T4: The Postpartisanator

"This program saved me from dying," said Paul Culp, whose untreated bipolar disorder left him living under a Tahama County, California bridge. The program he's talking about is the state's Integrated Services for Homeless Adults With Serious Mental Illness, whose budget Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has just cut from $55 million to zero. "I had that [program] to fall back on," said Culp, who was reunited with his children after it helped him become self-supporting, "and now I don't. Things seem to be going well, but it takes just one crisis to change that."

This is a story about the sham of "postpartisanship," the consequences of ideology and the underappreciated contributions of the mainstream media.

Seven weeks into a deadlock between Schwarzenegger and Republican legislators, the governor won two GOP defections and finally got his budget passed by promising to veto $700 million from the state's general fund. The cuts he announced last week did not include a $45 million tax break for purchasers of yachts, planes and RVs, but they did include a model program for getting mentally ill adults off the streets via job training, housing assistance, dental care and survival skills like grocery-buying.

Anyone who has walked an American street since the Reagan era deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill has seen the consequences of loopy government-is-the-problem social Darwinism. Where smart public programs like this one in California have since gained a toe-hold, their value has been demonstrated not only in human terms, but also in hard dollars. Since November 1999, the California program has helped 13,000 people; among those enrolled at the start of this year, according to a Los Angeles Times article, "there were 81% fewer days of incarceration, 65% fewer days of psychiatric hospitalization and 76 fewer days of homelessness compared with their pre-enrollment days."

The Schwarzenegger response to the pain this program's elimination will cause? Let the counties pay for it. No matter that the counties are already ridiculously strapped. No matter that a source the governor's Department of Finance said the counties should turn to -- Proposition 63, the 1% "millionaire's tax" designed to overhaul the state's mental health system -- is forbidden by law from being tapped to substitute for state cuts.

Earlier this summer, at a conference in Los Angeles, I heard Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mike Bloomberg extol the virtues of postpartisanship. At one panel, I listened to Sherry Lansing, whom I admire greatly, explain that she, a Democrat, came to support Schwarzenegger when she realized that if he shares her values and she agrees with him on the issues, why shouldn't she be for him? In a Q&A after that panel, when I asked Schwarzenegger's chief of staff, postpartisan Democrat Susan Kennedy, why Democrats should overlook Schwarzenegger's campaigning in Ohio for George W. Bush, whose Iraq war is arguably the most tragic debacle in American history, she blew me off with a snarky line about Democrats' "inflexibility" and condescension for my naivete in supposing that the governor's postpartisanship might actually dampen his support for the Republicans presidential candidate. I wonder what Sherry Lansing, a tremendous champion of progressive social causes, thinks of Schwarzenegger's choice of yacht and plane buyers over bipolar victims living under bridges. I don't wonder what Susan Kennedy thinks; she's paid to think what Schwarzenegger thinks.

I didn't need to do any reporting to write this blog, but I also didn't lick the facts it contains off the wall. I took all of them from a Los Angeles Times article that appeared this past weekend. It was written by three Times staff writers: Scott Gold reporting from Los Angeles, Lee Romney reporting from San Francisco, and Evan Halper reporting from Sacramento. Two other Times staff writers -- Jordan Rau and Jack Leonard -- contributed to the article. It was the lead piece in the paper's California section, which means that the section's editor, Janet Clayton, gave five journalists the time to report that they needed and the play that the article warranted. As far as I can tell, the other mainstream media outlets that reported this veto either credited the LATimes or came nowhere near its depth. The Times is hemorrhaging revenue, circulation and staff, yet it still manages to do impressive enterprise journalism. Yes, the blogosphere also supports some terrific investigative reporters. But I ain't one of them; I'm just a zhlub in sweats trying to shine a spotlight on what I see in other media. An article like this -- "Program for mentally ill eliminated: Before signing the budget, Schwarzenegger kills the $55-million initiative that aids the homeless. Counties can fund it, an aide says" -- is an occasion to celebrate the journalists who make a good deal of the essential but derivative Hey! Lookit this!ing of the blogosphere possible.

Comments

[fact finder]

What can you expect from some one who's father was an SS General.

[MidnightMike]

Typical of the Bush Bunch--line the pockets of the rich at the expense of those who are struggling to survive. Despicable--but unfortunately, predictable.

[Xtine]

arnie should have accepted the pot growers' generous offer: http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle_blog/2007/aug/06/marijuana_dealers_offer_schwarze

[tbmornel]

Your blog prooves that there is no difference between the two parties.

