Pleasant Surprises Are Always Welcome

It doesn't take much to cheer me up most of the time. As rotten as I felt yesterday after over-extending myself in the heat on Wednesday, I perked right up after reading this L.A. Times editorial. The editorial board got it right this time.

Its subject is the Romney campaign attack ad claiming that President Obama is gutting the 1996 Welfare Reform Act by erasing the return-to-work requirements. That law was mean-spirited and misguided, based as it was on a lot of myths about Welfare Cadillac Queens, but it passed (and was signed by an allegedly Democratic president). What this administration did, however, was simply listen to the complaints of states trying to comply with the law and finding some difficulty in doing so, and coming up with a way to remove some of the burdens on the states.

As much as lawmakers in Washington like federalism in concept, they have trouble accepting it in practice. In 2005, Congress eliminated some of the welfare law's flexibility and imposed new paperwork burdens, prompting several states to ask Washington for relief. Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would use the authority granted by the law to let states experiment with new, potentially more effective ways to move parents from welfare to work. Most controversially, the department said states could apply for waivers to consider "work activities" and participation measurements other than the ones specified in the law. For example, the department said, a state might propose to allow longer vocational programs to be counted as work activities.

States get no more aid when their caseloads rise, so they have a strong incentive to move welfare recipients onto private payrolls. Nevertheless, critics of the administration cried foul over the administration's plan, and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney produced ads accusing Obama of "taking the work out of welfare." On the contrary, the administration is trying to get the federal government off the backs of states eager to spend more of their (limited) welfare aid on programs that really do help put parents into jobs that can sustain their families. That task is hard enough, considering the cuts that California and other cash-strapped states have made to programs that help poor parents obtain child care and transportation. Yet when it comes to designing successful welfare programs, Romney and other administration critics seem to believe Congress knows best. That's principled federalism for you. [Emphasis added]

I think the editorial is unnecessarily kind. This ad really doesn't have anything to do with federalism. What it has to do with is the ongoing war against the poor, particularly the poor of color. It was a "dog whistle" aimed to rouse the worst part of the Republican base. The important thing, however, is that the editorial board blew its own whistle on the distortion and lies.

And that was a pleasant surprise.

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me

I suspect that this article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune was intended to showcase the good works of the local churches with respect to the problems of increased homelessness among families. And there is nothing wrong with such a showcase: providing shelter and transportation to those who've lost their jobs and their homes is indeed a laudable effort, especially with winter approaching. That local religious groups have put together such programs fairly quickly is a testament to the principle of caritas. Still, given the expense involved, one wonders how long the groups can continue to provide this temporary safety net.

Churches are responding to the rise of homelessness in the Twin Cities by aligning with groups such as Families Moving Forward and sheltering families for three to four weeks over the course of a year.

It's a practical approach that takes advantage of churches' cheap, open space and abundant volunteers. But it also has critics, because organizers move families daily between churches and day centers and rotate them to new church shelters every week or two.

Minneapolis-based Families Moving Forward's network of 41 churches and one synagogue includes sites in Eagan, Shoreview and Wayzata. Transportation consumes one-tenth of its budget.

Shelter leaders acknowledged the logistical challenges, but said the model works because families have the day centers as their home bases.

The church networks also remain cheaper than most overnight shelters -- despite the transportation expenses - and foster meaningful interactions between the homeless families and their church hosts.

Ordinarily, these families would look to the municipal and state social services departments for assistance, but no state has been untouched by the economic meltdown. When joblessness rises, tax receipts fall, and governmental budgets start gushing red ink. The states and local governments simply cannot keep up. They can no longer promote the general welfare of their citizens.

The church projects are at best a temporary measure, and one that isn't always the most efficient way to do things, especially when it comes to the costs involved.

Among those concerned with the roving church model of shelter is Monica Nilsson, street outreach director for St. Stephen's Human Services in Minneapolis. She figures it costs up to $1,000 per month to shelter a family with the church model and up to $3,000 per month to place a family in a traditional shelter. Both cost more than vouchers families could use to afford housing.

"What they need is a two-bedroom apartment at $800 a month, which is cheaper than both options," she said.

Ms. Nilsson is, of course, correct. But where do those vouchers come from and who will fund them? As I said earlier, the local governments are stretched beyond their capacity as it is. Sooner or later, the churches will have run through whatever money their members can come up with to help the less fortunate. It's time for the federal government to step up and do the right thing.

First of all, unemployment is the key issue. A new, actually bold program of stimulus spending which will benefit workers rather than bankers needs to be put into place immediately. Our crumbling infrastructure would be a good place to start.

