The brutal truth about America’s healthcare

An extraordinary report from Guy Adams in Los Angeles at the music arena that has been turned into a makeshift medical centre

August 15, 2009

GETTY IMAGES; AFP

The LA Forum in Inglewood, California, hosted dental and medical examinations, for thousands of people thanks to the charity Remote Area Medical. Some waited, above, for 36 hours to see the medical staff.

They came in their thousands, queuing through the night to secure one of the coveted wristbands offering entry into a strange parallel universe where medical care is a free and basic right and not an expensive luxury. Some of these Americans had walked miles simply to have their blood pressure checked, some had slept in their cars in the hope of getting an eye-test or a mammogram, others had brought their children for immunisations that could end up saving their life.

In the week that Britain’s National Health Service was held aloft by Republicans as an “evil and Orwellian” example of everything that is wrong with free healthcare, these extraordinary scenes in Inglewood, California yesterday provided a sobering reminder of exactly why President Barack Obama is trying to reform the US system.

The LA Forum, the arena that once hosted sell-out Madonna concerts, has been transformed – for eight days only – into a vast field hospital. In America, the offer of free healthcare is so rare, that news of the magical medical kingdom spread rapidly and long lines of prospective patients snaked around the venue for the chance of getting everyday treatments that many British people take for granted.

In the first two days, more than 1,500 men, women and children received free treatments worth $503,000 (£304,000). Thirty dentists pulled 471 teeth; 320 people were given standard issue spectacles; 80 had mammograms; dozens more had acupuncture, or saw kidney specialists. By the time the makeshift medical centre leaves town on Tuesday, staff expect to have dispensed $2m worth of treatments to 10,000 patients.

The gritty district of Inglewood lies just a few miles from the palm-lined streets of Beverly Hills and the bright lights of Hollywood, but is a world away. And the residents who had flocked for the free medical care, courtesy of mobile charity Remote Area Medical, bore testament to the human cost of the healthcare mess that President Obama is attempting to fix.

Christine Smith arrived at 3am in the hope of seeing a dentist for the first time since she turned 18. That was almost eight years ago. Her need is obvious and pressing: 17 of her teeth are rotten; some have large visible holes in them. She is living in constant pain and has been unable to eat solid food for several years.

“I had a gastric bypass in 2002, but it went wrong, and stomach acid began rotting my teeth. I’ve had several jobs since, but none with medical insurance, so I’ve not been able to see a dentist to get it fixed,” she told The Independent. “I’ve not been able to chew food for as long as I can remember. I’ve been living on soup, and noodles, and blending meals in a food mixer. I’m in constant pain. Normally, it would cost $5,000 to fix it. So if I have to wait a week to get treated for free, I’ll do it. This will change my life.”

Along the hall, Liz Cruise was one of scores of people waiting for a free eye exam. She works for a major supermarket chain but can’t afford the $200 a month that would be deducted from her salary for insurance. “It’s a simple choice: pay my rent, or pay my healthcare. What am I supposed to do?” she asked. “I’m one of the working poor: people who do work but can’t afford healthcare and are ineligible for any free healthcare or assistance. I can’t remember the last time I saw a doctor.”

Although the Americans spend more on medicine than any nation on earth, there are an estimated 50 million with no health insurance at all. Many of those who have jobs can’t afford coverage, and even those with standard policies often find it doesn’t cover commonplace procedures. California’s unemployed – who rely on Medicaid – had their dental care axed last month.

Julie Shay was one of the many, waiting to slide into a dentist’s chair where teeth were being drilled in full view of passers-by. For years, she has been crossing over the Mexican border to get her teeth done on the cheap in Tijuana. But recently, the US started requiring citizens returning home from Mexico to produce a passport (previously all you needed was a driver’s license), and so that route is now closed. Today she has two abscesses and is in so much pain she can barely sleep. “I don’t have a passport, and I can’t afford one. So my husband and I slept in the car to make sure we got seen by a dentist. It sounds pathetic, but I really am that desperate.”

“You’d think, with the money in this country, that we’d be able to look after people’s health properly,” she said. “But the truth is that the rich, and the insurance firms, just don’t realise what we are going through, or simply don’t care. Look around this room and tell me that America’s healthcare don’t need fixing.”

President Obama’s healthcare plans had been a central plank of his first-term programme, but his reform package has taken a battering at the hands of Republican opponents in recent weeks. As the Democrats have failed to coalesce around a single, straightforward proposal, their rivals have seized on public hesitancy over “socialised medicine” and now the chance of far-reaching reform is in doubt.

Most damaging of all has been the tide of vociferous right-wing opponents whipping up scepticism at town hall meetings that were supposed to soothe doubts. In Pennsylvania this week, Senator Arlen Specter was greeted by a crowd of 1,000 at a venue designed to accommodate only 250, and of the 30 selected speakers at the event, almost all were hostile.

