Read All About It in the Sunday Papers-Easter Edition

LEAD STORY-New York Times: “States Shredding Social Safety Nets to Balance Budgets”

Maybe Pierre duPont should come on here to explain how raising taxes on the Silverspoonistas is engaging in ‘class warfare’, while cutting vital services to the most vulnerable is not:

Perhaps nowhere have the cuts been more disruptive than in Arizona, where more than 1,000 frail elderly people are struggling without home-care aides to help with bathing, housekeeping and trips to the doctor. Officials acknowledge that some are apt to become sicker or fall, ending up in nursing homes at a far higher cost.

Ohio and other states face large cutbacks in child welfare investigations, which may mean more injured children and more taken into foster care. Despite tax increases, California has ended dental coverage for adults on Medicaid, all but guaranteeing future medical problems.

“There’s no question that we’re getting short-term savings that will result in greater long-term human and financial costs,” said Linda J. Blessing, interim chief of the Arizona Department of Economic Security, expressing the concerns of officials and community agencies around the country. “There are no good options, just less bad options.”

Someone from the Governor’s office needs to explain why they have not yet chosen to take back a reasonable portion of the obscenely-large tax cuts that Delaware’s wealthiest got over the course of 20 years to pay for the budget shortfall. That, amigos, is class warfare, not to mention upper-class welfare.

Washington Post: “How the Stevens Prosecution Imploded”

Inexperience, thin staffing and bureaucratic infighting. Whodathunkit during the Bush Years?:

Former prosecutors, defense lawyers and onetime Justice Department officials also described more chronic liabilities in the department’s Public Integrity Section: Once the “A Team” for fighting corruption in state legislatures, judges’ chambers and Congress, the unit in recent years lost staffing, strong supervision, some of its varnish and its insulation from politics.

Houston Chronicle: “Texas Bill to Allow Arming on College Campuses Likely to Pass”

Even though the NRA has pretty much had its way on the arming of America, some locations have largely been sacrosanct, college campuses prominent among them. But Texas is likely to counter that trend.   

“State after state after state have said no to it … and this committee just chose to ignore them,” said Marsha McCartney, president of the North Texas Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “I’m not usually surprised about what goes on in Austin, but I am terribly disappointed.”

If the bill passes, Texas would join, wait for it…, Utah as the only states prohibiting public universities from establishing rules barring licensees from bringing handguns on campus. 

Los Angeles Times: Failure of a Federal Low-Income Housing Program

A cautionary tale and brilliant  reporting by the Times’ investigative team. 

Remember the $1 homes to enable homesteaders to actually build their lives? Well-intended but virtually unregulated by HUD:

… The program goes unmonitored. Cities are by law required to give HUD detailed accounts of who bought the homes and for how much. But in at least 31 cases, San Bernardino provided inaccurate information, incorrectly listing either the buyer or the sale price, the review found.

HUD officials said that because the Dollar Homes program was mandated by Congress, it does not receive the same type of attention and follow-up as programs created by HUD itself.

“You have to keep in mind that this program wasn’t created for success,” said Vance Morris, the director of HUD’s office of single-family asset management, which oversees the Dollar Homes program. “Sometimes you have programs created for success and others that were created to be compliant with the law. In this case, we are just complying with the law.“

Got that? Because HUD didn’t think of the program themselves, they’ve provided at best minimal oversight even though oversight was their responsibility. Of course, the Obama Administration is developing real rules for oversight, but not before many undeserving people got rich off the scheme. Read the whole damn thing. It’s good!

McClatchy Newspapers: Wind Turbines Offer Great US Job Growth Possibilities

It’s already started, it’s growing, and once a reasonable energy policy passes, it’ll be a windfall.

Paging Tommywonk…if he’s not too hung over from the Horse Flies concert last night.

Philadelphia Inquirer: Easter & the Obamas-A Window Into African-American Culture

Why their fashion, food and church choices really matter to the African-American Community:

Easter, the holiest of Christian holidays, often has churchgoers breaking out their finest. Not only has the day traditionally meant new clothes, but for African Americans, it historically also has offered a chance to claim dignity within their own communities during times when they weren’t respected by society at large.

That means the sartorial choices of America’s first hostess of color will not merely make a fashion statement. For many black people, her clothes will communicate something about cultural identity, too.

There is a stereotypical belief that African Americans elevate fashion, sometimes flamboyantly so, at the expense of everything else on Easter. But many black people say the excitement they are expressing reflects something different.

African American culture – with its lifelong existence as a historical afterthought – is now being thrust into the forefront of American living. With the Obamas as America’s most prominent family, generations-old traditions vital to African Americans – including Easter fashion – will be displayed on the global stage.

And, on that note, the Beast Who Slumbers wishes the happiest of Easters to everyone who is celebrating today.