STATE OF THINGS FOR MID-JANUARY, 2010
1. Legislation
2. Churches and secular influences.
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“Why has the Lord permitted us
to be defeated today by the Philistines?
1 Samuel 4:3
There is a flurry of activity now in the state legislature. My time has been quite taken up with research, interviews of legislators or their aides and reading books on policy subjects. One book I would recommend for those who like heavy reading is “Politics for the Greatest Good: The case for prudence in the Public Square,” by Clarke D. Forsythe former Director of Americans United for Life.
Prudence, in this instance, is not compromise, but the gifts of discernment and wisdom as to what can be accomplished at any given time in the public arena and what should be tried to accomplish. Sad to admit but there are ever deepening dependencies both in the private and religious realms of dependency upon financial funding sources and power sources tied to activities and funding sources that would ordinarily be inimical to both. Sometimes asking for the whole enchilada can be more destructive than just taking that enchilada one bite at a time as in working for parental notification for a minor child’s abortion rather than a Personhood Amendment in a single bill. This is my example, not one offered in the book.
I have also taken some time to “walk the halls” in Sacramento, talking to legislative Aides, especially Republican Aides. It is instructive to understand what dynamic is going on when we see Republicans such as Republican Assemblyman mark Wyland, endorsing Democrat bills such as the Obama Administration promotion of “Race to the Top” (G. Romero, (D) SB x 45) education funding and restructuring bills. No Wyland employee was willing to speak for the record as to the reason a Republican co-authored a Democrat bill. The Republican federal No Child Left Behind education goals and agenda has now been supplanted by the Race To The Top legislation.
Here is my observation of the current cooperative attitude between Democrat and Republican legislators in Sacramento: there has been a decided choice on the part of Republicans not to think of this as a Democrat or federal funding takeover of local educational matters. Rather they preferred to think of it as a needed improvement of educational standards. These so-called improved educational standards are, in reality, nationwide, standardized core subject standards. This then brings national standards into the local community denying parents a right to involvement of what their child learns, places the national standards within the international (global) standards as sought by the United Nations and effectively makes every child a student of the global goals and standards. This further threatens the autonomy offered to Charter School parents and students as well as I will demonstrate further on in this report.
Did you know that ACORN and PICO have created Charter Schools as well?
This new attitude of cooperation in the legislature brings with it legislation already signed by the Governor authorizing Open Enrollment policies for the Public and Charter School, especially in economically deprived communities (read black and Hispanic).
Open enrollment policy states that a child who is failing in school may apply to any other (approved) school in the state. I asked one Aide if that meant that, for example, a 4th grader might only be able to improve his education by attending a special school that is several counties away from home? He said, yes, if the parents chose that. I asked, if, in the case of this school being only across the district or the county, who would be accountable for living arrangements for out of county placements and or transportation arrangements? Again, the Aide hedged but eventually affirmed that it would be up to the parents to make the living arrangements to board the child somewhere.
Regarding transportation I asked who would be responsible for getting the student(s) to these distant schools especially if poor parents have no means of transportation? He really hedged at that, but admitted that it would probably be up to the school system to arrange for transportation. Can’t you just picture the expanding number of buses needed to drive students of all ages around to schools? Talk about traffic jams!
This Aide further rejected the idea of Open Enrollment leading to internationalization of education, but, stated, instead, that what might happen is one state cooperating with 4 or 5 other states to set standards. I asked if he was referring to regionalization of education? He preferred the words collaboration or cooperation. But he did not deny the idea of regionalization. This fits in with workforce development standards and Master Plans.
And, by the way, everything is thought of these days as the necessity of forming Master Plans. Master Plans for workforce development whether it be in the health care fields, education arena, technology, science, teaching, elder care, transportation. All these plans mandate the formation of state and county advisory or oversight committees of local politicians, business people, non-profits, community organizing groups, unions, etc.
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LEGISLATION - State
AB 535 - Tom Ammiano, (D-SF) Elder Death Review Teams: Information Requests.
This bill has passed both the Assembly Health and the Asm Long-Term Care Committee with both Dems and Reps, in some instances voting for.
