Cornell's Sex Scandal - Some Sinister Unspoken Problems

 You might be wondering about what Cornell's undergraduate sex scandal has to do with Region 19. That's a fair question.

This post will speak about many profoundly troubling aspects of the Cornell case that have absolutely nothing to do with the details of the incident.

Instead, a number of questions arise that are difficult to ignore.

First, do teen, native social media addicts, exercise sexual behavior radically differently than previous generations?

Second, do traditional laws regarding sexual behavior require serious review and revision?

Third, have school expectations imprinted college aged students with a set of expectations that corrupt the very idea of accountability?

Fourth, have opportunistic, identity politic law firms discovered a cash cow in crippling independent schools of higher learning?

Sex, Social Media, and Children

Any reading of the description of what is alleged to have happened between an anonymous Jane Doe student and at laest seven male students may be surprising to many people.

Everyone with an advocacy campaign spins the information one way or another but the facts of the matter describe students who are comfortable with sexual behaviors that were never normalized to the degree the transcripts witness to. Drug use has long been a college behavior so nothing about that is particurly unusual.

What is different is that rape which is an act of sexual violence has lost all meaning in the social medai ecology. In the context of this civil suit it is nothing more than an antique set of metrics by which criminal status is determined. Yet virtually none of the criteria written into law seems to have imagined a youth culture in which kinky sex is little more than scratching an itch.

Are Laws Regarding Sexual Behavior Obsolete?

The Cornell incident seems to illustrate how inadequate the judicial system has become regarding allegations of sexual misconduct. Decades of Feminist Victim theories and legislation has diluted and rendered moot any reasonable metrics about legal expectations between men and women on many, many issues. Sexual assault claims are muddy as a clay pit and nuttier than a squirrels turd.

And that's a problem. Innocence is costly.

Life's Expectations

Recently, EO Smith changed their educational expectations to allow students who fail tests to retake these tests over and over again. Its an enormous burden on the teaching staff. Nobody gets smarter as a result.

Compounding the situation, teachers who constrain classroom assignments to be completed by a certain date can no longer enforce it. Students are not required to honor completion timelines.

This is part and parcel of the perverse and misguided political pedagogy that advocates equal student outcomes (e.g. "equity"). Nationwide, Democratically controlled districts are dropping requiremnts that students need to read, write, do math, or pretty much exercise their brains at all while attending school. Not to be left out, if teachers no longer have anything to teach, why bother certifying their employment as teachers? That too is being eliminated.

The consequence is that students entering higher education have never encountered adverse consequences. Accountability is just another word they can't spell.

Cornell is an early warning example of what happens when clueless students who are unqualified to control their behavior, recognise a good idea from a bad idea, or even consider a consequence are practicing "My Body, My Choice" in a rabidly litigious society.

So Why a Civil Suit?

This is the equivalent of a 9/11 attack on private academia by legal grifters.

Independent higher education is in free fall. They cannot afford expensive lawsuits, they are barely keeping the lights on. What better time to file civil suits that are institutionally crippling. There's a guaranteed settlement and nothing about these cases matters a whit.

But there's a kicker here. Jane Doe (and a batshit crazy Feminst mob) insist that settled and concluded cases are raw meat to be reopened  because, like the school tests that can be taken over and over and over, the cases can be retried until a desired result is acheived.

As for the idea that  appeals can expire... Why? If students never have to finish by a deadline then surely anyone can change their answers indefitiely.

The towers of higher education and due process are burning.

Critical Thinking Has Been Mugged

 

Educated or Trained?

 

Therapy???

 

Farewell Traditional Education

 

The Teaching Crisis

 

Iowa Democrats

Can this happen in CT?

Oh, yes. Yes it can.

 

One Hundred Ways to Improve the Mansfield Community Center (MCC) [61 - 70]

61.) Commission a mural of  Iryna Zarutska for an exterior MCC wall - a salute to leagl immigration and legitimate hardship consideration

62.) Commission an exterior MCC wall  mural of Charlie Kirk looking at the Mansfield government offices

63.) Commission a mural of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for wall along the MCC track - a salute to physical fitness

64.) Remember those repurposed administrative spaces we cleaned out in  One Hundred Ways to Improve the Mansfield Community Center (MCC) [1 - 10]. Use that space to establish pantry memberships in which needy local families can leverage their MCC membership with a periodic bag of donated groceries.