The packed bleachers in the LA Forum tell a different story. The mobile clinic has been organised by the remarkable Remote Area Medical. The charity usually focuses on the rural poor, although they worked in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Now they are moving into more urban venues, this week’s event in Los Angeles is believed to be the largest free healthcare operation in the country.

Doctors, dentists and therapists volunteer their time, and resources to the organisation. To many US medical professionals, it offers a rare opportunity to plug into the public service ethos on which their trade was supposedly founded. “People come here who haven’t seen a doctor for years. And we’re able to say ‘Hey, you have this, you have this, you have this’,” said Dr Vincent Anthony, a kidney specialist volunteering five days of his team’s time. “It’s hard work, but incredibly rewarding. Healthcare needs reform, obviously. There are so many people falling through the cracks, who don’t get care. That’s why so many are here.”

Ironically, given this week’s transatlantic spat over the NHS, Remote Area Medical was founded by an Englishman: Stan Brock. The 72-year-old former public schoolboy, Taekwondo black belt, and one-time presenter of Wild Kingdom, one of America’s most popular animal TV shows, left the celebrity gravy train in 1985 to, as he puts it, “make people better”.

Today, Brock has no money, no income, and no bank account. He spends 365 days a year at the charity events, sleeping on a small rolled-up mat on the floor and living on a diet made up entirely of porridge and fresh fruit. In some quarters, he has been described, without too much exaggeration, as a living saint.

Though anxious not to interfere in the potent healthcare debate, Mr Brock said yesterday that he, and many other professionals, believes the NHS should provide a benchmark for the future of US healthcare.

“Back in 1944, the UK government knew there was a serious problem with lack of healthcare for 49.7 million British citizens, of which I was one, so they said ‘Hey Mr Nye Bevan, you’re the Minister for Health… go fix it’. And so came the NHS. Well, fast forward now 66 years, and we’ve got about the same number of people, about 49 million people, here in the US, who don’t have access to healthcare.”

“I’ve been very conservative in my outlook for the whole of my life. I’ve been described as being about 90,000 miles to the right of Attila the Hun. But I think one reaches the reality that something doesn’t work… In this country something has to be done. And as a proud member of the US community but a loyal British subject to the core, I would say that if Britain could fix it in 1944, surely we could fix it here in America.

Healthcare compared

Health spending as a share of GDP

US 16%

UK 8.4%

Public spending on healthcare (% of total spending on healthcare)

US 45%

UK 82%

Health spending per head

US $7,290

UK $2,992

Practising physicians (per 1,000 people)

US 2.4

UK 2.5

Nurses (per 1,000 people)

US 10.6

UK 10.0

Acute care hospital beds (per 1,000 people)

US 2.7

UK 2.6

Life expectancy:

US 78

UK 80

Infant mortality (per 1,000 live births)

US 6.7

UK 4.8

Source

Health Insurance Abuses in US

The Health Insurance Racket: Getting Rich by Denying Americans Care

Obama fights Health Care Reform Propaganda

Indexed List of all Stories in Archives

Billions here, billions there: A look at where it’s going

Billions here, billions there: A look at where it’s going

November 24 2008

Wars. Bailouts. Unemployment aid. Automakers. Washington has opened the tap on big spending and money is gushing down the pipeline.

The national debt now stands at $10.6 trillion, compared with about $5.7 trillion in 2000 before George W. Bush took office. Buckle up, because that figure is going to climb.

Here’s where some of the big bucks are going:

Iraq war — Various estimates put the total cost of the military operation since 2003 at about $600 billion.

Bailout — The Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), signed on Oct. 3, provides $700 billion in financial relief. Of that amount, the Treasury Department has committed about $270 billion in cash injections for banks and another $40 billion for the insurer American International Group.

Economic stimulus — Earlier this year, Bush signed into law a $168 billion stimulus package that included rebates for households and tax breaks for businesses. President-elect Barack Obama is preparing another stimulus plan, and Democratic lawmakers say they expect the package could total between $500 billion and $700 billion.

Detroit — General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and their suppliers have been authorized $25 billion by Congress to retool their assembly lines for making more fuel-efficient cars. Now, the Big Three want an additional $25 billion to ensure they will have the funds to operate through spring. Congress could act on it in December.

Housing — In July, Bush signed a housing bill that included $300 billion in new loan authority for the government to guarantee cheaper mortgages for troubled homeowners. In September, the Treasury took over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, pledging up to $200 billion to back their assets.

Jobless aid — Congress last week approved an extension of up to three months for expiring unemployment benefits. The cost is nearly $6 billion.

Federal Reserve — In the past year the Fed has increased its lending and purchases of debt by $900 billion, to almost $2.2 trillion.

