The press was buzzing last week over a “Knott-headed” South Carolina legislator’s racial slur of a Republican candidate for governor:
“We already have a raghead in the White House. We don’t need one in the governor’s mansion,” said Republican State Senator Jake Knotts.
But no one seems to care that he also slurred the President of the United States. I guess it’s being done so often lately that it doesn’t qualify as news.
Assembly Member and Attorney General candidate Alberto Torrico has come up with the best advice on dealing with the Republican anti-tax zealots who are threatening to shut down the state unless the Legislature passes a draconian “cuts-only” budget.
Torrico basically urged Democrats to call the Republicans bluff. http://www.sacbee.com/static/w…
Democrats are unwilling to go past June 30th or July 15th or August 1st with a complete closure of state government. We are unwilling to do that, so we basically go in and negotiate with our hands behind our back.
We should be willing to go and demonstrate to people there are consequences to not saying to corporations we are going to eliminate some loopholes. You know when people will care? When schools go back to session in August and when Democrats and Republicans hear from their constituents, from middle-class families in phone calls like this, ‘Where’s my son’s bus?’
Back in 1995, Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in Congress threatened to shut down the federal government unless President Clinton bowed to their demands. Clinton responded, in effect: “Go ahead, make my day.”
So the Republicans shut down the government. After two days, the public’s outrage was so great that they ended the shutdown and caved. I’ll bet the same thing will happen here.
Torrico is right on target. Let’s call their bluff.
I’ve received tons of political mailers over the last month. Many are colorful, a few are insightful, and the majority are a collosal waste of money.
One was from “Californians Vote Green.” It carried endorsements for a number of the Democratic candidates running for state office this year. But it also urged readers to vote YES on Propositions 16 and 17, two of the most deceptive, anti-consumer ballot initiatives I’ve seen in my time in California. When I checked the groups website: http://californiansvotegreen.c… all it had was a solicitation for candidates and initiative sponsors to buy space. Nothing about the so-called “organization.”
OK, folks, I’m not naive; I know how mailers work. But I can’t help wondering why supposedly consumer-friendly Democrats would willingly buy space on a mailer that includes support for such blatant anti-consumer measures as Prop. 16 and 17. Someone ought to call them out on that.
My good friend Marty Omoto reminded me of a song by George Michael called “Praying for Time.”
The words are so moving and so relevant as we watch the destruction of the California dream. Check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
Here’s a portion of the lyrics:
These are the days of the empty hand
You hold on to what you can
And charity is a coat you wear twice a year
This is the year of the guilty man
Your television takes a stand
And you find out
That what was over there is over here
So you scream from behind your door
Say what’s mine is mine and not yours
I may have too much but I’ll take my chances
Because God’s stopped keeping score
And you cling to the things they sold you
Did you cover your eyes when they told you
That He can’t come back
Because he has no children to come back for
1. At a time when our goal is to shrink the welfare rolls and get people back to work, our governor eliminates CalWORKS, the only effective program we have to get people off of welfare and back to work. So we will now be the ONLY state in the union without a welfare-to-work program and will lose billions of federal dollars because of it. Congratulations, Mississippi, you are now a progressive state!
2. Last year, the governor tried to cut the cost-effective In Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program, which costs taxpayers five times LESS than nursing home care. The courts shot him down, pointing out that these cuts violate a number of Federal laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act. So what does he propose this year? That’s right, more IHSS cuts.
3. Once again, the governor proposes a cuts-only budget that will be DOA. Trying to solve the budget problem with cuts alone is like trying to fight with one hand tied behind your back.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the results to be different.
UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education recently analyzed the effect of proposed cuts in California’s largest health and human services programs. The results are staggering. Here are just some of them:
“Cutting in-home care services by $1 billion – reducing spending on the very old, the very young, the poor and the disabled is one of the perennial proposals to save state funds – would mean the loss of more than 215,000 full-time-equivalent jobs in the next year…For every dollar spent by the state government on in-home supportive services, we get $2.47 from the feds….Cutting in-home services by $1 billion (also) would result in an estimated loss of $359 million in state and local taxes, so the actual savings would be much less than projected….”
Other than an op-ed piece in the Chronicle on Sunday, unfortunately, no other media outlet has picked up on this important study. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/24/ING71D18D8.DTL
Isn’t it interesting that when a couple of Stanford graduate students recently released a study calling for the imminent collapse of the public employees’ pension system, the media were all over it like fleas on a hound. But this report, which could affect the lives of millions of our most vulnerable citizens, goes unreported.
