This is part two of the CS2 interview with State Senate candidate Dennis Baylor. If you’re tired of the same old tap dance you receive from conventional politicians you’re in for a real treat. Here’s a candidate who actually tells you where he’d cut state expenditures thus enabling real tax reform as opposed to the array of pandering and self-serving tax shifting schemes offered by most politicians these days. On a vast array of issues Dennis offers unconventional, thoughtful, and thought-provoking proposals. Whether you agree with Dennis or not on this particular issue or that, you will realize that you’re in the presence of a serious student of state government. If you’re reading CS2 for the first time please go back to Part 1 before continuing here.

CS2: If you make it and get into the Senate I was wondering if you’ll go into this area. I think one of the reasons that people think their guy is the nice guy is the franking privilege and the tools that incumbents have to supposedly communicate with their constituents. They’re really nothing but propaganda tools to say to the people look at what a great guy I am. How I’m working tirelessly on you’re behalf. These advantages are funded by the taxpayers that his opponent doesn’t have. And so when election time rolls around, I get look at all the wonderful things that Tim Holden has done for me. I’m not going to vote him out because I get mailings all the time from this guy. Shouldn’t there be some kinds of controls on the franking privilege?

Dennis: Well, let me say this about that. The franking privilege exists for the Federal Congress. The state guys get an expense account.

CS2: An expense account?

Dennis: The difference being for example, when you get a mailing from Tim Holden all that has to be on his envelope is his name. His name is as good as a stamp. Your local representative has got to put postage on his.

CS2: Who pays for that postage?

Dennis: The taxpayers do.

CS2: In essence the same thing then.

Dennis: Yeah. One reform we pursued with our Capital Crime-watch Program, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this (laughs). (he’s shows me a Capital Crime Watch handbill-see end of interview for particulars). We have color ones that are bigger than these. We went through the capital and we put up posters for Capital Crime Watch and we got a post office box for people to give us tips on violations of the campaign finance laws. Also, of other Pennsylvania state laws which don’t allow you to use any state property for conducting your campaign. You can’t use state computers, cell phones, office staff, and so forth and so on. We had a handout for staffers. We went to every office in the capital and gave the staff this list of 50 things that legislators couldn’t do to shore up the power of their incumbency; things that they routinely do. Nothing, including buildings, that are paid for by the taxpayers dollars can be used as a resource in political campaigns. But it’s done all the time. One thing that just drives me absolutely crazy are district offices. District offices and PSA’s are in the same category..

CS2: What’s a PSA?

Dennis: Public Service Announcements. You’ll see these on your local TV. It’ll be Dante Santoni telling you about the tax rebate program, or about whatever. It’s your legislator linking himself visually to a message that you’re paying to produce, to tell you something that the executive branch of government should be telling you. They don’t want it to be that anonymous. So you associate them with tax relief. Same thing with the mailings that you get. All of it is nonsense, and should be done away with. Take an incumbent’s District Office, I don’t mean to say that the function that they provide should be eliminated. The good they do for the public shouldn’t be eliminated, but they (District Offices) should be. Instead we should have plain vanilla state offices. If you have a problem with your driver’s license you could go in there and it wouldn’t be Carl Mantz who helped you or Carl Mantz’s brother who helped you. The state should straighten it out. They shouldn’t screw up to begin with.District offices are nothing but ways to ingratiate yourself with the taxpayer’s at considerable taxpayer expense. You go into some areas of Pennsylvania, for example Downingtown, where the legislator’s offices are as close together as ten miles. You know, you could go to any of them and find out about your senior benefits, your Pace applications or whatever. These things should not be connected to any individual. The mailings you get, if there’s a legitimate need to inform the public about something that state government is doing, that branch of state government as a cabinet level position should be doing that. The Department of Revenue should be sending you a notice, hey, you qualify for this or that. Rhodes recently sent me such a letter, a physical letter suggesting that maybe I or someone in my household qualifies for the property tax rebate, even though he knows how old everybody in the household is from campaign records. They can tell the birthdays of everyone in the household. So this is just a way of getting their name in front of your eyes at taxpayer expense.

