Shame, shame, shame

I guess AV shops at grocery outlet, where the customers reek as much as the employees at K-Mart. Kind of wonder why the VA wouldn't be doing something for a vet, the author doesn't mention that.

Adrian Vance wrote:

While everything you say may be true these programs have been badly abused and that seems to be the nature of all social welfare programs. How many times do you have to be in a grocery store checkout line and see a bunch of young people giggling hysterically as they exchange food stamps for munchie supplies, smelling of cannabis to high Heaven before you know your vote for yet another liberal or "progressive" was wrong?
I do not pretend to have the solution because there are people who just can't make it and none of us want to see them sleeping in the doorways, defecating in the gutters as they were in New York under Mayor Dinkins and intimidating ladies for "Change?" all day long, but liberal programs have only made the problem worse.
After eight years of the New Deal FDR's Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morganthau testified to a joint Congressional Committee that the New Dwal was a failure, "the we hwve spent billions of Dollars and still have 16% unemployment..." and more.
The only charity that I have ever seen work is that from families and close to home not from afar the effectiveness of charity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance in miles.

Easy for you AV who probably has Medicare and a great supplemental to cover your medical bills. Not all are as fortunate as you unfortunately. Have a heart. Society today seems to disgard our seniors, as if they are disposable.

I think the author does not understand that VA Benefits, Medicare and Medi-Cal are not the same thing. I think more she may be more worried about losing her benefits than those of her Medicare aged, VA eligible relatives but it sounds more dramatic to relect this on the elderly and the vets. My dad is a vet and is well cared for by the VA system, he does not have to rely on Medi-Cal for his care.

that is wrong Medi-Cal has it's foot up it's you know where. They are only worried about the money and paper work they don't care about the people. you literally have to jump through hoops for these people just to be seen and many more just to have your paper work looked at. I for one am totally pro universal health care because our american programs get us now where.

I find the grocery outlet to suit me just fine..with the economy as bad as it is, why spend $4 on a loaf of bread when you can get it for $2. More for the buck baby!

Philip Murphy wrote:

I guess AV shops at grocery outlet, where the customers reek as much as the employees at K-Mart. Kind of wonder why the VA wouldn't be doing something for a vet, the author doesn't mention that.

How would Arnold Swartzaneggar like it if he was poor, well actually he is not poor he has all kinds of money thats why he does not care about us poor folks. He just keeps cutting benefits. I want to know how he became the government and he is not even from California!!!. I can't wait until somebody else is elected. Praise the lord!!!

i think it is so dumb that med-ical is ending with the dental and foot doctor part there is going be more paients in the emgerency rooms racking up med-ical but do you think that they think about that hell no. there are going to cuase themselves to pay out a bunch more money than needed aren't we already in debt huh...

the illegals come here and pump out babies and thats a huge problem...cant speak a lick of english but they can say "medi-cal"....how about stopping that kind of crap.then there is the people that use emergency rooms like its their primary physician that crap has to stop too.

Though I do believe veterans should receive more than what they get, I am against welfare programs such as Medi-Cal and know first hand of what abuses and fraud happens with social handouts.

Clint Fitzgerald wrote:

<quoted text>Yesterday Sotomayor's La Raza weighed in on the subject. And i will get to that by referencing a story i read on Western Voices World News. If you think we have a problem with illegal immigration now, wait 'til you see the borders when this thing (health care "reform") gets passed.
"Suzanne", a female caller to Mark Levin's show on June 25th, revealed the ominous secret of the Democrat health care reform effort.
"I want to tell you that last week I attended a conference on health care reform sponsored by La Raza. And I will tell you that what they had to say, Mark, is scarier than anything that's been said so far on the health care plan.
The kind of comments that were made and the notes that I took... they started the conference out by saying "America does not need health care reform, but Latino immigrants need health care reform."
And someone from Menendez' office [Ed.: Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ] promised that he would make sure that "the useless barriers of citizenship would not be in this bill" and that he would make sure that they would use keywords like "streamline"...
It was La Raza, the Childrens Defense Fund and Senator Menendez from New Jersey, a representative from his office..."

the worl seems to be my dependant........can i claim them at tax time

The letter writer is way off...veterans have benefits outside of Medi-Cal.

Good - Medi-Cal should NOT be abused by people who have other benefits.

If this state doesn't have the funds why on earth would anyone EXPECT the benefits to continue without change?

Let us NOT continue to dig ourselves deeper in debt.

