Democrats for True Family Values

We hear incessantly about "family values" from the Christofascists and their political whores in the Republican Party, but when analyzed, their so-called family values boil down to being "pro-life" and anti-abortion, anti-gay, and whining about abstinence only sex-education.  None of the policy positions, however, include supporting children once they are born or supporting real families, particularly if those families are headed by single women or women of color. They idealize the mythical nuclear family with a working father/husband and a stay at home mother, ignoring that most families need BOTH parents working to simply survive financially.  In contrast, Democrats are advancing policy proposals that help to support and maintain real families. A column in the New York Times looks at one proposal by Elizabeth Warren - who I deem un-electable (she has burned many bridges already in Virginia in her attacks on Gov. Northam) - which would help real families. Hopefully, other electable Democrats will back similar proposals to exhibit true family values.  Here are column highlights:

For millions of Americans with children, life is a constant, desperate balancing act. They must work during the day, either because they’re single parents or because decades of wage stagnation mean that both parents must take jobs to make ends meet. Yet quality child care is unavailable or unaffordable.

And the thing is, it doesn’t have to be this way. Other wealthy countries either have national child care systems or subsidize care to put it in everyone’s reach. It doesn’t even cost all that much. While other advanced countries spend, on average, about three times as much as we do helping families — so much for our vaunted “family values” — it’s still a relatively small part of their budgets. In particular, taking care of children is much cheaper than providing health care and retirement income to seniors, which even America does.

Furthermore, caring for children doesn’t just help them grow up to be productive adults. It also has immediate economic benefits, making it easier for parents to stay in the work force.

So child care really should be an important part of the progressive agenda. Hillary Clinton had a serious plan back in 2016, but the news media was too busy obsessing over emails to pay attention.

[U]nlike purist visions of replacing private health insurance with “Medicare for all,” providing child care wouldn’t require imposing big new taxes on the middle class. The sums of money involved are small enough that new taxes on great wealth and high incomes, which are desirable on other grounds, could easily raise sufficient revenue.
 Child care would be regulated to ensure that basic quality was maintained and subsidized to make it affordable. The size of the subsidy would depend on parents’ incomes: lower-income parents would get free care, higher-income parents would have to pay something, but nobody would have to pay more than 7 percent of income.

So what are the objections to this plan?  I’m hearing from a few people on the left who complain that the plan doesn’t go far enough — that it should involve free, direct public provision of child care, not subsidies to private provision. There’s certainly a case for a more expansive policy. There’s also no chance that it will happen anytime soon.  The perfect here is the enemy of the good.

Meanwhile, on the right there are the usual cries of “socialism,”  . . . .  More interestingly, I’m seeing at least some commentary on the right that doesn’t just push back against the whole idea of making it easier for mothers to work, it wants us to go back to the days when families could “live on one income.”

Realistically, of course, that’s not going to happen, and not just because 30 percent of U.S. children live in single-parent households.  And bear in mind that even as conservatives bemoan the decline of the traditional male breadwinner, they’re pushing policies like Medicaid work requirements that basically force mothers out of the home.

Right now, all of the real contenders for the Democratic nomination are solidly progressive, but so far some seem either under briefed on policy issues — there’s been far too much fumbling over Medicare for all — or too committed to sweeping, maximalist policy visions to think seriously about what they might truly be able to do if their party takes the White House and Senate next year.

Visions and values are great, but Democrats also need to be ready to hit the ground running with plans that might actually turn into legislation.

Wit two working  daughters with young children, I know first hand just how expensive decent child care is and how it can make stay home unemployed seem the better option.  Why give over the raising of your children to others if you final net pay after child care costs is negligible or non-existent.  More Democrats need to get onboard with rational and attainable plains to demonstrate true family values for working class families. 

Extremist Derailed the Equal Rights Amendment Yet Again

Victoria Cobb - A leading face of hate in Virginia.

During this current session of the Virginia General Assembly, Virginia had the opportunity to pass the federal Equal Rights Amendment and put it over the top in terms of the number of states that must ratify a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  True to form, Virginia Republicans in the House of Delegates killed passage.  What most outside observes do not realize is that one woman is largely to blame.  She holds no elected office.  Instead, she is the head of The Family Foundation ("TFF"), Virginia's leading hate group, to whom Virginia Republicans grovel like circus dogs before a cruel trainer or spineless men before a whip cracking dominatrix.  Her name is Victoria Cobb and her stock in trade is lies, untruths and hate.  While Cobb wraps herself in the cloak of being "pro-life," she and her minions oppose state and federal government programs that seek to aid the poor, the sick, the homeless and the less fortunate.  Indeed, once one passes out of their mother's birth canal, they become invisible and irrelevant to Cobb and TFF.