Another example of the media’s “liberal bias,” I guess.
An editorial from Saturday’s Sacramento Bee: High-tech fix won’t stop IHSS fraud
In an effort to cut what Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger claims is rampant fraud in the state’s In-Home Supportive Services Program, the Department of Social Services is pushing a pilot program to assess the efficacy of an expensive high-tech system to fingerprint and photograph care providers and their recipients.
The MorphoTrak device, which the state is testing in three counties, including Sacramento, has been used by the military in Iraq. It can fingerprint, snap a photo and transfer data instantaneously. The machines cost up to $5,000 a copy. If deployed statewide, the state would need 600 to 1,000 of these devices potentially. But let’s hold on a minute.
Before the state commits to buying this expensive equipment and building yet another expensive police bureaucracy that treats all IHSS recipients and their caregivers as potential criminals, it needs to perform a far more thorough assessment of the potential for fraud within IHSS and the best way to address it.
In the welfare realm, fingerprints and photo IDs are used primarily to prevent duplicate fraud, cases in which aid recipients go to different counties and apply for welfare or food stamps under different names. IHSS services are delivered in recipients’ homes. It’s hard to conceive of an elderly frail or disabled IHSS recipient traveling from Sacramento to Yolo to apply for help bathing or feeding him- or herself at two different addresses.
To the extent that IHSS fraud exists, the vast majority involves caregivers claiming payment for services that were not provided, or elderly and frail IHSS recipients exaggerating the extent of their disabilities.
An expensive bureaucratic apparatus to capture and store fingerprints and photos of recipients and caregivers does nothing to address those problems. A $5,000 camera-fingerprint device would pay for 500 hours of in-home care to poor elderly and disabled people.
Although the administration needs to look out for taxpayers, it shouldn’t waste money on anti-fraud efforts that make little sense.
Here’s the latest “high tech” weapon in Gov. Schwarzenegger’s war on 450,000 elderly, blind and disabled Californians.
Without any authority from the Legislature, the Schwarzenegger Administration is planning to purchase up to $5 million worth of military/security cameras to take pictures of the 465,000 seniors and people with disabilities who receive In Home Supportive Services (IHSS) homecare.
The “MorphoTrak” cameras are currently being used in Iraq and other military locations. According to their manufacturer, they are also recommended for, among other things, “border crossings, gang enforcement, and airport/maritime security.” The camera itself costs $4,200, plus hundreds of dollars more for docking stations and other equipment.
Last year, the Legislature approved the administration’s demand that county social workers must fingerprint all IHSS consumers as part of a so-called anti-fraud initiative targeting the program. However, the Legislature neither discussed nor approved photographing consumers. Nor has the administration provided any evidence of how much fraud would be stopped by photographing/fingerprinting these consumers. Under the law, all IHSS consumers must be visited and assessed at home by county social workers before being approved for the program.
The Administration has projected that it will need to purchase 600 to 1,000 of these cameras, costing between $3 million and $5 million. It has borrowed several of these devices from the manufacturer and has solicited Sacramento and San Diego Counties to use them in a pilot project beginning April 1.
The District Attorneys in these two counties have been among the strongest advocates for the administration’s anti-fraud campaign. However, a recent report from Sacramento County found a total of 19 potential cases of IHSS fraud out of more than 20,000 consumers.
Each $5,000 used to buy a “MorphoTrak” camera would purchase nearly 500 hours of IHSS homecare.
Herb Mayer, 79 year old IHSS consumer, chair of the IHSS coalition and a Korean war veteran, said “My social worker knows who I am without needing a $5,000 camera. How can the administration find money for these cameras but no money to keep the IHSS program going?”
Assemblymember Hector De La Torre (D- South Gate) said: “I am outraged that this administration is again targeting our lowest income seniors and people with disabilities as if they were criminals we need to monitor. How is that we can afford millions for cameras yet we continue to cut their services and the money they live on?”
“This Administration’s misguided attack on alleged fraud in the IHSS program has already caused major disruptions to IHSS services for 450,000 elderly Californians who depend on these services,” said Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco). “The small investment in home support for the elderly keeps consumers out of expensive nursing homes and saves the state money. We intend to use our legislative oversight power to ensure the Governor does not waste government resources and harm elderly Californians who desperately need In Home Support Services.”
