FLAG BANNER
Help Remove BRIBERY FROM THE CENTER OF CALIFORNIA POLITICS
Home The Website    Corruption Updates    The Database    The Archives    Link Clusters    Why    How to Help     Contact
 
Fight Corporate Media Liars

CORRUPTION UPDATES 142

Posted: January 3, 2008, Draft edition

Previous Page: Page 141         All Archives               Next page: Page 143

California News

Contact Us: Committeefordemocracy.org

1) The Articles linked below were Abstracted from the sources cited. After the abstract there's analysis and commentary, links to related articles, and a link to the database with suggested search terms.

Three-way collegiate war brews

By Dan Walters - dwalters@sacbee.com

 

Published 12:00 am PST Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A3

 

http://www.sacbee.com/capolitics/story/603406.html

 

When the boards that govern California's public universities voted to oppose Proposition 92, a measure sponsored by community colleges to protect their state financing, it crystallized a growing level of animosity among higher education officials.

What was once envisioned as a seamless, cooperative three-part system of post-high-school education has devolved into an elbow-throwing competition for students, high-dollar private donations and, most importantly, state financing.

Community college officials fashioned Proposition 92 to protect themselves from being squeezed in a political vise – the powerful, union-driven K-12 coalition being one jaw and the politically connected four-year universities the other.

With the state facing increasingly difficult budgets, however, Proposition 92 has drawn fire from both the K-12 coalition and, in back-to-back resolutions adopted in November, from the governing boards of the University of California and the California State University system.

(CSU Power Grab)

There's little doubt in education circles, however, that as CSU issues doctorates, it will seek broader authority, with corollary impacts on research grants, campus construction and other financial matters.

The doctoral degree collision reflects the aggressively expansive attitude embraced by CSU Chancellor Charles Reed, who has pushed presidents of his 23 campuses to pursue the sorts of private donor and foundation support that UC had routinely received in years past. It also reflects the disarray in UC's upper ranks over a series of semi-scandals involving, among other things, under-the-table payments to favored administrators. There is a vacuum. Reed, it would appear, wants CSU to fill it.

The CSU aggressiveness is aimed downward as well as upward, as a current flap in the Bay Area's eastern suburbs illustrates. The Contra Costa Community College District's board is publicly upset by Cal State East Bay's decision to begin offering lower division classes at its Concord campus – thus competing for students who would otherwise attend community colleges.

These public conflicts large and small are the harbingers of what could become an all-out political war among California's higher education systems.

Top of Page


What's Really Going on Here?

The Dog Fight Begins

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., January, 2008

Our incompentent political leadership has allowed our state's schools to drown under a flood tide of crimigrants. The vast majority of our schools are no more than state-subsidized daycare for our crimigrant labor class. Few schools in the state can produce students capable of demonstrating even basic reading, writing and math skills.

Our schools are already in a death spiral from absorbing millions of un-funded foreign students during the last 30 years. While this growth generated major profits for the corporations, the taxes that should have been collected and spent to maintain our schools and develop infrastructure to match our growth rate have been pocketed as profits. Our schools have been sacrificed to subsidize corporate profit.

Adding to this financial burden is the fact that our growth has been rooted in the irresponsible assumption that the expansion of population, housing, and profits could go on forever.

An added bonus for the corporations was the fact that as our population swelled, labor prices declined as food, energy, and the costs of health and education skyrocketed.

Our 30-year expansion has drained our middle and lower classes of their wages, benefits, education, and medicine, and moved that wealth to the upper classes and to our Corporate Masters.

None of this would have happened if we had stopped the corporations and special interests from buying out our politicians, lock, stock and barrel. But our greed and ego still exceedes our ethics, honor, and ultimately our duty to protect our democratic institutions.

And now the grim dogfight between our already underfunded educational institutions begins. Expect to see the health, transportation, labor, and the corporate interests to enter the fray.

Our dishonest political leadership has already proven they have written off our educational system, and will not demand the taxes required to maintain quality education for all of our citizens.