CS2: When you add all this up it’s all about keeping incumbents in power.

Dennis: Right.

CS2: Your saying that District Offices which are thought of as constituent services offices really should be handled by the government agency involved.

Dennis: In the structure of Pennsylvania government the legislature does far too much in some areas. They intrude too much on the executive. The executive should be doing a lot more than the executive does in Pennsylvania. All these kind of notices to the public come from the legislature. Sometimes you’ll see the Governor. Even that bothers me, when it’s the Governor. We go through this nonsense every election cycle when you get a new Governor and we need to change the names on everything. Ed Rendell welcomes you to Pennsylvania. What does it mean? It’s of absolutely no benefit to anybody. Not even to Ed Rendell. Everybody whose here already knows who he is. Everybody who’s coming from the outside can’t vote for him anyway. All the papers, all the manuals and stuff like that. All they have is a foreword by Ed Rendell. It’s all nonsense. It’s pure waste. We have to do away with that. Think about calendars. Everybody sends you a freaking calendar. If you’re connected to politics at all, you get a calendar. The calendars cost like a buck to print, roughly a buck and a half to mail and in Pennsylvania the bill for doing that is like a half million dollars. A half million dollars doesn’t seem like much but if you’re doing this about everything it adds up. I’d gladly take the half million dollars (laughs).

CS2: Absolutely. I believe you have some other issues that you’re basing your candiacy on. Usury is one of them. What is it about usury that you’d like to do?

Dennis: I’d like to see regulations back about usury. Usury, to express in the vernacular, is loan-sharking. Usury is a common law crime. For years, it was a crime in this country to charge more than a certain amount of interest. If you did charge more than that amount of interest, no court of competent jurisdiction would award you that part of a claim. So when revolving credit came into existence with credit cards, there was a thing called the National Banking Act. Pennsylvania had usury laws until then, preventing charges of more than 8%.If you have a credit card, (I’ve never had a credit card in my life,) and you default on that, your credit card issuer is going to seek from you probably a minimum of 15%, all the way up to something like 29% interest. At one time in Pennsylvania, the court would say no. If you want more than 8%, you’re not getting a cent. They would not allow that part of your claim.

CS2: This is an issue that’s near and dear to me.

Dennis: I think it’s an issue that’s near and dear to everybody. We talk about these pente-ante tax rebates or I’m not going to raise you tax pledges but look what they allow here. Your taxes are being raised, but some lunatic is allowed to charge you 15% interest on your home mortgage.

CS2: And you know what else they’re allowed to do-and this didn’t used to be. Unfortunately, unlike you, I’ve had credit cards all my life. When credit cards first came out..

Dennis: That’s just part of my conservative credentials, never having a credit card. How conservative can you get?

CS2: Sounds like a smart policy to me. Credit cards used to have to issue a second tier for credit card charges at the new rate. You’d get a statement, let’s say you have $5,000 charged on an 8% line of credit. Now the card is raising it’s rate to 12%. They would charge all new purchases at 12% but the previous pre-raise $5,000 would have to continue to be charged at 8%. On the grounds that was the contract you entered into when you charged those goods and services. Now, and this is a personal experience I’m reporting to you, I had a credit card where I had 7.5% on it for my store and I had $10,000 charged on it. I get a bill informing me that my rate has been raised from 7.5% to 29%. When I call up and inquire, and I haven’t been late once because they take the payment out electronically and automatically, they said yes, but you paid your phone bill late last month. Two issues here. Number One, what business is it of there’s when and how I pay the phone bill? And second, isn’t it a stick-up? All they need is the mask and the gun. They’re going to take $10,000 that I owe them at 7.5% that I’ve never been late on and there going to take it to 29%? How can this be legal? When did it happen? In the middle of the night? Where’s the so-called party of the people? It didn’t used to be legal to do that.

Dennis: Some of this is in the area of Federal Law. Some of it has to be rolled back even if it is Federal Law. I think as a representative of state government you can’t have a blind eye to what your Federal brethren have done.

CS2: Federal?