Next, an expansion of federal funding for affordable housing needs to be implemented on an emergency basis. Section 8 eligibility should be tinkered with so that more of the newly homeless can qualify immediately and be placed in those two bedroom apartments.

Finally, the federal share of state social service costs needs to be dramatically increased for the next four years so that state and local social service agencies can do the job they were designed to do.

And where does the federal government get the money for these programs? It borrows it while interest rates are so low as to be nonexistent. As people return to work and began paying taxes, some of those expenditures will be offset. Programs which benefit Wall Street and banks can be slashed, as can the corporate welfare inherent in all the subsidies they've garnered over the years.

It's our turn.

Reality Based Stimulus

What a treat to get a sound projection for what works this morning from New Jersey Governor Corzine. With a solid grip on the realities of the situation, he does a down and dirty job of making a plan that can work, and putting it on paper. The states have for the most part had the full weight of support for social services over the past eight years, and the situation is desperate on that level. Many are out of funds for education, infrastructure, and unemployment.

Warning: this is not light reading.

The stimulus should be roughly divided into five categories: infrastructure, countercyclical programs, housing, education block grants and middle-class tax cuts.

· For every billion dollars we spend on infrastructure, we can put upwards of 20,000 people back to work. On one hand, we've learned painful lessons about the need to modernize our bridges and levees. On the other hand, we must think broadly about the idea of infrastructure: How many hours do people waste circling airports because our air-traffic control systems are outdated? We must commit to improving our transportation system, energy grid, Internet technology, ports, public housing and school facilities.

· Unless we also help states shore up their safety-net social programs, the economic impact of the federal stimulus will be negated.

Most states are constitutionally required to balance their budgets. Given the sharp decline in state revenue, we are not able to support, let alone increase, spending to meet growing demands for basic needs such as unemployment insurance, food assistance programs and health care -- including mental-health services to those with developmental disabilities.

Most states are facing cuts to these essential services, reductions that will exact an enormous toll on our most vulnerable citizens and remove money and jobs from the economy just when we need to promote growth. Put another way, even if the federal government dedicates a large sum to infrastructure, cutbacks in state and local safety-net programs would cancel out much of the effect of the stimulus.

Over two years, the federal government should boost its countercyclical spending by at least $250 billion. It can do so by increasing the Federal Medical Assistance Percentages; the federal share of Medicaid costs; and other health-care-related programs such as reimbursement to hospitals for treating the uninsured, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and child-care grants.

Many state unemployment trust funds are already depleted. Rising unemployment rates and reduced revenue over the next few months are likely to trigger major payroll tax increases in 2009. This harm could be partly mitigated by doubling proposed federal funding for state unemployment trust funds under the Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act, which would provide incentives to cover vulnerable low-wage and part-time workers who are often denied benefits.

· Unless we strike at the cause of the meltdown -- the collapse of the housing market -- our economy will continue spiraling downward. The federal recovery package should include funding for state housing mortgage authorities and for programs that help people restructure their mortgages, stay in their homes and find new shelter if evicted.

· If we are to pursue relief and recovery, it's essential that we continue developing a workforce that is able to meet the demands of the 21st-century economy. At least $250 billion in preschool-through-college education block grants would help states meet their school budget obligations; more important, such grants would enable greater strides toward universal early childhood education and fully funded programs for special-needs students -- improving the situation today and laying the foundation for a better tomorrow.

· A sizable middle-class tax cut is key. Over the past decade, median family income has failed to keep pace with inflation, especially given the sharply rising costs of health care and education. Most Americans have lost ground. Relief for the middle class would help our families weather the storm and also boost economic demand.

In 1932, Roosevelt warned against being of "faint heart, fearful of change, sitting tightly on the rooftops in the flood." His words are still prescient today. We must be bold -- $1 trillion bold. America has abundant resources and a generous, ambitious spirit. If we work together, we'll emerge stronger and more prosperous than ever.

That we have to tighten our belts as a society, and get to work, is not a surprise. Eight year of right wing dominance has strained all systems to the breaking point, and economic sphere beyond that point. The diversion of all our national resources into corporate welfare has been a huge theft from the public.

The strictures we are all facing will not be painless. They will be a solid reminder that allowing wingers to ignore and trample on our laws does not make anyone better off. Even business suffers from 'business side' economics as practiced by the crooks who took over the White House in 2001.

That reality-based public servants are here to step in for the real work is heartening. We have many good people stepping up to the plate, and thanks are due to them for taking hold.

For shame, Republican Party for destroying the economy.

Can You Spare Them Some Help?

