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.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?
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.
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.
Bobby Boy,
ReplyDeleteYou been messin round where
You aint go no business messin
and what you don't know
You aint got time to learn
What an evil, horrible little twerp.
And to think that certain national media label Jindal the new hope of the Republican Party. What's new? It's the same old party of people with no hearts.
DeleteHe's very bad!!
ReplyDeleteGrandmère, if Jindal does make a run for the presidency, you can be certain that his opponents will mine Wounded Bird archives for a lengthy history of his misdeeds! You may be doing a Very Important Thing here by chronicling his leadership record--such as it is.
ReplyDeletePrairie Soul, thank you. I hope my posts on Jindal count for something. The local press are cut off. Only a few Louisiana legislators have the spine to stand up to the governor, and their numbers are not enough to make a difference. He's set about destroying state institutions one by one, and it will take decades for the state to recover from his depredations, if we even have the will to recover when he's done.
DeleteIf Hillary runs she'll make mincemeat of the gobshyte!
ReplyDeleteWade, I don't think Jindal has a chance at the nomination, but with Republicans, you never know. Indeed, should it be a match between Hillary and Bobby, she'll chew him up into itty bitty pieces and spit him out.
DeleteNikki's at it in South Carolina, as well, refusing to enact Obamacare. They are literally killing people - many people - to advance their political careers.
ReplyDeleteJindal is philosophically against federal health care, so he will not allow the expansion of Medicaid. That people will sicken and die seems not to enter into his thinking processes. That someone will have to pay when the poor show up in the ER with stage 3 or 4 cancer, because they had no access to primary care doesn't seem to penetrate his penny-pinching mind.
DeleteHe's not stupid. It penetrates, I'm sure. Against his own self-advancement, it simply doesn't count. Nikki (I'm not citing her to bring this out as an "Indian" thing - the Republican governors as a whole are riding the same train) said an odd thing a couple of weeks back in response to the Newtown massacre. She spouted the expected support for gun ownership but then, within weeks of flat-out rejection of expanded medicare for South Carolina, came out strongly for greatly expanded State expenditure on mental health care, calling "the previous administration’s funding levels for mental health “immoral” and has made it a priority to restore funding". Go figure. I'm guessing that mental health issues have somewhere touched her own life and rendered her sensitive to the issue.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing that mental health issues have somewhere touched her own life and rendered her sensitive to the issue.
DeletePossibly. Personal experience or the experience of a loved one concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Very true, isn't it? The Rich, which she, relatively speaking, is not - not yet, at any rate - are largely cushioned from the experience, discomforts and sufferings of the individual in the street, as Romney's recent unending gaffes (and thank God for them) recently reminded us.
DeleteRomney called it right about the 47%, and he probably pushed the other 1% over to Obama. Amazing how accurate he was with his statement, and yet he was dead wrong in his certainty that he would win the election. Ha ha.
DeletePerhaps, the solution is not found in government sponsored homes. How many single moms would welcome a roommate; that the team might thrive together even in the very teeth of the failure of the individual? How many forthright and decent heroes might come together against suffering and abuse? We are stronger than brutality. We stand up, together. Love is strongest of all.
ReplyDeleteChris, I'm sure some single mothers might choose to pair up. Some are probably living with roommates now, but for those with no such option and no place to stay, there has to be a safety net provided by the government, or they'll be homeless - witness the numbers living in homeless shelters right now.
Delete"We stand up, together."
DeleteRespectfully, ChrisB, that's what government IS. "E Pluribus Unum"
Chris is my nephew, everyone, and a brilliant and compassionate mind. He's asked for my comments, but I have not yet fully-processed what he's saying in real-world terms. Like me, I think, Chris tends to lean toward idealism, but I did want to make clear that I know where his response is coming from, and it is from a heart of clear brightness.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mark. I'm an idealist, too. I have dreams about how things should be, but I also have a practical streak that accepts that we have to deal with what is.
DeleteAnd, I have to say, Chris, I'm gentler with you - quite hypocritically - than I might be with others. I'm as prone to knee-jerk as anyone, and, given the current call from certain quarters to cut funding and reduce government (where the poor and marginalized are concerned), I wanted to make clear to everyone here that you are not in that group who are concerned with nothing more than your wallet or your political power. Could you elaborate on your idea?
ReplyDeleteI'll try to be gentle with Chris, too, Mark.
Delete