Government Programs

Congress is about to approve a new federal program to pay car owners up to $4,500 for trading in gas-guzzling automobiles for more fuel-efficient cars, to the applause of the struggling auto industry. But the program is drawing heavy criticism from an unlikely quarter: environmentalists who are sworn enemies of big, old clunkers that get poor mileage.

Healthcare companies are tripping over themselves to profit from a flood of government contracts for treating the poor and disabled, and a family-run company in Long Beach with nearly $5 billion in revenue is trying to stay ahead of the pack. Amid the growing competition,Molina Healthcare Inc.is facing new hurdles. It has lost two key state contracts in Ohio and Missouri and its shares have tumbled 23% in recent weeks. J. Mario Molina, the company's 53-year-old chief executive, said that these are temporary setbacks and that the company remains in expansion mode.

When Rick Santorum stood in front of voters at a yacht club in this small town and pledged to slash government spending, especially entitlement programs, Nancy Garvin knew she had found her candidate. Garvin, 54, said she was sick of seeing government squander money through agencies that don't do anything, and wants expenditures cut "in half. " "Washington is throwing money away through a lot of wasteful spending," she said, sitting at a picnic table beneath trees draped in graying Spanish moss.

When Rick Santorum stood in front of voters at a yacht club in this small town and pledged to slash government spending, especially entitlement programs, Nancy Garvin knew she had found her candidate. Garvin, 54, said she was sick of seeing government squander money through agencies that don't do anything, and wants expenditures cut "in half. " "Washington is throwing money away through a lot of wasteful spending," she said, sitting at a picnic table beneath trees draped in graying Spanish moss.

Addie D'Agui and Michael Bergeron are like any other couple who fall in love and want to marry. But if this couple said "I do," their combined income would drop substantially. D'Agui and Bergeron are disabled and living on Supplemental Security Income payments. If they married, they would lose about $90 a month, a result of a government policy that provides married couples with less assistance than two single individuals.

The federal government's E-Verify program, which seeks to reduce the hiring of illegal immigrants, is becoming increasingly popular, with 1,000 new businesses signing up each week despite concerns about its reliability. More than 124,000 businesses, including nearly 10,000 in California, are signed up for the Web-based identification program that enables employers to check whether an employee is authorized to work, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

As President Obama began selling his new jobs package, he was pressed Wednesday from both the left and the right, with Republicans warning about ballooning deficits and black lawmakers seeking bolder action on an unemployment rate that approaches 16% for African Americans. Partisan tensions surfaced at a private White House meeting with congressional leaders of both parties. In an unusually aggressive move, Obama opened the meeting by accusing Republicans of "rooting against" an economic recovery, according to an account provided by Republican aides.

A report due to be released today by a Republican senator contends the Obama administration's stimulus program is fraught with waste and incompetence -- evidenced by a turtle crossing in northern Florida that will cost more than $3 million and a snafu in which thousands of Social Security checks went out to people who had died. Modeled after a release from the White House describing 100 stimulus projects that were in the works, the report put out by Sen.

The road to recovery for U.S. automakers could be jammed with hundreds of thousands of gas-guzzling used cars, which President Obama hopes will be traded in for more fuel-efficient vehicles -- with the lure of government money. So-called cash-for-clunkers programs in Germany and France have worked well this year to spur new car sales. But similar initiatives aimed at reducing smog in Southern California have not fared so well in recent years.

Geneva Thacker's wish sounds simple enough. She'd like city water hooked up to her trailer so she and her two young children don't have to carry it anymore. "I pack it in buckets from Mommy's," said the 29-year-old eastern Kentucky woman, who washes clothes by hand and uses a barrel to catch rainwater. "It's a big hill. That'd mean everything to me to get to put my bathroom in and my water. "I'd probably think I was rich."

Here's how healthcare management works in the Hiltzik household as 2011 starts to slip away: We've ordered a year's worth of disposable contact lenses for my son to supplement the year's supply he already has. I've bugged my wife to buy new eyeglasses and sunglasses, although the two pair of designer frames she already has are functional, and plenty stylish too. When the latest statement arrived from my dentist, I cursed my dental plan for...