Cobb is also well known to LGBT Virginians whose lives she has worked to make a living hell for years through the dissemination of deliberate lies and duping the ignorant and uneducated.  She can also always be found opposing any progressive legislation in Virginia as she strives to roll back time to the 1950's when women were deeply subordinate to men and women resorted to back alley abortions. There's another reason Cobb longs for the 1950's - segregation still reigned supreme in Virginia in the 1950's - and it is no coincidence that TFF's ancestry traces back to those who supported Massive Resistance (for non-Virginians, that's when public schools were closed rather than integrate and private "Christian" academies sprung up in their place).  This is the woman and organization to whom Virginia Republicans prostitute themselves year after year.  If one wants to hold up a face that represents hate in Virginia, Cobb's would definitely be one of them.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the smug, self-satisfied Cobb who is clueless - and could care less - about the reality of the lives of so many women. Here are column highlights:

It’s 2019, a surge of women just won election to Congress and the Virginia legislature, and it looks like the Equal Rights Amendment may be stopped dead in its tracks again.

By a woman. Again.  Meet the new Phyllis Schlafly: Victoria Cobb, who says she achieved all her success before reaching her 40th birthday without help from any amendment, so the rest of American women don’t need it, either.

The ERA, first written 95 years ago, regained new momentum in this #MeToo era after years of dormancy. And Virginia was poised to become the 38th state to ratify it, filling in that three-quarters majority of states required for it to become official. In Richmond, the GOP-led Senate passed the ERA bill earlier this month. And celebrities, lawmakers and activists were touting its revival on Capitol Hill in Washington. But then a tiny subcommittee in Richmond — the House Privileges and Elections subcommittee — voted along party lines to block the amendment from reaching the House floor after heavy lobbying from Cobb, president of the conservative Family Foundation of Virginia.

After that subcommittee quash last Tuesday, Del. Mark D. Sickles (D-Fairfax), one of the two men on that subcommittee to vote yes, tried to introduce it to the full House Privileges and Elections Committee anyhow on Friday. That was defeated by a 12-to-10 vote along party lines.

Cobb’s crusade was helped along by that subcommittee’s chair, the equally stunning and storybook-perfect Del. Margaret B. Ransone (R-Westmoreland).  Ransone also presents herself as the strong, capable “mother, wife, successful businesswoman” on her website who doesn’t need any darn amendment to protect her in the workplace or home or public space.

Except, of course, her powerful place in the world of business is her family’s oyster company, where she has worked most of her adult life. Good thing there’s no sexual harassment or gender discrimination there, right?

Cobb, the president of the Family Foundation of Virginia, is from a lovely suburb of Philadelphia, where she went to a private Christian school, played field hockey, learned to work against the ERA from her doting grandmother, and found her passion for fighting abortion rights when she was in sixth grade.

Her life has not included single motherhood while working the swing shift at a diner, the boss who grabs your butt and will cut your hours if you resist, a pregnancy that could kill you and leave your four children motherless, parents who kicked you out, or a husband who left and skipped child support.

Cobb pegs most of her anti-ERA crusade on abortion, convincing folks that somehow, if women were to finally be included in the constitution, it would mean all kinds of public money would be funding abortion.  Um, no. That’s not the goal of ERA.

We can consult a legendary conservative Supreme Court justice for the truth that women’s equality is not explicitly protected in the constitution or in the 14th Amendment.   “Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t,” the late justice Antonin Scalia said in a 2010 interview with California Lawyer magazine.

These women occupy a very privileged place in American society, and they hold up their very tidy lives as proof that the ERA is unnecessary.

But plenty of women don’t have her advantages, or the advantages that many white, middle-class women in stable families and marriages have.

Religion is a big part of conservative women’s politics and activism. When it comes to the protections that the Equal Rights Amendment would provide, perhaps they’d consider this perspective: There, but for the grace of God, go I.

Yes, the column was far too kind to Cobb.  In my opinion, she makes the Pharisees of the Bible look upstanding and hypocrisy free.

The Virginia GOP and False "Pro-Life" Values

The following is a cross post of my May, 2015, column in VEER Magazine which looks at the dishonesty of the Virginia Republican Party and Christofascists supporters who make a great show of claiming that they are "pro-life" yet continue policies that make it clear that for the most part, once a child is born and leaves the womb, they really don't give a damn about that child as it grows up - especially if it has mental or developmental disabilities.  And that doesn't factor in those dying prematurely due to lack of affordable health care.  Some of the data in the column is most damning.  Here is the column:

VIRGINIA'S SHAMEFULL RESPONSE TO THOSE WITH INTELLECTUAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES 

In August of last year, we lost my husband's father, a retired Baptist minister, the last of our surviving parents, four months to the day after the date of our marriage in Washington, D.C., where he co-officiated at our wedding.   While one expects to navigate through grieving and issues of settling an estate, selling the deceased parent's home and similar travails - my husband is the executor and trustee of the estate - nothing had prepared us for what would prove to be the biggest challenge: finding community services and housing and appropriate supervision for my husband's adopted special needs brother who was adopted many years ago by my husband's late parents who realistically had no idea what they were getting themselves and now us into.  Now age 43, their adopted son - a fetal alcohol syndrome child - through no fault of his own suffers from intellectual and developmental disabilities and will never be a fully functioning adult.  

