ObamaFest

During President Kennedy's administration, Democrats fought for working men and women by going after corruption in organized labor.  Here's another reminder that Camelot aint coming back:

California is on the ropes, and the state could run out of money in July.  The budget approved in Sacramento in February includes spending cuts and record tax increases.  While everybody is feeling the pain, President Obama wants to be the aspirin for the powerful Service Employees International Union and the SEIU members who have been asked to take pay cuts in the new budget:

"The Obama administration is threatening to rescind billions of dollars in federal stimulus money if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers do not restore wage cuts to unionized home healthcare workers approved in February as part of the budget.

The wages at issue involve workers who care for some 440,000 low-income disabled and elderly Californians. The workers, who collectively contribute millions of dollars in dues each month to the influential Service Employees International Union and the United Domestic Workers, will see the state's contribution to their wages cut from a maximum of $12.10 per hour to a maximum of $10.10."

The back story is how corrupt the SEIU is in general, and how pervasive corruption is in this specific program:

"Loose oversight and bureaucratic inertia have allowed fraud to fester in a rapidly expanding multibillion-dollar state program that provides personal caregivers to the impoverished elderly and disabled. Hundreds of reports of scams and swindles are going without investigation.

Prosecutors and program administrators across the state say they are alarmed by the ease with which people are taking advantage of the program, In Home Supportive Services.

In one case, a social worker, her brother and her grandson in Los Angeles County are accused of bilking the In Home system out of $77,000 over three years, billing for care that was not provided. The social worker was simultaneously collecting pay for her full-time state employment. The case is awaiting trial.

In Fresno County, officials used $650,000 in county funds to create the state's only active In Home Supportive Services fraud investigations unit. Prosecutors say they routinely find cheating on time cards, prisoners reporting they are providing care while locked up and recipients of the service concocting disabilities to get relatives on the state payroll."

With a tough road ahead, America is closely watching which battles President Obama chooses to fight.  The ObamaFest Team is discouraged to see him taking care of political i.o.u.'s at the expense of a state teetering on bankruptcy.