Jonathan P. Baird

On Oct. 17, a new bankruptcy law goes into effect. Known by the Orwellian heading Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, this law makes a contribution to the well-established American political tradition of false labeling. Substance is utterly contrary to title.
The last thing this law is about is protecting consumers. It is the baby of the credit card companies, banks and other corporate interests. They drafted this one-sided legislation eight years ago, nursed it along and ultimately shepherded it through Congress.
Under the new law, more people will be forced
into five-year repayment plans to creditors. The fresh start, previously considered the great plus for financially strapped consumers, will be more elusive.
A new and different means test will be the vehicle for these changes. The means test will apply to debtors with income over the state’s median – $50,411 for a single earner in New Hampshire. The new law will require the court to use predetermined government figures for expense items based on IRS guidelines for tax cheats. It will base a debtor’s income on an average of the previous six months, even if the debtor has been laid off or his or her circumstances have otherwise changed for the worse.
Under current law, a bankruptcy court judge looks at a debtor’s actual income and expenses in evaluating abuse and deciding whether a discharge of debt should be granted. A danger is that the new formula will result in overstated income and understated expenses, suggesting that debtors have greater repayment ability than actually exists.
The law essentially replaces a flexible, judicially supervised process that has worked well (at least in New Hampshire) with a mechanical one-size-fits-all model almost guaranteed to spawn more litigation. The means test is the place where it is most likely the consumer will be harmed since it remains unclear how much numbers will reflect reality.
There are many other objectionable aspects to this legislation, the scope of which is massive. Debtors will face increased costs and filing requirements. Even if they cannot afford it, they must obtain pre-bankruptcy credit counseling. They also must complete a personal financial management course. More debts will be classified non-dischargeable, and the ability of debtors to discharge credit card debt will be significantly reduced. It will be harder for tenants to use the bankruptcy law to protect themselves from eviction.
When the bill passed last spring, Congress voted down virtually every effort to afford some consumer protection. Amendments to discourage predatory lending, to protect the homes of the elderly and the medically infirm and to protect servicemen and women were all defeated.
Even the plight of hurricane victims was ignored. Your loan debt will continue to exist even if your house, car and all personal possessions are located somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. On Sept. 8, Rep. John Conyers introduced further legislation to protect the hundreds of thousands of families devastated by Hurricane Katrina who will suffer under the anti-debtor provisions of the new bankruptcy law.
False stereotype
The corporate interests who sponsored the original legislation portrayed bankruptcy as a system where deadbeats totally escaped paying their debts. The consumer recklessly using credit cards for frivolous purpose was their image of choice. Think mall shopping spree with no intent to repay.
Behind the stereotype lies a complex set of reasons why consumers file bankruptcy. I would estimate that for every person gaming the system, there are at least 20 who file bankruptcy due to a personal tragedy like illness, job loss or divorce.
While federal statistics do not indicate why people file, we now have good academic data about who turns to the bankruptcy system. Professor Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law School, a bankruptcy law expert, argues that the amount of medical debt is substantial. Warren has stated that more than one-quarter of all filers cite illness or injury as a specific reason for bankruptcy. Another quarter cite uncovered medical bills of over $1,000.
It is hard not to connect the inadequacy of health insurance coverage with the need for bankruptcy protection. Probably the most common scenario I have witnessed is illness leading to job loss resulting in big debt. If we had national health insurance, there would be far less bankruptcy. Gaps in coverage, underinsurance and no insurance all leave people at risk. Only really comprehensive health insurance would help.
This law does no credit to either political party. Shamefully, many Democrats supported it. If lawmakers are serious about consumer protection, they should look at the ridiculous extension of credit, including to minors. Credit card solicitations and profits have vastly increased. These companies have bled consumers dry with their fees, penalties and interest. The other side of bankruptcy is their predatory practices, which this legislation ignores.
Consumer protection has become a joke. A better name for this law would be the Credit Card Protection and Fleecing the Consumer Act of 2005. In passing it, Congress acted like a physician who misdiagnoses the patient and prescribes wrong treatment. Forgotten was the old medical maxim “First, do no harm.”

As our Legislature wrestles with the budget deficit, a variety of fixes have been suggested. Many center on cutting Medicaid, a joint federal-state program that provides health services to especially vulnerable populations. Medicaid serves around 95,000 people in the state.
These legislative proposals include cutting Medicaid reimbursement rates to hospitals, counties and other medical providers, putting an asset test on the Healthy Kids program and imposing monthly premiums on Medicaid recipients.
The proposals have been put forward in the name of fiscal responsibility. But it is not fiscally responsible to make proposals that ignore significant adverse effects on the health-care system as a whole. A better characterization would be passing the buck.
The suggested Medicaid measures mask cost shifting that ultimately harms consumers of health care along with private businesses. This cost shifting is a budget boomerang that needs to be more widely understood.