Dennis: It is Federal. It was part of the Bankruptcy Act. Whenever your credit score changes, everybody that issues you credit is free to change your rates based on your credit score.

CS2: Even on previously borrowed amounts? That’s the part that bothers me. Money you’ve already borrowed at one rate now is subject to a new rate. Does this stuff strike you as something fair or legal??

Dennis: No! No! No! No! No! It isn’t fair. The interest rates themselves aren’t fair. When you look at what’s happening with the mortgage crisis and everything like that and you see that people are proposing that we back out of this problem by allowing people to refinance their rates. We have this insane mentality in this country that the people that are least able to afford credit deserve the highest rates. You know it’s the check cashing places. All that kind of stuff doesn’t belong in a healthy society. Pay Day lenders-all that should be gone.

CS2: You mention the federal area. What is the state area. I know this for a fact: When a lot of changes weren’t being made in some states the credit card companies moved to Delaware or Omaha.

Dennis: Or North Dakota.

CS2: So there must be something at the state level that allows them to run wild within those states. What is that? Do you know what that is?

Dennis: Yeah. I know what that is. Part of it is The National Banking Act. The National Banking Act literally destroyed state banking and state banking regulations. What The National Banking Act said was that if you have a bank entity in your state, the state’s regulation can not be so great as to put them at a competitive disadvantage. That’s pretty much a way of saying there aren’t any rules anymore. It’s Dodge City here. The states that were real quick to adopt the Dodge City attitude found that the banking and credit card operations anxious to move there. Even though the bank itself didn’t go to Delaware. For example, if you had a National Central Bank account years ago and a regional account, the credit card operation was run out of Delaware. The headquarters of the bank may be in Lancaster, Pa. They all did that because the states like Delaware, North Dakota; South Dakota don’t have any rules.

CS2: Yeah. So what can states like Pennsylvania do to reel these wild-west creditors in? Can anything be done at the state level to help the consumer and the average citizen?

Dennis: When you have a financial problem and someone wants to collect money from you, that is usually done through the state court system. I would like to see Pennsylvania go back to a usury system that 8% is the maximum credit rate we will enforce. It doesn’t make any difference what laws have allowed you to charge more. If this person is delinquent and you’re using the resources of the state to collect from Chuck Brown you can only collect this much. It’s a moral question. That’s all the state should do, they should not be aiding and abetting loan-sharking. These rates of interest for the lending of money are just insane. The banks themselves have to recognize that at some point in time this is going to be a problem. But they simply can’t get enough. Bank of America, one of the biggest credit card issuers, had 10 billion dollars in income this last quarter. They made less than a quarter of a million dollars profit - because of lending practices. They have fees for every time you scratch your ass. They’re charging exorbitant interest rates. What’s required to make these people profitable? There’s no reason that government should be cooperating with these crazy ponzi type schemes that they’re all involved in.

CS2: I guess you don’t expect contributions from credit card comanies to your campaign?

Dennis: No. (laughs) I won’t be getting any contributions from them. And I won’t take any in the form of credit either. Good American cash. I’ll use green.

CS2: I’ll move on to something that I guess as you know is important to me. Facing life without Healthcare insurance and being in my case basically uninsurable. Having had cancer and a stroke they’re not lining up to insure me. What can the state do about healthcare? What should it do?

Dennis: Let me pander to you Chuck (we both laugh). Occasionally I’ve been in the boat that you’re in now. When I was a small kid I broke my legs from the knees down, when I crawled unto an old style kitchen stove. I was less than two years old. It was about 1952, and then parents often didn’t have health insurance for children. Although I wasn’t insured, I was under continuous hospital care for six months, mostly in hospitals in Philadelphia. So I wasn’t insured but I was under continuous hospital care for six months. Both my legs were rebuilt from the knees down, and the small town we lived in at the time, Schuylkill Haven, conducted blood drives, and collected donations for my medical care. My parents lost their home. I was probably about 5 before I started to walk, and the extensive skin grafts required medical attention through grammar school. Follow-up care and therapy until I was in college. That was without insurance. Then shortly after college I began to experience a variant of migraines called cluster headaches, I was employed at the time and well insured, and consequently had every neurological test known to man, at least once. For over a decade, they defied diagnosis, worsened and were soon accompanied by seizures. I was in intensive care a number of times. All the while the medications to control the headaches became more powerful, until one day my aorta collapsed and my heart stopped. I had health insurance through a company I did freelance design work for, and I will never forget the day the President of the company came to the cardiac intensive care ward and fired me on the spot.

