Go see the Daily Bastardette for details from today’s hearing on California AB 372-.

For once, it’s a bit of what could be good news,

CALIFORNIA AB 372 SENT TO SUSPENSE FILE

as Marley said,

The committee has until May 25 to retrieve it from suspension, but because of the costs involved, the bill is likely to expire there.

and

I don’t think it’s a bad idea to keep those cards and letters comin‘ kiddies!

Just when you thought the mess out in California couldn’t get any stupider, AB 372 now apparently is projected to come with an 8 million dollar start up cost.

Yes, you read that right $8 million, even as California is in the depths of fiscal crisis and budget hearings. (It’s really impossible to pick any one link as any form of overview of the situation in CA, if you’re not familiar with the the budgetary crisis a simple websearch will turn of more than enough articles to get you up to speed.)

AB 372 as currently proposed is simply insane, completely fiscally irresponsible, and absolutely unwarranted.

Other states have achieved genuine open records legislation without a high price tag fiscal note attached. Now CA wants to give adopted adults (over age 25, no less!) an insulting half-assed ‘faint possibilities of maybe-access sometimes sorta’ AND couple it with an $8,000,000 price tag? Positively shameful.

Tomorrow morning the bill goes before the Committee.

Go read the Bastard Nation action alert, then make your calls and send your emails. If you’re in CA and can make the hearing tomorrow morning by all means, attend in person.

CAL OPEN/BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT- CAL AB 372. ACT NOW!

The author’s office has stated there is an $8 Million start up cost estimate attached to the bill.

Otherwise,

You can watch and listen LIVE to the hearing via the internet:
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
Room Number 4202
9:00 AM (PST)
click here
(Click on Committee Room List)

You can find the full bill text, last modified May 7th, here

Also see the Bill Analysis

As well as the previous unanimous passage vote tally in the Appropriations Committee.

Rubber stamping AB 372 on through the committee vote is not an acceptable outcome.

Not acceptable to adopted people and our families, and not acceptable for California itself.

Show up, call and write to demand better.

IS THAT ALL THEIR IS? CALIFORNIA AB 372 PASSES OUT OF JUDICIARY

CalOpen and Bastard Nation (along with a number of individuals) stood firm, and submitted testimony refusing to leave anyone behind, working against the disastrous bill.

Here’s Marley’s rough run down of who testified at the hearing (in this case “proponents” means those supporting the bad bill, “opponents” meaning those unwilling to leave anyone behind):

Witnesses: I missed a couple of proponents, but think I got all the opponents. Names may be misspelled in some cases.

Proponents: Stephanie Williams (CARE) Sarah Burns, (AAC/CUB,) Cal Assoc. of Adoption Attorneys. Jean Strauss, Tom Martin, Cheryl Cook, Jean Strauss, Tom Martin, Cheryl Cook, CA Alliance Child Family Services, Jim Dunn, Jennylee Balantine, Karen Vedder, Bonnie Burnell, Kristina Cook, Rachel Smith, John Smith, Bruce Reeves,

Opponents: Joe Wood CalOpen) , Linda Franklin, Laurel Ehrichs, Jean Ulrich (CalOpen) , Laurie Dunfield-Baker, (”adopted citizen”), Burt Brosnan, Imogene Speed (adoptive mother, Kathleen Cox.

Also be sure to read through the BN testimony opposing passage,

BASTARD NATION TESTIMONY AGAINST CALIFORNIA AB 372: LEAVE NO ONE BEHIND!

The bill may be out of committee, but this is still far from over.

That, and sadly, C.A.R.E. still has plenty of time to make their already badly botched bill even worse.

ACTION ALERT – DEFEAT CALIFORNIA AB 372

Also be sure to note CA Open’s lobby page with a sample quick lobby letter.

Stay tuned to California Open’s webpage for further information.

***

Read ‘em and weep. Then work to kill AB 372.

Bastardette-

CARE’S BRIDGE TO NOWHERE: NEW AB 372 AMENDMENTS RELEASED–DROPS ADOPTEES IN THE RIVER

BASTARDETTE POLL: WILL CARE PULL AB 372?

B.B. Church-

Bad, Worse, Worst: AB 372 limps into Judiciary…

In which he lays out one of the ways in which AB 372 takes the already bad lack of access system and actively makes it worse-

Under the current laws, if you want your birth records, you petition the courts. The court order up your records, take a look, and either releases your records or not. If there is a disclosure veto filed, then chances are slim to nil that you’ll get them. But if there is no disclosure veto the judge has the discretion to release the records.

Under the proposed changes the adoptee fills out an application with the State Registrar. The Department of Health sends out a letter into the aether to a twenty-five year old address. If they don’t get a reply, or if the letter is undeliverable, they have no discretion, they reject the application.

Reading the memo, it’s clear there are MANY more issues with the proposed amendments.

There’s a hell of a lot more to say about this bill, mired in the carefully fabricated lies of both access being predicated upon  ‘medical necessity’ and the ‘balancing interests’ poppycock (in reality, records access is a matter between adopted people and the State,) both of which have been discredited long ago by those authentically working for Bastard Rights (see Bastard Nation’s the Basic Bastard as but one of many such examples.)

For now, though, there’s work to be done.

Meanwhile, here’s a brief note that we can add to the growing pile of C.A.R.E. abominations.

***

Just go read B.B. Church’s latest piece-  C.A.R.E. Pays for Play?

