Indigents

For more than a decade, conservative social theorist Charles Murray has made a living pushing the boundaries of politically acceptable debate about the welfare state. But nothing the contrarian thinker has written in the past drew the level of vitriol now engulfing "The Bell Curve," his new best-selling book linking IQ to race and poverty. Murray has spent the better part of the past two weeks fending off accusations that he and his late co-author, Richard J. Herrnstein, are reactionary racists.

Dear Liz: Our mother just turned 64, and our father is divorcing her. She hasn't worked in years because of significant physical and mental health issues. My sister and I have been trying to figure out how she's going to survive on $750 a month, which is the equivalent of half his Social Security. She has always had serious issues with money management, which is why there are no retirement savings or a house. We are now about to embark on the maze of social service benefits that an older woman below the poverty line can receive, partly so we can decide whether she's better off staying put where she is in Arkansas, moving to my sister's in Texas, moving to be near me in Maryland, or moving to her childhood home of Chicago, where most of her friends are. For a lot of complicated reasons (mostly related to the mental health issues)

Whether it is grilled squab at Spago or fettuccine Parmesan at Gennaro's, restaurant leftovers have a common fate around Los Angeles. " Lo buttiamo via, " explained a waiter quietly in Italian. "We throw it away." The homeless in a dozen cities across the nation, including Chicago, New York and Atlanta, dine nightly on scraps from the finest white-linen restaurants. At upscale Chez Panisse in Berkeley, ham carved into perfect rectangles becomes prosciutto.

It took only 12 minutes Wednesday to memorialize the lives of 1,639 people who share a fresh grave at the Los Angeles County Cemetery and Crematory, their cremated remains packed in individual plastic boxes beneath a layer of dirt. Five chaplains, joined by a smattering of mourners and an unusually quiet contingent of media, stood in the sun, offering prayers that promised an eternal life kinder and richer than the mortal one that ended with a burial plot marked not with the names of the dead but only the year they died: 2008.

The Board of Supervisors has approved a new contract with a unit of the Los Angeles County Bar to represent indigent defendants in criminal cases. The contract includes a pay raise for the 460 attorneys who work in the Indigent Criminal Defense Assn., representing defendants in cases in which the public defender and alternate public defenders have conflicts. Those attorneys have been without a raise since 1986. Their contract expired last week after negotiations with the county broke down.

A state appeals court has struck down a San Diego County program that offers free healthcare to those who make $1,078 a month or less but provides no subsidies for those who make more. The decision Wednesday by a three-judge panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal reversed a trial court's decision in favor of the county's all-or-nothing plan. Attorneys for the plaintiffs said Wednesday's decision could bring lifesaving care for thousands.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday pledged $7.5 million for indigent medical care, giving up their long-held insistence that the state bear the cost of the entire program. Without comment, supervisors agreed to provide county general funds to Indigent Medical Services, an 8-year-old, county-run program that reimburses doctors and hospitals for treating uninsured patients. The action came even as the board faced a $60-million deficit for the next fiscal year.

County officials are pressing for changes in the way the government pays to defend indigent people charged with crimes, and county supervisors said Tuesday that they believe the new proposals could save "significant" amounts of money. The county spent about $9 million last year in fees to private lawyers brought in to defend indigent clients.

Lawyers for two Los Angeles County indigents won a court order Thursday temporarily blocking the planned shutdown of dozens of special health-care clinics and services for the poor, closures that a Superior Court judge said would cause "irreparable harm" if allowed. Faced with the need to cut $6.

It was raining and the freeways were a mess. I was on my way to a parking lot in La Habra where a mobile pediatric clinic stops once a week. I was writing another story on indigent care--this one on the troubles that St. Jude Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Fullerton was having in starting a "mom-mobile," a new van similar to its 2-year-old pediatric van, that would provide free prenatal care. I wanted to look at the pediatric van, talk to some patients, see how the program worked.

Los Angeles County's fee to transport and handle dead bodies is going up from a cap of $200 to a maximum of $400. The county Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the fee increase Tuesday, accepting the coroner's office's assertion that transportation and handling costs have gone up since the fee was enacted in 1991. Approved billing rates for the current fiscal year, which ends this summer, will only go up to $312.12, according to a coroner's staff report. "The increased fee ?

