OUR FEDERAL SYSTEM OF HEALTH CARE ESPECIALLY FOR THE DISABLED WAS NOT COSTLY WHEN IT WORKED RIGHT. DEFUNDING AND DISMANTLING OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY MADE COSTS SOAR AS FRAUD AND CORRUPTION SET IN. FAST FORWARD TO TODAY AND PRIVATIZATION WILL MAKE COSTS SOAR WITH FRAUD EVEN MORE WITH DEREGULATION KILLING PUBLIC PROTECTIONS.
Below you see all of Federal funding is going to managed care corporations----to private non-profits with no oversight----and as with Amazon.com and other global corporations----is not recognizing worker disability at all. Medicaid was so gutted of funding that it is not even a program anymore so sending people over to global managed care corporations will not end well. In-home care toted as good for the person is seeing levels of abuse and neglect never seen in America and you would expect that in a profit-driven health system. Families with disabled are being given vouchers to stay home with their children and adults but most of the time this is overwhelming...AS CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS KNOW IT WILL BE. In Maryland, we have hospitals that ask every time you go if you want to opt out of resuscitation as families are soaked with medical debt and the disabled and chronically ill are made to feel guilty for the burden and lack of choices in care. Maryland has ManorCare owned by the largest global Wall Street hedge fund----HOW DO YOU THINK THAT WILL WORK?
The goal of ACA and Clinton Wall Street neo-liberals with this health care reform as it is tied to ending safety net and disability programs is that people will be treated just as Wall Street banks treat them......if you are too poor they will use you for liquid money-----if you are middle-class they will soak you with fines, fees, and corruption so they take all your personal assets in pursuit of care for you loved one-----and if you are the few that can afford full private health coverage ---you will continue to get the kind of health care and disability access everyone always had!
Below you see just one of tens of thousands of private non-profits getting VA funds to care for veterans and the disabled......
Veterans Benefits Comfort Keepers®
Is Honored to Serve Our Nation's Veterans We feel privileged to provide home care for veterans who served our nation in its time of need. We provide you with the information to work through the paperwork to help you avoid potential pension claim delays. Once you become an approved participant in a VA program, Comfort Keepers will provide the quality home care and companionship our veterans deserve. There are several veteran in-home care programs for which an individual may qualify:
Improved Pension Benefit Program
Homemaker/Home Health Aide Program
In-Home Respite Program
Who Qualifies? If you or your spouse served 90 consecutive days of active military duty – at least one of those days during a U.S. declared war – you may qualify or be partially qualified.
Other qualifications include specific financial criteria and documented physical need for in-home care.
To begin the application process, you will need:
Original discharge certificate
Marriage certificate (divorce papers from any prior marriages, if applicable)
Death certificate of veteran (if applicable)
Social Security numbers for the veteran and spouse
If you think you may qualify for one of the VA programs, contact your local Comfort Keepers office today. Or use the Find Local, Loving Care search box in the left side of the screen to locate the elder care office nearest you.
Can you imagine being a senior trapped in your apartment alone with only visits by these home-health services as your only access to health care? Aging in place is not what they make it sound. End of life can be lonely and depending on an array of strangers coming to your house is dangerous. We are already seeing the abuse and neglect from this system and people with disabilities are especially at risk.
The idea of public nursing facilities was to do just what the ACA pretends it is doing-----consolidating care under one roof for groups of aging with all the care needed on site. Shared living provides better mental health. THAT WAS HOW PUBLIC HOSPITALS AND NURSING HOME USED TO WORK. Then, Reagan/Clinton started the defunding and dismantling of oversight and accountability and these public facilities became what the ACA is creating now----neglect and abuse.
The amount of money stolen in health industry fraud can fund an entire renaissance in public care facilities that employ lots of people paid well and protected by US labor laws. Filling these corporations with immigrant workers exploited and impoverished does not do this. We need to move away from profit at any cost and back to publicly funded quality care paid for with our copious tax payments. Remember, our taxes are not going to go down simply because all of this is privatized----the more privatization the more fraud and corruption the higher the cost.
These corporate pols consider it a success with the costs of these disability programs go down----but it really means people have simply been made unable to access it or give up trying to get any quality from this privatized ACA.
Remember, people do not want to go to state nursing homes in Maryland for example because they are defunded and often neglectful and dangerous. The idea people want to stay home comes from this fear. As this article states---they are deregulating Medicare and Medicaid to allow for what used to be protections for these clients to be ignored in creating these at-home situations.
Below you see what everyone with integrity knows----you break a Federal system into at home health care and you send fraud and corruption soaring because there is no way to give oversight and accountability. You fully fund group health care living and provide quality you save tons of money. This is not rocket science folks---they know they are busting the Trusts with fraud. Keeping people out of COSTLY institutions?
For-Profit Nursing Homes Fuel Rise In Fraud And Abuse
Chargeswww.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/31Dec 31, 2012 · ... nursing home companies, the ... Nursing Home Abuse Assisted Living and Nursing Homes Medicare Medicare Fraud Assisted Living and Nursing Homes Health ..
Cleaning up Dodge: The challenge of home care fraud and abuse ...www.fiercehealthpayer.com
Reports of fraud and abuse in home healthcare make this benefit seem like the lawless wild west of government health insurance
Patient-centered medical homes lower costs, reduce healthcare overuse Report also finds model produces care quality improvements
January 30, 2015 | By Leslie Small Fierce Health Care
ACA offers incentives to keep elderly out of nursing homes
Christine Vestal, Pew/Stateline Staff Writer 10:31 a.m. EST January 17, 2014(Photo: Darren Cummings, AP)
In New Hampshire, Medicaid pays for in-home care for nearly all of its developmentally disabled residents. For frail elders, the opposite is true. Most wind up in nursing homes.
To remedy this imbalance, New Hampshire is taking advantage of Affordable Care Act funding for a program aimed at removing existing barriers to providing long-term care in people's homes and communities.
Known as the Balancing Incentive Payments Program, it is one of several ACA provisions designed to keep as many people as possible out of costly institutions. Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Texas are also participating in the $3 billion incentive program.
According to a 2010 AARP survey, nine out of 10 older Americans said they would rather be cared for in their homes than in a nursing home. People with mental and physical disabilities, and those who represent them, also have pushed for community-based long-term care options and the ability to live independently in their homes.
States participating in the $3 billion program receive a higher federal match for all of their spending on home and community care through September 2015, provided they reduce the red tape and confusion that caretakers, elders and those with disabilities typically encounter when they attempt to find alternatives to nursing homes.
PROVIDER OF LAST RESORT
In 2010, nearly two-thirds of nursing home residents had their bills paid by Medicaid. Many low-income older people qualify for Medicaid before they enter a nursing home. But hundreds of thousands of higher-income people also end up in the Medicaid program after they deplete their own resources. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the average cost of nursing home care in 2010 was $6,235 per month.
States have had the option of providing alternatives to nursing homes under a Medicaid "waiver" program developed during the Reagan administration. A major impetus for the change was that Medicaid dollars can support nearly three older people or adults with physical disabilities in their homes for every one person in a nursing home, according to a study by AARP.
Progress has been made over the last 30 years. More people are able to remain in their homes every year. In fact, the use of nursing homes has declined in recent years, despite the growing ranks of the elderly. In 2010, 1.4 million Americans resided in nursing homes, a decline of 4% since 2005, according to the AARP study.
But nearly everyone agrees that not enough has been done to give people a choice about where they receive care. Part of the problem is a morass of regulatory barriers under the Medicaid program. The balancing incentives program could eliminate some of them.
Separate from the balancing incentives program, HHS last week published a long-awaited update to its community living waiver rules, with the goal of simplifying the waiver process and eligibility requirements so that more people can receive care outside of institutions. In general, said Matt Salo, director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, the federal government is "putting its foot on the accelerator to make more community-based services available."
NO WRONG DOOR
Under the balancing incentives program, states must create a so-called "no-wrong-door" approach for people looking for resources to help them keep their loved ones at home. Most people have no idea where to turn when the need for long-term care arises. To make sure people get access to the services they need, Medicaid agencies are charged with training all state and local social services organizations to help them apply. The state also works with hospital discharge personnel to make sure they inform patients about their options for care.
"In New Hampshire that means not turning them back out into the cold," said Don Hunter, who heads the state balancing incentives program. "Don't just give them a phone number. Make the appointments for them."
The program also requires states to create a standardized set of eligibility assessments for everyone so that all of their needs can be met, no matter what their age or type of disability.
States must also provide an independent case manager for every person in need – one who does not have ties to a nursing home or any other type of health care service.
To qualify for the incentive program, states must have spent less than 50 percent of their Medicaid long-term care dollars on community-based care in 2009.
When the program began in 2011, New Hampshire was ahead of most other states. Nearly 50% of its spending was on home and community care. Today, community spending exceeds 55%, Hunter said.
INCENTIVES FOR CHANGE
National advocates for community-based care are watching New Hampshire because it has made huge strides in caring for people with developmental disabilities. At least 99 percent of them are receiving care in their homes and communities, far more than in other states. Many hope the state can make the same kind of progress for elders and adults with physical and behavioral disabilities.
But transferring those policies to older people may not be so easy. Doug McNutt, AARP associate state director for advocacy, says the challenges are very different for disabled adults and older people. "Family members have had an amazing effect. Parents [of kids with developmental disabilities] take it on as a mission and that mission doesn't end when they're 18. With elders, it's not the same."
Medicaid requires states to provide nursing home beds to those who need it. Waivers for community-based services are optional. The state can limit eligibility, total spending and geographic availability. Determining eligibility under a waiver can take two months. Eligibility for a nursing home is automatic.
New Hampshire's long-term care waiver for community services is broader than the waiver in most other states. People don't have to apply for multiple programs to get the services they need. But McNutt said the process needs to be faster. "Families are in crisis, and if there aren't family members around, it's even more likely you'll end up in a nursing home."
Another impediment to shifting more care to the community is that New Hampshire, like most other states, has a well-established nursing home industry. The owners of dozens of facilities who employ thousands of workers have a vested interest in making sure they have a steady stream of business.
That issue doesn't exist for people with developmental disabilities. As the result of a lawsuit, New Hampshire in 1991 closed its only institution for people with cognitive impairment—the Laconia State School. As a result, there was no other option but to find home and community based services for its residents. "It was like lightning in a bottle," McNutt said.
Still, state officials deserve credit for creating a smooth transition, said Sue Fox of the University of New Hampshire. "New Hampshire got ahead of the game and stayed ahead with the developmental disability population. Now the goal is to bring some of those same policies to aging and mental health," she said.
That is the consensus around the world. Amazon is known as a sweat shop operation and will be moving to robotics in just a few years so many of these jobs will not be permanent. Baltimore Development Corporation only brings global corporations known for exploitation and corporate fraud and corruption. What the citizens of Baltimore want is to get rid of these global corporations and rebuild our domestic economy with small and regional businesses. Just take away the copious corporate tax breaks, corporate tax evasion, and stop the fraud and these global corporations are history!
To see who the future disabled will be and how they are already ignored----look below at what is a growing number of college grads left unemployed because Clinton neo-liberals hand power of the economy to global corporations that want high unemployment. None of this has to happen----a domestic economy fueled by small and regional businesses will kill this hold. It doesn't take long on unemployment to burn through all of your assets and become homeless and that is what global corporations like Amazon prey on-----a desperate worker---with no Federal safety nets we move to third world beggars. TOO SCARED TO PROTEST!!!!!!! THAT'S WHAT TODAY'S CONGRESS WANTS!
A THIRD WORLD WORKER AND THAT IS WHERE CLINTON, OBAMA, AND OUR NEO-LIBERAL CONGRESS IS TAKING US!
If you don't know that the story below is happening in large numbers----you need to WAKE UP!
Please glance through this article to see what is becoming the norm under Clinton neo-liberalism and Bush neo-conservatism as safety nets disappear.
'Yep I'm hurt right now I hurt myself there and they expect the exact same thing out of me as they did when it before I was hurt'
'Being homeless is better than working for Amazon' Nichole Gracely has a master's degree and was one of Amazon's best order pickers. Now, after protesting the company, she's homeless
I am homeless. My worst days now are better than my best days working at Amazon.
According to Amazon's metrics, I was one of their most productive order pickers – I was a machine, and my pace would accelerate throughout the course of a shift. What they didn't know was that I stayed fast because if I slowed down for even a minute, I'd collapse from boredom and exhaustion.
During peak season, I trained incoming temps regularly. When that was over, I'd be an ordinary order picker once again, toiling in some remote corner of the warehouse, alone for 10 hours, with my every move being monitored by management on a computer screen.
Superb performance did not guarantee job security. ISS is the temp agency that provides warehouse labor for Amazon and they are at the center of the SCOTUS case Integrity Staffing Solutions vs. Busk. ISS could simply deactivate a worker's badge and they would suddenly be out of work. They treated us like beggars because we needed their jobs. Even worse, more than two years later, all I see is: Jeff Bezos is hiring.
I have never felt more alone than when I was working there. I worked in isolation and lived under constant surveillance. Amazon could mandate overtime and I would have to comply with any schedule change they deemed necessary, and if there was not any work, they would send us home early without pay. I started to fall behind on my bills.
At some point, I lost all fear. I had already been through hell. I protested Amazon. The gag order was lifted and I was free to speak. I spent my last days in a lovely apartment constructing arguments on discussion boards, writing articles and talking to reporters. That was 2012 and Amazon's labor and business practices were only beginning to fall under scrutiny. I walked away from Amazon's warehouse and didn't have any other source of income lined up.
Employees of online retailer Amazon blow whistles during a strike in front of the company's branch in Leipzig, central Germany. Photograph: Jens Meyer/AP
I cashed in on my excellent credit, took out cards, and used them to pay rent and buy food because it would be six months before I could receive my first unemployment compensation check.
I received $200 a week for the following six months and I haven't had any source of regular income since those benefits lapsed. I sold everything in my apartment and left Pennsylvania as fast as I could. I didn't know how to ask for help. I didn't even know that I qualified for food stamps.
I furthered my Amazon protest while homeless in Seattle. When the Hachette dispute flared up, I "flew a sign," street parlance for panhandling with a piece of cardboard: "I was an order picker at amazon.com. Earned degrees. Been published. Now, I'm homeless, writing and doing this. Anything helps."
I have made more money per word with my signs than I will probably ever earn writing, and I make more money per hour than I will probably ever be paid for my work. People give me money and offer well wishes and I walk away with a restored faith in humanity.
I flew my protest sign outside Whole Foods while Amazon corporate employees were on lunch break, and they gawked. I went to my usual flying spots around Seattle and made more money per hour protesting Amazon with my sign than I did while I worked with them. And that was in Seattle. One woman asked, "What are you writing?" I told her about the descent from working poor to homeless, income inequality, my personal experience. She mentioned Thomas Piketty's book, we chatted a little, she handed me $10 and wished me luck. Another guy said, "Damn, that's a great story! I'd read it," and handed me a few bucks.
If the US supreme court rules against the Amazon workers and determines they should not be paid while waiting in line – I'll protest some more.
I've applied for many jobs, and any prospective employer that runs a Google search of my name can see my discontent with my last employer.
I couldn't afford to be working poor and now I'm chronically homeless. My homelessness isn't really a mystery. I simply could not afford to keep a roof over my head and asking my family was not an option. I've met other intelligent, hard-working homeless people. Many put in years of service before becoming disabled and summarily tossed outside without any money. We're expected to be dumb. We didn't choose homelessness.
I don't know what the picture of the average American homeless person is, but I'm sure it wouldn't include me. I graduated college. I have been published in a scholarly journal and a social-justice oriented website. I have completed my MA in American Studies. I ditched plans to pursue a PhD because it clearly wasn't going to be a viable career option: I did not appreciate the so-called privilege to become volunteer labor and work for less than minimum wage as a graduate student, and then maybe, if I were so fortunate, become an adjunct professor. It didn't take long for me to realize that I was living a fantasy, thinking that a student of the humanities would be tolerated, and paid decently, in the corporate world of the modern university. I could never afford to perform an unpaid internship and that damaged my long-term career prospects. I had to work at jobs that paid money, jobs like the one at Amazon, while I went to school and took out loans.
I did not simply perish when I lost all sources of income and could no longer afford to pay the bills. A survival instinct that I didn't even know I possessed manifested itself. I learned to live without money and without a home. I worked at REI in Eugene, Oregon back in 2002 and I know how to live outside. I refuse to live within oppressive walls. I stopped worrying myself with terrifying numbers. They aren't even real any more.
We don't care about profits. We don't care about workers. Read between the lines. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Photograph: Murdo Macleod I've camped and protested for the right to construct modern-day Hoovervilles.
I slept on cardboard and concrete throughout Seattle's rainiest March on record. Camped on DOT land off Interstates. Rubber tramped then leather tramped, carrying sleeping bag, tarp, and a change of clothes, not knowing where I was going to sleep for the night, hiding so I could get some rest.
My wallet does not contain a single bill. I need glasses. I need winter clothes. I need cash and an opportunity. Anything! I've applied for jobs, both professional and with physical labor. Taken my MA off my resume so I don't look overqualified. I've tried everything. Maybe it's because I protested Amazon; maybe it's because my credit is wrecked. Maybe it's because I used homeless services as addresses. Maybe it's because there really aren't many jobs available.
The homeless and cash-starved are merely kept alive while nothing changes. In actuality, austerity measures are felt on the ground and essential social services are woefully inadequate. We've woken up outside on most days and often walked miles before breakfast with a pack on my back.
I've worked for places to live in Oregon, mostly cooking and feeding families. It was a kind of Maoist re-education program– a little too much like slavery for my comfort. I became a capitalist. I flew a sign to escape harrowing conditions in Oregon and I arrived in Seattle with nothing. When I landed I saw green. I created carefully crafted signs with cardboard and a Sharpie and, just like that, I was making money again. Hundred-dollar hours became the norm, not the exception. I learned that capitalism is fun when you're winning. I needed a laptop to use as a professional tool. Social services couldn't help. But I got one by flying a sign in Seattle. It's been an incredibly useful tool.
My partner and I have actively sought out gainful employment, a place to call home, and community. We enjoyed lovely days in intelligent, civilized Seattle and we left, because we've learned that it's best to keep moving. It's not easy to start up anywhere with absolutely nothing.
My heart has expanded and I have learned that the American people are much better than our political and economic systems. I have been the recipient, and giver, of acts of kindness that I never before knew were possible.
Anyone who bemoans the weakening of Americans should look at the hardy homeless. It takes tremendous strength to get through a day. I'm stronger, healthier and happier than ever. There's more respect for a homeless woman out on the streets than there is in a warehouse for Amazon workers.
The most important issue with the dismantling of our Federal safety nets is what happens when the seniors, poor, and disabled fall into one of the most predatory global corporate health and senior care systems in US history? Affordable Care Act makes staying at home for care the answer and that means families with disabled will be overwhelmed with care------families with seniors will be overwhelmed with care----and most people will fall prey to a warehousing level of care where the only goal of that business is to find ways to profit from that client. With no oversight and accountability and complete deregulation of the health care industry-----THAT IS WHAT IS ALREADY HAPPENING.
Our Federal agencies for disability are now funded as vouchers and local control means the money is hijacked and sent to the rich as happens in Baltimore. Making health care long distance and online mirror sending people to call centers and then ignoring or giving them really bad service.
Remember, America used to have lots and lots of public hospitals, day care facilities, senior care and nursing homes. When they were well-funded they worked absolutely fine as a intermediate care venue. Whether workmans' comp and disability-----whether special needs with complicated care needs----or whether seniors aging into chronic illness ----
ALL OF THIS WAS HANDLED WITH A PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM FUNDED BY THE TAXES PAID THROUGH INCOME TAXES, PAYROLL TAXES, AND THINGS LIKE THE WORKMANS' COMP TAX. IT IS ALL PAID FOR FOLKS!
Institutions like Johns Hopkins simply captured the politics of the city and took all that money and allowed these public care systems disappear. They now are preparing for what I describe above. These Federal laws creating the safety nets do not just disappear-----they are still there only being ignored which is illegal. Stop allowing them to tell us we have no rights as citizens and that public taxpayer revenue will go to profit and not people!
To Collect Debts, Nursing Homes Are Seizing Control Over Patients
By NINA BERNSTEINJAN. 25, 2015 The New York Times
Dino and Lillian Palermo at the Mary Manning Walsh Nursing Home, which had tried to obtain guardianship over Mrs. Palermo.
Piotr Redlinski for Lillian Palermo tried to prepare for the worst possibilities of aging. An insurance executive with a Ph.D. in psychology and a love of ballroom dancing, she arranged for her power of attorney and health care proxy to go to her husband, Dino, eight years her junior, if she became incapacitated. And in her 80s, she did.
Mr. Palermo, who was the lead singer in a Midtown nightclub in the 1960s when her elegant tango first caught his eye, now regularly rolls his wife's wheelchair to the piano at the Catholic nursing home in Manhattan where she ended up in 2010 as dementia, falls and surgical complications took their toll. He sings her favorite songs, feeds her home-cooked Italian food, and pays a private aide to be there when he cannot.
But one day last summer, after he disputed nursing home bills that had suddenly doubled Mrs. Palermo's copays, and complained about inexperienced employees who dropped his wife on the floor, Mr. Palermo was shocked to find a six-page legal document waiting on her bed.
The Palermos at the Mary Manning Walsh Nursing Home, which had tried to obtain guardianship over Mrs. Palermo. Credit Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times It was a guardianship petition filed by the nursing home, Mary Manning Walsh, asking the court to give a stranger full legal power over Mrs. Palermo, now 90, and complete control of her money.
Few people are aware that a nursing home can take such a step. Guardianship cases are difficult to gain access to and poorly tracked by New York State courts; cases are often closed from public view for confidentiality. But the Palermo case is no aberration. Interviews with veterans of the system and a review of guardianship court data conducted by researchers at Hunter College at the request of The New York Times show the practice has become routine, underscoring the growing power nursing homes wield over residents and families amid changes in the financing of long-term care.
In a random, anonymized sample of 700 guardianship cases filed in Manhattan over a decade, Hunter College researchers found more than 12 percent were brought by nursing homes. Some of these may have been prompted by family feuds, suspected embezzlement or just the absence of relatives to help secure Medicaid coverage. But lawyers and others versed in the guardianship process agree that nursing homes primarily use such petitions as a means of bill collection — a purpose never intended by the Legislature when it enacted the guardianship statute in 1993.
At least one judge has ruled that the tactic by nursing homes is an abuse of the law, but the petitions, even if they are ultimately unsuccessful, force families into costly legal ordeals.
"It's a strategic move to intimidate," said Ginalisa Monterroso, who handled patient Medicaid accounts at the Mary Manning Walsh Nursing Home until 2012, and is now chief executive of Medicaid Advisory Group, an elder care counseling business that was representing Mr. Palermo in his billing dispute. "Nursing homes do it just to bring money."
"It's so cruel," she added. "Mr. Palermo loves his wife, he's there every single day, and they just threw him to the courts."
Brett D. Nussbaum, a lawyer who represents Mary Manning Walsh and many other nursing homes, said Mr. Palermo's devotion to his wife was irrelevant to the decision to seek a court-appointed guardian in July, when the billing dispute over his wife's care reached a stalemate, with an outstanding balance approaching $68,000.
"The Palermo case is no different than any other nursing home bill that they had difficulty collecting," Mr. Nussbaum said, estimating that he had brought 5,000 guardianship cases himself in 21 years of practice. "When you have families that do not cooperate and an incapacitated person, guardianship is a legitimate means to get the nursing home paid."
Guardianship transfers a person's legal rights to make some or all decisions to someone appointed by the court — usually a lawyer paid with the ward's money. It is aimed at protecting people unable to manage their affairs because of incapacity, and who lack effective help without court action. Legally, it can supplant a power of attorney and a health care proxy.
Although it is a drastic measure, nursing home lawyers argue that using guardianship to secure payment for care is better than suing an incapacitated resident who cannot respond.
Mr. Palermo, 82, was devastated by the petition, brought in the name of Sister Sean William, the Carmelite nun who is the executive director of Mary Manning Walsh. "It's like a hell," he said last fall, speaking in the cadences of the southern Italian village where he grew up in poverty in a family of eight. "Never in my life I was sued for anything. I just want to take care of my wife."
A court evaluator eventually reported that Mr. Palermo was the appropriate guardian, and questioned why the petition had been filed. But the matter still dragged on, and Mr. Palermo, who had promised to pay any arrears once Medicaid completed a recalculation of the bill, grew distraught as his expenses fighting the case reached $10,000.
In the end, Medicaid's recalculation put his wife's monthly copay at $4,558.54, almost $600 less than the nursing home had claimed, but still far more than the $2,642 Mr. Palermo had been paying under an earlier Medicaid calculation. As soon as the nursing home cashed his check for the outstanding balance, it withdrew the guardianship petition.
"They chose to use a strong-arm method, asking for somebody to be appointed to take over her funds, hoping for a rubber stamp to do their wishes," said Elliott Polland, Mr. Palermo's lawyer.
Many judges go along with such petitions, according to lawyers and others involved in the process. One judge who has not is Alexander W. Hunter Jr., a longtime State Supreme Court justice in the Bronx and Manhattan. In guardianship cases in 2006 and 2007, Justice Hunter ordered the nursing homes to bear the legal costs, ruling they had brought the petitions solely for the purpose of being paid and stating that this was not the Legislature's intent when it enacted the statute, known as Article 81 of the Mental Hygiene Law.
Mrs. Palermo, now 90, has been living at the nursing home since 2010. Last year Justice Hunter did appoint a guardian in response to a petition by Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale, but in his scathing 11-page decision, he directed the guardian to investigate and to consider referring the case for criminal prosecution of financial exploitation.
The decision describes a 94-year-old resident with a bank balance of $240,000 who had been unable to go home after rehabilitative treatment because of a fire in her co-op apartment; her only regular visitors were real estate agents who wanted her to sell. After Hebrew Home's own doctor evaluated her as incapable of making financial decisions, the decision says, the nursing home collected a $50,000 check from her; it sued her when she refused to continue writing checks, then filed for guardianship.
"It would be an understatement to declare that this court is outraged by the behavior exhibited by the interested parties — parties who were supposed to protect the person, but who have all unabashedly demonstrated through their actions in connection with the person that they are only interested in getting paid," he wrote.
Jennifer Cona, a lawyer for the nursing home, called the decision "grossly unfair to Hebrew Home," but said she could not discuss details because the record was sealed.
Many cases in which judges grant nursing homes' guardianship petitions never come to light. But one that challenges the legal propriety of such petitions for bill collection is now pending before the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court. Without explanation, that record, too, is sealed from public scrutiny.
"There is no transparency in the whole process," said Alexandra Siskopoulos, a lawyer who represents a relative of the nursing home resident in the appellate case — a relative who had wanted to take the resident home. "Unfortunately, people's eyes are not opened until it's their family member, and at that point, it's too late."
Throughout the country, data is lacking on the most basic facts about guardianships, even how many there are. In New York State, with different rules in 62 counties and no centralized database, it has taken a team of researchers more than two years to collect information from a fraction of case files in 14 counties, said Jean Callahan, the director of the Brookdale Center on Healthy Aging at Hunter College.
Preliminary findings of the center's study are not expected until later this year, but at the request of The Times, the researchers undertook a breakdown of the petitioners in a sample of the 3,302 guardianship cases filed in Manhattan from 2002 to 2012. More frequent petitioners than nursing homes (12.4 percent) were hospitals (16.1 percent), friends and family (25.3 percent) and Adult Protective Services (40.1 percent).
New York's guardianship statute was part of a national movement to limit guardianships to the least restrictive alternatives necessary to prevent harm. A petition is supposed to be brought only by someone with the person's welfare at heart, and guardianship is to be tailored to individual needs, taking into account the person's wishes.
Instead, Ms. Callahan said, "it has become a system that's very focused on finances."
One afternoon, Mrs. Palermo dozed in her wheelchair while her husband described their careful preparations for old age, and the shock of discovering that papers drawn up by an elder law specialist were insufficient protection.
He recalled the fear and anger he felt when he first read the nursing home's petition, on his bus ride back to a rent-stabilized apartment on East 36th Street filled with mementos of their happy marriage. They have no children. "Who better than me, the husband for 47 years, that she gave power of attorney?" he asked.