The federal deficit — It’s the difference between what the government received from taxes and other revenue and what it spent. In fiscal 2008, which ended Sept. 30, the budget deficit was $455 billion, quite a difference from 2007’s $161.5 billion. Just one month into fiscal 2009, the budget deficit had already reached $232 billion, including $115 billion going directly on the deficit ledger for bank stock purchases as part of the financial bailout. The deficit for fiscal 2009 could reach $1 trillion.

Source

Millionaires reap farm payments; Nobody checking incomes

Investigators say the problem will get worse

By LARRY MARGASAK
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — A sports team owner, a financial firm executive and residents of Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia were among 2,702 millionaire recipients of farm payments from 2003 to 2006 — and it’s not even clear they were legitimate farmers, congressional investigators reported Monday.

They probably were ineligible, but the Agriculture Department can’t confirm that, since officials never checked their incomes, the Government Accountability Office said.

The Agriculture Department cried foul: It said the investigators had access to Internal Revenue Service information on individuals that the department is not permitted to see.

John Johnson, deputy administrator in the department’s Farm Service Agency, said officials there are in touch with the IRS to devise a system for including tax information in its sampling program to determine eligibility.

He added that 2,702 recipients cited by the GAO was a small percentage of the 1.8 million recipients of farm payments from 2003 through 2006.

The investigators said the problem will only get worse, because the payments they cited covered only the 2002 farm bill subsidies.

The 2008 farm legislation has provisions that could allow even more people to receive improper payments without effective checks, they said.

There are three main types of payments: direct subsidies based on a farmer’s production history; countercyclical payments that kick in when prices are low and disappear when they recover; and a loan program that allows repayment in money or crops.

The 2002 farm bill required an income test for the first time.

An individual or farm entity was ineligible if average adjusted gross income exceeded $2.5 million over three years — unless 75 percent or more of that income came from farming, ranching and forestry.

According to the report, the 2,702 recipients exceeded the $2.5 million and got less than 75 percent of their income from these activities.

The payments to them totaled more than $49 million.

“USDA has relied principally on individuals’ one-time self-certifications that they do not exceed income eligibility caps, and their commitment that they will notify USDA of any changes that cause them to exceed these caps,” the GAO said.

The report said Agriculture field offices have been able to request that recipients submit tax returns for review.

But the administrator in charge of the payment programs, Teresa Lasseter, told the GAO, “Requiring three years of tax returns initially from over 2 million program participants was not a viable option or cost-effective alternative.”

The GAO said 78 percent of the recipients resided in or near a metropolitan area, while the remaining 22 percent resided in large towns, small towns and rural areas.

Further, the investigators said the Agriculture Department should have known that 87 of the 2,702 recipients were ineligible because it had noted in its own databases that they exceeded the income caps.

The GAO said it was prevented by law from identifying individuals cited in its report, but the investigators offered these examples of likely improper payments:

A founder and former executive of an insurance company received more than $300,000 in farm program payments in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 that should have been subject to the income limits.

An individual with ownership interest in a professional sports franchise received more than $200,000 for those same years that should have been barred by the income limits.

A person residing outside the United States received more than $80,000 for 2003, 2005 and 2006 on the basis of the individual’s ownership interest in two farming entities.

A top executive of a major financial services firm received more than $60,000 in farm program payments in 2003.

A former executive of a technology company received about $20,000 in years 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 that were covered by the income limits.

This individual also received more than $900,000 in farm program payments that were not subject to those limitations.

The investigators also found nine recipients resided outside the United States — in Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom, for example.

The remainder resided in 49 of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands.

Five states — Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois and Texas — accounted for 36 percent of the recipients and 43 percent of the $49.4 million in farm program payments.

Source

We must also remember that $2.3 Trillion they admitted to losing on September 10, the day before 9/11 still hasn’t been found either.

One has to wonder how much money, has been lost in other areas as well?

“Accountability” is not something the Bush Administration took to seriously.

Bush accountability is gone: just a reminder

By Leonard Pitts Jr.

June 7, 2007

Somebody owes me a Diet Coke.

That’s what was at stake in a wager a gentleman and I made over dinner at a restaurant in Baton Rouge. He had asked if I didn’t agree that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, then, as now, under fire in the scandal over the alleged politically motivated firing of nine U.S. attorneys, would soon be forced to step down. I said no. He said Gonzales would not last six weeks. We made a bet on it.

This was 11 weeks ago. Gonzales, of course, is still in office. In fact, President Bush last month reiterated his support for his embattled friend, who faces a possible Senate no-confidence vote later this month.

I wish I could say that in wagering on Gonzales’ political survival, I relied upon some insider knowledge, some astute reading of the tea leaves based on long years of watching the political scene. Truth is, what I relied on is a belief in the utter shamelessness of George W. Bush’s administration.

