Americans with Disabilities

Related: Healthcare by the numbers

Leno’s single payer “Medicare for All” health bill passes Senate

I am disgusted that Senator Dianne Feinstein, Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar and the Obama administration have agreed to conduct a political farce under the guise of "science." The irony is that the biological opinion that is being "reviewed" by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a plan that a federal judge ordered rewritten under the Bush administration. Now the Obama administration, under pressure from big water interests, is doing a review of a court-ordered biological opinion that was begun under the Bush administration!

Doesn't that put the Obama administration to the environmental right of the Bush administration, since it was the re-written biological opinion begun under the Bush administration that "limousine liberal" Stewart Resnick and southern California water interests are challenging because it is "too protective" of salmon, smelt and other fish?

Big Water Interests Hijack Obama Delta Science Team

Yay!

Maybe that's a bit of a stretch and she would have gone after them anyway, but it seems awful coincidental when she was the only DA in the room for Ahnold's grandstanding of this issue last Summer.

I'll skip to the relevant section in this report

IHSS fraud in Sacramento County was highlighted in a critical grand jury report in May. Problems statewide led to legislation this year that requires background checks of providers and unannounced visits.

[...]

On to this report in the Bee from July

[...]

At a news conference Monday with district attorneys who support his IHSS changes, the governor repeated again that "some people say that there is 25 percent fraud. That would be over a billion dollars right there."

Who exactly are some people? We'll find out

Related: California's Vulnerable Protest, and Demand to See Governor

And: The California Budget Crisis: The L-Curve and the $11.3 BILLION in ANNUAL Tax Cuts for Corporations and Wealthy

And: Memo to Darrell Steinberg and Karen Bass: California Voters Set the Democrats Free: Will They Act?

[OK, I don't know if he was in his office, but he sure didn't come out to meet them, and he sure could have left word to leave them alone. ... Oh, I know where he was, he was in his jacuzzi smoking a cigar]

Dozens Arrested For Protesting At Capitol

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- More than two dozen people were arrested for protesting at the Capitol Tuesday evening.

The caregivers and people with disabilities said they are furious that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is asking for more cuts to California's in-home support services.

Earlier in the day, about 100 protesters said they successfully blocked the entrance to the governor's office. The People's Day of Reckoning Coalition organized the protest.

The coalition sent a letter to Schwarzenegger in June, asking him to come up with a budget solution that includes new sources of income and not just cuts to services.

"We are calling for a budget solution that is based upon shared responsibility and shared sacrifice -- not a solution that falls squarely upon on the shoulders of children, people with disabilities, elders, the chronically ill, the unemployed and the impoverished," the letter said.

Schwarzenegger's office said it has asked the group to talk three times, but the protesters have refused.

[You notice how it doesn't say "he asked the group to talk"]

Click the link for video. And why the protest?

Governor Targets In-home Supportive Services while Speaker Boycotts Meetings

By Marty D. Omoto

Director/Organizer

California Disability Community Action Network

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger held a meeting with 5 county district attorney officials from Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego and Ventura counties, and underscored that any budget agreement must solve the entire $26 billion budget shortfall problem and must include several of his proposed reforms, including a proposal to combat “waste, fraud and abuse” in the In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program that serves over 430,000 children and adults with disabilities – including developmental, the blind and low income seniors. Only one district attorney – Jan Scully from Sacramento County – was actually present, the others being deputy district attorneys or other district attorney officials.

The Governor said that “this is the perfect time” to bring up his program reform proposals because “…we have a huge budget problem. When you have this kind of problem, you look for the obvious in making cuts or raising taxes.”

This rocks!

Capitol Protesters Demand to See Governor

Anger boiled over in the state Capitol as the disabled and their advocates temporarily blocked the main corridor

Judge Wanger Issues Injunction Against Federal Delta Smelt Plan

Schwarzenegger praises decision, campaigns for canal and dams

by Dan Bacher

U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wanger in Fresno granted on May 29 a preliminary injunction requested by San Joaquin Valley agribusiness against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) biological opinion for Delta smelt, a plan providing for increased protected for the imperiled fish.

Hear the rally at the California State Capitol
to stop funding cuts to public transit on June 17, 2008

align="left" hspace=4 vspace=4 >

Speakers addressed the proposed 10% cut of transit funds by the California State Legislature:

• Jacklyn Montgomery, California Association for Coordinated Transportation
• Rick Ramacier, Central Contra Costa County Transit Manager

• Mike Wiley, Sacramento RT, General Manager

• Barbara Stanton, Grey Panthers

• Mark Wall, Lake & Del Norte County Transit Manager

• Jennifer McSweeney, Ridership for the Masses

• and other riders.

Duration 1:04:01

Let's compare and contrast

This is where Arnold lives

This is where some of the constituents he's speaking of, live

Arnold Schwarzenegger to TERMINATE aid to Poor Kids

From the Mercury News

A beaming Arnold Schwarzenegger began his final four years as governor Friday with a grand inauguration befitting what he promises will be an ambitious second-term agenda. But ambitious means expensive, and this week the governor will begin to reveal how he plans to pay for a massive expansion of health care for millions of Californians, as well as billions of dollars for new prisons and other infrastructure.

Sunday, the governor offered a glimpse of how he plans to pay for some of it: proposing an end to state welfare payments to poor families with children after five years. Aides said the plan would promote personal responsibility and save nearly $500 million.

Thanks Howard

Howard on the Daily Show

The Fifty State Strategy

"We cannot run 18-state campaigns. We've got to be everywhere. We've got to be in Mississippi. We've got to be in Oklahoma. We have to be organized. By the end of this year, we have a goal of having a Democrat in every precinct in America,

Charlie Brown, Democrat, to debate John Doolittle (R) in Rocklin tonight wednesday, October 11, 7:30pm to 9:30pm Local cable, channel 4 Starstream in Lincoln/Rocklin/Granite Bay/Loomis area.
Also to be live streamed on the web by newschannel 10, http://www.news10.net
Doolittle gave very short notice, don't miss this if possible.

Picking the Pockets of the Aged, Disabled

George Skelton

Capitol Journal

May 15, 2006

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said it himself while unveiling his $131-billion revised spending plan: A Budget is "much more than just ledger sheets ... A budget is all about values."

"It's an expression of who we are," he continued, "and what we really care about."

Right. So I won't be joing the large cheering section for this annual "May revision" of the governor's proposed budget for the fiscal year starting July 1.

I didn't realize there were so many Al Qaeda cells in America. I guess we really do need to be afraid...

NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls
Updated 5/11/2006 10:38 AM ET
By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.