42 Criminilazing poverty: ban on begging, sleeping on the sidewalk

The elite who caused the Financial Crisis now claim it's nearly over. They "talk up" the stockmarket, keep house prices up with First Home Owners Grants that mean buyers don't even need a deposit - anything to restore 'Confidence', ie dupe more "Greater Fools"

Yet the victims - the unemployed - are not allowed to privide for themselves. There is no "human right" to build a roof over your head - not even on your own land. Instead, you have to run the gamut of Building Inspectors. Home Birth is equally harassed, and Funeral Parlours make sure that Death is expensive too.

(1) Criminilazing poverty: ban on begging, sleeping on the sidewalk
(2) US Heath Insurance companies behind campaign against 'socialized medicine'
(3) Shift Social Security from payroll deductions to income taxes
(4) Private place for business to schmooze with premiers
(5) Schmooze: Do we speak Yiddish?
(6) Who's who of Labor in the lobby business

(1) Criminilazing poverty: ban on begging, sleeping on the sidewalk

From: World View <ummyakoub@yahoo.com> Date: 10.08.2009 07:10 PM

Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?
By BARBARA EHRENREICH
August 8, 2009
NEW YORK TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/opinion/09ehrenreich.html?em

IT'S too bad so many people are falling into poverty at a time when it's almost illegal to be poor. You won't be arrested for shopping in a Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you're well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life — like sitting, sleeping, lying down or loitering. City officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification in the '80s and '90s. "If you're lying on a sidewalk, whether you're homeless or a millionaire, you're in violation of the ordinance," a city attorney in St. Petersburg, Fla., said in June, echoing Anatole France's immortal observation that "the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges."

In defiance of all reason and compassion, the criminalization of poverty has actually been intensifying as the recession generates ever more poverty. So concludes a new study from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, which found that the number of ordinances against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with ticketing and arrests for more "neutral" infractions like jaywalking, littering or carrying an open container of alcohol. The report lists America's 10 "meanest" cities — the largest of which are Honolulu, Los Angeles and San Francisco — but new contestants are springing up every day. The City Council in Grand Junction, Colo., has been considering a ban on begging, and at the end of June, Tempe, Ariz., carried out a four-day crackdown on the indigent. How do you know when someone is indigent? As a Las Vegas statute puts it, "An indigent person is a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive" public assistance.

That could be me before the blow-drying and eyeliner, and it's definitely Al Szekely at any time of day. A grizzled 62-year-old, he inhabits a wheelchair and is often found on G Street in Washington — the city that is ultimately responsible for the bullet he took in the spine in Fu Bai, Vietnam, in 1972. He had been enjoying the luxury of an indoor bed until last December, when the police swept through the shelter in the middle of the night looking for men with outstanding warrants.

It turned out that Mr. Szekely, who is an ordained minister and does not drink, do drugs or curse in front of ladies, did indeed have a warrant — for not appearing in court to face a charge of "criminal trespassing" (for sleeping on a sidewalk in a Washington suburb). So he was dragged out of the shelter and put in jail. "Can you imagine?" asked Eric Sheptock, the homeless advocate (himself a shelter resident) who introduced me to Mr. Szekely. "They arrested a homeless man in a shelter for being homeless."

The viciousness of the official animus toward the indigent can be breathtaking. A few years ago, a group called Food Not Bombs started handing out free vegan food to hungry people in public parks around the nation. A number of cities, led by Las Vegas, passed ordinances forbidding the sharing of food with the indigent in public places, and several members of the group were arrested. A federal judge just overturned the anti-sharing law in Orlando, Fla., but the city is appealing. And now Middletown, Conn., is cracking down on food sharing.

If poverty tends to criminalize people, it is also true that criminalization inexorably impoverishes them. Scott Lovell, another homeless man I interviewed in Washington, earned his record by committing a significant crime — by participating in the armed robbery of a steakhouse when he was 15. Although Mr. Lovell dresses and speaks more like a summer tourist from Ohio than a felon, his criminal record has made it extremely difficult for him to find a job.

For Al Szekely, the arrest for trespassing meant a further descent down the circles of hell. While in jail, he lost his slot in the shelter and now sleeps outside the Verizon Center sports arena, where the big problem, in addition to the security guards, is mosquitoes. His stick-thin arms are covered with pink crusty sores, which he treats with a regimen of frantic scratching.