65.) Eliminate the wasteful and unnecessary practice of approving posters added to message boards. If something is found to be offensive then empower members to remove it, leave it at the front desk for potential reconciliation.

66.) Eliminate the pre-emptive review of art  content from the art show application process. Make it clear that the art must be tasteful and leave it at that. If something of an offensive or inappropriate nature is presented have the management remove it as a matter of practice.

67.) Explore periodic, short-term, low-cost childcare services as a membership benefit. Re-examine a partnership of high school students earning credit for childcare experiences.

68.) Offer Virtual Reality experiences during unused teen center hours.

69.) Sponsor healthy eating presentations by local farmers and grocery providers

70.)  HOWTO Compression, taping, and preventative training seminars

Older posts contain the previous ideas.

I've listed 70. Its up to the rest of the Community to come up with 30 more.

Virtual Reality games

One Hundred Ways to Improve the Mansfield Community Center (MCC) [51 - 60]

There are rumblings that Senior Health benefits like Silver Sneakers are yet again in danger of being eliminated from health care plans due to rising costs and demand for even higher institution compensation demands. The Parks & Rec. consulting recommendations may soon succeed in killing the golden goose based on their worthless advice.

Maintenance week is coming to the Mansfield Community Center (MCC). Pop some popcorn as we wonder if the communication follies of previous years will continue to fester into this year. Last year the upstairs office spaces were all scrubbed down and made clean only to be trashed by all kinds of later in the week ceiling repair and other dusty activities. So the area was cleaned a second time. Spotless. A few days later, dusty maintenance on the first floor drifted upstairs, undoing the second cleanup of the second floor.

#51) improve the communication during maintenance week

#52) Post signs in the changing rooms that everyone using the restroom facilities must absolutely maintain good hygiene habits AND wash their hands before using the swimming pools. This includes the staff.

#53) Start a neighborhood anti-littering campaign. The Region 19 countryside looks as if a a roving caravan of pigs drop their garbage along the countryside.

#54) Fine and expel abusers of the swimsuit water extractor machine.  There is no good reason that its down for maintenance as often as it is and its been reported that its because of misuse and abuse.

#55) likewise offer rewards to identify individuals abusing the exercise equipment causing unnecessary repair costs. The equipment has limits that must be respected.

#56) Start a plateball league

#57) Start some special interest clubs that meet periodically - coin/stamp/cards

#58) Use underutilized meeting spaces for cosplay tournaments (D&D, etc.)

#59) Sponsor community holiday parties for kids 

#60) Create an app that allows Seniors to remotely swipe-in when engaged in Siver Sneaker off-site program activity.

One Hundred Ways to Improve the Mansfield Community Center (MCC) [41 - 50]

The Mansfield Parks & Recreation Department (MP&R) have a serious problem when talking about budgeting and planning. There's a napkin sketch algebra to determining what you're spending and how much you have to spend.

I've found it nearly impossible to untangle the cluster-muck of numbers and membership categories used in managing the Mansfield Community Center (MCC).And it's not only that mess. To top it off the MP&R spending seems to be coupled to the MCC in weird and not so wonderful ways. There will be a bit of redundancy that follows, but...

41. The MCC's budget needs to be autonomous from the rest of the MP&R budget. The scope of the  MCC budget must be constrained to the services offered in that building. Keep it simple. That's what membership pays for.

42. The MCC building is part of the MP&R budget. Mansfield owns the building and makes it available as a public good (that's what "community" means). Membership is not responsible for all the public goods Mansfield owns and maintains (parks, monuments, and so on). 

43. If Mansfield uses Public Works to move dirt around then sweeping the MCC floors is just another aspect of that job description and budget.

44. A senior citizen MCC membership category is unique to Senior Citizens and a nationally recognized metric for membership reimbursement is established and sensible. It's not based on local spending habits, it's based on calculated usage based on well known age limitations and a healthy cadence of attendance.

Senior citizens using insurance aren't the same as "Individual" memberships. They can't take advantage of family aggregate discounts. Their ability to use equipment is limited. There are innumerable reasons why the insurance rate is a sane and reasonable reimbursement.