As his voice grew anguished, Mrs. Palermo began to moan and cry out incoherently. "Are you O.K., baby?" he asked, jumping up to embrace her. "Now, don't do that. Come on, give me a hug."
He soothed her in Italian, speaking of the polenta he had made for her that morning. He wheeled her to the dining room. Later, he would serenade her.
But in the night, again he could not sleep for worry. He fingered drafts of his own petitions, hand-lettered pages that he debated sending to nursing home administrators. One was addressed "To God and to whom it may concern."
"I'm trapped in a web of people and lawyers that will exhaust my 50 years of sacrifices and savings," he wrote. "Please, dear God, grant me strength and wisdom to take care of my wife."
We elected a candidate in Obama who ran as a progressive ready to redistribute wealth back to the people as FDR did in the New Deal and we got a President doing the opposite---he appoints directors to Federal agencies that dismantle oversight and accountability and allows corporations to ignore disability requirements in the workplace and allows workman comp taxes not be collected through policy like Trans Pacific Trade Pact. TPP seeks to allow global corporations to come to the US to operate ignoring US labor and justice laws which is what has happened since Reagan/Clinton and soared under Bush/Obama as the courts were loaded with judges that agree to ignore law. NONE OF THIS IS LEGAL---THEY SIMPLY DO IT BECAUSE THEY CONTROL THE MECHANISMS OF ACCOUNTABILITY. 
Clinton and Obama are neo-liberals---meaning they want corporations to maximize profits by ignoring labor and justice laws.
Below I look at the Disability law from the New Deal----Workmans' Comp and Disability to show how neo-liberals are ending this New Deal program. Amazon is a global corporation setting up business in the US and can ignore all US laws according to TPP----and they do. Meanwhile, small and regional businesses in the US must pay workmans' comp taxes and they are getting expensive---placing these businesses at a disadvantage and often out of business. In Maryland, great revenue collections for Workmans' Comp and Maryland Assembly laws that make it nearly impossible for a worker to get workers' comp. So, it appears that the Trust for Workers' Comp is fungible money that disappears to corporate profit at the expense of citizens and small business. Notice O'Malley's Rain Tax only hit citizens and small businesses?
SEE THE PATTERN WHEN GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS WORK FOR AN ECONOMY DOMINATED BY GLOBAL CORPORATIONS.
Below are two articles that show the problem with the fleecing and bashing of a very good Federal program that worked just fine as long as oversight and accountability protected the Trust and workers. It shows that workers are not faking to get these benefits in most cases and it shows that corporations are faking to avoid taxes and giving workers their rights. Small businesses play by the rules because they are likely to get audited---big business knows no one is looking.
WHO SHOULD BE PROTECTING AGAINST THIS ABUSE OF WORKMANS' COMP AND DISABILITY? LABOR UNION LEADERS. WHO SUPPORTS THE CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS ALLOWING ALL THESE LAWS BE IGNORED? LABOR UNION LEADERS.
See why making sure the right candidates running for Governor of Maryland get to participate in primaries---you wouldn't want a Governor who appoints directors of DLLR that actually protect the citizens and workers!
Workers' Compensation: Employer Fraud is Alive and Well
workers-compensation.blogspot.com/2011/04/employer-fraud...CachedApr 10, 2011 ·
Premium Fraud is where the employer misclassifies its workforce and gets a lower rate on its premium (like telling the workers' compensation carrier the ...
The Myth of Workers' Compensation Fraud
by Lisa Cullen Frontline
In recent years, the insurance industry's focus on cheaters and malingerers helped push through national workers' compensation reform, a profitable cost-cutting campaign supported by outrage over alleged abuse of the system. The problem, however, is that the fraud image is false for the vast majority of workers' compensation cases. Studies show that only 1 to 2 percent of workers' compensation claims are fraudulent. 1 2 Certainly, the tens of thousands of workers killed every year were hardly aiming for a free ride on their employer's tab.
Maryland Association for Justice
Below you see a good explanation of a strong labor law. These lawyers are sounding an alarm that the future of this vital health care law is threatened. Please look at what these trial lawyers describe as the issues surrounding Worker's Compensation and then look at how I widen the issue to look at how TPP will make all labor law like this one disappear.
The Workers' Compensation System was established almost 100 years ago to provide compensation to workers injured in connection with their employment. It is an exclusive remedy for compensation, that is, the worker may not sue his employer or a fellow employee for injuries sustained in the course of the worker's employment. As consideration for not being able to sue the employer or fellow employee for injuries they may have caused, the worker is to receive compensation for lost time from work, compensation for temporary or permanent disability, appropriate and timely medical care, and, when needed, rehabilitation services. The award of these various benefits is provided under the auspices of the Workers' Compensation Commission which hears all contested cases. The amounts and extent of the benefits are prescribed by law, and the Commission renders awards based on its determination of the nature and extent of the worker's injury and disability. The system is designed and intended to provide the injured worker a simplified process to provide an expeditious adjudication of the claim, including the right to receive prompt and appropriate medical attention to maximize the recovery. Under Maryland law, an employee who is injured on the job and whose injuries are determined to be compensable is entitled to certain benefits, especially medical treatment. Medical care by a provider of the worker's own choice is one of the most important benefits provided under the statute. This benefit helps effectuate a major cornerstone of the public policy that underlies the worker compensation system — that the injured worker receives prompt, appropriate medical care in order to maximize the degree and speed of recovery. Only when the injured worker can independently choose his or her own health care provider will the worker have confidence in the diagnosis and treatment plan, which in turn will lead to a quicker recovery and earlier return to work. However, in recent years there have been a number of bills introduced that, if enacted, would have delayed the injured worker's access to appropriate and timely medical care. Among these proposals was a bill to establish an arbitrary 30 day limit on a physician's ability to dispense medication to his/her patients if they are being treated for work related injuries. The effect of such proposal would be to delay the ability to obtain medication in a timely and appropriate manner. Other bills could delay the ability of a worker to receive needed timely medical care, thus reducing the chances of a maximum recovery from the injuries.
Other initiatives are designed to embarrass the employee, add delay and expense to the workers' compensation claims process
Employer fraud in Maryland is soaring as regards workers' comp and the workers' comp Trust is looted for reasons other than workers getting good access to care when hurt. Below you see the people assigned to make sure these Federal laws are ignored. O'Malley appointed the director with the OK by your Maryland Assembly pols and Hogan will do the same because both parties are crony and corrupt.
Maryland State Workers' Compensation Commission msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/25ind/html/80work.htmlCached
STATE WORKERS' COMPENSATION COMMISSION
Appointed by Governor with Senate advice & consent to 12-year terms: R. Karl Aumann, Esq., Chair ...
As always, when the government does not enforce or protect our rights as citizens the private lawyers get rich doing what our government should be. So, in Maryland workers' comp and disability lawyers make a killing simply getting people the rights Martin O'Malley, the Maryland Assembly, and Baltimore City Hall are required to protect.
What happens if you're injured on the job and unable to work? How will you pay your medical bills and make ends meet? Most states require employers to carry workers' compensation insurance to provide for citizens who are injured or become sick or disabled as a result of performing their jobs. Each state has its own requirements for employees to qualify for workers' compensation insurance.
Maryland Law and Workers' Compensation Claims
Maryland Workers' Compensation Law is very specific about what types of injuries are covered, even if they happened "on the job." The Maryland statute mandates that harm suffered by an employee must be caused by an "accidental personal injury arising out of and in the course of employment." Cases fall into two categories: accidental injury or occupational disease.
Butschky & Butschky, LLC represents employees who have been injured or become ill or disabled as a result of their work, including those hurt in Maryland construction accidents. Over the past two decades, we have appeared before the Maryland Workers' Compensation Commission, representing thousands of injured and sick employees, from teachers to police officers to plumbers and physicians. Anyone can become sick or injured at work, and we have successfully represented clients from across the spectrum of professions.
As experienced personal injury attorneys who are well versed in Maryland Workers' Compensation Law, we can ensure that you receive the proper medical care, document your injuries or illness properly, and make sure that you receive the maximum Workers' Compensation benefits to which you are entitled under Maryland law.
Benefits may include Disability Benefits (temporary, partial, total, and permanent), Medical/Hospitalization, Wage Reimbursement and Vocational Rehabilitation.
Since Maryland has a Maryland Assembly that works for corporate profit----and since neo-cons and neo-liberals work for global corporate profit----none of the laws are written to protect labor and justice.....they are written to be vague and broad so that the laws are not enforced. Below you see the phrases your Maryland Assembly led by Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons included to make sure corporations do not lose with workmans' comp and disability.
Keep in mind that Trans Pacific Trade Pact will allow global corporations to ignore all US labor and justice laws and Maryland is pushing a global corporate economy as hard as it can!
Please just glance through this document that can be boring to see how your pols work against you! Remember, at the Federal level Obama has appointed someone ignoring this program and outsourcing to corporate contractors having a goal of making sure as little as possible is spent on claims.
REMEMBER----THE BIGGEST EMPLOYER FRAUDS TODAY------PRETENDING EMPLOYEES ARE NOT EMPLOYEES BUT INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS TO AVOID ALL THESE PAYROLL AND WORKERS' COMP AND DISABILITY TAXES AND IN MARYLAND THIS IS SOARING.
Please note that the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Workers' Compensation Programs OWCP administers four major programs including:
the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, the Federal Employees' Compensation Program, the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Program and the Black Lung Benefits Program.
The OWCP provides wage replacement benefits, medical treatment, vocational rehabilitation and other benefits to federal workers or their dependents who are injured at work or acquire an occupational disease,
Go to their web site for information if your are covered under these programs.
This site is intended only to provide a brief, general description of the Maryland Workers' Compensation Law and benefits. It is not a comprehensive review of the law nor is it intended as a replacement for Legal guidance and advice from a competent lawyer.
The Maryland Workers' Compensation Act may be found in the Labor and Employment Article, Title 9, Annotated Code of Maryland.
Since the early 1900's, every State has had some form of protection for employees who are hurt while working. The old system requiring lawsuits against employers just wasn't effective. Negligence by the employer was often difficult if not impossible to prove and the legal process was very time consuming and expensive, with no benefits paid to injured workers during the process. This is why the States passed workers' compensation laws, providing a statutory solution to the problem. Workers' compensation was a new kind of insurance which all employers were required to obtain to protect their employees.
Covered Injuries
Not all injuries are covered by the Workers' Compensation Law even if the injury happened "on the job." In Maryland, in order for an injury to be covered, the harm suffered by the employee must have been caused by an "accidental personal injury arising out of and in the course of employment." Those words from the Maryland statute are VERY important. Just because a person is hurt "while working," "on the job" or "at work" may not be enough for the insurance to apply. Additionally, if you can prove that you have an occupational disease you may be entitled to Workers' Compensation benefits.
In determining whether an injury falls under the coverage of workers' compensation the first thing to understand is that this law protects only employees. The Workers' Compensation statute provides legal guidance on who is a covered employee and employer. A genuine employer-employee relationship must exist. Some businesses are set up in such a way that some persons don't actually work for the business but work with it as independent contractors. Other businesses don't have any employees because they are a sole-proprietorship or partnership. Persons in these categories, if they want workers' compensation insurance, may elect to be covered and can obtain the necessary insurance. There is a statutory procedure for electing coverage.
Accidental Personal Injury & Occupational Diseases
If there is an employer-employee relationship between the worker and their company, the next factor considered is if the injury was an accident. An accident is when a sudden unusual or extraordinary event causes an unexpected result. The unexpected result is a bodily injury; that must be caused by an unexpected or unusual event. Injuries that do not fit into this category may very well be covered by general health insurance but may not be compensable under the Maryland Workers' Compensation Act.
Exceptions to the accident requirement are occupational diseases. These are illnesses caused by the nature of the circumstances surrounding the worker's job. For example, asbestosis is a disease that may have been caused by a worker's job of removing asbestos from buildings. Some forms of skin, eye or lung disease may have been caused by long term exposure to chemical solvents or other solutions used on the job. Conditions such as these may result in the employee's being covered by workers' compensation even though there was no specific "accident;" they are covered as occupational diseases.
Arising Out of Employment
For a compensable accidental injury claim, the injury must "arise out of the employment". If the conditions under which the work is required to be performed by the employer causes the worker's injury, it is said to "arise out of" the employment. The focus of this factor is on the exposure of the employee to risk or danger because of the job requirements. For example, if a person must work in an environment that is usually wet and slippery--for instance, a car wash facility or a water amusement ride at an entertainment park--then a slip-and-fall injury experienced by that worker could be said to arise out of the person's employment.
Arising in the Course of Employment
For a compensable accidental injury claim, the injury must also "be in the course of employment." "In the course of employment" is a slightly different factor. Here the attention centers on the time, place and circumstances of the injury. If the injury occurs during the period of time when an employee was at work, the employer's place of business or such other location as may have been designated by the employer, and while the employee was performing their job duties or something related to them when the injury took place, the injury is said to have arisen in the course of that person's employment.
If all of the above factors are satisfied -and that's not always easy to determine initially- a worker's injury will generally be covered by workers' compensation insurance. Frequently, an investigation of the claim is necessary. If a worker believes they have sustained a compensable injury, an Employee Claim may be filed with the Workers' Compensation Commission to receive a determination regarding the type and amount of any benefits to which the worker may be entitled. Initial determinations that may have been made by insurance carriers are not binding on the Commission.
The legislature of each State determines the type and amount of benefits which are payable under workers' compensation insurance, just as the various States differ in determining what kinds of injuries are compensable and which are not. Based upon the laws enacted in each State the insurance companies who provide this type of insurance coverage consider the probabilities of injury for different occupational categories and set their premium rates accordingly. This is the amount charged to employers for their workers' compensation insurance. The Workers' Compensation Commission does not establish rates of premiums, nor does the Commission itself provide insurance coverage. Workers' compensation payments are not taxable to the employee as income.
The Maryland Workers' Compensation Act provides for the following benefits in appropriate cases:
Temporary Total Disability Benefits This is the period of time frequently referred to as the "healing period". If an employee's injury has resulted in a disability that prevents the person from returning to work at all -that is, the person is completely disabled for all work purposes- then the employee may receive temporary total disability payments. If the period of disability is fourteen (14) days or less then the compensation benefit payments may not be allowed for the first three (3) days of disablement except for payments for hospital, nursing or other medical services, funeral expenses or medicine. If the period of temporary disability lasts for more than fourteen (14) days, then the compensation is allowed from the date of disability.
It will take a greater effort on my part to find how the Maryland Comptroller applies to his corporate revenue column the payroll and workers' comp taxes he is supposed to collect because I do not see a separate column......needless to say we KNOW there is fraud. I wanted to look at the ratio of small businesses paying vs the fact that corporations are paying none at all.
Below you see where Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons want to take us with Trans Pacific Trade Pact. Amazon.com is now registered overseas and is not a US corporation. It comes back to the US as a global corporation and builds its warehouses and VOILA----they are not required to follow US labor and justice laws if TPP is passed. Of course, since Obama is not enforcing Federal laws corporations are already ignoring as if its a done deal. In Maryland, we see this all the time. As the employee states---he was not only denied workmans' comp----he was expected to work or be fired.
THAT IS WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE FDR AND THE NEW DEAL......NO MATTER HOW DANGEROUS THE WORKPLACE----YOU WORKED AT YOUR OWN RISK AND SUFFERED ALL OF THE CONSEQUENCES. THAT IS WHERE YOUR MARYLAND AND BALTIMORE POLS ARE TAKING US.
WHO SUPPORTS CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS EVERY ELECTION? NATIONAL LABOR UNION LEADERS AND THIS IS WHAT THEY SUPPORT!
You see how far this can go and if you do not fall in line----there is no safety net says Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals.
Friday 28 November 2014 08.30 EST The Guardian
I've camped and protested for the right to construct modern-day Hoovervilles. I slept on cardboard and concrete throughout Seattle's rainiest March on record. Camped on DOT land off Interstates. Rubber tramped then leather tramped, carrying sleeping bag, tarp, and a change of clothes, not knowing where I was going to sleep for the night, hiding so I could get some rest.
I've worked for places to live in Oregon, mostly cookingand feeding families. It was a kind of Maoist re-education program– a little too much like slavery for my comfort. I became a capitalist. I flew a sign to escape harrowing conditions in Oregon and I arrived in Seattle with nothing. When I landed I saw green. I created carefully crafted signs with cardboard and a Sharpie and, just like that, I was making money again. Hundred-dollar hours became the norm, not the exception. I learned that capitalism is fun when you're winning. I needed a laptop to use as a professional tool. Social services couldn't help. But I got one by flying a sign in Seattle. It's been an incredibly useful tool.
Below you see again Obama simply continues all of the Bush Administration policies----very little difference and that is because they are both working to maximize corporate profit and end all Federal social programs.
The only problem with Federal workmans' comp is the lack of oversight and accountability. What this law seeks to do is adopt the Maryland approach to lengthen the award process to the point people really hurt end up frustrated and give up before getting the care they need. Again, it is the Veterans Administration approach to care----let them wait for months to access care to lower costs.
These reforms make sure the Federal program that allowed workmans' comp to continue on into retirement now reverts over to that Federal employee's retirement. Think about the future of SSDI which is the civilian equivilent of the Federal retirement for someone with disability and you get a program that is slated to end.
They are simply closing any loopholes these employees will have to continue disability payments.
FECA Reform Sought Again
More in: Fedweek
The Bush administration has once again requested changes in the Federal Employees' Compensation Act, the workplace illness and injury benefits program that it says would bring the program more in line with practices in similar state government programs. "Under current law, individuals can receive FECA benefits indefinitely, as long as their injury or illness diminishes their wage-earning capacity. Because they are tax-free, FECA benefits typically exceed federal retirement benefits, which entices individuals to remain on FECA past when they would otherwise have retired," the administration says in a budget justification document. The proposed legislation primarily would amend FECA to prospectively convert retirement-age beneficiaries to a retirement annuity-level benefit, impose a waiting period for benefits, streamline claims processing, and permit the government to recapture compensation costs from responsible third parties. The projected 10-year saving to the government is $592 million. Similar proposals have been made in the past but not enacted.
Obama targets federal workers comp programs in 2014 budget proposal
By Roberto Ceniceros
President Barack Obama's 2014 budget proposal sent to Congress on Wednesday calls for reforms to two federal workers compensation programs: the Federal Employees' Compensation Act and the Defense Base Act.
The White House is proposing to act on longstanding recommendations by the Government Accountability Office and other federal organizations by converting retirement-age FECA beneficiaries to a "retirement annuity-level benefit."
FECA currently creates an incentive for federal employees injured on the job to continue receiving its benefits beyond their retirement age, according to the budget proposal.
"In addition, while state workers compensation systems have waiting periods for benefits to discourage less serious claims, FECA has a three-day waiting period for non-postal employees that is imposed too late in the claims process to be effective," the proposal states.
The proposed changes also would impose a new up-front waiting period for FECA benefits and give the U.S. Department of Labor "additional tools to reduce improper payments." The budget proposal does not provide specifics, but the FECA changes would save more than $500 million over 10 years, it says.
The president's proposal also would replace the current Defense Base Act program with a governmentwide benefit fund that would bill individual federal agencies for their workers comp insurance costs.
The DBA provides benefits for contract overseas workers on U.S. military bases and for workers on overseas public works projects.
Under the DBA's current structure, federal agencies pay for their insurance through a "patchwork" of individual contracts, and its costs now exceed benefits paid "by a significant margin," according to the budget proposal.
The proposal points out that the DBA's caseload increased by nearly 2,600% from 2002 to 2011, with more than 11,600 claims filed in 2011.
Here you see the Federal and State government employees are being treated to the same disregard and dismantling of their workers' comp and disability protections. Keep in mind that Maryland's DLLR is now Obama's Labor Secretary for the very reason that Perez worked in this environment of ignoring all of the reasons for workers injury claims and ignoring the payment of corporate workers' compensation taxes.
Perez will continue the Bush Administration's bill to close more and more of Federal workers' ability to access care just as he did in Maryland.
WHO SUPPORTED THE PEREZ APPOINTMENT AS LABOR SECRETARY? TRUMKA THE NATIONAL AFL-CIO LEADER.
TRUMKA KNOWS PEREZ IS THERE TO END LABOR'S RIGHTS PREPARING FOR TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT!
So, the Social Security Disability Insurance was subprimed to implosion as the track for disabled civilians----Workmans' Compensation for both government and private sector employees is under attack......and we have an Affordable Care Act creating all kinds of new ways to determine who and how health care is dispersed written by corporations not wanting money to be spent on workplace injury.
Getting compensation shouldn't be so hard for federal workers hurt on the job
Network News By Joe Davidson Thursday, July 22, 2010
Working for the federal government should not be hazardous to employees' health.
But when it is, Uncle Sam should not be as stingy as he was made out to be during a hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill.
Leaders of employee organizations, including those representing baggage screeners and federal firefighters, provided one example after another of the government's failure to care, either promptly or at all, for federal workers who were injured on the job.
Consider these stories from Jon Adler, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association:
-- On Sept. 11, 2001, Secret Service Special Agent Mike Vaiani ran into the World Trade Center, attempting to rescue those inside. He seriously injured his neck, shoulders and back in the process.
First, the Labor Department's Office of Workers' Compensation Programs lost his file. Then he started getting dunned for unpaid medical bills.
"After enduring this miserable process," Adler told the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on the federal workforce, "Vaiani stated, 'I would rather run back into the tower while it's on fire than have to deal with the Department of Labor.' "
-- Postal Inspector Bill Paliscak went to the Brentwood postal facility in Northeast Washington when anthrax-contaminated mail was discovered in 2001. Paliscak became ill as a result of anthrax exposure. The compensation office initially denied his claim. It was accepted in May 2002, but not before his credit was ruined and his medical care was disrupted.
-- Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Tim Chard participated in the dismantling of 100 meth labs between 2000 and 2007. In 2008, he began to suffer from pain and other symptoms apparently connected to meth lab toxins. The compensation office rejected his claim, so the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association Foundation paid for him to enter a treatment program.
"The common denominator from these horror stories is the OWCP is unable to effectively process claims filed by injured law enforcement officers," Adler said. A denial of a claim, or delay in processing it, can exacerbate medical problems and financially ruin employees, he told the panel, because once they say a health problem is work-related, private insurance will not cover it.
Shelby Hallmark, director of the compensation program, testified before Adler spoke and did not respond to the specific examples Adler offered. Hallmark, in his prepared statement, said his office "is dedicated to promptly adjudicating claims, promptly paying medical bills and claims for compensation."
He told Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) that his office does not make payments while a claim is being adjudicated. For complicated cases, the agency's goal is to decide on a claim within six months, he said.
Of course, a complicated case might be one that involves a complicated and serious ailment that is expensive to fix. A six-month wait could be devastating in those circumstances.
Those complicated cases sometimes involve illnesses, such as cancer, that might have been caused when an employee came in contact with a toxin while working. These cases require lots of detailed medical evidence to establish the link between the illness and the job.
The claims acceptance rate for occupation illnesses was only 52 percent last year, compared with a 90 percent rate for traumatic injuries, such as being cut by work equipment, Hallmark told the panel.
The subcommittee's hearing comes two days after President Obama announced his POWER Initiative, an acronym for Protecting Our Workers and Ensuring Reemployment. He expects the program to reduce federal workplace injuries and cut lost time.
Obama cited more than 79,000 new claims and more than $1.6 billion in workers' compensation payments in fiscal 2009. "Executive departments and agencies can and should do even more to improve workplace safety and health, reduce the financial burden of injury on taxpayers, and relieve unnecessary suffering by workers and their families," he said.
Just before the hearing, the subcommittee held a business meeting where it approved legislation to enhance training for federal supervisors. Under the bill, supervisors would receive training within one year of entering their new positions and every three years after that.
The panel, chaired by Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.), also advanced legislation that calls on the Office of Personnel Management to use a different method to calculate payments by the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service to the Civil Service Retirement System. After recalculating the payments, the legislation directs OPM to transfer any Postal Service surplus in payments already made to the USPS Retiree Health Benefits Fund.
Estimates of the surplus range from $55 billion to $75 billion.
The Affordable Care Act is simply the Republican health policy ending public health care like Medicare, Medicaid, and Federal programs like Workmans' Comp. You can see the goal if you read this article on the outcomes of the Romney Care in Massachusetts----the same plan. What they did in Massachusetts and they will do with ACA is pushed people away from making claims through workmans' comp to go through the personal state run health plan. The problem most people see with the Affordable Care Act is that deductibles and co-pays keep people from being able to afford to access health care and the same happens to people injured at work. So, pushing people over to these health systems from the Workmans' Comp system is the way to end this public disability and workers' comp program.
This is why we know national labor leaders that were sent out to shout for the Affordable Care Act knew it was going to dismantle all of their union member's access to care....both public unions and private union health plans. National NAACP and justice organizations knew as well and had people and children of color out shouting for the ACA.
IT WAS SO SAD TO SEE THE LABOR AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS WE BUILT IN THE 1960S USED TO DISMANTLE ALL OF THESE GAINS!
As with the claims for lower costs from the ACA-----this claim of lower costs to Workmans' Comp comes from the fact people cannot access it....ergo costs go down.
Under the Massachusetts Health Care Reform Act, costs within the workers' compensation system decreased. Although PPACA is more complex, similar provisions between the two laws enable a prospective comparison of what may happen to the workers' compensation system as more elements of PPACA are implemented. It must be noted that Massachusetts already had one of the lowest workers' compensation fee schedules in the country and that quantifying the changes under PPACA may take time. Nevertheless, the practicing orthopaedic surgeon should be aware of the actual and potential changes to deal appropriately with workers' compensation claims and changes in reimbursement schedules. Anticipating a changing demographic pattern—in terms of how patients will be treated under which insurance system—is vital for orthopaedic surgeons who see a variety of musculoskeletal conditions associated with workplace injuries.
Vasanth Sathiyakumar, BA; Daniel J. Stinner, MD; William T. Obremskey MD, MPH; A. Alex Jahangir MD; and Manish K. Sethi, MD are associated with the Vanderbilt Center for Health Policy.
I WILL FINISH TODAY THE TALK ON SAFETY NET ISSUES SURROUNDING DISABILITY AND EEOC====EQUAL OPPORTUNITY. NEXT WEEK I'LL TALK ABOUT HEAD START AND WIC PROGRAMS.
How do you kill employment for returning vets? You privatize and outsource the VA---the largest employer of vets.....you privatize and outsource the US Post Office---the source of many jobs for veterans.
While the SSDI is being imploded by subpriming the next largest Federal disability program is under attack by outsourcing. I showed yesterday how what used to be VA fund resources going to corporate private non-profits to tell vets to volunteer for their community as no jobs are available below you see why vets are being reduced to volunteering and not working-----all the job areas they have always known as a resource are being outsourced and much VA funding is now going to corporate executive pay and the typical corporate fraud and corruption.
As important is the outsourcing of the medical staff-----Walter Reid was the world's best military hospital and now it is being closed as doctors are sent to do global medical tourism and vets are left with the same Medicaid clinic care by staff with less training and experience.
THIS IS DELIBERATE BECAUSE WHAT USED TO BE THE BEST MEDICAL CARE IN THE US FOR VETERANS IS NOW BECOMING THE SAME MEDICAID FOR ALL LEVEL OF CLINIC CARE.
VA accused of excessive outsourcing of vets' jobs
The Veterans Affairs Department is being accused of undermining its own goal of hiring more veterans by expanding its outsourcing practices that eliminate many federal jobs currently, or historically, held by veterans, according to the union representing 205,000 employees at the VA.
In November, President Barack Obama signed into law the "VOW to Hire Heroes Act," which included language to set up an expedited process for hiring returning solders for federal jobs.
But the VA's own outsourcing, which began to grow under the Bush Administration and are continuing to expand, are abolishing many federal jobs currently held by veterans, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), an AFL-CIO union, said in a Feb. 8 news release.
For example, the Veterans Benefits Administration recently entered into a $54 million three-year contract with ACS Government Systems to perform claims processing work.
That work currently is being performed by "large numbers of veterans," the union said. "To add insult to injury, the VBA employees are being asked to volunteer to train the contractors to do their work."