CS2: What a guy!

Dennis: A real sweetheart. They “self-insured”, so his action had the effect of immediately terminating my insurance, leaving me with a pile of bills, and a pre-existing condition that barred future coverage for years. I was uninsurable then for the next seven years. I was sued by about a dozen providers, and because of the seizure history I couldn’t drive. In that era, an asset such as the roof over your head disqualified an individual for Medicaid. I was flat broke, couldn’t afford medicine, ate oatmeal for every meal and lived without heat or electricity for a year. After being “symptom” free for three years, I could drive again, and after seven, I was once again insurable for my pre-existing conditions. Since then, I have had three additional heart attacks. It’s an odd kind of situation. Depending on what kind of problem you have. If you have a problem that’s stress related you really can’t go out and be competitve in a stressful world. It’s like putting a gun to your head to do that.

CS2:So What is your conclusion from all this?

Dennis: I do not see the answer to what is wrong with healthcare as coming from state government, and I think that all the focus on the single-payer insurance and universal care questions are a distraction. Money isn’t the problem, and doctors not getting paid is not the problem; but to completely remove the issue from consideration, I think socialized medicine is the way to go. Which is probably what the single-payer crowd is really wanting, they’re just afraid to use the words. I have an extensive resume when it comes to illness. I’ve had probably every physical test ever made. Belive it or not I don’t really like a lot of what I’m hearing about healthcare reform. I think the concentration on how many people are insured vs. how many people aren’t insured is a false argument. Because doctors always get paid. I had this conversation with Kathi Ember a few weeks ago and I thought she was going to kill me. I kept saying, Kathi don’t focus on the money because people always get paid in one way, shape or form. Show me an area where they’re not being paid. Because they are always paid. Trying to put more money in the system, trying to insure more people to me is counter-productive because that’s where all the problems lie. Some of the solutions lie in the area of making medicine better. I am appalled, and I don’t know if you ever looked at your medical record, that those records are kept by anything calling itself a science. Stint work for blockages in my heart were cartoons. There weren’t any sonograms. I had catscan work done and all kinds of work done that gives images. Those images aren’t in your medical record. Data on all the blood tests and stuff like that isn’t in your medical record. You’re astounded when you see your medical record. How little is there and the quality of it. Hillary Clinton has come out with a proposal to become electronic in how these records are kept. It baffles me that I can’t carry in my pocket an insurance card that I take to everybody who can run it through a swiper and have my complete medical record with all scans included. It would have a complete listing of all the tests so that I’m not re-tested. They would see accurately the prescriptions I’m taking so they don’t mis-medicate me. I just took my 80 year old mother to the urologist the other day. I completed nothing less than 12 pages of forms that were her medical history that they should have been able to get from her medical history. That should be something that she carries around and there shouldn’t be a couple of stooges at the front desk that shuffle that paper and send that paper out. There are a lot of ineconomies there as well as in filing. Everybody points to single-payer as creating some economies and that’s true. But some of the problem lies in the very dangerous practice of having patients in charge of generating their medical history. And it doen’t provide the best care. We pay more in this country for medicine than anyone else. And our healthcare is not any better. It’s worse in a lot of respects.

CS2: Why wouldn’t you trade our system for a single-payer system since it insures everybody? Countries like England and France on many levels of comparison are ahead of us.

Dennis: You’ve got to start splitting issues. You have single-payer, you have insure everyone. If you want medicine to be universal and free I’m for that. Because then you get all those economies and that’s got to come from the Federal government. The Federal government is running the big insurance programs. Unless you can capture Medicaid, Medicare and Veterans Insurance for starters, as something you can roll into a state single-payer program, you can’t have single-payer. You’re just kidding yourselves.

