Balancing the budget, $23.95 at a time

We mailed an international envelope with $23.95 in postage on it. The post office cancelled the postage and returned the envelope marked “postage due,” demanding another $16.60 because it wasn’t a flat rate envelope. Except that it was.

They marked up the envelope to make it unusable, so we have to repack the order. They marked up the postage to make it unusable, so we have to pay for new postage. The post office should look at what happened, apologize, and cover the postage on the replacement package. But the reality is that the $23.95 is gone, because the only recourse that the post office offers is to fill out a form requesting a refund, which the post office will sit on for months and eventually refuse in the hope that we won’t appeal.

Mistakes happen. This one was that an incompetent postal worker didn’t know the post office’s own range of envelopes, and couldn’t be bothered to read the words “Flat Rate” printed on the envelope. What bugs me isn’t the mistake. It’s that the post office’s policy is to penalize the customer for their worker’s mistake.

Ghosts of evil past

RadioBoston asked what questions people have for Martha Coakley. Here’s one:

According to lawyers all over the area when you were district attorney, you trained a generation of ADAs to lie in court, withhold evidence, and disregard both truth and justice, all to further your pursuit of higher political office. As attorney general, you have quashed investigations into Beacon Hill, allowed insurance rates to skyrocket, and failed to address the mortgage crisis in any way that truly helps homeowners or punishes banks. When you insisted on arguing a case before the Supreme Court yourself, you somehow failed to convince a conservative pro-prosecutor Supreme Court to rule in favor of prosecutors. That ruling is what has now led to the fallout from Annie Dookhan being such a mess. As governor, who would you lie to, lie about, threaten, or lock up in order to improve education, transportation, human rights, and economic opportunity in the Commonwealth?

Here is what I wrote in 2010. I still believe it to be true:

Martha Coakley is deeply unprincipled. She serves her own ambition, and nothing else. She does not believe in the rule of law, or fairness, or justice. She willfully damaged her community as a prosecutor over and over again. She sanctioned child molestation, shielded predators, and persecuted the innocent. And when given the responsibility to hire and train young attorneys, she coached them to lie to judges, conceal evidence, and do everything in their considerable power to destroy people’s lives, innocent or not, in a quest for headlines.

I will not consent to give a person like that my vote.

While I would prefer that political candidates be, on the whole, cut from better cloth than they generally are, I do not refuse to vote for candidates simply because they are thoroughly flawed. I do not refuse to vote for candidates simply because their ideals, principles, beliefs, goals, or actions are at odds with some of mine. I can overlook a lot, but I cannot vote for a person I truly believe is evil. I believe with all my heart that Martha Coakley’s success has been a triumph of evil.

I know that there are many good people and informed people who will vote for Martha Coakley. You, dear reader, may be one of those people. You may believe that Martha Coakley cannot possibly be as bad or dangerous or immoral as all that, or you may believe that there are other concerns which warrant voting for someone who is. If so, please know that I disagree. 

Voting for Carl Sciortino

I’m voting for Carl Sciortino for Congress, and I encourage everyone in this district to do the same. This is not criticism of the other candidates. This is wholehearted enthusiasm for Carl.

I’ve known Carl for many years as my state rep. I actually spoke with him as a state rep before I was redistricted into his district a couple of years ago. I’ve seen him at dozens of public meetings and events, and I’ve spoken with him at length about issues ranging from taxes to transportation to arts funding to CORI reform. He is smart, thoughtful, friendly, and genuine. (That’s not true of enough people, let alone enough politicians.) When I have talked with him about an issue that was new to him, he has listened to my thoughts, gone and learned more, and then gotten back to me. I agree with him on many issues, but more importantly I trust his priorities. He values people, he values transparency, and he values clear and open communication. He is clear about his views without dismissing others.

Carl has also been a very effective state rep. He has been a leader within the legislature on transportation issues, education reform, and human rights. He has been extremely accessible to his constituents, open to talking to anyone. I’ve often written in his name when I was not satisfied with the choices on the ballot for various races. I would love to have him as my Congressman.

