Saint Joseph Valley Project - A Coalition of Community, Faith and Labor

Day 1
This is my first day as a lobbyist for my generation. The first thing I must do is to read my e-mails and really understand what they mean. A bus is not a bus, if it is a van. I found out today Susan really has more education about dealing with the elderly and mentally handicapped people than most people do. I am only hoping that tomorrow goes better.

Day 2
Susan and I go to the training as we walk over to the Indiana State house annex where we discussed the AARP agenda for the day.
Over lunch we listen to speaker of the House B Patrick Bauer thank us for being at the capital to lobby so that he knows what his constituents want. We than discussed with our state senator Joe Zakas the state budget specifically CHOICE funding, and also age discrimination legislation.
I find it funny that I can speak about labor issue age discrimination but usually the republican representatives have not meet with me as a labor representative.

The senator has indicated his support for CHOICE, which allows an individual to live at home with dignity at a cost to the state of about $400.00 a month compared to living in a retirement home at $4,200.00 per month. Even though the individual than qualities for Medicare the state has to pay 1/3 of the cost, which is approximately $1000.00 per month, sounds like a no brainer to me oh yea except lobbyist for business have a different agenda. By the way Governor Daniels wants to lower funding for CHOICE by $4 million a year. Penny wise pound foolish.
The other legislation which AARP would like our legislators to support is an age discrimination law. We would like to move the jurisdiction for violating the rights of the elderly at work from the labor department to the civil rights commission. The Civil Rights Commission has jurisdiction for all other federally protected class of citizens. Under the Department of Labor there is no recourse for the violated worker other than the employee posting they wont do it again. Under the civil rights division the government can fine the employer and get restitution for the harmed individual just like any other class of protected citizen.

You may wonder why labor law is so week. We’ll like my grandfather told me money makes money and shit makes shit. Who else can hire people to work full time to sit and wait to talk to the legislators, or take them to dinner? As citizen lobbyist we do have the power to change the direction but only if we hold our legislators to the light of day. We the voters did vote for change and only time will tell if the people will truly succeed in the peace full overthrow of our government

In solidarity
Joe.