California on the brink of financial ruin
By Dashka Slater and Gary Rivlin, Newsweek
Toni Sevchuck knows that budgeting is about making tough choices: taxes vs. cuts, parks vs. prisons, health care vs. schools. But as California’s austere new state budget goes into effect, the 47-year-old mostly deaf single mother is finding that her own options have run out. “I don’t get to make choices,” she says. “I don’t have the money to make choices with.”
The state’s Medicaid program, called Medi-Cal in California, stopped covering dental care in 2009, so Sevchuck has had four molars pulled and is likely to lose a fifth. Last month her welfare and disability payments were cut by 8 percent each, leaving her with $1,160 in monthly aid, plus $200 a month in food stamps. After she pays her rent, she has $310 to pay all her other bills, including a $237 car payment. Each month most of her bills don’t get paid. “It doesn’t seem like a lot of money to most people,” she says of the combined $44 reduction in her monthly checks. “But when you’re in my boat, that pays your utilities.”
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Sevchuck’s sense of dwindling options is being echoed across the state. You hear it from the 22-year-old senior at the University of California, Santa Cruz—the first in his family to go to college—whose tuition has risen 80 percent since freshman year. You hear it from the 49-year-old partial quadriplegic in Orange County who may lose the state-funded caregiver who allows her to stay out of a nursing home. And you hear it from the 55-year-old accountant in Inglewood as he braces for the end of state funding for the adult-day-care center where his 75-year-old mother, a retired schoolteacher with advanced dementia, spends her days. “Many of these cuts are hitting the same vulnerable people over and over again,” says Lydia Missaelides, executive director of the California Association for Adult Day Services. “It’s not sharing the pain, it’s really piling on the pain.”
As the nation’s most populous state and the world’s eighth-largest economy, California rarely does things by halves. Dreams are bigger and glossier here, and when they crash, they crash spectacularly. California’s per capita foreclosure rate is the highest of any state outside of Nevada. Unemployment has reached a grueling 12 percent, nearly 3 points higher than the national average. And while nearly every state in the union faced budget deficits this year, California’s was the nation’s largest, at $26.6 billion. The resulting $15 billion in cuts came on top of the $22.5 billion axed in the previous two budget cycles. By way of contrast, the package of austerity cuts and tax hikes that sent rioters into the streets in Athens this spring totaled $40 billion over three years—and those cuts hadn’t even gone into effect when the demonstrations started.
Maybe if Toni had brushed and flossed she’d still have her own teeth.
The welfare mentality encourages people to wait for someone else to fix problems for them instead of being proactive and preventing problems from occurring in the first place.
Yes, California is rapidly going down the drain, thanks in good part to people like Toni.
How about some concern for those who continue to work and struggle without government assistance, who have the additional burden of paying for those like Toni who expect everyone to pay their way. California became a welfare state which was unsupportable and now things must change and unfortunately we all suffer during the collaspe and corrections that follow.
Right on dogwoman. I’ve not seen the level of government support to so many people in any other State. Also the number of people receiving support who feel it is their right to receive it astonishes me. If you have to accept housing, food stamps, medical, etc. you shouldn’t feel you can still run to Reno to shop and play. Save your money to be able to stand up one day and say “thanks for helping me when I needed it now what can I do to help others”.
A 47-year old woman should not be losing any teeth. This sounds as though she is either an alcoholic or drug addict or has not bothered to brush her teeth for decades.
The article also says that she is a single-mother. She should not have elected to get pregnant if she couldn’t afford a child. While the child didn’t make this choice and may need additional state support, the tax-payers should not be burdened with helping the hapless mother.
Additionally, I know of many partially and completely deaf people who have successfully held regular jobs for years. This woman seems to be lazy and has an entitlement mentality.
If you are going to use an example to evoke sympathy from the reader, this woman is an extremely poor choice.
Instead of focusing on the lack of dental hygiene of one woman, perhaps we should be looking at the reasons that California is in such bad financial shape. For too many years California, and the liberals who run it, have just given away the farm. We have become the ultimate Nanny State.