Our Congress is currently extremely broken. I’m under no illusion that Carl will be able to fix that. But he will stand up for progressive values without increasing the polarization, he will work to pass and improve legislation that can make it through a broken Congress, and he will be in a good position to help our country become a better country as Congress eventually returns to the important work of governing.

So I’m voting for Carl Sciortino, and I hope you do as well.

A lecture on October 28

Swarthmore President Rebecca Chopp hosts Political Science Professor Ben Berger in a lecture:

"Guilty—with an explanation: Moral engagement and disengagement in democractic life"

Each day we engage with certain moral principles and follow through with appropriate actions. We also selectively disengage from other moral principles. How do these processes work? Should some kinds of moral engagement and disengagement concern liberal democracies more than others? This topic bridges research from political theory, moral philosophy, social psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.

Monday, October 28, 2013
Reception with hors d'ouevres and wine at 6 pm, talk begins at 7 pm

Boston Marriott Copley Place
110 Huntington Ave
Boston, MA 02116

RSVP by October 21 to the Alumni Relations Office at alumni@swarthmore.edu or 610-328-8402.

Early intervention is many things

Early intervention is periodic formal testing of your child, telling you whether or not your child is sufficiently developmentally delayed to qualify for service.

Early intervention is periodic formal testing of your child, telling you whether or not your parenting has been adequate.

Early intervention is seeing your child qualify for services, then learn to walk, then actually start early intervention and have early intervention take credit for teaching him how to walk.

Early intervention is weekly visits to your home where a specialist works with your child on whatever skills you want them to focus on. The specialist answers your questions, offers suggestions, explains their methods, and includes you as a parent in the planning and the activities.

Early intervention is weekly visits to your home where a specialist works with your child on whatever skills the specialist wants to focus on. The specialist undermines your authority in the home and disrupts the nature of your home as a safe space.

Early intervention is weekly written notes evaluating your child, creating an enormous set of paper records that cannot possibly help your child. Early intervention is also being handed written notices telling you your legal rights over and over and over again, as if they can’t believe that you’re honestly not going to exercise your rights to escape from early intervention.

Early intervention is a playgroup with structured activities that you have to fight to get your child into for six months, while they keep promising that admission is right around the corner. Early intervention is where your toddler with excellent motor skills is placed in a group with barely crawling infants. Early intervention is where healthy snacks are fruit punch, cookies, and Froot Loops, where a rule against fruit means serving grapes or jam-filled cookies, where a rule against bare feet means that only some of the kids have bare feet, and where the teaching assistants barely seem to have a clue how to interact with a child. Early intervention is where the group’s daily schedule is written out, posted on the wall, and completely ignored. Early intervention is where the changing table is broken, the carpets aren’t cleaned correctly, and your wallet is stolen. Early intervention is continually dashed expectations and broken promises.

Some days, early intervention is a teacher misjudging your child’s emotional state, refusing to respect your knowledge about your child, and silently disregarding your instructions.

Some days, early intervention is a teacher telling you that you’re the one holding your child back. What a nasty thing to tell a parent, no matter whether it’s true.

Can't get away from the news

So the House of Rs has shut down the government, hurting a lot of people. Possibilities: 1. They think they'll gain a long-term political advantage by doing this, and that's worth hurting a lot of people. 2. They think they'll actually win some or all of their latest demands, and that's worth hurting a lot of people. 3. Shutting down the government and hurting a lot of people is not a means to an end; this is the actual goal.

I don't really care which of these is true. I just want to go visit Acadia National Park and forget about the news. And I can't, because the national parks are all closed.

Questions that should not be hard for a health insurance plan to answer

Is a lab in-network for my insurance plan?

CIGNA's answer: Maybe. There's no way to know for sure, unless you use Quest. See what happens. Depends on who decides to bill under which provider number. Answers from the lab or from CIGNA in advance do not correlate to how the claim is processed. No way to obtain a definitive answer that you can then rely on.

If a lab is in-network, should the insurance plan cover the out-of-network pathologist claim tied to that lab as if the pathologist were in-network?

CIGNA's answer: No. Yes. Maybe. No written policy.

If a lab is not in-network, should a claim be paid as in-network if an in-network doctor chose them?

