Author: mopress

In a telephone conversation last week, an L.A. activist talked about “neo-liberalism.” It is a crucial term for globalization activists, but it can be confusing for audiences in the USA, since it denotes right-wing privatization. We’ll use the term in an effort to accustom local readers to international dialogue. At any rate, the Center for Public Policy Priorities has presented an excellent summary of events regarding a Texas experiment with neo-liberalism in human services, pasted below–gm
Background: Integrated Eligibility and Enrollment (IE&E)

The 2003 Legislature directed the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) to change the way people apply for public benefits, including Medicaid, CHIP, Food Stamps, and cash assistance (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), by cutting state workers and relying heavily on telephone call centers.

HHSC was given the option to either operate or outsource the call centers, and opted to turn over a large portion of eligibility system operations to private contractors. HHSC dubbed the new system Integrated Eligibility and Enrollment (IE&E).

The state entered into a contract that included not just the new call centers, but also CHIP eligibility services, several major Medicaid contracted services, and maintenance of the new eligibility computer system (TIERS) the state had been developing for years.

HHSC planned to close 99 of its 381 eligibility offices by the end of 2006, with four new call centers playing a major role in processing applications and renewals. Eventually, clients would be able to apply via the Internet as well.

Children’s Problems Soon Apparent

The new contractor took over CHIP enrollment and renewal for the entire state in November 2005. Transition to the new IE&E system began in Travis and Hays counties in January 2006, and was scheduled to “roll out “ (phase in) across the state over a 10-month period. (This first phase of the IE&E roll-out also affected a small number of clients who used to live in Travis and Hays counties, whose cases were processed and remain in the new TIERS system.)

Serious problems with processing CHIP renewals and new applications for CHIP and Children’s Medicaid soon became apparent: Children’s Medicaid enrollment dropped an unprecedented 29,000 from December 1 to January 1; CHIP renewal rates plummeted from 84% to 52%; and new CHIP enrollees diminished to half their usual level.

By early March it was clear that the Medicaid decline was not a temporary aberration, CHIP renewals remained dismally low, and disenrollments surged (see table, page 7). Child health advocates shared their concerns with HHSC officials and the press. HHSC extended CHIP coverage for about 6,000 children whose parents had not been given proper or accurate notice by the contractor of their correct enrollment fees.

USDA Oversight

Meanwhile, it was also becoming clear that processing of Medicaid and Food Stamps renewals and applications in Travis and Hays counties was significantly backlogged. Problems there with the IE&E pilot (run by the same contractor) included the same issues plaguing the CHIP/Children’s Medicaid operations—multiple computer system issues, training deficits, flawed processes, and staffing shortfalls—but clients’ woes were compounded by the acute and worsening under-staffing of HHSC’s eligibility offices statewide.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA, which oversees the Food Stamp Program) conducted a Program Access Review of IE&E operations in late March, which included conference calls with community groups, legal services, and anti-hunger advocates to hear their reports on the roll-out.

IE&E Roll-out Delayed for 30 Days…

On April 5, HHSC Executive Commissioner Albert Hawkins announced the agency would delay IE&E roll-out to the next planned region (Hill Country counties) in order to make technical and operational improvements and would review the system’s readiness again in 30 days. HHSC cited the need for “better training for customer service representatives in the call centers, a process to more quickly resolve complicated cases, better reporting tools to track cases and workload, and improved data collection.”

In April legislative hearings, HHSC officials acknowledged many problems with the IE&E transition and contractor including serious state staffing deficits. Based on their review, USDA officials conveyed to HHSC in April their concerns about the project including lack of timeliness in application processing, inability of the contractor’s front-end computer system to interface with TIERS (adding to backlogs), high call abandonment rates and long hold times at the call center, and lack of correct policy knowledge by contractor staff.

USDA’s independent project monitor identified several fundamental concerns: inadequate readiness testing of computer functions, a roll-out timeline that was too fast to allow for identification and resolution of all problems, inadequate staffing levels, insufficient training of private contractor staff, and shortcomings in some aspects of call center technology.

On April 11, HHSC announced that a new $3 million marketing and public information campaign for CHIP and Children’s Medicaid would begin in May (these activities had been largely abandoned after the budget-cutting 2003 legislative session). While notable agency efforts to improve the CHIP and IE&E processes produced a temporary improvement in call abandonment rates and hold times in April, problematic application and renewal trends and client complaints showed little if any improvement.

On reaching the deadline for determining CHIP enrollment for May, HHSC faced terminating a record number of nearly 50,000 children in a single month, for a dismal renewal rate of only 23.5% (compared to a fiscal year 2005 average of 80%). The agency elected instead to continue coverage of 27,768 children for an additional month while their families were given more time to provide missing information or to submit payments.