No, Team Bush does not own the patent on shamelessness. Some of us thought it bespoke an alarming imperviousness to embarrassment when Bill Clinton, caught lying about being serviced by a young intern in the Oval Office, chose to brazen his way through the resulting furor rather than resign.

But if the Bush people did not invent shamelessness, they have refined it to a level that once seemed impossible. So much so that this shamelessness, this indifference to perception, this abysmal lack of what Thomas Jefferson called “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” may prove to be the administration’s defining characteristic, its calling card in matters both grand and small. Granted, shamelessness will have to battle hubris and incompetence to earn that distinction, but still …

No administration in living memory has shown Team Bush’s ability to reverse itself so blithely, to deny the obvious so serenely, to ignore precedent, propriety and responsibility with such placid unconcern for consequences or public perception.

Weapons of mass destruction not found where you once guaranteed they would be? Pretend you invaded Iraq for other reasons.

“Stay the course” proving an ever more threadbare strategy? Deny it was ever your strategy at all.

FEMA director presides over a botched disaster relief effort that costs hundreds of American lives? Praise him for doing “a heckuva job.”

CIA director presides over intelligence gathering failures that cost thousands of American lives? Give him a Medal of Freedom.

And so on.

If you’re looking for accountability, you’re looking in the wrong White House. Or as Bush once put it, “We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 elections.” In other words, if you win the election you can do whatever you want and it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.

So I am not surprised that, despite growing evidence he allowed the Justice Department to become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party, Alberto Gonzales still has a job with the federal government. To be honest, I am more surprised that Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and former FEMA chief Michael Brown do not.

And ain’t that a kick in the head? We have reached a pass where one is almost shocked to see people held to answer for scandal and ineptitude. Where one is taken aback at the notion that failure carries a price. And where tough talk and a “What, me worry?” smugness now routinely pass for iron resolve and moral clarity.

If you had told me in 2001 that this would be the state of things six years later, I’d have laughed in your face.

I’d have lost a lot of Diet Cokes on that.

Source

GAO: Labor Dept. Misled Congress

By Carol D. Leonnig

November 25, 2008

The Labor Department gave Congress inaccurate and unreliable numbers that understated the expense of contracting out its employees’ work to private firms, according to a Government Accountability Office report released yesterday.

The department’s decisions in allowing contractors to compete for bureaucrats’ work — known as “competitive sourcing” — also demoralized workers, according to most of the 60 agency employees interviewed by the GAO.

“DOL’s savings reports are not reliable: a sample of three reports contained inaccuracies, and others used projections when actual numbers were available, which sometimes resulted in overstated savings,” the GAO report said. “Because of these and other weaknesses, DOL is hindered in its ability to determine if services are being provided more efficiently as a result of competitive sourcing.”

Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao began having some agency workers compete for their jobs in 2004, but since then few employees have actually lost their jobs and had their pay cut as a result of the privatizing effort, GAO found. Of the 314 federal workers who had a job change as a result of competitions with private firms, 263, or 84 percent, were either reassigned to positions with the same title and pay or were promoted. Of the 16 workers who were demoted, 14 kept their same professional grade or pay.

Twenty-two employees were demoted or laid off, and all were African American. An additional 29 employees left voluntarily.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), chairmen of their chambers’ appropriations subcommittees with jurisdiction over the Labor Department, asked for the report and urged Congress not to fund the competition program until the GAO provided the answers. They issued a statement yesterday saying the review documented “the negative impact the Bush Administration’s failed policies have had” on the agency.

“Under the direction of this White House, the Department of Labor has increasingly attempted to move work performed by Federal employees to private contractors” and, in so doing, hurt workers’ morale and “grossly overstated savings,” they wrote. “We look forward to working with the Obama Administration to strengthen the Department of Labor as it undertakes the critical missions of making sure our workplaces are safe; protecting employee pensions, health benefits and rights; and providing workers with the skills they need to compete successfully in the 21st century economy.”

Patrick Pizzella, an assistant secretary who oversees competitive sourcing, told the GAO in a letter last month that the department agrees tracking costs and performance more systematically would give the agency a more accurate picture of the usefulness of competitive sourcing. “As the GAO report indicates, DOL has made progress developing a system to assess the performance of winning service providers in our competitive sourcing program, and DOL’s competitions rarely resulted in lost jobs or salary reductions for DOL employees,” he said yesterday.

Pizzella said the Office of Management and Budget does not require that fuller counting; the GAO urged the OMB to require agencies to do so.
Source

Will the lies ever end?

Ranieri Becomes Victim of Crisis as Franklin Bank Corp. Seized

By Ari Levy

November 8 2008

Update 1

Lewis Ranieri, who helped create the mortgage-securities market in the 1980s while at Salomon Brothers Inc., became a victim of its collapse after his Houston-based bank was seized.

