Opinion
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- Written by: Lake County News Reports
The In-Home Supportive Services program is one California can be proud of. It allows the disabled (from mild to severe) choose caretakers to provide helping services in their own homes. The choice of caretaker is the client’s alone, and not many conditions are imposed on the caretaker – meaning this can be a person with no training or someone with criminal offenses in their past.
The proposed raise for IHSS workers is causing controversy because it will only be given to those who qualify “to be registered.” Caretakers (providers) can currently work for any recipient or multiple recipients who requests them. Under the proposal, those who pass a drug test and background check would additionally qualify for a registry (labor pool), where people looking for caretakers could find help. These professionals would receive a higher wage than those who aren’t registered. This is similar to a normal promotion resulting in a higher grade of pay. So what is wrong with that? And how is that different from any professional registry or licensing board (like nurses or doctors)?
Drug testing is probably fair criteria in the caretaking environment, because drugs are often readily available. However, I would take away the requirement that the person not have a criminal background. Past behavior should not prevent caretakers from earning as much as their peers or joining the registry (although the registry would certainly have to notify potential clients of criminal backgrounds).
In its place, I would require a minimum competency test. If competency was a condition for extra wages, it would be more understandable that those who see caretaking as a profession would have the right to earn more than those who do not want to prove their qualifications.
Janis Paris lives in Clearlake Oaks.
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- Written by: Lake County News Reports
U.S. district court judge Jeremy Fogel put the brakes on executions in California in February 2006. He interpreted the law to say convicted murderer Michael Morales shouldn’t experience pain when executed by lethal injection. This is no joke! Morales brutally beat a teenager to death with a claw hammer! Fogel and the law, however, are worried about his pain. Unfortunately, Fogel isn’t the only judge that strictly follows the “no pain for murder” commandment.
Why shouldn’t murderers suffer when they die, some people ask? Murder victims suffer when their lives are taken. Family members of murder victims suffer the rest of their lives. For 400 years, convicted American killers experienced pain when they were executed by hanging, firing squads, electric chairs and gas chambers. Regrettably, times have changed.
Where do Fogel and other magistrates get their crazy no-pain-for-the-guilty dogma? Nobody knows, for sure. Some say they attend that new “Godless Church of Liberalism and Conformity” that’s all the rage. It’s the liberal mullahs in that sect who teach followers they must execute murderers with out pain if they want to be righteous. Many dim witted disciples believe and convert to this wacky doctrine. It’s more trendy every day, especially in California.
Unfortunately, the same liberal justices don’t apply their no pain doctrine to unborn babies who’re killed in abortion clinics. Unborn babies are innocent. Their screams are silent but everyone knows the excruciating pain they experience when they die.
It’s quite clear, Fogel and his madcap associates practice law backwards and upside down. In case after case, they adjudicate no pain for guilty murderers and unbearable pain for innocent unborn babies. One day, judges must regain their senses and reverse themselves. Innocents won’t suffer and guilty human vermin like Morales will be speedily executed. Of course, judges who reverse themselves will be excommunicated from that goofy “Church of Liberalism and Conformity.”
Darrell Watkins live in Kelseyville.
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- Written by: Lake County News Reports
I am going to ignore the large number of non-English speakers in our schools, their inadequate funding, the bizarre districting, the outdated school buildings, yada yada yada, and blame our schools' academic failings on the lack of fish on the cafeteria menu. As everyone knows, (don't you?) fish is brain food that nurtures keen thought and quick thinking. It is the lack of fish food for lunch, breakfast and snack that is the root of our schools' academic shortcomings. It says so in the Nutritionists Bible.
It also says in there that “the Board of Education must smite those who deny the benefits of fish fillets to the students.” Accordingly, we must smack every teacher and administrator with a board until they repent of the fishless menus. Only when they see the light and serve fish fillets, fish-burgers, fish tacos, and fish-shakes will our students learn as they should.
When our educators achieve true fishiness, perfection will be achieved according the Nutritionists Bible, a large pink cloud will coalesce overhead, and we will arise to academic perfection.
Until then, heed only me. I am the Grand Panjandrum of the Piscine, and must be obeyed.
Decreed by George J. Dorner of Lucerne.
P.S. My doctor says it may take a little while for my new meds to kick in. Please bear with me until then, especially if I sound like a certain local dogmatist.
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- Written by: Becky Curry and Wanda Harris
The American people do not allow the delivery of our police and fire services – services that protect the health, welfare and safety of our citizens – to be owned and controlled by corporations, interested only in their shareholders bottom line. These institutions do not serve citizens only if they can pay individually for the privilege of being protected. Our communities share the costs of these services, for the good of all, not one by one through a profit taking middle man. Why, then, do we accept a health care system, rationed by corporations, to deliver our health care financing system?
The evidence is clear that our current, badly fragmented, private insurance based, health care finance system does not provide universal health care and produces far less than optimal health care outcomes.
The California Universal Health Care Act (SB 840 – Kuehl) will provide lifetime health care insurance for all California residents. This act will provide coverage including all care prescribed by the patient’s health care provider that meets accepted standards of care and practice and including hospital, medical, surgical, mental health; dental and vision care; prescription drugs and medical equipment, diagnostic testing, and hospice care.
Our current private insurance system provides unnecessarily high costs to consumers and providers and incorporates self contained cost spirals within the system that drive up costs at a far higher rate than overall inflation.
Sen. Keuhl’s bill will produce lower cost for consumers and employers by consolidating hundreds of insurance plans, both private and public, into one comprehensive insurance plan risk pool, thereby saving the state, patients and providers billions of dollars each year by dramatically reducing administrative costs; by eliminating stock market pressures for exceptional profit taking from the corporations who control our health care; by reducing employer costs for health care insurance and increasing their competitiveness; by reducing or eliminating inconsistencies and loopholes in legislation that allow fraud, abuse and general and specific tax breaks and regulatory relief to these corporations; by achieving economies of scale in purchasing prescription drugs, equipment devices, supplies and services and by providing a healthier workforce for employers and fewer health related lost work hours and increased productivity.
Our California legislators in Sacramento, Assemblywoman Patty Berg and state Sen. Pat Wiggins are co-authors of Sen. Kuehl’s bill.
We appreciate their leadership on this issue. We too recognize that the primary factor in our high and rising health care costs are the private health care finance insurance companies. We trust that our representatives in the state legislature will not accept any plan from the governor or other legislators that does not replace the current insurance companies with a government agency financed single payer insurance plan. This issue is critical to their Lake County constituents as well as all Californians.
Rebecca Curry of Kelseyville chairs the Lake County Democratic Club; Wanda Harris of Hidden Valley Lake chairs the Lake County Democratic Central Committee.
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