"Contract claims processors working for profit will now handle the most personal information of our veterans." AFGE National President John Gage said in the release.
In several other outsourcing contracts in recent years, the VA also has gotten rid of many government jobs historically held by veterans, AFGE said.
Other jobs recently outsourced by VA medical centers and cemeteries, which historically had been held by veterans, included cemetery caretakers, laundry and food service workers, housekeepers, groundskeepers and transportation assistants.
The VA also has failed to comply with a 2009 law that requires the agency to do a cost-benefit analysis before each outsourcing contract is awarded, to determine whether the contract is cost-effective for taxpayers, the union said.
"The agency continues to violate federal law by contracting out work that has been traditionally performed by veterans," the union said. "The outsourced jobs include many entry level jobs that disabled veterans rely on to get back on their feet after returning from the battlefield."
The union also claimed the VA conducts "excessive contracting" of physician and nursing services rather than hiring clinicians from within the military.
"Contract physicians and nurses lack the specialized skills and best practices of clinicians who dedicate their lives to serving the veteran population as VA employees," said AFGE National VA Council President Alma Lee.
VA officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Feb. 9.
Complaints about VA outsourcing have arisen on a regular basis in recent years. In 2009, the president reversed course on a proposed third-party billing initiative for veterans medical care following negative media attention about it.
As someone with a family member who dead early because of mistakes at a VA hospital the number is growing as the quality of staff and doctors declines and as the time wait for care grows too long for a healthy outcome. Veterans are being forced from what was world-class care to what 80% of Americans are being forced to---Medicaid for All ----a clinic -level care with people having less training and low wages.
This is reflected even more so by veterans with disabilities who need more time and access and are getting less. The backlogs are just the tip of a dysfunctional system made so by outsourcing and downgrading of resources and funding.
Dec 23, 2014 at 11:26am ReplyQuote Post by MeMyselfandI on Dec 23, 2014 at 11:26am
More Than 500 Veterans Have Died Because Of Mistakes At VA Hospitals Since 2010
More than 500 military veterans died because of serious mistakes at Veterans Affairs hospitals across the country between 2010 and 2014, VA records show.
There were a total of 1,452 "institutional disclosures of adverse events" between fiscal years 2010 and 2014, 526 of which resulted in patient deaths, according to VA data obtained by the Washington Free Beacon through a Freedom of Information Act request.
According to the Veterans Health Administration, such disclosures are required when "an adverse event has occurred during the patient's care that resulted in or is reasonably expected to result in death or serious injury."
Specifically, adverse events are defined by the department as "untoward incidents, diagnostic or therapeutic misadventures, iatrogenic injuries, or other occurrences of harm or potential harm directly associated with care or services provided" by the VA.
The 1,452 disclosures represent a miniscule portion of the hundreds of thousands of patients who are treated annually at VA hospitals, but they reveal for the first time a fuller picture of errors and lapses in medical coverage that affect veterans across the country.
The disclosures include feeding tubes being placed in patients' lungs, patients being sent home with undiagnosed rib and shoulder fractures, and in one case extracting the wrong tooth from a patient.
But buried among the more common mistakes that occur in even the best hospitals — incorrect dosages, surgical equipment accidentally left in patients' bodies—are reports of the fatal delays in cancer diagnoses and follow-up treatments that would later lead to a national scandal and the resignation of the VA Secretary.
"Chest X-Ray for [patient] showed an ill-defined one centimeter nodule overlying the left anterior fourth rib," a 2011 entry from a San Diego VA hospital reads. "Radiology recommended a CT scan of the chest for a more complete evaluation of possible left midlung nodule. Patient was not informed about abnormal imaging and no follow-up was arranged. Patient was seen in the ER six months later. Patient diagnosed with Stage IV small cell lung cancer and passed away two months later."
"[Patient] had chest X-ray in 2010; no follow-up until patient presented for ER visit in 2010," another entry from Erie, Pennsylvania reads. "Patient ultimately found to have lung cancer. He expired in 2011. A delay in work-up of approximately 6 months occurred."
"Follow-up CT scan ordered at CBOC to be completed at parent facility. Order faxed to unmanned printer and it did not get scheduled. Delay of diagnosis of lung cancer of approximately 9 months."
Scores of similar entries are scattered through the quarterly reports from every corner of the United States, from Puerto Rico to Fargo to Los Angeles.
In fiscal year 2012 alone, 74 patients with some form of cancer saw delays in their treatment or the initial findings were overlooked. Twelve of those veterans ultimately died from their illness.
Less frequent but equally troublesome are reports of VA staff not properly screening patients at risk for suicide.
"Missed Opportunities prior to Suicide Completion" is the entirety of one entry from 2011.
Medical privacy laws strictly bar from disclosure the names of patients and other details, making it difficult to document individual cases, but the data does show general trends. Reports of patient deaths and injuries rose steadily from 2010 to 2013, peaking with 126 reported deaths.
As US troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan accelerated over those years, VA hospitals struggled to handle the surge in patients and simultaneous shortage of doctors and staff. Some did the best they could under the circumstances, but other hospitals turned to dishonest means to hide the scope of the problem from VA headquarters in Washington.
VA Whistleblowers first began coming forward in late 2013 with allegations that schedulers at the Phoenix VA hospital used secret paper waiting lists to hide the long wait times faced by patients. Whistleblowers alleged that up to 40 veterans died while their requested appointments languished on unofficial paper lists.
The VA disclosed in April that, since 1999, 76 patients nationwide were seriously injured because of delayed gastro-intestinal cancer screenings, and 23 died.
A May audit of the Phoenix hospital found 1,700 patients were put on unofficial wait lists and subjected to treatment delays of up to 115 days.
VA Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned as a result of the scandal, and the department ordered a nationwide audit of its consulting practices.
That audit released in June, found that 57,436 newly enrolled veterans face a minimum 90-day wait for medical care, while 63,869 veterans who enrolled over the past decade requested an appointment that never happened.
According to the audit, 8 percent of scheduling staff nationwide used something other than the official electronic wait lists, and 13 percent of staff had been instructed by a supervisor to enter a date other than the veteran's requested appointment into the "desired date" field, fudging the actual wait times.
Since then, the new VA Secretary has fired five senior administrators at problematic VA facilities, including the director of the Phoenix VA hospital.
The number of patient deaths due to errors dropped to 107 in fiscal year 2014, according to VA records.
However, the widespread use of secret waiting lists means that there are potentially many more cases of patients who died because of long-delayed appointments than appear in the reports that were filed to VA headquarters. For example, the Phoenix VA hospital appears relatively few times in the reports, and no significant delays were reported there in 2013.
The Williams Jennings Bryan Dorn Veterans Medical Center in Columbia, South Carolina reported the highest number of delays in cancer care, of any facility, in 2012.
The cancer care of at least eight veterans was delayed significantly enough that officials said it may have impacted the rate of survival and the ability to later provide sufficient treatment.
Four disclosures note that a "delay in diagnosing impacted [the veteran's] cancer staging and survival rate." Four others use similar language, explaining that delays "in diagnosis impacted … cancer staging and treatment" of the patients.
The Dorn facility first came under scrutiny for delays in cancer care, specifically gastrointestinal (GI) care, following a CNN report in November of 2013.
The facilities' own disclosures show that delays in gastrointestinal care have plagued the facility for a number of years.
In 2013, nine patients experienced delays between their initial consultation and necessary diagnostic procedures, such as endoscopies and colonoscopies.
The delays in GI care for two veterans, in 2012, meant they were required to undergo surgery to remove a mass in their colon, which "might have been removed endoscopically" instead of surgically if the procedure was completed earlier.
There have been six total deaths since 1999 due to delayed cancer screenings, according to the VA report.
A February report by the VA Inspector General found the Dorn hospital faced staffing and equipment shortages that led to delays. The report also noted that Dorn ranked 127th out of 128 VA facilities in health care-associated infections during 2013.
In response to the report, the Dorn VA hospital said it was immediately taking steps to fix the problems.
The Dorn VA hospital did not immediately return requests for comment.
The Malcom Randall VA Medical Center in Gainesville, Fla., reported 31 "adverse events" during fiscal year 2013, the most of any VA facility. Three of those incidents were delays in cancer diagnosis and treatment.
The VA also confirmed earlier this year that two patients died at North Florida/South Georgia system, where the Gainesville hospital is located, due to delayed cancer screenings.
Additionally, the hospital conducted an "incorrect autopsy," according to a 2013 disclosure.
The system is the busiest in the country, serving roughly 125,000 VA patients per year. However, numerous congressional investigations and internal audits by the VA also describe a corrosive work environment, where leadership encouraged staff to cook the books to meet performance standards and where whistleblowers were harshly punished.
Three VA officials in Gainesville were placed on leave this year after an audit by the VA Inspector General found the hospital was using a secret paper list to keep track of appointments.
There were also allegations that surgeons were not allowed to perform certain operating room procedures to avoid increased mortality rates, and that patients with a high mortality risk were sent to a local hospital. However, the VA Inspector General said in a report it could not substantiate those claims.
Augusta, Georgia
The Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta, Ga., reported 14 "adverse events" during fiscal year 2013, and three cancer patients died as a result of delayed screenings over the past two years.
In 2013 alone, there were ten reports of delayed colonoscopies, two of which resulted in patient deaths.
According to a 2012 report from the VA Inspector General's Office, five patients died or sustained serious injury as a result of mismanagement between 2007 and 2010, and more than 4,500 gastrointestinal endoscopy consults went unresolved.
A VA audit this year reported that 26 new patients in Augusta had to wait at least 90 days for an appointment. Additionally, 133 veterans were not scheduled for an appointment despite requesting one in the past 10 years.
Since then, Augusta officials say they have reduced the number of veterans waiting at least 90 days for an appointment from 26 patients to two.
There were four open federal investigations into whistleblower retaliation at the hospital as of July.
'Missed Opportunities'
Twenty-two veterans are said to commit suicide each day, and decreasing that number has become a key mission of the VA. However, some disclosures raise questions about the steps being taken inside the department's facilities to ensure veterans receive appropriate attention for mental health issues.
"[Registered nurse] documented patient had frequent thoughts of suicide," one 2011 entry reads. "RN did not perform a suicide risk assessment with the patient and the patient attempted suicide by overdose."
"Providers did not listen to patient complaints that psychiatric meds not working," a 2012 report from a Salt Lake VA hospital said. "Patient overdosed on acetaminophen."
In one case, the family of a veteran reached out to staff at the facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico after they became concerned with the patient's depressive behavior, but staffers failed to follow up on those concerns.
"Patient attempted suicide by stabbing with a knife to his neck requiring emergency surgical repair," the report notes. "Family had contacted facility with concern of patient depression behavior on [redacted]; lack of appropriate follow-up and medication regime."
In Saginaw, Michigan a veteran "on a day-pass from an inpatient PTSD treatment facility" died after ingesting medications prescribed by his primary care doctor without a "face to face assessment."
He was found dead in a motel room, two days after receiving the prescription, from "an accidental or intentional overdose of medications."
A Comparison To Civilian Care
There are several caveats to the VA data. In many cases, the "adverse events" occurred from one to several years prior to the year they were reported. Many patients were also injured in falls or other accidents that were not strictly the result of staff error.
In other cases, the VA was scrupulous in reporting events that could not be conclusively connected to the death of a patient, some of whom had other severe medical problems.
Sometimes the mistakes did not even result in an injury. For example, in fiscal year 2013, 67 patients suffered no injury despite an error requiring a disclosure. Even in cases where the VA reported a mistake, some patients were still grateful for the care they received, according to the reports.
Although it is difficult to make a direct comparison without more detailed information, VA hospitals are not alone in committing serious, sometimes fatal mistakes.
According to a 2010 Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General report, "an estimated 1.5 percent of Medicare beneficiaries experienced an event that contributed to their deaths, which projects to 15,000 patients in a single month."
In a groundbreaking 1999 study, the Institute of Medicine estimated that medical errors killed between 44,000 and 98,000 patients at hospitals nationwide every year. However the Journal of Patient Safety said in a report released last year that the numbers may be as high as between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year.
Every year, an estimated 4,000 cases of "retained surgical items— in other words, things accidentally left inside patients' bodies—reported in the United States.
The Department of Veterans Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this article.
See the documents here: Institutional Disclosure Data Summary; Institutional Disclosures in FY2011; Institutional Disclosures in FY2012; and Institutional Disclosures in FY2013.
Below you see that the ADA is under attack as people with disabilities are being squeezed from the workplace at the same time worker's compensation and disability laws are being 'reformed' such that workers will find it near impossible to prove an injury or a disease vector originated on the job.
The EEOC like OSHA is a Federal agency with an appointed director and we know OSHA has not been functioning for a few decades in protecting workers and it looks as though the EEOC is now doing the same.
Workplace Disability Discrimination Claims Hit Record
By Shaun Heasley January 29, 2013
More complaints of disability-related job discrimination were filed last year than ever before, new statistics show.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received 26,379 claims of job bias citing disability issues in fiscal year 2012. That's up slightly from 25,742 filed the prior year.
Of the disability-related cases handled last year, the EEOC said they found that allegations in 5,907 had merit.
Aside from disability, the EEOC monitors employment discrimination complaints based on a variety of factors including race, sex, age, religion and national origin.
Overall, the number of job bias complaints filed with the EEOC was down somewhat in 2012, with a total of 99,412 charges filed by private sector workers. Disability claims, however, have increased every year since 2005.
The reason worker's compensation and workplace discrimination cases are soaring is that the American worker is being exploited and abused with long work hours----broken shifts that kill sleep patterns----long exposure to operational procedures like repetitive motion and staring at computer screens that break people's health. At the same time working conditions worsen and people's health compromised the agencies that should be supporting workers like OSHA and EEOC are being led by corporate directors that look out for a corporations profits over the well-being of workers.
People fired are of course-----the disabled, seniors, and people of color---all within the protective window of EEOC. This article makes it appear that people are using EEOC as an excuse for the layoff----
BUT I THINK WITH THE EMPLOYMENT STATS SHOWING RECORD NUMBERS OF THESE EMPLOYEE GROUPS ON THE DOLE----THERE ARE A RECORD NUMBER OF CASES OF DISCRIMINATION.
EEOC Discrimination Claims Soar in Early 2010
By Fox Rothschild LLP on September 24, 2010 Posted in General Employment Discrimination
The Wall Street Journal reported today that claims of employment discrimination filed with the EEOC from November 2009 through April 2010, increased 60% over the same period one year ago, with 70,000 claims filed. Attorneys quoted in the article cited layoffs attributed to the economy as a major factor in this increase. For example, with an increase in layoffs, more employees who are in a "protected category" are bound to be among those terminated, and they are more likely to file claims of discrimination if a new job is not found quickly. One such category of claims relates to age, since older workers are sometimes over-represented in layoffs, even if unintentionally.
Another factor in this increase is the 2008 change in the federal age discrimination law. The law broadened the definition of disability and therefore put more pressure on employers to accommodate these employees. In a down economy, more employers are claiming that it is "too burdensome" to make the necessary accommodations, and are taking their chances and terminating such employees.
We have found an uptick in meritless claims filed by laid-off employees who have no other means of support, and seek to extract a possible settlement from employers by filing a simple and free EEOC claim.
The Affordable Care Act has placed into the hands of corporate health institutions slated to profit from how health care access is managed the ability to define treatment and compensation charges and what constitutes on-the-job injury. What was once standards written from the public interest standpoint is now being re-written by corporations making sure these programs will be hard to access and wither on the vine.
Congress is writing law that makes defining on-the-job injury harder and the ability for disabled to receive long-time ADA workplace exemptions are disappearing. All of this is happening because Obama is a Clinton neo-liberal working for wealth and profit just as is the Republicans. If we elect REAL labor and justice candidates during primaries we can reverse this and bring back our public disability and workplace disability programs as before.
Remember, it is national labor unions and national justice organizations who support every election Clinton Wall Street neo-liberals doing all of this even as they protest against these actions.
SO, PLEASE MAKE SURE WE HAVE STRONG LEADERS IN LABOR AND JUSTICE AND POLS THAT ARE NOT WALL STREET AND CORPORATE!
States are eliminating their commitments to worker's comp and saying there is Federal agency coverage---but these Federal agencies are staffed by corporate directors that are outsourcing much of the work with the direction to slow the number of claims.
Workers Compensation Targeted By Business, Insurance Groups Across Country
Posted: 04/22/2011 9:08 am EDT Updated: 06/21/2011 5:12 am EDT
Former cop Bill Fournier told the Maine state legislature last week about the time he responded to a crime scene and found a 4-year-old girl burned alive in an oven. The grisly 1984 murder sent his life off the rails, Fournier said, to the point where he once put a revolver in his mouth and cocked the hammer.
It isn't something Fournier would like to revisit, but a subject dear to him was on the table: Reform of workers compensation laws.
Joined by other police officers, firefighters and paramedics, Fournier testified against a Maine bill that would diminish the role of psychiatric and emotional damage in determining a worker's right to compensation after an injury. The hotly debated measure, sponsored by state Rep. Kerri Prescott (R), has drawn support from the Maine Chamber of Commerce and insurance interests and opposition from labor groups. Many workers, particularly first responders, have argued that mental and emotional injuries should carry no less weight than physical ones when it comes to compensation.
Kevin Gillis, the head of the Maine Workers' Compensation Coordinating Council, an organization that represents businesses and insurers and backs the measure, says Fournier's emotional testimony epitomizes a lot of the heated discussion surrounding workers comp in Maine and elsewhere right now.
"People can understand just enough to comment on it, but they still don't fully understand it," Gillis told HuffPost. "A lot of people don't understand the significance or lack of significance of these [reforms]. You have to have a good grip on the whole statute." Gillis insists the reforms are aimed at lawyers who manipulate the system, and he believes the proposed changes wouldn't have affected Fournier's case.
There's a flurry of legislative activity around the country -- notably in Maine, North Carolina, Illinois, and Montana -- geared towards reining in the costs to employers of workers compensation claims. Maine Governor Paul LePage (R), who's already sparked a high-profile battle with the state's labor groups, went so far as to mention workers comp reform in his inaugural address. Illinois Governor Pat Quinn (D) recently told his state's enthusiastic Chamber of Commerce that workers comp reform will happen "this year."
While some bipartisan efforts exist, Republicans generally push the reforms, which business groups and insurance trade associations support. And though many of these discussions have been brewing for years, the ongoing efforts seem to dovetail nicely with the anti-labor zeitgeist fostered in Wisconsin and Ohio, as stories of able-bodied workers gaming the system now abound in legislative halls.
A representative of the Workers Injury Law & Advocacy Group (WILG), which represents claimants' attorneys, told HuffPost that "workers' rights and benefits, nationwide, appear to be under greater attack this session."
North Carolina serves as one of the prime battlegrounds, where a Republican-sponsored bill would cap the amount of time an injured worker can collect compensation at 500 weeks. Right now there is no time limit. The state's GOP has tried unsuccessfully to implement caps before, but now that the party controls both the House and the Senate for the first time in a century, the measure may have its best shot.
A study released by the Workers' Compensation Research Institute last year deemed North Carolina's workers comp costs among the highest of 15 states studied. Proponents of the reform argue higher taxes and insurance premiums for employers discourage businesses from settling or staying in the state, and the system is ripe for abuse without caps. Earlier this month, a scrum of injured workers and labor groups showed up at the state's assembly steps to protest the proposal.
"We believe there's a number of provisions being proposed that would hurt workers," said James Andrews, president of the AFL-CIO for North Carolina. He warns that the bill could make it harder for injured workers to change doctors and that it would redefine what "suitable" employment means. "It would require workers to take Walmart-type jobs in an effort to quickly return to work," James said.
Sorting out the real costs and savings of reform hasn't been easy. Ray Evans, the director of the North Carolina Rate Bureau, the state-chartered non-profit that determines insurance rates, said the impact of a cap isn't clear and the discussion tends to veer off into emotionally charged territory.
"In this legislative environment, it's difficult to separate the anecdotal evidence from what we consider more factual evidence," said Evans, whose bureau doesn't take a position on the possible reforms in North Carolina. "We hear all the time about people on disability out playing golf or basketball. We don't know if that's urban legend."
In Illinois, members of both parties have vowed to tackle the workers comp issue. Quinn recently told the business community that reform could save local companies half a billion dollars. Calling for an overhaul of the state's compensation commission, Quinn said, "Nobody's going to get scalped in the reform -- someone might get a hair cut -- but nobody's going to get scalped."
Although a few reforms would be possible in Illinois, one may fundamentally change the definition of a compensable injury, by requiring the worker to show that the accident was the "primary" factor in the resulting disability. The state head of the AFL-CIO has called this provision "deal-breaker" for labor. WILG argues that one Illinois bill would "effectively abolish" the Illinois Workers' Compensation Act and put cases with the state's circuit courts rather than with its compensation commission. 
Last week, Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer (D) signed a bill pushed by the Republican-led legislature that will change the state's workers compensation system significantly, including limiting benefits to a five-year period (two-year extensions are possible) and making those injured during a break ineligible. Proponents said the measure will cut expenses by 25 percent in a state known to have both some of the highest workers comp costs in the country and some of the highest workplace injury rates.
The Montana reforms came after five years of negotiations, and it's unlikely the bills in Maine and North Carolina will move swiftly given the resistance from labor groups. In the meantime, those following the developments expect more heated debate and hyperbolic talk in the statehouses.
Many people probably won't understand their state's compensation systems -- or the implications of ongoing reforms -- until the time comes to file a claim. "For the most part, folks don't have a good idea on the differences in workers compensation programs," said Evans of the N.C. Rate Bureau. "You can ask a hundred different people on the street how it all works, and I'm not sure you'd get an informed answer."
Progressive Democratic voters have always asked-----why do southern states mostly Republican using the most Federal program funding-----like Title 1 for special needs and disabled always have the working class voters voting with Republicans and against these progressive programs?
THE ANSWER IS -----SOUTHERN STATES LIKE MARYLAND AND NEO-CONSERVATIVE CITIES LIKE BALTIMORE NEVER ALLOWED THESE FUNDS TO MAKE IT TO SCHOOLS TO BUILD THESE PROGRESSIVE CLASSROOMS FOR THE POOR AND SPECIAL NEEDS STUDENTS.
Baltimore City residents took to court to try to regain almost a billion dollars in Title 1 funding redirected to corporate profit----they won and still the Maryland Assembly is in contempt of court not repaying Baltimore City schools for that missing money. Yet you do see a proliferation of ARC and corporations disguised as non-profits using those funds to keep the poor at the lowest level of living as possible----working only for food and shelter with taxpayer money earmarked to allow those citizens opportunity and access. Mind you---this misappropriation of Federal funds is illegal and political malfeasance but when Rule of Law is suspended and Equal Protection ignored----
WE HAVE NO RIGHTS AS CITIZENS. WHEN A GOVERNMENT SUSPENDS RULE OF LAW IT SUSPENDS STATUTE OF LIMITATION.
So, as Social Security Disability Insurance Trusts were subprimed for corporate profit----how do states keep their citizens at near-slave like work conditions? Trans Pacific Trade Pact is sitting there waiting for the same Congressional
Clinton neo-liberals that dismantled all oversight and acccountability so these abuses could occur----are ready to pass TPP which WILL BRING SLAVERY AND INDENTURED SERVITUDE BACK TO THE US.
The Americans With Disabilities Act and Title 1 when applied as intended in states across the nation allowed the disabled access to the same broad education in K-12 that gave them the ability to excel on college boards and sent a record number of disabled into mainstream corporate jobs and were tax-paying self-sustaining adults.....not trapped in poverty as in those states misappropriating these funds.
WE NEED TO STOP THE SYSTEMIC FLOW OF OUR FEDERAL TAXPAYER MONEY LOST TO FRAUD AND CORRUPTION TO SIMPLY CONTINUE THESE SUCCESSFUL SAFETY NET PROGRAMS AT A TIME WE NEED THEM MOST.
This is what Baltimore politicians are guilty of and it is Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins controlling the implementation of this misappropriation to profit. See why Baltimore's justice organizations are silent on issues of justice? They are led by people profiting from these frauds!
18 U.S. Code Chapter 47 - FRAUD AND FALSE STATEMENTS
Below you see a good overview of what has been a requirement for decades since these ADA laws came into effect. These funds were used to subsidize corporations and in this case universities so that they could meet the ADA requirements and this allowed the disabled to expand into these university and corporate workplaces just as everyone else. Why is it worthwhile to use Federal funds to do this? Because it keeps people connected to jobs and a lifestyle that allows them the ability to remain free of social service support as adults and be taxpayers themselves. So, the investment in the K-12 and college years made lifelong independent workers of these people with disabilities. This same idea is tied with Title 1 funding for underserved schools where this education funding moved the poor into higher paying jobs and away from the school to prison pipeline. In states like Maryland and especially in cities like Baltimore where all that money was misappropriated ------
WE HAVE THIRD WORLD POVERTY AND PUBLIC SUBSIDY USED TO KEEP PEOPLE POOR AND DEPENDENT. IT IS BALTIMORE'S POLITICIANS THAT WORK FOR HOPKINS TO KEEP PEOPLE POOR.
You see below that all the expense of getting the disabled set up in a workplace or university came from this Federal fund and could be used for future students and employees once installed----but much of that money never made it because students with disabilities never received the Title 1 funding in K-12 that gave them the level of education to advance to college and on to the workplace.
Workplace Accommodation Fund
It is the policy of The Ohio State University that discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities is prohibited. Pursuant to Titles I and II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the University provides equal employment opportunities and reasonable accommodation for qualified individuals with disabilities.
In the context of employment, reasonable accommodations are the provision of auxiliary aids or modifications to job duties, the work environment, policies or procedures that enables a qualified individual with a disability to perform the essential job functions. The determination of what accommodation is reasonable is contextual and involves a process in which the department and the employee identify the impacts of the disability on job performance and workflow; explore potential accommodations to mitigate those limitations and maintain essential job functions and standards. Human Resources and the ADA Coordinator's Office are available to assist in determining disability, evaluating its impacts, identifying reasonable accommodations, and resolving disputes related to the accommodation process.
The accommodation process is expected to be interactive with participation from the employee, the supervisor, and the unit's Human Resources contact. Accommodating employees is considered a shared responsibility between hiring units and central administration.
When there is an accommodation request, The ADA Coordinator's Office is available to assist in evaluating the presence and impact of a disability, determining appropriate accommodations, and providing funding accommodations.
The ADA Coordinator's Office can be contacted at (V) (614) 292-6207; (TTY) (614) 688-8605; (Fax) (614) 688-3665; ADA-OSU@osu.edu; http://ada.osu.edu
Employing department's responsibilities:
Employing units are expected to fund expenses normally provided for all employees, independent of disability status (such as furniture, phones, computers, technology upgrades, professional development opportunities, and other tools of the position.)
Employing departments are expected to cover the first $500.00 in annual accommodation expenses.
Employing departments can request assistance from the Workplace Accommodation Fund for qualifying accommodation expenses above $500.00.
Employing departments are expected to participate in the process of ordering and installing needed equipment or services once they are identified as reasonable accommodations.
Employing departments are expected to work collaboratively with the ADA Coordinator's Office to build continuing and anticipated accommodations into their planning process.
When submitting a request for assistance from the Accommodation Fund, the employing unit's Human Resources' contact (or departmental designee) will provide the following information to the ADA Coordinator's Office:
Name of employee, the accommodation requested and any documentation already collected in support of the request.
A copy of the employee's current job description.
Available information on any previous accommodations provided.
If you have difficulty accessing any portions of this website due to incompatibility with adaptive technology, or you have suggestions on how we can make this site more accessible, or you need the information in an alternative format, please contact us at:
L. Scott Lissner, ADA Coordinator
Address: ADA Coordinator's Office, The Ohio State University,
Ground Level; Hale Hall (formerly Enarson Hall)
154 W. 12th Avenue
My best friend at university was a social worker placing the most difficult of disabled in mainstream jobs. Her duties were also making sure the less-severely disabled had that pathway to mainstream employment. So, she kept an eye on the enforcement of regulations around disability and visited workplaces and universities to make sure money was spent as it should. She was a public employee working with the Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation in a state that actually enforced Title 1 and ADA.
