CALIFORNIA’S SHAME: Governor’s budget hurts the poor, disabled

By ELIZABETH SHOLES

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year is constitutionally due to be passed by the Legislature by June 15 and signed by the Governor by June 30 to take effect July 1, 2005.

The state enters the budget year with a persistent $9.1 billion shortfall. The issue is how that gulf between income and outgo will be closed. The governor projects doing so exclusively through cuts of $8.6 billion coupled with the creation of a $500 million reserve. No new taxes are on the table.

Approximately 85% of California’s budget is encumbered, or mandated, by numerous voter-backed initiatives such as Proposition 98, by bonds, and by federal mandates in spending levels. Consequently, the only discretionary spending, the remaining 15%, is largely in social programs, the subject of the governor’s cuts. In addition, the Governor has authorized the borrowing of what remains unspent from Proposition 57, the deficit bond passed by voters in the March, 2004 election.

SUMMARY: the budget will involve:

Borrowing:

• $1.7 billion additional borrowing under Proposition 57

• $464 million in new borrowing (to be approved by voters) to finance the state’s obligations stemming from lawsuits over flood damage;

Cuts to funding and programs:

• $2.3 billion cut from • Proposition 98 (constitutional school guarantees) funding suspension;

• $543 million - Education Program Cuts

• $1.3 billion - cuts in Proposition 42 transportation expenditures;

• $449 million - CalWORKS grant reductions;

• $260 million - MediCal Fund shifts

• $259 million - Supplemental Security Income/Sate Supplementary Payment (SSI/SSP) cost of living suspension;

• $195 million - wage and benefit rollback for workers providing In Home Supportive Services (IHSS) to elders and those with disabilities;

• $928 million - general government cuts;

• $475 million - cuts in Resources;

• $272 million - cuts in Youth & Adult Correctional rehabilitation and training;

• $20 million - Miscellaneous cuts.

No new or restored tax rate increases are proposed, but increased student fees at State University and University of California systems will be included as revenues.

This budget is balanced exclusively by eliminating resources for all our children’s education, that promote family self-sufficiency for our working poor families; and those who support those who are old, blind, and disabled. They are all paying to support the state’s balanced budget. Families working toward self-sufficiency will lose grants, income, and child-care while actually paying for their health care from a reduced income base.

SELECTED CUTS:

Health programs: The upcoming Medi-Cal redesign will make major changes that will impact recipients. Over a quarter-million families and one-half million aged, blind, and disabled will be moved to managed care, thereby giving up their doctors, specialists, and existing care coordination. Redesign will also limit adult dental payments to $1000 per year placing major dental work out of reach for working poor families. The hardest blow is the imposition of a co-premium of $4 per child and $10 per adult monthly up to $27 per family.

In Home Supportive Services (IHSS): IHSS offers assistance in daily living to allow elderly and disabled people to live at home and remain employed when they work. IHSS caregivers will have their wages reduced from $10.10 per hour to minimum wage. Caregivers will either leave the field for better pay or those remaining may be substandard. Without IHSS recipients may be institutionalized.

Welfare: CalWORKs, our welfare-to-work program, will eliminate the Cost of Living Increase for families AND reduce basic grants by 6.5%. Grants for families of three would be reduced from $723 to $676 in high-cost counties. In addition, the amount of earnings families may exclude from their income to determine eligibility will be reduced so they will lose their grants.

There are many other changes and alterations that will affect all Californians. For more detail, visit the California Budget Project, www.cbp.org.

WHAT ARE OUR OBLIGATIONS? The budget is a document of morality as much as of finance. Whom we support and whom we reject is a statement concerning our value of life.

Options: The Franchise Tax Board states that there is an $8 billion gap between the current taxes owed to the state and what is actually collected. The Administration’s budget proposes to capture only $34 million of that amount. Reclaiming this money is a key solution to these intolerable cuts.

ACTION: Visit www.capwiz.com/cachurches/state/main/?state=CA&view=myofficials#0 to contact your legislator and emphasize the critical need to restore simple decency to our budget process.

