DHS fails kids, Granholm fails taxpayers (and Ralph Nader) and Dem racial politics go local
By RightMichigan.com Posted in Breaking News | jennifer granholm | Michigan | Ralph Nader — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.
Turns out that when a department is broken in the Granholm administration it stays broken for a long time. Unfortunately that's true of departments that deal with Michigan's most vulnerable children, too. Despite an August 2007 leadership change at the Department of Human Services the part of state government responsible for overseeing the placement and appropriate treatment of foster children has a spectacularly bad recent track record, not only failing to take care of kids like Ricky Holland but failing to even fulfill legal requirements for basic safety checks.
According to this morning's Ivory Tower hundreds of children were placed with out a single follow-up visit despite that pesky little thing we like to refer to as "the law." It's no surprise then that there's a giant lawsuit and that things aren't looking very good.
Experts said about 41 percent of children were moved at least three times during foster care.
Initially, state officials said they wanted to try to settle the suit. But settlement talks broke off last year when the state said it had no money to enact reforms. A trial date has been set for June.
Policy states that caseworkers make two face-to-face contacts with children during their first month in foster care. But caseworkers did not make any contacts in 31 percent of the 460 cases analyzed by the Children's Research Center.
The Children's Research Center, a nonprofit based in Madison, Wis., was appointed by U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds to conduct the case record review. Edmunds is overseeing a class-action lawsuit filed in August 2006 by New York-based Children's Rights, a national child advocacy group that alleges 19,000 Michigan children are being harmed in foster care.
Legal requirements are usually best fulfilled. I know, that's a shocking and genuinely profound sentence but apparently there are some folks out there working with Michigan kids who aren't familiar with the concept. For the sake of DHS officials across the State I'd rather state the obvious than make any sort of assumptions.
And this bit about having no money to enact reforms? How about not breaking the law? That should probably be worked into any department's budget pretty early in the process. Though, honestly, it's not surprising that DHS couldn't budget to save their own lives. They weren't able to budget to save the lives of several children in recent years either. The stories of kids like Holland and Isaac Lethbridge have achieved a pretty significant level of infamy across Michigan. And despite those failures Granholm's DHS continually failed to make routine, legally mandated safety visits?
Real shining example of leadership at it's finest. But hey, they're only foster kids, right Governor? It's not like they vote. Oh, I know. She cares. She's probably really mad and fed up and she's not going to take it anymore. Right. And we haven't heard that sort of thing before.
Now how about getting something done?
Swing over to a different part of the Capitol and you'd have seen a little bit of that happening yesterday on an entirely different topic. Attorney General Mike Cox teamed up with Jack Hoogendyk and Ralph Nader to push the State to update and make more accessible it's online listing of state contracts. Cox is leading the way by posting his own department's contracts. (Incidentally, I fully expect that for the rest of my life, whenever I see Ralph Nader's name anywhere in the news I'll have no choice but to click the link.)
The Associated Press reports:
"You can see the potential for regular citizens to find out what's going on in their state government," Cox said while unveiling his new Web site to reporters. Nader spoke by phone.
Cox, Nader and House Republicans said letting taxpayers see and search for government contracts will make government more transparent and help the public, media and scholars.
"Information is the currency of democracy," Nader said.
Cox said Nader wrote a letter last year to all 50 governors asking them to post contracts online. (Liz) Boyd said the governor's office had no record of such a letter.
Granholm's office counters that a site already exists listing State contracts. The tricky part is, it's 16 pages long. For the whole of state government. Cox's list is 6 pages long. For one department. Doesn't take a math major to figure out that the State's website is missing a few pages. Which begs the question... what are they hiding?
A few contracts with out-of-state companies they're not telling us about? Suppose we won't know unless the House takes up Hoogendyk's legislation. And for that, boys and girls, I wouldn't hold your breath. Andy Dillon's spokesman is quoted in the article derisively dismissing the legislation because Andy's busy "creating jobs." No word on whether he had more success with that first $2.4 billion tax hike package or by telling the State that a lame-duck vote on a gas tax hike was probable.
Keep working, Mr. Speaker. Keep working.
And while a former Republican gubernatorial candidate (Hoogendyk) and a future Republican gubernatorial candidate (Cox in 2010) do your job for you we'll swing our attention a little further east where another potential 2010 Democrat gubernatorial candidate has surfaced and immediately been labeled by Democrats and the MSM. The Detroit News reports that former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer may be seeking his party's nod... oh, and he'll be the `black guy:'
"Would he have the ability to raise money? Yes. Would he command respect? Yes. And in a Democratic primary, a quarter to a third of voters are African-American. That's a big plus for him," Sarpolus said.
"He's got to be saying 'If Barack Obama can do it nationally, I can do it here in Michigan.' He was loved in Detroit and even in the white suburbs. He has a legitimate shot."
Ed Sarpolus, Lansing-based pollster and political consultant, said an Archer gubernatorial candidacy would have to be taken seriously.
A great man once gave a great speech where he talked about having a dream. So much for judging men by the content of the character and not the color of their skin.
What's the first thing Dems like Sarpolus (the governor's personal pollster) point out when a Dennis Archer talks about entering a race? `Hey, he's black! Barack Obama! Racial identity politics!' And of course the implicit and insidious assertion in the pollster's statement about the racial make-up of the primary voting base is that African-American's are racists and WILL break for the guy who looks like them because he looks like them.
Isn't it interesting that we haven't seen an article discussing Bob Ficano's interest in the governor's office quoting a prominent Democrat saying something like "two thirds to three quarters of primary voters are white. That's a big plus for him!"
Dennis Archer's politics bother me. Things like this:
He singled out UAW President Ron Gettelfinger, whom he called "a brilliant guy."
He said any decision to run also would be based on luring some of the best minds to join him in Lansing for at least a year or two.
THAT is a relevant topic for debate, discussion and derision. But attempting to marginalize and pigeon hole the guy as the "black candidate?" There's no place for that. That's bush league. And, not coincidentally, the current Democrat modus operandi.