CS2: I think the state bill for single-payer in the senate, I think it’s SB300, is a bill that wouldn’t bring single payer? You’re saying it can’t do that?

Dennis: No. That’s true. It’s all an illusion. Until you can put all this money into one big pile you can’t have single-payer.

CS2: Is it because these other folks are having their bills being paid by a Federal entity?

Dennis: Yeah.

CS2: So even a single-payer that would be designed to make everybody part of the medicare program could no longer be done at the state level. Is that what you’re saying?

Dennis: That’s right.

CS2: Let me ask you this then. You’re in the senate right now. You’re being confronted by Ed Rendell’s health care package. Are you voting up or down?

Dennis: The one thing that Ed Rendell did that I salute, that Ron and Rosie and other people that are pushing health care reform probably don’t agree with, is that he’s taking a stand that we are not going to pay for malpractice. In other words, medicaid in the state of Pennsylvania as per Ed’s plan, you don’t get paid for mistakes. This may seem logical to everybody else who has not been as sick as you or I, but you are charged for the goofs. The guy who killed me wanted to be paid. It was the guy who stopped my heart-the man who literally killed me. He wanted to get paid. I think that it’s a step foreward-not paying for mistakes. It’s one of the things that will have to be done to straighten the problem of medical care out. In America we need cost controls. If you have a disease you get X dollars. For a broken arm there’s $300.00 dollars to make Chuck right. That’s all you get. Period. Take all the treatable and curable conditions and put a price tag on them and that’s all you get. Consider what I was saying when I had to take my mother to the urologist. My mother had to go to the urologist because she had blood in her urine. We go to the urologist and he takes a test to tell us: she’s got blood in her urine. We’ll schedule a visit for you…and repeated tests and for this he collected $177.00. Now my mother has to go back. She has to go back for two things which can be done in the office both of which take 5 minutes. But she can’t come back 1 time. She’s got to come back 2 times. Medicine does that. If you put a flat price on things and you say this is all you get they will put some efficiency into it. Costs will start to come down. We don’t care about costs. Everybody who wants health care reform aren’t talking about the outrageous costs that are in healthcare. And they are absolutely outrageous. Some of that comes from cost shifting. Some of that comes from doctors always getting paid. If you aren’t paying them, your insurance is.

CS2: In the practical political world you are confronted with bills when you’re in the senate. If SB300 comes to the floor are you voting up or down?

Dennis: I don’t think any of the bills would address what I consider the problems of health care to be. It’s going to be really hard to roll back the problems of healthcare. You’re not going to do that with one hail-Mary pass. It’s going to take some real work. As an interim measure I might support some bills that go in a direction that does, solve the problems I think need solving. I’m completely committed to the idea that we can make health care a lot cheaper in our country. We can improve it and we can make it available to far more people. If we force medicine to behave like a science.

CS2: You say far more people but you don’t say that as a citizen every person has a right to health care?

Dennis: Yeah I do. Everybody has a right to healthcare.

CS2: Everyone?

Dennis: Everyone.

CS2: All right. Let’s move on to the environment. There’s a lot of local issues, state issues, land preservation and sludge, using inner-city abondoned buildings. Give me your environmental policy as a future state senator.

