The Nationwide Scandal Hiding in Plain Sight

Some investigative reports reveal such extreme levels of greed, immorality and abuse that they can seem inconceivable. Such is the case of the bombshell series by the Center for Investigative Reporting on the egregious exploitation of residential care home workers. Jennifer Gollan, the Emmy Award-winning journalist in this investigation published by Reveal, joins Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer to discuss her work on this week’s episode of his podcast “Scheer Intelligence.”

[truthdig.com]

I'll be quite frank about this. This is a sample of our compliance to the allowance of and support of a failing capitalist system of both parties. Rather than confront this failing system we have come to placing our loved one's into places like these for cheaper means. Rather than fight for a health care system like many developed countries have, in which I'll argue we are paying for.

I personally spent the better part of 2 years speaking out against the ACA (Obama Care) which was simply a program to redistribute wealth from the working class to insurance and pharmaceutical companies for their benefit and to pay for preexisting conditions for insured that would become part of that forced program. And for low income people that would receive insurance at very low prices or free. When the ACA went into effect, that year my employer dropped our health care program and my monthly premiums went up 400%. As I tried to explain this to people on facebook I was called a liar and several other names and derogatory remarks. Accused of being many things, most disgusting, a republican

It took around 2 years for the stories like mine, people with family going under, losing homes, to finally see the implications of another failed health care program being forced on us. Well, here's another failure this program has brought onto us. As the cost of health care goes up 20% to 25% a year, you're now willing to remain in compliance to a totally fucked up system and place your loved one's into a makeshift home that is most likely incapable of providing adequate care for them by continuing to support a 2 party system that works against us. It was ridiculed when I used the frog in a pot of water analogy a while back, but this is exactly what is going on when it comes to compliance to what we are being served by our nongovernment. Because what we have is Corporatement by the ruling class.

{I should point out that to open up one of these care homes, you have to have more training to be a manicurist than you do to open up one of these senior facilities. And these facilities, because regulations have been relaxed over the last 15 years, are taking on increasingly ill patients. So we’re talking about hospice and dementia patients, which require 24-hour care and attention. And that’s what these senior facilities are promising, but it’s at the expense of these workers.}

This is disgusting! While the ruling class, and Trump!, will use these immigrants as virtual cannon fodder in the political arena, they also use them to make fortunes off of while lacking skills to adequately do the job required in the shadows.

{As I said before, a deep blue state. And why does this situation continue? First of all, why do the children of these parents put up with it? Do they know what’s going on? Why isn’t there more regulation? Kamala Harris, who’s running for president now, was the Attorney General during much of that period in California. Why didn’t they act on it?

Yeah, there have been actually some quite serious cases. One, in fact, is a case that the California Department of Justice is currently prosecuting. It involves a chain of care homes and childcare facilities in South San Francisco where prosecutors allege that workers were working around the clock for just two dollars an hour. And in some cases, they had their passports withheld. And this is a human trafficking case. These workers were not allowed to leave these facilities. And so going back to the question of enforcement, there are laws on the books that would hold some of these operators accountable. For example, there’s the Fair Day’s Pay Act, which became effective in 2016. And it basically said the Department of Social Services, which oversees licensing of these senior care facilities, that it empowers them to revoke the licenses of operators that have outstanding wage theft judgments. But what we found is that there are at least 20 companies that are still operating despite outstanding wage theft judgments, and that means they’re operating illegally. But the Department of Social Services, when we took these findings to them, told us that their hands are tied. That they cannot do anything unless it’s a health and safety issue that poses a risk to a resident, let alone the workers. So this is an area where, you know, there are laws on the books, but regulators aren’t enforcing them.}

In other words. These companies have more favor within the laws than the citizens. They are above the laws because they brought the politicians.