“The Administration’s proposal to spend $5 million on cameras is ridiculous,” said Assemblymember Dave Jones (D-Sacramento). “The money for each $5,000 camera could instead be used for 500 hours of IHSS care. The Administration has asked Sacramento County to begin a pilot program with loaner cameras on April 1. I am calling on Sacramento District Attorney Jan Scully not to participate in this misguided program
.”
“It is bad enough that the Schwarzenegger Administration treats 450,000 of our most vulnerable citizens and the people who serve them like common criminals,” said Doug Moore, executive director of UDW Homecare Providers Union. “Now, to add insult to injury, the administration wants to waste millions of taxpayer dollars on these unauthorized and totally unnecessary cameras. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic.”
It is no secret that I have a personal and compelling interest in Governor Schwarzenegger’s draconian cuts to the In Home Supportive Services (IHSS) homecare program. He would deny care to more than 400,000 low-income elderly, blind and disabled Californians or force them into nursing homes, which would cost taxpayers far more. He would leave hundreds of millions of dollars in Federal matching IHSS funds on the table. He would throw nearly 400,000 low-wage homecare providers out of work, increasing the state’s unemployment rate by almost two percent.
Yet, as horrific and shortsighted as these cuts may be, they are merely symptoms of the greater crisis that all Californians are facing. For many of us, the California dream has become a nightmare.
People need to understand that the budget cuts to schools, parks, libraries, infrastructure, safety net programs and other public services proposed by the governor and his allies aren’t just “temporary” cuts that will go away once the economy recovers. Their impact will haunt Californians for generations to come.
• Families who file for bankruptcy because they can’t afford their child’s medical bills willnever get their life savings back.
• College students who can’t afford skyrocketing tuition and fees or can’t get into the courses they need to graduate may have to postpone their education indefinitely.
• The pain of seeing a disabled loved one forced into an institution will never go away.
• School children will not get to retake the third grade even if their classroom was too crowded and unruly for them to learn.
• Eliminating rehabilitation programs for prisoners and then turning around and releasing them early will be a recipe for disaster.
To help Californians understand what is happening, a small but intrepid group of marchers will set out this weekend on a 48-day, 260-mile march from Bakersfield to Sacramento. The theme of their march: “Restore the California Dream.”
Supported by a broad coalition of labor, education and faith groups, the marchers will be joined by teachers, police and firefighters, homecare workers, nurses, and other public servants in towns and cities up and down the Central Valley. The march will end with a rally at the State Capitol in Sacramento on April 21.
Now some people may ask why the organizers chose the Central Valley for this March instead of more “liberal” areas of the state. There’s a simple answer: Those who live in the Central Valley–just like all other Californians– know that something is seriously wrong in our state. Republicans and Independents as well as Democrats agree that our system is broken. Conservatives and moderates as well as liberals realize that our political leaders lack compassion, courage and creativity.
If the people of the Central Valley look closely enough, they will see that the choices that have been made by the governor and the Legislature are neither wise nor inevitable. The marchers and their supporters won’t be there to spotlight our state’s problems. They will be there to reach out to people of good will–regardless of their political party or ideology–and work with them to find creative solutions.
All Californians should want quality public education and public services. All Californians should want a government and an economy that works for all of us. All Californians should wanta fair, stable tax system to fund California’s future. That was the California Dream we once had and can have again. We won’t restore the dream overnight, or by the November election, or even the next election. But on a rainy Saturday morning in the heart of the Central Valley, in the footsteps of Cesar Chavez, we will begin.
The dismal record of the Schwarzenegger Administration in court continues.
The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued four decisions Wednesday against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that continue to block past budget cuts to Medi-Cal reimbursement rates for hospitals and pharmacists and In-Home Supportive Services wages.
The Ninth Circuit agreed with lower court decisions that granted preliminary injunctions against the cuts because California did not comply with the federal Medicaid Act. The cuts were contained in budget agreements over the past two years.
Four more clear legal warnings that the governor’s draconian cuts to Medi-Cal and IHSS homecare violate the federal Medicaid Act and probably the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Olmstead decision mandating community based care, and other laws and regulations.
Of course, the Terminator remains undeterred.
“We strongly disagree with the court’s decisions, which interfere with the state’s ability to manage its finances and reduce its spending to match its revenue,” said Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Rachel Arrezola. “We are confident the U.S. Supreme Court will overrule the Ninth Circuit’s rulings and reaffirm the state’s ability to make tough decisions to balance its budget.”
Translation: “Laws? We don’t need to obey no stinking laws! We’re conservatives!”