Her success was amazing.
Meanwhile in states like Maryland the Maryland DLLR is captured by these crony and fraudulent pols that appoint people to ignore all of what DLLR is supposed to do-----like Maryland's former DLLR chief-----PEREZ made Obama's Labor Secretary for just that reason---to make sure all Federal laws that cost corporations money are not enforced. Know who approved of Perez as Labor Secretary? Trumka and national labor union leaders and fake immigrant groups like Casa Maryland pretending his appointment was good because he is Hispanic.
Who are hurt most when ADA and Title 1 are not enforced? Working class labor and immigrant families needing those funds.
Once again----Clinton neo-liberals have captured all leadership in agencies that advocate for labor and justice just so they become the cheerleaders for the dismantling of these vital programs. Remember, the working and middle-class will not see their taxes drop---they will simply move these public subsidies to corporate subsidies as happens in Maryland thanks to Clinton neo-liberals like Baltimore Mayor then Governor O'Malley.
Sheltered workshops is just where Maryland and Baltimore goes!
Disabled workers deserve real choices, real jobs
By Steven J. Taylor
Labor Day, 2002 -- Labor Day is traditionally an occasion for celebrating the American worker and, by implication, the value of work. Unfortunately, people with disabilities of working age don't have much to celebrate.
Not so long ago, work wasn't even a possibility. People with developmental disabilities and their families had two options: stay home or go into an institution. For adults with disabilities living alone or with their families, sheltered workshops emerged in the '50s and '60s as an opportunity to get out of the house and to have something to do during the day.
Much has changed. With the passage of P.L. 94-142 -- now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act -- children with disabilities were guaranteed the right to a free, appropriate public education. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and then the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, outlawed discrimination against people with disabilities. Federal and state vocational rehabilitation programs have been established to help people with disabilities enter the work force. Work incentives have been created for beneficiaries of federal disability benefits, and tax credits and deductions have been developed to encourage employers to hire people with disabilities.
Most significantly, attitudes toward people with disabilities have begun to change. To be sure, prejudice and discrimination are still directed toward disabled people. Yet, as a community and society, we are learning that people with disabilities do not need to be put away or segregated and "sheltered" from society. We are also learning that our communities, neighborhoods, schools, and work places are enriched by the presence and participation of people with disabilities.
It's time to consign sheltered workshops to history. The case against them is strong, not merely on philosophical grounds, but pragmatic ones as well.
Low pay. A 1998 national report indicated that sheltered workshop clients earned an average of $65 per week, while rehabilitation clients working in the competitive labor market earned an average $272. Even for people with severe mental retardation, earnings are significantly higher in competitive employment. Workshop clients earned a weekly average of $37, and workers in competitive employment made $110.
Dead-end placement. Supporters often defend sheltered workshops as a "transitional step" to prepare people to enter the competitive work force. Studies have consistently shown that segregated environments do not prepare people to live, work, or participate in integrated environments. A mere 3.5% of people in sheltered workshops move into competitive employment in a given year. This is one reason why the federal Rehabilitation Services Administration ruled in January 2001 that sheltered workshop placement would no longer qualify as an accepted employment outcome.
Incentive to keep the most productive clients. Sheltered workshops receive funding from a combination of public vocational and rehabilitation programs and contracts from businesses. Like any enterprise, workshops need to provide products of high quality to survive and continue to receive contracts. Workshops have a built-in incentive to retain the most productive and dependable clients. These are precisely the persons most likely to succeed in the competitive labor market, with the fewest supports.
Study after study has shown that people with severe disabilities can thrive in regular employment, given the proper supports. The problem is that the bulk of public funds continue to be channeled into sheltered workshops and other segregated facilities. In 1996, the Arc of the United States recommended, "Federal and state policy shall establish as a workforce development priority, employment of people with mental retardation in competitive settings with supports as necessary."
Ironically, sheltered workshops seldom have served people with the most severe disabilities. These people are deemed unproductive and unlikely to help them fulfill their contract work.
There is no question that people with disabilities can be productive and dependable workers. I am sure that many clients at sheltered workshops are proud of their work. But wouldn't those clients be prouder if they knew that they could perform their skills in real places of employment and be included and accepted into the regular work force -- just like anyone else? And wouldn't those businesses and places of employment be enriched by having workers with disabilities on-site, rather than out of sight?
The success of supported work and school-to-work transition programs demonstrate that people with disabilities do not need to be placed in sheltered facilities. Sheltered workshops need to be phased out of existence.
Steven J. Taylor, Ph.D. is Director of the Center on Human Policy at Syracuse University. His e-mail address is staylo01@mailbox.syr.edu
For those not recognizing the transition of ADA and Title 1 since Clinton neo-liberals captured the Democratic Party-----these programs went from funding good programs for the disabled to being a corporate source for maximizing profit. As this article states about Walmart and McDonald's sucking our social services dry by pushing workers to poverty wages that leave them unable to support themselves----so to does pushing low-wage workers into these disability programs while keeping the really disabled from being able to reach the mainstream education and jobs the funding was meant to do. IT WAS DELIBERATE; IT WAS MALFEASANCE AND FRAUD; AND WE CAN GET THAT MONEY BACK FOR OUR SSDI TRUST.
All of this does not happen in a vacuum. The labor and justice organizations that should be shouting against this have to be silenced by directors not allowing a word of this go public. The media knowing all of this is happening have to have station managers that make sure none of this information gets out. Universities have to make sure to teach and graduate people who fits into the fraudulent guidelines and make sure no talk of what the ADA is supposed to look like happens----this is done by who is appointed to head universities-----like O'Malley did.
ALL OF THIS LYING, CHEATING, AND STEALING ULTIMATELY MOVES BILLIONS TO THE TOP AND A FEW HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS TO THE PEOPLE ADMINISTERING THE FRAUD.
The article below suggests that getting workers higher wages will end this but it doesn't tell the real story----these practices are preparing for the next step after Trans Pacific Trade Pact is installed----that these public programs will end and Americans will be forced to work in slave conditions just for food and shelter. Imploding these good social programs with systemic fraud as an excuse to end them is exactly what Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons have as a goal.
12/24/2013 @ 9:27AM
Walmart And McDonald's 'Welfare Queens'?
Adam Ozimek , Contributor
I've written before about an unfortunate trend where people are trying to raise the status of the minimum wage by slinging mud at welfare programs. But I want to write about this again, because I'm having a difficult time figuring out exactly what the claims of the Walmart and McDonald's MCD +0.15% critics are here, and maybe some other readers are as well. A recent series of articles from Barry Ritholtz are good examples of what is confusing me.
It seems clear to me that Barry thinks welfare policies are a subsidy to corporations that employ low-income workers, but my question is what this subsidy actually means. I've seen "subsidy" used repeatedly to describe the relationship between these employers and the policies without describing what the impacts of the subsidy are on the firm. Here is an example from Barry that creates the impression that Walmart and McDonald's economically benefit from these policies:
My politics are pretty middle-of-the-road, and I find myself offended by subsidizing profitable companies this way. As a taxpayer, there are much better things I would like to see my monies go towards. Some rule changes are needed to end this wasteful spending.
We should get corporate welfare queens off of the public teat. Regardless of your politics, it is an issue that politicians on both the Left and the Right can agree upon.
So "profitable companies" are being "subsidized," and the public spending goes towards this "wasteful spending" that has these "corporate welfare queens" on the "public teat." All of these descriptors, however colorful, are still pretty devoid of actual economic claims. The implication of economic claims is certainly there, and readers certainly couldn't be blamed for assuming that "wasteful spending," "corporate subsidies" and "receiving so much taxpayer largess" meant that these companies had higher profits due to welfare programs. How else should one interpret a statement like "both giants are the beneficiaries of a surprising amount of federal aid"? But I'd like to see this argument made in actual economic terms instead of colorful vague language so we can actually talk about the plausibility of these impacts.
If these corporations are profiting from the subsidy, it seems the hypothesized impact is through lower labor costs. After all, if it was that food stamps increased household spending which benefitted the stores they shopped at, why on earth would writers be targeting the employers of low-wage workers? If this were the case there would be little reason to hold up Costco on the basis of their higher wages, as we often see, since it is the customers and not employees that determine "subsidy" amounts in this scenario. And with Ritholz at least this is clear, as he refers "these corporations having their full-time employees' paychecks effectively subsidized by taxpayers."
So if lower wages is the way that welfare leads to profits, then let's talk about labor supply and labor demand. To have welfare lead to lower wages would mean that it increases labor supply, so that the welfare leads more people want to work for a given wage. Does this sound plausible to you? Remove yourself from the context of trying to prove or disprove something about corporations and try to think of whether you'd take such a claim very seriously. Outside of the EITC, which most are not talking about here, I don't see any argument here at all. What's more puzzling here is that if we are talking about a subsidy that operates through expansion of labor supply, then you might think this is a good thing given our long-term unemployment problem and declining labor force participation.
So how about labor demand? I can't think of any reason to believe that welfare leads to lower labor demand that would be needed to drive down wages. Nor can I think of any reason why getting rid of welfare would increase labor demand. I keep reading people saying that welfare "allows" firms to pay less, but can you explain this in terms of the behavior of profit maximizing firms? Does anyone care to cite empirical evidence here?
Overall, I'd really like to see someone explicitly defend the implied claim that if food stamps or medicaid were repealed that wages at Walmart and McDonald's would actually go up. The way that these pieces are written might allow the authors to weasel out of this claim, but there's no denying the pieces are written with the intention of conveying that welfare contributes to McDonald's and Walmart's profits. I've seen some claim that these higher profits from welfare are only relative to the minimum wage. But in the same way you could call any policy a "subsidy" or "corporate welfare" simply by judging it relative to a profit tax. This argument simply presumes a priori that the minimum wage is the "right" way to do it, then judges welfare relative to the minimum wage. If that's your goal then fine, but it's misleading to call this a "corporate welfare" and a "subsidy". At the very least stop proclaiming yourself so puzzled that libertarians aren't on board with your presumption that the minimum wage is the right baseline.
I don't think there is any real economic argument here, and what we are seeing is entirely an attempt to raise the status of the minimum wage relative to welfare with branding. What gets some people understandably mad about pieces like this is that the authors are also in effect lowering the status of welfare. The basic argument is: welfare has these bad qualities that you aren't considering enough, and the minimum wage doesn't. If alleging downsides of welfare succeeds at raising the status of the minimum wage, it has to have done so by making welfare look worse. I don't think these writers get that.
The other side of the Americans With Disabilities Act and Disability protection policy is our American veterans. No one received better treatment through the Veterans Administration that veterans for decades. The VA offered life-long care for those making the ultimate sacrifice. The ADA was critical for these vets coming home and needing work.
Flash forward to today and the Veteran's Administration has been largely outsourced and privatized and corporate private non-profits are now receiving the Federal funding that VA Administrations did and you now see the emphasis on getting veterans to volunteer just as student grads from college denied the ability to have a real job and made to do VISTA work----these vets who were sorely used by Bush with never-ending tours are coming home to corporate veterans non-profits telling them to volunteer for their services.
We have Wounded Warrior as a charity group hawking for funds no longer sent to the VA so wounded veterans are now seen as charity cases ----not as people with lifelong benefits and a strong VA supplying them. All of this is an attack on the public system of disability funding and these vets are now going to be treated as those low-wage workers trapped in the corporate ARC-----working for food and shelter.
THINK US MILITARY VETERANS NEED MORE TIME VOLUNTEERING FOR THEIR COUNTRY/!!!!!
Engaging Veterans with Disabilities and Wounded Warriors in National and Community Service
A participant in the Wounded Warrior Project's Soldier Ride heads to the South Lawn of the White House through the Diplomatic Reception Room before the start of their ride, May 4, 2011. The President welcomed the group to the White House in advance of their fifth annual ride on Friday and Saturday. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Background As part of its mission to engage all Americans in service and as directed by the 2009 Edward M. Kennedy Service America Act, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) places a high priority on engaging veterans in community service, including those with disabilities.
In 2010, the CNCS launched the Engaging Veterans with Disabilities Initiative to enhance the capacity of national service programs to recruit, engage and support veterans with disabilities as active service members in structured volunteer experiences. The Corporation is conducting the Engaging Veterans with Disabilities in National and Community Service Initiative through its National Service Inclusion Project, housed at the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts Boston, in partnership with CTAT (Center for Technical Assistance and Training) and Operation TBI Freedom at Denver Options.
Objectives The purpose of the initiative is to identify promising practices, products and delivery strategies that can be used to guide the practice, policies and procedures of service programs as they recruit and support veterans with disabilities.
Interviews with veterans who are current or former AmeriCorps or other national service volunteers.
Discussion groups with active duty soldiers from the Wounded Transition Units and veterans to speak about what would engage them in national or community service.
Target Participants The initial target of the initiative is enlisted soldiers who served in Afghanistan or Iraq and veterans who experience traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder and other combat-related issues. In a later phase, the project will explore how the strategies and products can be generalized to additional groups of veterans.
Common Themes from 2010 Interviews
Veterans feel a sense of belonging and regain their identity through service and volunteerism.
AmeriCorps gives veterans and soldiers the opportunity to get back into the workforce and develop new skill sets.
Service and volunteerism is a satisfying and structured opportunity to serve our country in another way.
AmeriCorps gets soldiers and veterans out of their comfort zone and teaches them a great deal.
Veterans find that helping others is a way to help themselves.
How to Engage Veterans Veterans indicated in the first interviews and discussion groups that they preferred marketing materials that considered the following:
Knowing what's in it for them upfront, such as the stipend and benefits, including the educational benefits, and their value.
Messages that are authentic.
Creating materials that use patriotic colors.
Stressing volunteer service is way for veterans to serve their country and a way to serve those in their communities who need help.
Emphasizing that service gives soldiers a sense of belonging, purpose, inclusion, human connection and helps with self-esteem and identifies challenges.
Wanting to have their interests matched with program goals and activities.
Project Funding Provided by Engaging Veterans with Disabilities in National and Community Service Initiative is a project of the National Service Inclusion Project (NSIP), a training and technical assistance provider on disability inclusion, under a cooperative agreement (#08TAHMA001) from the Corporation for National and Community Service. NSIP partners with CTAT and Operation TBI Freedom at Denver Options to increase the participation of veterans with disabilities in national service.
'A rule preventing reallocation of Social Security funds to men, women, and children who receive disability insurance was one of the first orders of business for the House Republicans, who are holding these people ransom unless these reallocations are offset by either benefit cuts or tax increases. Now, that latter is never going to happen, since you know as well as I do that they'd shoot down a tax increase even if that tax increase directly lead to a larger part of American children having a better future. So what this means is that the GOP is setting up benefit cuts to 11 million people over the next two years'.
ATTACKING ALL OF WAR ON POVERTY AND NEW DEAL INCLUDES ENDING AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT AND TITLE 1 EQUAL PROTECTION LAWS SURROUNDING SPECIAL NEEDS CHILDREN.
To understand why Obama's budget will further undermine the Federal agency for special needs funding----look to how Bush and his No Child Left Behind was an unfunded mandate----in other words---you load all kinds of requirements onto a program and then do not fund them so that the program fails to meet objectives and is termed 'unsuccessful' or a failure. See how underserved schools are being closed by this same method----Bush created NCLB with no funding so that underserved schools had no way to meet these terms----so now they declare them failing and close them. That is what Obama is doing to special needs K-12.
As I stated public education fell under attack with Reagan/Clinton and neo-liberalism so all Federal education agencies are deeply underfunded. So, when Obama keeps special needs funding the same as 8 years of Bush----he is continuing the starving of these Federal agencies. Below you see the University of Michigan speaking to this years ago.
Maryland Governor O'Malley did the same thing in Maryland. Tuition climbed in Maryland through earlier terms and the Thornton Bill fought to protect funding for Baltimore public schools was left without COLA increases since it passed and O'Malley did the same----he sold the idea he was funding Baltimore schools by keeping the funding the same. We all know Thornton Bill is so underfunded as to be a shell of itself and no doubt Hogan will find excuses to cut more. They goal in Maryland is to end state funding for public schools altogether----so, special needs is going.... going.
This article written late in the Bush years shows that a progressive policy from 1975 failed to be given the COLA and funding throughout the Reagan/Clinton years and of course Bush with some states following suit. For those thinking Clinton could not do this because of a Republican Congress-----Federal money has always been fungible and it could have made to to these programs as it should have with a super-majority of Democrats and Obama in 2009. Rather, Clinton neo-liberals chose to control defunding and gutting this Federal special needs agency with corporate private non-profit outsourcing----
BYE BYE SPECIAL NEEDS SAY CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS!
Meanwhile, for-profit education corporate fraud of a trillion dollars occurred during the Clinton/Bush Administrations and continues now under Obama. Plenty of money to steal---not enough to send to the classrooms. The frustration with public schools comes from this defunding---not because public education is a bad idea. Maryland is tops in what is described below---we simply have no universities or public sector providing this kind of research data.
FUNDING FOR SPECIAL NEEDS EDUCATION:
The special education system in the United States is one of the most heavily-regulated and under-funded of all federal education mandates
(http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/16_03/Prom163.shtml).
According to National Association of State Boards of Education when IDEA was created in 1975, the legislation included the goal that 40 percent of the extra costs of the inclusion of special needs children into regular classrooms would be covered by the federal Government, but according to the 2002 budget the government has only provided 18% of the extra costs for special education and it has been up to the states and local governments to foot the rest of the bill
(http://www.nasbe.org/Educational_…/Policy_Updates/10_12.html).
There is not nearly enough funding for these children that need it the most. In order to have
good teachers who care about their students there needs to be more funding put into special needs education. Not enough teachers today are being trained in special needs education. If more teachers are trained and more inclusion of these children
occurs, then it would be easier to get the funding for special needs because the children would already be included into a regular classroom setting.
Other states and school districts seem to agree with this discrepancy in cost due to the federal government's forgetfulness to pay 22% more than they currently are, some of these states are taking action against the government, but still some are not doing their part to ensure children with special needs receive the funding they need to continue their education in the proper way. Wisconsin law,
for example, mandates that the state reimburse local school districts for 63% of the cost to educate children in special education, but the state has not met this commitment for nearly a decade, and special education costs have increased at a
rate of 6.3%
(http://www.weac.org/Capitol/1998-99/april99/eengp.htm).
It is in the state law to help these children and to fund their special education needs. Wisconsin as a state is not doing to their part to ensure success for all students. The federal government is obviously not willing to help these children either, and
if every state followed in Wisconsin's footsteps, there might not well be a special education program in any classroom across the United States. Proper funding is a large part of what can make or break special education. Proper funding can provide
great care and teachers to these kids, and if that funding continues to not be sufficient, it can hurt these children in the long run.
According to the Governor's Budget on Special Education funding in California in 2003-2004, it proposes that the total expenses would increase
approximately $215 million dollars up to a total of $4.4 billion in 2005-2006, also under this proposal the General Fund support for special education would increase 4.9%
(http://www.lao.ca.gov/…/e…/ed_08_Special_Education_anl05.htm ).
Also under this proposal the General Fund support for special education would increase 4.9% This proposal sounds promising, and that is exactly what the governors of these states want you to think. Proposals from the governor always sound wonderful, and seem like they are going to work for everybody, and everyone will be happy with the results. If you take it at face value, all it is just a
proposal, it's not a promise, just a guideline. Unfortunately, California along with many other states are not even close to this guideline.
According to an article on Special Education News in California, the state of California and the California Schools Boards Association which represented
nearly 1000 county education agencies and school districts, reached a final agreement to reimburse school districts for $520 million they have spent over the last 20 years to educate students with special needs, funds which were largely paid
(http://www.specialednews.com/…/statesnews/CAfunds111500.html).
What does this say about the state of funding for special needs students in our classrooms? California and Wisconsin are both holding back funds to help these children, and more needs to be done to put pressure on these states to produce this money and give more to education. Children are the future of this country, special needs or not, everyone can have a chance to reach success if they are just given the chance to do so. Even though the schools were reimbursed for their funds spent
out of pocket, the settlement figure is only slightly more than half the $1.1 billion dollars the CSBA originally claimed the schools were owed
These states are getting off easy, more needs to be done to ensure each special needs child has
a chance for a proper education, no matter what school district or state they are in. One of the few states to take action against the lack of proper funding for special education was Michigan. In Durant v. State Board of Education, 244 taxpayers representing 225 school districts sued the State for allegedly underfunding special education programs and services by hundreds of thousands of
dollars (www.lawyersweekly.com)
These are just three states where major problems in special education funding have occurred. All three of these states (California,Michigan and Wisconsin) have been cheated by the State system for funds that are dearly needed for the proper education of special education children. What needs to be done to ensure that the withholding of funds for special
education doesn't continue for more children throughout the United States? The federal government needs to step in and take charge of where this money is going. They need to enforce these laws throughout the entire country and make sure every state is doing what needs to be done so that children everywhere, disability or not, can have a positive, effective school experience.
Below you see some short descriptions of what life for special needs used to look like before War on Poverty Equal Protection for People with Disabilities. They were warehoused or never sent to school. The funding that was fully supported for two decades moved special needs education into every school as was the Constitutional requirement and it assigned specially trained teachers to see that these students received the same broad public education as all students and a record number of special needs attended college and were hired by corporations in mainstream jobs. Had this funding not occurred---as is happening now-----you can read what some people living before 1960s remember existed for special needs children and how that transitioned out in the 1970s
Until Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children act (Public Law 94-142) in 1975, kids with disabilities didn't even have a right to a free, appropriate public education.
Some districts in some states, often because they were pressured by parents, organized special education classes. But they were often a haphazard grouping of all the students who were different in some way, including kids who did not have cognitive delays. Often people with hearing loss, for example, were felt to be "slow learners" because they had speech problems (you can't learn to articulate if you can't hear the difference in sounds) and they had trouble learning the material that the teacher talked about.
My sister has Down syndrome, and when she was born in 1965, the doctors called her a "mongolian idiot" and suggested that our parents institutionalize her, because she wouldn't ever be able to even take care of her personal needs. So that's an example of how even well-educated people in the 60s and 70s had low expectations of people with disabilities. (By the way, my sister can read well - her favorite author is Stephen King! Her math skills are not as good. She lives in a group home, has a job that she loves, has a boyfriend and many other friends, and has a very happy life.)
I began teaching special education classes in the 1970s, and I had classes where the students ranged in age from 6 to 17. Most of the students were what was then called "educable" or "trainable mentally retarded," but I also had a student who was mentally ill (paranoid schizophrenic) simply because there was no place for him to go to school. And I had to fight with my district because they placed a little girl with an average IQ in my class, simply because she needed leg braces and crutches to walk! Eventually they agreed to let her go to a regular first grade class, but many people believed that she needed to stay with "those poor little handicapped kids."
So much has changed since those days, mostly for the good. (Remember, that was also the era in which it was completely legal to deny voting rights to people because of their race, to segregate schools by race, and to legally discriminate against people according to race as well as disability.) But you are still bearing the burden of the low expectations and poor education you received, and I am sorry for that. You obviously have learned some good skills, though, and I hope that you are having a life with plenty of personal satisfaction. Remember that it is never to late to learn, and while we can't go back and undo what happened to you 30 or 40 years ago, you can still move forward. You have the skills and initiative to post your questions here, which demonstrates that you have the abilities and the motivation needed to be a life-long learner, despite your unfortunate school experiences.
Comment from Kathy
I am 52 years old . I am asking God for the courage to slay the lie that I am stupid . When I asked my mother "what was it they said was wrong with me?" Her reply "you were just lazy" I was often in a closet like room with 10 or 12 students . We made rock candy , they made me wear a headset piping background noise into my ears while I attempted to read and answer questions . All though I had no outward physical appearance I can remember looking around the classroom at other disabled people and thinking because I looked normal on the outside "I might be able to hide my broken self". I took my important senior classes in summer school the year prior to Senior year fearful I would fail . When I attempted a class in Community College with in the 1st week the teacher commented on my paper in front of the entire class my lack of proper Writing and English skills . I was so embarrassed I never returned to school. Although I have raised 2 children and been married for 24 years and have accomplished many things . As for the "lazy" comment I have held a job since I was 16 and aside from 2 years I took off I have always worked . Some days I realized I missed pain and some days I realize I've missed much of life's excitement . However , when it come to compassion and love for broken hearts I am gifted . For this road we walk is a treacherous one and I do believe Christ is healing us all. Not sure ill figure out the schooling at this stage of life but pray for revelation that "I can learn in the traditional sense "
Comment from Judy
it was all full they put you in this little room right be side the office with only a few chairs ,they gave you the answer if they didn,t want to mess with you .they didn,t teach you any thing .or get you in front of a class to get you to read knowing you could,nt they just didn,t care . for the kids to day i pray it is better . yes i had a learning disability but i,m here to say and not a shamed i was 26 years old be for i could read a paper tell time count money or math and now i can do all that and more because i found some one that cared to teach me . we , you and others you you can learn to just put your mind to it . one more thing i didn,t find out i was hard hearing (deaf un till 1993 so those who have a hard time learning don,t give you can learn just like the rest up just a little harder for us . god bless those who be live in them self keep it up and i learned to use a computer with no help . what i,m guess i ,m trying to say is you are no driffent from other good luc
Comment from Steak
I am a 1967 high school graduate and my rememberances of special ed classes was horrific. In one classroom with a windowless door shut all day,25to 30 students from eighth to twelve grade sat all day and acted like pure d fools. Whatever teacher they mustered up for that day always had a petrified look of helplessness on his or her face. On a rare oppotunity when the door was opened the students were beating on desks, cursing at the teacher and just utter chaos. A student who was a bit slow back then really had no special help, only to isolate them from the rest of the public education system. In all four years of high school they learned nothing at all and when time to graduatre were left to fend for theirselves. Things have changed a great deal since then. Thank god. I was a special education teacher during the late seventies. I don't know where you went to school but most of my students were mainstreamed and eventually returned to the regular classroom. As always, it depends on the teacher, students, and parents as stakeholders. I hope that you have since found some help or support groups for individuals with learning disabilities.
Comment from Ginny
I was a special education teacher during the late seventies. I don't know where you went to school but most of my students were mainstreamed and eventually returned to the regular classroom. As always, it depends on the teacher, students, and parents as stakeholders. I hope that you have since found some help or support groups for individuals with learning disabilities.
Comment from Dolphin Mama
Special Education was non existent at the time. Before that time, children with severe special needs were put into institutions, and children with mild needs were looked over. Special education wasn't designed until 1975 with the Education of the Handicapped Act (P.L. 94-142).
Below you see what is happening in Baltimore as charter schools and even our public K-12 have principals so bound by stripped budgets that they cannot accommodate special needs students. The model that places schools as businesses running efficiently and cost-effective does not recognize equal protection----it grabs only the best of students that are easiest to attain high scoring. As Diane Ravitch states below----THIS IS NOT LEGAL.
In Baltimore it is the MD ACLU leading this effort and they along with the NAACP should be leading the effort to protect these children. This happens in Baltimore to largely black underserved schools because these are the majority of schools but the same is happening in white underserved schools and it is coming to middle-class schools. The only schools in Baltimore having what is required by law are Roland Park and Mt Washington public schools----both in affluent communities.
Remember, Wall Street is pushing to have 90% of Americans in poverty with the end of the middle-class so as the stats show-----most public school children are coming from families at or near poverty. That means this dismantling effects almost all American families. It is happening not because America/Maryland does not have the funds----it is happening because Clinton neo-liberals are allowing all the funds to be lost to corporate fraud----giving it as corporate subsidy----and ending the collection of all corporate and wealth taxes.
WE CAN EASILY TURN THIS AROUND AND FUND ACCORDING TO THE US CONSTITUTIONAL REQUIREMENTS.
It is no secret that Race to the Top creates the very school structures to end all equal opportunity and access education and that pols know the legislation they are passing is written to allow this to happen as best they can. Allowing charters to have data shielded from public view is illegal policy that simply needs to be challenged in court. This is why in Maryland the ACLU has a director that works against these civil liberties-----
Most special-needs students drop out of charter schools by third grade:
report General students from kindergarten to third grade are retained by the privately operated schools at a slightly higher rate than district schools, according to the study report by the Independent Budget Office released Thursday.