…And Now On Hold Indefinitely

On May 4, the HHSC Commissioner announced findings of its 30-day review. Importantly, this announcement indicated that the original roll-out schedule has essentially been suspended indefinitely until problems can be resolved. HHSC would retain 1,000 of the 1,900 state eligibility workers it had planned to lay off, and the remaining layoffs would be postponed for 12 months.

It is important to note that this decision did not increase the number of state staff working in the system; it simply reduced and postponed the planned reduction in staff.

Revised procedures announced by HHSC included: having state eligibility workers in the Midland call center oversee private “customer service” staff to ensure they give out correct information; returning most processing of Travis and Hays Medicaid and Food Stamp cases from contractor staff to state workers; new policy training of customer service staff; a new “escalation” process for directing complex policy questions from contractor staff to state workers, and new training for private workers on how to use the contractor’s and the state’s computer systems.

The announcement also noted that many contractor workers were unable to locate information that was already in their system. HHSC’s May 4 announcement also detailed changes to the contractor’s CHIP/Children’s Medicaid operations, including extending timelines for collection of missing information and enrollment fees, allowing third-party verification of income, and accepting some missing information via telephone (rather than extended postal exchanges that cause children to lose coverage through missed deadlines).

H
HSC staff, the HHSC Office of Inspector
General, and independent evaluators would examine various aspects of the contractor’s performance and processes. The state pledged to more carefully oversee contractor correspondence with families, and to seek stakeholder input in improving those communications. Grave Concerns Remain in Early June Advocates and providers welcomed HHSC’s decision to postpone the rollout, and support its efforts to improve the system and involve advocates in these activities.

However, grave concerns remain for CHIP, Medicaid, TANF and Food Stamps for several reasons. CHIP applications and renewals—and a significant share of new applications for Children’s Medicaid—are still being operated exclusively by the new contractor, because CHIP eligibility has always been primarily operated by a private contractor.

Thus, state workers cannot step in to fix the problems, and HHSC’s contingency plans to stop the dramatic decline in CHIP must instead rely largely on the contractor’s ability to resolve the problems.

On May 25, the Texas CHIP Coalition submitted a letter to HHSC Commissioner Hawkins detailing recommended steps needed to reverse the decline in CHIP and Children’s Medicaid enrollment. The letter (located at (http://www.cppp.org/research.php?aid=534) noted that the new contractor’s CHIP performance has “serious and as yet unresolved problems”, which did not bode well for the same contractor’s take-over of major responsibilities for Medicaid and Food Stamps under IE&E, potentially affecting more than 4 million Texans (thirteen times the size of the CHIP program) including children, the aged, and Texans with disabilities.

The Coalition urged HHSC to make successful reversal of the problems with CHIP a prerequisite for any further roll-out of the IE&E model. Detailed CHIP statistics have not yet been released for June 2006, but preliminary data show that CHIP enrollment fell to 293,564, a drop of 5,212 children from May.

On June 2, HHSC issued a press statement announcing that it would continue to extend deadlines for enrollment fees and missing information to protect children form losing their health coverage and give the agency and the contractor more time to correct the problems causing the decline.

Meanwhile, parents continue to report applications and renewals that appear to have been lost or delayed for months. In the third week of May, the “call abandonment” rate for IE&E was over 22%, and for the CHIP/Children’s Medicaid line was over 41% (average hold times were 6 and 15 minutes, respectively). Get the full report from the Center for Public Policy Priorities

Three press releases yesterday from the Geo Group show which way the world drifts. First, the company secured a contract from Florida to manage an existing detention camp while it builds an expanded one. Second, the company announced plans to expand a Texas detention camp in Del Rio. And third, the company reported that sales of common stock would be used to pay for the Texas construction. Does this mean that Geo Group stockholders now have a vested interest in filling the borderland jails?
Get tomorrow’s headlines today at the Geo Group press room.

“My own feeling about private prisons is that the biggest issue with private prisons, for me, is that when you introduce that kind of private capital into this field, what private prisons do, either directly or indirectly, is mitigate toward more and more prisons, because what they’re interested in is market share. That’s what they do. This is a business. So the more prisoners they have, the more money they make.”–Michael Jacobson speaking on Democracy Now (June 13, 2006)

By Greg Moses

Jerome Corsi raises some timely questions about “trilateral” arrangements being forged by “working groups” between North American actors. World Net Daily (WND) is on the document trail of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) thank goodness. But when you look at these kinds of initiatives, you get a shape-shifting mess of spaghetti. Asks WND: “Bush sneaking North American super-state without oversight?” To which we answer, well, duh. I mean what else has he ever been up to?
From the Mexico report to the U.N. Commission on Rights of Migrant Workers, we find a list of “bilateral mechanisms” (pasted below) headed by the Mexico-United States Binational Commission. As Corsi suggests, these things are difficult to see through, and the opacity is cleared up not a bit by a Washington press corps which begins the press conference on the US-Mexico Binational Commission (USMBC) by asking about Iran.