CIGNA's answer: No. Tough luck, you should always check on which lab your doctor is using for every test, even though we offer no definitive answers on whether any given lab is actually in-network. But no written policy saying this.

If a lab is not in-network, should a claim be paid as in-network if nobody in-network can provide the same test?

CIGNA's answer: No. Yes. Maybe. Could fall under medical necessity, but that would probably require an appeal and massive cooperation from your doctors.

If a lab is not in-network, how can the insurance company say that the lab failed to follow insurer guidelines and therefore the patient owes nothing to the lab?

CIGNA's answer: Um, well, that's what the EOB says, but we might change that later, and there is no way to guarantee finality.

If a lab is not in-network, how can the insurance company apply a discount to the amount that we owe the lab?

CIGNA's answer: No answer.

Does a payment to an out-of-network provider cross-accumulate toward the in-network individual deductible? Toward the in-network family deductible? Toward the in-network individual out-of-pocket maximum? Toward the in-network family out-of-pocket maximum?

CIGNA's answer: Yes to all of these. But not until the out-of-network claim is actually processed, even if that takes much longer than any other claims. And we won't give this information in writing.

If the order of claims affects how much the patient owes, should claims be processed in order of date of service? In order of date of claims submission? In whatever order most benefits the patient? In whatever order most benefits the insurer?

CIGNA's answer: In order of date of claims submission, subject to a lot of random variation, with hints of an internal policy of rigging the processing order to benefit CIGNA. No written policy, not even an internal written policy answering this question.

If claims are processed in the wrong order, how can that be corrected? Can $1000 that the insurer wrongly told the patient to pay to 20 different providers be reimbursed by the insurer directly to the patient, since the providers have already been paid? If the insurer now sends payments to 20 different providers that duplicate payments that the insurer already told the patient to pay, can we get a list of those payments? Can amounts that the HRA wrongly paid on the patient’s behalf be reimbursed directly to the patient? Restored to the HRA?

CIGNA's answer: Claims are always processed in the correct order. Mistakes cannot happen. You can always appeal, but you cannot reference any written policy about how claims should be processed. Duplicate payments to in-network providers can only be sent by CIGNA to the providers, with no tracking of those payments available to the customer. If an amount was wrongly paid by the HRA, the customer must convince the provider to refund the HRA payment to CIGNA, who will then theoretically put the money back into the HRA account, where the customer can then submit manual requests for the HRA to send payments to other providers. So if CIGNA told the HRA to pay Doctor A and told the customer to pay Doctor B, and then CIGNA later decides to pay Doctor A themselves, the customer must convince Doctor A to refund the HRA payment to CIGNA, wait for CIGNA to put it back into the HRA, then ask CIGNA to pay Doctor B with the HRA funds, wait for that payment to go through, and then convince Doctor B to refund the customer's original payment to Doctor B. Because what could go wrong?

The above questions are really about how the health insurance plan should work. Then there’s the parallel questions of how it will work, since practice and theory differ. It seems like somebody should be able and willing to provide authoritative answers to at least some of those questions, in a way which we can then insist that the insurer abide by those answers. But, well, no.

Roof notes

(with links I want to save)

Because the solar companies told us we need to deal with our roof, we started learning about roofs. They’re much more complicated than I thought. The big problem for us is the chimney flashing, which is not in great shape. We don’t want more lead on the house, but lead flashing is the standard choice in these parts. The roofer we were going to use won’t consider any alternatives. Lead flashing stays much more intact than lead paint, but it can have some runoff, and installation and removal both are much more problematic than commonly acknowledged. And where our chimney is, any lead dust running off from around the chimney (from cutting the lead, deburring it, grinding it out, or just continued degradation from environmental exposure) will go straight into a very small garden that we want to be working in.

The other good choices seem to be removing the chimney entirely or using copper flashing. (Copper isn’t great to ingest, but it’s not as bad as lead, and there’s a lot of copper in roofing shingles anyway to reduce algae growth.) I’m not sure why nobody considers zinc. We can’t remove the chimney until we change out the furnace (planned for the next few years), the water heater (as soon as feasible), and the fireplace (need to learn more). But it would make a lot of sense to remove it: it’s usefulness is declining, maintenance is a giant expensive headache, and it’s an enormous roof penetration that coincidentally makes house fires worse.

