular day. My best friend, named Odell Jones, used to come over to my house to play my games. Seems I was the only person who had any games; I didn’t know that at the time. One day we went for a short walk, and for the first time I ended up on the street at the back end of my block. We walked up about halfway, and he pointed out his house. It was a tiny ranch house, no glass in the windows, only a curtain pulled across. His parents were sitting out front in rocking chairs. His father was blind and didn’t work; his mother didn’t work either. Both were sitting on the porch in dirty clothes. There were 4 other children around them, but they weren’t playing in the yard, but sitting on the porch with their parents; until that time, I thought he only had an older sister, as he’d never talked about his family. As I looked up the street, I saw many other houses like this one; I was confused and scared, and we didn’t go any further. I’m usually a curious sort and like to look around, but I decided not to take any chances. I didn’t fit in already, and I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself than I already had in school, where you can believe I wasn’t overly popular. We weren’t rich by any means, as the military doesn’t pay great, but comparatively, I was living well.

Or was I? Sure, I had some things, but my grandmother’s house had deteriorated in its own fashion after so many years. It had rats and mice, roaches and huge water bugs. My mother spent all her time in her bedroom upstairs; she rarely came out and rarely went downstairs. She drove to the air force base nearby for her foodstuffs, and kept everything in her room so she didn’t have to leave. You know she wasn’t used to living this way either. My grandmother is the type who can get by anywhere; all she wants is a place to sleep at night, even now.

After a year of that my dad came back from Vietnam, and we moved to Maine, where we encountered a much different kind of life. It took me a long time to get adjusted to it; how does one go from a predominantly black slum area (we had one Mexican kid in school, otherwise it was all black) back to military living, where there are no hardships because food and supplies on a military base cost less, life is easier, the grounds must be maintained so there is no squalor, and of course I was once again back in the minority? It was tough, for sure. I always thought back on my experiences in Kansas City, and it gave me a better appreciation for what I had, as well as a compassion for those who don’t have as much as I have. I have always given money when I can, though I admit that I don’t volunteer as much as I probably should. I feel I have a unique point of view whenever I hear someone talking about poverty and sloth and the educational system and Medicaid and food stamps and putting people down who live in these kinds of conditions. Nobody asks to live like that; sometimes, those are just the circumstances people face in their lives.

In 1999, I had an opportunity to go back to Kansas City for the first time in almost 30 years, and I said I wanted to go back to the old neighborhood. It might not have been safe, but I wanted to go anyway. Oddly enough, it’s probably safer now, though it’s no less a ghetto area. More than half of the houses on my old street have been torn down, and all that remains is a paved over area where basements used to be; one of these houses was my grandmothers. The school I went to is also gone; I can’t believe they tore down an entire brick building, but they did, and there was nothing there at all except more slab. The store was gone, but, oddly enough, that same lot was sitting there empty, the one with the old Red Ball trailer; that was gone, though. It was summer, but I didn’t see any people. Then I had to think back; I rarely saw people when I lived there. So, it was a different kind of poverty; this poverty could hide behind doors, but it was still there.

I was sad; after 30 years, it wasn’t actually worse, but it wasn’t better. How does that happen in America? For that matter, how does it happen anywhere in this world of prosperity? I guess I’ll never know, and no one else will ever know, but it always reminds me of that one line from Jesus Christ Superstar, which is not a direct quote from the Bible, though many people think it is: “There will be poor always.”

If you get a chance, please go to my other blog to read what I wrote there on this same topic today.

Tomorrow is Blog Action Day. Its purpose is to highlight the problem and issue of poverty around the world. A Blog Action Day website has been set up to help track everyone who says they’re going to participate in this action. I’ve decided not only to participate, but I’m going to write a different post for each blog tomorrow, which is the 15th, in case you’re reading this from elsewhere.

For an idea of what your page might look like, though I’m certainly not going to this kind of extreme, check out this post. By the way, you can also donate money to the cause or help promote it in other ways also. Just click on that first link above.

Why not take a stand and have a say? I hope all of you participate in some way.

I’m basically staying non-political on my blogs, because I figure I have my positions and I know who I’m supporting, and why. However, that doesn’t mean that when there’s something that just doesn’t sit right with me that I’m going to let it go, and I don’t really care who it is at that point.

In this case, I’m addressing this issue of wolf hunting in Alaska. I don’t mind there being a hunting season, even though I’m not a hunter, and I know people have their reasons for wanting to hunt, let alone governments having their reasons for allowing specific types of hunting. And I’m not a big animal rights buff. However, hearing that hunters are allowed to shoot wolves from airplanes, and that they’ll get paid a bounty if they turn in wolf paws, just smacks of indecency to me.

Anyway, mixing serious stuff with some entertainment, this little video, though funny in a way, addresses this topic, and pretty much expresses my thoughts on the matter. So, without further ado,…