There were ten working groups active at USMBC 2006, and they arrived well-oiled and warmed up, because it appears that the conference lasted only a day. But what were the working groups? One can surmise from the “accomplishments” listed in a March 24 fact sheet that the working groups include:

Narco Wars and Anti-Terror (don’t get us started)

“Mesoamerica energy initiative” encompassing Central America and involving USAID, USTDA, and our [whoever “we” are] participation in the Inter American Development Bank. By the way, this also involves Methane exploitation (from oil and gas fields or garbage).

Transportation and air safety (they don’t mention NASCO here, but it seems a likely topic).

Regional good government (oh boy, this little project was convened with USAID in Mexico City on 9-11 2005, which makes us all feel tingly, yes?) Says the fact sheet: “USAID is now working with the Mexican Government to respond to technical assistance requests from the Central American countries. USAID has also supported the efforts of Mexico and its states to modernize criminal justice systems to better serve their citizens, increase their access to justice, and make them more secure.” (Access to Justice? Can this mean anything other than more police?)

Social Development (actually this boils down to improved banking structures, saving money on the cost of handling remesas and figuring out how to make this cash flow work better for lending practices of local banks in Mexico. Soon enough, the remesas will be returning back to the USA in the form of interest payments on debt?)

Liberalizing air traffic (neo-liberalizing is probably the better term)

Education (this is the key word for the democratic solution to USA-Mexico relations and that’s why it gets $50 million over an eight year period, while, let’s see, what does a single missile cost these days?)

Cultural Cooperation (I mean, once the cargo gets to pumping from China through Mexican ports and up into the heartlands, and once those remesas start falling back into the hands of bankers, and USAID starts funding technical requirements for good government in Central America, too, what’s left but to sell tickets for “increased mutual understanding through the arts”? We’ll entitle our own grant application: Circus of Bread.)

Air Quality (put Texas and Mexico together on this one and no doubt the air will continue to be safe enough for smoke stacks far into our children’s childrens’ futures.)

Innovative Housing Technologies (just tell us which famous names will be getting the contracts).

There you have it, our best guess at the ten working groups chaired by Secretaries Rice and Derbez before they chatted privately about Bush’s plans for the way things are really going to be. (As in, how ’bout that National Guard?)

-Mexico-United States Binational Commission. The Binational Commission’s Working Group on Migration and Consular Affairs is the main forum for dialogue on
migration matters. It deals with the most important issues related to the protection of Mexican nationals at the level of Secretaries of State. Its decisions and agreements have ensured decent treatment of Mexicans abroad.

− Liaison mechanisms for border matters (MEF). These mechanisms are the main forum for participation by the three levels of government of Mexico and the United States and deal with the main issues in the border area: consular protection,
public safety and border crossing points and bridges.
Their main purpose is to promote coordinated action between the two countries’ federal, state and local governments and to ensure that local issues at each border point are addressed from the standpoint of those who, because they live in the border
area, have the clearest idea of the problems. This enables border communities themselves directly to influence federal public policy on border matters and also permits the solution in situ of a variety of border problems and issues that previously required intervention and decision-making by authorities based in Mexico City and Washington. The mechanisms are headed by the consuls of Mexico and the United States at each border point.

− Internal consultation mechanisms (MCI). These are operated by all consulates and have immediate responsibility for addressing the problems of Mexicans detained by the United States immigration authorities, consular notification, access and protection and repatriation problems.

− Pilot voluntary programme for interior repatriation.3 This is based on the Memorandum of Understanding on the Safe, Orderly, Dignified and Humane Repatriation of Mexican Nationals signed in February 2004 between the Ministries of the Interior and Foreign Affairs of Mexico and the United States Department of Homeland Affairs. The pilot programme was intended to safeguard the lives of
migrants attempting to cross the border in the Sonora-Arizona area and involved the
migration authorities of both Governments.

