Samantha Pierce

I appreciated the opportunity to take part in the live broadcast town hall on Monday, May 15, 2017 with my congressman John Katko. The event wasn’t earth shattering or game changing. It was a good start for a new way to do public dialogue with elected officials. I’d love to get state and local elected officials in that kind of format. Here are the questions I had prepared for the evening but did not get a chance to ask. (News coverage here , here , and here . Plus protest coverage here , here , and here .) Medicaid Medicaid fraud prevention measures do a poor job of preventing fraud. Instead they make it harder for people who need services to get them. How would you address this problem at the federal level? Medicaid reimbursements to service providers are notoriously low. This leaves people with limited options for care. It is a perennial problem for people with disabilities who need specialized care. Central New Yorkers are currently faced with a limited number of provi...

Fuh real? President Obama’s Agriculture Department today announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees—the Christmas Tree Tax—to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees. In the Federal Register of November 8, 2011, Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. The purpose of the Board is to run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry” (7 CFR 1214.46(n)). And the program of “information” is to include efforts to “enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States” (7 CFR 1214.10). To pa...

I've been reading Life in a Medieval Village by Frances Gies and Joseph Gies. Apparently back then villagers had to pay their lord a fee for living in the village and farm on the lord's land. A reasonable enough arrangement. But if you moved away from the village you had to pay the lord a yearly fee for doing so. That just rubs my modern sensibilities the wrong way. Not long after reading that historical tidbit I read the following and thought, the more things change the more they stay the same: What Happens When Cars Use Less Gas? Drivers of electric cars may have left the gas pump behind, but there's one expense they may not be able to shake: paying to maintain the roads. After years of urging residents to buy fuel-efficient cars and giving them tax breaks to do it, Washington state lawmakers are considering a measure to charge them a $100 annual fee — what would be the nation's first electric car fee. State lawmakers grappling with a $5 billion deficit are fac...