DCF: still "Destroying Children's Futures"

The Daily Business News reports that Florida's most incompetent bureaucracy is still screwing up.   And Florida's misguided decision to privatize child welfare is paying the expected dividends of ruin and despair.

Back in 2005, DCF entrusted a 10-year old boy to a company called Hillsborough Kids, who accepted responsibility for placing the child in a foster home.  But they didn't to that; they passed the child onto another company to do it.

That company placed the boy in a foster home run by a single mother, which would have been acceptable if a 13 year old boy also in the home hadn't raped him one night.

A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of the boy, of course.  And of course, everyone who was supposed to be watching out for this boy is now behaving reprehensibly.  The subcontractor says Hillsborough Kids is responsible.  Hillsborough Kids claims that DCF is responsible.  Their argument?  DCF is supposed to vet all the contracting agencies.

“It’s sad and a complete waste of resources when we see each blame the other or duck behind technical defenses while the innocent foster child is suffering and waiting to get help,” said Howard Talenfeld, a child advocate with Colodny Fass Talenfeld Kalinsky & Abate in Fort Lauderdale.

If the DCF is solely to blame, the child won't get more than $200,000.  That's the maximum amount allowed by law.  And let's face it, the DCF should hand that over.  This ten year old boy is pretty badly scarred in so many ways.  But the fact is that the DCF is not solely responsible; they found an ostensibly professional service that claimed it could care for the child for a fee.

Meanwhile, private contractors argue they should have immunity from large judgments just like the state despite a statute and contracts that say otherwise. Additionally, providers say they couldn’t afford rising insurance premiums and legal fees that would come with any increase in lawsuits.

Hillsborough Kids accepted responsibility for the boy's welfare.  Once they signed for him, they became the arbiters of his fate, and while their argument that the DCF should have known better  than to trust Hillsborough Kids is interesting, it still doesn't let them off the hook for their choices in the matter.  They signed on for responsibility, and then chose to pass the kid along one more time. Hilllsbrough Kids chose, not the DCF. It was their choice who to pass him along to.

They argue that they should have immunity "just like the state" because they are "acting on behalf of the state."  But they are wrong.  They are not "acting on our behalf."  They are paid to "provide a service," and when they fail to do so, and worse, when their actions cause the damage their service was supposed to prevent, they must be held accountable.

Hillsborough Kids should not only pay for their negligence in this case, they should be punished for having the gall to try to dodge that responsibility.

But providers say that’s unfair and Children and Families Secretary George Sheldon said he supports giving the contractors sovereign immunity, which could limit judgments, fearing a multimillion-dollar verdict could break them. He suggested increasing the cap on the insurance contractors are required to carry and barring judgments above that amount

Hey, George, I have a better idea: keep the kids safe in the first place, so no one will need to file lawsuits.  Otherwise, sue the crap out of these agencies, yes, break them, ruin them, put them begging on the streets.  We should not tolerate this criminal lack of oversight, and that's what you're doing when you build a business plan to allow for it.

Because we can't assign a dollar amount to a child's innocence, to their welfare.

Midwest Realty Management: A Stain on our Republic

Dawn Price wanted to honor her husband's service for his country, and show support for all the other men and women serving our country.  So she did what patriotic men and women have been doing in this country for over 200 years; she hung a US flag in her window.  It's not a behemoth, like the Star Spangled Banner, it's just a simple flag, hung inside the glass.

But according to WLUK-TV, the Oshkosh NorthWestern, and numerous other sources, her landlord took issue with this.

Midwest Realty Management, a company with its head so far up its ass that it would make Rand Paul proud, decided that First Amendment rights don't apply, and have served an eviction notice to this patriotic family. 

WTMJ spoke with a company representative:

"We just don't allow people to stick things in their window," Midwest Realty Management president Rodney Oschleger explained. "Instead of drapes or blinds, for example, we don't allow them to put sheets. We don't allow them to put flags or banners or religious or political things."

Oschleger insisted that the company’s objections are aesthetic and have
nothing to do with the message a particular flag or banner might depict.

Oh, I see, speech is free only if it is aesthetically pleasing.  So much for all those rulings from the Supreme Court.