Bill Clinton feels Barack Obama's pain. "President Obama has had a tough hand to play," the former president writes in "Back to Work," his passionate little book about, well, mostly about what Bill Clinton would do if he were in the White House today. And Clinton means it. He acknowledges that Obama is wrestling with a much deeper economic crisis than anything he faced in the early 1990s. He blames most of our problems on George W. Bush and other Republicans for passing tax cuts that ballooned the federal deficit and for failing to regulate financial derivatives (he admits he could have done more of that himself)

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said that he plans to launch an investigation into government loan programs, in response to the implosion of solar equipment maker Solyndra, which got a $535-million federal loan guarantee in 2009. Solyndra was the first recipient of a loan guarantee under a program authorized by the Bush administration in 2005 and beefed up under President Obama's stimulus act.  But in the last few weeks, the company has shuttered its operations, laid off nearly all of its 1,100 workers and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Maccao Peoples is a cheerful man, brightly engaging, with worn hands and an easy, if slightly wary smile. Under the circumstances, the cheer is more surprising than the wariness: Peoples has spent the better part of his 50 years in and out of prison, mostly for small stuff, most of it drug-related. He'd get in trouble, get arrested, do some time, be released, fall into old habits, get in trouble again. What he couldn't get was what he thought might break this pattern: a job. Then in May 2010, soon after his release from the California State Prison of Los Angeles County in Lancaster, he discovered Chrysalis.

Last Sunday, The Times reported that Gov. Jerry Brown has been taking thousands of dollars each month from donors to pay the rent on his Sacramento loft, while refusing his official state housing stipend. In the same day's paper, it was reported that as part of a "public-private partnership," corporations and foundations would pay several million dollars toward the successful Summer Night Lights anti-gang program in L.A. parks this year. And a few weeks earlier, the paper noted that the Los Angeles Unified School District was taking money from developer Eli Broad, entrepreneur Casey Wasserman and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to pay the salaries of about 20 top officials in the school bureaucracy.

Officials at one of the largest nonprofit homeless shelters in downtown Los Angeles say they can no longer operate government-funded programs because the costs are not fully covered and it takes months to get paid. Andy Bales, president of Union Rescue Mission, said no one would be forced onto the streets because of the decision. But nine families who are in transitional housing in South Los Angeles may have to move into the mission's main shelter on downtown's skid row until alternative placements can be found.

Most people want to live to a healthy and productive old age, and increasing numbers of Americans are achieving that goal, at least in part. The Census Bureau now counts 3 million people who are 85 or older. In the next quarter-century, thanks to healthier lifestyles and advances in medical knowledge and technology, that number is expected to more than double. And there's no reason to think it won't go on rising.

The federal government suffers from complacency in its approach to the worsening hunger problem in this country, said a former U.S. Department of Agriculture senior official. The attitude, primarily a recent development, is fostered by a false belief that the poor already receive sufficient help from the food programs now in place, said Carol Tucker Foreman, an assistant agriculture secretary during the Carter Administration.

Payday loans are billed as a quick way for borrowers to receive small loans, with no collateral or credit requirements. But the cost of the loans, which proponents say are supposed to be for emergency use, is extremely high. In California, each $100 borrowed costs up to $15; thus the fee on the maximum allowed $300 payday loan would amount to as much as $45. The annual percentage rate on that deal comes out to a whopping 460%. But do these borrowers, who might turn to payday loans to get money for recurring expenses, such as for groceries or housing, have better options?

The federal government spends $20 billion every year on kidney dialysis programs, but 1 in every 4 patients dies anyway. Investigative reporter Robin Fields of the public interest research group ProPublica Communications dissects the problems in a report appearing online in the Atlantic . Highly recommended reading. In preparation for the release of the article, the umbrella group Kidney Care Partners prepared a response to the article. That is available at the ProPublica website.