If the politicians did demand the taxes from the employers to pay the educational, medical and prison expenses of the crimigrants, the employers would not be able to pocket the massive extra profits that hiring crimigrants represents. Crimigration is how the Corporations move the wealth of our country into their hands.

All of this irresponsible growth will end when the corporations, rather than the citizens, have to pay the full costs of educating, medicating, and incarcerating their crimigrant labor force.

Until then, we can depend on our corrupt, incompetent “leaders” to continue to tell us lies as they exchange our american working and poor classes for compliant 3rd world workers who will accept poverty as the terms of employment.

And now the dogfight over funding is begining.

As the brewing battle within higher education illustrates, the rate at which the state pulls itself apart increases relative to decreases in funding, and will accelerate as our national economic bubble continues to burst.

The big-money labor, education, medicine, and infrastructural interests are beginning to pull out the knives and turn on each other, willing to rip each other apart to get their teeth on as much of the shrinking wealth of this sinking ship as they can.

It is apparent to all disinterested observers that our polity is no longer democratic. Our state is governed by a political duopoly primairly funded and bribed by the corporate interests, closely followed by the bribes of the various special interests such as the lawyers, indians, unions, and way back there is the environmental "lobby," outgunned by every two-bit scammer in the state.

As a consequence of allowing politics by auction to run our state, our state is no longer is capable of protecting the general welfare of our citizens, nor providing the most basic services required for good governance.

Irresponsible government brought irresponsible growth, and now we are left paying the long-term expences for short-term corporate profits. This assures that the quality of education, medicine, and labor, and all the basic elements composing a good life for working californians will decline for decades.

Third-world poverty is spreading and deepening across california, and will accelerate as our economic bubble continues to burst. Soon poverty will escape the barrios and slums our politicians created to enrich their corporate sponsors, and spread into the upper middle and lower ranks of the elite corporate classes.

The foreclosures are just the beginning.

I must say that we have created the crisis we are facing, and we are not going suffer any pains in the impending decline that we don't deserve, and didn't create ourselves.

For the rest of us, sitting beneth the upper classes, and above the quagmire of 3rd world poverty, we will see a general decrease in all wages and benefits, all services, the quality of the roads and bridges, while increases in food, fuel, and inflation remove even the appearance of disposable income, and threaten to push our lives into the very poverty we used to profit from.

The decline in the middle and lower classes quality of life is accelerating from the dismal level it has fallen to during the past 30 years, of "prosperity," and will not stop declining until we take our democracy back.

Top of Page

Also See:

Mortgage crisis defunding cities and states for years to come, lat, 12-31-07

Arnie predicts 14 bil shortfall, bee, 12-12

Budget Cuts for Education on the way bee 12-10

Who will subsidize profits of corporations now? The Crimigrants? HA-HA: YOU WILL july 7, 07

Summary; Deterioration of the 2007–08 Budget, Elizabeth Hill, Legislative Analyst, Nov 14, 2007

 

CALIFORNIA PRISONS INHUMANE, NYT, October 5, 2006

State prisons in 'tailspin,' panel says, lat, 1-26-07

Study: Schools need billions: CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS IN A DEATH SPRIAL, BEE, 3-16-07

CALIFORNIA GROWTH BEYOND NATURAL LIMITS: POLITICIANS-CORPORATIONS WANT MORE DAMS, LA Times, 3-19-07

Schools call roll at a border crossing: Illegals drain Public Services while Enriching Private Interests, LA Times, June 25, 2007

Criminal alien' cases provoke national debate: Don't Forget the Ruined Schools and Hospitals..., Mcclatchy, September 4, 2007

Our diploma-less students: Editorial: Times Identifies Failures, But Fails to Call for Real Reforms or Substantive Changes, Chron, 5-27-07

Illegal Students Await Immigration Plan: Who is Going to Pay to Educate the Illegals? AP, 6-3-07

