SYSTEMS FOR THE PUBLIC WELFARE, HEALTH AND SAFETY

By Teddi Alves

• SYSTEMIC STRUCTURAL FAILURES DEMAND RESPONSIVE, STRONG AND CAPABLE LEADERSHIP.

• QUALITY EDUCATION.

Politicians having failed responsibility to their constituents in favor of "special interests" and "lobbyists" in general have been allowed to deflect blame onto those students so handicapped without the decency to address the obligation of this society to assist their rehabilitation.

Systems of education are obsolete. Structure must be updated and reconfigured to address demands of our complex society wherein family structures have changed, for many families there is a demand for two paychecks and some are headed by a single parent.

There has to be a holistic focus on child development through college, with teachers equipped to identify abberations in conduct and performance for referral to professional counselors trained for assessment and guidance to ensure timely and effective intervention of required specialty assistance, be it academic or behavioral in nature, alowing for early identification and remedy, proactive response to reduction of social ills and criminal behaviors with motivation and support of upward mobility.

As it is, students derailed have limited employment options, often without marketable skills, career options foreclosed; others "roll over" to systems of law enforcement, juvenile and adult jails and prisons.

Students who have strived throughout their primary and secondary education to prepare for college find themselves "priced out?" The burgeoning bureacracy of public employee unions has been secured by politicians of both political parties with funding not available for allocation to those on which our future depends. Are we to believe that every public employee has been/is indispensable from day one on the job and to the grave?

• SOCIAL PROGRAMS.

There are 2.2 Million members of organized labor in CA; 50% in Republican ranks, 1.1 million in Democratic ranks are but 15% of 7 million registered Democrats. Unions today represent but 12% of the national workforce; 88% has rejected that agenda that fails to recognize intrinsic motivations of those striving for achievement, recognition and commensurate rewards of promotion and compensation, not "holding the line!"

There are no "gold watches" in the private sector; in the public sector, to be hired is to retire in grandeur, no layoffs, no downsizing, security to the grave. But worse, the most productive talent that could be attracted for those contributions to make our world a better place are deterred.

Unions dues of 2% attach to every payroll dollar billed with liability as a mere surcharge in taxes that cannot be refused, with additional pick pocketing by fees, fines, service charges, utilities, water, trash, and sewer. The Dept of Water and Power in the City and County of Los Angeles has pay scales of record nationally and threatening work disruptions; in NY the Transit Unions tried that at Christmas and were fined a few million dollars, upheld by the courts.

In the new framework we have become the little people, "the rest of us are losing out". We are unwittingly funding the union dues cumulatively applied to political action adverse to the public interest, to the public welfare, health and safety, those funds not available for application accordingly.

These are the "interests" who lament limits on taxes that can be attached to our homes by Proposition 13, they want the right to increase taxes and approve budgets by majority and not a 2/3 vote. At the meeting of The OCDCC of April 28, an overwhelming vote endorsed a bond issue for "education." Affordability for those families impacted in Santa Ana in this projected economic trauma not a consideration? I spoke in opposition to no avail.

It is a ruse of these "special interests" to set up Corporate America as "bad guys," Unions "the hope" of "working men and women." Corporations are overdue for REFORM. Tax Law is a great equalizer! Discipline can be imposed and behaviors encouraged. Unions are not "democratic," dissent is not well received and can cause blackballing for complaints. Unions are overdue for REFORM.

Moreover, public employee unions have become so powerful in Los Angeles City and County, those governments are veritably a union "Local." The unions of police and sheriff deputies scuttle any criticism, their internal reviews produce rave results, and conduct is condoned whether wrongful deaths, excessive/lethal force. The toll for liability surrounding King/Drew Hospital is not tallied.

It is the Political Action Funds unwittedly contributed by taxpayers to the public employee unions that are being applied to benefit the growth and development of potential for those of their fraternal associates within the private sector, with the County and City of LA now imposing that agenda on businesses in designated "districts" by fiat!

Ironically, the same unions responsible for corroding systems of education now cry out on behalf of "working men and women" without skills as a result, and to now be "enrolled" at 2% on their paycheck, "living wages" by "union scale."

For those of us genuinely concerned with the public welfare, health and safety, there is a cognitive dissonance in tolerance of this disproportionate domination of organized labor within The California Democratic Party, as if reference to "working men and women" is synonymous with those of unions and the other 85% is irrelevant? There are laws to ensure Fair Employment Opportunity," and "Equal Opportunity," in hiring, promotion, and retention" It is unfair and unlawful for any agenda to supersede that of the public interest and this has been allowed to occur.

Assemblies of the Democratic constituencies are too frequently in union halls instead of town halls, the demand to patronize all goods and services of union providers is unfair to "working families" in smnall businesses and those that are providing commpetitive goods and services in the economy, paying taxes to support governments and employment payrolls generating those tax revenues. Not incidentally, corporate America has climbed on the bandwagon of Universal/Single Payer Health care as unions have been working to organize health care workers and employees of insurance companies.

My Voice is for Fairness and Equality. Some will feel this expression a form of blasphemy. On the other hand, it is very unlikely that the Republican Party would embrace those social needs commensurate with a sense of that conscience for those services for the most vulnerable amongst us as moral obligations; statistical representation shows there is no discrimination by age, class, ethnicity, gender by catastrophic conditions and disease inflicted on those victims. The Republican Governor of CA repeatedly treats critical needs as frivolity, and has been accomplice with Democratic leadership in allowing tickets of union folk punched for life at the expense of everyone else; this is not rational and cannot be justified.

Business was forced to reign in union demands by the marketplace overruled in the public sector given the power to tax and spend whether or not funded, or even an "honest bargain." Concepts of respect for government employees and fairness in that recognition of their services are not mutually exclusive.

• HEALTH CARE.

Specialists demand "regular 40 hrs weeks," no obligation to be on call for "emergencies." Artificial control of NUMBERS has been the practice of protective "fraternal associations" with elitists primarily among those able to afford the costs of lengthy education, internships, and residencies.

Social issues compel a consideration of the quality of medical care that might be enhanced by those dedicated to research and medical practicioners focusing on preventative medicine, healing, compassion and humanity enabled to do so by subsidies of costs of lengthy education and training with required periods of "payback" in medical services provided.