We might talk to GF Sprague, Ranch Roofing, or someone else recommended on the Arlington List. We have three quotes from other roofers, only one of which seems sufficiently detailed.

I’d love to rebuild the front porch and dormer over it at the same time, but we can’t live through that kind of construction with a toddler. And we still won’t be able to make our house look like this one.

For solar reflectivity, asphalt shingles vary from terrible to bad. Medium gray is pretty close to light gray in reflectivity, and is not as terrible as very dark gray or black.

If we ever do more work on the inside of the house, there’s some ideas at aMortonDesign, Clarke Carpentry, and Second Life. Or we could do more ourselves with help from Mr. Pete. We’re adding some shelving to my office, but I don’t really want to do more interior work anytime soon.

Shop class

Solar, the postscript

The Massachusetts last chance auction for SRECs was completed last week. This is the mechanism that SunBug described to me as a price floor for SRECs, a mechanism to guarantee that SRECs would always be worth a minimum of $300 each. It’s an annual fixed price auction at $300, but Massachusetts forgot to require the utilities to actually buy the leftover SRECs at that auction.

There were 38,866 SRECs available. How many cleared? All? Almost all? 75%?

3.

Not 3%. Just 3.

They sold 3 SRECs at the last chance auction. Out of 38,866.

Maybe it looks better in dollar figures. The state put a lot of work into auctioning off $11,659,800 in SRECs. The utilities collectively purchased $900. The state probably spent two to three orders of magnitude more than that to run the auction.

The state did jump in and announce that they were buying all the rest of the SRECs themselves, in a one-time gimmick designed to shift everyone’s embarrassment and anger down the road a year. And they stated very clearly that they won’t do that again.

So there you have the final word on the state’s price support mechanism for SRECs. It was a colossal failure.

If you’re planning on putting in solar in Massachusetts, don’t do it based on fantasies about how much income you’re going to get from SRECs. The state might change the rules, but as things stand now there is no price floor. The folks saying that a long-term target of $150 per SREC is reasonable look a lot more plausible now.

Opinions, not facts, about the candidates for Medford City Council

Medford City Council elections are coming up, sadly. Here are the candidates, complete with my opinions or the opinions I’ve heard from others:

Michael Marks (incumbent): the best of a truly terrible group of incumbents
Breanna Lungo-Koehn (incumbent): somewhat harmless
Paul Camuso (incumbent): sometimes harmless
Frederick Dello Russo, Jr. (incumbent): desperate to appear harmless
Robert Penta (incumbent): this is the lunatic who gets Medford City Council into the papers for all the wrong reasons
Rick Caraviello (incumbent): the new guy, anti-Green Line
Robert FitzPatrick: clearly the best candidate
Adam Knight: can’t find any actual policies, though he appears pro-labor
Mark Crowley: some good ideas, but he must know he’s being completely dishonest about property tax rates as his leading issue (we care about how much we pay, not about the calculation that got us there)
Robert Cappucci: prominent local Republican
Neil Osborne: appears to have the full support of Bill Wood and Carolyn Rosen, the worst people in Medford
Jeanne Martin: goes on endless incoherent public tirades, frequently uses "liberal" as an epithet, vehemently opposed to just about everything
Jim Morse: writes a lot about local issues, an anti-development and anti-Green Line crusader

Now let’s create an interesting and smart Medford City Council. Here’s a slate: Ken Krause, Sharon Guzik, Doug Carr, Laurel Ruma, Dee Morris, John Roland Elliott, and Allison Goldsberry. Why are none of these people running?

I’ll be loyal to any brand that deserves it

It’s been an exciting month on the appliances front.

Our Samsung refrigerator (less than 2 years old) has been behaving badly for months. The freezer frosted up constantly, the freezer glides weren’t working correctly, and Samsung was being a real pain to deal with. Lisa and I finally did good cop/bad cop and got Samsung to send a tech to do a warranty repair, and two weeks ago the tech finally replaced a freezer glide and admitted that it was defective. Problem solved.