Bridges, Infrastructure Sucks. Essay: Cash Cow, SF Chron, 8-3-07

 

U.S. Life Span Shorter: American Corporate Greed brings Poverty, ignorance, and Death, AP, August 11, 2007

Survey Finds 43.6 Million Uninsured in U.S; Bush Assures Health Executives Continued Massive Profits, Public Health, Welfare and our Taxes sacrificed for Industry Profits, NY Times, June 26, 2007

Healthcare reform's unlikely ally: big business: Big Business Wants US to Subsidize their Healthcare Just Like we do for ILLEGALS, LA Times, 5-7-07

California proposal: Get health insurance or pay fine: Arnie: Nazi Enforcer for Insurance Industry Profits, LA Times , 4-12-07

 

 

More in U.S. plunge deeper into poverty, Mcclatchy, 3-1-07

HONEST STATISTICAL ANALYSIS ONLY SHOWS MONETARY COST OF IMMIGRATION, quarterly journal of economics, November 2003, Vol. 118, No. 4, Pages 1335-1374

Income Gap Is Widening, Data Show, NYT March 29, 2007

U.S. Poverty Rate Drops; Ranks of Uninsured Grow, Washington Post, August 29, 2007 (note: poverty rate apparently dropped only because more members of familes went to work)

 

Search the Corruption Database under

prisons

schools

economics

crimigrants

Speak your Mind here! Send your Comments about the Topic Above for Posting!

Submit Comments Here

Please limit comments to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number on the page. Example: (82_1.)

 

Home

All Archives

Top of Page

2) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Population increases drive state

By Dan Walters - dwalters@sacbee.com

Published 12:00 am PST Sunday, December 30, 2007

 

http://www.sacbee.com/capolitics/v-print/story/598757.html

 

Just before Christmas, the state's demographers released an update on California's population, having calculated that as of July 1, it had increased by some 438,000 souls during the previous year and stood at just under 38 million.

A few days later, the Census Bureau weighed in with its own estimate, pegging California's population at more than a million fewer than the state number and thus continuing an ongoing conflict between state and federal demographers about growth in the nation's most populous state.

Simply put, the Census Bureau believes that California has lost much more population to other states – some 1.2 million since 2000 – than the state Department of Finance, which believes there has been very little, if any, such loss.

Whatever the true figure, the new data are another reminder that California remains an ever-expanding and ever-changing society, and dealing with that fact is its most important and most neglected political issue.

Although Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislators are still patting themselves on the back for enacting nearly $40 billion in public works bonds in 2006, it was, at best, a down payment on an infrastructure need that is several times that large and, as the population numbers imply, will continue to grow.

Those 438,000 additional Californians (the state number) will generate a need for at least 150,000 new housing units, which means that while the housing industry has been clobbered and there are many vacancies, within a year or two, demand will catch up. Deciding where and how ever-increasing numbers of Californians will be housed is a major issue for state and local governments.

Those 438,000 additional Californians, too, will mean at least a quarter-million additional cars and trucks on a road system that is already severely stressed. And they'll expect to turn on their faucets and have water, underscoring the long-standing political impasse over water development.

The single most important factor in California's population growth is a continued high rate of births. Baby production declined somewhat in the 1990s, thanks largely to a severe recession that propelled more than a million Californians to leave the state in that decade, but has picked up sharply in this decade. And that means that the leveling-off of school enrollment – and even declines in some communities – will end soon as a new wave of youngsters hits the classroom.

When one drills into the data, the fuller dimension of California's population growth – the absolutely unique level of cultural and ethnic diversity it has generated – becomes evident.

While the state is, albeit slightly, a net loser in state-to-state migration, immigration from other countries remains strong, about 200,000 a year in the most recent estimates, and other data tell us that over half of the state's 500,000-plus babies are born to immigrant mothers.

The state's white population is continuing to decline, at least in proportionate terms, and already is well below 50 percent, while Latino and Asian American communities expand, driven by high immigration and/or birth rates.