Clint Fitzgerald wrote:

<quoted text>Yesterday Sotomayor's La Raza weighed in on the subject. And i will get to that by referencing a story i read on Western Voices World News. If you think we have a problem with illegal immigration now, wait 'til you see the borders when this thing (health care "reform") gets passed.
"Suzanne", a female caller to Mark Levin's show on June 25th, revealed the ominous secret of the Democrat health care reform effort.
"I want to tell you that last week I attended a conference on health care reform sponsored by La Raza. And I will tell you that what they had to say, Mark, is scarier than anything that's been said so far on the health care plan.
The kind of comments that were made and the notes that I took... they started the conference out by saying "America does not need health care reform, but Latino immigrants need health care reform."
And someone from Menendez' office [Ed.: Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ] promised that he would make sure that "the useless barriers of citizenship would not be in this bill" and that he would make sure that they would use keywords like "streamline"...
It was La Raza, the Childrens Defense Fund and Senator Menendez from New Jersey, a representative from his office..."

Yes, I can say it now: America, love it or leave it!!!!! Move on over white man!!

Philip Murphy wrote:

I guess AV shops at grocery outlet, where the customers reek as much as the employees at K-Mart. Kind of wonder why the VA wouldn't be doing something for a vet, the author doesn't mention that.

I will have to note that Phil is right both ways: Yes I do shop at Grocery Outlet and yes the last group of ripped welfare kids I saw swapping food stamps for munchies, giggling and reeking of weed, was at Grocery Outlet.

Grocery Outlet is a small business owned and run by a couple that are working day and night, just like you do, Phil, and while you may think their store is funky you will find some excellent stuff in there that no one else carries locally and the prices are good.

They did a great article about "The State of Jefferson" in N.CA.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi...

PART 2 Next
Adrian-Move to Modoc County-it suits you. There, you will have "rustics" galore to impress, and people get more than they give beyond your wildest dreams AND they are republicans, hands down!
whoohoooo

PART 2 Modoc County welfare republicans:
Sprawling across the northeastern corner of California, this huge, thickly forested county with more cows than people epitomizes the Western frontier - and what seems to be a two-faced political ideology.
Modoc has the highest Republican registration of any county in California, it unfailingly elects anti-tax Republicans to office, and the vote here against last month's ballot measure that would have raised a variety of taxes was one of the most lopsided in the state. And yet, per capita, Modoc County gets more state taxpayer dollars than all but one of California's 58 counties.
PART 3 to follow

The prevailing attitude among the right-wing ranchers and modern hippies who define Modoc County is of fierce self-reliance - but more people here than just about anywhere else depend on welfare checks of some kind to get by.
So with state Republicans blocking new taxes and insisting on deep cuts in taxpayer-funded services, does that make this most solid of GOP bases politically conflicted? Or, worse, just plain ignorant?
No way, say the cattlemen and the hippies. Most folks up here will tell you that no matter who is in office or what the big-city politicians do, the dearest wish of anyone living in Modoc is to be left alone - except for a little help for core needs like hospitals and schools.
And if you cut off our funding even for that, they say, we won't like it - but we'll get by. We're independent.
It's a frontier thing.
Split but not split
Ken McGarva and Tina Hodge will both tell you with equal ardor that government should stay out of their faces. But you wouldn't know they could agree by looking at them.
McGarva is a cowboy. The real kind, one who ropes and brands his cattle in the dot-in-the-road town of Likely. At 70, he loathes liberal politics.
Hodge is a back-to-the-land hippie. The real kind, one who raised her kids in a tepee on a remote mountaintop near tiny Eagleville and now lives off the grid in a hobbit-style house on that same mountaintop. At 57, she loathes conservative politics.

PART 4 However, both McGarva and Hodge maintain that state legislators shouldn't even think of cutting health and education funding to rural counties like Modoc, where 9,184 residents knock around a territory the size of Connecticut.
Instead, they say, swing the budget ax on bloated-big-government-style frills - for instance, state-paid cars for legislators and misguided environmental regulations, though they don't always agree on which ones are misguided.
'We'll just get by'
The fact that health and education spending make up about 70 percent of California's general fund, leaving little else to cut, only emphasizes the importance of that funding, they say.
And if the Capitol does indeed slash Modoc County's money for road maintenance, health services and welfare job training - which will happen, if Sacramento's Republicans get their way - McGarva and Hodge have the same plan.
"Well, we'll just get by the way we did in the Great Depression - on our own," McGarva said, swatting mosquitoes on his porch after another hard day of herding dogies on his 1,000-head ranch. "We'll grow a vegetable garden, we'll use milk cows." If the roads are closed, he said, they always have horses.

