Daily PUMA Column - Commentary by Alessandro Machi

Monday, September 4, 2017

While DACA dominates the news, several dozen thousand California senior homeowners may have lost their homes because they can't deduct their home property tax payment from their annual stated income, and Christopher Columbus is stripped of Holiday status by spineless LA City Council.

First DailyPUMA had to listen to some really deranged commentary from the Los Angeles City Council members over why Christopher Columbus's holiday had to be burned at the stake and replaced with an Indigenous Holiday. DailyPUMA favors both having holidays rather than one replacing the other, alternating the Holidays is workable as well.

Columbus is being blamed for the decimation of the Indian population in the North American Continent. This is classic blaming the messenger syndrome. Christopher Columbus helped prove the world was a lot bigger than anyone realized and that the world was most likely not flat. 

Since Columbus never reached Asia, he couldn't say for certain the earth was round, but he put other people's money where his own mouth was and commanded three ships full of sailors who became less loyal with each passing day. Columbus was a scientist who actually walked the walk by being part of the scientfic premise he created.

In case you wonder what is next, the day will come when our beloved astronauts of our era will be bedeviled for having landed on other heavenly bodies, which ultimately led to those heavenly bodies being colonized and eventually harvested for resources for Planet Earth.

Now DACA will take center stage. And while DACA is taking center stage, nothing will be done to help the ever shrinking eligibility California senior homeowners have when it comes to qualifying for MediCAL and In Home Supportive Services.

In Home Supportive Services is one of the most cost effective home health services in the nation yet it continues to be attacked by Republicans, and even Democrats such as Jerry Brown, who even tried to can the IHSS program a few years back. The I.H.S.S. program is so disrespected by Brown that over half of the recent raise given to caregivers was actually the money they were owed because of the 7% pay cut caregivers were forced to endure during the California budget crisis.

Even though Democrats are more likely to support MediCAL / MediCAID and In Home Supportive Services than Republicans are, Democrats keep pushing IHSS to the back of the bus while hiding behind H.I.I.P.A. regulations that prevent the true level of devastation they have caused among senior citizens who own homes but cannot deduct their home property tax payment from their annual stated income, making them ineligible for help.

Many California Senior homeowners are NOT RICH. They purchased their California home 30 to 60 years ago when homes were still affordable. Because these impoverished California Homeowners have such small social security income, they do not qualify for any kind of a loan other than Reverse Mortgages. Reverse Mortgages  takes a chunk of money upfront as a processing fee and then tacks on mortgage insurance and interest rate charges on all related debt to the Reverse Mortgage. Reverse Mortgages only allow one spouse on the plan so if the responsible party passes first, everyone in the house has to leave and the home has to be sold off if the interest accruing reverse mortgage debt cannot be paid off within a year.

MediCAL and I.H.S.S. is home healthcare at a FRACTION of the cost of assisted living centers. But when all the costs are factored in regarding owning a home that are NOT considered deductible, more and more seniors are ineligible because the poverty levels have not been changed for OVER 25 years. There are seniors who end up with zero income per month when their basic home expenses such as home property taxes, home insurance and share of cost are added in, yet if they could just deduct their home property tax payments, they might actually get to keep 700 dollars every month because they would no longer have a share of cost.

The Democrat pricks in charge who are more concerned about DACA and Immigration issues than helping their own elderly who have lived in California and paid all kinds of taxes for the past 30 to 60 years are in essence Democrat Gentrifiers with no opposition because the idiotic Republicans simply reject almost all public funding, it's incredible isn't it?

A Moderate Republican could defeat the next Democrat candidate for Governor of California. All the Moderate Republican would have to do is draw a line between life long California residents who are not being protected because of a trillion dollar pension obligation set in motion ironically by Jerry Brown the first time he was governor, and immigration issues. Kind of explains Brown's willingness to try and end the I.H.S.S. program a few years back when the California State budget was in crisis. 

Unfortunately, the Republicans are as dumb as bricks and can't fathom a world where they actually back up their claim of being the party of family values by actually valuing the elderly in California.


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3 comments:

Deanter said...

"Christopher Columbus helped prove the world was a lot bigger than anyone realized and that the world was most likely not flat."

This is a common misconception. By Columbus's time, most educated people in Europe knew the world was round. The dispute was over the size of the Earth, and Columbus was wrong about that. Some people believed (correctly) that the Earth was very large, and that the distance west from Europe to Asia was too far to sail (aside from the Americas being in the way, which no one knew about). Others, like Columbus, believed the Earth was fairly small and that the trip west from Europe to Asia was just two or three thousand miles. They were wrong.

"Columbus is being blamed for the decimation of the Indian population in the North American Continent. This is classic blaming the messenger syndrome."

No, Columbus is condemned because of his behavior as governor of Hispaniola a few years after his voyage of discovery, which included enslaving the native Indians on the island and working them to death. He was personally responsible for systematic brutality and mass murder.

Alessandro Machi said...

Your account is a bit of an oversimplification. Five Myths about Christopher Columbus
The conclusion one can come to is, Christopher Columbus was heavily leveraged and once he found land had to justify the investment made in his trips.
His first settlement resulted in all of his people dying when he came back to see how they were doing. This no doubt affected his future decisions on how to have his settlers survive.
Anytime anyone has ever invaded a patch of land, they will try and make friends, and then those who oppose the friendship are considered the enemy. This is how "civilization" has done it well before and after Christopher Columbus's time. Nowadays most people do not approve of this concept, but it is how our species developed.
When I was in school we were taught that Columbus was trying to prove the world was not flat. And I do recall reading revisions in more recent years. But with each passing day, on his first three ships, as scurvy set in and sailors died, they were most likely were not convinced the world was round since they had yet to discover a new continent.
In a nutshell, Columbus had to convince someone to fund his expedition, then he actually walked the walk. What happened afterwards was somewhat inevitable.

Alessandro Machi said...

The funny thing about "proof". Most of the educated world may have thought the world was round, but who had actually proved it back in Europe prior to Columbus? The proof will always come in the actual physical demonstration of the proposed or calculated concept. If everyone knew the earth was round, why wasn't anyone taking the trip that Columbus took, before Columbus did?
They may have thought the world was round, or oval, but nobody was willing to put their money on it until Columbus came into the picture.
And how profound an impact did finding his original settlement completely decimated have on Columbus. These settlers, assuming they were on ships, could have been like family to him. Imagine leaving a few dozen of your family on land, and coming back a year or two later and they are all dead. It must have been an incomprehensible moment for Christopher Columbus to have to deal with, especially if he spots natives going about their business like nothing happened.

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