Set up like a bowlin' pin

Went to a county General Plan Citizens Advisory Committee meeting tonight. First presentation was on sustainability. What it means, how it should impact planning considerations, and so on. No information or ideas that were new to me but I knew as soon as I saw a particular powerpoint slide that the presenter, a geology professor from CSU Chico, was likely to catch hell from somebody for it. Little grumbles of concern and disapproval rose from various corners of the room. The offensive comment was "Capitalism concentrates wealth and power." Other than that I didn't hear anything I thought would be controversial. Wrong!

Several times in her presentation I was pleased to hear her talk about poverty as an environmental as well as a social problem, and that racial and economic equity (thank heavens she didn't suggest gender) are key components of sustainability...that environmental justice issues (i.e. the historical tendency for heavily polluting industry and poor people / people of color to be sited together) must be addressed in sustainable development. Yep. She even talked about affordable housing and ways of increasing the supply of it, such as by adopting inclusionary zoning ordinances. I love it when people use those words in public places of their own free will. Hmm. I suppose I wondered if somebody would take exception to the inclusionary zoning reference too, as I've been in other public meetings where it was an inflammatory idea, but she didn't dwell on it very long.

Listening to all this I felt like I should try to think of a question to stand up and ask her, or some way of saying "Hear hear! Jolly good!" when she was done, or some relevant comment that would galvanize all this in public consciousness and make the Committee to go out and demand affordable housing or something. I was having a hard time formulating a question, and a couple other people had already stood up mostly to comment, not to inquire. Then a gentleman stood up and said, "In all your talk about protecting minorities I didn't hear you say anything about protecting religious groups." Ah, here we go, I thought. Because medical waste incinerators are so often opened next door to white people's churches. He had taken many notes and was going over them point by point. "And illegal aliens? Are we going to protect THEM too??" My eyes started rolling uncontrollably. "And you said Capitalism concentrates wealth and power! Capitalism is what made our country great!" Duh. Absolutely great, in wealth and power. That's why slavery was / is a hard habit to break. "Our traditional values are being destroyed by all the liberalism!" (Dang, no more slavery.) "There's no such thing as affordable housing because somebody always has to subsidize it! Doesn't equity just mean SOCIALISM?" Oh please, don't let it mean that. Etc. etc.

He was just on a roll, all but accusing the poor geology professor of advancing a godless Communist agenda, and I felt it was my duty as the legal aid lawyer with the little ACLU button on my bag to stand up and at least express some support for the speaker. I don't feel good about impromptu speaking. I had a few things I was rehearsing in my head, and hopefully they came out making more sense to other people than they did to me. I got up and said I found her presentation quite timely because it happened that I would be attending a summit in New Orleans next week on Regional EQUITY and SOCIAL justice. (Hmm...) That regardless of one's political views or preferred coping strategy, poverty is an environmental and social problem that we have to address. I recommended some books on the synthesis of capitalism and sustainability. I misspoke, though, by saying that capitalism and sustainability can "coexist." It would have been more correct to say that since capitalism is the economic reality of the world, it has to adopt the principles of sustainability or it will put the world out of business. All the externalized costs (such as the inner city kids with asthma from the medical waste incinerator) are really bad accounting in the long run. Maybe he'll read Paul Hawken's books and learn all that anyway. Ha.

And I realized that all my buttons, including the ACLU button, had been pushed by some ignorant fool, and I was annoyed that it was so easy to do. But it was a good exercise for me to stand up and try to say something, and I might not have done that if I hadn't been all riled up and eye-rollin'. At a Buddhist retreat center I visited a couple years ago, a sign said that the person who is the most irritating / difficult for you is your greatest teacher. So many great teachers in the world.

Child-hating congressman

Whoa, Em, that's some strong rhetoric there...wasn't Rep. Nathan Deal, R-GA just trying to protect innocent taxpayers from spending their money on illegal aliens when he and the late Rep. Charlie Norwood created the Deficit Reduction Act of 2006? Some excerpts from an update on CaliforniaHealthline.org:

Proof-of-Citizenship Rule Pushes Drop in Medicaid Enrollment

March 12, 2007

Medicaid programs in seven states have reported declines in enrollment during the past year that they attribute to new federal rules requiring beneficiaries and applicants to provide documentation proving their U.S. citizenship, the New York Times reports.

The Deficit Reduction Act of 2006 includes a provision that most people who seek Medicaid enrollment must provide "satisfactory documentary evidence of citizenship," such as a passport or the combination of a birth certificate and driver's license. Applicants are required to submit original documents or copies that have been certified by the issuing agency, some state officials say.

The law, written by Rep. Nathan Deal (R-Ga.) and the late Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.), is intended to prevent undocumented immigrants from enrolling in Medicaid. However, it "has instead shut out tens of thousands of United States citizens," the Times reports. Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia have attributed declines in Medicaid enrollment to the new requirements.

In Florida, the number of children enrolled in Medicaid declined by 63,000, to 1.2 million, from July 2006 to January. Florida Department of Children and Families spokesperson Albert Zimmerman said, "Nearly all of these people are American citizens." In Iowa, the number of Medicaid beneficiaries declined by 5,700, to 92,880, during the second half of 2006 after increasing for five years.

Iowa Department of Human Services Director Kevin Concannon said, "The largest adverse effect of this policy has been on people who are American citizens. We have not turned up many undocumented immigrants receiving Medicaid in Waterloo, Dubuque or anywhere else in Iowa."

So now that Rep. Deal knows that his law is keeping real live U.S. citizens and their kids from accessing health care benefits such as befit real live U.S. citizens, is he trying to fix it?

