Can we just forget about the formality of titles for a minute, and bring the conversation down to the level of what’s real, here?
Gavin “I blame Vietnamese Nail Salons for COVID-19” Newsom, who just survived a Right-Wing recall because all the Bernie-Sanders-Platform-leaning-voters and voters-who-hate-fascism in CA dealt a decisive blow to the forces of MAGA, kicks off his “Recall Survival Celebration” with a big thank you to people who didn’t ask for it or deserve it, Central Bank Financed Real Estate Developers, by signing SB 9 and SB 10 into law.
Then, on October 7, in approving of the racist actions of the California Department of Health in his veto of AB 279, a bill intended to stop evictions of seniors from licensed nursing homes during the pandemic to July 2022, he hides behind the California Association of Health Facilities (CAHF) constructed straw man falsehoods to state his “rationale” for the veto:
“Although this bill seeks to protect residents of ICFs and SNFs from involuntary transfers, its restrictions could have unintended consequences for the people it intends to serve. Requiring a struggling facility short of bankruptcy to remain open may lead to conditions where are is compromised because the facility is not able to retain staff.”
The claim is rat’s manure. There is nothing in AB 279 that has anything to do with staff reductions/retentions. It’s unlikely that AB 279 is the reason why workers are quitting a capitalist-operated facility. AB 279 isn’t the reason they’re being underpaid and mistreated as human beings. And there are no facilities in CA that have been identified as meeting any criteria that can be characterized as “struggling” in the way described in the transposed CAHF/ CDPH veto messaging. Certainly, no facility would get to that financial state due to AB 279.
By the way, “CAHF” is the primary for-profit nursing home lobby that controls the CA Department of Public Health.
It would take real political leadership to ascertain that AB 279 was needed to protect seniors. Such as awareness that over 200 cases of improper discharges have already happened from senior nursing facilities during the pandemic. AB 279 would have made the law simple and easy for the CDPH, if they had ever been interested in supporting the objective: Until July 2022, evictions of seniors from licensed care facilities, improper OR OTHERWISE will be made illegal. When CDPH and Newsom use the words, “struggling facility short of bankruptcy” they really mean “operators seeking maximum profit margin.” And from that standpoint, in the case of Pacifica Companies, AB 279, did stand in the way of that objective. They really didn’t want a stop to “legal” evictions, which are often, from an ethical standpoint often not “proper.”
In terms of acting to protect vulnerable seniors from the pandemic, this was asserted in the Legislature, such as the Senate Appropriations eventually sending the bill to a Senate Floor vote by a vote of 6-0. Through four committees and the Assembly and Senate floor votes, in bipartisan fashion on the no-brainer need to protect seniors from being pushed into Delta Variant vulnerability, AB 279 sailed to the Governor’s desk. But protecting the lives of seniors, or slowing the real estate development plans of the likes of a Pacifica Companies was of no concern to Gavin Newsom. After all, he wants to climb the political career ladder, and he needs allies with money to buy those future campaign television ads. “We’ll give you the wording for your veto letter,” said the message from the CDPH henchperson for the capitalists’ lobby, “Japanese American and Japanese seniors are not a large voting bloc, to be concerned about after all, and the people in the U.S. have never given a rat’s ass about Asians, anyway.”
One might say it’s not his case to make that former Sakura ICF seniors need protection, he’s just playing a role in the larger game: The capitalist system in service of the biggest of businesses – triple-digit millions in annual sales revenue businesses and such. He’s not a leader. He just an impotent tool in a suit that who follows the directives of his political career masters, including: The California Association of Health (CAHF)-controlled CDPH, with their loyal “Acting Director” puppet at the helm, Cassie Dunham. This doesn’t excuse him of complicity with racist forces. But then, wasn’t he also once married to a MAGA supporter?
In his veto letter, he used pretty much the same exact language that the CDPH used when they stalled the hearing of AB 279 in the CA Senate Committee on Appropriations ahead of the summer recess, which bought Pacifica Companies more time to drive all of the Japanese American and Japanese seniors out of the Sakura ICF, assisting Pacifica Companies in their plan to soon convert the only ICF with bilingual Japanese services and Japanese cultural services in the U.S. into “market-rate,” high-rental income rental property to increase the value of their capital investment and eliminate more Medi-Cal patients from their clientele.
CDPH used the falsehoods about AB 279 forcing operators into bankruptcy, but of course never identified any operator facing such a predicament, nor did they corroborate any claims of financial burden on the state, which is the responsibility of the Appropriations Committee (in both houses) to acertain. Furthermore the Senate Committee on Appropriations, chaired by CA Senator Anthony Portantino, apparently KNEW about the $3 Million in emergency funds in the CDPH coffers standing by to aid operators in need, which could be tapped in the event of a “financial aid” arising for any owner operating in good faith who might run into such a situation. The Committee assessed no significant burden on the State posed by AB 279 and advanced it with a 6-0 vote to the Senate Floor.
CDHP had already gone on record to support Pacifica Companies’ mass eviction of Sakura ICF while the pandemic was ongoing and initial cases of the Delta Variant just beginning to peak. https://progressiveasians.org/cdph-oppose-the-pacifica-transition-plan/
AB 279 would have allowed a possible revisitation of the original conditions of sale and further defense of bilingual/bi-cultural services for Japanese American and Japanese seniors at the former Keiro Nursing and Retirement Homes now owned by Pacifica Companies. That CDPH continued to oppose AB 279 to the very end confirmed that there was more at stake then attacking Japanese Americans alone, but we should be clear that this was the genesis of the eventual veto. AB 279’s protections would have been in the interests of ALL California seniors living in nursing homes, but it would have included a defense against attempted cutbacks in services for non-english speakers as well.
In a nutshell, Gavin Newsom has stood by the corporate interests defended by the CDPH, which included supported the mass eviction of over 80 Japanese American and Japanese seniors from their homes during the pandemic against the advice of 10 licensed physicians and knowing that there existed no comparable bilingual/bi-cultural care facilities anywhere else, much less facilities that had been kept 100% COVID-19 free like Sakura ICF had been kept.
Is there another way to describe, “Potential Death Sentence?”
Despite the veto of AB 279, advocates of equality in public health are pushing forward with AB 1400, the latest single payer reform legislation which for the first time, addresses inequality. Visit https://saveourseniors.network to find out how to support the fight for equality in healthcare.
*(The funds for this resulting from the accumulation of penalty fees from operators who have been caught violating state laws of proper practice).
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The AB 279 veto has inspired this title of my latest unpublished work about rage:
“Governor White Supremacist Servant of the One Percent Motherfucker We’re Gonna Be Coming After You Too for Supporting Attempted Murders of My People by For-Profit Operators of Senior Nursing Homes.”
#AB279 #KillingJapaneseAmericanSeniors #KillingJapaneseSeniors #KillingMediCalPatients#BoyleHeightsGentrificationAndDisplacement = #WhiteSupremacy
cultureraging 