Dennis: Doing the activist thing, I’ve been all over Pennsylvania. In single weeks I’ve put a couple thousand miles on in Pennsylvania dragging the pig around and stuff. I’ve seen a lot of it. The thing that impresses me is that Pennsylvania isn’t growing. Contrary to everything you see, the fact is that Pennsylvania is not growing. The population of Pennsylvania has been flat for a considerable period of time. Yet it’s astounding at the rate we’re consuming open space. Just looking at places like Exeter Township and what’s happening there you would call me a liar for asserting a proposition that Pennsylvania’s not growing, because everything you see tells you to the contrary. It seems we must be growing. We’re not. We’re just using up land. Some of that is because of tax policy. I would venture to say that if we went to a system where there was no proberty tax consequences for commercial properties that problem would just get worse. It would make that problem many times worse. Property tax administration and planning, and putting equity into the system would make it a lot more expensive to bust up a farm for development. It should do that. That’s one of the reasons I’m not really keen on seeing property tax go away. If you enacted a measure as simple as your proberty tax is based on what you paid for the structure, you would change land use in Pennsylvania dramactically. Because the burdens that these new properties put on government should be shouldered by them. If you put in a new delvelopment which calls for increased police and fire protection, those developments aren’t paying anything to that. There’s been some talk about an impact fee and stuff like that, why not have them have to pay more because of their effect? Say the average house in an area costs $150,000 and you put in a development and now all of a sudden the prices on houses are a quarter of a million dollars those are the people who should pay. The person who has been in that community for 30 years has paid off bond issue after bond issue after bond issue to build schools and roads. Those people should get a break. If you bought your house 50 years ago you paid your taxes based on the cost of that house 50 years ago. It would make inner-city housing units more attractive. It would price out-of-reach this idea of using up land like we’re using it up in Pennsylvania just because we got tired of the old buildings. We’re leaving abondoned properties all over the place to build new crap. We can’t continue to do that. It’s wastefull and it’s stupid. On environmental issues Pennsylvania really needs to look at the resources that we’re blessed with and manage those better. Some of that would be in the area of electrical generation. One of the things you need to make electrical energy is water. Just about every method relies on copious volumes of water. Pennsylvania has a lot of that but it doesn’t have an unlimited amount.

CS2:Who or what had the greatest influence on how you turned out? What makes you the person you are today.

Dennis: I had a really great father. A fiercely independent man, who would not hesitate to tackle any challenge, and was willing to teach himself whatever he needed to know so that he might succeed in a new undertaking. I also have a wife, Sylvia, who is the best human being I have ever met, and knowing her makes me a much better person. They influenced me a lot, but the thing that almost exclusively steered my life along its course during my formative years was my accident. I didn t start walking until I was over 5, and was never allowed and/or lacked the strength to participate in sports. If you were faced with those limitations in the 1950 s, you ended up reading a good deal. When I was a kid, I read almost every great work of Greek literature, and throughout my life have enjoyed the classics. So for influence, I would say, part Dad, part wife, and part Homer, Socrates, Virgil, Voltaire, Hesse etc. Last but not least, there is also my friend Gene Stilp, who appears in many of the pictures that are part of this interview. Gene and I have traveled across Pennsylvania many times, in pursuit of one political objective or another. Events pictured here, like Capitol Crime Watch, the Pink Pig, the Pig Bus etc. are just a small fraction of Gene s creations. He has done more to improve government than anyone I know.

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Crime Watch

Things not to be used for campaign activities

Use of any computers
Use of any mails
Use of any rooms or offices
Use of telephones
Use of any staff members
Use of any government paid for vehicles, leased vehicles to attend any election function whatever, in the Capital area of back in the district
Use of any reimbursement for time, mileage or expenditures for election purposes,
Use of any hand held computing device (Blackberries, etc) provided by the legislature
Use of any staff member to help coordinate fundraising activities in Harrisburg area of back in district
Use of government offices to meet with potential candidates
Use of government offices for meeting with possible election donors
Use of offices safes to store political contributions
Use of government purchased food for office entertaining for election purposes
Use of government products to send to potential voters, e.g. calendars, birthday letters, etc.
Use of staff to put out mailings for election purposes
Securing election materials from department of State.
Use of staff to file petitions with Department of State
Sending election materials with State postage
Use of staffers to opponents Ethics statements and petition filings
Use of district office staff and office for election purposes
Use of any staff for election purposes
Use of demographic staff for election purposes
Use of House or Senate caucus computed and IT services for election purposes.
Use of research offices for position papers, speeches, etc.
Use of media offices (television or radio or press offices) for election material development, recording messges, etc
Use of the paid Public Service Announcement scam in 2008
Use by members of any cell phone, land line, fax line, computer, car, office, capitol event for election related purposes
Gifts purchased with taxpayer money
Use of staff vacation time supposedly used for election related matters.
Use of shifting staff to district office during election season.
Use of legislative bill development or introduction for political gain and contributions.
Staff attendance at political affairs during work hours.

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