To encourage the insurance industry to raise this reimbursement rate is the equivalent of asking for across the board increases in health insurance rates, it does nothing to reduce local taxes, and it simply promotes a pattern of inevitable cost inflation. Dumb and dumber.

45. It is not impossible to predict anticipated yearly income and therefore plan expenditures that stay within that constraint. A quick and dirty calculation might be:

Income = cost of doing business + emergency maintenance + planned improvements

It's not unreasonable to plug in last year's actual income as a baseline for the next year. And if you are overspending on the right side of the equation, the solution is to reduce spending.

46. REDUCE SPENDING

47. Use a tool like Trello to visualize a Kanban board of tasks. Trello tools have rows (swim lanes of progress) and columns representing stages of completion and cost).

48. An important swim lane is emergency tasks that require the highest priority attention. This last year, swimming pool repair and air conditioning repair are exactly those kinds of things.

49.The leftmost column is a wish list and must list of  costed tasks to be prioritized WITHOUT EXCEEDING THE ANTICIPATED BUDGET.

50. Plan not to exceed the anticipated budget and no membership fee adjustments are needed.

One Hundred Ways to Improve the Mansfield Community Center (MCC) [31 - 40]

31. Rent a staffer/guide for walks on campus, in parks, or places of interest (Mansfield Walks, Ashford Walks, Willington Walks, and so on)

32. Establish a dodgeball league for R 19 middle school kids

33. Establish a kickball league

34. Teen dance events

35. Instrument all MCC doors to be robot and exo-skelton friendly

36. skating events

37. pickleball equipment rentals

38. Hartford/New Haven/Worcester/Boston/NYC museum bus trips

39. How to apply make-up classes

40. Build a Skateboard classes

One Hundred Ways to Improve the Mansfield Community Center (MCC) [21 - 30]

 Broadcast screens in business settings are more technically called 'Information Radiators'. When they are used most effectively they inform everyone of the most recent status of progress, problems, or other important topics.

21. The information radiator[s] at the Mansfield Community Center (MCC) must make the fiscal condition of the MCC transparent to everyone on a near real-time basis in addition to its current content stream

22. The list of priorities for MCC related spending must be made transparent and public so that the membership can provide a feedback loop as to prioritization and necessity of expenditure

23a, Advertisement from local food, services, and other commercial venues should be offered on MCC information radiators. This creates a virtuous circle of local engagement. The ads can be paid in MCC member discounts at the retailer (they get MCC business, MCC members get value-add to membership - think EO Smith students getting lunch discounts across the street, UConn students likewise, and so on)

-OR-

23b. Ads are paid for, subsidizing the MCC budget

24. Mansfield Parks & Rec. needs to pilot a fleet of driverless Robo-Taxis that can pick up and deliver home MCC members (for a fee)

25. Commence a 'MCC After Hours'  program that keeps only the front lounge and vendor area open for book clubs, political debates, and so on.

26. Extend senior citizen click activity to legitimately qualifying, complementary, off-site programs in Region 19 towns.

27. Eliminate all rate discounts that haven't worked.

28. Uniquely define membership categories

29. Eliminate location specific assignments for fitness center assistants

30. All building maintenance and routine upkeep needs to be done by Public Works employees.

One Hundred Ways to Improve the Mansfield Community Center (MCC) [11 - 20]

11 Keep track of MCC usage metrics - time, who, and so on

12 Automatically shut off all lights and appliances not being used

13 Change the name and mission of the MCC to the Region 19 Community and Lifelong Health Center

14 Same membership fee regardless of Region 19 town residence - practice "Equity" instead of the hypocritical virtue signaling in the "Master Plan"

15 Sponsor a weekly 4 hour, Homeschooling Takeover of the MCC facility. All participants must be members, event sponsored and supervised by the Homeschooling Community. Scheduled during slowest MCC attendance periods - can extend normal operating hours.

16 When you have lemons, make lemonade. The MCC needs to prioritize buying and classifying its equipment to match restorative and therapeutic health benefits so that a health deductible fee of $5/mo can be added to senior citizen insurance paid benefits - its not just a Community Center its a Health Center resource as well.

