From Politico:

“CONNECTICUT — Hospitals in the state have filed a petition to CMS alleging that Connecticut is “illegally administering” its Medicaid program by paying inadequate rates for treatment and imposing a $556 million tax on providers. “Connecticut’s Medicaid payment system has degraded to a point where provider payments are no longer sufficient to assure efficiency, economy, quality of care, and adequate access to care for Medicaid beneficiaries,” the petition says. The state’s hospital association and 20 hospitals also appealed a state court’s ruling on the tax to a state Superior Court. The group’s claim against the tax was denied by two state agencies last month.”

Note that Yale is not included as a signatory to the petition. It recently won approval from state regulators to take over Lawrence and Memorial Hospital. You decide if that has anything to do with Yale’s sudden satisfaction with Medicaid reimbursements.

Here it is:

RE: Pakistani Doctors

From:podesta@podesta.com (This is Tony Podesta, John’s brother)

To: john.podesta@gmail.com

CC: eryn.sepp@gmail.com

Date: 2015-07-17 17:44

Subject: FW: Pakistani Doctors

Promised vin that I would bring to your attention

Not sure if this can be moved or if 500k is important

Tony

Vins cell 202 351 1619

From: Vincent Roberti [mailto:vroberti@robertiwhite.com]

Sent: Friday, July 17, 2015 2:18 PM

To: Tony Podesta

Subject: Pakistani Doctors

Tony – We represent the Pakistani Doctors of America. They are 18,000 strong. They have their annual summer retreat this year from August 13th to the 16th. Essentially ‎Thursday thru Sunday. There will be more than 5,000 attendees. We have been negotiating with Dennis Chang and Michael Smith for nearly 2 months.  After weeks they came back to us and offered Wednesday the 12th.  Although we were clear with them how hard this was going to be given that most of the members have already booked their flights, we convinced the leadership of the group to push forward.  If they were to do this Friday Saturday or Sunday as we suggested I believe we would have been seven (7) figures no problem.  With the  change we down-graded it to 250k although I still believe we will hit 500k.  The response time has been terrible and frankly they have placed me in an extremely embarrassing position with my client, not to mention leaving the opportunity for 7 figures and more going forward. I can tell you that Nancy Pelosi would tolerate this for 2 seconds.   Email doesn’t do the situation justice.  I really need to have a conversation with John directly.

Thanks Vin

from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.

Politicos and others get in a confused twist over what sort of identification voters need to present in order to cast a ballot at their polling place. You do not need a photo ID. You should present some sort of document that matches the name and address on the voter roll. A credit card with your signature should also satisfy the election official. Failing that, every polling ought to have a statement you can complete and sign that states the person signing is the same person whose name appears on the voter list.

The Secretary of the State’s office provides this explanation. Tell your friends who may not have a driver’s license, the most common form of ID in a state of drivers.

Juries seem pre-disposed to believing people in politics are corrupt. They also do not believe their testimony when they testify in their own defense. After a six week trial, jurors found two defendants–New Jersey Governor Chris Christie enforcers Bill Baroni and Bridget Kelly–were found guilty of abusing their authority as government employees. The George Washington Bridge scandal–as it became known–involved members of Christie’s inner circle closing lanes on the New Jersey side of the bridge in 2013 in retribution for a local Democratic mayor’s refusal to endorse Republican Christie’s re-election bid.

The third member of the Christie bridge triangle, David Wildstein, made a deal with prosecutors and testified against his former colleagues. He is likely to get considerable credit when a sentence is imposed.

Connecticut Democrats under scrutiny in a criminal investigation of the financing of Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s 2014 re-election campaign may want to ponder the Wildstein example.

Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Peter Zarella announced this morning that he will leave the court at the end of December. Justice Zarella was appointed to the Superior Court in 1996 and elevated to the high court in 2001 by Governor John G. Rowland.

Justice Zarella spent his career before his appointment to the bench in private practice. He became familiar in political circles as the rare successful Republican party leader in the vote-rich suburb of West Hartford.

Justice Zarella has maintained his dignity and fought his corner in a court that has become notable for its public displays of vituperation and pettiness. He will join McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter, LLP, in January.

2016-10-29_11-52-51-mp4

It’s unsettling to hear. It must be alarming for residents of Ansonia,  Beacon Falls, Bethany, Derby, Hamden, Naugatuck, and Woodbridge to realize that Democratic state Senator Joseph Crisco is in a high and frequent state of confusion over his own record. In this podcast interview with the Valley Independent, Crisco, who turned 82 in June, refuses to acknowledge he voted for two historic tax increases in 2011 and 2015. The 11-term veteran insists they did not become law. Of course, they did and with Crisco’s critical vote.

No wonder Crisco is rarely ventures onto the campaign trail alone.

You can see the entire Crisco interview here, as well as one with Republican George Logan.

What next? House Republican Leader Themis Klarides gets a co-starring role in a mailer from her close friend and political ally House Majority Leader Joseph Aresimowicz (D-Berlin) to voters in his district. Whatever Klarides gets out of the tight relationship with Aresimowicz, it has reaped no benefits for her caucus members or the citizens of Connecticut. Klarides has been unable to get votes on state employee contracts from her union factotum special friend.

They may want to check the rooms for wires at the December holiday meeting of the Democratic Governors Association in New Orleans. The December 4th and 5th pay-to-play festival of checks features the host governor, Louisiana’s John Bel Edwards, and six visiting governors. They include Connecticut’s Daniel P. Malloy, whose 2014 re-election campaign is at the center of a Federal criminal investigation over campaign finances and other things. Virginia’s Terry McAuliffe, who is shocked, absolutely shocked, to find himself ensnared in a Federal criminal investigation of his 2013 campaign finances and also some personal matters.

Lame duck from Vermont, wildly unpopular Peter Shumlin, will also attend his DGA swan song.

Legendary 20th century Connecticut and national Democratic chairman John M. Bailey had an almost mystically belief in high school mock election results as accurate predictors of the the final outcome. He might have changed it after seeing this year’s Ridgefield High School results.

Clinton 132/Trump 150

Blumenthal 150/Carter 132

Himes 159/Shaban 132

Among the many curiosities of these results, you may be certain that if Jim Himes outruns Sergeant Blumenthal in any town in the 4th CD there will be tensions in the upper ranks of the state’s Democratic organization. Himes will become an object of unrelenting suspicion, which will be a story worth watching as a re-elected Blumenthal, 70, becomes the oldest man (Connecticut has only elected men) to represent the state in the U.S. Senate.

Ruction readers, if you have high school mock election results please send them and I’ll post as received and verified. 

House Republican Leader Themis Klarides confirmed concerns about her alliances again this weekend. While most legislative candidates were using the second to the last weekend before November 8th to campaign, Klarides left the trail to visit her very close friend, House Majority Leader and speaker in waiting Joseph Aresimowicz (D-Berlin). That’s Klarides’s supine assistant, Vincent Candelora on the left. He posted the troubling photo on Facebook.

With nearly two dozen open seats and opportunities to defeat incumbent Democrats, Republican candidates are counting on aggressive campaign leadership from Klarides. Her politics of relationships, devoid of firm beliefs, may continue to hold back party prospects. It’s why House Republicans worry that no matter how many seats they win Klarides’ most important relationship is with the top Democrat in the House.