The Berkeley Daily Planet

The Berkeley Daily Planet Current Issue


Tuesday
May 18, 2010


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Tuesday May 18, 2010


Home Services Crucial; Gulf Disaster; A 50th Anniversary at the Newman Center; Don't be Fooled by PG&E; Clean Up, BP; Gulf Disaster; Oil Takeover; Tea Party; Greed and Oil; End Political Parties; BRT Proponents Have Their Facts Wrong; Gestapo Epithets; Action Alert: Sleep-Out Protesting Schwarzenegger’s Deadly Cuts; Radical Republicans Doomed; Zionism; Local Likudnik Nutcases & Group Generalizations; More about Israel; Stop the Dirty Energy Proposition; PG&E Smart Meters

Home Services Crucial

As part of his budget plan, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed eliminating In-Home Supportive Services, the state's fastest growing social services program, which pays caregivers to help the disabled and the frail elderly. Nearly half a million disabled Californians get subsidized home care.

Without the services, many current clients would be forced to move to skilled-nursing centers that accept Medi-Cal patients. At an average expense of $55,000 a year, nursing homes cost five times as much per person as an In-Home Supportive Services client. The number of skilled-nursing center beds has dwindled through the years as the service's success has grown at helping the elderly continue living independently.

I was thinking about California being on the brink and going bankrupt. They can't go on robbing the poor and helping the rich, and get away with it. And that's exactly what this California economy has been doing for years. California kept borrowing money and selling bonds, then borrowing more money and all that kind of stuff.

Well, people will trust you so long, and then they quit trusting your ability to ever pay it back. So if you keep living on borrowed money, there comes a day when you have to pay it back when those bonds begin to come due. So we've been robbing the poor.

Well that's what happened to California. It's been going on for years and now California is $20 billion in debt and going up

Ted Rudow III,MA