For the not-yet-homeless, there are two main paths to criminalization — one involving debt, and the other skin color. Anyone of any color or pre-recession financial status can fall into debt, and although we pride ourselves on the abolition of debtors' prison, in at least one state, Texas, people who can't afford to pay their traffic fines may be made to "sit out their tickets" in jail.

Often the path to legal trouble begins when one of your creditors has a court issue a summons for you, which you fail to honor for one reason or another. (Maybe your address has changed or you never received it.) Now you're in contempt of court. Or suppose you miss a payment and, before you realize it, your car insurance lapses; then you're stopped for something like a broken headlight. Depending on the state, you may have your car impounded or face a steep fine — again, exposing you to a possible summons. "There's just no end to it once the cycle starts," said Robert Solomon of Yale Law School. "It just keeps accelerating."

By far the most reliable way to be criminalized by poverty is to have the wrong-color skin. Indignation runs high when a celebrity professor encounters racial profiling, but for decades whole communities have been effectively "profiled" for the suspicious combination of being both dark-skinned and poor, thanks to the "broken windows" or "zero tolerance" theory of policing popularized by Rudy Giuliani, when he was mayor of New York City, and his police chief William Bratton.

Flick a cigarette in a heavily patrolled community of color and you're littering; wear the wrong color T-shirt and you're displaying gang allegiance.

Just strolling around in a dodgy neighborhood can mark you as a potential suspect, according to "Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice," an eye-opening new book by Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor in Washington. If you seem at all evasive, which I suppose is like looking "overly anxious" in an airport, Mr. Butler writes, the police "can force you to stop just to investigate why you don't want to talk to them." And don't get grumpy about it or you could be "resisting arrest."

There's no minimum age for being sucked into what the Children's Defense Fund calls "the cradle-to-prison pipeline." In New York City, a teenager caught in public housing without an ID — say, while visiting a friend or relative — can be charged with criminal trespassing and wind up in juvenile detention, Mishi Faruqee, the director of youth justice programs for the Children's Defense Fund of New York, told me. In just the past few months, a growing number of cities have taken to ticketing and sometimes handcuffing teenagers found on the streets during school hours.

In Los Angeles, the fine for truancy is $250; in Dallas, it can be as much as $500 — crushing amounts for people living near the poverty level. According to the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union, an advocacy group, 12,000 students were ticketed for truancy in 2008.

Why does the Bus Riders Union care? Because it estimates that 80 percent of the "truants," especially those who are black or Latino, are merely late for school, thanks to the way that over-filled buses whiz by them without stopping. I met people in Los Angeles who told me they keep their children home if there's the slightest chance of their being late. It's an ingenious anti-truancy policy that discourages parents from sending their youngsters to school.

The pattern is to curtail financing for services that might help the poor while ramping up law enforcement: starve school and public transportation budgets, then make truancy illegal. Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Be sure to harass street vendors when there are few other opportunities for employment. The experience of the poor, and especially poor minorities, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks.

And if you should make the mistake of trying to escape via a brief marijuana-induced high, it's "gotcha" all over again, because that of course is illegal too. One result is our staggering level of incarceration, the highest in the world. Today the same number of Americans — 2.3 million — reside in prison as in public housing.

Meanwhile, the public housing that remains has become ever more prisonlike, with residents subjected to drug testing and random police sweeps. The safety net, or what's left of it, has been transformed into a dragnet.

Some of the community organizers I've talked to around the country think they know why "zero tolerance" policing has ratcheted up since the recession began. Leonardo Vilchis of the Union de Vecinos, a community organization in Los Angeles, suspects that "poor people have become a source of revenue" for recession-starved cities, and that the police can always find a violation leading to a fine. If so, this is a singularly demented fund-raising strategy.

At a Congressional hearing in June, the president of the National Association ofCriminal Defense Lawyers testified about the pervasive "overcriminalization of crimes that are not a risk to public safety," like sleeping in a cardboard box or jumping turnstiles, which leads to expensively clogged courts and prisons.

A Pew Center study released in March found states spending a record $51.7 billion on corrections, an amount that the center judged, with an excess of moderation, to be "too much."

But will it be enough — the collision of rising prison populations that we can't afford and the criminalization of poverty — to force us to break the mad cycle of poverty and punishment? With the number of people in poverty increasing (some estimates suggest it's up to 45 million to 50 million, from 37 million in 2007) several states are beginning to ease up on the criminalization of poverty — for example, by sending drug offenders to treatment rather than jail, shortening probation and reducing the number of people locked up for technical violations like missed court appointments. But others are tightening the screws: not only increasing the number of "crimes" but also charging prisoners for their room and board — assuring that they'll be released with potentially criminalizing levels of debt.