BY Ben Chapman NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, January 10, 2014, 1:05 AM
Richard Harbus for New York Daily News The Innovative Manhattan Charter School on Delancey St.
City charter schools lose a whopping 80% of special-needs kids who enroll as kindergartners by the time they reach third grade, the report says. A whopping 80% of special-needs kids who enroll as kindergartners in city charter schools leave by the time they reach third grade, a report by the Independent Budget Office released Thursday shows.
But the publicly funded, privately operated charter schools, which enroll 6% of city students, hold on to general education students at a slightly higher rate than district schools, according to the study, which covered retention rates for kindergarten through third grade.
The report followed students from 2008 to 2011.
Joe Tabacca Charter school leaders and families gather to show support on the steps of City Hall. Critics have said for years that charters push out needy kids and serve fewer difficult students. About 70% of students attending charter schools in the 2008-2009 school year remained in the same school three years later, compared with 61% of kids at district schools.
Critics have said for years that charters push out needy kids and serve fewer difficult students. Overall, just 9% of charter school students have special needs — much lower than the citywide average of 18%.
New York City Charter School Center CEO James Merriman said the study included a sample of just 25 charter students with special needs and that charters' overall retention rates were good. District schools also had a tough time holding onto special-needs kids in the time period covered during the report. Just half who enrolled in traditional public school as kindergartners remained in the same school at the end of grade three.
New York City Charter School Center CEO James Merriman said the study included a sample of just 25 charter students with special needs and said the charters' overall retention rates were good.
"The narrative that we attrit all kinds of kids at a greater rate just turns out to be false," said Merriman. "That is really amazing, given that opponents have been so adamant about it."
Below you see what is happening as Obama and the Federal agencies tasked with enforcing these Federal rights are simply ignoring them. Lawsuits grow-----parents and local governments expend money in these lawsuits with the idea that soon all that will stop.
DO YOU KNOW IF THE MARYLAND STATE ATTORNEY'S OFFICE TOOK THESE CLAIMS TO COURT-----AND THEY TOTALLY IGNORE ALL PUBLIC JUSTICE ISSUES----THAT THEY WOULD WIN FOR THESE PARENTS BECAUSE WHAT IS HAPPENING IS ILLEGAL!
This shows how the early stage of skills development for special needs children needed for them to go to college and enter mainstream employment----is disappearing.
Why Parents File IDEA Complaints, LawsuitConflicts Causing Parents to File Formal Complaints
Updated July 16, 2013.
Special education disagreements happen. Parents of children with learning disabilities may sometimes disagree with how schools manage their children's programs. Fortunately, many of those disagreements can be resolved informally. When problems are severe, parents may need to take formal actions to get them resolved. Learning the top conflicts that cause parents to file formal complaints or take legal actions against school districts can help you determine if you need to do the same. 1. Failure to Communicate - Teachers and Staff Not Reporting Progress to Parents When teachers and school staff do not share progress reports with parents, conflicts can arise. Failure to communicate can be caused by:
Failure to agree upon what will be communicated, how, and when;
Parents and / or teachers misunderstanding what was agreed;
Forgetfulness;
Lack of classroom support needed to implement the plan;
Lack of cooperation from the child to follow his part of the plan;
A teacher agreeing to implement a plan she could not realistically implement;
Unreasonable expectations from parents;
In rare instances, teachers or school staff may not implement a plan because of willful non-compliance or negligence;
Communication within the family is not effective.
2. Difficult Communication With Schools - Hostility Between Parents, School Staff Conflicts are worsened when parents and school staff are hostile with each other. When parents' and teachers' behaviors become disrespectful and angry, relationships can become so strained that the child can suffer emotionally and academically. Some reasons hostile relationships can develop include:
Parents and/or teachers do not respect each other;
Teachers, administrators, or parents refuse to make changes to accommodate the child;
Parents make unrealistic demands in an angry, confrontational manner;
Parents or teachers feel they are not valued, their input is not wanted, and that the child is not receiving an appropriate education; and
The school or home environment is negative, unsafe, rigid, or nonsupportive.
3. Failure to Provide Instruction and Services - School Does Not Implement IEP Failure to provide specially designed instruction, implement an IEP, or provide related services required on an IEP is a frequent reason parents file formal complaints against school districts. Failure to implement an IEP may involve:
Students not receiving specially designed instruction;
Students not receiving adaptations and modifications for testing; or
Students not receiving related services such as speech, occupational therapy, physical therapy, or other services listed on the IEP.
4. Failure to Provide Equal Access to School Programs and Services When schools fail to provide equal access to programs and services such as extra-curricular activities, sports programs, or access to advanced courses with reasonable accommodations, parents may file complaints. In many cases, such problems are covered under Section 504. In some cases, however, denial of access to school programs and services can fall under IDEA.
As the article shows----special needs children are being forced from charters and then end in public schools were tiered funding and school choice are making it almost impossible for parents of special needs to find the right school and certainly this happens rarely in their own neighborhoods. This is how Texas lowered its number of special needs in public schools decades ago.
Regular teachers are now handed IEPs for special needs----a huge rise in time needed for administration with increasing class size and testing and evaluation requirements. All this spells----IT ISN'T GOING TO GET DONE AND YOUR POLS KNOW THIS!
The unfunded mandate strikes again as it is only meant to create the conditions for teachers and administrators wanting to be rid of special needs children and parents becoming frustrated with what is available in public schools.
THIS IS THE ONLY GOAL OF THIS RACE TO THE TOP AND INCLUSION POLICY.
Transition Planning for Students With IEPs
By Kristin Stanberry
The transition from high school to young adulthood is a critical stage for all teenagers; for students with learning disabilities (LD), this stage requires extra planning and goal setting. Factors to consider include post-secondary education, the development of career and vocational skills, as well as the ability to live independently. The first step in planning for a successful transition is developing the student's transition plan. A transition plan is required for students enrolled in special education who have an Individualized Education Program (IEP). In this article, we will define and describe transition planningand how it can be utilized to maximize your teenager's future success.
What is a Transition Plan? A transition plan is the section of the Individualized Education Program (IEP) that outlines transition goals and services for the student. The transition plan is based on a high school student's individual needs, strengths, skills, and interests. Transition planning is used to identify and develop goals which need to be accomplished during the current school year to assist the student in meeting his post-high school goals.
When Should Transition Planning Begin? The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 04) requires that in the first IEP that will be in effect when the student turns 16 years of age, his annual IEP must include a discussion about transition service needs (some states may mandate that the process start even earlier). A statement of those needs, based upon his transition assessment and future goals, must then be written into his IEP. IDEA 04 mandates that the annual IEP meeting focus on more specific planning and goal setting for the necessary transition services. Factors to be included are: academic preparation, community experience, development of vocational and independent living objectives, and, if applicable, a functional vocational evaluation. The agreed upon plans must then be documented in the student's IEP. The law also requires that a statement of the student's transition goals and services be included in the transition plan. Schools must report to parents on the student's progress toward meeting his transition goals.
The IEP team may begin discussing transition services with the student before he turns 16, if they see fit. If the IEP team hasn't begun to focus on transition planning by the time your child turns 16, it is important for you, as the parent, to initiate that process.
Why is Transition Planning Important? It isn't enough to simply be aware that teenagers need guidance to transition successfully from high school to the next phase of young adulthood; concrete action steps must be taken to guide and prepare teens for college and/or a career, and for independent living. Without this guidance, students with learning disabilities often fail or flounder in high school and beyond. Consider these sobering statistics:
Over 30% of children with learning disabilities drop out of high school. (Source: 28th Annual Report to Congress on the Implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2006)
Only 13% of students with learning disabilities (compared to 53% of students in the general population) have attended a 4-year post-secondary school program within two years of leaving high school. (Source: National Longitudinal Transition Study, 1994)
Transition services, provided by knowledgeable educators and community resources, can be tailored to a student's goals and strengths and provide him with options and plans for his future. Transition services offer students with learning disabilities hope for the future.
Below you see an article from British Columbia that shows exactly what is happening in the US. We used to be the best in the world with special needs education and now of course we are at the bottom of developed world nations----Mexico is having the same reforms with the same reactions from citizens.
Baltimore County has a functioning public school system while Baltimore City has a privatized and outsourced mess. This is thanks to Johns Hopkins and Clinton neo-liberal Governor O'Malley who have tag-teamed to make Baltimore City the platform for the most privatized and corporate K-12 in the nation. You won't see these kinds of articles in Baltimore because all of the Baltimore media, labor and justice organizations are captured and silent as Hopkins sends the city to a third world level of education-----
Baltimore County knows this Baltimore platform will expand all over Maryland if left to continue to develop. Below you hear teachers shouting what we all know-----there is no proper readiness for teachers for an inclusion of special needs into mainstream classrooms and regular teachers have no training or time to spend with these children. What the school board, City Hall, and the governor know is that these special needs children will be allowed to sit and play or simply kept quiet ------
In Baltimore City it is far worse as this inclusion is happening in underserved schools were teachers are far more stressed and discipline is a major time factor. We are seeing Baltimore special needs children in large numbers being bullied out of school by these school conditions.
THAT'S A WIN SAYS OUR CORPORATE BALTIMORE CITY SCHOOL BOARD. THE GOAL IN BALTIMORE CITY WITH JOHNS HOPKINS IS TO RAISE SCHOOL TEST SCORES BY GETTING RID OF ALL THE CHILDREN THAT COST MORE TO EDUCATE!
This is exactly what is happening in Baltimore!
B.C. teachers' strike: are we failing special needs students?  Some parents and educators say teacher training is inadequate and inclusion isn't happening By Catherine Rolfsen, CBC News
Posted: Sep 04, 2014 7:54 AM PT Last Updated: Sep 05, 2014 12:06 PM PT
Kim Pemberton, at right, has been fighting for inclusion for her daughter Hannah, who has a learning disability and obsessive compulsive disorder. (Shiral Tobin )
(Note: CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external links.)
As B.C. teachers and the government continue to square off over class size and composition, some question whether B.C.'s special education system even exists.
"There really are no special education teachers in the system at all anymore," says Pat Mirenda, a University of B.C. professor and expert in special education and inclusion.
LISTEN | Can teachers handle special-needs demands?
Mirenda says B.C. used to a be a leader in special education, but now most of those experts have retired, gone back into the regular classroom, or moved up the management chain in the education system.
Now, Mirenda says the one-year teaching training program at B.C. institutions certifies all teachers to teach everything.
LISTEN | Education assistants face violence in classrooms
"So I can be a science nerd who went through [the] secondary teacher education program and my dream is to teach Science 10 or Physics 11 and the only job I can find is Grade 3 and that's what I teach," she says.
"And at the most, they've probably had one class and it's basically tiptoe through the disabilities."
The lack of expertise and resources for special needs education means that exclusion still exists in high schools.
Kim Pemberton's daughter Hannah finished Grade 12 last year. She has a learning disability and obsessive compulsive disorder.
'They weren't really planning to teach to her.'-Kim Pemberton, mother of a special needs student
"I had some teachers tell me that they weren't really planning to teach to her, that she was just there for the social experience," Pemberton says.
"In my experience the majority [of teachers] don't even teach to the special needs. They leave it to the aide to do it."
Educational assistants also lack training However, the aides, or educational assistants, often don't have the training or expertise in special education to deal with the more complex teaching cases.
LISTEN | A firsthand account from a former special needs student
"A lot of EAs that are working out there have never been trained formally," says June Kaiser, who worked more than a decade as an educational assistant and serves as president of CUPE local 716 in Richmond.
"If you breathed on a child at some point, you were trained. That's really coming back to haunt them now."
'If you breathed on a child at some point, you were trained.'- June Kaiser, former educational assistant Kaiser says the resource teachers who are there to support teachers and educational assistants also don't have adequate knowledge.
"They're generally the youngest teachers in the program. The older teachers have all vacated that position because it is such a hard position."
University of B.C. professor Pat Mirenda says B.C. used to be a leader in special education, but now lags behind. (Shiral Tobin)
Mirenda says B.C. has a long way to go to achieve an inclusive education system.
"The funding for education has been dramatically eroded in this province for the past couple of decades and the kids with special needs have been the ones that have most dramatically suffered," she says.
"And now the kids with non-special needs are starting to suffer as a result."
Reagan/Clinton neo-liberals declared war on the Great Society by defunding and dismantling oversight and accountability which led to systemic fraud and corruption in the social safety net system----mostly by corporations fleecing the people getting the Federal support. Then, when services and programs fell apart because of this---they declared the Great Society a failure. Look to Baltimore to see how a neo-conservative approach to the War on Poverty created just what I describe above.....Johns Hopkins became a global corporations on the funding for social safety net programs that the citizens didn't get. No, these programs won't work if undermined......as a Johns Hopkins researcher said recently-----THE POOR WILL REMAIN POOR! All data shows the record number of people lifted from poverty by these programs and with Clinton neo-liberalism came the capture of the Democratic Party that protected those progressive policies and came the dismantling that made them dysfunctional.
Maryland is home of Sargent Shriver and the Special Olympics which is one of the most successful of War on Poverty programs for the disabled.
The high cost of War on Poverty programs came after Reagan/Clinton dismantled oversight and the corporate frauds started gutting a hundreds of billions of dollars each year from these programs causing the costs to climb ----as with Medicare and Medicaid.
LBJ's War on Poverty: It Worked!
President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty in his State of the Union address 50 years ago this week. Prof. Michael Katz pushes back on the modern blather that the project failed:
President Reagan famously quipped that the nation fought a war on poverty and poverty won. This is an overly harsh blanket statement. Through the War on Poverty, the federal government helped millions of Americans find medical care, food, housing, legal aid, early childhood education, and income security at a level unprecedented in America's past.
Poor Americans also helped themselves. The day-to-day War on Poverty took place at the grassroots in the complex interactions between activists on the ground, local officials, and the federal government. Many of the gains wrested with great difficulty remain in place today. The War on Poverty and Great Society did not eradicate poverty in America, but during the years when the programs flourished, poverty dropped to its lowest recorded point in US history.
Amen. Enough with the claims that the government can't do anything to help people get a leg up in their lives! Those braying blowhards who say can't really mean shouldn't, which is a much different thing.
The LBJ Library has a nice feature on the War on Poverty, including this old-timey video presentation from 1964:
"For the first time in our history, an America without hunger is a practical prospect. And it must, it just simply must become the urgent business of all men and women of every race and every religion and every region."
You don't have to look at too many photos from Appalachia in the 1960s to see just how bare the living could be in those days. The government helped change it:
Medicare and Medicaid expanded the availability of medical care for the elderly and indigent. Poverty among the elderly plummeted while their use of medical care soared: between 1964 and 1973, hospital discharges of the elderly rose by 350%. Poor people began visiting doctors at the same rates as everyone else.
Operation Head Start helped significant numbers of poor children prepare for school; Upward Bound prepared large numbers of adolescents for college; and financial assistance permitted thousands of young people from families with low or modest incomes to take advantage of higher education. Were there mistakes and missteps and abuses? Sure. Those huge city housing complexes didn't work out too well. Yes, people found ways to game the system and get their hands on money they didn't deserve. The same is true of the Defense Department and its game-playing contractors and occasional boondoggle fighter jets, and yet nobody ever suggests that the governent can or should get out of the business of the public defense. A lot of people are a lot better off 50 years ago because LBJ and Congress worked hard to make things better for all citizens. Good for them, and good for us, for trying everything we could to help Americans make a better life -- and shame on us if we listen to the naysayers and give up now.
I spoke earlier about the implosion of the Social Security Disability Trust and its soon to be demise and it is tied to the soon to be dismantled Americans With Disabilities Equal Protection structures. Both indicate that people with disabilities have no rights under Clinton neo-liberalism and Bush neo-conservatism. Obama has greatly reduced and privatized the Federal programs tied to the Disabilities agencies and with Race to the Top is dismantling all of the network of special needs education in all of our public K-12 and rebuilding the structures of warehousing -----sending special needs to underserved schools with the lowest per pupil funding and this inclusion policy sends these most vulnerable students into already overcrowded classrooms in schools already facing the discipline problems that come from poverty. Teachers are overwhelmed and untrained to handle this and these children are becoming lost or families are forced to remove their children with no good school replacement. What these privatizers do is create private corporate non-profit structures for special needs that places them in tracking for jobs that exploit. In Baltimore, the only strong public schools with the same special needs classroom funding and structure are in Roland Park and Mt Washington----affluent schools that get private donations. So, again-----if you are affluent you will have what all children had under Equal Protection and 90% and more of special needs will be tracked into these corporate non-profits. No more will the goal be to prepare these students for integration into the mainstream workplace----no more will corporations be required to accommodate special needs employees per the Disability Act----
WE DON'T RECOGNIZE EQUAL PROTECTION AND BROAD-BASED EQUAL ACCESS AND OPPORTUNITY EDUCATION say Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons.
Keep in mind that any child creating a need to alter any classroom instruction have been categorized as special needs. Behavior, mental health, physical needs, and general low-achievers. So, the numbers are high!
Texas was one of the first to implement this end of Disabilities Act and today they are proud not to have many at all special needs children in their public schools. That is because those families were pushed out of the state. Maryland has modeled its economic and public policy on Texas! The education reform in Baltimore is the platform for this Texas-style end of all that is Equal Protection and public.
Below you see the beginning of the dismantlement---the discharge of the mental health institutions and sending most of these people to become homeless. Now, those institutions were not necessarily progressive, but the social structures built to handle this was purely profit-oriented......in comes BIG PHARMA and the mental health clinic as drug dispenser. Now, the mentally ill were on the street being dosed with drugs and left to have very shorten lives with little path for improving their lives. Federal money goes from providing these people a safe place to live and food to eat to sending it all to a network of homeless shelters and PHARMA dosing clinics.
Remember, the conditions in these mental health facilities had declined tremendously with defunding and as with public schools and education today---crumbling schools with no resources or funding----parents and care-takers wanted change----they did not want the change they got from privatizers like Reagan neo-liberals pretending to be progressive.
Ronald Reagan and the Commitment of the Mentally Ill:
Capital, Interest Groups, and the Eclipse of Social Policy
Alexandar R Thomas
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
alex@telenet.net
Conventional wisdom suggests that the reduction of funding for social welfare policies during the 1980s is the result of a conservative backlash against the welfare state. With such a backlash, it should be expected that changes in the policies toward involuntary commitment of the mentally ill reflect a generally conservative approach to social policy more generally. In this case, however, the complex of social forces that lead to less restrictive guidelines for involuntary commitment are not the result of conservative politics per se, but rather a coalition of fiscal conservatives, law and order Republicans, relatives of mentally ill patients, and the practitioners working with those patients. Combined with a sharp rise in homelessness during the 1980s, Ronald Reagan pursued a policy toward the treatment of mental illness that satisfied special interest groups and the demands of the business community, but failed to address the issue: the treatment of mental illness
Almost ten years after Ronald Reagan left office as president, the legacy of his administration continues to be studied. What is almost indisputable is that the changes in public policy that were implemented during the 1980s were sweeping and marked a turning point in American domestic policy. Faced with increasing competition from overseas, American business found it necessary to alter the social contract. This would require a realignment of the political economy so as to weaken labor unions and the social safety net. In Reagan, the Right found a spokesman capable of aligning conservatives, centrists, and working class whites. With this coalition, Reagan was able to bring about a number of reactionary changes in public policy (Alford, 1988).
This paper provides an illustration of this co-optation by examining the policies regarding involuntary commitment of the mentally ill. The shifts in such policies were not the result of overt attempts at change, but rather part of an overall effort to realign the political economy to be more profitable for business. The overall result was that political discourse shifted from a focus on social policy to a focus on fiscal policy. As such, social programs that necessitated financial outlays on the part of the federal government were overlooked in favour of policies that seemed less costly.
Still, the administration did not, and perhaps could not, act in isolation and without public support. But they didn't have to. By the middle of the 1970s, there was a consensus among interested groups that reform of the Mental Health Care System was necessary. Lobbying on the part of special interest groups and a commitment on the part of President Jimmy Carter led to passage of the Mental Health Systems Act.
With the planned transfer of responsibility for the mentally ill to the states, reformers needed to build coalitions of fiscal conservatives concerned with the cost of social programs; "law and order" Republicans concerned with crime; and those who dea lt with the mentally ill who, in the absence of more comprehensive reform, sought more limited alternatives (Becker, 1993). Within this context, statutes and procedures dealing with involuntary commitment of the mentally ill were attractive. Easing standards cost relatively little, allowed the Administration to claim action simultaneously on mental health care policy, crime, and homelessness, and appeased health care providers and families of the mentally ill.
THEN CAME CLINTON NEO-LIBERALISM TO CONTINUE THE REAGAN REPUBLICAN DISMANTLEMENT OF PUBLIC POLICY-----NOT THAT IT DIDN'T WORK---THEY SIMPLY WANTED TAXPAYER MONEY GOING TO CORPORATE SUBSIDY AND NOT PUBLIC SUBSIDY!
Below you see a great example of how neo-liberalism works-----this article written in 2006 during the Bush years makes the public programs look like they create the impoverishment of those supposed to be helped by New Deal and War on Poverty Programs but you won't read one word about the move with Reagan/Clinton neo-liberalism to dismantle all of the strong protective structures for educating, training, and placing the disabled in quality work positions and living conditions earning a supportive salary. So, before the 1990s------the ADA worked wonders mainstreaming the disabled with all kinds of Federal support. That is when the US had full employment. Note this article starts in the 1990s to talk about how the disabled were becoming trapped in poverty programs like Social Security Disability and not finding jobs and that is what they say is bad policy. See how the dismantling of the ADA parallels the rise in people being pushed and left in the SS Disability program that is now imploding. Many of these people were fully employed when the ADA was healthy and funded. Now, neo-liberals and neo-cons call the public services and programs failures because Clinton neo-liberalism moved all US corporations and jobs overseas and left high unemployment. THAT IS THE PROBLEM----NOT THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITY ACT. So, all of the funding that did go to improving the education and job placement of the disabled is now being sent to corporate private non-profits where they are tracked into poverty jobs at early ages.
21st realities-----third world employment structure has the poor doing what used to be well-paid public sector jobs in exchange for food and shelter.
In Baltimore ARC is the private non-profit corporation that has the disabled doing public sector jobs for food and shelter. Note all of the issues they claimed to be addressing were the issues the ADA addressed when it was funded. Now, it was about sending the disabled to boost corporate profits.
Please just glance through this technical writing to see the transition away from being all you can be to being useful on the cheap. It's a 21st century fact of life with the NEW ECONOMY says Clinton neo-liberals!
Dismantling the Poverty Trap
Originally published as Stapleton, D., O'Day, B., Livermore, G., & Imparato, A. (2006).
Dismantling the poverty trap: Disability policy for the twenty-first century. The Milbank Quarterly, 84(4), 701-732. © 2006, Milbank Memorial Fund. Published by Blackwell Publishing Dismantling the Poverty Trap: Disability Policy for the Twenty-First Century David C. Stapleton Bonnie L. O'Day Gina A. Livermore Cornell University Andrew J. Imparato
American Association of People with Disabilities Address correspondence to: Bonnie L. O'Day, Cornell University Institute for Policy Research, 1341 22nd Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037 (email: bo29@cornell.edu).
Working-age people with disabilities are much more likely than people without disabilities to live in poverty and not be employed or have shared in the economic prosperity of the late 1990s. Today's disability policies, which remain rooted in paternalism, create a "poverty trap" that recent reforms have not resolved. This discouraging situation will continue unless broad, systemic reforms promoting economic self-sufficiency are implemented, in line with more modern thinking about disability. Indeed, the implementation of such reforms may be the only way to protect people with disabilities from the probable loss of benefits if the federal government cuts funding for entitlement programs. This article suggests some principles to guide reforms and encourage debate and asks whether such comprehensive reforms can be successfully designed and implemented.
Working-age Americans with disabilities are much more likely to live in poverty than other Americans are, and most did not share in the economic prosperity of the late 1990s. At the same time, public expenditures to support working-age Americans with disabilities are growing at a rate that will be difficult to sustain when the baby boom generation retires and begins to draw Social Security Retirement and Medicare benefits. We suggest that better policies would both improve the lives of many people with disabilities and stimulate the labor supply of working-age people with disabilities at a time when labor is becoming an increasingly scarce resource. Accordingly, the current policies that trap people with disabilities in poverty and encourage them to retire early even when they still may have some work capacity should be replaced with policies that reflect twenty-first-century realities. More specifically, we argue that some current policies are outdated and paternalistic and should be replaced by policies promoting economic self-sufficiency and bringing the relevant programs in line with more modern thinking about disability. Indeed, today's paternalistic policies trap many people with disabilities in poverty by devaluing their often considerable ability to contribute to their own support through work. Although recent reforms are an improvement, they do not adequately promote true economic self-sufficiency. Rather, they should take advantage of the productive capacities of people with disabilities while at the same time providing sufficient support to ensure that those who are working will achieve a higher standard of living than they can under the current policies. Such policies would •
Take advantage of the advances in medicine, technology, training, and workplace modifications that enable many people with significant physical or mental impairments to work.
• Be consistent with changes in the social expectations for people with disabilities and for the workplace improvements embodied in the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
• Increase public support for disability programs and reduce the vulnerability of people with disabilities to future program cuts.
• Motivate and empower people with disabilities to participate more fully in the economic mainstream.
• Address unrealistically low societal expectations about the work capacity of people with disabilities. The transition to economic self-sufficiency policy has already begun, with several important pieces of legislation and other initiatives that reflect a more modern approach to disability policy. We argue, however, that these changes alone are inadequate to achieve the ambitious objectives of advocates and policymakers. More radical change is needed, and many difficult challenges remain to be addressed. Leaders in business and government must recognize that this is an urgent issue for the country's entire economy, not just an issue of providing more appropriate support for people with disabilities.
Table 1. Employment and Poverty Rates by Disability Status,
2003 Disability Employment Rate/Poverty Rate
Sensory Disability 47.8% 20.5%
Physical Disability 32.2% 24.4%
Mental Disability 28.2% 30.1%
Self-Care Disability 17.6% 28.3%
Go-Outside-Home Disability 17.4% 29.1%
Employment Disability 18.1% 28.9%
Any Disability 37.9% 23.3%
No Disability 77.6% 8.9%
Source: R. Weathers, A User Guide to Disability Statistics from the American Community Survey (Ithaca, N.Y.: Rehabilitation Research and Training Center for Disability and Demographic Statistics, Cornell University, 2004).