WLUK-TV spoke with property manager Randy Rich:

"This policy was developed to insure that we are fair to everyone as we have many residents from diverse backgrounds."

Great.  MRM isn't singling out Mrs. Price's civil rights, they're trampling on the rights of every victim tenant they have. 

Midwest Realty Management needs to be informed that someone has already found a way to "fair to everyone:"  it's called the First Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights attached to the Constitution of the United States of America.  It states that everyone has the right to make statements.  Statements like hanging a flag or political or religious material in the windows of our homes for all to see.  Our founding fathers thought that this right was so important that they made it the very first right they defined.

Sadly, the fact is that the US Constitution doesn't apply to individuals.  That's right, the Bill of Rights doesn't impose any behavior on you or I; it is a set of rules for the government.  This omission leaves the jackbooted thugs at Midwest Realty Management  free to inflict their own petty tyranny on their tenants. "STFU or move the hell out."  Yes, Randy Rich and his cohorts at MRM are completely within their rights.  But that doesn't make it - or them - right. It's an affront to every American who has ever lived.  It's a slap in the face to every single one of us.

WTMJ quotes Oschleger again:

“If you drove by the property you would see four huge American flags flying throughout the complex!  We‘ve got them at the rental office, at the clubhouse, at the Brookside North area, and then another one just down the street!  Four American flags and we‘re unpatriotic?”

The problem, Rodney, is that you're reserving that right for yourself, and denying it to others.  That's not fair.  And that certainly is not patriotic.  That's why Freedom to Display the American Flag Act was passed, specifically banning real estate management organizations from doing precisely what you're doing.  It's too bad Congress didn't think to choose the word "residents" instead of "homeowners."  It's an oversight that needs to be addressed.

Since the law can't deal with the petty tyrants that call themselves Midwest Realty Management, it's up to us.  If you're local, don't do business with them.  If you do business with them, call them and let them know you're done with them.

If, like me, you're a thousand miles away, write or call to let them know what you think of a policy that runs counter to the high ideals we expect of all Americans.
Midwest Realty Management
2990 Universal Street Suite A
Oshkosh, WI 54904
fax (920) 426-2065
email: heidi@midwestrents.com

Fire the "Foxes"

According to the Miami Herald, the Minerals Management Service has not only been lax on safety, but lax on collecting fees for all the offshore drilling.

Even as drilling exploration increased throughout the Gulf from 2000 to 2006, the MMS reduced the number of workers in its royalty compliance office by 75 positions. Spending on royalty enforcement in the Gulf fell nearly $3 million from 2003 to 2006. And, records show, the agency is increasingly relying on information provided by the companies in collecting royalties.
- The Miami Herald

That's right, the MMS relied on the companies it was supposed to be collecting the fees from to let them know how much was owed.  Remind you of anything?

And while the MMS was issuing more drilling permits, resulting in more productive wells, the revenue from all those permits went down, and the MMS didn't even blink.

This case illustrates, once again, why we can't adapt the honor system so heartily endorsed by conservatives.  As much as the GOP, the Libertarians, and the TEA Party would like to believe otherwise, big business can't be relied on to deal honestly with anyone where profits are concerned.  Their continuing argument against reasonable regulations undermines their credibility when stories such as this keep coming to light.

It further undermines the credibility of right wing politicians like Rand Paul, who would like you to believe that incidents like the current oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are merely "unforseeable accidents,"  when the fact is that BP knowingly chose a less reliable but much cheaper option so it could complete the well sooner and save a few million dollars.  Now BP wants us to know that they're "doing everything we can" to clean up the spill.  Sorry, Doug, you weren't doing everything you could when it really mattered - before the rig exploded and starting pumping 70,000 barrels of oil into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

And they saved their money at the expense of safety while knowingly underpaying the government - US - the fair share of profits made from its other wells in the Gulf.  They were playing both ends against the middle in the name of undeservedly high profits at our expense. And the MMS let them do it.

While the Obama administration has called for re-structuring that will likely solve some of the issues, they stop short of actually solving the problem by allowing the corrupt administrators from the MMS to continue working in the new bureaucracy.  Breaking up the MMS solves nothing if criminals are simply re-distributed.

The American people deserve better - a clean sweep and a truly fresh start.