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ITEM: With only one year left since the lifetime, five-year maximum on welfare benefits was enacted, the state is already moving for extensions for the thousands of families it says won’t be able to make it on their own as of Aug. 1, 2002. Department of Social and Health Services proposes hardship extensions for the mentally ill, homeless, older care givers of young children and those who have made a “good faith” effort to find jobs or are working for low pay. Some lawmakers also want extensions for pregnant women and new mothers.
COMMENT: Providing social and health services is a big industry — DSHS has over 18,000 employees — that will resist what its very job calls for it to do, get people off the welfare rolls and back to productive or self-supporting circumstances. Their success undermines their own jobs. No more clients, no more work for them. One complaint by mothers on welfare is that they can’t work because day care fees are too high. Let me suggest again day care centers in which pregnant women and mothers of babies can work while they care for children of those who have or are capable of getting jobs. We’d be getting something out of the one group in return for their welfare checks and/or pay, and freeing the others to work so eventually all would or could get off welfare.
ITEM: The Washington Education Assn. will appeal the $400,000 fine a Thurston County Superior Court judge assessed for illegally spending non-members’ dues in political campaigns. The Evergreen Freedom Foundation of Olympia filed a lawsuit against the WEA last year on behalf of those 4,000 teachers who were not informed they were owed refunds for the “agency fees” they must pay because the union represents their interests whether they join or not. Use of the money for political purposes requires an annual approval from each of them, something the WEA conceded it failed to get. WEA explained it as an innocent accounting error.
COMMENT: We didn’t get any virgin here. In 1998, the WEA paid $430,000 to settle out of court a lawsuit against it for illegal use of members’ money in the 1994 campaign. They said it was an accounting error but it looks as if, when it comes to the public disclosure laws, it isn’t only Johnny who can’t read.
ITEM: Only 17 percent of the nation’s high school seniors and one-fourth of fourth and eighth-graders are proficient in mathematics, according to a report issued by the Education Department’s National Assessment of Educational Programs. There was some improvement for the grade schoolers over the past four years, but the number of high school seniors performing at or above the basic level declined. Researchers thought the decline correlated to a decrease in high school drop outs.
COMMENT: Obviously, if the senior grade levels are being brought down by more kids completing high school, they got all the way to the 12th grade without somebody teaching them mathematics. Oh, well, what can you expect when their teachers got busted twice for almost a million bucks for having trouble with figures.
ITEM: The National Commission on Federal Election Reform recommends turning Election Day into a national holiday by combining it with Veterans Day, forbidding media projections in presidential elections so long as polls are open in any of the contiguous states, restoring voting rights to felons who’ve served their sentence and probation time, and letting voters whose eligibility is questionable cast special ballots to be reviewed separately.
COMMENT: If Election Day becomes a holiday, fewer, rather than more people will vote. If getting off from work is a problem, keep polls open 24 hours. A ban on media projections will never fly because the media will claim First Amendment rights. Felons who’ve served their time should have voting rights restored. Special provisional ballots are OK for people who show up at the wrong place, but how can you deal with other mishaps without violating the secrecy of the ballot?
(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.). |