The author is Public Policy Coordinator for the California Council of Churches; sholes@calchurches.org

Grassroots journalists workshop February 12

The Community Alliance newspaper will hold a workshop for grassroots journalists on Saturday, February 12, 2005. The workshop will feature photographer and grassroots journalist David Bacon who will share his experiences. The workshop’s purpose is to improve the skill level of alternative media writers and photographers. The goal is to give them the skills they need to better tell their stories. We will also invite other members of the alternative media, such as low power and pirate radio stations, active in the Central Valley.

Ukraine’s Orange Revolution: learned lessons of democracy

By SERHIY SAMBORSKI, Ph.D.  
photo: Irina Palovska

You say you want a revolution,
Well you know,
We all want to change the world.
—                John Lennon and Paul McCartney

December 26th marked the two biggest closing events of 2004. Both affected the lives of millions of people. Both were of enormous magnitude. The first one was a man-made phenomenon. The second was a natural tide. One was unbelievably peaceful, the other incredibly violent. Both were entirely unexpected and completely destructive. The former annihilated an oppressive and corrupt regime that reduced the country’s population by three million in the past decade. The latter killed tens of thousands of people and ruined thousands of homes. These are new beginnings in the New Year.

On that day, millions of Ukrainian people went to the voting booths for the third time in two months. They stoically endured weeks of freezing temperatures in central squares and camping tents. They peacefully but resolutely rejected their government’s rigged elections outcome. People simply refused to be treated like a herd of masterfully indoctrinated cattle.

Media coverage of the spectacular victory of the democratic and peaceful Orange Revolution in the Ukraine was quickly swallowed by the horrific tsunami in the South Asia.

What happened in the Ukraine will have a huge geopolitical impact on the world. A peaceful and democratic nation with territory larger than that of Germany or France will serve as a perfect bridge between the Middle East, Russia, and the European Union. Its very location, fertile black topsoil, and well-educated industrious people have made Ukraine such a desirable prey for countless invaders throughout many centuries.

That’s why Russian president Vladimir Putin visited the Ukraine three times to personally express his support for the twice-convicted and now-defeated presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych. The Kremlin went far beyond its verbal support; it spent close to three hundred million dollars in illegal campaign funds. The price of losing the Ukraine for its political and economic influence is huge for Russia. Remember what Lenin said in 1918 when the Ukraine declared its independence after the bloody Russian Revolution: “Russia without Ukraine is like a body without its head.”

The Red Army was sent in, and Ukrainian statehood lasted only three months. But the resistance movement never ceased to exist. After the Russian Empire renamed itself the Soviet Union, Lenin’s bloody successor, Joseph Stalin, starved to death about seven million Ukrainian farmers who refused to give up their modest land ownership. The break-up of the “evil empire” in 1991 truly occurred only after the Ukraine declared its long sought independence on August 24 of that memorable year. The newly elected Russian president Boris Yeltsin rushed to instruct his Kremlin government, “You must wake up thinking about Ukraine and go to bed thinking of Ukraine.”

Ninety percent of former Soviet Union’s intercontinental ballistic missiles were produced in Ukraine; many of them aimed at the United States. The Ukraine was the world’s third nuclear power, trailing the two superpowers, United States and Russia. So the first thing the newly independent Ukraine did was to unilaterally give up all its nuclear weapons. International recognition followed immediately; generous promises of economic assistance were made. Russia, on the other hand, did not want to see the Ukraine moving out of its sphere of influence and wanted to maintain Ukraine as its military power warehouse. It quickly succeeded in electing the former director of the largest nuclear missile factory, Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine’s president in 1996.

Kuchma proved to be very thankful to his bosses in Moscow — he sold most of Ukraine’s strategically vital enterprises to Kremlin-controlled Russian businesses. On paper the, Ukraine remained an independent state, but in reality it remained a kneeled vassal to its “older brother” in the north.

President Kuchma quickly reinstalled the neo-soviet oppressive regime with omnipresent control over government and public institutions. Small and medium businesses were rapidly swallowed by several powerful oligarchs from Kuchma’s immediate family and cronies. For instance, the steel industry became controlled by the president’s son-in-law. Did I say “law?” This notion became almost extinct in Ukraine during ten years of Kuchma’s rule. His clique created the most unbearable situation for people’s survival.

