California: The “Least-Educated State”?
By Peter SchragThis one doesn’t quite belong under “lies, damned lies and statistics”, but it’s close enough. On Thursday, CIS, the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, issued a press release headlined “California Now the Least-Educated State: Report Examines How Immigration Has Changed the Golden State.” Huck Finn would have called that a stretcher.
The handout is based on a CIS compilation of data showing that while the percentage of California workers with high school diplomas has increased over the past 50 years, other states improved their graduation rates so much more that California’s is now the lowest in the nation..
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Preserve Safety Net, Cut Corrections
By Margaret Dooley-SammuliDrug Policy Alliance
Because of California's continuing budget crises, the question is no longer will we cut the corrections’ budget but how. Every dollar spent on big prisons this year will be taken from children's health care, family welfare, students' education, and services to our elderly and infirm.
We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past in terms of shredding the education and social safety net or investing billions in incarceration policies that cycle men and women in-and-out of violent, overcrowded prisons and back to our communities. The decisions made now will have real and lasting consequences for the health and safety of California communities for decades.
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California Cuts Threaten Latino Seniors’ Health, Safety
Araceli Martínez OrtegaLa Opinion/New America Media
The only thing that makes 82-year-old Jesús Ruiz happy, despite his disabilities and feeling abandoned by his children, is the help he receives from the State of California through In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) for frail low-income elders and younger people with disabilities.
A home-care worker with a kind Mexican face goes to Ruiz’s apartment in Sacramento three hours per day to help him to clean, to wash his clothes and cook for him. She is the only one person left to care for him.
"She is a true angel,” said Ruiz, for the first time showing a smile in his face during the interview.
"If they take her away from me, I would rather that they hang me in a tree. What am I going to do? If my children turn out to be devils, and my neighbors are only smoking pot. Who is going to help me,” he asked with a tone of desperation.
With a heart condition and diabetes, Ruiz takes 15 pills per day. "The doctor has told me that I can go in any moment," he said.
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