Three headlines from today's LA Times:

1.  Foreclosures in state hit record high (Seems we're up a whopping 799%  from the same period--2nd quarter of the year--last year).

2.  Uninsured adults face yearlong delays for some surgeries (If you're in LA County and you need "non-emergency"--meaning not immediately life threatening but who cares if you're doubled over in pain--surgery, you better have insurance.  Otherwise the waiting list for little "elective" surgeries like gall bladders removal or hernia repair is over a year long).

3.  GOP budget plan would slash welfare (Senate Republicans are proposing a $324 million cut to welfare which would "result in as many as 40,000 families losing state assistance).

Never mind that welfare has been radically cut over the years of the Bush administration.  They want to cut more.  It's not a good time to be poor in California.

I know all the arguments ("I've known them all already, known them all" to quote Prufrock).  That only lazy people are on welfare.  Only people without ambition are without insurance.  It's the illegal aliens (let's blame them, yeah, or the terrorists).  Blah...blah...blah.  I worked with many welfare-dependent, uninsured people at the Santa Clarita Valley Food Pantry.  I can see them now.

Sure some have long-standing drug and alcohol problems.  But the majority are single moms (or dads) who are simply stuck in a cycle of poverty that minimum wage jobs do nothing to break.  Then someone gets sick.  Someone gets fired.

And their safety net?  Well, for up to 40,000 of them, it's more of a safety trampoline.  Here today, bounced out tomorrow.

And why?  So we can keep paying OUTRAGEOUS salaries to prison guards.  So we can keep providing agricultural subsidies that protect big farming companies.  So we can keep protecting big business interests.

Sorry kids.  It's a tough world out there.

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