Employment and Poverty of People with Disabilities:
A Discouraging Picture
The employment rate of working-age people with disabilities is well below that of their nondisabled cohort, regardless of what national survey is used or how disability is measured. The American Community Survey (ACS) is a survey by the U.S. Census Bureau designed to replace the decennial census long form. Starting in 2000, the ACS has contained six measures of disability: sensory, physical, mental, self care, ability to go outside the home, and employment. Based on these measures, 38 percent of working-age people with at least one of the ACS disabilities were employed in 2003, compared with 78 percent of people reporting none of the ACS disabilities (last row, second coumn of Table 1). The low employment rates of people with disabilities are reflected in their poverty rates, which for people with at least one disability are more than twice as high as for those with no disabilities (second to last row, last column of Table 1). Many others live in families with incomes just above the official federal poverty standard, which does not allow for the extraordinary disability-related expenses incurred by many people with disabilities. These poverty rates are high, even though almost 9 million working-age adults with disabilities receive income support from the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs. Although the SSI and SSDI programs have provided cash assistance to millions of Americans since their inception, these benefits often are not enough to lift incomes above the poverty standard. Indeed, the maximum federal SSI benefit now is only about 75 percent of the federal poverty standard for an individual. In addition, many people with disabilities do not receive support from these programs. In 2002, 41.6 percent of working-age adults with any ACS disability who lived in a household with an income below the poverty line received income support from SSDI and/or SSI. Another 6.8 percent lived in a household whose income was from the federal/state Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program (Weathers 2004). In many areas, the basic SSI monthly benefit is not sufficient to pay for housing; for example, in 2002, the average national rent for a modest one-
Although the country's recent economic growth has somewhat reduced the poverty rate of people without disabilities, it has not helped people with disabilities (Burkhauser, Daly, and Houtenville 2001; Burkhauser, Houtenville, and Wittenburg 2003; Burkhauser, Houtenville, and Rovba 2004; Burkhauser and Stapleton 2003, 2004a). For example, the poverty rates that Burkhauser, Houtenville, and Rovba (2004) report for working-age adults with "long-term" work limitations (i.e., work limitations reported in each of two surveys, twelve months apart) are comparable in magnitude to the ACS poverty rate estimates. When comparing the two surveys conducted during the business cycle peak in 1989 with the two surveys conducted during the business cycle peak of 2001, they found that the poverty rate had risen from 26.9 percent in 1989 to 27.6 percent in 2000, compared with a decline from 7.1 percent to 6.5 percent for those without work limitations. Unprecedented Growth of Dependence on Public Programs The decline in the economic status of people with disabilities despite higher public expenditures has outpaced economic growth. In FY2002, the federal government spent $87.3 billion on SSI and SSDI benefits and another $82.1 billion on Medicare and Medicaid programs for working-age people with disabilities. Adding federal expenditures for housing, food assistance, rehabilitation, income assistance for families, assistance for veterans, and other programs for people with disabilities brings the total federal spending to approximately $226 billion: 11.3 percent of total federal outlays in FY2002 and 2.2 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). From FY1986 to FY2002, federal disability expenditures grew 85 percent more than total federal outlays and 57 percent more than the growth rate of the GDP. In FY2002 the state governments contributed an additional $44.6 billion under Medicaid and $2.9 billion for state supplements to SSI (Goodman and Stapleton 2005). In sum, expenditures are growing faster than federal outlays and GDP because of the rapid growth in the number of people with disabilities receiving income and health care support, along with the rising cost of health care. Although one reason for the growing number receiving benefits is the aging of the baby boom generation, another important reason is the higher participation rate for almost every age group. The single most important component in the growth of federal disability expenditures is the greater number of people on the SSDI rolls, all of whom also are enrolled in Medicare after a twenty-four-month waiting period. One recent study estimates that the fraction of the working-age population on the SSDI rolls rose by 76 percent from 1984 to 2003 (Duggan and Imberman 2006). Although the authors trace some of this to the aging of the baby boom generation and the long-term growth of female labor force participation, they attribute the bulk of the growth (82 percent for men and 72 percent for women) to program policies and how they interact with the economy. They note a 48 percent rise in the number of nonelderly adult DI recipients from December 1995 to December 2004 versus a 15 percent increase in the number of nonelderly adult SSI recipients.
I attended a public school special needs meeting at the ARC where parents of special needs brought their stories of the chaos and dysfunction being brought by the inclusion education policy that kills special needs programs in all public schools and creates the warehousing effect I described above. These parents and some teachers were clear that this education reform was not working in Baltimore----AS NONE OF IT IS. The program had all of the Obama education reform people there promoting the idea of this education reform to this group with ARC supplying the place for them to sell these reforms.
No doubt ARC had a progressive beginning as did all of our labor and justice organizations did---but as others it has been modified into this Clinton neo-liberal picture of operations around finding the cheapest mode that boosts corporate profits. If any group would be fighting this education reform and the dismantling of all public disability structures for the disabled----it would be ARC. I DON'T HEAR A WORD FROM ARC.
I am picking on ARC but there are now lots of corporate private non-profits all geared to sending people to work for less under the umbrella of disability.
A Leader in Disability Rights
We are the largest national community-based organization advocating for and serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families. We encompass all ages and all spectrums from autism, Down syndrome, Fragile X and various other developmental disabilities.
Strong National Presence With more than 140,000 members and nearly 700 state and local chapters nationwide, we are on the front lines to ensure that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families have the support they need to be members of the community.
Deeply Rooted History
The Arc was born more than 60 years ago from a grassroots movement of families working vigilantly to create services for children and adults who were being denied day care, educational opportunities and work programs.
Founded in 1950, The Arc was comprised of a small group of concerned and passionate parents and community members who would be catalyst for changing the public perception of children with disabilities. For the past 60+ years, The Arc has continued to grow and evolve along with the changing needs and issues people with disabilities and their families face.
Governed by a volunteer board of directors and managed by key staff of The Arc, we work passionately to uphold our vision that every individual and family living with an intellectual or developmental disability in the United States has access to the information, advocacy and skills they need to participate as active citizens of our democracy and active members of their community.
Everyone knows the people who are really disabled really have no problems getting SSDI---the program was designed for just that. When you are teamed with a lawfirm that makes sure you can get those benefits then it seems to be working less for the disabled and more for the expanding base of people left long-term unemployed.
If you look at an organization like AARP---it started as a seniors advocate and now is basically a corporation promoting senior service corporations.
A progressive is not trying to keep the long-term unemployed from having an employment outlet----it is fighting the dismantling of the public sector with good paying jobs and benefits and replacing these workers with ARC.....which keeps these people impoverished. It is also why the SSDI is being drained of funding for people really disabled. So, in Baltimore I see ARC cleanup services all along public grounds. That is a public sector job paid by taxpayers now being paid by SSDI.
THAT IS NOT WHAT ARC STARTED AS A MISSION.
Champion Disability Advocates
Champion Disability Advocates, a solution from Human Arc, is a leader in Social Security disability claims services. Our mission is to help people access monthly cash disability benefits and qualify for Medicare and Medicaid insurance in the shortest possible time. We do this by helping people who cannot work because of medical conditions apply for these benefits. We also help people who have been denied benefits by guiding them through the appeals process, even representing them in court if needed. Our knowledgeable team includes former Disability Determination Service examiners, former Social Security Claims Representatives, and attorneys who specialize in Social Security Disability. We help more than 1,000 people each year get monthly Social Security cash benefits. We can help you, too! Contact us today at 1.877.444.1327.
When I see an ARC person I always talk with them. Most of these people are not disabled----they are not mentally challenged.....they are simply the working poor needing a job. ARC is huge in Baltimore because of this and it keeps these people from what the ADA meant for these programs---to fight for structures that educate and hire into good paying jobs.
Meanwhile, people with serious disabilities are seeing their pathways closing as SSDI implodes.
Arc Industries provides paid work opportunities for individuals with developmental disabilities with a focus on encouraging a strong work ethic, developing good work habits and skills, and rewarding efficiency. Workers are trained in performing service contracts and assembling and packaging products efficiently.
Arc Industries offers local companies secure document destruction, product processing, packaging, and warehousing in a 65,000 square foot production facility equipped with 10 trailer-height dock doors. Arc Industries boasts a large experienced workforce ready to turn out a quality product in a timely fashion.
Sub-contract capabilities and services available through Arc Industries include:
The Arc Baltimore is the nation's largest - and most successful - community-based employment program for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Our workers are skilled, reliable and motivated. They don't just need a job; they want a job! The Arc has contract arrangements with companies who need supervised work crews.
The ADA was the last progressive program to come from Congress as the power in Congress grew more neo-liberal. So, this program was indeed designed to augment the LBJ Great Society and opened the door to people with disabilities with funding that sent them into the mainstream workforce. It sent them to college and made corporations meet hiring stats ----and made sure they could access all the places they needed to be independent and self-supporting.
Twenty years later after the dismantling of the structures that do most of the above-----we see less movement of the disabled into mainstream workforce and more of them doing the poverty level tasks that provide them food and shelter......often subsidized too.
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
An act to establish a clear and comprehensive prohibition of discrimination on the basis of disability
Introduced in the Senate as S.933 by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) on May 9, 1988
Passed the Senate on September 7, 1989 (76-8)
Passed the House of Representatives on May 22, 1990 (unanimous voice vote)
Reported by the joint conference committee on July 12, 1990; agreed to by the House of Representatives on July 12, 1990 (377–28) and by the Senate on July 13, 1990 (91-6)
Signed into law by President George H. W. Bush on July 26, 1990
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
(ADA) is a law that was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1990. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) authored the bill and was its chief sponsor in the Senate. Harkin delivered part of his introduction speech in sign language, saying it was so his deaf brother could understand. It was signed into law on July 26, 1990, by President George H. W. Bush, and later amended with changes effective January 1, 2009.[3]
The ADA is a wide-ranging civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[4] which made discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics illegal. In addition, unlike the Civil Rights Act, the ADA also requires covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities, and imposes accessibility requirements on public accommodations.[5]
ADA disabilities include both mental and physical medical conditions. A condition does not need to be severe or permanent to be a disability.[6] Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations provide a list of conditions that should easily be concluded to be disabilities: deafness, blindness, an intellectual disability (formerly termed mental retardation), partially or completely missing limbs or mobility impairments requiring the use of a wheelchair, autism, cancer, cerebral palsy, diabetes, epilepsy, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and schizophrenia. Other mental or physical health conditions also may be disabilities, depending on what the individual's symptoms would be in the absence of "mitigating measures" (medication, therapy, assistive devices, or other means of restoring function), during an "active episode" of the condition (if the condition is episodic). Certain specific conditions, such as kleptomania, pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, etc. are excluded under the definition of "disability" in order to prevent abuse of the statute's purpose, however other specific conditions, such as gender identity disorders for instance, are also excluded under the definition of "disability".
Obama has spent his entire terms aligned with the Republicans and this budget shows the restructuring of funding for the disabled. Race to the Top included a massive restructuring of K-12 moving away from special needs in all public schools to the idea of inclusion which manifests in lower funding and combining of special needs with low income. It also came with a huge influx of education businesses designed to teach everyone how to do this. So, special needs inclusion funds supposedly educated teachers never handling special needs to handle them and as I said above-----most teachers say they are not getting the training or are too overwhelmed to put it into action. Then, there was the assessments and evaluations needed to be bought and installed----THIS WAS WHAT THE INCREASED FUNDING FOR SPECIAL NEEDS WAS ABOUT AND IT IS NOT PROGRESSIVE.
As you see Obama attacks the equal opportunity and access at HUD with housing for disabled just as public housing for the poor is being dismantled. Group homes that once worked well to keep the disabled independent are now being defunded -----staffing less trained-----and the entire process is threatened----independent working and living.
Obama Budget Brings Mixed Bag For People With Disabilities
By Michelle Diament February 14, 2011
Special education appears to be a bright spot for Americans with disabilities in the president's $3.73 trillion budget proposal released Monday.
In a plan featuring flat or reduced spending for many programs, special education got a boost. President Barack Obama included $200 million in extra funds for state grants for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, and added $50 million to help young children with disabilities.
The increase is "modest" for an $11.5 billion program, says Deb Ziegler of the Council for Exceptional Children, which lobbies on behalf of special educators. But, she adds, "in this budget climate, we're appreciative of anything we get."
Other programs for Americans with disabilities are likely to fare worse. Under Obama's proposal, funding to ensure voter access for people with disabilities will be eliminated. And there will be $104 million less in federal money available to build new housing for those with disabilities.
What's more, a program that administers federal grants to promote the inclusion of people with developmental disabilities in the community is slated to be cut nearly in half.
"There's a lot of stuff that's very concerning," says Ari Ne'eman, president of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. "Everybody recognizes that these are difficult fiscal times but we need to make sure that we aren't sacrificing the long-term rights and opportunities for people with disabilities."
Entitlement programs like Social Security were left largely untouched. But Obama is proposing a $40 million pilot project designed to wean children from the Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, program by providing grants to help improve children's outcomes.
Meanwhile, the budget maintains funding for ongoing research into autism spectrum disorders.
The proposal presented Monday represents the president's funding request for fiscal year 2012, which begins in October. At present, Congress is still considering spending for the current fiscal year, a more pressing concern for many disability advocates.
Late last week, congressional Republicans proposed slashing special education by $557.7 million for 2011 alongside other cuts.
"I think the threat is very real," says the Council for Exceptional Children's Ziegler. "The quality of services for students is in jeopardy."
I will start Monday on the next safety net policy being dismantled by Clinton neo-liberals these several years under Obama and a neo-liberal Congress----the Americans with Disability Act. This is part of the Equal Protection law from LBJ but it is a safety net for people with disabilities and it is being dismantled under the guise of Race to the Top, Federal HUD reform taking funding for the poor to fund corporate and affluent development, and through corporate private non-profits created to pretend to aid the disabled while installing a structure of warehousing minus the equal protection. Again, the people installing these policies that end equal protection and backing the Clinton neo-liberals doing it are
NATIONAL LABOR UNION AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS. DO LABOR UNION MEMBERS BENEFIT FROM AMERICAN WITH DISABILITIES ACT WHEN A FAMILY MEMBER BECOMES DISABLED? OF COURSE. THE NAACP AND ACLU ARE THE ORGANIZATIONS THAT FOUGHT FOR THIS IN THE 1960S AND THEY ARE NOW DISMANTLING IT.
Below you see some of the global organizations that are working for the 1% in promoting the restructuring of national governance and social structures around the WE HAVE ALL THE MONEY AND NOW YOU WILL HAVE NO RIGHTS motto. These are the organizations working for Clinton neo-liberalism and Bush neo-conservatism. You will see the same language used as you hear from Baltimore City Hall, Maryland Assembly, and your Congressional pols and this group is located all around the world using the same language and selling it as progressive-----remember Kissinger's statement ----CONTROL THE OIL (ENERGY) YOU CONTROL THE NATION AND CONTROL THE FOOD AND YOU CONTROL THE PEOPLE. That is what sustainable development is about as sustainable equates to how to allow corporations to profit with tax revenue as people become too poor to consume----it is what energy efficiency is about as consolidation and Wall Street speculation and Smart meters allow prices to soar----natural resource management as BIG AG and BIG ESTATE consolidate land to the few-----and automation refers to how to make labor as inexpensive as possible. It has nothing to do with saving the world's natural resources as they are stripping every drop of raw resources any way they can--- and environment as we see them ramping up destruction right here in the US. If you are going to sideline the people to Chinese sweat shop labor having no money to consume ----all of the engine for corporate profit comes from sending Federal, State, and local taxes to corporate subsidy and that is what Obama, Congressional neo-liberals, O'Malley and Maryland Assembly, and Rawlings-Blake and the Baltimore City Hall are doing. Remember, handing all wealth to corporations and the rich is a Republican policy so voting Republican is not the answer-----rebuild the people's Democratic Party for the 80% of the labor and justice base-----start by getting rid of captured leadership working for corporations!
WE CAN ELECT POLITICIANS THAT REVERSE THIS IF WE BECOME ENGAGED IN POLITICS AND RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES.
Notice these groups/slogans-----they are falling around the world courtesy of the 1%-----Zeitgeist and Moving Forward. The Venue Project is heavily hitting South America with this neo-liberalism. Chile, Brazil, and Peru are the most taken.
The Venus Project corporation was incorporated by Jacque Fresco in 1995 to advocate a theoretical economic system, what it calls a resource-based economy. This idea has versions of sustainable development, energy efficiency, natural resource management, and advanced automation in a global construct.
The design studio at the research center in Venus, Florida As of 2011 Fresco lectured and gave tours of the Venus Project location.
The 2011 documentary-style films Zeitgeist: Addendum[2] and Zeitgeist: Moving Forward focus on ideas from the Venus Project though the two groups split from each other as far as supporting one another after the movies mentioned were made.
For those knowing Nancy Pelosi's Democratic National Campaign leadership----Wasserman-Schultz and Israel----both great big Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals-----Wasserman-Schultz comes from a Florida family with a huge foundation of wealth funding this kind of world social transition. YET SHE IS A DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL LEADER.
NONE OF THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM----YOU ARE ALLOWING LESS THAN 20% OF PEOPLE CAPTURE A PARTY OF 80% LABOR AND JUSTICE BECAUSE WE HAVE NO LEADERS.
This weekend I want to return to reforming elections and rebuilding our public sector structures that are key to public discussion of public policy and encouraging public debate and participation. I'm not trying to embarrass people but I am making sure people know how government by the people works.
For those not knowing Martin O'Malley because he has developed a system of private corporate non-profits designed to give headlines that he is a good man doing progressive things-----O'Malley is the worst of neo-conservative/neo-liberal repressive policy and he has been since his time in Baltimore City Hall. Now, I rant about the systemic corporate fraud and government corruption that steals all public money---but the military and unconstitutional policing has been in Baltimore for decades but is getting worse as people have lost all civil rights and are losing their lives for not reason.
Below you see how the most repressive pols are being called 'progressive' as the Democratic Party is captured by the worst of Bush neo-conservative/neo-liberal policy. It is confusing because in Baltimore, neo-conservative Johns Hopkins makes these repressive policing policies and pols running as Democrats install them.....so Baltimore pols are serving as neo-conservatives and running as Democrats.
Return to stalag O'Malley?
Gregory Kane | 9/27/2013, 6 a.m.
Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley couldn't resist putting in his two cents worth about Baltimore's recent crime surge. And our former mayor knows exactly what to do about it.
A "new strategy" to fighting crime in Baltimore is needed, the governor says. That's what he said; here's what he means.
By "new strategy," O'Malley means Baltimore should return to the bad old days of his zero tolerance policy, when city cops ran buck wild over the populace.
Things got so bad I took to calling the city "Stalag O'Malley," the better to describe how our then-mayor had reduced Baltimore to little more than a police state.
Remember the thrust of O'Malley's zero tolerance policy: cops would arrest people for even the pettiest of crimes. Some of those arrested ended up spending an entire weekend at the Central Booking and Intake Center. (At one point inmates spent 48 to 72 hours in Central Booking.)
Let's recall the lowlights of that time, shall we?
The jive humble arrest of Evan Howard: Howard graduated from the esteemed Baltimore Polytechnic Institute in 2004. In April of 2005, he was a freshman, engineering student at Morgan State University. Courtesy of O'Malley's zero tolerance policy, by the end of April Howard had a criminal record.
Howard came out of a store one day and greeted a friend. A couple of Baltimore cops arrested them. The charge? Loitering!
I kid you not. A young man— a college student with a promising career ahead of him who had no criminal record— spent a weekend (56 hours) in Central Booking on a loitering charge.
The arrest of the meter maid: Remember when two Baltimore cops busted a meter maid for writing a ticket after one of them refused to move a police vehicle? This had to be the low point in police-community relations in Baltimore.
The arrest of Douglas L Johnson: This Vietnam veteran was arrested for sitting on the steps of a vacant building. James Jordan spent 17 hours in Central Booking. His offense? Littering. He dropped a cup on the ground.
Things got so bad in the city that cops themselves rebelled. They went to their union, the Fraternal Order of Police, in an attempt to get O'Malley to cease and desist with his zero tolerance policy.
The officers told the FOP president that they were being pressured into getting the "stop and frisk" numbers up.
Those "stop and frisks" are also called Terry stops. They're legal— when done properly— but they have to be documented. A District Court judge found that, in many cases, the Terry stops weren't properly documented. That means those stops violated the law.
O'Malley justified his zero tolerance policy because it led to a reduction in the number of Baltimore homicides. But what lesson was learned?
That if we turn a city into a police state, then we can reduce crime? Well, yeah.
However, you would expect crime to be reduced— and reduced drastically— in a police state. The trick in a constitutional republic is to reduce crime WITHOUT turning society into a police state.
The upside of O'Malley's zero tolerance policy was, indeed, a reduction in the number of homicides. The downside was that O'Malley's policy left many Baltimoreans with a distrust of police that continues to this day.
During the days of Stalag O'Malley, two Circuit Court judges threw out gun cases because they said they couldn't trust the word of police. A third Circuit Court judge urged that a grand jury investigate why so many Baltimoreans don't trust the police.
Return to the days of Stalag O'Malley, governor? Let's not and just say we did.
I attended a Baltimore City Hall meeting last week on this very issue currently happening. The above article makes you think Governor O'Malley wants to bring back zero tolerance but it has already been installed---if it ever left when Police Commissioner Batts was installed by Baltimore City Hall a few years ago and then they voted to extend his term for 6 years----never done before. Why did they do that-----because Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins is gearing up for a zero tolerance military policing that will include privatized police force and an IRAQI war zone view of people as insurgents if they do not tow the autocratic governance being installed. This is directed at people in underserved communities the most but as an article below shows it is expanding to all civil protest and disobedience. Johns Hopkins through its puppet Baltimore City Hall pols are building the structure for an autocratic militarized policing. Zero tolerance is alive and well and has been in place ----if it ever left for several years. Mayor Rawlings-Blake says WE USE COMMUNITY POLICING---- Baltimore City Hall says-----WE VOTED AGAINST ZERO TOLERANCE------and yet there is widespread unconstitutional and zero tolerance policing happening as these public officials LIE TO US. If you think it is OK for one person to lose their civil rights then you do not understand that global corporate pols do not think anyone has civil rights.
SEE HOW A FIRST WORLD NATION BECOMES THIRD WORLD WITH GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS?
The article below is long but please glance through it---it shows how these policies when they were openly supported worked. What this article does not tell you is that these same policies are still in place only now they pretend they are not.
Unconstitutional Policing and the Toxic Relationship Between Cops and Baltimore Communities
Retired 60-year veteran law enforcement officer Stephen Tabeling and award-winning investigative journalist Stephen Janis discuss the harm caused by unconstitutional policing practices and how "Zero Tolerance" in the 2000s lead to the wrongful arrests of tens of thousands of people under the Martin O'Malley administration (2/4) -
January 7, 2015 Real News
BioStephen Tabeling is the co-author of You Can't Stop Murder: Truths About Policing in Baltimore and Beyond. He a retired Baltimore City Homicide Lt, also served of police of Salisbury, Maryland. From 2000-2009 called out of retirement to teach at the police academy in Baltimore
Stephen Janis is an award winning investigative journalist whose work has won acclaim in both print and television. As the Senior Investigative Reporter for the now defunct Baltimore Examiner he won two Maryland DC Delaware Press Association Awards for his work on the number of unsolved murders in Baltimore and the killings of prostitutes. His in-depth work on the city's zero tolerance policing policy garnered an NAACP's president's award. Later he founded Investigative Voice, an award winning web site that is the subject of the upcoming documentary Fit To Print. As an Investigative Producer for WBFF/Fox 45 he has one three successive Capital Emmys, two for best Investigative Series and one for Outstanding Historical/Cultural piece. He is the author two books on the philosophy of policing Why Do We Kill?: The Pathology of Murder in Baltimore, You Can't Stop Murder: Truths About Policing in Baltimore and Beyond, and two novels This Dream Called Death, and Orange: The Diary of an Urban Surrealist. His teaches journalism at Towson University
JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: As we continue our discussion on the roots of the toxic relationship between law enforcement and low-income and African-American communities here in Baltimore, we're joined by two guests. Stephen Tabeling is the co-author of You Can't Stop Murder: Truths about Policing in Baltimore and Beyond. He's a retired Baltimore City homicide lieutenant, also served as chief of police of Salisbury, Maryland. From 2000 to 2009, he was called out of retirement to teach at the police academy in Baltimore. We're joined by his co-author, Stephen Janis. He's an award-winning investigative journalist currently working as an investigative producer for FOX45. So, Stephen Janis, you did some of the first reporting on this policy in the 2000 under the then-mayor Martin O'Malley administration called zero tolerance, where you have the "Jump Out Boys" sweeping up entire neighborhoods of mostly black, low-income residents and throwing them into trucks and hauling them down to central booking. What was the impact of that? And the impact of that is still being felt today.
STEPHEN JANIS, INVESTIGATIVE PRODUCER, FOX45: I think, as we discussed before--this is at the root of some of the mistrust between the community, especially the African-American community, and the police department. I mean, you had a city of roughly the population of 600,000 processing 100,000 arrests per year. So that meant that almost--and, of course, [this is (?)] all based on the idea of the broken windows theory, which is that, you know, you have a window--which is an interesting metaphor in and of itself, right, because you're talking about a building--you have a building with broken windows. You arrest people for the minor crimes, quality-of-life crimes, sitting on a stoop, walking down the sidewalk, and somehow it will improve the homicide rate. That was basically the premise, and that's why then-mayor O'Malley felt this was a good policy, because he was very much fixated on the homicide rate. But the result of that was that you had people, thousands of people being arrested. You talked about the "Jump Out Boys". People [in their neighborhoods (?)] would tell me they'd be sitting on their stoops, the vans would come out, officers would jump out of the back and literally just guide them into the van. They hadn't committed a crime, and/or they'd be sitting on their stoop, drinking a beer, which is perfectly legal down at Ravens' stadium, but not legal if you live in East Baltimore. So it was highly toxic racialized policing. I don't think anybody--and, in fact, in the settlement with the ACLU, the Police Department admitted that they had targeted poor minority neighborhoods. So this, this constant, one would say, abuse of the law created tremendous tension in the community and, I think, in a sense made the relationship between the Police Department and the community almost, I guess, in a sense, completely dysfunctional, because there was just the feeling that you couldn't walk around a neighborhood. And I don't think people realize the extent of it, because it was really focused--it wasn't happening in Roland Park and it wasn't happening in Federal Hill. It was happening in neighborhoods that had already--you know, were isolated socially and politically. And not only that, but it proved to be extremely ineffective and extremely costly. So I think it really set the stage for, later on, a continued, like, mistrust of the justice process, because the justice process was completely controverted by a policy that pretty much criminalized people for doing nothing.
NOOR: And, you note in the book, during this period the murder rate actually increased, and only after the policy was removed did the murder rate decrease.
JANIS: Absolutely. In 2007, then-mayor Sheila Dixon publicly reversed her policy, said that she would go to a targeted enforcement policy. And after that, the homicide rate continued to drop. And I can say some current news right now. The homicide rate is expected to be around 202, 203--[not that you want to (?)] fixate on a number, but this year they've only arrested--I'm saying only--31,000 people. Now, in 2005, when they arrested 105,000 people, the [homicide rate was in the (?)] 230s, I think, 240s. I mean, it's inexplicable. I mean, you can explain it, right? I mean, it doesn't add up. So, to me it wasn't something that got a lot of publicity, but it showed, I think, the limits to the use of force and the use of law enforcement and the use of that in communities. It basically doesn't return any dividends in terms of safety. And I think that's the big issue, and, of course, you know, how it sort of [fomented (?)] tremendous distrust.
NOOR: And, Stephen Tabeling, one of the reasons you wrote your book is because you feel that law enforcement has lost sight of the law. Officers don't understand the law. And by not applying it correctly, they are--it's leading to these policies where illegal actions are happening, and that's sewing this distrust with the community, and it's giving--obviously, it's giving officers a bad name and a bad reputation. And that's one of the reasons why this relationship is so poor right now
.­LT. STEPHEN TABELING, FMR. CHIEF OF POLICE, SALISBURY, MD: Yes. That's correct. And I don't think policemen--not only in Baltimore City, but, I think, around the United States, are not properly legally trained. I'll give you an example of what Steve was talking about of the "Jump Boys". In 1968, in a case called Terry v. Ohio from the United States Supreme Court, in a decision 8 to 1 in favor of police officers, what the justices said in that case was, if police officers have a reason to believe that someone is presently armed and dangerous, they can pat that person down based on articulable reasonable suspicion. And if they find a weapon, that person can be arrested. And that later went on to investigative detention. If you had that articulable suspicion that a person committed a crime, they could be detained. And the Supreme Court said, to have somebody detained and do an investigation on the street and maybe release them as a result of that is better than taking somebody in for the full booking. What's happened to the police departments: they're not properly trained. They do not understand how you come up with this articulable reasonable suspicion. And there's many ways that you can do it. The police are not properly trained in that. And if you're not properly trained in the law, you're going to make mistakes. From my experience in the training academy and seeing people go out on the street and come back, people are interested in numbers--get numbers. That's what it's all about. That's like if you make an arrest in a case and a person's not convicted, that the case is gone. That's what the fallacy in homicide arrests: what you should be after is convictions. In the academy I did scenario-based training. And what I did was I took actual cases, took all the facts out of the cases, split the class up, and we had discussions. And we actually had time in the classes when I would set people [for suspicious so how (?)] to pat people down. I don't really think any of that's being done. The best way to get those weapons off of the street is with Terry v. Ohio. Read the Supreme Court decision, what the justices said about the number, the number of guns that's on the street now. But it has to be done with within the law. My main contention is police officers do not know the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth amendments of the Constitution, and based on that they can't make practical decisions based on the law. We need more legal training. When I was in the police academy, I had the only legal reference in the academy. I had LEXIS-NEXIS on my computer that I paid $125 a month out of my pocket, and there was not another legal book in the police academy.