PART 5
"We have pretty much all we need here on the mountain, and if we had to we could grow more of our own food," said Hodge, standing in her front yard, which is 6,100 feet above sea level and a jarring, 4-mile rumble up a dirt road. If the roads are closed, she said, she can always pack into town using her herd of llamas.
The politicians 200 miles south in Sacramento say they admire that frontier spirit, and both sides say they know what is best for Modoc County. But that's about where they stop sounding alike.
Politicians can't agree
Democrats say the solution to the state's $24.3 billion deficit involves more revenue sources. Republicans say it requires only expenditure chopping. Both sides have dug in their heels.
Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, chairwoman of a legislative budget conference committee, ordered up a report last winter ranking which of the state's counties send the most tax money per capita to the Capitol, and which ones consume the most in health and other services. It showed that conservative counties - like Modoc, with 49.9 percent Republican registration, the state's highest - generally consumed the most, and liberal counties sent in the most.
Marin County was No. 1 in contributions, at $4,793 per person, and San Francisco was No. 3 at $3,578. Modoc was No. 2 in consumption at $2,216 per person, and conservative Tulare was No. 1, with $2,223.
"I don't think voters in the conservative counties understand the connection between the service they are receiving and the votes their representatives are making," Evans said. "Maybe the layers of government are so convoluted that many people don't realize how it works."
In Modoc, the way it works is that if the cuts being proposed go through, near-catastrophe will reign, said County Administrative Officer Mark Charlton.
He said the entire road maintenance service would be closed except for snowplowing on a few main roads, the welfare-to-work CalWORKS program would be cut in half, many mental health patients would no longer be monitored and would relapse and wind up behind bars, and there would be fewer police patrols.

PART 6
"You'll be able to translate these cuts into more accidents on the road, more people in jail, more people getting sick," Charlton said.
Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber (Tehama County), vice chairman of the Assembly budget committee, represents Modoc County. He said cutting social services is not what he has in mind when he talks about deficit reduction - it's chopping other things, such as regulatory oversight committees and government employees.
He said health and road services cost more per capita in rural places like Modoc because they're remote and expensive to reach. So don't blame the sticks for consuming more funding per person, he said.
"There's no way you're going to have a booming county up there, so every penny we send counts," Nielsen said. "The funding there wouldn't buy (much) in San Francisco, but it goes a long way in Modoc."
Barbara March, 62, who moved up from Carmel Valley six years ago to publish the Modoc Independent News with husband Ray, 74, said the only people who move so far into the trees are by definition stubborn, frontier types. So it makes sense they would share some values. If you're looking for multiplexes and Starbucks, you don't come.
A self-selecting population
"Hippies and buckaroos and everything in between - they all have a tolerance and generosity of spirit up here," March said. "But you can't tell them what to do."
In the cities, talk of chopping government services brings defiant cries of protest. In Modoc, cowboy McGarva, whose family has ranched here since 1918, said his solution to the budget crunch is to shoo government as far away as possible. Fund good education and rural health services, he said - but don't raise taxes.
"Get rid of all this environment crap first, saving the three-legged frog and whatnot, and protecting the mountain lion so much it ruins the hunting up here," he said. "Cut down on useless things like all those departments they have. Then they'll make some progress."
Back-to-the-lander Hodge and her husband, Bill, 63, moved to their mountaintop in 1981 to raise two daughters, as well as llamas for wool and breeding. In 1995, she started Eagle Peak Herbals, which ships herbal remedies and potions all over the world. In their way, the Hodges are every bit the self-starting business people that the ranchers are.
"I think we should raise money when it's needed ... but no, government does not work as well as it should, and there are quite a few things we don't need," Hodge said. "We don't need the corporate subsidies we give, and we don't need more dams on the rivers up here."
Her suggestions don't exactly match McGarva's. But then, they and their families said, in a place like Modoc, they don't have to be a perfect fit.
"Around here there are a lot of people with great hearts, and if you work hard, you can do fine," said Bill Hodge. "We all have a real sense of community."
"We're the kind of people this country was founded on, still strong enough to stand up for our ideals," said McGarva's daughter, Rhonda, 44, who can drive cattle with the best of them. "When you're talking about self-reliance, you're talking about us.

"""We're the kind of people this country was founded on, still strong enough to stand up for our ideals," said McGarva's daughter, Rhonda, 44, who can drive cattle with the best of them. "When you're talking about self-reliance, you're talking about us. " Really? Doesn't look like it.