While I am terribly hurt by the jobs situation, and that lack of the opportunity for working people to support themselves and their families in any comfort, there is a problem with begging on the streets. Although I did propose that funding for certain programs in MD should be funded by Repugs begging in the streets, since they were creating the problem, I do see that some begging has gone pro.

At a place I worked near the LBJ Freeway, you could observe vans driving up in the early hours and letting out a contingent equipped with signs, lunches, that whole setup, to beg from the commuter traffic. That is the kind of approach that gives the right wing bases for insisting that anyone can work if he/she wants to, and gives them purchase in the public mind.

The professional panhandler, 'spanger', is the subject of this article by Steven Malanga:

Unlike their predecessors in the '70s and '80s, many of these new beggars aren't helpless victims or even homeless. Rather, they belong to a diverse and swelling community of street people who have made panhandling their calling.

Like most countries, America has always had its share of itinerant travelers, vagabonds and hoboes. But panhandling became a more pervasive and disturbing fact of urban life in the 1970s – a byproduct of the explosion in homelessness that resulted from rising drug use and the closing of state-run mental institutions.

By the crack epidemic's late-'80s peak, New York City in particular was home to a massive panhandling presence. The problem soon turned from irritating to alarming, as incidents of aggressive panhandling leading to violent crime began showing up regularly in the headlines.

The escalation – and other cities faced it, too – shouldn't have been surprising.

"If the neighborhood cannot keep a bothersome panhandler from annoying passers-by ... it is even less likely to call the police to identify a potential mugger or to interfere if a mugging actually takes place," wrote political scientist James Q. Wilson.

New York, fed up with the disorder, began to crack down on panhandling in the early '90s. Its success prompted other cities to follow suit – adopting community courts, forcing beggars to register for licenses (which discouraged them) and passing new anti-panhandling laws. These measures helped spark new development and interest in downtown districts across the country.

But over the last several years, the urban resurgence has proved an irresistible draw to a new generation of spangers.

There are a lot of organizations that will help out the really needy, and there are places like the Red Cross to go for help. It isn't actually necessary to beg on the street, and it's something that needs to be stopped for all of our sakes. We need to strengthen social support systems. That will be a lot easier if we aren't fighting the image of elements that want to prey on our generosity.

Changing Focus

The editorialists at WaPo are struggling, trying to find new ways to support a candidate who isn't giving them much grounds for support. Today's exercise is in diverting the voter from noticing that McAyn says different things at different times on the social security issue.

The candidate says he may be going to raise taxes to supplement the fund which has been so raided by his party, or maybe not. His campaign is contradicting him on this and several other issues, while saying voters should just ignore what the candidate says. This would be the nightmare of any campaign team, to have a loose canon out there in public who can't remember or doesn't want what you all decided on as your candidate's stands on issues.

WaPo tries valiantly to admit to the truths its readers will come across while deriding That Other Guy for thoughtful and workable proposals. I will give you the entire editorial below, and that will save you having to give it the hits you tell me will only make Fred happy that he's stirred up more distaste for his prevarications and gotten statistics to show he's 'popular'.

MAYBE IT'S just not possible to have anything approaching a serious discussion about Social Security in the midst of a presidential campaign. Maybe the best that can be achieved is do-no-harm Social Security detente, in which neither candidate so boxes himself in that his choices in office would be even more constrained by politics. That, at least, is where the 2008 candidates seem to be settling. The last few weeks have featured John McCain putting tax increases on and off the table quicker than a newlywed trying out china patterns, while Barack Obama, having proclaimed himself the truth-teller about making tough choices, proceeded to duck them.

In February, Mr. McCain seemed to be following in the "no new taxes" footsteps of the first President Bush, who lived to rue that pledge. Asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulos if he was a "read my lips" candidate, Mr. McCain obliged: "No new taxes," he said. Then, back on the same show last month, Mr. McCain sounded different -- and, to our ears, much more responsible -- when asked if he would rule out a payroll tax increase as part of a larger Social Security fix: "There is nothing I would take off the table," he said. Naturally, that got him clobbered by anti-tax conservatives. It didn't take long for Mr. McCain's own spokesman to repudiate Mr. McCain. "There is no imaginable circumstance where John McCain would raise payroll taxes," said spokesman Tucker Bounds. "It's absolutely out of the question." Except that it might not be. "Sen. McCain believes you can solve Social Security without raising taxes, but he also believes you can't start a negotiation with an ultimatum," said spokesman Taylor Griffin.