As a result, the husband and I have found ourselves being thrust into dealing with the Byzantine bureaucracies of the local Community Services Board, local Department of Social Services and the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Services (“DBHDS”) and witnessing the disturbing manner in which Virginia treats those with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The lack of accountability and seeming near indifference on the part of some personnel encountered has been both disturbing and maddening.  However, the more we have learned, the more it has become apparent that there is a systemic problem with the manner in which Virginia deals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.  Indeed, it is much akin the shocking deficiencies in Virginia's inadequate mental health care services that were brought into sharp focus by the tragic wounding of Senator Creigh Deeds and the suicide death of his son.  Pushing paper and playing a shell game to hide the reality that there is nowhere near enough state funding or enough available facilities is not meeting anyone's needs, especially those in desperate need of community based services. 

Depending on the income ranking one chooses, the Commonwealth of Virginia ranks either 5th in the nation in per capita income or 7th in median per capita income.  In short, in relative terms nationwide, Virginia is a wealthy state. But in terms of its spending on the needs of those suffering from intellectual and developmental disabilities, Virginia ranks 49th in the county.  That's right, second to last.  Only Mississippi spends less on those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.  Stated another way, even Alabama and Arkansas - ranked 45th and 49th, respectively - spend more per capita on those with intellectual and developmental disabilities than Virginia spends.  This circumstance is nothing short of a disgrace.  Making the situation even more outrageous - or hypocritical depending upon one's political view - is the fact that Virginia is currently controlled by a General Assembly dominated by the Republican Party.  The GOP elected officials and sycophants incessantly blather about being "pro-life," protecting the unborn, etc., with the result that Republican members of the General Assembly seek to restrict all abortions (which will yield yet more children with disabilities).  

Sadly, the concern of the Republicans and their constituents who demand never ending tax cuts and their far right religious supporters for the unborn seemingly evaporates the moment those unborn children pass from their mothers' wombs.  These "god fearing folk" oppose Medicaid expansion, oppose government programs for the poor and unfortunate, and care nothing if those children suffer from intellectual and developmental disabilities.   Historically, their solution has to been to lock away such individuals in institutions where they lack socialization and optimization of their potential.  Even then, the spaces available came nowhere near meeting the demand for services.  

Just how bad are things in Virginia?  In 2010, the Civil Rights Division of United States Department of Justice "("DOJ") launched an investigation that found that Virginia violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by failing to serve individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in integrated settings appropriate to their needs, and failing to provide adequate community services and supports.  The Department of Justice filed suit against Virginia in while anti-abortion warrior Ken Cuccinelli was Attorney General of Virginia.  Ultimately, Virginia entered into a settlement agreement with the Department of Justice upon the advice of Mr. Cuccinelli's office in an effort to reach a settlement without subjecting the Commonwealth to an extremely costly and lengthy court battle with the federal government. (See Civil Action N0O: 3:12cv059-JAG in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Richmond Division) The settlement agreement resolves DOJ’s investigation of Virginia’s training centers and community programs and the Commonwealth’s compliance with the ADA and Olmstead with respect to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities provided that Virginia complies with the mandated improvements set forth in the settlement agreement.

Since Virginia has proven that it cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of those with intellectual and developmental disabilities, an Independent Reviewer files a report with the Court that evaluates Virginia's compliance with the settlement agreement and the progress or lack thereof being made.  The most recent report was filed in December, 2014, and found that despite progress "Despite these efforts, however, the Commonwealth continues to be significantly behind schedule. There have been repeated delays in complying with certain obligations, including elements critical to an effective community based services system that is truly responsive to individuals with ID/DD."

What does this mean for every day Virginians?  From my conversations with agencies familiar with the situation faced by those waiting for Medicaid waivers that will allow them to receive much needed housing and/or grants to allow them to remain in their own homes or the homes of family caregivers, the situation is grim.  Here are some of the statistics:

According to the most recent data from DBHDS, there are 7,948 people waiting for the Intellectual Disability (“ID”) Waiver (4,851 individuals are on the urgent list and 3,097 are on the non-urgent list) and 1,902 waiting for the Developmental Disability (“DD”) Waiver. Between June 2014 and April 2015, 903 people were added to the ID waiting list, and 447 added to the DD waiting list.  Despite this growing need, only 365 slots were funded during this last general assembly session for this fiscal year (Jul 2015-Jun 2016); this was the minimum required by the DOJ settlement agreement referenced above.

According to 2013 data that was released last month in the State of the States that compares data nationwide:

- --Virginia is ranked 29th in family support spending.

--- Virginia is ranked 50th in family caregivers receiving I/DD state agency support.  There are an estimated 98,828 care giving families of people with I/DD in Virginia; in 2013, only 325 of these families received state agency support (i.e., 0.3%).

As bad as these statistics are, I suspect that they likely mask the true number of individuals in need of services because the existing bureaucracy discourages those in need and/or their families from seeking services.  The husband's experience in dealing with the local community services board and office of social services has been one of bureaucracy at its worst: indifferent on the part of many of the staff and/or non-responsive staff and unrelenting passing the buck.  The more I have learned, the more I believe that their ultimate ploy is to avoid admitting that there simply is no state funding.  People with developmental and intellectual disabilities simply do not matter in Virginia.  It is far past time that our state legislators correct this situation – particularly those who talk disingenuously about supporting “family values” and being pro-life.