17 Equipment purchase should be prioritized to emphasize senior citizen needs

18 The MCC has a kitchen. Start a weekly program to teach young adults how to cook, set a table, and clean up. Senior citizens who attend to their health most often win a seat at the table. Local grocery stores and food vendors donate the goods for the meal showing off their prices and product. Young adult membership required, $100/yr

19 Sponsor a biweekly, "How did the grandparents do that?" cooking and demo event in which Grandmas or grandpas give up their favorite recipe secrets by making a favorite dish for sampling

20 Teen sleepover events.

One Hundred Ways to Improve the Mansfield Community Center (MCC) [1 - 10]

1. The members only check-in should happen at the entrance doors

2. New member registration and delusional questions having nothing to do with the MCC should be performed at the Town Offices by any town employee with too much time on their hands

3. Eliminate all employee chairs and stationary desks

4. All employees must exercise Gemba 

5. Eliminate the Front desk area

6. Eliminate the lounge area

7. Eliminate all office spaces except for the one on the second floor. That becomes the only administrative space in the building.

8. Solicit a rotating schedule of food truck offerings that will pay a vendor's fee to the MCC. Nothing attracts potential customers like food trucks.

9. Rent the lounge area to commercial vendors - jewelry, pottery and clay, restaurant and food, etc.

10, Repurpose the lounge furniture to the now empty Front desk space round robin fashion so that people have to speak to each other.

Mansfield Doubling Down on Bad Ideas

 This afternoon the Mansfield Parks & Recreation Department (MP&R) held a public meeting to explain, re-explain, or rationalize their decision to discontinue the use of senior citizen insurance coverage to pay for Mansfield Community Center (MCC) memberships.

The meeting was held in their town hall which always reminds me of this scene from Terry Gilli

am's movie, Brazil. It's a strange little political wonderland squeezed into a former elementary school. I felt like I needed a hall pass on my way to the meeting.

I got there a few minutes late and informally counted 125ish likely medicated senior citizen attendees and a handful of others. The meeting had started at 1 p.m. and the first 40 minutes were a walkthrough of dubious bar charts, wishful thinking, and gas-lighting about *why*, why oh why, the MCC needed to do the dastardly deed.

The first audience person to speak was the previous meeting's insufferable town mayor. In Lewis Carroll fashion she was Late!, Late! for a very important date - elsewhere but, OH BOY, how gratifying to see so many people show up - hiya, hiya, hiya... gotta go.

Of the important points presented these stand out;

One audience member (Ashford) brought attention to the discounted membership fee given to individuals who were teen to 26 years old (40%) while seniors got none whatsoever.

Another member said she simply attended for a specific group class and being forced to pay a monthly fee on top of that was fiscally unacceptable. Another said she would go, shower, use the pool for 15 minutes, shower and leave - costly if a full membership was required.

Another great point was that existing members miss some of the older equipment that was just enough to satisfy their needs now replaced by newer but less user friendly replacements. A feedback loop in purchasing is desired.

The insurance company is in negotiations with the Town of Mansfield discussing rates - so, if only, if only.

As I made my way out of the building, the town was kind enough to offer PTSD lapel ribbons for those who attend town meetings like these and leave with a hurting head. It's not much but its the virtue that counts.

Mansfield, CT's Parks and Recreation and Saving the World Spending Tsunami

 I'm diving into the deep end of Mansfield, CTs hydra of town committees, special interests, and origins of the Mansfield Parks & Rec (MP&R) master plan. I'm currently examining the February agenda document that has many fine details about the fiscal trajectory of the Mansfield Community Center (MCC).

None of the innumerable town committees (many dedicated to the elderly) seem to have any interest or input into the master plan. All of which implies to me that the assertion that the town politicians responsible for vetting the plan and ensuring that there was a rich and vested feedback loop are exaggerated [to be blunt, lying]. From page 49:

One of my favorite (because it works) management techniques is called Kanban. It is implemented using Kanban boards with some level of ToDo, InProcess, and Done columns of publicly visible tasks.
A legitimate ToDo prioritized list would never look like this. The MP&R so-called priorities are a magical thinking set of platitudes.

The acronym CIP stands for continuous improvement process. This is the mythological W.E. Deming methodology that reconstructed Japan's auto, electronics, and high tech industry after WWII. In the 21st century CIPs are a cautionary tale. The introduction of Apple's revolutionary Smart Phone was not the by-product of a CIP applied to a flip phone. It was a radical rethinking of what a phone might be.