Switch to Mr. Obama, who got some credit from us during the primary campaign for at least acknowledging that dealing with Social Security would entail some difficult choices. Last November, Mr. Obama was saying, on NBC's "Meet the Press" that "we're going to have to make some decisions, and it's not sufficient for us to just finesse the issue because we're worried that, well, we might be attacked for the various options we present." Of course, Mr. Obama was promptly attacked, including by Hillary Clinton, for presenting one option -- an increase in the payroll tax for taxpayers making more than $250,000 a year. Now, Mr. Obama has refined the details of that proposal, and to call his approach finessing would be awfully generous.

As laid out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed by economic advisers Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee, Mr. Obama's tax increase would not take effect until 2018 -- yes, after both terms of an Obama presidency. One argument for this delay is that raising Social Security taxes now would just allow lawmakers to spend more of the existing surplus on other things; it's not until 2018 that the income from payroll taxes would fall short of paying promised benefits. But surely President Obama could find some way to bring in money sooner without letting Congress fritter it away on other needs.

Meanwhile, under the revised Obama plan, additional Social Security taxes on the top earners would be between 2 and 4 percent. That's only sensible: Soaking the richest taxpayers with the full tax would push marginal tax rates to dangerously high levels. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign has been deliberately obscure about whether the tax would apply to all income (including investment earnings could raise significantly more revenue) and whether those paying more taxes would receive extra benefits (in which case much less of the shortfall would be filled in). What's clear is that, however the Obama plan is crafted, it would not come close to solving the fundamental problem that Social Security revenue will not be able to pay promised benefits. Even assuming that Mr. Obama would tax all income and would not increase benefits, he would make up one-third of the projected 75-year shortfall.

So does Mr. Obama get credit for being brave -- or foolhardy -- enough to put out a tax proposal that is sure to be used against him? Does he get demerits for failing to be more specific, and more honest, about what will be required? Or does it turn out, sadly, that the "textbook Washington campaign" he derided Clinton for running, in which "you don't present tough choices directly to the American people for fear that your answers might not be popular, you might make yourself a target for Republicans in the general election," has something to recommend it after all.

This is as roundabout way to say that a candidate has the right answers as anyone ever came up with. I pity WaPo's hit squad, they have such a flake to try supporting. The pity won't hurt too much though, it's mixed well with schadenfreude.

The worst HiattCo. can come up with is accusing Obama of uppity courage in the face of adversity. The best they can come up with is accepting their own candidate's inconsistencies and coloring them as maverickety, oops, that 'rickety' stuff is an age/ability aspersion, isn't it?

Did You Know You Were An Experiment?

There are many things wrong with the way we take care of the kids whose parents aren't up to the job. The fact that some foster parents and facilities are doing the job for the money is disquieting enough.

But are we looking closely enough at the treatment they're getting, as well? It's sad to find out some of them may be into profits for treatment as well. The profits come from their research, and the kids they're treating are not voluntary patients, though. Free guinea pigs wasn't the role that these foster kids were put into any program to play under any concept of the fostering program.

One in three Texas foster children has been diagnosed with mental illness and prescribed mind-altering drugs, including some that the federal government has not approved for juveniles, state records show.

Many of these drugs are prescribed by doctors who have a financial stake in pharmaceutical companies' success, a Dallas Morning News investigation has found. Dozens of physicians who treat children in state custody supplement their salaries with tens of thousands of dollars in consulting and speakers' fees, and they use drug company grants to fund their research projects.

Accepting this money is not illegal, nor is it frowned upon in most medical circles. Many of the state's leading medical experts receive income or grants from drug companies, money that has funded groundbreaking scientific advances. And financial ties between doctors and pharmaceutical firms are frequently self-reported by physicians on their Web sites, conference programs and journal articles.

But while the psychiatric drugs given to foster children cost millions of taxpayer dollars a year, it's hard to know how much the doctors prescribing them are making from pharmaceutical companies. Texas, like most states, does not require disclosure.

The most prominent researchers can easily make $15,000 a year from each drug company they consult for, plus fees for speaking engagements that top $1,500 an event, according to financial disclosure forms some researchers are required to file because they work for state universities. Research grants often exceed $100,000, these records show.

Kids have enough to deal with, without this cynical misuse of programs supposed to help them cope.

Does the hippocratic oath have an amendment? I remember the "First, do no harm" part, and I haven't seen anything that would warn users of the medical system that it may be dangerous to your health.

Kids need protection, not misuse, by the agencies empowered and paid to care for them. The medical community does not need fostering under the guise of kids' benefits.

Confusion: Kill the Patient or Solve the Problem?

There has been no end of problems with Texas' new distribution system for benefits, so naturally the Department with the responsibility for helping the needy has decided to dump more recipients into existing confusion. This constitutes a death sentence for some, and is cynical in the extreme.