Also be sure to note, (particularly in light of in-kind donations and potentially jeopardizing an organizational tax status, which Ron summarizes here-)

This is because this “celebration” is a thinly disguised fundraiser for Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, (”make the checks out to Fiona2010″) and C.A.R.E. could jeopardize its 501(c)4 status if it donated money or in-kind resources directly to a candidate.

(Emphasis added- BLC)

that the RSVPs go to jean@cacare.org (link goes to the PDF copy of the invite B.B. has up.) That would be a C.A.R.E organizational e-mail address, not an individual member’s personal e-mail address.

<sarcasm on>

Damn good thing C.A.R.E. itself wouldn’t be caught dead organizing a fundraising event for the California Assembly member who introduced their (disastrous) AB 372, right?… Right?

Nah, certainly not!

<sarcasm off>

To get readers up to speed, first a little history:

Ron has done a number of posts on CARE’s crap, including his latest, in which he nails the sappy overwrought emotionalism CARE is employing:

BB Church vs CARE, Nikfa and THE Adopton Institute, with one hand tied behind my back…

Marley also has a number of posts on her California Adoption Reform Effort tag, including her latest about the content of the CA bill itself:

CALIFORNIA: I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE! BAD BILL HITS THE BOARDS!

While you’re there, be sure to note Maryanne’s comment on Marley’s piece:

maryanne said…

I am mad as hell! I am a member of the CUB Board and we were flat out lied to to get us to support CARE’s bill. We were told in an email from Jean Strauss that they were going to introduce a clean bill, with the proviso that it “might” have to be modified somewhere down the road. This clearly not what happened; CARE did not even try to introduce a clean bill, but came out with this travesty.This group deserves no support from anyone who cares about adoptee rights.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009 10:45:00 AM EST

If this is how the bill’s “supporters” are interpreting current events, I’d say CARE has a rocky road ahead of it.

The full text of CA AB 372 as introduced can be found on the California Open page.

Read it and judge for yourself, but simply put, it is not by any stretch a clean open records bill.

As Marley pointed out in her latest piece CARE felt the need to add this disclaimer of sorts to their webpage concerning the bill:

(a word about reading a bill: Legislative language, and the language of statutes, can be confusing. The language is based upon existing legal code which encompasses thousands of pages that are all interrelated. The chane that we are requesting will allow adult adoptees over the page of 18 access to their original record of birth. The text herein is written by the legislative counsel for the California Assembly and is written for lawyers, not for lay people. What’s important is that it cretes a legal right for adult adoptees to get their birth records.)

In other words, it’s a nice little condescending pat on the head, saying essentially, ‘there, there all you adoptees, it’s in legislate-ese, just TRUST US, it doesn’t mean what you thought you read, see? It’s now a “rights” bill, trust us!’

Which of course is ultimately not what it is. This is not a rights bill, this more of the usual conditional psuedo-access predicated upon desires and whims.

Again, Bastards buying that old “trust us” line, I’ve still got that old CARE bridge on the wrong coast to sell ya … .

Bastards have every reason to begin asking the hard questions when someone begins selling us the just “trust us” line in relation to legislation.

These are people’s real lives CARE is being so CARE-less with. The consequences of getting it wrong means real people left behind, screwed over, and trapped behind walls of lack of access.

In Ohio, I’m precisely that class of “left behind” Bastards. Had I been born just a few years earlier, or perhaps a few years later, my chances of actually gaining access to my authentic records would be quite different, but as it stands now, purely due to a “political compromise” I’m locked into those middle, and fucked over, years.

Messed up legislation has real world consequences to those bargained away.

And that is precisely what the CARE bill does, set up a new and damaged system going forward. If their bill were to pass Bastards would be left begging judges for scrubbed of identifying information (unless such is deemed necessary to assist in establishing a legal right) copies of their paperwork.

It says so right there in the CARE bill:

The name and address of the natural parents shall be given to the petitioner or requester only if he or she can demonstrate that the name and address, or either of them, are necessary to assist him or her in establishing a legal right. In all other cases, that information shall be redacted from all records and information provided, including a copy of an original record of birth.

CARE’s pre-emptive answer to such is of course, another pat on the head, ‘there there, you just don’t understand it, TRUST US!’

Trust people who have the unmitigated gall to write such into a bill and then try to proffer it off as a bill that “creates a legal right for adult adoptees to get their birth records”?

Like hell!

Yes, by and large I’m pointing my readers to others writings on the CARE-tastrope, in part because

• Ron himself is a California adoptee (as well as his previous work with California Open)
• and Marley in her Bastard Nation work as a “9-year member of CalOpen Partners” is also in a position to have something to say here.

Both of them not only have something to say about this monstrosity, they come from places to know of what they speak.

What I have to say is mainly in support of the good work they’re already doing.

None-the-less, being a left behind Bastard myself, who has petitioned the court for my records repeatedly, let me tell you, I at least hold out hope that if the judge were to actually sign off on allowing me my own paperwork, it would at least be complete, not routinely redacted by law.

CARE is thus taking a bad situation and ultimately making it worse, setting up NEW roadblocks. This is not merely a bad bill, it’s actively counterproductive.

Living as I do on the other end of a not altogether dissimilar process in Ohio, let me be the first to tell you, “compromises” that create new obstructions and make the already bad situation worse are no answer.