Nevertheless, the vast majority of voters are white, middle-aged homeowners, and a constant political subtheme is the gap between the priorities of voters and those of the much more diverse population of nonvoters. Immigration itself is the single most important issue to California voters, several polls have established, and we have seen sharp political clashes over it and such issues as affirmative action and bilingual education.

Growth and cultural change, moreover, when coupled with economic evolution, drive both the state's perpetual budget crisis and the angst over extending health insurance to millions of working poor families.

Top of Page

What's Really Going on Here?

Stop all Demographic Growth NOW!

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., January, 2008

Top of Page

Also See:

HONEST STATISTICAL ANALYSIS ONLY SHOWS MONETARY COST OF IMMIGRATION:, quarterly journal of economics, 11-03

LIAR PRESENTS LOSS OF WORKER DIGNITY AND PAY AS “PROMOTION,” bee, 2-28-07 (new link)

CORPORATE-DEMOCRAT IMMIGRATION POLICY SUCCESSFUL: Poverty, Mcclatchy, 3-1-07

Immigrant cost studies fan debate: I Hate the Heritage Foundation, But they are Only Group to Add All the Costs of Crimigration, Bee, June 18, 2007

Gov. aims for healing, hits a snag with Latino journalists: Arnie Chides Corporate Slaves for not being Americans, LA Times, June 14, 2007

Government Set for a Crackdown on Illegal Hiring: Mexicans Out-Wages Up, NY Times, August 8, 2007

Competing voices in GOP on immigrant laborers: Buisness without State Subsidized Foreign Slaves? Wages will go UP! Sac Bee, September 7, 2007

STUDY: Black workers earn low wages, lack advancement: here's proof: Which Threatens Blacks More, Mexican Cheap Labor, or Chinese Racism? The Michigan Citizen, Detroit - MI, 9-9-07

 

 

Scientists: Water Shortages and Drought: CLIMATE ALREADY CHANGED, NO ONE NOTICED, ap, March 12, 2007

CALIFORNIA GROWTH BEYOND NATURAL LIMITS: POLITICIANS-CORPORATIONS WANT MORE DAMS, lat, March 19 2007

Global Warming Campaign Accelerated: Corporations try to Make Money from Global Warming without identifying or Addressing Root Cause: Massive American Growth, AP, 5-8-07

Sprawl clashes with warming in California, SF Chron, May 27, 2007

Immigrant licenses off table; Let's fight Global Warming with Autos for Every Crimigrant, Bee, June 26, 2007

Air board OKs first steps to cutting greenhouse gas emissions: Feel Good Environmental Protections Worthless in face of Massive Demographic Growth in California, Bee, June 22, 2007

Perata pushes $5 billion water bond: Perata Advances Great Water Grab to fuel further Massive Expansion of Southern California, Bee, July 17, 2007

 

 

Delta pumping to increase despite smelt: State Says: Fuck the Smelt, We've Stuffed Millions into California, Associated Press, June 16, 2007

Delta: We Don't have a Water Crisis, or an Energy Crisis, We Have Too Many People Crisis, bee, 6-21-07

Biggest Urban Growth Is in South and West, nyt, June 28, 2007

Weak Attempt to Control, but not Limit, California's Massive Growth Rate, SF Chronicle, August 27, 2007

Essay: Hippies growing us to environmental disaster while feeding irresponsible corporate growth-consumption nov 28, 07


Population increases drive state, bee, 12-30-07

 

Search the Corruption Database under

Water

 

Submit Comments Here

Please limit comments to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number on the page. Example: (82_1.)

 

Home

All Archives

Top of Page

3) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Pension Fund Shortages Create Hard Choices

By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

NYT, December 19, 2007

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/business/19pension.html?ref=todayspaper

 

Almost half of the states have been underfunding their retirement plans for public workers and may have to choose in the years ahead between their pension obligations and other public programs, according to a comprehensive study to be released to the public on Wednesday.