In 1990, the Ukraine had 52 million people. By 2000, its population dwindled to 48 million. An additional 7 million are trying to earn a living in other European countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and Great Britain. Why? Doctors, teachers, and other professionals are getting official salaries of between $70 and $100 per month. Can you imagine the rest of the population? Kuchma’s economic policy pushed everybody to function in an entirely corrupt mode in which bribes, nepotism, and graft are commonplace. Nobody would voice open descent against the regime because everyone was placed in a situation of being a potential criminal. Today you say something against the ruling elite, and tomorrow the IRS sacks your business. All power structures of the government would serve exclusively the interests of those very few extremely rich individuals and clans who financed the “family.”

Small and medium business owners who managed to make a pretty decent living were far from being happy with the system because they could never be sure of tomorrow. They got tired of living under a corrupt, deceitful regime. They did not want to see their children leave for foreign countries in search of a better, safer, and honest life. They could not fully enjoy their economic opportunities seeing their former school teachers living from hand to mouth. Millions of young professionals had to leave their children and spouses behind in search of a much better-paying but low-qualified jobs abroad because they felt foreigners in their own land.

Last October, the Olympic champion in wrestling, Irina Melnik, came to Modesto for ten days as part of our sister cities exchange program. The 22-year-old fell in love with America instantly. At the end of her week-long stay, she burst into tears. When asked what was wrong, she bitterly explained, “No matter how hard we may work in Ukraine, we’ll never be able to have a decent life like those who work half-pace in America.” It struck me to hear such a doomed predicament from the first female Olympic wrestling champion in history. Many years of hard work on the way to Olympus would not pay off financially or even career-wise. The system rewarded only those who were good at cheating and stealing under the “umbrella” of their powerful patrons.

Then came Viktor Yushchenko! He said “enough” to the corrupt junta. They tried to poison and kill him but failed. This became that very moment of truth for millions of hard-working, honest people who love the Ukraine dearly. They quickly understood that only through personal, active involvement could the catastrophic situation be reversed. They voted for the gravely poisoned Yushenko on October 31st. The Kuchma government played a “democracy” game and announced that neither the opposition leader nor the Russian protégé had won the majority (51%) of the votes.

It took the government a week to count those ballots. Three weeks later, the runoff elections were held, and only one-day later Russian president Putin rushed to congratulate Viktor Yanukovich on becoming the new Ukrainian president. Everybody recognized the typical strategy of deceit. Even the Ukraine’s Supreme Court declared the election results rigged and therefore illegitimate. The second runoff was set for December 26th. Russians could not interfere as much, and its man Yanukovich stopped calling the millions of protesters “orange rats” and “billy goats” because ordinary Ukrainians became fully aware of their newly discovered power. They PEACEFULLY blockaded government buildings in Kiev and most other cities throughout the country. Police and army units declared they would not use force against their own mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. Many of them joined the protesters to protect them from the government.

So why did the seemingly powerful regime in Ukraine collapse so magnificently? How come even Russia could not force its mighty will upon these peacefully chanting Ukrainians? Why did money not talk this time? I asked my friends and relatives in Khmelnitskiy these very questions. They responded with the Orange Revolution slogan: “There are many of us and we cannot be defeated!” “Freedom cannot be stopped!”

Truth has to prevail in the end. Both Kuchma and Putin’s undemocratic cliques became so blatantly arrogant that they simply failed to recognize the rapidly brewing desire for liberation and freedom the Ukrainian people so gallantly displayed.

I bet a lot of similarly oppressive and corrupt regimes around the world are genuinely perplexed and seriously afraid that their own people who seek and deserve freedom may successfully follow the Ukrainian example. Not the freedom to consume. Not the freedom to destroy their own immediate environment and global ecosystem. Not the freedom to easily purchase weapons that kill. But the freedom to deserve truth.

My friends in the Ukraine recognize that the euphoria should be quickly shaken off. They observed incredible change in peoples’ attitudes toward each other, their professional duties, and moral obligations. They started viewing their elected leaders not as bosses but as those responsible to execute the electorate’s will.

