Showing posts with label battered women shelters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label battered women shelters. Show all posts

Friday, January 4, 2013

THIS MAN WANTS TO BE YOUR PRESIDENT

From the Advocate:
In Baton Rouge, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s latest round of state budget cuts are forcing shelter director Audrey Wascome to contemplate cutting the number of beds for battered women and children by a third.

The reductions will hit shelters for domestic violence victims across the state, including the Metropolitan Center for Women and Children in the New Orleans area. The Metropolitan Center’s executive director, Dale Standifer, said Thursday the cuts will erode funding for an emergency shelter that gives women a place to sleep when they have nowhere else to go.
....

Funding for family violence prevention and intervention programs was cut by $998,413, a 16 percent reduction in total dollars through the contracts the state holds with shelters and other domestic violence prevention providers.

Other reductions impacted hospice services, health care providers, dental benefits for pregnant women and contract services for the poor, the mentally ill and the drug-addicted.
Jindal wants to put the women and children in hotel rooms, but Wascome says there is no money to pay for hotel rooms.  Right now she turns away women and children every day, because the shelters are full, and she may have to reduce the number of beds in the because of budget cuts.  Why is it so often the most vulnerable who must suffer?
For 2010, the Violence Policy Center ranked Louisiana fourth in the nation in the number of women murdered by men in single victim-single offender homicides.  Between Jan. 1, 2010, and Oct. 31, 2012, domestic violence was blamed for the deaths of nearly 200 people across Louisiana, according to the Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence. 
Bobby Jindal is the very soul of "compassionate conservatism", and he wishes to share his concept of "compassion" with the entire country. He wants to be in charge of the country so much that he travels frequently to promote his own cause and phones in his orders to his staff in Louisiana.

Jindal declines requests for interviews or commentary from the local media, because he wants to be a star on the national stage, and coverage by the media in Louisiana will not further his national ambitions.  The locals know too much and might ask embarrassing questions.