JANIS: What Steve talks about is interesting, because what evolved during zero tolerance was an idea of officer discretion. And he's talking about officers sort of being in control and being able to use discretion. But what happened during zero tolerance was officers were evaluated by the number of arrests. I did a lot of reporting on quotas. It was called arrest quotas. So, in other words, an officer was expected to go out there on a shift and make eight interests. And if they didn't make eight arrests, they'd get transferred or their squad be--something would happen to them administratively. And so the idea that an officer could go out and sort of construct this idea of reasonable articulable suspicion in this situation was kind of usurped by the idea that they had to their--their whole, the whole idea of policing was the end result of an arrest. Steve's talking about convictions. In zero tolerance, it was just about bringing someone in. And those quotas were used, really, I think, to change the culture of policing. And it resulted--it really came out of the idea that arrests somehow were a means to an end or somehow the best use of the process and somehow ensured safety. And that's probably why the law was sort of not as important, because the law was about officer discretion. Zero tolerance was about you'd better make eight arrests [about (?)] quotas about this sort of turning the process into some sort of, like, industrial thing. You know, you're going to make ten arrests or you're going to get demoted or you're not going to get overtime.
NOOR: And so this was all part of the politicization of policing and the police force.
TABELING: I had young officers that went out for training. After the police academy, they go out [incompr.] before to actually go out on their own. And I had an officer come back to me and said, I had a disturbing incident--and this happened a lot--had a lieutenant to tell me to go down to the corner and pat those people down. And I said to him, for what? And the lieutenant said, well, it's numbers. We need numbers. We can get these people in here. And this officer said, I don't think I want to do that. Well, he was in pretty bad shape for not wanting to do what the lieutenant told him. And they feel pressure. They feel pressure of what to do. Look, this is just an example. I'm in the police academy, and we had a director in there (who will remain unnamed), and we were at roll call in the morning, and they said to me, Tabeling, I've got something for you. I said, well, that's good. He said, when I was out on the street, if I see a car going down the street and there was four people in the backseat, I pulled that car over. Do you know why? I said, I have no idea. He said, well, they didn't have seatbelts. And I said, okay. He said, when I pulled the car over, I got them out one at a time, I patted them down, and sit them on the curb. I said, you're wrong. He said--I said, you're wrong. You can't do that. He said, that's the problem. We're getting guns off the street by doing that. I said, but you're not making any convictions. His answer to me was, you worry too much.JANIS: The entirety of the zero tolerance and the fixation on stats and the homicide rate, which I have argued is not always the best barometer of the communal health of a city, translated into this idea that the policing was no longer a process the law but, you know, a process of measuring something. [What they're (?)] measuring they never talk about. But then-mayor Martin O'Malley was fixated on reducing--he promised to reduce the homicide rate. And I think he felt that if you applied some of the aspects of City-Stat, which was measuring things, and if you came up numbers and there was--I found documents that showed every district was measured by arrests. You know? And I think there was a complete fixation on the idea that incarcerating people, even temporarily, was better than doing the kind of policing that Stephen talks about and that we wrote about in his book. And that is--you know, that's a cultural political change. I mean, that's a change in a country where you say the rights of the people are not important in that aspect in measuring the law, that the health of the community was completely discernible by the outcome of the process of policing. And I think you can see that in other [over in Iraq (?)]. You know, we have the surge. We've always had these ideas that somehow multiplying force will create some sort of favorable result. But I think if you go to the communities now that were targeted by zero tolerance, you see a lot of emptiness. You know? You see--so I think Steve is--.
NOOR: And you have a whole generation, you have whole committees with criminal records. And so they're not going to be finding jobs, they're not going to be able to return to the workforce.
JANIS: Absolutely.
NOOR: And they're going to be reduced to a life of working outside of the legal economy.
TABELING: You can't stop murder. Statistics around the country with murder are cyclical. All around the country now, maybe except for Chicago, murders are down. In the 1970s, we had a higher rate of crime than you have now. And if you look at statistics, you will see violent crime is down now better than it was in the 1970s. You can maybe prevent murders with good information and arresting people and taking people off the street on legitimate warrants that have the propensity for violence. You can do that. But for somebody to say you can stop murders, if a police chief can stop murders, he's going to be a miracle man, and everybody in the country will want him. You can't do it. It's impossible to do.
OF COURSE WHAT LEADS TO ALL THE VIOLENCE IS THE PUSHING OF PEOPLE INTO THE BLACK MARKET ECONOMY BY STAGNATING JOB CREATION WITH PUBLIC POLICY GEARED AT GLOBAL MARKET----EXACTLY WHAT ERHLICH AND NOW HOGAN AS NEO-CONS AND O'MALLEY AS NEO-LIBERAL DO!
NOOR: And what's not being discussed in policing is addressing some of the root causes of what's leading people down this path and this cycle of violence and drugs. And that's actually the next thing I want to talk about. So I want to thank you both for joining us for this segment.
JANIS: Thank you.NOOR: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
As someone who attends most of these protests against this policing and as a middle-class white woman----I experience just what is described below. This unconstitutional policing is expanding to deny all civil rights even as they pretend to be protecting them. If you stand up against unconstitutional policing you are charged with failing to obey police instruction. They want to pretend it is constitutional ----BUT IT IS NOT.
Remember, Congress and Obama passed the NDAA which allows domestic citizens to be arrested and detained with no charge-----the same as happens in Iran or China----DON'T WORRY OBAMA SAYS----THIS IS ONLY FOR TERRORISTS. Well, protesting has been classified as a terrorist act against the government.
IF YOU ARE SILENT WHILE INJUSTICE COMES TO ONE-----INJUSTICE WILL COME TO ALL! WAKE UP AND GET RID OF THESE CORPORATE POLS IN BALTIMORE CITY HALL AND MARYLAND ASSEMBLY!
Protesters: Police blocked them from delivering letter Demonstrators say police contained them unconstitutionally
Published 5:24 PM EST Jan 16, 2015 WBAL TV
BALTIMORE --Some demonstrators are upset with Baltimore City police, claiming officers trampled on their rights during a demonstration Thursday night.
Protesters voice opinions on National Day of Action Several protests against police brutality and militarization took place Thursday as part of a National Day of Action, with one of those protest spots being downtown Baltimore's McKeldin Square.
On January 31, 2008, CCR and the law firms of Beldock, Levine & Hoffman and Covington & Burling filed a class action lawsuit charging the NYPD with engaging in racial profiling and suspicion-less stops-and-frisks of New Yorkers. The named plaintiffs in the case—David Floyd, Lalit Clarkson, Deon Dennis and David Ourlicht—represent the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who have been stopped on the way to work, in front of their house or just walking down the street, without any cause and primarily because of their race.
The protesters said they announced on a loud speaker several times during the demonstration that they were going to deliver a letter at police headquarters. Baltimore City police said they would have accepted the letter had they known of the group's intentions.
The group Peace Justice and Accountability demonstrated against police brutality. Protesters said when they got to police headquarters in downtown Baltimore Thursday night, they ran into what they considered unconstitutional containment tactics by officers that prevented them from going where they intended to go.
Sharon Black, of the Baltimore Peoples Power Assembly, said the group was trying to deliver a letter to Commissioner Anthony Batts, calling for an end to systemic racism, calling for the indictment and firing of officers who the group says terrorize and endanger communities, ending militarization of police departments and establishing a community control police board. But as they got to police headquarters at President and Fayette streets, they said they were surrounded.
"We are very upset with the way Baltimore City police have been handling protests," Black said. "I heard some of the ranking officers tell cops to line up body to body, shoulder to shoulder. Hundreds lined up."
Baltimore City police Lt. Sarah Connolly responded about the handling of protesters, saying, "We will continue to support the First Amendment rights for the citizens of Baltimore. We have had several people protest where we have ensured a safe route of travel for the individuals involved. Our highest obligation is the public safety and protecting those First Amendment rights."
PPA is also angered by what the group considers the unfair targeting of one of its leaders, Sara Benjamin, 23. The groups said Benjamin was arrested several hours before the protest on a 1-year-old misdemeanor warrant for assault. Police confirmed they picked her up on a sheriff's warrant for failing to appear in court.
PPA said the protests will continue. The group wants a public meeting with Batts, and they're sending their letter via registered mail so that they get a response indicating the commissioner received it.
Here we see another black city Clinton Wall Street neo-liberal/neo-con in Philadelphia's Mayor Nutter doing same Wall Street reforms as is happening in Baltimore. Each time a justice organization enters the process it is after the policy has occurred for years and as in Baltimore it has now been back for years. The middle-class ignore it because they think it is only part of the gentrification process of getting rid of the poor and working class so suspending civil rights is OK. 90% of people in third world nations have no rights----where will your children and grandchildren fall?
Warren Branch – Chair
Brandon M. Scott – Vice Chair
Sharon Green Middleton
Nick Mosby
Staff: Larry Greene
Baltimore Police Chief Batts wants every police officer with a taser for their protection because after all the unconstitutional policing and zero tolerance that makes people angry and humiliated by police----they feel someone might retaliate against the police. At the meeting I attended I reminded both Chief Batts and the Safety Committee that I lived for decades with police not being allowed TO TOUCH CITIZENS and somehow they apprehended criminals and few police lives were lost. All studies show these unconstitutional policing policies heighten safety risks for our police officers-----
THESE POLICIES ARE WHAT PLACE POLICE OFFICERS AT RISK FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON OTHER THAT TO INTIMIDATE AND HUMILIATE PEOPLE OUT OF A COMMUNITY FOR DEVELOPMENT PURPOSES.
What does that do for public safety in general-----when people are left humiliated and without civil rights getting more angry each day? It endangers everyone on the street. So, Baltimore City Hall and Police Department are using policy that creates
COLLATERAL DAMAGE WITH CIVILIAN LIVES LOST IS THE EFFORT OF INSURGENT REMOVAL FROM AREAS BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT AND JOHNS HOPKINS WANTS TO DEVELOP!
Remember, poverty and unemployment pushes people to black market and the crime and violence that comes with it and Baltimore City Hall working for Johns Hopkins creates the public policy that creates high unemployment!
GET RID OF POLITICIANS THAT ARE SIMPLY WORKING TO INSTALL THIRD WORLD GLOBAL CORPORATE POLICY! Know who backs these pols every election? Maryland Labor Union leaders-----Maryland NAACP and the 15 black ministers telling their membership to vote for Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins' pols.
Know who helps? All of Baltimore media outlets---corporate and public.
Below you see another tag-team Baltimore City Hall group----the Baltimore Board of Estimates that funds all of these dubious policies---we are going to buy tasers from an International Taser corporation. They use the same excuse every time as Baltimore City council uses because City Charter gives the Mayor three votes to over-ride the Comptroller Pratt and City Council President Young every time so everything that goes through the Baltimore Board of Estimates in controlled by the Mayor who works for Baltimore Development Corporation and Johns Hopkins. Never once do I hear Pratt and Young shout and organize
TO PETITION TO REFERENDUM A CHANGE IN THE BALTIMORE CITY CHARTER THAT TAKES THE POWER AWAY FROM THE MAYOR AND CREATES A DEMOCRATIC AND PEOPLE-CONTROLLED BOARD OF ESTIMATES. It is ridiculous to have to listen to these pols pretend their hands are tied by the mayor.
Police Chief Batts wants each police officer having a taser even as they know they have systemic unconstitutional and zero tolerance policing with no oversight and accountability structures in place.
TASING IS A PHYSICAL ASSAULT AGAINST AN AMERICAN CITIZEN WITH CIVIL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES!
ACLU targets "stop and frisk" police tactic in Philadelphia
The ACLU in Pennsylvania has sued the Philadelphia Police Department over it's stop and frisk tactics, adding Philadelphia to a list of cities targeted for what civil rights groups call harsh policing methods that unfairly target minorities.
Read a copy of the complaint here.
Police officers in Baltimore and New York have come under fire for stopping and searching people on the streets, often times without arresting them or finding evidence of a crime. Supporters say the practice drives down crime, while opponents say it violates people's rights.
In Baltimore, stop and frisk was part of a zero-tolerance policing program that in the mid 2000s led to cops arresting more than 100,000 people, filling the jail to capacity and drawing complaints form citizens and prosecutors that many of the arrests were unlawful.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III has shunned the practice, promoting smarter arrests targeting violent gun offenders. His officers have arrested tens of thousands fewer people than his predecessors, and has driven down crime and homicide to historic lows.
In 2007, Bealefeld told The Sun that he found the volume of arrests in previous years "mind-boggling. ... Did we really accomplish a lot doing that?" He said that instead of filling the city's Central Booking and Intake Center "with a whole bunch of arrests for arrests' sake, ... we're going to be much more focused."
In June, the Maryland chapter of the ACLU settled with the city over this city's mass arrest policies, costing the city $870,000 and requiring a monitor to examine arrest data. New York City has received similar complaints, and now Philadelphia appears the next target.
The Washington Post reports on the Philadelphia suit in today's editions. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that city officials are defending the practice:
City Solicitor Shelley Smith, however, said [Charles] Ramsey has beefed up police training and supervision, responded quickly to allegations of abuse and meted out discipline when warranted. Last month, Ramsey added more investigators to the Internal Affairs Bureau. "The Police Department and Commissioner Ramsey take seriously the need to protect the constitutional rights of citizens," Smith said. Yesterday afternoon, Nutter said he had not yet reviewed the suit. But he said the "stop and frisk" policy was legal and effective if used correctly. Since taking office in January 2008, Nutter has championed "stop, question and frisk" policing as part of a plan to fight crime and get guns off the street. Nutter stressed that overall crime, including violent crime, is down and said race is not a factor in who gets searched. He also noted that "stop and frisk" - in which police stop people suspected of criminal activity and pat them down for illegal weapons - was being used before he became mayor.(Ramsey, you might recall, came under fire when he was chief of police in DC for mass arrests during a protest in 2002. Just recently, a judge approved a settlement that cost the city more than $8 million.
While Baltimore police are curtailing the practices, The New York Times reported in May that its department has more than quintupled the number of stop and frisks over the past few years. Last month, the group Center for Constitutional Rights, released a report criticizing the NYPD for its stop and frisk tactics. Here is there statement:
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has engaged in a pattern of unconstitutional stops that disproportionately affects Black and Latino New Yorkers, according to an expert report filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York. The report, based on a six-year analysis of the NYPD's own data, reaches the conclusion that the Department's controversial stop-and-frisk policy is at its core based on race rather than crime statistics.
Prepared by Jeffrey Fagan, Professor of Law and Public Health at Columbia University, the report supports the claims in Floyd v. City of New York, a class action lawsuit of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) that challenges NYPD stops-and-frisks and alleges violations of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. Among the report's conclusions, the following findings were made:
• Nearly 150,000 stops over the last six years are unconstitutional and lack any legal justification. Another 544,252 stops may be unconstitutional but were not documented sufficiently to determine this. All together, 30 percent of all stops are either illegal or of questionable legality;
• Most stops occur in Black and Latino neighborhoods, and even after adjustments for other factors including crime rates, social conditions and allocation of police resources in those neighborhoods, race is the main factor determining NYPD stops;
• Black and Latino residents are more likely to be stopped than Whites even in areas with low crime rates where populations are mixed or mostly White;
• Nearly half of all stops are justified by citing the vague category "furtive movements," as opposed to only 15 percent citing "fits relevant description"; 
• In more than half of all stops, the officers cite "high crime area" as an "additional circumstance" even in precincts with lower than average crime rates. The Supreme Court has found specifically that it's unconstitutional to stop and frisk a person simply because they are in a so-called "high-crime" neighborhood;
• Black and Latino suspects are treated more harshly in instances in which police officers make the determination that a crime has occurred. Black and Latino suspects are more likely to be arrested rather than issued a summons when compared to White suspects who are accused of the same crimes. Black and Latino suspects are more likely to have force used against them; and
• The rate of gun seizures is nearly zero—0.15 out of a hundred stops—a disturbingly low return for a law enforcement tactic the NYPD claims is designed specifically to remove illegal guns from the streets.
"This exhaustive and meticulously researched report makes clear what hundreds of thousands of young Black and Latino people know from their everyday lives; the NYPD stops and frisks them because of their race," said CCR staff attorney Darius Charney.
"It's time for the City to come to grips with the reality that they need to find an effective way to fight crime without resorting to racial profiling," added Jonathan Moore, attorney with Beldock, Levine & Hoffman.
Know who helps? All of Baltimore media outlets---corporate and public.
Police Chief Batts wants each police officer having a taser even as they know they have systemic unconstitutional and zero tolerance policing with no oversight and accountability structures in place. That was how his police force in California operated for decades creating the same system of unconstitutional and police brutality-filled policing possible. Everyone that supported Batts as Police Commissioner knew what he would bring.
750 more Tasers approved for Baltimore Police In a split vote, the city spending board approves a $1.1 million contract to stock up on the electroshock weapon
Mark Reutter October 9, 2014 at 6:22 pm Baltimore Brew
A Taser being deployed, from the cover of the state's 2009 report "Task Force on Electronic Weapons."
Photo by: Maryland Attorney General's office
By a 3-2 vote, the Board of Estimates yesterday awarded $1.1 million to a Phoenix-based company to supply Baltimore Police with about 750 Tasers, supplementing the 1,165 Tasers ordered last December as part of the department's objective to arm each officer with an electroshock weapon.
City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young and Comptroller Joan Pratt cast "no" votes, while the three members of the Rawlings-Blake administration voted "yes."
Finance Director Henry J. Raymond, sitting in for Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who did not attend yesterday's meeting, approved the expenditure, together with City Solicitor George Nilson and Department of Public Works Director Rudolph Chow.
Last year, Taser International Inc. was awarded a contract to supply Tasers to the police, with four one-year renewal options. Yesterday, the spending panel exercised the first year renewal.
"We currently have 1,165 of Model X26p and 250 of Model X26, which are being phased out," said Sarah Connolly, a spokeswoman for the Baltimore Police Department. "Officers assigned to patrol are being issued the Tasers first."
According to the company's invoice to the city, each X26p Taser has a base price of $877.97, with another $52.95 for a holster, $62.26 for a battery pack and $269.99 for a four-year warranty.
Adding in the cartridges (at $27.24 each) and deducting for a volume discount, each Taser costs taxpayers about $1,260.
Better Spent on Training, say Young and Pratt
Yesterday's contract was passed without discussion by the board, in a voice vote with other spending items.
Asked today why Young voted against the expenditure, his spokesman, Lester Davis, said he believed the police department has not sufficiently trained officers in the use of the weapon.
From a video in which police used at least two Tasers (see the flash of yellow at center of picture) to subdue a suspect outside a Greenmount Avenue nightclub.
"He would like to make sure that proper training is in place prior to providing officers with additional equipment that could be used to apply lethal force," Davis said.
In an interview today with The Brew, Pratt said the funds should go toward training officers about other ways to settle confrontations "given the recent tensions between residents and a few police officers not representative of the department."
Pratt also cited the safety issue, saying, "They are Tasering citizens who have health issues and can be permanently injured."
George V. King Incident
Tasers can be lethal if used repeatedly in prolonged (beyond five second) discharges. The weapon has been linked to four deaths and an unknown number of injuries since 2004, according to David Rocah, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland. Rocah said that city police department's use of Tasers doubled from 123 in 2009 to 257 in 2012.
Last May, George V. King was reportedly Tasered five times by an officer called to Good Samaritan Hospital after the patient became disruptive. The unarmed teenager went into a coma and died a week later. Connolly said the matter is still under investigation.
Last month, the spending board paid $63,000 to a woman Tasered by police after she reported a home burglary.
While condemning excessive force by officers in the wake of several videos showing police punching and kicking citizens, Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts said he intends to issue a Taser to every member of his department.
Yesterday's $1.1 million award – with more Taser purchases permitted under the contract in 2015, 2016 and 2017 – will go a long way to help him achieve that goal.
In the wake of the King incident, the ACLU, a civil rights group and the King family's attorney called for a moratorium on Taser use by police and a review of the policy.
Asked how the BPD responded to those demands, Connolly said, "The policy is currently under review."
FOOD JUSTICE DOES NOT INCLUDE ENDING PUBLIC SUBSIDY FOR FOOD----IT DOES NOT INCLUDE OUTSOURCING THE SOCIAL SERVICES TIED WITH DISTRIBUTING AND OVERSIGHT. IT DOES INCLUDE PROVIDING OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY TO SEE THAT PEOPLE CAN ACCESS THEM AND THAT THESE FUNDS ARE NOT LOST TO FRAUD.
We need to remember that after the coming economic crash larger than in 2008----the public sector will reduced, all public aid and the organizations dispersing it will be reduced so the percentage of Americans at or near poverty when these neo-liberal policies hit will be 80% and rising. So, food security and justice will mean as much to the current middle-class as it does now to the poor. The 21st century economy will see almost everyone toiling in a sweat shop capacity if we do not reverse this by running and voting for labor and justice. The citizens of Maryland should be carrying out those Maryland Assembly pols kicking and screaming as they destroy our food and water sources for no reason other than profit.
The organizations that keep coming out for Clinton neo-liberals are the churches, the national labor union leaders, and the national justice organization leaders. So, the very organizations tasked with working for the people and labor are electing these corporate pols killing us and our Constitutional rights. Churches should not be in the business of social services---if they were not---they would be shouting to protect people from the worst of poverty. Labor should not be connected to global corporations and Wall Street financial investment operations because they are now depending on the money as shareholders to fund unions----earning money from corporations capitalizing on labor and justice. So, we need to clean house----of corporate pols and corporate labor and justice organization leadership that have allowed themselves to be corrupted by Wall Street and Federal handouts.
THAT'S THE PLAN FOLKS----THIS IS WHY REPUBLICANS HAVE ALWAYS WANTED SOCIAL SERVICES TO GO TO CHURCH AND CHARITY AND IT IS WHY CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS ARE JOINING THEM.
We can reverse this if we clean house and return to a domestic economy and strong public sector that works in the public interest!
What we see in Baltimore is corporate donation joined with churches to expand the status of people from citizen to people needing charity. Remember, we pay lots of taxes that are meant to help us in times of need. What is happening now is all that tax base is going to corporate subsidy and charity organizations.
BELOW YOU SEE THE CHURCH REORGANIZING TO MOVE PEOPLE FROM ONE AREA TO ANOTHER FOR DEVELOPMENT PURPOSES. WHAT HAPPENS WITH THIS IS PEOPLE LOSING TRANSPORTATION OPTIONS AND ACCESS TO JOBS IN MORE AFFLUENT COMMUNITIES ARE TRAPPED INTO POVERTY.
I'm not against any church-----I am against the systematic ignoring of Separation of Church and State as is happening now!
Posted in Local Catholic News, Local News, on January 4th, 2013
CSS to close 2 social service offices in Archdiocese
CatholicPhilly.com staff report
Catholic Social Services (CSS) of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia will close two of its locations in Chester and Delaware counties, the Archdiocese announced, Friday, Jan. 4.
A statement said the restructuring plan that resulted in the closures is "aimed at more effectively utilizing its limited resources to support those in need" in the five-county Archdiocese. The plan affects the Community-Based Services division of CSS, which operates outreach sites in each county. Of the division's 317 full-time employees, 13 were laid off as a result of the restructuring.
The plan calls for the West Grove Family Service Center to close and a "partnership" to be formed with Misión Santa Maria Madre de Dios, an outreach program at St. Rocco Parish in Avondale, Chester County.
Also, the Springfield, Delaware County center will close and merge with the Chester City Family Service Center in order to provide more staff to serve the poorest community in Delaware County.
In addition to the enhanced services at the Chester site, a new partnership with the St. Katharine Drexel Evangelization Center is expected to expand the existing food and clothing distribution efforts, and extend the literacy program for more residents. The evangelization center is an outreach program of St. Katharine Drexel Parish in Chester.
"Although these changes will be difficult, especially for those who are directly affected by the staff reductions and mergers, this plan will allow CSS to continue to provide services to those who need it most throughout the Archdiocese," said Auxiliary Bishop John McIntyre, who oversees Catholic Social Services. "Amid these changes, what remains constant is our unwavering commitment to continue the works of the Lord Jesus, by affirming, assisting and advocating for individuals, families and communities in need."
The statement said the CSS board of directors intends the reorganization to make "the best use of limited resources by achieving greater efficiencies and sharpening the focus of social service delivery to those people most in need of assistance."
The plan also "features a strong emphasis on developing partnerships with successful parish outreach programs throughout the region, a viable alternative approach that leverages CSS support of grassroots local efforts."
The restructuring positions CSS for the future, the statement said, enabling the agency to better deal with challenges and "long-term program growth and development elsewhere" in its system.
CSS offices in Bucks and Montgomery counties will continue to serve their communities with large food cupboard programs organized by volunteers working in close collaboration with CSS staff.
Information and referral assistance in the counties will now be provided through a central "CSS Helpline" (267-331-2490) which has been in use in Philadelphia over the past year.
Philadelphia will continue to be served by CSS offices in the Northeast, North and Southwest sections of the city, with social services supporting healthy family development, homelessness prevention and emergency food assistance.
Social Security Threatens to Close All Field Offices
www.truth-out.org
Social Security Threatens to Close All ... Answers have never been farther than your local Social Security office, ... The loss of in-person services would create .....
The intent of Clinton Wall Street corporate neo-liberals is to end public programs and they are working as hard as Republicans to do so. So, the latest move is consolidating physical social services buildings to areas slated for moving the poor and working class----and the move to outsource these services to private corporations that often create call centers for social services. How does a private corporation lower the amount of public services it gives out---which is the goal of corporate pols as all of Federal, state, and local tax revenue must now go to corporate subsidy and not public----it places social service people into the nightmare that is call center and never-talk-to-a-human status. That is how they intend to end social services from Food Stamps to Disability. Already citizens in Baltimore are finding it hard to connect for services and Texas is known to have long gone with this SOCIAL SERVICES IN THE CLOUD technique. What happens when people are unable to access any social services as 70-80% of Americans are at or near poverty? People begin to simply work for food.....the third world society.
THAT IS TO WHERE CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS AND BUSH NEO-CONS ARE TAKING THE US. IF YOU THINK WE DO NOT NEED SOCIAL SAFETY NETS YOU NEED TO THINK THAT AFTER THIS COMING ECONOMIC CRASH MOST OF THE MIDDLE-CLASS WILL BE AT POVERTY. WAKE UP AND GET RID OF THESE CLINTON GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERALS CONTROLLING THE PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC PARTY. WE ARE ALLOWING 20% OF DEMOCRATIC VOTERS CAPTURE PRIMARIES FOR THESE POLS BECAUSE WE ARE NOT RUNNING AND VOTING FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES IN ALL PRIMARIES.
Posted by Nick Surgey on October 08, 2013
Profiting from the Poor: Outsourcing Social Services Puts Most Vulnerable at Risk -
- by Nick Surgey and Katie Lorenze
Child sleeping on suitcase (Source: Shutterstock)
In a story most in the media missed, protestors gathered under the dome at the Mississippi state capitol earlier this year to oppose a bill that would allow the state Department of Human Services (DHS) to privatize everything from child protective services to nutrition programs for the elderly. The bill, HB 1009, which later passed, started out as a way to allow the Mississippi DHS to hire private contractors to collect child support payments -- something which Mississippi had flirted with in the past, with less than impressive results.
From 1995-2000, a wealthy but little known firm called Maximus, Inc. had been hired to collect overdue child support payments in Mississippi and, according to a joint legislative committee report, on average, had higher costs but collected less in payments than the state did during the same five-year period. During the February 2013 debate on the new bill in the state Senate, the Associated Press quoted Senator Hob Bryan as saying "I remember the disaster that Maximus was."
But memories of that failed experiment did not stop Republican lawmakers from expanding HB 1009 to include a broad provision to allow the Mississippi DHS to privatize any of its functions by contracting out to private companies.
"Outsourcing aid for people can't work. It's designed to make a profit," Mississippi state representative Jim Evans told CMD. Evans had joined other legislators to stop what they saw as the potential corporate takeover of a public agency providing essential services to vulnerable citizens.
Despite the now lengthy list of failed -- and often disastrous -- attempts at privatizing social services in states across the country, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed the bill into law this spring.
