The Service Employees International Union is well known for representing the interests of illegal aliens. The SEIU contributed more than $33 million to the Obama campaign (see below).

Now the Los Angeles Times reports that the union used its political pull to eliminate billions of dollars slated for California as the state is failing financially. [SEIU may be linked to ultimatum on withholding stimulus funds, May 11, 2009]

Reporting from Sacramento — Officials in the governor’s office say a politically powerful union may have had inappropriate influence over the Obama administration’s decision to withhold billions of dollars in federal stimulus money from California if the state does not reverse a scheduled wage cut for the labor group’s workers.

The officials say they are particularly troubled that the Service Employees International Union, which lobbied the federal government to step in, was included in a conference call in which state and federal officials reviewed the wage cut and the terms of the stimulus package. [...]

During the call, state officials say, they were asked to defend the $74-million cut scheduled to take effect July 1. The cut lowers the state’s maximum contribution to home healthcare workers’ pay from $12.10 per hour to $10.10.

The California officials on the call, who requested anonymity for fear of antagonizing the Obama administration, said they needed the savings to help balance the state budget.

The wages go to some 300,000 people who care for the elderly and ill in their homes. Those workers collectively pay millions of dollars in dues each month to SEIU and another union.

SEIU was among the biggest donors to President Obama’s campaign, contributing $33 million. The union is also consistently among the biggest donors to Democrats in Sacramento and had aggressively fought the wage cut during state budget negotiations.

Sacramento was trying to save taxpayer dollars by lowering wages — no good deed goes unpunished.

The generous wages in question are for the In-Home Supportive Services program, which was recently recognized as an easy scam: Fraud infects state in-home care program [LA Times, April 13, 2009].

Sacramento — Loose oversight and bureaucratic inertia have allowed fraud to fester in a rapidly expanding multibillion-dollar state program that provides personal caregivers to the impoverished elderly and disabled. Hundreds of reports of scams and swindles are going without investigation.

Prosecutors and program administrators across the state say they are alarmed by the ease with which people are taking advantage of the program, In Home Supportive Services.

The program is one of the fastest-growing in state government. This year it is budgeted at $5.42 billion to provide care for some 440,000 Californians. The aim is to allow low- income and elderly incapacitated people to remain in their homes, saving the state the expense of costly nursing homes. Experts generally consider it a success.

But government funds are flowing in so quickly, with such limited oversight, that prosecutors say it is common for the state to send paychecks to scam artists claiming to be caring for someone who is dead. Or claiming to be caring for a relative or friend faking a disability. Or claiming to be providing care during the same hours they are working elsewhere.

“This program is very easy to abuse,” said Michael Ramsey, the district attorney in Butte County in Northern California, which disbanded its In Home Supportive Services fraud unit in 2007 because of budget cuts. “It invites chicanery and fraud.”

Some critics of the program say politics has blocked efforts to combat fraud. The program has become a steady source of revenue for the Service Employees International Union, among the most powerful interest groups in the Capitol, as well as a second union, the United Domestic Workers of America.

The in-home care program is just the sort of scam that would be attractive to illegal aliens and immigrants, although I can’t find any direct investigations of that aspect. However, medical fraud in general is a big draw for foreigners (e.g. Elderly immigrants used in Medicare scam), so it’s reasonable to assume they are overrepresented among the in-home care scammers.

So the upshot overall is that the SEIU is happy to screw California out of billions of dollars in order to maintain the wages of a program brimming with fraud that fills the union coffers. Nice people, these diverse union members!

I thought Michael Grunwald’s Time Magazine essay Republicans in Distress: Is the Party Over? was mostly just the usual MSM nonsense (i.e. the GOP needs to become more like us Democrats!) until this leapt out at me:

There’s always the chance that some new issue — immigration? Iran? cap and trade? something nobody has thought of yet? — will blow up and bring the GOP back to life.

Emphasis mine.

It’s not clear why Grunwald mentions immigration. Earlier, he cites the GOP’s allegedly impending demographic doom without showing any awareness that the problem is wholly caused by immigration policy. Maybe he’s a sort of political idiot savant, able to come up with disconnected insights, just as Dick Morris suggested the immigration issue could work electorally in 2004 and 1996 although eveything he writes on immigration in principle is useless.