Maybe we can't afford the measures that would begin to alleviate America's growing poverty — affordable housing, good schools, reliable public transportation and so forth. I would argue otherwise, but for now I'd be content with a consensus that, if we can't afford to truly help the poor, neither can we afford to go on tormenting them.

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author, most recently, of "This Land Is Their Land: Reports From a Divided Nation."

(2) US Heath Insurance companies behind campaign against 'socialized medicine'

From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date:  07.08.2009 01:54 PM

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rachlis3-2009aug03,0,1367307,print.story

A Canadian doctor diagnoses U.S. healthcare

The caricature of 'socialized medicine' is used by corporate interests to confuse Americans and maintain their bottom lines instead of patients' health.

By Michael M. Rachlis, August 3, 2009

Universal health insurance is on the American policy agenda for the fifth time since World War II. In the 1960s, the U.S. chose public coverage for only the elderly and the very poor, while Canada opted for a universal program for hospitals and physicians' services. As a policy analyst, I know there are lessons to be learned from studying the effect of different approaches in similar jurisdictions. But, as a Canadian with lots of American friends and relatives, I am saddened that Americans seem incapable of learning them.

Our countries are joined at the hip. We peacefully share a continent, a British heritage of representative government and now ownership of GM. And, until 50 years ago, we had similar health systems, healthcare costs and vital statistics.

The U.S.' and Canada's different health insurance decisions make up the world's largest health policy experiment. And the results?

On coverage, all Canadians have insurance for hospital and physician services. There are no deductibles or co-pays. Most provinces also provide coverage for programs for home care, long-term care, pharmaceuticals and durable medical equipment, although there are co-pays.

On the U.S. side, 46 million people have no insurance, millions are underinsured and healthcare bills bankrupt more than 1 million Americans every year.

Lesson No. 1: A single-payer system would eliminate most U.S. coverage problems.

On costs, Canada spends 10% of its economy on healthcare; the U.S. spends 16%. The extra 6% of GDP amounts to more than $800 billion per year. The spending gap between the two nations is almost entirely because of higher overhead. Canadians don't need thousands of actuaries to set premiums or thousands of lawyers to deny care. Even the U.S. Medicare program has 80% to 90% lower administrative costs than private Medicare Advantage policies. And providers and suppliers can't charge as much when they have to deal with a single payer.

Lessons No. 2 and 3: Single-payer systems reduce duplicative administrative costs and can negotiate lower prices.

Because most of the difference in spending is for non-patient care, Canadians actually get more of most services. We see the doctor more often and take more drugs. We even have more lung transplant surgery. We do get less heart surgery, but not so much less that we are any more likely to die of heart attacks. And we now live nearly three years longer, and our infant mortality is 20% lower.

Lesson No. 4: Single-payer plans can deliver the goods because their funding goes to services, not overhead.

The Canadian system does have its problems, and these also provide important lessons. Notwithstanding a few well-publicized and misleading cases, Canadians needing urgent care get immediate treatment. But we do wait too long for much elective care, including appointments with family doctors and specialists and selected surgical procedures. We also do a poor job managing chronic disease.

However, according to the New York-based Commonwealth Fund, both the American and the Canadian systems fare badly in these areas. In fact, an April U.S. Government Accountability Office report noted that U.S. emergency room wait times have increased, and patients who should be seen immediately are now waiting an average of 28 minutes. The GAO has also raised concerns about two- to four-month waiting times for mammograms.

On closer examination, most of these problems have little to do with public insurance or even overall resources. Despite the delays, the GAO said there is enough mammogram capacity.

These problems are largely caused by our shared politico-cultural barriers to quality of care. In 19th century North America, doctors waged a campaign against quacks and snake-oil salesmen and attained a legislative monopoly on medical practice. In return, they promised to set and enforce standards of practice. By and large, it didn't happen. And perverse incentives like fee-for-service make things even worse.

Using techniques like those championed by the Boston-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement, providers can eliminate most delays. In Hamilton, Ontario, 17 psychiatrists have linked up with 100 family doctors and 80 social workers to offer some of the world's best access to mental health services. And in Toronto, simple process improvements mean you can now get your hip assessed in one week and get a new one, if you need it, within a month.

Lesson No. 5: Canadian healthcare delivery problems have nothing to do with our single-payer system and can be fixed by re-engineering for quality.

U.S. health policy would be miles ahead if policymakers could learn these lessons. But they seem less interested in Canada's, or any other nation's, experience than ever. Why?