So we already have a clue as to why the MCC is digging a fiscal hole.

Another indicator is shown on page 33:

61 new employees and contractors is a lot of wetware and from my experience at the MCC, they aren't dedicated to senior citizen participation. Just another clue as to Why the MCC may be in fiscal dire straits.

On page 34:

At face value it looks like spending is outpacing attendance increases. *That* certainly looks unsustainable.

Potential Novel Legal Responses to Mansfield CT's Elder Abuse Problem

 I previously about Mansfield, CT's chronic hypocrisy with neighboring towns. This doesn't apply to everyone but there's a cohort of snobs who think they are just a cut above the rest. The authors of the Mansfield Parks and Recreation 10 Year Plan that recommends eliminating insurance paid memberships for seniors claim that surveys of opinion and a solicitation of ideas to avoid this conclusion were repeatedly made. And the only members who were solicited were from Mansfield.

Normally I would ask myself, "WTF is wrong with these people?" but I don't bother - Mansfield's historical love for the Other.

Mansfield serves as a stalking horse for Region 19's statewide interests. Former CT Secretary of State, Denise Merrill, recently resigned in the wake of state election issues (hmmm). She proved to be a cash cow as local residents held their noses when she discussed politics but were always welcoming the fiscal showers. My suspicion is that the spigot has been reduced - Mansfield still rolling on a sugar-mommy high.

Well I've been discussing the difference between the actual Mansfield Community Center (owned and operated by the town as a public asset) and the public services made available there through memberships.
The elimination of senior citizen insurance options affects ALL members from wherever they reside. And the fact of the matter is that members from the entire region are being taxed (call it what you want) without representation. Aside from insulting, it's discriminatory in mean and potentially illegal ways.

Should this proposed policy ever be implemented a few legal recourses may be applied to protect the senior citizens.

OSHA

Government workers (such as MMC employees) are not subject to OSHA. But given that the town of Mansfield, CT has turned membership into a local profit making enterprise to pay off government debt then conceptually, the senior citizen community targeted to pay the increased fees may qualify as a labor cohort that *is* covered.

Under that novel definition, the violence of invalidating their insurance benefit may qualify as illegal. The all too frequent failure of the air conditioning systems at the MCC is a specific hazard to senior citizens. Finally the impact of local government stress on senior citizen's well-being is a  potential issue.

Here I'm just spit-balling superficially but I think a class action suit might be worth exploring.

CHRO

The Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities is another resource worth exploring.

Government (e.g. Town of Mansfield) cannot use taxpayer money to run a for profit enterprise. Unlike commercial fitness centers who are losing money, the government can't pursue strategies pursuing ever increasing cost for public services. The MCC represents a regional, default public good resource.

Current scandals at USAID illustrate the scam.  If taxes don't work then obfuscate the spending problems by offsetting increased taxes to a third party - in this case senior citizens.

In this case, government politicians who universally milk the argument that citizens should have access to low-cost health insurance are caught red-handed stripping seniors of using one that they do have based on the premise that their spending habits are more important than the health of their citizens.

Google AI: ""Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" is a well-known phrase from the Declaration of Independence, articulating fundamental human rights. It signifies the freedoms individuals possess to live, make choices, and seek personal fulfillment without undue government interference. "

The 'Stool' in Mansfield, Watch Where You Sit

 The Mansfield, CT Parks and Recreation Ten Year Plan is a piece of work. Silicon Valley futurists speculate a few years from now, maybe to the border of 2030 and then ambiguously, with lots of hand-waving.  I just realized that its something that was adopted about a year ago, is tucked away on a different website than than the town's page, and nobody seems to have know it existed until July2, 2025 when Mansfield mailed "news" about membership fees.

The phrase that sticks in the mind is "We also recognize the personal financial adjustment that may be required...". I'll bet you do.

You see. nowhere in any of the online discussions or literature is the idea that the first order of business would be to have institutionally financially adjusted the town's multi-million dollar budget to ensure that temporal spikes in spending needed to be tempered over time. But its too late for that now and, knowing Mansfield, this isn't a temporary spike in spending - this is a harbinger of debt to come.