The clearest explanation I have seen about health-care cost shifting comes from Doug Hall of the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies. In 2003, Hall reported that New Hampshire Medicaid reimbursed only 77 percent of actual expenses incurred by hospitals. That means taking any Medicaid patient is a losing proposition.
Of course, hospitals will not simply eat the loss. They shift costs to private insurance and private-pay patients to compensate for lost revenue. Hall compares the revenue structure of a health-care provider to a hydraulic system. He says push down on one revenue source and another must rise to compensate.
When public programs like Medicaid fail to pay real cost and do not increase their payments consistent as costs rise, insured and private-pay patients will have to make up the difference. In publications, both Hall and the Business and Industry Association have well described this reality.
Hall reports that in 2001 New Hampshire hospitals shifted $198 million in costs onto insurers and self-pay patients. This amounts to a 23 percent surcharge over the true cost of health care.
Legislators who propose further Medicaid reimbursement reductions are not thinking through the consequences of their actions. Their acts will cause a ratcheting up of costs outside Medicaid while weakening that program.
It is ridiculous that the state has built the Medicaid program on the expectation that health-care providers should donate their services for Medicaid recipients without fair compensation. This amounts to undermining the program. It is not a recipe for any long-term survival.
The problem has gotten much worse during the last decade. Ten years ago, New Hampshire paid much closer to the actual cost of Medicaid patients. According to the New Hampshire Hospital Association, we are now last among the states in the adequacy of Medicaid payment. Our reimbursement rates are nearly 20 percent lower than the national average.
Further underpayment of Medicaid has additional dark sides. More medical providers will limit access of Medicaid patients in the future because of the steeper financial loss. When care is denied, the patient in need will still be there. If the patient gets care, the likely place will be an ER and the likely result of the delay will be more expensive treatment due to a worsened condition.
I am no expert, but I expect the Medicaid cost shifting is approaching a breaking point. Public rates are too low and private rates are too high. Something will have to give. Yet the government, in effect, looks away.
At its best, New Hampshire is a genuine community based on a shared sense of caring. A community must take care of its members. We need an organized way of helping the sick and infirm. It undermines our community when Medicaid is significantly under-funded.
Fiscal responsibility requires adequate public funding, in part, so that the private system does not pass on even more exorbitant price increases that would turn health care into an even more unaffordable commodity than it is at present.
In stepping back from the immediate crisis, I find it embarrassing that our neighbor Vermont can actively consider universal health care while we remain mired in a dispiriting, backward-looking legislative debate that will deny care to more citizens. It is time New Hampshire moved in a different direction.

The Legislature is poised to take up again the issue of raising the state’s minimum wage. House Bill 665, which has many sponsors, including Rep. Sandra Keans, Rep. Terie Norelli and Sen. Dick Green, proposes to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $6.65 an hour over a three-year period. The bill proposes yearly 50-cent increases.
This will be the fourth attempt at the state level to raise the minimum wage over $5.15 an hour. It has been eight years since the last increase. Last year, the House speaker broke a tie vote to kill the bill. Before that, the House had passed an increase, but the bill died in the Senate.
The reasons to raise the minimum wage are both moral and practical. As an economic justice issue, it is fundamentally about fairness for low-wage workers. There is a core value in America that if you work hard, you should be treated fairly and you should have adequate resources to provide for your family. That means full-time workers should be paid enough to feed their families and put roofs over their heads without government assistance.
The current minimum wage fails to protect low-income families against hunger and homelessness. A wage of $5.15 an hour does not provide enough income to pay for basic necessities. Finding affordable housing in New Hampshire on that wage would be a miracle.
A minimum wage increase is not a guarantee against economic hardship. No doubt, families will still struggle. But an increase would provide more tangible help to pay for food, rent or medicine. Having a little more money might prevent an eviction, a utility shutoff or repossession of a car needed to get to work.
During the last eight years, while the minimum wage has stagnated, the cost of living has risen. Consider gas prices or rents. When the minimum wage does not keep pace with living costs, its value erodes.
The value of the minimum wage in 2005 is less than it has been in 46 out of the last 48 years. The minimum wage is worth only 33 percent of the average American wage, its lowest level since 1949. The minimum wage was instituted in 1938 and reached its peak value in 1968.
There has been one unrecognized cost in the erosion of value of the minimum wage. More people need to seek town, city or state government to survive because their wages have not kept up with the cost of living.
Welfare, food stamps and fuel assistance see more applicants. Government ends up subsidizing the businesses that pay bottom-of-the-barrel wages.
Polls and referendums find raising the minimum wage is overwhelmingly popular. In the last election, in two red states that voted for George Bush, voters approved ballot measures to raise the minimum wage by $1, to $6.15 an hour.