Franklin Bank Corp., formed by Ranieri in 2002, was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and its deposits handed over to Prosperity Bank, the FDIC said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. The failed bank’s 46 offices will open as branches of Prosperity, the FDIC said.

Ranieri, 61, a former Salomon Brothers vice chairman, formed Franklin in 2002 and over the next four years expanded the bank’s lending operations. While Franklin avoided the subprime mortgage market, his firm was burned by loans to builders in California, Arizona, Florida and Michigan, where foreclosures are among the highest in the U.S. In November 2006 and again a year later, he predicted the market would get worse.

“The subprime crisis has spread to other sectors of the housing market,” Ranieri said in a conference call a year ago. It’s “having a significant effect on housing and builders.”

Franklin and Security Pacific Bank of Los Angeles became the 18th and 19th U.S. banks seized this year amid the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression. Franklin’s $3.7 billion in deposits were assumed by Prosperity, and Security Pacific’s $450.1 million in deposits are now controlled by San Diego-based PacWest Bancorp. All deposits from both banks are still insured, the FDIC said.

Banks Closing

Regulators this year have closed the most banks since 1993, and the collapses of Washington Mutual Inc. and IndyMac Bancorp Inc. were among the biggest in history. The housing slump and tight credit led to a $700 billion bank-rescue plan, and the U.S. Treasury is using the fund to buy $250 billion in preferred shares in banks to boost capital.

In May, Ranieri replaced Anthony Nocella as chief executive officer after accounting errors related to real-estate loans. Alan Master was promoted to CEO in August, freeing Ranieri to try to raise money. That month, the company said it expected a $102.5 million second-quarter loss following $87 million in total losses the previous two periods.

In building Franklin, Ranieri enlisted Nocella among five former executives of Bank United Corp., later sold to WaMu, to run the bank. Ranieri took the bank public in 2003 at $14.50 a share, and the stock peaked at $21.88 in October 2006. Franklin shares tumbled 33 percent to 26 cents yesterday.

Franklin’s Decline

Franklin lost more than three-fourths of its market value during 2007 as bad home and commercial loans doubled. Ranieri said in December 2006 at an industry conference that investors in mortgage-backed bonds had no idea of the risks they were taking. Worldwide credit losses and writedowns linked to the mortgage meltdown have swelled to $688 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Ranieri’s assistant said he wasn’t available for comment yesterday.

“The residential side was not their problem, it was clearly the commercial side,” said David Lykken, co-founder of Mortgage Banking Solutions, an Austin, Texas-based consulting firm. “The reason it took a little longer is because that trailed residential,” he said yesterday in an interview.

Prosperity, of El Campo, Texas, will assume Franklin’s deposits, including brokered deposits, at a 1.7 percent premium. Prosperity will purchase $850 million of assets and the FDIC will retain the rest for later disposition, according to the statement. The FDIC estimates the transaction’s costs to its insurance fund will be $1.4 billion to $1.6 billion.

Pacific Western agreed to assume Security Pacific’s deposits at a 2 percent premium and buy $51.8 million of assets, with the FDIC keeping the rest. Security Pacific is the third California bank to close this year, after IndyMac and First Heritage Bank.

Cost of Failures

The FDIC oversees 8,451 institutions with $13.3 trillion in assets, and insures deposits of up to $250,000 per depositor per bank and the same amount for some retirement accounts. The agency has proposed doubling premiums charged to banks for coverage, to replenish its reserves amid agency forecasts that bank failures through 2013 will cost almost $40 billion.

The FDIC in August said 117 banks were classified as “problem” in the second quarter, a 30 percent jump from the first quarter. The agency, which doesn’t name “problem” lenders, will update its assessment this month.

“Banks overall are very well capitalized,” FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair told the Senate Banking Committee on Oct. 23. “We have some banks with some challenges, but the vast majority are well capitalized.”

The U.S. closed 27 banks from October 2000 through the end of last year, according to a list at fdic.gov.

Source

Can’t vote because you’re in jail? Yes you can!

by Jennifer Rae Taylor

On a cloudy Saturday morning in August, the sidewalk outside Glenn E. Dyer Jail in Oakland seems an odd site for a voter registration drive – but organizers are targeting an atypical audience: inmates and those visiting them.

“You’ve got the right and reason to register to vote in this election and so do the people you’re coming to visit,” says Linda Evans as two women approach the jail entrance. Evans is co-director of the San Francisco-based non-profit All of Us or None, which organized the Aug. 16 Day of Action to raise awareness of voting eligibility and counter what they call “widespread confusion about inmates’ legal voting rights.” Chapters throughout the state held drives in Alameda, Sacramento, Orange, San Mateo, Los Angeles and San Diego counties.