On page 43 of the document, a conceptually moronic illustration of a stool is drawn as if it somehow meaningfully depicted an assurance that the town had a stable fiscal vision. I leave it to the reader to make sense of it.

I keep digging for clean data to make sense of Mansfield's accounting practice that should clearly define a dollar amount that can be mapped to a business expense that can be uniquely mapped to a functional responsibility.

For example, is the Public Works Department responsible for the custodial maintenance of all Mansfield public properties including the Mansfield Community Center (MCC)?

And isn't the MCC receptionists who handles A LOT of Mansfield Park & Recreation (P&R) communications P&R employees assigned to the MCC or MCC employees providing pro bono work for the town?

These are not small details when it has been suggested that membership rates should be increased just because accounting tricks are being used to shift Mansfield's self-inflicted fiscal obligations out to an unwitting and unsuspecting public. And we're not even talking about subverting the public's ability to apply low cost insurance toward the service. 

On social media, Mansfield tax payers insist they OWN the MCC, the parks, the playgrounds, and so on. If that's the case then the daily operation and maintenance of all of it is a (proud) fiscal obligation of the Mansfield tax base to navigate and manage. Period. If *that* stuff is the reason that there's a cost deficit then that's not on the membership holder to bear.

Mansfield taxpayers who insist they don't use the MCC want to disown their obligation to pay for community assets. Some even absurdly insist that a non-taxpayer stepping into a public park is a freeloader. American values are being turned on their head by governmental malfeasance.

So far the puddle of incompetence that stool is sitting on includes:

• poorly or undefined MCC costs
  
  
• subversion of the legitimate exercise of applying insurance benefits (Is it a benefit if the government can cancel it?)
  
  
• negligence in educating and informing the public as to the purpose and scope of civic obligations
  
  
• promoting bigotry  (age, class, ???)

The legs of that stool are equally nefarious. There is no accountability for the growth of the cost of services. None. 

Mansfield taxpayers are imprinted to believe that the solution to fiscal problems is to find somebody/anybody to pay for them. There is no impulse to examine the cost and manage it. And the politicians are skilled at instrumenting actual costs into a whack-a-mole fool's errand.

There are no beneficiaries of service - there are only consumers who are willing to pay an honest price for an honest product.  They aren't joining to pay off systemic mismanagement.

And when it comes to service categories, Silver Sneakers, et al are one of those categories. 

Mansfield CT Welcomes "The Other"

 Mansfield, Ct has about much use for "The Other" (you know, illegal immigrant references, "boink! - ouch!") as Martha's Vineyard has. You wouldn't know it though. You can get a deep summer tan from the shine of signal virtue, lawn signs on Mansfield country roads.

An actual illegal immigrant - the kind you meet in Willimantic's Walmart isles - might mistakenly think Mansfield is a soft touch. The reality is that Mansfield Parks and Recreation Department (no doubt with a cross reference from the Martha's Vineyard playbook) is more likely to hand them a useful map as to where to find gardening, poultry processing, or otherwise job opportunities - and this is key - somewhere else. Don't rape anyone on the way there.  <- *THIS IS SATIRE* (Mansfield can be cruelly humorless at times.

That brings us to a far more nefarious "other" lurking far closer than the Texas/Mexico border - Ashford and Willington. The whole Region 19 thing is sooo awkward. I mean everybody knows sports are healthy things but then there's the issue of two teams, Mansfield and anybody else. This is a problem for Mansfield Parks and Recreation - the other team is using outdoor parks that Mansfield taxpayers have now designated as a cost center.

Something is going to have to give. F'n senior citizens don't play soccer, baseball, or any of the other stuff without an arm or leg falling off. The money has got to come from somewhere.

Mansfield Parks and Recreation is baking in class warfare in their ten year plan. Mansfield's idea of "community" means that tightly coupled Region 19 communities are treated like "the Other" and welcomed with a Welcome tax on top of the cost of participation in their ever-so-virtuous public services.

It's penny ante stuff but... still - for real?

The Mansfield CT Map is Different From the Un-Charted Territory

 The Mansfield Parks and Recreation Department has managed to assemble a ten year master plan.

It's a piece of work that reads like an Aryan Race Handbook for cost of oven operations during WWII.

There's a chart that has been particularly perplexing to me that appears on page 53.

For a long time I just couldn't figure out where these percentages could possibly come from - so strange.