How about creating jobs (where have I heard that before???) and teaching some of these people how to take care of themselves? Public assistance should not mean that the government will take care of you forever.
U kidding me… This lady has it made.. $1360 a month is a ton of money.. Thats ull time work at minimum wage, maybe better.. Why does an unemployed welfare recipient have a car payment? What a joke!! We need to stop handing out money and make others work hard and find their way.. This does not incentivize people to work, only be lazy… These handouts simply cannot be sustained…
you took it too literally, Karen. The woman’s poor dental hygene is indicative of her entire existence, and that of the whole welfare/SSD class. Why bother to be responsible and care for yourself when the government will do it for you? And SO many generations that attitude have broken what once was a beautiful and prosperous state.
California has lost so much over the last few decades.
CA Liberalism and the Progressive liberals running the state have delt a serious blow that has consumed much more than just money.
You followed who you followed and now you eat what you have sowed.
For 30 years I and others have warned what a financial mess you are making. Ignored.
The Arrogance of ignorance is the most annoying. Ignorance is a California standard. The schools teach socialism. Educators retire young and recieve millions.
I finally moved out. Voted with my feet.
If you pay the least productive people the most. The productive
leave.
California, land of the ignorant yet arrogant liberals.
No bailout.
I plan to come back and pick up an ocean view after the collapse.
GBA
THWC
4 million people lose power on a 100 degree day.
Kinda third world huh?
20 yr long train wreck of an economy.
CA crony capitalism. You built it it’s yours.
Ya, I am very ticked off about it. That’s why I started the PubWorksTV idea. You can find it on Twitter. Links to relevant NEWS and Rock and Roll too.
Pub stands for Public House from the Days of old.
Where America was formed…
What is the problem you selfish guppies.
These poor unfortunates only want a significant part of the easy money you earned while you live on easy street. The big brother in Sacramento just wants to do what’s right for the downtrodden and helpless. If it buys them a few votes all the better. Don’t you feel sorry for toothless Toni? Don’t you know hard it is to chew steak with your gums? Where is your compassion?
You know, it would be a much better world if everyone could just inherit their money without working for it and simply pretend to “work and struggle” on their car collection.
Wow.
There are many abuses of assistance, and Toni may well be one of the abusers. But really — give some thought to your words before you click “Submit Comment”.
There are myriad reasons 47-year-olds can lose teeth, including genetic predisposition to dental problems, injuries, bite issues that cause clenching and tooth fractures, and underlying diseases.
The only reason I still have all my teeth is because I have insurance and can pay for what my insurance doesn’t cover — and I’m neither an alcoholic nor a drug addict. (I just wish my teeth were worth what we’ve spent on them so I could leave them to my kids.)
Also, single parenthood happens for a lot of reasons, and is not always a choice. Ever heard of widowhood? How about spousal abandonment?
Matthew 7:1-5
http://www.bartleby.com/108/40/7.html (KJV)
http://www.biblica.com/bibles/chapter/?verse=Matthew+7&version=niv (NIV)
Gee dumb, I wonder who you are talking about.
The federal government is on the same road as California, just a few years behind. The other advantage the feds have is those massive printing presses cranking out that currency all day and night.
They are monetizing our debt and soon we will have to pay the piper. I grow tired of hearing about “Environmental Sustainability” when what we should be screaming about is “Economic Sustainability”! The fiscal disaster which is currently ongoing is utterly and absolutely unsustainable.
I’m no Harvard Economics PhD, but unlike Obummer and his crew of “Academics” (who’ve never actually run a business) I do know some basic fundamental economic realities.
1. You cannot borrow your way out of debt.
2. You cannot tax your way into prosperity.
3. You cannot spend your way out of a depression (especially with money you don’t have.. see #1!)
Why is this so hard for our elitist leaders in SACRAMENTO or WASHINGTON DC to understand?