Two hours later, the Kenmore gas dryer (well over 15 years old) stopped heating up. Lisa’s dad (a mechanic) had been planning to visit later in the week, so we waited for him to show up to start taking things apart. The first YouTube video for the dryer model showed how to check the various electrical components in the back of the dryer for continuity, including a fuse. Bingo. The fuse was busted, Sears had the $16 part only 6 miles away, and now the dryer works.

So we decided to tackle the GE gas range (8 years old). The oven had been whooshing since the winter, and had been getting slower and slower to get up to temperature. And the burners had been pulsing if the oven was on at the same time, which didn’t look right at all. Some web research suggested that it could be the oven igniter, and some further web research turned up some pretty clear video and photos about how to replace the igniter. Amazon had the part for $26 (far better than $93 direct from GE for the identical part), and the second time they shipped it to us the igniter arrived intact. And now our range works.

Yesterday we discovered that the large Frigidaire window air conditioner (7 years old) taking care of our entire first floor had gotten its drain plugged up, and had damaged some floor, some wall, some carpet, and the window. We’re not fixing the air conditioner; replacing it seems like the better plan.

A house can be unending problems, and that can get terribly overwhelming. But the satisfaction of reducing the list of problems and fixing some of those problems ourselves is enormous.

Solar, part 3

A company called SolarFlair is doing the Solarize program for Newton and Brookline, and offering much better base pricing and a 10-year labor warranty rather than SunBug’s 5-year labor warranty. The base pricing goes down to $3.69/watt with SunBug if enough people sign up, while SolarFlair starts at $3.69 and goes down to $3.14. Of course, I don’t live in Newton or Brookline. I wonder how SunBug got the Solarize Medford contract. Perhaps the adders for better panels and other upgrades cost a lot more with SolarFlair.

Aside from the massive uncertainty built into the SREC program (a 5kW system might be worth anywhere from $8000 to $25,000 in SRECs over the next 10 years, or possibly even less than $8000), it turns out we cannot get an enforceable long-term agreement with the city to be able to trim the city-owned shade tree if it grows too tall. Any future city government would be able to unilaterally revoke any such agreement or permit.

And we’d need to add snow guards lower down on the roof to deal with the tendency of solar panels to release their snow cover in one big whoosh, since that avalanche of snow from our roof configuration would be coming straight down at our front steps and our poor abused garden.

The final numbers as I understand them: We could spend about $24,000 up front for a 4.9 kW system, get $3900 back in a state rebate, $1000 back in a state tax credit, and $6000 back in a federal tax credit. That’s a net cost of $13,100. We’d generate about $600/year to $800/year in electricity at today’s 14 cents per kWh. We’d also earn $1000 in SRECs per year, or maybe $1500, or maybe $600, or possibly less or more. Conservative numbers would be $1200 per year payback, and that assumes we don’t have shade problems. If electricity prices go up a lot and the state fixes the SREC price support to be a true floor, the payback could be much better. But the conservative numbers don’t justify the costs right now.

The way to make the economics work are to put up more and cheaper panels, and treat the credit on the roof work as a deduction from the solar. So we spend $20,000 up front, get $4000 back in a state rebate, $1000 back in a state tax credit, and $8000 back in a federal tax credit. That’s a net cost of $7000. At $1200 per year payback, that looks worth it. Barely. And that’s not worth the continuing headache.

Next year solar costs will be different, the SREC program will be different, and some of what I’ve learned will no longer apply. And so it goes, round and round the sun.

Solar, part 2

Well, we got our quote from Sunlight Solar. They are substantially more expensive than SunBug’s proposal, but I also learned a bit more about SRECs and solar finances.

Both companies agree that SunPower panels are much better than everyone else’s panels at the moment. SunBug wants to use the previous generation panels, and Sunlight Solar wants to use the current generation panels.

Sunlight Solar projects about 7% less production than SunBug, which seems reasonably consistent to me given the number of variables.