Then it occurred to me that the chart has nothing to do with accuracy but instead a manufactured justification for the narrative of the plan which is, in and of itself, a tautology.

Here's the paradox. Believe it or not, insurance companies can do morally and ethically good things. I know. That's an unexpected twist. So what can I possibly be referring to? Well, it's the Silver Sneakers/Renew Active insurance policies for seniors.

The intent (a successful one) is to encourage seniors to maintain healthier lifestyles and so on. It keeps insurance rates down, yada yada. I mean this is truly a great program for all the right reasons AND it establishes a realistic baseline of the reimbursement for their use of services from a participating "community center" - as of this writing, $3/visit to a max of $30/mo.

Seniors aren't wearing out the equipment either, they require no supervision, and leave the place like they found it - low cost/high return - win/win/win. Seriously. Seniors are a temporal value-add in every sense of the concept.

The chart certainly lists these programs as line items but every column has no relationship to the goals of the insurance and senior participants.

No. the Cost Recovery column distorts everything. We have no idea what cost means or why seniors are responsible for recovering that cost percentage or why cost recovery is a criteria for evaluating a noble insurance policy. And the other columns are simply collateral fictions intended to mislead.

The insurance policy is assuming the community center already has everything required for seniors as a subset of normal operating procedure. There's no added cost for a senior walking in the door. This a deceit - yet another take-advantage-of-seniors ploy to manipulate their emotions and age compromised judgement into thinking they need to pay more to get out of a jam.

Why is the Mansfield CT Community Center using these tactics? Is it incapable of welcoming seniors in whatever numbers to stay healthy first?

Charts and draconian accounting tricks are an ad hominem character assassination technique repeatedly found in the Facebook discussion of this topic. For sensitive older people this kind of deceitful rhetoric is more than insulting, it's yet another psychic papercut.

This chart is really a subliminal message about greed. The message is that if the insurance coverage would just pay a max monthly membership fee, Parks and Recreation could keep spending money like drunken sailors on leave. Nobody cares if you come or go or drop dead - to hell with the insurance companies incentivizing regular attendance - the Little Shop of Fiscal Horrors needs to be fed a bigger, more certain portion.

Swarmy Expectations: Mansfield CT Public Works

 The general public's understanding of of creating a public works project is pure ignorance. Parks, Statues, monuments, buildings, and civic projects are politically sacred obligations intended for posterity. 

When Mansfield, CT decided to build a Community Center 20 odd years ago someone should have explained this to them. Something along the lines of, "Oh, by the way, you build it - it's yours to have, hold and maintain, kit and kaboodle,  FOR POSTERITY". But that's not what was sold to them. Uh uh.

The citizens of Mansfield were sold an ever-Wokey nirvana-esque pit stop for peace, love, and understanding that involved all of Region 19 with Mansfield residents being very, very special and everybody else paying the overhead. Well, I'm getting ahead of the story.

 Most of the Mansfield public not imprinted with the woke mind virus understood it would never break even in terms of expenses and were more or less resigned to that reality. Putting up with listening to health nuts sing Kumbaya once in a while was tolerable and NO BIG DEAL.

But there was another disconnect. The building and the services offered in that building are two separate cost centers both of which were being taxed locally in Mansfield! Local taxes HAD TO pay for the public works thing built next to Mansfield's pos government offices. I mean you can't just hide it. Not that they didn't try by having an ugly, perfunctory MLK mural slapped on the side of the building to ward off anyone who might make noise. "Look, we got a therapy mural!"

But as the shiny new object got more expensive to operate, the local posse of political hacks began devising strategies to turn that Nirvanistic rat's nest of health seeking locals into an engine of health for profit. Now we've caught up.

Why are Mansfield tax-payers paying for the services side of the equation? Dagnabit, these angry citizoids were told to believe that they would have FREE (as in "free beer") access to the now legendary town under-utilized facility thing. Not that they actually ever want to go in there - its just the principle of not being asked to pay twice - this a theme that we will return to.

This cohort of social media participants could care less about senior citizens. It's a show-me-the-money crowd. Not that there's anything wrong with senior citizens.