State social services officials now plan to switch 1 million or more needy people in the next year to a different application process for benefits, including Medicaid and food stamps.

The state says it intends to shift 953,000 elderly and disabled Medicaid patients into its problem-plagued "integrated eligibility" system by September 2009 – on top of its previously stated goal of moving in 288,000 more food stamp recipients by August 2009.

The state's decision, tucked into an advance copy of Health and Human Services Commission chief Albert Hawkins' planned testimony to a legislative panel next week, caught advocates for the poor, state employee groups, and a veteran Democratic lawmaker by surprise Friday.

They expressed alarm that Mr. Hawkins would so greatly accelerate the rollout of TIERS – the Texas Integrated Eligibility Redesign System – to aid recipients statewide.

"I'm concerned that the commission is going to take one of the most vulnerable populations, the elderly and disabled, and convert these extremely complicated cases into TIERS so quickly," said Rep. Elliott Naishtat, D-Austin. He said the Medicaid recipients are "most likely to have problems" and there could be "dire consequences."

The Texas State Employees Union, which has said an old mainframe-based system works much better than TIERS, denounced the plan.

"It borders on irresponsible behavior," said union spokesman Will Rogers. "They haven't worked out all the bugs with TIERS. You're playing with people's lives by doing that." (Emphasis added.)

Like the cretins in high office in D.C., these right wingers are determined to make it as hard as possible for the unfortunate to get by. As Eschaton cited this morning, we have an unconscionable element, enabled by the philosophy of You're On Your Own. It's a Law of the Jungle that pitches the elderly and handicapped out onto the streets to fend for themselves.

This should not be accepted by the TX legislature, and those who are promoting it should be redirected into a line of work more suitable for them. There's a soon-to-be renamed sewage plant in California that seems right.

Who Could Have Imagined?

The law of unintended consequences is a bitch, especially these days. During the Clinton administration, Welfare Reform was all the rage (and I do mean rage) and hundreds of thousands of people, many of them single mothers, were shoved off the welfare rolls into minimum wage jobs with no benefits and very little by way of backup from state governments. A dozen years later, in the early stages of a recession, states are now facing the impossible task of trying to cope with a surge of newly unemployed people who are without any kind of safety net, including access to health care.

An editorial in today's Boston Globe pointed to some of the difficulties and the sad statistics which point to the problems about to turn tragic.

THE GOAL of welfare reform wasn't to slash social spending to the bone, but to equip poor families to become self-sufficient. The rolls would shrink, the idea went, as recipients of cash assistance joined the labor force. States would then reinvest the savings in the toughest cases - such as those parents who needed extensive training and child care help to succeed at work. So what happened to all the money?

In Massachusetts, welfare caseloads plunged, from 103,000 in 1995 to 45,000 in February. But there hasn't been a dramatic reinvestment. Instead, from 1995 to 2007, total spending on low-income families fell by $588 million in real dollars to about $1.4 billion, according to a report released Tuesday by the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center and the Home for Little Wanderers, a nonprofit human service agency in Boston.

Sadly, the spending decline isn't the result of upward mobility among former welfare families. Massachusetts instituted welfare reform in 1995. Federal reform followed in 1996. Nationwide, the percentage of people living below the poverty line fell from 14.5 percent in 1994 to 12.3 percent in 2006. But the new report says that the Massachusetts rate has held steady at about 10 percent.

And even when families climb above the federal poverty rate, a paltry $17,600 for a family of three, they don't get very far. In Massachusetts, the rate of individuals living at or below 200 percent of poverty has "hovered around 25 percent between 1995 and 2007," according to the report.

While some of the statistics are reflective of problems specific to Massachusetts (home heating and housing costs), the overall problems are testing the will and the patience of all the states. If they are not confronted soon, the tragedies will grow and might very well consume an entire generation. The problem is that the states aren't getting any help from the federal government, and haven't for the past twelve years of Republican and DLC ascendancy.

There are answers to some of these problems, but those answers involve hard choices and risky political moves. The editorial offered a couple of suggestions that are right on the mark:

Universal healthcare is one good step. And the state can make long-term plans and short-term investments in child care and training. The state's Department of Early Education and Care has invested in full-day preschool programs that support working families year-round. Massachusetts must also help more adults gain advanced skills needed for jobs in healthcare, information technology, and other industries.

Cutting welfare caseloads isn't enough. A state investment in families who are stuck earning minimal wages could help the entire economy prosper.

That state investment can only happen in partnership with the federal government. While that won't happen under the current administration, perhaps the next (with a revamped Congress) might be persuaded to act. One of the first of those acts will hopefully involve revisiting SCHIP.

As a very wise man once said, "We all do better when we all do better."