All together, the 50 states have promised to pay some $2.7 trillion in pension and retiree health benefits over the next 30 years, according to the Pew Center on the States, which spent more than a year studying the issue.

The amount does not include separate retirement plans run by local governments.

While some states are managing their costs reasonably well, the center found that others, like New Jersey and West Virginia, have made serious mistakes and are now cutting education and health programs as they struggle with costs incurred decades ago.

Still more states are at risk of being caught in a similar squeeze, the center said, because they are not setting aside enough money now, as their populations age and more public employees approach retirement.

“It is a huge bill,” said Susan Urahn, managing director of the center, a nonpartisan research group that studies public finance and other civic matters.

By way of comparison, $2.7 trillion is roughly the value of all investments worldwide in information technology last year, one of the study’s authors, Richard Greene, said.

Ms. Urahn said that the magnitude of government legacy costs was poorly understood and that one of the center’s goals was simply to establish where things stood.

Until now, there has been a paucity of independent data, making state-to-state comparisons nearly impossible. Previous attempts to rank state pension funds have been foiled by differences among plans. And efforts to describe the “average” public pension fund have failed to show where the biggest problems were occurring, or to give credit to the most successful states.

Unlike companies, state and local governments are not subject to federal pension laws, which set uniform standards for private industry. If a company skips its required pension contributions, it can be required to pay a big excise tax. No comparable enforcement mechanism exists for states.

Among the states that have fallen behind, some, like Florida and Iowa, have been skimping only slightly. But several — including Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, Michigan, New Jersey, Virginia and Washington — have contributed far less than the required amount, year after year.

Other states appear to have been fully funding their pension plans, only to run into trouble in the last few years, at which point they started to fall behind. States in this situation include Colorado, Kentucky, Maryland and Ohio.

 

Even in the most extreme cases, Ms. Urahn said, the public may not be aware of any problem because there is always enough money to keep sending out pension checks, and retirees do not complain. But once the money dedicated to pensions starts being depleted faster than it is replenished, financial problems are likely. The further behind a state falls, the more cash it has to come up with each year to catch up.

The Pew Center on the States is a nonpartisan research body sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

 

Top of Page

What's Really Going on Here?

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., January, 2008

Top of Page

Also See:

Public sector reels at retiree healthcare tab: Thought your Elite Unions Protected You? No, Dems Bought Union Silence with Massive Perks, While the Rest of Us Learned Spanish, LA Times, June 10, 2007

COSTS OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE BENEFITS COMING DUE, SF Chron, 11-19-06

 

Search the Corruption Database under

 

 

Submit Comments Here

Please limit comments to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number on the page. Example: (82_1.)

 

Home

All Archives

Top of Page

4) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

SEIU moves on after ballot

As dissidents fail to overturn 'fair share' fees, state workers union plans for new contract bargaining.

By Andy Furillo - afurillo@sacbee.com

 

Published 12:00 am PST Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A4

 

http://www.sacbee.com/capolitics/story/603291.html

 

Now that it has defeated a potentially costly insurgency, the leadership of California's largest state workers union faces a new challenge: unifying its membership ahead of upcoming contract and pension battles.

Service Employees International Union Local 1000 stood to lose $12.5 million in revenue in the campaign to eliminate "fair share" fees in its largest bargaining unit. But the rescission campaign failed when less than half of the eligible voters mailed in ballots, the Public Employment Relations Board reported. (apathy)

SEIU 1000 President Jim Hard said the defeat of the rescission campaign will allow the union to "focus on this huge and growing state budget deficit and our contract negotiations that are coming up quickly," as well as another challenge to its members' pension benefits.

"Unity in the upcoming budget and contract campaigns is critical," Hard said. "We're going to reach out to all those who have concerns and complaints and try to resolve them. We're all state employees who are affected by this. We need to come together and work for a new and fair contract."

The deal between the union's 87,000 members and the state expires in the middle of 2008. SEIU 1000, as well as other public employee unions, also is expecting to fight an initiative campaign next year that is seeking to reduce benefits for its future members.