My friends also realized they should work closely with the 40% from Eastern Ukraine who voted for the ex-convict. I suggested they start sister cities relations with pro-Russian, coal mining regions. Perhaps when the miners visit western, Ukrainian-speaking lands, they will realize that the word “mother” should not be used in forms of Russian swearing but rather be reserved exclusively and sacredly for the first woman and a native country in anyone’s life.

“Maybe I am a dreamer, but I’m not the only one...”

The author, Modesto-Khmelnitskiy Sister Cities’ Committee chair, is special correspondent for Koleso, a weekly newspaper in Khmelnitskiy.

ACTION: Express your support to our friends in Khmelnitski, send email to:
Zoya Didenko, chairwoman of Khmelnitski’s Sister Cities; prosvita@svitonline.com  
Ludmila Cherevchenko; cherevchenko@rada.khmelnitsky.com
Irina Pavlovska, Sister Cities committee member; clubsv@clubsv.com
Khmelnitskiy Public Library staff; cbs@rp.km.ua
Valentina Shulevska, bank president, member, Sister Cities; o.sivak@km.ukrsotsbank.com 
Viktor Vikarchuk; viktor@vikarchuk.com

Tsunami disaster highlights corporate media hypocrisy

By Peter Phillips

The terrible earthquake/tsunami disaster, along coastlines of the Indian Ocean, left tens of thousands dead and many times more people homeless and weakened. Front pages news stories swept the US corporate media -12,000 dead, 40,000, 60,000 and 100,000 made progressive day by day headlines. Twenty-four hour TV news provided minute-by-minute updates with added photos and live aerial shots of the effected regions. As the days after unfolded, personal stories of survival and loss were added to the overall coverage. Unique stories such as the 20-day old miracle baby found floating on a mattress, and the eight year old who lost both parents and later found by her uncle, were human-interest features. Individualized reports from Americans caught in the catastrophe made national news and numbers of Europeans, and North Americans involved were a key part of the continuing story. US embassies set up hotlines for relatives of possible victims to seek information. Quickly added into the corporate media mix was coverage on how the US was responding with relief aid and dollars. In Crawford, Texas President Bush announced that he had formed an international coalition to respond to the massive tsunami disaster.

The US corporate media coverage of the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster, for most Americans, was shocking, and emotional. Empathic Americans, with the knowledge that a terrible natural disaster of huge significance to hundreds of thousands people had occurred, wanted to help in any way they could. Church groups held prayer sessions for the victims, and the Red Cross received an upsurge of donations.

The US corporate media coverage of the tsunami disaster exposes a huge hypocrisy in the US press.

Left uncovered this past year was the massive disaster that has befallen Iraqi civilians. Over 100,000 civilians have died since the beginning of the US invasion and hundreds of thousands more are homeless and weakened. In October 2004 the British medical journal Lancet published a scientific survey of households in Iraq that calculated over 100,000 civilians, mostly women and children, have died from war related causes.

The study by researchers at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University and the College of Medicine at Baghdad ‘s Al Mustansiriya University, involved a complex process of sampling households across Iraq to compare the numbers and causes of deaths before and after the invasion in March 2003. The mortality rate in these families came to 5 per 1,000 before the invasion and 12.3 per 1,000 after the invasion. Extrapolate the latter figure to the 22 million population of Iraq, and you end up with 100,000 total civilian deaths. The most common cause of death was aerial bombing followed by strokes and heart attacks. Recent civilian deaths in Fallujah would undoubtedly add significantly to the total.

The Iraqi word for disaster is museeba. Surely the loss of life from war in Iraq is as significant a museeba as the Indian Ocean tsunami, yet where is the US corporate media coverage of thousands of dead and homeless? Where are the live aerial TV shots of the disaster zones and the up-close photos of the victims? Where are the survivor stories - the miracle child who lived thought a building collapsed by US bombs and rescued by neighbors? Where are the government official’s press releases of regret and sorrow? Where is the international coalition for relief of civilians in Iraq and the upsurge in donations for Red Cross intervention? Would not Americans, if they knew, be just as caring about Iraqi deaths as they are for the victims of the tsunami?