“Laws that directly affect inmates will be decided this November, so please share this information and encourage them to vote,” Evans continues.

“Wait,” one woman says, slowing her pace. “You mean they can vote while they’re in jail?”

“Yes they can,” says Evans. “It’s the law.”

A law that is hardly clear. After years of disagreement and legal wrangling, authorities at every level still disagree about the voting rights of California’s more than 82,000 jail inmates – most of whom are Black or Latino, and have not been convicted of any crime. Less than three months before one of the most historic elections in national history, California is still without a clearly established policy on jail inmate voting – and “the law” seems to vary with who you ask.

Ten California counties hold about 70 percent of the state’s jail inmates, but calls to the registrars of voters in each of these counties yielded a variety of opinions on whether or not those inmates can vote. Representatives from four counties, including San Diego and Alameda, stated that inmates cannot vote under any circumstances; four other counties, including Fresno and Sacramento, said inmates with felony convictions were disenfranchised; Orange County’s registrar’s office said that jail inmates are eligible to vote as long as they are citizens; and in Los Angeles County – which holds the nation’s largest jail population of 19,000 – a registrar employee admitted to not knowing what voting rights jail inmates held and suggested calling Secretary of State Deborah Bowen.

“The law is the same in all of California. Registrars are supposed to be the authority and people are going to trust what they tell them. Their answers shouldn’t vary by where they are or who picks up the phone,” said Dorsey Nunn, co-director of All of Us or None and its parent organization, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children. However, uncertainty has surrounded this issue for years.

In June 2004, San Francisco non-profit Legal Services for Prisoners with Children asked then-Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to clarify the voting rights of those in jail and on probation and learned that both groups were eligible to vote. In November 2005, new Attorney General Bill Lockyer officially denounced Shelley’s interpretation, declaring those on probation and in jail for a felony to be legally disenfranchised.

All of Us or None, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and several other organizations took the debate to court. In December 2006 the California Court of Appeal sided with the activists, ordering the secretary of state to inform election officials that “the only persons disqualified from voting are those who have been imprisoned in state prison, or who are on parole as a result of the conviction of a felony.”

Following the 2006 decision, the secretary of state’s office complied by informing county registrars that only those “in prison or on parole for a felony” were ineligible to vote – but did not fully explain what that meant for those held in jail, creating a network of state elections officials who disagree amongst themselves.

According to the secretary of state’s lawyers, individuals serving a jail sentence following a felony conviction cannot vote, while those in jail for a misdemeanor or awaiting trial can. Organizations like the ACLU, All of Us or None and Berkeley-based Voting Rights for All and even the county of San Francisco take a different stance, arguing that the 2006 Appeals Court decision enfranchises even those jail inmates who have a felony conviction.

The confusion may ultimately boil down to the precise meaning of “a felony sentence.” According to Peter Sheehan, an attorney with the Social Justice Law Project who served as co-counsel in the 2006 case, the decision holds that someone sentenced to jail for a felony is incarcerated as a condition of felony probation, and not technically serving “a felony sentence.” That makes the actual number of disenfranchised jail inmates very small. Or it would, if the average citizen – or public official – understood that distinction. “If the Secretary of State is simply saying people in jail for a felony cannot vote, that’s a misrepresentation unless they follow up with a detailed explanation of the distinction between felony probation and a felony sentence,” Sheehan said.

Ultimately, most jail inmates’ rights do not hinge on the outcome of that particular disagreement. According to state data, more than two out of three California jail inmates have not yet been convicted of any crime and would qualify as potential voters even under the secretary of state’s own reading of the law – though four of the 10 county registrars polled believed all jail inmates were ineligible to vote.

“If most people in jail haven’t been convicted, the state already agrees that most people in jail can vote,” said Evans. “So why isn’t there some kind of institutionalized procedure to make that easier and to make that known?”

According to a legal representative from the secretary of state’s office, the state is only required to inform counties of the law, while each county registrar is responsible for ensuring that employees correctly follow it. Sheehan believes the state has a duty to do more.

“Let’s say we were talking about women or Catholics or Blacks, instead of people in jail,” he said. “We all know these groups can vote under the law. If some counties wouldn’t let them, we’d expect the state to take action, whether it involved making phone calls or holding a training. This should be no different.”

But it is different. “The misinformation is widespread and goes all the way to the top,” said Judy Gerther, a co-chair of Voting Rights for All, who coordinated volunteers to register voters outside of Oakland’s county courthouse in 2004. “There were judges we ran into then who read our materials on eligibility and said, ‘We don’t believe you.’ This has been the law since 1973, but it’s never been publicized or clarified in layperson’s language. Lawyers don’t know; judges don’t know.”