Upset by an increase in union dues from 1 percent to 1.5 percent of their salaries, supporters of the rescission campaign obtained valid signatures of 13,000 Unit One employees to force the election. The unit, the largest in SEIU 1000, covers administrative, information technology and other state employees.

Despite the results, the organizer of the petition campaign, Lyle Hintz, said the effort "had some good, positive effects."

Fair share employees are covered by contracts negotiated by the union and are required to pay fees for bargaining and other services provided by the labor organization, even though they are not members. In Unit One, the fees come to about $73 a month for the fair share payers, or $2 below the dues paid by union members.

SEIU 1000 officials estimated that fair share fees accounted for $12.5 million of its $44 million in revenue last year.

 

 

Top of Page

What's Really Going on Here?

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., January, 2008

Top of Page

Also See:

 

Fair Share fees definition, from UC Berk union,  CUE

 

Assesment of SEIU battle,  by CSUEU

 

Assembly Dems Block (Indian) Casino Deal: Bribed better by Unions than Indians, bee, 9-1-06

 

Indian Revenge Attack on Dems for Killing Slot Settlement, bee, October 26, 2006

 

SEIU Political Corruption in LA Defended as Normal, lat, October 27, 2006

 

SEIU Union Chief gets jail..., lat, December 15, 2006

Search the Corruption Database under

Unions

Indians

Lobbyists

California

 

Submit Comments Here

Please limit comments to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number on the page. Example: (82_1.)

 

Home

All Archives

Top of Page

5) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Governor to head redistricting drive

He'll lead initiative to stop Legislature from drawing boundaries in its own elections.

By Jim Sanders - jsanders@sacbee.com

Published 12:00 am PST Tuesday, December 4, 2007

 

http://www.sacbee.com/111/v-print/story/540447.html

 

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who began 2007 with a plea for unprecedented cooperation in a spirit of "post-partisanship," is ending the year by throwing himself into the middle of what threatens to become a political brawl.

Schwarzenegger announced Monday that he will chair a campaign to qualify a measure for the November ballot that would strip legislators of the authority to draw their own political districts and those of the state Board of Equalization.

"We need a system where the voters choose the politicians, rather than the politicians choosing the voters," he said.

Republicans and Democrats struck a deal in 2001 to draw districts that protected incumbents of both parties. Only one of 53 congressional seats – and none of 120 legislative seats – has changed party hands in the past two elections.

The governor vowed to do "everything possible" to qualify a proposed ballot measure that would create an independent redistricting panel of five Democrats, five Republicans and four independent or minor-party voters.

One glaring omission, however, is that the Legislature would continue to draw congressional boundaries, an apparent concession to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Democratic legislative leaders typically have expressed support for voluntarily relinquishing their map-drawing powers. When push came to shove, however, the Democratic-controlled Legislature killed all four proposals it considered this year.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, through a spokesman, noted that he consistently has favored creation of an independent commission, but not necessarily the one backed by Schwarzenegger.

"Redistricting has become like motherhood and apple pie: Everybody's for it – and the devil is in the details," said Steven Maviglio, Núñez's spokesman.

Núñez is concerned, among other things, that the initiative might not create a commission that adequately reflects the state's diversity or gives sufficient weight to communities of interest, Maviglio said.

The Schwarzenegger-backed plan was crafted by California Common Cause, AARP and the California League of Women Voters, among others. Supporters include the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

The 14-member commission proposed by the initiative would draw new maps every 10 years, beginning in 2011.

Any California voter could apply to serve on the redistricting commission.

 

Top of Page

What's Really Going on Here?