[biglover]

Did anyone really expect anything less from the Postpartisanator?

[gems]

Certain mental health disorders can cause violent behavior, including crimes. Psychotic disorders, some depressions, schizophrenia, paranoia, that need to be monitor with medication. (My grandfather was a psychiatrist). Mental health patients untreated can be miserable and in some instances dangerous, but priorities are priorities, plains, cars and automobiles come first before humans.
I'm also an animal lover and a vegan. I hope that poor little pig he is holding doesn't end up slaughter.
I know he is done a few good things, but I have never been quite sold on him.
Gemma

[Sinclair]

While I'm glad that the Los Angeles Times reported on this issue, I'm afraid that their doing so is more the exception than the rule. Too many other issues have been ignored and even censored by the Times.

This story is sort of like the broken clock being right twice a day. In this case the broken clock being the L.A. Times.

[FOXYLADY]

I'M NOT FOR SOCIALIZED MEDICINE OR ANY OTHER SOCIALIZED THINGS........BUT DAMN IT, WHY FAVOR ALL THE RICH W TAX CUTS WHEN WE, WITH ANY INTELLIGENCE, HAVE EXPENSIVE LAWYERS TO FIX THEIR RETURNS AND ADD ALL KINDS OF CROOKED DEDUCTIONS TO THEIR TAX BILLS....ASS KISSING BUSH OF THE SAUDI ROYALS AND HIS HAVES AND HAVE MORES..HIS BASE.......BIG BUSINESS.

[FOXYLADY]

WELL, FOLKS, HE IS CALLED THE "EXTERMINATOR"!! IN PHILADELPHIA THERE ARE SOME HOSPITALS LEAVING INDIGENT (IS THAT THE WORD) OUT ON THE STREETS INSTEAD OF TAKING THEM TO SOME SAFE PLACE/SHELTER...THE SHELTERS ARE OVERRUN WITH HOMELESS PEOPLE.....EVEN ENTIRE FAMILIES........NOW...THAT'S A REAL SIN. PERHAPS WE SHOULD ALL STAND OUTSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE AND SCREAM FOR BUSH TO DO SOMETHING FOR AMERICAN CITIZENS INSTEAD OF FOREIGNERS AND BIG OIL BUSINESS'S.......

[rshrink]

Since the Reagan years, Kansas has closed the main hospital for the mentally ill, has eliminated beds in the remaining hospitals, and state money and insurance has been cutback for mental illness. The result is a huge portion of the mentally ill have now drifted into the care of the correctional institutions and nursing homes, mostly the former. The police now monitor many of the mentally ill, living on the streets and they often have to contend with mentally ill people who are threatening suicide or seeking "death by cop." With the lack of appropriate services for mentally ill people, we have slipped back into former centuries where mentally ill people were viewed as possessed by demons and the only course was to lock them up in institutions. How could we have slipped back so far, at the same time that we have modern, more therapeutic medications and treatments? The bulk of the media is not covering this, so the extent of the repurcussions of this kind of policy are not known by the average citizen. Good that it is mentioned here, but it will take a lot more to educate people to the inhumanity of treatment now going on in the good "old" USA.

[Real American]

Your mistake is was believing anything the los angeles times prints. There's an old saying that goes, "don't believe anything you read and only half of what you see"

[jayne]

Amen. Many thanks for an insightful, and important post. More people need to read the fine print where Arnold Schwarzenegger is concerned. Good for you for giving credit to the mainstream media when it is so richly deserved, and not merely demonized.

[ld]

You're so totally correct about the sleazy budget cuts, but in the governator's defense he needed to get a budget through and so was blackmailed by some extremely cold-hearted Republicans into cuts he didn't support.

[joyhorowitz]

Maybe now that the governor has axed state funds for the homeless, he's ensured that his brother-in-law in Santa Monica will forever have a platform to continue to promote himself.

[JusticiaParaTodos]

It appears that Ms. Lansing not unlike Nancy Pelosi appears to be the epitome of neo-liberal thinking.

These yuppie liberals are "left" only when it is convenient, otherwise they are just as to the right as the Terminator and his brother W.

I personally think what this nation needs along with a new president is a new, people oriented, people controlled political party that will fight for our rights as working people, protect our environment from corporate induced pollution and above all; DEFEND OUR CONSTITUTION!