Judge Rules That U.S. Has Broad Powers to Detain Noncitizens Indefinitely

By NINA BERNSTEIN
The New York Times
Published: June 15, 2006

A federal judge in Brooklyn ruled yesterday that the government has wide latitude under immigration law to detain noncitizens on the basis of religion, race or national origin, and to hold them indefinitely without explanation.
The ruling came in a class-action lawsuit by Muslim immigrants detained after 9/11, and it dismissed several key claims the detainees had made against the government. But the judge, John Gleeson of United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, allowed the lawsuit to continue on other claims, mostly that the conditions of confinement were abusive and unconstitutional. Judge Gleeson’s decision requires top federal officials, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft and Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, to answer to those accusations under oath.

This is the first time a federal judge has addressed the issue of discrimination in the treatment of hundreds of Muslim immigrants who were swept up in the weeks after the 2001 terror attacks and held for months before they were cleared of links to terrorism and deported. The roundups drew intense criticism, not only from immigrant rights advocates, but also from the inspector general of the Justice Department, who issued reports saying that the government had made little or no effort to distinguish between genuine suspects and Muslim immigrants with minor visa violations.

Lawyers in the suit, who vowed to appeal yesterday’s decision, said parts of the ruling could potentially be used far more broadly, to detain any noncitizen in the United States for any reason.

“This decision is a green light to racial profiling and prolonged detention of noncitizens at the whim of the president,” said Rachel Meeropol, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented the detainees. “The decision is profoundly disturbing because it legitimizes the fact that the Bush administration rounded up and imprisoned our clients because of their religion and race.”

A spokesman for the government, Charles S. Miller, would not respond to those assertions, saying only that the Justice Department was “very pleased that the court upheld the decision to detain plaintiffs, all of whom were illegal aliens, until national security investigations were completed and plaintiffs were removed from the country.” He said the government was reviewing the rest of the opinion to decide whether to appeal the rulings Judge Gleeson made to allow the plaintiffs’ other claims to proceed.

In his 99-page ruling, Judge Gleeson rejected the government’s argument that the events of Sept. 11 justified extraordinary measures to confine noncitizens who fell under suspicion, or that the attacks heightened top officials’ need for government immunity to combat future threats to national security without fear of being sued.

But his interpretation of immigration law gave the government broad discretion to enforce the law selectively against noncitizens of a particular religion, race or national origin, and to detain them indefinitely, for any unspecified reason, after an immigration judge had ordered them removed from the country.

“The executive is free to single out ‘nationals of a particular country’ and focus enforcement efforts on them,” the judge wrote. “This is, of course, an extraordinarily rough and overbroad sort of distinction of which, if applied to citizens, our courts would be highly suspicious.”

Yet, he continued, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that Congress and the executive branch, in exercising their broad power over naturalization and immigration, can make rules that would be unacceptable if applied to American citizens.

In the judge’s view, the government has the right to detain people indefinitely as long as their eventual removal is “reasonably foreseeable.” If that interpretation stands, it could apply to millions of noncitizens, including tourists removable for visa violations, said Gerald L. Neuman, a law professor at Columbia who is an expert in human rights law and was not involved in the case.

“It doesn’t seem to limit the motives the government has to have in being slow in removing them; it could even be just basic neglect,” he said.

But Professor Neuman cautioned that “it’s only a district judge’s decision.”

“The decision encourages the government to behave this way without fear of financial liability,” he said, but it does not carry the weight of a ruling by an appellate court. “This interpretation is attackable even among other judges in Brooklyn, let alone Lower Manhattan.”

But David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University and a co-counsel in the lawsuit, said the ruling was the only one of its kind and made New York “an equal protection-free zone” because the government can detain immigrants wherever it chooses.

“What this decision says is the next time there is a terror attack, the government is free to round up every Muslim immigrant in the U.S., based solely on their ethnic and religious identity, and hold them on immigration pretexts for as long as it desires,” he said. “We saw after 9/11 what the government did in an era of uncertainty about how far it can go. Judge Gleeson has essentially given them a green light to go much further.”

The class-action lawsuit, Turkmen v. Ashcroft, is the first and largest of several brought by immigrants held after 9/11. The named plaintiffs in the case include former detainees who came back to the United States this year for depositions and were required to be in the custody of federal marshals at all times. Among them were Hany Ibrahim, a deli worker, and his brother, Yasser, a Web designer, Egyptian Muslims who said then that putting themselves back in the hands of the government they were suing was an act of faith in America.

Yesterday, Yasser Ibrahim, who had lived in New York for three or four years on an expired tourist visa and was delivered in shackles to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn soon after Sept. 11, said through his lawyers that he was shocked and very disappointed by the judge’s decision.

“I can’t believe the court would allow this to happen,” he said.” I am frightened for other Muslims in the United States, who could face the same discrimination and abuse that I suffered.”