Chris Riley, chief of staff for Deal, said Deal believes that the law "has saved taxpayers money," adding that Deal "will vigorously fight repeal of that provision." Riley added that Deal will try to extend a similar provision to SCHIP. Riley also said that the requirement could be applied flexibly to minimize hardship for citizens (Pear, New York Times, 3/12).

Assuming there's genuine interest in minimizing hardship. Some states, not to name names (FLORIDA) thrive on it. So many vivid cliches come to mind...babies and bathwater...noses and faces...guns and feet...

So, I assert, either Rep. Deal hates children, or he just really hates non-citizens & non-citizen children and doesn't believe that people who need Medicaid are really citizens because he thinks there's an income requirement in the Constitution (hint: there's not). Or maybe in the war on illegal immigration, tens of thousands of U.S. citizens are OK collateral damage especially if it frees up our sacred tax dollars for other uses. Last I checked Georgia was not one of those states where nobody needs Medicaid so I reckon he's not doing such a great job of "Representing" y'all.

Feeling stretched...like butter over too much bread...

Looks like we have a supply & demand problem here.

From a recent report by the California Commission on Access to Justice:

* In 2005, only 754 California lawyers worked as legal aid attorneys. That translates into one legal aid lawyer for every 8,361 low income Californians. On the other hand, there is one private attorney for every 250 Californians.
* Two of three eligible low-income clients with meritorious cases are turned away.
* IOLTA (Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts) funding, which serves as the underpinning for many legal aid programs, declined by $14.6 million between 1993 and 2005, a 59 percent drop.
* Although core funding for legal services (from IOLTA, the Legal Services Corp. and California's Equal Access Fund) increased by $7 million from 1993 to 2005, when adjusted for inflation, the 2005 money actually represented a decline in funding.
* Self-help centers are helping to fill the gap in county courthouses, but the courts need $44 million to fully achieve self-help assistance. Current funding provides $8.7 million statewide.

Word to Bush -- Isaiah 3:15

A long time ago, riding down a street in Salt Lake City with my dad, I saw a bunch of guys in carwash uniforms kicking and stomping on another guy who was down on the ground, looked like he could have been homeless but who knows, and who knows what he may have done, if anything, to incur the wrath of his attackers. Whatever else it was, it was obviously not a fair fight. When we got to Dad's office he called the police to report the incident. I haven't witnessed live very many instances of real violence which seems a little surprising to me, considering how prevalent it is in the world. In my own protected sphere most of the violence I see is prepackaged and edited or staged, with one subtle exception.

I have a client, a woman in her 50's, who (along with her cat) is about to end a long stint of homelessness. She was a winner of a recent Section 8 "lottery." During the cold snaps in January I wondered almost every night if I would read the next morning that she had frozen to death. The homeless shelter wasn't a viable option for her because they have many stringent rules for eligibility imposed by their HUD funding. No way in hell was she giving up her cat, her best friend and companion for the past ten years, and she doesn't do so well with crowds and little privacy. I have heard people use the term "feral humans" as a way of trying to wash their hands of those "hard to serve" homeless who won't sign away nearly all of their personal liberties for the sake of a roof and a hot dinner, but she has been very much interested and focused on finding herself a warm, safe place to live.

A few months ago, our local Housing Authority held a lottery for people to try to win a position on the waiting list for a Section 8 voucher. Briefly, the Section 8 program allows people to receive rental assistance that allows them to rent a very modest apartment of their choice (from any landlord who will accept the vouchers). The tenant is obligated to pay about 30% of whatever income he / she has as their share of the rent. There is a ceiling on the amount of assistance the Housing Authority can provide, so the total rent has to be at the lower end of the area's average rents to start with, or the rental won't get approved. If or when the tenant's income increases, the Section 8 subsidy decreases proportionally. So it's a pretty smart program, encourages responsibility, theoretically helps avoid concentrating all the poor people into one spot, includes annual inspections to make sure the housing is up to health and safety codes, and so on.

Unfortunately the waiting list to obtain one of these prized vouchers in our county had been closed for YEARS before the recent lotteries. Even once on the waiting list, in many areas it can take five years or more before your name comes up.

My client and her cat got lucky -- not only did she win a spot on the list, she got a low number and was able to get a voucher almost immediately. She's working with a landlord to make some repairs on an apartment so that it will pass the Section 8 inspection, and hopefully soon she can leave behind the years of sleeping in old camping trailers and tents and somebody or other's van. I am so proud of her, she's really stayed on top of this plus she has no car and travels everywhere by bicycle and bus. A hero for our time.

So when I read about Bush's budget proposal that would further slash housing assistance programs, it is clear that Bush and his gang are just like those guys at the carwash. This is our "homeland security," a bunch of guys in jumpsuits who will come and stomp on you when you're down. In the article linked above there is an interesting quote from Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign touting the fact that

"for the first time in 20 years we are spending more on human resources than defense."

This was something people once said to try to get re-elected. Huh.

I will vote for anyone who has the internal organs, of whatever gender, to embrace truly and re-proclaim investment in human resources (including varying companion species) as a legitimate American value and a most desirable goal. Down with the thugs.

Grandmas on ice

Local grandmother Cathy Webster will spend two months in federal prison for her protest at the School of the Americas (WHINSEC). At her sentencing, Ms. Webster told the judge, "You will notice that increasingly it is the elders who are speaking out and acting boldly and authoritatively to bring understanding of what justice, kindness, generosity and compassion mean in a world weary of the endless conquest and dominance mind-set of nations."