Tahoe and California needs to think outside the box. Why not provide dental care for someone, but offer them a way to earn credits to pay for that care. Example – the woman can work for our community doing something within her talents. Maybe she can cook, she can work at the food bank, or she can stock the pantry, or even work at the court house doing shredding. Imagine how wonderful our community would look if we required the unemployed to work in the community painting, picking up trash, or even manning stands giving directions or information to visitors in order to collect their weekly benefits.
I do agree, time to stop handing out “free” money and benefits to able bodied people. However, I also think it is time for government to give up the PERS plan and go to the private sectors 401k. I don’t want to fund the government workers pension that is 2 times higher than I expect to generate off my 401k, not to mention the health benefits they receive. Look at the California CAFR and you will see how the pension plan for government will be our downfall.
The usual platitudes from the left and right are fairly predictable and mostly simplistic and jingoistic. This is a national problem, not just California.
Cut corporate taxes and regulations to create jobs? How did that work out in the aftermath of Bush tax cuts and Phil Gramm/Robert Rubin/Greenspan bi-partisan financial elite tagteaming of the clueless public, other than to lead to a short term real estate bubble and massive financial scandal and economic collapse?
Where are all those wondrous jobs THAT was supposed to create? And why is Obama basically bowing to the same financial elites, just another variation of Bush lite?
Or feed the beast with massive government stimulus? Primarily puts off the day of reckoning, but at least food stamps and welfare prevent an early uprising of anarchy and street violence, when hunger becomes desperation. But how do you pare this back without restless chaos?
The truth is we’re undergoing a massive and wrenching worldwide reorganizing of production and jobs that isn’t going to be fixed by any simple dogma. The corporate, financial, and revolving door K-Street elites understood this a long time ago, and used it to their advantage in buying out the government and levers of mainstream media, and promoting deregulation to their own advantage. Those of us lower down the food chain are left with our heads spinning wondering what’s happened. More here:
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-08-17T07%3A36%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=5
What’s the solution? Well there isn’t a simple one. But it’s going to have to start with a reversal of the last 30 years where big finance has ruled, where taxation of the extremely rich has become a dirty phrase, and expectations of suburban McMansions and unlimited cheap gasoline for the masses became an expectation.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2011/07/us-is-not-high-tax-corporate-country.html
Washington DC is captured by the business and MIC elite, and breaking that will not be easy. But cutting lifelines and benefits to the average American had better be balanced with:
– more tax on wealth
– higher contributions on SS above the $106,000 limit and restructuring of the private insurance sick care scam into a more efficient single payer basis
– large cuts in military and overseas adventurism budgets
– a serious effort at developing post cheap-oil energy provisioning
– providing whatever measures we can to lower the tax rate and reduce burdens on SMALL businesses and entrepreneurs – encourage these rather than for corporates who seem to manage quite well on their own
– providing meaningful prosecution, penalties, and upholding of the law for the perpetrators of the financial collapse of 2008 and beyond. Reinstating reasonable controls separating commercial bank lending and investment bank speculations, with no public taxpayer backstop.
– getting government expenditures under control
As well, a state banking system run by private bankers but controlled in the State’s interest to limit bonuses and provide lower interest loans to state infrastructure projects and other state funding needs has proven beneficial in North Dakota and should go forward here as well:
http://publicbankinginstitute.org/
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/state_bank_option.php
Just a few ideas there. None of these alone will fix things.
This major shift will not be easy, nor will millions of jobs magically appear regardless of what we do. Buckle up, and avoid the political dogma trap. Or take the easy way out and just blame the party you don’t like, contributing nothing to the solution.
If California has cut so much why does it still have the same # of employees that it had before the financial crisis and why does 1 out of every 8 of those employees make over 100k/yr (not counting benefits or retirement plans!)?
And why is it I have never seen so many CHP on Hwy. 50 or on the drive from here to Sacramento? Or why is CalTrans repaving the same roads over & over again?
Bottom line, there’s still a lot of waste & fat the State of CA needs to remove from its budget!!