SunBug said that there’s a price floor of $300 on SRECs. Sunlight Solar says that there is no floor, because the last chance auction isn’t guaranteed to work. Turns out that’s true, which substantially changes the finances. And I’m not thrilled about SunBug lying to me on a huge issue like this. Some folks in the industry think that the last chance auction price of $300 is going to act as a ceiling rather than a floor, and that $150 per SREC is a more likely long-term price. That’s a loss of about $8000 over 10 years from SunBug’s numbers.

And even worse, the current unpredictable SREC scheme is only guaranteed to be available for systems that are approved for interconnection by December 31. After that, systems will likely earn even less with SREC 2, whose rules aren’t set. SunBug won’t guarantee installation by December 31, and is lying to customers about the implications of that deadline.

Meanwhile the city is not being at all cooperative about potential future shade problems from their tree. I would have expected them to understand this issue, since they’re pushing the solar program city-wide and many houses have city-owned trees at least in front.

I still want to install solar if it’s financially reasonable to do so and if we can clear the other hurdles. But the forecast isn’t very sunny.

Solar, part 1

Medford is doing a community push for solar, which convinced me to take another look at solar for our property. The city’s chosen installer is SunBug, and I’ve gotten a proposal from them.

Choosing an installer is tricky. There aren’t a lot, and most haven’t been in business very long. But since they are going to be messing with your roof and your electrical system, you want someone good. There aren’t a lot of reviews. You can see an Excel file of all the companies who have done projects in Massachusetts in the past few years that qualified for a state rebate program. Brightstar Solar gets great reviews, but isn’t doing installations in Medford. Sungevity was very hard to talk to in 2012, and Next Step Living has frighteningly bad reviews, so I’m skipping those two. I’ve been waiting to hear back from Blue Selenium, and Sunlight Solar is coming next week to do a site evaluation.

Direction matters. South would be optimal. On the map, it looks like our unshaded roof faces ESE. SunBug thinks it’s close enough to SE that we’ll be ok.

Pitch matters. Our roof is 45 degrees, which is a decent compromise between wanting steeper in the winter and less steep in the summer.

With both direction and pitch, I’d expect to find decent curves showing the dropoffs in production and calculators that let you see the results. I haven’t found those yet. But solar companies must be using those.

Shading matters. A little shading can have a huge detrimental effect on production since solar panels are wired in series (both within the panel and in a string of panels). The only shading we really have to worry about would be if the tree in the park next door gets much taller, but the problem is that we don’t have the right to trim that tree if it does. Perhaps the city would like to agree to trim that tree if it starts to shade our solar panels?

Roof condition matters. SunBug told us we have to redo our roof before we can install solar. I expect other solar companies will tell us the same thing. We have no leaks, so this is sooner than we would replace the roof otherwise, but roofs don’t last forever.

The electrical panel matters. SunBug told us we need to install a subpanel or redo our main panel in the basement to install solar. My idea of putting a subpanel in the attic to make this easier is apparently not a great idea because the attic gets very hot in the summer, which isn’t great for the wiring.

The choice of panel matters. We can produce a lot more power if we use SunPower 327-watt panels than if we use typical 250-watt panels. The downside is a bit more up-front cost.

Financial assumptions make a huge difference. What will happen to the cost of electricity over the next 10 years? What’s the opportunity cost of the investment? Is SREC income taxable? (At the moment there’s a good argument that SREC income is not taxable, since it’s less than the cost of putting in the panels. But it makes a big difference if it becomes taxable, since that’s the bulk of the payback over the first 10 years.) How does depreciation on the system work with my home office? Will my insurance cover the solar panels? Will the system increase or decrease the house’s value? (Looks like a modest increase in the short term, but my guess is that it won’t matter in the long term.)

Financing matters. About 2/3 of new systems are leased rather than owned. Since we may want to sell in 5-10 years, and leasing makes that harder, we need to own the system.

The roof geometry of the front of our house is terrible for curb appeal. Will a monolithic solar array on the top section make that better or worse? How will a different roof color affect the appearance, since we can choose a different color when we reshingle?

But I like the idea of having more of our electricity come from solar, and this is the step we can take towards that. It’s not an ideal site, and there aren’t ideal conditions here, but it still may pay off in about 7 years (based on some reasonable assumptions). That’s pretty good.