Indiana Outsourcing Demonstrates the "Perfect Storm" of Overzealous Corporate Ambition and Corporate Politicians Mississippi protestors had good reason to be concerned. The privatization of social services has in the past resulted in some spectacular failures.
The Denver Post found a shocking pattern of abuse when it conducted an in-depth investigation of the privatization of Colorado's foster care system a decade ago. The Post reported that numerous children were molested, abused, and even died in foster home after the state started contracting with businesses that failed to ensure they were placed in safe homes. The state also paid three times as much to place a child in private foster care as it did in homes that were supervised by the counties.
More recently, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels' attempt to transform the state into a privatized utopia failed spectacularly in the health and human services area. Indiana's 2006 experiment involving a $1.16 billion contract awarded to a consortium of firms including Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (ACS), went so badly, that the Governor cancelled the contract at an unknown cost to the state, and the state legislature even considered banning privatization altogether.
Before Indiana privatized these services, it had one of the lowest rates in the country for incorrectly denying or ending access to food stamps, but in 2008, under for-profit outsourcing, that error rate jumped 13 percent according to the LA Times, resulting in kids going hungry and grandmas losing their Medicaid coverage. The human cost of these failures is all too real. WTHR News in Indiana, reported on the story of Ronald Alexander who died in 2009, more than a year after being wrongly denied Medicaid benefits and despite his frequent and frustrated attempts to get the help he needed.
Many blamed ACS, the main subcontractor on the project, for the repeated problems. By 2009, the state cancelled its contract and attempted to institute a hybrid method, transferring some functions back to the state government.
In a lawsuit after the outsourcing effort collapsed, Judge David Dreyer wrote, "ACS failed to make any serious effort with respect to its portion of the responsibilities, and was instead lobbying the state, directly and through its lobbyist, to replace IBM as the general contractor on the project." Dreyer continued: "This story represents a 'perfect storm' of misguided government policy and overzealous corporate ambition."
Maximus: A Lesson in How Profiteers Have Billed Taxpayers for Parties and Settled Charges of Medicaid Fraud, but Still Win Outsourcing Bids Many question whether these services -- aimed at helping the elderly, single parents, and foster children -- should ever be delivered with a profit motive. As Bob Jacobson of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families put it, "If you're a corporation whose very mission is to increase shareholder value that is automatically in conflict with a social service agency whose sole purpose is to meet the needs of people in the program."
Hired to manage Wisconsin's privatized welfare to work program known as "Wisconsin Works," the Maximus firm had billed the state nearly half a million dollars in improper or questionable expenses, including $195,745 that it spent on promotional materials, $15,741 spent on items such as "hotel rooms in Lake Geneva" and parties and $1,498 that it had spent on flowers, according to a Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau report.
Lawmakers subsequently called for the termination of the corporation's $46 million contract with the state.
It's not just in Wisconsin that Maximus has been documented ripping off taxpayers.
In 2007, a whistleblower came forward accusing the corporation of defrauding Medicaid in the District of Columbia. In response, Maximus agreed to pay $30.5 million in a settlement with the Department of Justice.
Remarkably, despite this history, in 2011 Maximus was given a $21 million rebid to manage Wisconsin's foster care administration through 2016.
Jacobson noted that in the early days of privatizing social services in Wisconsin, contracts with Maximus and others were set up in such a way that "the profit motive was built in to deny benefits." That is, whatever money Maximus saved the government by not enrolling eligible individuals, it got to keep. "There was all sorts of money being siphoned off to build big houses for CEOs and it was perfectly legal," Jacobson told CMD.
In Tennessee, Maximus controlled the Davidson County Child Support Enforcement Office for more than 20 years until last July when the county terminated its contract. One juvenile court magistrate observed, "We have three full-time magistrates ready to hear cases, and our dockets have never been completely full [under Maximus]...we were being underutilized."
Maximus had little incentive to round up parents who consistently fail to make their mandated child support payments since the government offers money to address the problem of low collection rates. In other words, for Maximus and other companies, doing the job well could mean losing money that it could otherwise keep for itself.
Despite this record, Maximus continues to be awarded numerous significant government contracts. Most recently, on October 3, 2013 a U.S. Department of Education contract was announced, to provide services including a call center and to process payments from federal student loan borrowers. That contract begins at $143.3 million, but could run as high as $848.4 million.
The corporation also boasts of being the "nation's largest administrative support vendor for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program," and has won numerous contracts to run eight call centers in multiple states to support the new health care exchanges set up under the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
ACS Siphoned Money from Poor Families, Failed to Deliver on Medicaid Contracts In 2008, Affiliated Computer Services signed a $69 million seven-year contract with California to manage the state's electronic benefits transfer system. This allows families receiving cash welfare assistance, utility grants, and other emergency support to access their benefits electronically.
In 2011, the Huffington Post reported that ACS collected $806,238 in fees from California's public benefit recipients over the first eight months of that year, according to state data, and banks collected about $12.9 million in ATM surcharges from many of California's poor families during the same period. Under the terms of the contract, ACS charged families an 80-cent fee to access their cash at an ATM and 25 cents each time they checked their balance at an ATM.
Although the contract has been a financial boom for ACS, it has been less reliable for those that depend on vital benefits that are now paid through the system. In January 2013, 37,000 people in 17 California counties suddenly found their food stamp benefits had disappeared and were left hungry and unable to feed themselves and their families. Some had to wait long periods for new cards to arrive in the mail.
In North Carolina in 2004, ACS won a five-year $171 million contract to deliver a new Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS) for the state, designed to streamline the processing of claims and payments. After two years of failing to meet the terms of its agreement, the state finally cancelled the ACS contract at a cost of $16.5 million to the state.
In 2008, North Carolina tried again, awarding a larger $265 million contract to ACS rival Computer Sciences Corp of Virginia. That system, called "NCTracks," was due to go live in August 2011, but didn't do so until July 2013 while the cost ballooned by 82 percent to $484 million. All too predictably, NCTracks is already beset by problems, including the fairly fundamental problem of inaccurately processing claims.
Similar MMIS contracts were awarded to ACS in North Dakota and New Hampshire.
In the Granite State, after nine missed deadlines, the $90 million project finally went live in March this year, fully six years later than originally planned. Now that it's launched, the project is facing yet more complications, with a reported $10 million payment backlog in processing payments.
The North Dakota program, which was scheduled to launch in 2011, is finally due to go live this month (October 2013).
ACS didn't do much better in Minnesota, where it had a contract to create a computerized system to match the nearly 700,000 people on state health care programs to the correct program. After five years, the state Department of Human Services decided it would be better off developing the system without ACS.
Welfare to Poor Families Dwindles as Corporate Welfare Thrives As some cash strapped governments choose to balance the budget on the backs of children and families, corporate contractors' profits are soaring.
According to SEC filings, Maximus raked in total revenue of $1.05 billion during its 2012 fiscal year, with CEO, Richard Montoni receiving more than four million dollars. Over the past five years his total compensation has been $16,194,847. From 2008-2012, Maximus' top executives have pulled in $41,808,585, with substantial revenue from state taxpayers.
During the 2012 fiscal year, ACS's parent company, Xerox, took in $22.3 billion. Lynn Blodgett, the former CEO of ACS (prior to its acquisition by Xerox) who is currently a Xerox Executive Vice President, made $7,561,949 in total compensation last year.
In the three years since Xerox bought ACS, Blodgett's compensation has totaled $17,475,776. Xerox -- which directly benefits from the government contracting work done by ACS and its other division -- compensated its top executives a total of $124,842,705 from 2008-2012.
The Story of Outsourcing Social Services to For-Profit Firms Is Repeated Failure Despite repeated examples of failure, laws like Mississippi's HB 1009, which bring about the selling off of social service agencies to for-profit contractors, will continue to crop up around the country if legislators fail to learn from the past mistakes of outsourcing, and instead persist in the drive to privatize the provision of essential services and benefits for our most vulnerable citizens.
The provision of benefits and social services to the poor or otherwise needy has traditionally been carried out almost exclusively by government or by charity, often in partnership. Increasingly this is changing.
As private corporations like ACS and Maximus rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in massive contracts, and their executives rake in colossal compensation packages, shareholder profits and warped incentives detract from the standards of care provided by these corporations.
According to In the Public Interest, a comprehensive resource center on privatization and responsible contracting: "Numerous state and local governmental entities are finding that turning over these programs to private contractors not only fails to achieve projected cost savings but also decreases access to these important services, hurting many vulnerable families. In many cases, the service quality declines dramatically and many sick or at-risk people are left with substandard care."
For anyone caught in the Federal student loan process, and most college grads these several years are because of the capture of the job market by global corporations---you have a look at what outsourcing Federal services looks like. The Federal Student loan process is now predatory and full of fraud with all the money that should go to the Federal government now goes to Wall Street credit collecting corporations. So, if Food Stamp and social services are outsourced we will see much of the funds that should go to the person needing this money diverted and subjected to fraud as we see here. Student Loan collections of hundreds of billions of dollars what the highest Federal revenue source since this happened and most of it is tied with predatory and fraudulent collection.
As we see Social Service funds cut more and more----these programs will be infused with fraud as happens every time public programs are outsourced. This has been a problem in Baltimore for decades as we do not have a public sector with oversight and accountability and lots sent to churches and non-profits often for pay-to-play support for establishment politicians. Can you image what Food Stamps would look like. Remember, when buildings close and call centers make it hard to reach Social Services -----many of these funds are not accessed. Where do they go? In Baltimore------everything is fungible.
PLEASE FIGHT THIS PRIVATIZATION---IT IS ONE STEP TO ENDING THESE PROGRAMS AND SIMPLY MAXIMIZES PROFIT FROM GOVERNMENT FUNDS ON THE BACKS OF LABOR AND JUSTICE!
Student Loan Rehabilitation Repayment a Scam?
Uploaded on Feb 18, 2010Student Loan Rehabilitation Repayment a Scam?
Watch the video and learn about the student loan rehabilitation repayment program. On the surface it sounds beautiful but watch out for the tricks student loan collectors uses.
Get My Confessions of Rogue Student Loan Collector
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http://www.StudentLoanFundamentals.com
Mr. Kay Production Manager
Rogue Student Loan Collector
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Why am I releasing this information?
*I have seen what student loan troubles can do to a person. Family get torn apart, newly graduates cannot find a job or go back to school, kids are not able to go to school because of the parents defaulted student loan, and the list goes on....
I want you to learn how to "fight back" against those who are making your life difficult -- and holding you back. With the "Student Loan Blue Print" we guarantee your entire outlook on life will change forever. However, I don't know how long we will be able to make this information available. For obvious reasons, there are a lot of people who do NOT want us making this information available to people like you. It gives you an almost unfair advantage to beat them at their own game.
'Tying of food aid with conditions that benefit the donor has been one of the reasons food aid has not been effective, and criticized for benefiting multinational food companies and donor nations more than recipients'.
We know BIG AG is located in mostly Clinton neo-liberal states and we know that Clinton and Obama spent these several years trying to push developing nations to give up public subsidy for food and health care as they move the Bush Trans Pacific Trade Pact forward----so this recent fight in Congress over cutting Food Stamps is a tag-team effort. As this article states the cuts are coming as poverty grows---just as the Clinton Welfare to Work came as unemployment soared. Neo-liberals want the US to be a food importer as do Republicans---remember, Trans Pacific Trade Pact allows global corporations to come to the US and operate as they do overseas complete with wages and injustice.
Maryland has always been one of the lowest in funding for social services and with fraud and corruption much of that funding does not make it to the poor----and Clinton neo-liberals work hard to label Maryland progressive and BLUE.
Not as well the move to tie energy subsidy reduction to Food Stamp reduction. It seems those crazy poor people are using a loophole to boost some subsidy and that can't happen say the MOST MASSIVE CORPORATE SUBSIDY CONGRESS IN HISTORY! The goal of course is to end both energy and food subsidy and tie Smart Meters to rationing.

I always like to remind----there is no national debt or budget deficit----the massive corporate frauds of last decade are these deficits and a REAL DEMOCRAT would have spent several years recovering corporate fraud not pretending to need austerity. Fraud recovery pays for itself.
Republicans Just Won the Food Stamp War Congress is set to approve $9 billion in cuts to the food stamp program even as a record number of Americans live in poverty.
—By Erika Eichelberger
| Wed Jan. 29, 2014 12:06 PM ES
On Wednesday morning, Republicans won a years-long battle over whether to slash or spare food stamps when the House passed the farm bill, a $500 billion piece of legislation that funds nutrition and agriculture programs for the next five years.
The farm bill has been delayed for more than two years because of a fight over cuts to the food stamp program, which is called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Last June, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) forced a vote on a bill that would have cut $20 billion from SNAP. But conservatives said the cuts were not deep enough, Democrats said they were far too deep, and the bill failed, 234-195. That September, House Republicans drafted new legislation slashing $40 billion from the food stamp program. That bill passed the House with Republican votes only. After months of negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate, which wanted much lower cuts of around $4 billion, the House finally passed a farm bill 251-166 Wednesday that contains a "compromise" $9 billion in reductions to the food stamp program.
Both the Senate and President Barack Obama are expected to approve the legislation.
Here's why the compromise level of cuts is a Republican win: In addition to the $9 billion in food stamp cuts in this five-year farm bill, another $11 billion will be slashed over three years as stimulus funding for the program expires. The first $5 billion of that stimulus money expired in October; the rest will disappear by 2016. In the months since the first $5 billion in stimulus funding was cut, food pantries have been struggling to provide enough food for the hungry. Poverty remains at record high levels, and three job applicants compete for every job opening.
And yet, despite the $5 billion in cuts that already happened and the guarantee of $6 billion more, Republicans succeeded in getting their Democratic peers to cut food stamps further. This is the first time in history that a Democratic Senate has even proposed cutting the program. Now the upper chamber is expected to pass cuts twice the level it approved last year.
"It's a net loss for Democrats," Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tells Mother Jones. "It's absolutely a GOP win," agrees a House Democratic aide.
How did the GOP do it? In November, Dems said that Boehner was interfering with House-Senate negotiations on the farm bill, rejecting proposed legislation that contained shallower food stamps cuts. (Boehner's office denies this.)
But Dems deserve much of the blame, the Democratic aide says. Last year, House liberals were scheming to get progressives to vote against any farm bill that contained SNAP cuts. The idea was that if enough progressives voted no along with the House conservatives who think the cuts are too low, Democrats could defeat the bill. In that case, food stamp funding would be preserved at current levels. A "$9 billion [cut] is too much…It hits in the gut," Rep. Gwen Moore (R-Wis.) told Mother Jones earlier this month.
When the final bill came up for a vote in the House, the Congressional Progressive Caucus advised its 76 members to vote against the bill. But not enough Dems voted to block the cuts. One hundred three Democrats voted against the farm bill, but 89 voted in favor. If 43 more Democrats had voted no, the farm bill would have failed. "Dems are…complicit in changing [the] law, when they could just [block the bill] and let that status quo continue," the Democratic aide says.
Democrats in the House and Senate agreed to cut nutrition aid for poor Americans because they "have shifted to the right on SNAP politically," the staffer adds. "If Dems were as absolutist as the tea party, this bill would be dead on arrival and SNAP would continue as is."
But the assault on the food stamp program "could have been much, much worse," argues Ross Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. Stacy Dean, the vice president for food assistance policy at the nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), agrees. Democrats succeeded in stripping many draconian GOP provisions from the bill.  Republicans wanted to impose new work requirements on food stamp recipients; allow states to require drug testing for food stamps beneficiaries; ban ex-felons from ever receiving nutrition aid; and award states financial incentives to kick people off the program. None of those measures were in the final legislation, Dean notes.
The cuts to the food stamp program come from closing a loophole that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agreed needed to be addressed. A household's level of monthly food stamps benefits is determined by how much disposable income a family has after rent, utilities, and other expenses are deducted. Some states allow beneficiaries to deduct a standard utility charge from their income if they qualify for a federal heating aid program called the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, even if they only receive a few dollars per year in heating aid. The arrangement results in about 850,000 households getting a utility deduction that is much larger than their actual utility bill. Because the deduction makes these families' disposable income appear to be lower than it actually is, they get more food stamp money each month. The farm bill that passed the House on Wednesday saves $9 billion by closing that loophole.
The savings from closing the heating aid loophole could have been returned to the food stamp program. Instead, Republicans succeeded in prodding Dems to accept $9 billion in new cuts on top of the $11 billion in expiring stimulus funds. That extra $9 billion in cuts means that close to a million households will see their benefits slashed by about $90 a month—enough to pay for a week's worth of cheap groceries for a family of four.
We know in Baltimore most attempts at community gardens are geared towards corporations donating for tax credit and many of the projects are hit and run installations that do not last since they are not tied to a public agency to maintain and promote. Citizens in these communities are not given time to develop interest ----they are recruited for these one-time-installations and then fade away. This is not how you build a Food Justice platform. We have a cycle of build it/rebuild it/rebuild it just as is done in developing nations where NGOs spend hundreds of billions of dollars and all of it collapses into disuse or poor building. When I first moved to Baltimore and became involved in greening a friend told me she never takes grants because those projects just become abandoned. Again, it is because Baltimore refuses to hire public sector employees to maintain and promote these community gardens for the long-term. That's not to say that there are no successes in community gardening in Baltimore.....and lot's of people want to see it successful. When you have Baltimore Development Corporation and Johns Hopkins devoted to moving all public money to profit and getting rid of the working class and poor in Enterprise Zones where much of this activity takes place----it all becomes money spent for development and less about Food Justice. So, Baltimore is starting to end Food Stamps with no meaningful support for after its gone---with growing unemployment and an economic crash right around the corner. It is a recipe for disaster for progressive labor and justice!
WHO SUPPORTS CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS AND JOHNS HOPKINS AND BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT? LABOR UNIONS AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATION LEADERS. IT IS LABOR IN BALTIMORE THAT OFTEN WORKS FOR POVERTY SUPPLEMENTED WITH FOOD STAMPS.
One big partner in Baltimore is Home Depot--they donate wood for a tax credit----they donate employee time for a tax credit-----and they get a large tax credit as a green corporation. From all I see Home Depot donates wood that they cannot sell because of poor quality. Within two years much built in these projects is gone.
Since Home Depot is a do it yourself store you do not need any inexperienced help.As a contractor I ask for contractor discount at Home Depot says their prices are low enough.
I buy products at mom and pop stores and the prices are much cheaper with experienced help. Case and point... Anderson 5 foot sliding glass door Home Depots price $2800 local lumber store $1700 exact same product. Manufacturers produce cheap products for box stores so they can sell cheaper than specialty stores but but break down quicker.
It looks like the same product but with inferior raw materials.
Solid brass verses plated, metal verses plastic, solid wood verses veneer, that is why you will never see the same model number on a Home Depot product as you see in a specialty store.Keep your community revenues local and buy from specialty stores.
Just a quick introduction to what I will speak later----what we see with the Obama HUD policies that change the way low-income housing looks is directly tied with Trans Pacific Trade Pact. Below you see how US global corporations in China handled their factories and employees. They keep saying they don't have control over conditions but of course they do. What Apple and Microsoft found to maximize profits was to have the factories with housing for the workers and those often included crop gardens for these mostly former agrarian peasants to grow their own food. Forget that these factories exuded the worst of toxic materials into the soil----these workers now have high levels of disease associated from working and living in these US Tech factories. Fast-forward to TPP and bringing global corporations back to the US to allow them to operate as they did overseas-----we are seeing HUD move to the same worker living where they work model complete with a centralized garden for food. This is where Baltimore is going----corporate non-profits are leading the way and Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins have partnered with developers as low-income housing is planned for along the current Baltimore City line. As with China, farming beside industry never bodes well for Food Justice......
Now, if TPP wasn't bringing global corporations back to the US to work under third world conditions---this model would be fine....progressives have always tried to tie these together both in rural areas and cities. The difference is that
ALL CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AS CITIZENS, RULE OF LAW, AND BILL OF RIGHTS WILL BE GONE WITH TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT AND PEOPLE WILL BE EXPLOITED AND ABUSED.
THAT IS NOT PROGRESSIVE----IT IS CLINTON WALL STREET GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERAL AND NEO-CON REPRESSIVE.
Citizens of Baltimore may consider what FOXX did to create a campus----and Johns Hopkins and its sucking of all real estate in Baltimore city center-----they are indeed building their FOXX campus.
A Chinese factory outsources worker dorms
Sci-tech | David Barboza, NYT News Service | Updated: June 26, 2010 14:53 IST
Shanghai: Under intense scrutiny after several suicides at its factories in southern China this year, Foxconn Technology, a major supplier to Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, has decided to stop operating its own dormitories for workers.
On Friday, the company said that it was essentially outsourcing its living arrangements to two Chinese real estate companies. The firms will take over the operations of 153 dormitories that house half of its 420,000 workers in Shenzhen.
The decision is the first time one of China's biggest exporters has pledged to abandon what most manufacturers say is an integral part of China's factory model -- a system that depends on housing migrant workers near factories that specialize in low-cost, around-the-clock assembly line operations.
Some of the world's leading electronics brands are investigating the circumstances surrounding the spate of suicides at Foxconn, one of the world's largest contract electronics manufacturers. Many companies are pressing Foxconn to improve living and working conditions at its huge operations in Shenzhen.
Health experts say the suicide rate at Foxconn is not above the national average of 14 suicides per 100,000 people this year, but the 10 deaths were a sharp increase from each of the last few years, when there were only one or two suicides. Labor rights groups said they believed that Foxconn's military-style management system and the company's highly regimented and even abusive working conditions were contributing factors in the deaths.
A group of prominent Chinese sociologists released an open letter this month calling for China to "put an immediate end to a development model that sacrifices basic human dignity." The letter was written in response to the suicides at Foxconn.
Whether Foxconn is really abandoning worker dormitories, however, is unclear. Some analysts are skeptical that Foxconn, a division of the Hon Hai Group of Taiwan, can afford to surrender control of its dormitories. They say the company may simply be trying to evade responsibility for poor living conditions by outsourcing the dorms to other companies.
"That's the logic apparel companies relied on 15 years ago when they said 'it's not our manufacturing plant so it's not our problem' if working conditions are poor,' " said Pietra Rivoli, a professor of international business at Georgetown University and the author of "The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy."
"But it didn't work then," she said. "And I don't see how this is going to absolve Foxconn of responsibility in the eyes of most observers of the supply chain."
In the aftermath of the suicides, Foxconn has been forced to cope with a wave of bad publicity at home and overseas. Since then, the company has hired sociologists, psychiatrists and Buddhist monks to advise the company's managers and counsel its assembly line workers. The company has also announced three separate wage increases and promised radical reforms. The company's chairman promised to do everything possible to stop the suicides, and Foxconn even placed safety nets on tall buildings at its two Shenzhen campuses to prevent workers from taking their own lives.
In recent weeks, Foxconn executives have repeatedly said the company was ill equipped to manage such huge factory towns or the social lives of so many young migrant workers. Many of them are between the ages of 18 and 25 years old and have come from some of the country's poorest provinces.
In its announcement Friday, Foxconn went even further, saying it would give up its "college campus style" dormitory system in Shenzhen in the hope that outside management companies could better integrate its workers into the local community and relieve some of the pressures of factory life.
"Providing employees with basic necessities including a safe and convenient place to live at the work site might have been sufficient in the past," Terry Cheng, an executive vice president said in a statement released late Friday. "But this arrangement no longer satisfies the needs of the young migrant workers of today."
The decision is a sharp turnabout for Foxconn, which has an extensive one-square mile campus in Shenzhen with high-rise dormitories, restaurants, banks, recreational facilities and a hospital.
Professor Rivoli at Georgetown said she would be surprised to see factories in China move away from control over their factories because, despite poor conditions, it was considered a highly effective and efficient way to lower costs and meet export production controls.
"It's the command and control model that has been very effective for China," she said in a telephone interview Friday.
US global corporations devastated China's environment and as this article shows-----the wealthy Chinese want their food from better environments. Well, if you look at what Trans Pacific Trade Pact does---it allows global corporations to ignore US environmental law and as such---we will see exactly what this article says---we just saw a merger of Smithfield Ham with a Chinese corporation and nothing is worse for Food Justice and labor justice than factory industrial meat.
This again threatens our good soil for growing local and ties American workers to more BIG MEAT. Remember, I try to order a Maryland crab cake and find quite often it is not Maryland crab-----much is being sent to Asia while we are eating food from less safe environments. This is what globalization and turning the US into developing world status is all about.
All HUD development around economics and low-income housing are taking these Chinese models as the footprint being built in cities like Baltimore. Johns Hopkins certainly has the Chinese ethos of anything for profit to make this happen!
Are We Becoming China's Factory Farm? US hog operations are feeding more than a billion people's growing appetite for pork.--
By Tom Philpott
| November/December 2013 Issue
Illustration: Michael Klein China is in the midst of a love affair with pork. Its consumption of the stuff has nearly doubled since 1993 and just keeps rising. The Chinese currently eat 88 pounds per capita each year—far more than Americans' relatively measly 60 pounds. To meet the growing demand, China's hog farms have grown and multiplied, and more than half of the globe's pigs are now raised there. But even so, its production can't keep up with the pork craze.
So where is China looking to supply its demand for chops, ribs, loins, butts, and bellies? Not Southeast Asia or Africa—more like Iowa and North Carolina. US pork exports to China surged from about 57,000 metric tons in 2003 to more than 430,000 metric tons in 2012, about a fifth of all such exports. And that was before a Chinese company announced its intention to buy US pork giant Smithfield Foods in 2013. The way things are going, the United States is poised to become China's very own factory hog farm. Here are a few reasons why:
It's now cheaper to produce pork in the US than in China. You read that right: Our meat industry churns out hogs for about $0.57 per pound, according to the US Department of Agriculture, versus $0.68 per pound in China's new, factory-scale hog farms. The main difference is feed costs. US pig producers spend about 25 percent less on feed than their Chinese counterparts, the USDA found, because the "United States has more abundant land, water, and grain resources."
Americans are not as fond of "the other white meat" as we once were. You wouldn't know it from the menus in trendy restaurants, but US consumers' appetite for pork hit a peak in 1999 and has declined ever since. Yet industry, beholden to shareholders demanding growth, keeps churning out more. According to its latest projections, the USDA expects US pork exports to rise by another 0.9 metric tons by 2022—a 33 percent jump from 2012 levels.
Much of China's arable land is polluted. Fully 40 percent has been degraded by erosion, salinization, or acidification—and nearly 20 percent is tainted by industrial effluent, sewage, excessive farm chemicals, or mining runoff. The pollution makes soil less productive, and dangerous elements like cadmium have turned up in rice crops.
Chinese rivers have been vanishing since the 1990s as demand from farms and factories has helped suck them dry. Of the ones that remain, 75 percent are severely polluted, and more than a third of those are so toxic they can't be used to irrigate farms, according to a 2008 report by the Chinese government. According to the World Bank, China's average annual water resources are less than 2,200 cubic meters per capita. The United States, by contrast, boasts almost 9,400 cubic meters of water per person.
Chinese consumers are losing trust in the nation's food supply—and will pay for alternatives. A spate of food-related scandals over the past half decade has made food safety the Chinese public's No. 1 concern, a 2013 study from Shanghai Jiao Tong University found. Judith Shapiro, author of the 2012 book China's Environmental Challenges and director of the Natural Resources and Sustainable Development program at American University, says she expects Smithfield pork to command "quite a premium" in China, because it's perceived as safer and better than the domestic stuff. Already, "US pork is particularly popular and commands premium prices, as it is viewed as higher quality due to our strict food safety laws," a Bloomberg Businessweek columnist reported last July.
But what's good for pork exporters may not be good for the United States: More mass-produced pork also means more pollution to air and water from toxic manure, more dangerous and low-wage work, and more antibiotic-resistant pathogens. And that's just the beginning. In addition to ramping up foreign meat purchases, China is also rapidly transforming its domestic meat industry along the US industrial model—and importing enormous amounts of feed to do so. The Chinese and their hogs, chickens, and cows gobble up a jaw-dropping 60 percent of the global trade in soybeans, and the government may soon also ramp up corn imports—because while Beijing currently limits foreign corn purchases, meat producers are clamoring for more. And where does a third of the globe's corn come from? You guessed it: The good old USA.