American democracy runs on money. Pharmaceutical and insurance companies have the fuel. Analysts see hundreds of billions of premiums wasted on overhead that could fund care for the uninsured. But industry executives and shareholders see bonuses and dividends.

Compounding the confusion is traditional American ignorance of what happens north of the border, which makes it easy to mislead people. Boilerplate anti-government rhetoric does the same. The U.S. media, legislators and even presidents have claimed that our "socialized" system doesn't let us choose our own doctors. In fact, Canadians have free choice of physicians. It's Americans these days who are restricted to "in-plan" doctors.

Unfortunately, many Americans won't get to hear the straight goods because vested interests are promoting a caricature of the Canadian experience.

Michael M. Rachlis is a physician, health policy analyst and author in Toronto.

(3) Shift Social Security from payroll deductions to income taxes

http://www.examiner.com/x-654-Baby-Boomer-Examiner~y2009m8d5-Shift-Social-Security-to-income-taxes

Shift Social Security to income taxes?
August 5, 7:28 AM

Paul Briand

Researchers are asking the question: Instead of paying for Social Security through payroll taxes, should we pay for them through income taxes?

The biggest problem with the current system, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, is that eventually Social Security will run out of money. In addition, the researchers said, the payroll deduction system is inequitable with younger workers paying into a trust fund that might not benefit them when they retire.

In addition, because of a cap on higher-income wage earner, the tax burden is distributed unevenly among low- to middle-income workers.

Baby Boomers are applying for Social Security benefits at a rate of 10,000 a day -- a rate that will continue for the next 20 years.

The question the research center raises is whether there is a more lasting and more equitable way to fund Social Security.

It suggests making it part of the income tax.

"The average income tax rate would have to increase," CRR researchers said.

"For example, to pay off the debt over the next hundred years would require that the ratio of taxes to taxable income would have to be 2.8 percentage points higher than otherwise," they added. "In 2009, that increase would mean income taxes would have to rise from 19 percent of taxable income to 22 percent."

It should be noted that this represents a suggestion, a discussion point. No legislation in this regard has been filed.

(4) Private place for business to schmooze with premiers

Dennis Shanahan, Political editor | August 08, 2009

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25899354-601,00.html

LABOR'S lobbyist firm Hawker-Britton has been hosting private Sydney dinners for corporate clients and their guests to meet out-of-town ALP premiers for more than 10 years.

The lobbyist firm does not charge its clients extra for the private access to the Labor leaders at plush dinners that is supplied as part of the standard service.

The premiers attending the dinners, at Circular Quay's swish ARIA Restaurant overlooking the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, make room on their taxpayer-funded trips to Sydney to talk to NSW businesses at the Hawker-Britton dinners.

The dinners are usually for 15 to 20 guests, who can ask about business problems or prospects in private and seek follow-up meetings.

Hawker Britton's managing director Bruce Hawker yesterday told The Weekend Australian he had been hosting the dinners in Sydney since 1998. A corporate guest at one of the dinners told The Weekend Australian that "what Hawker-Britton do well is provide access at the highest level in the right atmosphere". He said there was "no extra charge for the premiers' dinners; it's part of being a client and within the general fees".

In recent weeks, special and private access to premiers and ministers, fundraising payments for ministerial meetings, political donations and the role of lobbyists who are former Labor politicians have rocked the Queensland Labor government and spawned calls for an independent anti-corruption commission in South Australia.
At the Hawker-Britton dinners, there is no fundraising. Hawker-Britton gets the business advantage of providing access to the premiers for its clients and guests and Labor gets election assistance in return.

Mr Hawker said that during that time, most of the serving Labor premiers would have taken "the opportunity to talk to NSW businesses with a frank exchange of views".

Hawker-Britton donates funds to the NSW Labor Party, works on Labor's election campaigns and allows its staff to volunteer and work for nothing for the ALP on campaigns. In two years, the ARIA restaurant has also donated $4500 to the NSW ALP.

South Australian Premier Mike Rann has defended his attendance at the Labor lobbyists' dinner as being in the interests of South Australia.

Mr Hawker said that from memory, the only serving Labor premiers who had not attended were John Brumby and his predecessor, Steve Bracks. Former Queensland premier Peter Beattie attended more than one of the dinners.

"Most of the premiers take advantage of the chance to meet some business people while they are in town," he said.

"It's an opportunity for a premier from outside NSW to talk to a Sydney business audience."