Whatever - it’s a good sign!

Zachary A. Goldfarb reports in the Washington Post:

Fannie Loses $23 Billion, Prompting Even Bigger Bailout
Fannie Mae reported yesterday that it lost $23.2 billion in the first three months of the year as mortgage defaults increasingly spread from risky loans to the far-larger portfolio of loans to borrowers who have been considered safe. …

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Various economic commentators such as Tyler Cowen are scratching their heads over why the single country most similar to the United States, Canada, hasn’t yet had a gigantic banking crisis. It must be some subtle technical difference in bank regulations!

Yet, you’ll notice that most of the losses on mortgage defaults in the U.S., which set off the American crisis, were concentrated in four states, none of which are anywhere near Canada: California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to note that the rate of social problems such as crime, illegitimacy, and dropping out of high school were lower in states closer to the Canadian border. He liked to recommend to policymakers that this data implied that they should attempt to move their states up closer to Canada, although he never, to the best of my knowledge, suggested how.

Steve Malanga has a good qualitative history of the failures of the federal government to promote homeownership among marginal families from Herbert Hoover onward in Obsessive Housing Disorder in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. An excerpt:

Pressuring nonbank lenders to make more loans to poor minorities didn’t stop with Sears. If it didn’t happen,

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Here’s another preventable death that can be chalked up to misplaced do-gooderism among immigration enthusiasts. The young Sudanese, Gareng Deng (inset photo), who murdered Marilyn Bethell (main photo) was not an illegal alien, but a refugee with a strong imprint of violence from childhood. He was damaged goods, not a good bet for assimilation on any level. But stupid America puts the welcome mat out for just about anyone. [Teen pleads guilty in Marilyn Bethell murder, Chicago Tribune, May 9, 2009]

Gareng Deng grew up in Sudan, surrounded by violence. When he came to the United States, he brought destruction with him.

Marilyn Bethell, 47, lived quietly on the far northeast side of Aurora. Somehow, the substance abuse counselor became Deng’s target.

Deng, 17, pleaded guilty Friday to participating in Bethell’s 2005 murder. He will spend almost all of the next 33 years in prison. [...]

During those [2007] hearings, it was revealed that as a child in war-torn Sudan, Deng witnessed atrocities and genocide. He saw a man’s arm chopped off. He walked into the desert with his uncle to buy guns.

The World Relief Organization eventually helped Deng’s family come to the U.S. But once here, Deng got involved in more and more serious crimes, culminating in Bethell’s murder.

Abused children often grow into violent, abusive adults. It’s basic psychology that no one questions, except in the immigration/refugee milieu. War-affected children commonly experience anger and post-traumatic stress disorder as they grow older.

It’s entirely irresponsible of refugee agencies to deposit these little time bombs into American communities with no psychological counseling and expect everything will work out somehow. It doesn’t, and only a fool would expect a good result.

In Salt Lake City last Wednesday, a Sudanese refugee drove his car into a group of children on their way home from school. Fortunately, none of the injuries were very serious. [Police: Motorist aimed at group of Kearns students, Salt Lake Tribune, May 7, 2009]

Police have arrested a man they believe purposely ran his car into six children walking home from Kearns Junior High on Wednesday.

As rattled parents and students tried to make sense of the bizarre incident Thursday, police continued to investigate why Luka Wall Kang, a 50-year-old Sudanese refugee, allegedly drove into the group of students on a sidewalk at 4015 West near 5600 South as children streamed home from school around 3:10 p.m. [...]

According to the Arizona Refugee Resettlement Program, Kang is a refugee from Sudan who came to the U.S. in May 2003 through Jewish Refugee Resettlement of Southern Arizona.

Records show he lived in Tuscon, Ariz., and Omaha, Neb., before arriving in Kearns “a few months ago,” Hutson said.

Kang told police that he suffered from depression and was frustrated over his lack of employment, Hutson said.

Of course, it is similarly the worst sort of public policy to continue bringing thousands of unskilled third-world people to America in a terrible economy. (Refugee Resettlement Watch has been watching this topic closely.) It is no kindness to them and is dangerous to the public.