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., January, 2008

Top of Page

Also See:

Democrats Break Ranks on Prop. 11, caprogressreport, 8-14-08

House Dems oppose Calif. redistricting measure, ap, 7-16-08

 

Leaders split over plans to redistrict: Nunez Using Fraudulent Reform to Protect Party and his Political Ambitions, BEE, 5-17-07

 

CA Dems Term-limit FRAUD, Bee, July, 20, 2007

Redistrict proposals all flawed, BEE, 6-5-07

 

Good analysis of Term Limit/Redisticting proposals, Bee, September 12, 2007

Arnie rejects Nunez's Fake Term Limit measure, Bee, September 17, 2007

 

NUNEZ-ARNIE REDISTRICTING STALLED BY PELOSI, lat, 2-25-07

 

Ca districts drawn by corruption, not democracy, bee, 12-3-06

 

 

 

Comments: Nunez' fradulent term-limits initiative

 

 

 

Search the Corruption Database under

Term limits

redistricting

Arnie

Nunez


Submit Comments Here

Please limit comments to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number on the page. Example: (82_1.)

 

Home

All Archives

Top of Page

6) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

Assembly bill would help cover state's uninsured

Health Q&A

By Aurelio Rojas - arojas@sacbee.com

Published 12:00 am PST Wednesday, January 2, 2008

 

http://www.sacbee.com/capolitics/v-print/story/603289.html

The California Assembly has approved legislation that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, say would provide medical coverage to about 70 percent of Californians who are permanently uninsured.

If the Senate passes Assembly Bill X1 1 after the Legislature reconvenes next week, voters would be asked next November to approve taxes that would help pay for the $14.5 billion annual tab.

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, wants to see the legislative analyst's assessment of the plan's impact on California's $14 billion budget deficit before deciding whether his house will take the decisive vote.

Schwarzenegger and Núñez say the Health Care Reform and Cost Control Act they negotiated would pay for itself by requiring employers and individuals – with some exemptions – to contribute to the cost starting in 2010.

The rest of the money would come from hiking the tax on a pack of cigarettes by $1.75, imposing a fee on hospitals and leveraging that money to increase federal matching funds.

Because Republican legislators uniformly oppose the tax increases, the financing would require voter approval.

The legislation prohibits insurers from denying coverage to applicants regardless of pre-existing medical conditions. It also requires insurers to spend at least 85 cents of a premium dollar on health care.

Opponents include Blue Cross, the largest health insurer in California, the tobacco industry and the pharmaceutical industry, which will fight the provision allowing the state to purchase prescription drugs in bulk, substantially lowering prices.

Other opponents include the California Chamber of Commerce, which contends mandating employers to provide coverage violates federal law, and the California Nurses Association, which prefers a government-run health care system that would cover all uninsured Californians and do away with the role of private insurance companies.

 

Top of Page

What's Really Going on Here?

Dems legislate massive profits for health corporations:

Payback for decades of Bribes

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., January, 2008
This is exactly why we need to stop the corporations from bribing our politicians.

Imagine what kind of health care system we would have had decades ago, if the special interests, in this case corporate "health," were unable to bribe our politicians. I imagine an efficient system where all of our citizens would be entitled to, and we would all split the cost of, a real public health care system.

No leaching, bribing, greedy deniers of care would be allowed in our country if the politicians belonged to the people, rather than being no more than tools of the corporations.

I can see a profitable place for private care even with a real health care system. As in England and Canada, among others, the upper-classes pay for private services, so they do not have to rub elbows with the unwashed masses.

So what's the score? Oil companies getting subsidized, under both parties, to screw us.

Pharmacuticals screwing us.

Our brilliant democrap legislature "privatized," our electrical grid, giving pge a licence to screw us.

Top of Page

Also See:

 

Search the Corruption Database under

 

Submit Comments Here

Please limit comments to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number on the page. Example: (82_1.)

 

Home

All Archives

Top of Page

7) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

The mistress, the wife and the O.C. sheriff

LAT, 12-28-07

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-twodebs28dec28,0,1683234.story?coll=la-home-local

Preparations were underway for Deborah Carona's 50th birthday party when the host learned who would be attending the party. He was stunned.