Along with this month’s Day of Action, grassroots efforts to raise awareness have included a Northern California ACLU billboard campaign and All of Us or None lobbying state officials for better education and enforcement. As in 2004, Voting Rights for All plans to conduct outreach outside several Bay Area courthouses in mid-September. All of Us or None and the ACLU have sought a meeting with Secretary of State Deborah Bowen for several months, peaking in April when All of Us or None led a protest on the state capitol. That meeting hasn’t happened.

When it comes to inmate voting, jail facilities are no more regulated than county registrars. Don Allen of California’s Correctional Standards Authority, the agency responsible for designing state jail and prison policies, admits there are no mandated procedures for providing inmates access to voting information. “We have a broad rule that jails need to have some kind of policy to accommodate inmates’ right to vote,” said Allen. “The onus is on the county to design procedures that fulfill that obligation. Some may do the minimum and some may do more.”

For some, that minimum is far too low. “Many individuals in jail have no reason to think they can vote and little chance of receiving accurate information if they ask,” said Kathy Kahn, a retired defense attorney and Voting Rights for All co-chair. “Until we can assure accurate information is available, we don’t know how many inmates don’t want to vote and how many are being incorrectly told they can’t.”

“Even if the law says inmates can vote, they’re in jail. They’ve got bigger problems and priorities,” said Michael Robinson, an Alameda resident perplexed by the campaign to secure inmates’ rights he’s not sure they want. “My nephew talks to me about all kinds of stuff when I go see him in jail, but he’s never asked me to help him sign up to vote.”

Activists argue that this is not a question of whether or not inmates want to vote or who they will vote for. “I don’t think most people in jail understand the power of their voting. They often think voting won’t change anything,” said All of Us or None member Elder Freeman. A former Black Panther and state prisoner, Freeman fears many in jail today don’t know what voting can accomplish.

“Getting them the vote is just the first step,” he said. “We need to teach them it’s not all about federal elections. State and local elections determine policies in the communities where they live.”

Though All of Us or None has sought support for this issue from the state Democratic Party with little success, Nunn emphasizes that defending the voting rights of those in jail is about civil rights, not partisanship.

“Nobody I try to register ever says, ‘Oh, I can’t vote because I’m Black,’” said Nunn, also a former prisoner. “But I get plenty of Black and Brown people who falsely believe they can’t vote because they’re on probation or have a felony conviction. I know there are plenty of Black and Brown people who are told and believe they can’t vote because they’re in jail. So the effect is the same.”

Whether the question of inmate voting rights will be settled with a conference or require further legal action, organizers and advocates are determined to not see another election pass without a statewide policy protecting incarcerated voters’ rights under the law.

“Even with the law on our side, we are being disenfranchised by misinformation,” said Nunn. “That is a blow to our communities and to our democracy.”

Jennifer Rae Taylor can be reached at jraetay@gmail.com.

Let my people vote!

by Pastor Kenneth Glasgow

One of the most important rights people lose by going to prison is the right to vote, so voter re-enfranchisement is key to successful reentry back into the community. People who have been in prison are determined to build political power in order to win back our rights, and one expression of political power is exercising our right to vote.

Voting rights laws differ widely from state to state, and 48 out of 50 states have laws that disenfranchise or limit voting rights for people with felony convictions. A national research organization estimates that at least 5.3 million Americans will be denied the right to vote in the 2008 election because of a felony conviction.

A total of 13 percent of Black men are ineligible to vote because of past convictions. Dorsey Nunn, co-founder of All of Us or None, noted: “The voting rights of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people and people with past convictions have been violated over the course of decades, at a minimum through benign neglect and at worst deliberate disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of people. The lessons coming out of Florida in 2000 were not only a question of hanging chads but the open suppression of Black votes through the manipulation of felony conviction status.”

Formerly incarcerated people throughout the U.S. are determined to unite to make our voices heard: As our forefather Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will.” Join us in a National Day of Action for Jail and Prison Voting Rights.

We’ve gone from the back of the bus to the front of the prison. The struggle continues.

We’re not second class citizens, but second chance citizens, SO LET MY PEOPLE VOTE!

Source

A Detailed Description of Management Strategy Fraud

A Detailed Description of Management Strategy Fraud

Prepared For The People by Professor Glen Chase

Glen Chase, a Professor of Systems Management, has released a third report detailing the methodical fraud that the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Management perpetrated to attempt to create a bogus emergency eradication program for the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM). This third report demonstrates the fraud and deception within the program strategy that CDFA Management used and is continuing to use to qualify for $100’s of millions of dollars of emergency taxpayer funds, which were intended for real emergencies.

fraud-deception-cdfa-lbam-eradication-program.pdf
download PDF (809.0 KB)

October 7, 2008, Santa Cruz, California

CDFA MANAGEMENT STRATEGY FRAUD REVEALED BY PROFESSOR

PROFESSOR RELEASES THIRD REPORT DETAILING THE FRAUD AND DECEPTION OF THE CDFA LBAM ERADICATION PROGRAM.