The US corporate media has published Pentagon statements on civilian deaths in Iraq as unknown and has dismissed the Lancet study. It seems US media concerns are for victims of natural disasters, while the man-made disasters, such as the deliberate invasion of another country by the US, are better left unreported.

MECA organized to promote equality for GBLT individuals

By JEFF GIANELLI

The Stanislaus County Chapter of Marriage Equality California (MECA) has been organized recently to promote equality for GBLT (Gay Bisexual Lesbian Transgender) individuals and their families.

Equality California (EQCA), the parent of MECA, has introduced a new bill called the “Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act” (AB 19), which would allow for same gender marriage in California. MECA is encouraging others in our community to write their local legislators and lobby for EQCA.

MECA hopes to create a local GLBT friendly business directory, and to initiate the formation of a non-profit organization that would create a GLBT community center in Modesto. The center would be the hub for all GBLT related support groups, as well as a place where those seeking information and resources could find help anonymously.

Title XV: The conditions in women’s prisons

By SARA OLSON, W94197

Title XV, the book of regulations that codifies the daily management of California prisons, must be changed to reflect gender differences. Women are not violent. Title XV must be made more gender specific. It’s currently written to apply to violent male prisoners.

When imprisoned, women tend to become depressed or to seek solace in a personal relationship with another prisoner. However, the California Department of Corrections (CDC) spreads the news that women are becoming more violent to justify increased imprisonment numbers and more onerous custody classifications.

Despite the fact that violent crime has decreased nationwide over the past decade to a 30-year low, the number of women in U. S. prisons had reached the highest amount ever by 2003: 100,000. In December 2004 the Little Hoover Commission, a state government oversight panel, released a study of California prisons and women prisoners. It came to the conclusion that California’s system spectacularly abuses women. The number of women in California’s state prisons has increased five times since the mid-1980’s.

Today in California, there are 22,000 women, inmates and parolees, whose convictions are for, on the whole, non-violent and drug-related crimes. Because of mandatory sentencing, predatory prosecutors, and a broken parole system that exists primarily as a prison reentry program, female convicts receive no rehabilitation or hope for a successful integration in to free society. Rather than address these problems, CDC policy is almost wholly punitive, introducing regulations that restrict personal property, access to programs of any kind and medical, dental or psychiatric care. Even the food is getting worse!

When a prisoner is released, she is barred from public housing and most welfare benefits. Ex-felons are barred for life from many well-paying jobs. Parole programs exist, in practice, for one goal: to violate parolees for any reason to keep prison population levels elevated to totals that earn state monies for the “corrections” system. Often, paroled women remain outside for only one day to a week before remand to prison. That’s not their failure. It’s systemic failure, but there’s no government oversight of these failed mechanisms. A bottomless public money pit finances these failures. Parole Department employees have no incentive to perform competently. In fact, success could lead to their redundancy.

The CDC is responsible for the wellbeing of prisoners. Instead, gender-blind rules apply in prisons full of generally low security risk women. Guards act as though they’re constantly in danger of attack from out-of-control inmates. At their training academy, prospective employees learn restraint techniques and methods for maintaining personal safety in the presence of menacing convicts. Then they come to women’s prison and hand out sanitary napkins or tampons and break up catfights between jealous girlfriends. They become lethargic. Those who don’t succumb to lethargy enforce petty rules that, if broken, can result in harsh punishment or even additional time. According to one old-timer, in CCWF’s fourteen-year history, no officer has been stabbed. Only four have been actually jumped and punched. There is no inmate-on-inmate murder, just death by suicide and medical neglect. But the guard’s union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, must push the violence quotient because it guarantees jobs.

At Central California Women’s Facility (C.C.W.F.) and its sister prison across the road, Valley State Prison for Women (V.S.P.W.) the only major non-gender blind policy is dorm housing. Men are housed two to a cell to prevent fights. Women are housed eight to a cell in a room originally designed for four people. Women who are mutually hostile, mentally ill or lifers and parole violators.