Mr Hawker said the last premiers' dinner hosted in Sydney for his clients and guests was for Tasmanian Premier David Bartlett. He said he intended to continue hosting dinners for premiers visiting Sydney.

The Hawker-Britton dinners began soon after the lobbyist company was formed in 1997. Mr Hawker had served nine years as chief-of-staff to former NSW premier Bob Carr and has helped Labor in more than 28 federal, state and territory elections.

Mr Hawker said the dinners were not just for Hawker-Britton clients but were also for selected guests, including past and present opinion page editors from The Australian, such as Tom Switzer, who is now in the running for a Liberal seat in Sydney, and Rebecca Weisser, who replaced him.

(5) Schmooze: Do we speak Yiddish?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/schmooze

schmooze

2 entries found.

1schmooze (verb)
2schmooze (noun)

Main Entry: 1schmooze 

Variant(s): or shmooze   \?shmüz\
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): schmoozed or shmoozed; schmooz·ing or shmooz·ing
Etymology: Yiddish shmuesn, from schmues talk, from Hebrew sh?mu'?th news, rumor
Date: 1884
intransitive verb: to converse informally : CHAT; also : to chat in a friendly and persuasive manner especially so as to gain favor, business, or connections
transitive verb: to engage in schmoozing with <she schmoozed her professors>

— schmooz·er   \?shmü-z?r\ noun

(6) Who's who of Labor in the lobby business

Rick Wallace, Victorian political reporter | July 22, 2009

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25817944-5013871,00.html

DESPITE promising to introduce a register of lobbyists in the 2006 election campaign, the Victorian government has still not set one up almost three years later.

While there is currently no public disclosure of lobbyists' identities, former Labor MPs, ministers and staffers make up the bulk of Melbourne's thriving lobbying community.

Labor-aligned firms such as Hawker Britton, CPR Communications and the Enhance Group, which employs former Queensland deputy premier Jim Elder, are among the big names.

Former Victorian minister David White and ex-Labor staffer Danny Pearson are the heads of Hawker Britton's Melbourne arm. Mr White was in the news before the 2006 election when he was lobbying for gaming and lottery giant Tattersall's and it emerged he had met then premier Steve Bracks for dinner.

The right-wing Labor hard man vigorously defended himself in an opposition-controlled parliamentary hearing, denying he and Mr Bracks had discussed sensitive gaming licences. It emerged Mr White had pushed for a $350,000 "success fee" with Tatts, but this was never paid.

Colourful former federal Labor minister Graham Richardson has also been active in Victoria. He was hired by developer Walker Corporation to lobby on its behalf during crucial negotiations over the development of Kew Cottages, a former government institution. The former senator refused requests to attend parliamentary committee hearings to discuss his role.

CPR Communications, now owned by the Photon Group, has emerged as one of the bigger players in Victoria. The company is headed by Adam Kilgour, a friend of Mr Bracks, and has a bevy of former Labor identities on its books including former senator and defence minister Robert Ray, although he is not employed as a lobbyist.

The firm's Victorian office is headed by Brett Miller, formerly an adviser to Mr Bracks and a ministerial chief of staff. CPR also employs two Liberal-aligned staff in former state frontbencher Bill Forwood and former Crosby Textor executive Jason Aldworth, who heads CPR's research arm and is not a lobbyist.

The Enhance Group's Victorian office is headed by Tim Fawcett, a former staffer to Simon Crean and Gareth Evans.

The president of Progressive Business, Phil Staindl, is another influential ALP-aligned lobbyist. He runs Inside Out Strategic with former ALP staffer Steve Cusworth.

Government Relations Australia employs several former ALP politicians, including the Victorian-based Christian Zahra, who held the seat of McMillan from 1998 to 2004.

Unlike in Queensland and Western Australia, the lobbying community in Victoria has operated mostly without major controversy and many of its members are believed to support the federal government's lobbyist register and are relaxed about a possible state equivalent.

With Labor having held power in the state for more than a decade and also in control federally, it pays to have someone who knows their way around the party's internal processes and rivalries, and who's who in various ministerial offices.

One source in the lobbying industry said firms such as Gavin Anderson and Parker and Partners had moved to recruit staff with ALP links in recent years.

Opposition scrutiny of government spokesman David Davis criticised the government for failing to introduce a register and said businesses should not have to hire ALP-aligned lobbyists to do business in the state.

"There is something wrong in Victoria when Labor lobbyist mates play a key role in deciding public policy," he said.

A spokesperson said the Victorian government was assessing ways in which the state could adapt a framework as part of the federal government's Code of Conduct.