Ammiano’s Aide said, in passing, that the medical directive for health care that the bill would work with is called Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment - POLST. This is a program prompted by the Compassion in Care group which was the major supporter of the latest attempt at passing Physician Assisted Suicide.
The official sponsors are the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform and the California Senior Legislature (a private, non-profit lobbying group.
While this would appear to be an admirable piece of legislation seeking to provide the fullest protection against elder abuse and discrimination, a look beneath the nice words presents a different picture.
This is the Master Plan for elder care. It will create state and local elder death review advisory panels for all skilled nursing facilities - snf. These panels consisting of distinguished local elected, legal, community, medical and non-profit groups will have the power to mandate in-depth reporting and analysis of the manner in which patients die. This information will be shared with all the agencies connected to the death review teams. There will be an electronic data collection system developed or put into use. The stated purpose is to act as a monitor for any actual or suspected elder patient abuse, physical, medical, mental, social or financial.
The bill is, in my estimation, suspect for being used to monitor whether or not facilities are complying with any right to die mandates that are not being complied with especially since the bill promotes the POLST. www.finalchoice.org.
Location of Bill: 1/14 it passed out of the Long-term Health Committee and is going to the Appropriations.
REQUEST: Please write to the author, The Hon. Tom Ammiano, c/o State Capitol, Sacramento 95814 with a copy to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, same address. PLEASE use letterhead organization stationery if you have any. Only that way will your opposition get on the record.
Since this is appropriations which means funding, they are not swayed (much) by moral or religious persuasions. The fact that it is going to appropriations means that it is believed that it will have a fiscal impact even though the author denies any impact. One could easily state that this bill would negatively affect the smooth flow of medical and personal care to patients if there has to be a continual use of personnel to fill out state forms and to be on-call to any of the local death panel team members for information and analysis.
This team could also, especially with the advent of Universal Health care, be a means of rating these facilities as to whether or not they will be denied new patients and or whether their employees or medical staff will be subject to law suits for failure to comply promptly with reporting mandates.
SB 438, Leland Yee, (D-SF) Charter Schools: Freedom of Speech and of the Press. On 1/14/ this bill was gutted and amended from a health care bill to its current status as an education Committee free speech bill which will include Charter Schools under the Public School freedom of speech and school newspaper press rights.
It is being promoted as merely an adjustment to the law drawing in the Charter Schools under its protection, but it has an interesting twist.
Charter Schools have become popular with both conservative and Christian families due to its presumed freedom of families to be involved in setting education goals and standards.
This bill would protect the right of students to publish in campus newspapers anything they chose as well as put notices on bulletin boards (that’s where freedom of the press comes in). It also has the potential for protecting staff from law suits for allowing student free speech.
This would begin to be a limitation on parental rights to set standards and goals whether it would be a case of promotion of homosexuality, abortion or in the case of an ACORN Charter School, some student who would want to write about supporting the right to life. LOCATION: Re-referred to Senate Appropriations Committee awaiting hearing due to change of focus and different potential for costs to the state such as law suits.
Letters of Opposition should be sent to the author, The Hon. Leland Yee at the state Capitol address and a copy to the Senate Appropriations Committee. In this case it would be appropriate to make reference to the potential for placing limitations on Charter School parental involvement rights along with stating that this is a nuisance type piece of legislation interfering with academic learning leading to court challenges of parental rights.
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Thank you to all who contributed to our support during December and January. There is one clarification that we wish to make regarding donations. At one time and for many years, California Right to Life Education Fund, IRS 501 (c) 3 and California Right to Life Committee, Inc. IRS 501 (c) 4, were two phases of the same organization. Right around 2000 we split into two separate organizations. CRLEF retained its non-profit, tax deductible status and maintains a separate office and identity. I took over the Committee, Inc. or Public Policy Advocacy activities. Money donated to the one organization does not benefit the other organization. We both hope and pray that you continue supporting both of us but, please, with separate checks.
Donations to Committee, Inc. are used to defray the costs of research on legislation and mailings. It is still considered educational activities but with the added emphasis of providing the citizen with the tools to access their elected officials and advocate for life in the public square. This is not political activity or support or opposition to candidates. That comes under an entirely different branch of IRS rules with which neither of us are connected.

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