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors formally appointed a veteran county lawyer Tuesday to lead the public defender's office, an agency that employs more than 700 defense attorneys who represent indigent defendants in criminal court. The appointment of Assistant Public Defender Ronald L. Brown to the $270,000-a-year position marks the first time an African American will run the office, which has an annual budget of about $178 million. Brown said in a recent interview that his biggest challenge will be dealing with the financial difficulties facing the county.

Second of two parts In San Antonio, the Catholic Church has long been a political force, often providing a voice to poor neighborhoods that can feel like an entirely different metropolis from the upscale communities in the north end of town. "It's like you need a passport to go from one side to the other," said Father Virgil Elizondo, a San Antonio vicar. For a quarter-century, the archbishop was Patrick Fernandez Flores, whose remarkable journey -- he was the seventh child of migrant farmworkers and a high school dropout -- resonated deeply.

Doctors and other medical personnel who volunteered last August at the largest free health clinic ever held in Los Angeles could practically watch as their patients slipped through the holes in the county's safety net. Among the 6,300 uninsured and underinsured seeking care at the Forum in Inglewood last year, Dr. Natalie Nevins diagnosed a 58-year-old woman as having diabetes and dangerously high blood sugar. The woman, who had recently lost her job and health insurance, refused to be hospitalized, afraid of the expense.

In a gloomy building off Ganguly Street with 12-foot ceilings and floors carpeted with wood chips, Mohammad Manawwar spends his days building the obsolete. Nearly half a century ago, his father and grandfather taught him how to hand-craft a rickshaw, shaping the spokes and outer arc of the oversized wheels from pieces of ash and lining the bucket seat with a pillow of flax. "For years, they've threatened to close us down," he said. "But we're still here." Welcome to Kolkata, where poverty, inertia and entrenched interests have made this former capital of the Raj a soulful, somewhat squalid bastion of fading traditions and technologies.

Maria Perez's fever had climbed to 103, her body ached and she had trouble breathing. After being told in the emergency room that she had pneumonia, Perez went to a clinic in South Los Angeles for a follow-up appointment. The doctor asked Perez about her housing situation. Her apartment had cockroaches and mice, Perez said, and rain came through a broken window and filled the walls with mold. The doctor wrote prescriptions to treat the pneumonia and an asthma flare-up and then did something that he hoped would prevent her from getting even sicker: He sent her down the hall to talk to a lawyer.

A judge handed a victory to ill and impoverished patients Thursday, ruling that county government must give them a chance to appeal when it refuses to pay their medical bills. Three legal aid groups had sued the Board of Supervisors in October, alleging that poverty-stricken patients were being dunned after the county refused to reimburse doctors and hospitals for their treatment.

Allowing indigent parents the chance to give their children Christmas presents, the Union Rescue Mission in the skid row area of downtown Los Angeles has set up a "Christmas Store" where parents can pick out three gifts for every child. Since Monday, parents registered with the Union Rescue Mission have been stopping by the makeshift store to find the perfect presents for their children--from Barbie dolls and footballs to toiletries and sweaters.

In a chaotic eight-hour budget hearing Wednesday, members of the Los Angeles City Council set aside a slew of budget proposals designed to prevent the city from going bankrupt. But they did approve a reduction to one subsidy program that covers the trash fees of at least 58,395 low-income senior citizens and disabled residents in Los Angeles. Most Los Angeles customers who live in single-family homes pay $36.32 per month in trash and recycling fees, while apartment dwellers pay $24.33, according to city officials.

He hanged himself in a room above a donkey stall. He lived there with his new wife; he will not know the child she carries inside her; never again will he work the summer fields, walk home along the canal at dusk with his brother. He didn't leave a note. He could write no more than his name. Others were left to tell the short story of Samir Asar, a man of no consequence beyond this village, who sought a life he couldn't find, a life the Nile Delta refused to grant him. Winter light slants through the open door and shines on a platter of rice his mother, Fawzeya, balances on her lap, picking out chaff and smoothing.