The Facebook Mansfield Connection Censored Entry

 I've been doing some free (as in free beer) analysis and troubleshooting work locally because the Community Center I attend in Mansfield, CT is trying to pull a fast one (as in fraudulent scam) involving Senior Citizen insurance benefits.

The Mansfield Community Center has created a political narrative that removes Tivity Health based reimbursement incentives (Silver Sneakers, et al) from being used to access the facility offerings.

The politicians claim the facility is being short-changed. I attended the public meeting. Mansfield's Facebook page is where the issue is being discussed and my remark was censored. This is the exchange of interest.

"I attended the Mansfield Silver sneakers public hearing and will provide some information that should open some eyes.

The first speaker noted that the Board claimed that the Silver Sneakers reimbursement claim was incorrect. I looked up his assertion in Google AI.

Mansfield Parks and Rec claims that "For every dollar received for a traditional MCC membership the insurance providers reimburse an average just 42 cents. Unfortunately, the revenues received from insurance carriers to provide these services are not adequately offsetting the costs." This is not only a fraudulent claim but it is equally disingenuous in its attempt to gaslight the public.

An individual MCC membership fee is $39.00/mo. $39 x .42 = $16.38/mo reimbursement. The problem is that that's not how reimbursement works.

Google AI: "The reimbursement that a community center or gym receives from Tivity Health, the parent company of Silver Sneakers, is typically on a per-visit basis.[1] This means the facility is paid each time a Silver Sneakers member checks in.

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Steven Knauf

What I find interesting is that a for profit business seems to think it is profitable enough to continue but that a government department does not think this is so. This is rather unique in my experience. Perhaps we should compare how each is applying this to see if any modifications should be made to make the program more profitable.

Also, will there be a review of policies if the projected income does not materialize and/or if there is a drop in membership from people 65 and older.

Last thing....is every program at the center run at a profit?

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Frank Krasicki

Steven Knauf Google AI: "Understanding the project involves grasping its purpose, scope, and the processes involved in its execution and completion. This includes defining clear goals, understanding the project's lifecycle, and identifying key components like scope, time, cost, and quality. A project is a temporary endeavor with a defined beginning and end, aiming to create a unique product, service, or result."

IMO (and I don't think I'm wrong) when government dedicates itself to a long term public works project, say a Community Center, it is performing a civic entanglement, much like marriage, "for better or for worse". In other words, this isn't about initial cost but about long term civic upside - not always fiscal.

This Mansfield government doesn't understand the project. The MCC is a maintenance challenge. It requires a thoughtful maintenance schedule that softens that cost. Mansfield's P&R budget spending resurfaced the gym floor, bought lots of new equipment, added an outdoor pickleball court, added a new massive playground, on and on and on. It exploded the public works budget and played accounting tricks with lots of loosey-goosey cost centers. And, as an inevitable consequence, has saddled future generations of tax-payers with the continuing maintenance and upkeep cost.

So it comes as no surprise, that they're phishing for money and the seniors are an easy (but pyrrhic) cash cow to cover their spending addiction.

When I queried Google Ai about Mansfield's budget, it suggested that Mansfield has added a lot of new employees lately. It's that sucking sound you hear around town.

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Steven Knauf

I don't believe the seniors are an easy cash cow. I agree with you it is pyrrhic at best. I think it sends a bad message but time will tell."

AI in Education

Time to Sunset the Federal Department of Education

The weaponization of public schools as indoctrination camps for the teacher's unions is unacceptable. It is one thing to advocate for the teaching profession itself and quite another to engage in political hate rhetoric against half the voting population of America.

It is also high time to apply the demand for gender equality and equity to the teaching profession at all educational levels. Children deserve and need strong, smart male role models teaching side by side with women. Time to walk the walk.

Can the NEA's disconnect with America's parents and children become any more obvious than this?

Hartford Public Schools and Money

 I found this site to be fascinating.

"It’s a “loan.”  No, it’s a “reallocation.”  No, it’s a “reimbursement.” 

The first two are illegal so the third was concocted (and needs an audit) to justify the city of Hartford allowing Hartford Schools Superintendent Torres-Rodrigeuz to pillage the Other Post-Employment Benefits trust fund (OPEB), a trust fund set up to provide benefits beyond pensions to employees of Hartford Public Schools, not a trust fund to bailout the financial malfeasance of a not-ready-for-prime-time superintendent."