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When I was a young organizer for Iowa Citizen Action Network, we were doing a lot of work on utility rate hikes. I met an elderly woman, maybe late 70s, who was living on her Social Security check. As utility prices went through the roof, her cost of living increase in that check wasn't coming anywhere close to covering the costs she had.

She was extremely worried, because as frugal as she was she couldn't figure out how to keep her heat on, pay her rent, and buy a few meager groceries. She thought the utilities might end up shutting her heat off. I suggested a social services agency she could go to, and that she might check with neighborhood churches to see if they had funds that could help. And I promised that I would do everything I could to fight for her.

I pushed hard on the local utility companies to try and shame them away from turning the heat off the dead of an Iowa winter, which didn't work very well because the utility companies had no shame. And my organization pushed in the legislature to get a bill passed that would prohibit utility shutoffs in the wintertime, which didn't pass the first year but did the second year we worked on it.

But it didn't pass in time to save the woman I met. Reading the Cedar Rapids Gazette one day that winter, I saw that the woman I met had been found dead in her apartment of hypothermia after the utility company had turned off her heat.

When we got the bill passed in the next session, I thought of her. I was proud that no one would die in the coming years in Iowa because of having their heat turned off, but I was also mourning that we were too late to save her. And I vowed to keep my promise to her as long as I lived, that I would keep fighting for her and people like her.

It’s 30 years later, but I still have promises to keep, as do all Democrats who claim to be on the side of the middle class and poor. As Dean Baker makes clear, if the President’s apparent offer of changing the CPI formula is part of the budget deal, it will be a very hard blow for generations to come for seniors who will be unlikely to have decent pensions or much in the way of savings to cushion the blow of these cuts. And with prices for necessities (utility prices, gas, groceries, health care) tending to go up more than the inflation rate in general, this is the absolute worst kind of cut to be making.

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We are all hypocrites now and again. It seems to be a key ingredient of human nature, to ignore those who advise us to "judge not lest ye be judged," as we looks towards our friends, neighbors and political leaders with the scowl of Simon Cowell, as if we're Charles in Charge and they're Tyler Durden from Fight Club.

So that is who we are as a species. If we screw up it's bad luck. If the guy or gal down the hall does, there was evil intent or they are incompetent or quite likely a member of the Palin family trying to do another reality show (nice work Lifetime!). Although, to give Bristol Palin credit, she deserves some kind of a prize for convincing 1.1 million people who actually thought the idea of watching Dancing Moms to be a good one, to put the Cheetos aside once the mom-folk stopped undulating, lean forward in their Barcaloungers and turn the channel to anything where Bristol Palin was not.

But I digress. Yes, human beings are hypocrites. If we weren't we wouldn't get just so darn offended when we find out our favorite athlete went to the team that paid the most money or senator such-and-such said a bad word. Lord knows neither of these offenses would ever befall any of us.

Yet, that group of gray hairs reenacting their very own libertarian Woodstock, also known as Tea Party faithful, they seem to almost delight in their hypocrisy. Often we talk about this this in terms of their not-quite-personally-valued family values fetishes. For if you added up those lucky duckies who have, at one time or another, been enjoined in marital bliss to Bob Barr, Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, you could probably start a small village of home-schooled, Jesus-campers.

But on the economic front, this do-as-I-say-not-as-I'd-ever-think-of-doing is just as pernicious, if not more.

On Wednesday, Sam Stein of The Huffington Post made this abundantly clear on that day's edition of Morning Joe. Stein was on the panel with former (and kind of still current) Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, who has compared Social Security to slavery, and had just gone on a long exposition about how it was unconstitutional, abrogated our freedoms and was just a downright terrible idea in general. So Stein asked Paul a simple question. "Are you on Social Security?"

I bet you know the answer! Of course Ron Paul cashes his Social Security checks. Sure, he has the means so he doesn't have to accept them. As a former doctor, and from those kindly old newlsletters he published in the 1990s that helpfully warned us about all those criminally inclined (as high as 95% in Washington DC alone!) and "fleet of foot" black men walking--or perhaps running--among us. But much like his idol Ayn Rand, who thought Social Security was evil until she accepted it and Medicare under her husband's name, and more recently Congressman Paul Ryan, who utilized Social Security survivor benefits to attend college, Ron Paul is a hypocrite of the highest order.

Social Security is a-ok to do for them (not currently for Rand, as she has passed on) as it currently does for millions of Americans in providing a necessary income supplement to retirement or benefits for children who have lost a parent, but won't do anymore for the hoi polloi if the Pauls and Ryans get their way (yes they are not trying to eliminate it, but they are trying to privatize it, which in light of what happened in 2008, is a swell idea).

Of course this is a widespread trend. Tea Party hero-cum-lunatic Congressman Joe Walsh of Illinois, who screams at constituents about spending like Chris Christie screams at constituents about, well, everything, was found to be delinquent by a judge in paying child support to the tune of $100,000 (personal responsibility!). Or Michele Bachmann of the Children-Of-The-Corn eyes, who happily accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in farm subsidies for the family farm while thinking this kind of government spending for anyone else to be a conspiracy on par with the moon landing! And, of course, all you have to do is look at the members of Congress who repeated Tea Party slogans while killing the public option, only to accept their swanky government-provided health insurance, thank you very much.