Contact: Professor Glen Chase
glenchase [at] aol.com

FRAUD AND DECEPTION: THE CDFA LBAM ERADICATION PROGRAM
A Detailed Description of Management Strategy Fraud
Prepared For The People by Professor Glen Chase

Glen Chase, a Professor of Systems Management, has released a third report detailing the methodical fraud that the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Management perpetrated to attempt to create a bogus emergency eradication program for the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM). This third report demonstrates the fraud and deception within the program strategy that CDFA Management used and is continuing to use to qualify for $100’s of millions of dollars of emergency taxpayer funds, which were intended for real emergencies.

CDFA’s main method of fraud is “Fear and Solution.” CDFA Management creates a false fear and then comes to the rescue with a solution. The false fear is the nearly harmless moth that CDFA characterizes as the moth of mass destruction. CDFA falsifies that eradication is necessary and possible, and extorts taxpayer emergency funds for the solution. It is very much like paying the CDFA to keep the sky from falling.

The second method of CDFA fraud finds the CDFA supplying other agencies with false information so that the work of other agencies results in conclusions that support the CDFA lies. Other agencies are generally innocent, but under pressure for immediate results with limited budgets and not suspecting CDFA deception, other agencies accept the information and data that CDFA supplies them.

The third method of CDFA fraud is to load the decision making processes with people who have something to gain by the fake eradication program going forward and exclude independent and honest analysis by scientists and others who are not dependent on or under the wing of CDFA.

The fourth method is repetition of message: “Safe,” “Safe,” “Safe,” “Safe,” “Safe,”
“Just a Pheromone,” “Just a Pheromone,” “Just a Pheromone,” “Just a Pheromone.”
It is interesting to learn that there is not a single drop of natural moth pheromone in the entire bogus eradication program, and not a single scientific document that concludes that any method used by CDFA in their program is safe.

The fifth method of fraud and deception is damage control. When the CDFA is caught lying, or the false information they deliver is found to be incorrect, A.G. Kawmanura, the secretary of the CDFA, makes the statement that they will need to communicate better, implying that the lies and deception were just a misunderstanding.

Currently, the theme of fraud that the CDFA is using is a classic example of the false fear that CDFA creates. After public hearings and courts convened and found that NO DAMAGE had occurred from this moth, CDFA has rebounded with the slogan: “Once the damage is seen, its too late.” CDFA uses this slogan to make us believe that LBAM is like a locust attack on our State or the wall of a dam breaking and that we should have fixed the crack ahead of the devastation. This is all scary stuff. But there is ZERO truth and ZERO relationship of LBAM to the fear scenario that the CDFA has created in their new slogan. It is without precedent in the known history of this earth that LBAM suddenly devastates crops, forests or backyard gardens, as the CDFA management would want us to believe.

Professor Chase is furthering the call for a truly independent State investigation of CDFA and the LBAM eradication program. An independent investigation into the CDFA LBAM eradication program will quickly demonstrate the erroneous messages delivered and the unnecessary LBAM eradication program perpetrated by CDFA. “An investigation will isolate the real scientists within the CDFA from the Management because the scientists at the CDFA will unlikely commit perjury to support the fraud and deception that has been delivered by CDFA Management to California’s agriculture community, elected officials, the press and the general population.”

Professor Chase’s first report (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/07/15/18516449.php) revealed the falsehoods CDFA delivered after June 19 when courts and public pressure stopped the CDFA from aerial spraying synthetic pheromone based pesticides directly on cities. Professor Chase’s second report (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/08/19/18527832.php) revealed the fraud and misinformation delivered by CDFA from fall 2007 until June 19, 2008.

Glen Chase is a Professor of Systems Management specializing in Environmental Economics and Statistics. Glen served as an Associate Professor teaching graduate level courses in Systems Management at USC for eight years. He has taught at multiple universities in the Central Coast area, including The Naval Post Graduate School, The Monterey Institute of International Studies and Cal State University, Monterey Bay. Glen is also a Management Consultant. Currently, Professor Chase develops management systems to assist organizations that cater to the improvement of life for children with disabilities.

Background Note: the area of Systems Management within Chase’s field involves management, communication and integration of complex and often highly specialized sciences. Systems Management was not generally recognized 100 years ago, when a single scientist could be a master of all areas related to his/her work. Today, it is essential.

Source

My, My this sounds almost like the

1. Bailout Strategy.
2. War in Iraq Strategy.

What a familiar ring it all has. Oh I must be hallucinating, couldn’t be could it?

Bush would never dream of LIEING would he?