Among the guests invited to the celebration for the wife of Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona was the lawman's mistress, Debra V. Hoffman.

But friends and associates of the sheriff said the 2001 birthday bash -- midway into Carona's first term and not long before Larry King dubbed him "America's sheriff" -- was indicative of the frenzied lifestyle that Carona was juggling as he ran the state's second-largest sheriff's department.

Now, Carona, his wife and mistress have been accused in a broad public conspiracy case that alleges that the sheriff sold his office for a stream of gifts and money. All three have pleaded not guilty and said they expect to prevail at trial. Carona, his wife and Hoffman all declined to be interviewed for this story.

On the morning after he was charged, Carona was ushered into a courtroom ordinarily reserved for drug runners, bank robbers -- the sorts of criminals the sheriff had spent years trying to sweep off the streets.

The two Debbies sat nearby. Like the sheriff, they were in handcuffs.

 

Top of Page

What's Really Going on Here?

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., January, 2008

Top of Page

Also See:

Search the Corruption Database under

 

 

Submit Comments Here

Please limit comments to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number on the page. Example: (82_1.)

 

Home

All Archives

Top of Page

8) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

TOUGH ODDS FOR GAMBLING ADDICTS

As casinos have multiplied all over the state, so has the number of people who can't stop - and help for them has not kept up

 

Kevin Fagan,

SF Chronicle, December 24, 2007

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/12/24/MNE9TTF2I.DTL&type=politics

 

There are an estimated 1.2 million gambling addicts just like her in California - 300,000, or about 30 percent, more than before voters approved Proposition 1A in 2000 to allow Las Vegas-class gambling on Indian lands in California, according to figures compiled over the past decade by the state attorney general's office and the California Council on Problem Gambling.

At the root of that growth is Indian gaming, which has exploded in California from a limited-game $1.4 billion business in 2000 to a $7.7 billion behemoth today that draws more than 10 million gamblers a year - and has eclipsed Las Vegas' $6.5 billion annual take to become the premier gambling region of America.

Before Prop. 1A, Indian casinos mostly consisted of tents or warehouses offering "Class II" games such as bingo and odd poker-like card games that didn't allow a house bank for the dealer. Today, under the expansion to "Class III" - often called Nevada-style - games, there are 60,000 slot machines and 2,000 blackjack and other banked card tables in 57 Indian casinos in California, many of which are Las Vegas-like in glitz and allure.

 

Top of Page

What's Really Going on Here?

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., January, 2008

Top of Page

Also See:

 

Search the Corruption Database under


Submit Comments Here

Please limit comments to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number on the page. Example: (82_1.)

Home

All Archives

Top of Page

9) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

 

Top of Page

What's Really Going on Here?

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., January, 2008

Top of Page

Also See:

 

Search the Corruption Database under

 

 

Submit Your Comments Here

Please limit comments or essay to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number that you are referring to. Example: (82_1.)

Home

All Archives

Top of Page

10) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.

 

Top of Page

What's Really Going on Here?

Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., January, 2008

 

Top of Page

Also See:

 

Search the Corruption Database under

 

Submit Comments Here

Limit comments to 400 words, unless you write really well! Remember to include the Corruption Updates page number, and the article number on the page. Example: (82_1.)

Previous page: Page 141                 Next page: Page 143

Contact Us: Committeefordemocracy.org




Home

All Archives

Top of Page


Today's Headlines

1) State's already failed educational instutions ready to tear each other up over shrinking funding

2) Population increase driving state into toilet

3) Elite unions collected pensions we can't afford in return for years of political bribes

4) SEIU ready to defend elite state worker's penisons with millions in bribes for democrats: the rest of us get to pay for it

5) Arnie trying to break dem monopoly on electoral districts

6) Arnie and Nunez agree to subsidize profits of corporate health industry

7) Corrupt OC Sheriff, wife and mistress all face federal corruption charges

8) Gamblers, smokers, and other unpopular activities taxed instead of taxing corporations

9)

10)