Hypocrisy is the worst of human nature. And it is in all of us. It's just in the Tea Party a lot more.

Follow me on Twitter @cliffschecter

This piece was first published at Al Jazeera English

After 30 long years of Reagan-inspired hatred of government services, we're seeing the policies come to their logical conclusion. Because we didn't so much cut the size of government as we outsourced it. Most people are oblivious to the fact that large numbers of government social services were simply contracted out to local non-profits because it meant towns, cities and states didn't have to pay for the additional benefits of a government employee to do that job.

And now, anyone in need of those services is screwed - because those agencies aren't getting paid:

SCO Family of Services, a nonprofit agency based on Long Island, started the year with a $25 million credit line at its bank, which it planned to use to pay its bills while awaiting government reimbursements and donations.

Now, after its bank has cut its credit line twice and withdrawn a promise to support a critical bond offering, the organization is worried about whether it can pay its employees this month.

“I spend a good part of my day every day just trying to manage cash flow,” said Johanna Richman, chief financial officer at SCO, which provides services to children with developmental disabilities.

SCO is one of hundreds of charities caught in the credit crunch as skittish banks reduce their lines of credit or cut them off entirely at a time when the need for their services is climbing sharply, nonprofit leaders say.

“While nonprofits are working feverishly to accommodate increased demand, they are facing severe financial constraints that are threatening their ability to go on, much less expand their services,” said Diana Aviv, president and chief executive of Independent Sector, a nonprofit trade association.

Almost three-quarters of nonprofits in the United States receive some type of government financing, according to new research by the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago, and about half of those count on that aid for at least half of their budgets.

As a growing number of states delay payment, nonprofits must rely on lines of credit to help them get by. In Illinois, the state is running as much as 150 days late in making reimbursements, and California has told nonprofits to expect i.o.u.’s in lieu of payment starting next month.

It was only a few years ago that Arnold Schwarzenegger recalled a sitting governor, promising the end of massive budget deficits. Guess what we have in California this year? Oh, just a measly $20 billion deficit.

Our schools are closing and social services have already been slashed to the bone. And it is just the start of budget season in California. Unfortunately, because Democrats do not hold a two-thirds majority in the state legislature, a small minority of Republicans are able to hold Californians hostage, refusing to raise taxes, no matter how ridiculous the loopholes.

Even, get this... a sales tax loophole for purchasers of yachts and private jets. The Republicans have very much earned the moniker bestowed on them by the Calitics crew: The Yacht Party.

The Courage Campaign has teamed up with the California Nurses Association to create "Yacht Party 2", the second in a series of TV ads designed to re-brand the California Republican Party. This spot is not your traditional political ad. In fact, it's quite non-traditional. And it's got a lot of people talking. In fact, the response to Arianna Huffington's message announcing the ad to Courage Campaign members was so strong, we have already authorized an ad buy in Sacramento. See what you think....

To increase the pressure on Republicans in Sacramento to close this yacht tax loophole, we need to make this "Yacht Party" brand stick. If you like the ad, please contribute to help us expand our buy across California.

On Friday, September 22, 2006 on PBS (check local listings for times), NOW will be covering items of critical importance to the upcoming elections. In the voting booth this fall, voters in states across the country will find ballot initiatives with titles like "Taxpayers' Bill of Rights" and "SOS - Stop Over Spending."

The aim is to slash state spending, including deep cuts in health care, education, and other social services. But are these local initiatives really "home" grown? NOW investigates how one wealthy New Yorker is secretly providing major funding for these and other ballot measures way outside his neighborhood, in states across the country. NOW also takes a look at the questionable tactics used to put these issues on your ballot.

Starting this Friday, the NOW website at www.pbs.org/now will feature a state-by-state tool that will allow users to see the ballot initiatives they'll be facing in November and check how their states score on a campaign finance report card.

PLAGIARISM -(updated for bad vision)
The Raw Story has the info: In the article about a Massachusetts couple who refused to let their home-schooled children take a standardized test, Guckert used quotes identical to Beecher's article without attribution. Beecher was the only reporter in attendance at the couple's home the day the Department of Social Services came to collect the children.

I always get a kick out of how Jimmy/Jeff considers himself a journalist.
(I have to get contacts)

Gov. Bush Seeks to Take Custody of Schiavo

Jeb Bush and the state's social services agency filed a petition in state court to take custody of Schiavo and, presumably, reconnect her feeding tube....

The President has backed down.

"Meanwhile, President Bush suggested that he and Congress had done their best to help the parents prolong Schiavo's life, and the White House said it has no further legal options."

I have a feeling that Jeb will do something along those lines. In any case, the "Religious Elite" will attack judges like never before.