In Florida, over 70 percent of voters supported the increase. In Nevada, over 68 percent supported it. In these states, hardly liberal bastions, the minimum wage increase won in every county in both states. A new poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Foundation found that 82 percent of Americans stated that raising the minimum wage was an important priority. Only 6 percent opposed an increase.
In New England, all our surrounding states have raised the minimum wage above $5.15. Vermont is at $7 an hour, Massachusetts $6.75 and Maine $6.35. The latter two states are considering additional increases. Rhode Island is at $6.75, and Connecticut leads at $7.10.
Having observed the debate over this issue over the years, I believe most opponents of the increase in New Hampshire do not think there should be any minimum wage. They see a wage floor as intrusive government regulation of the marketplace.
There has been no consistency in opponents’ arguments. Arguments have included: not enough people would be affected; too many people would be affected; and small business would be hurt.
Having a minimum wage protects the value of work and the idea that work should be rewarded fairly. Without an hourly wage floor, employers could exploit the lack of bargaining power of low-wage workers. Nothing in the market would prevent a down spiral in worker pay scale. Pretty soon, some employers could be offering the equivalent of Third World wages.
Congress will not act on the issue. Even though Congress has given itself cost-of-living pay raises five years in a row, the U.S. Senate failed to step up when it recently defeated the minimum wage amendment to bankruptcy legislation.
A modest minimum wage increase like that presented by House Bill 665 makes good economic sense, and it is the right thing to do.

The Legislature will soon debate two bills that seek reconsideration of laws that allow judges and police officers to seize guns in domestic violence cases. Rep. Howard Dickinson, a Republican from Center Conway, is sponsoring a bill to study gun seizure law, and Rep. Richard Kennedy of Contoocook is promoting a bill to reshape the law itself.
Neither bill deserves support. When the Legislature reformed the domestic violence laws several years ago, the issue of guns and domestic violence got extensive review. There was testimony from all sides at a public hearing in Representatives Hall.
After months of deliberation, legislators decided that people who committed domestic violence forfeited their right to possess guns for the 12 months of their restraining order. Unless the abuser poses a continuing threat, courts will return the guns after the year is up.
There is no good reason to revisit this law now.
The reasons for the seizure law are straightforward. The most important is public safety. Gun seizures may save lives. Removing guns lessens the chance of homicide and suicide by taking one risk factor out of the equation.
Domestic violence commonly features heightened emotional volatility. Out-of-control anger may not be far from homicidal rage. In a heartbeat, in the context of an argument, guns can turn domestic violence into homicide. Taking the guns makes it harder to murder.
It is not as though we lack experience with domestic violence-related homicide. Two-thirds of our homicides in New Hampshire are connected to domestic violence. That is a long-standing pattern consistent with national figures.
Women are far more likely to be killed by a spouse, an intimate acquaintance or a family member than by a stranger. Most often, it happens during an argument. Guns are the most common murder weapon.
It is hard to miss the almost routine homicide stories that appear in the media with numbing regularity. The story varies little: A current or former boyfriend or spouse shoots an abused girlfriend or wife. Then the boyfriend or spouse kills himself, explaining he would rather die than see his ex with a new lover.
I received my own education on the role of guns in domestic violence cases from my former client, Karen. She and her ex-husband had an ongoing custody battle after their divorce.
Karen’s ex-husband always had multiple weapons on his person, including guns and knives. He wore a shoulder holster and an ankle holster. He maintained a large gun collection in his mobile home. It was like every day he was preparing for a battle.
Gun display was his form of intimidation. He had previously threatened Karen while holding a gun to her head. He made death threats. To the great distress of his son, he shot and killed the family dog. He used weapons to communicate physical menace and to try and keep Karen in line.
He also specialized in psychological abuse. He consistently belittled Karen and called her demeaning names. Everything was always her fault. He never could see his responsibility.
Years after the divorce, he continued to stalk Karen. He would park across the street from her apartment and monitor her whereabouts, her activities and her visitors. He kept a log detailing what he observed, including descriptions of visitors, their license plate numbers and speculation about Karen’s activities of which he disapproved.
During the course of the case, I obtained a copy of the log he maintained. It included almost daily entries and read like he was a private investigator or a police officer. After the court issued a restraining order against him, he contacted me and claimed he was the victim of an elaborate plot hatched by his ex-wife and her supporters.
In an article in the Monitor in early January, Rep. Dickinson stated there is excessive paranoia about guns and they may have nothing to do with a couple divorcing. He believed the gun seizure laws demonstrate too much caution. He also expressed concern about the lack of care given to valuable guns after they are confiscated by the police.
Such comments trivialize domestic violence and the well-documented role guns have played in homicide and intimidation. No right, including state constitutional rights about guns, are absolute. Domestic violence abusers lose their right to possess weapons because of their behavior, not their beliefs.
I am curious if the legislators sponsoring the study bill think convicted felons or those with severe mental illness should still have access to weapons. Maybe they want a study committee about that, too.
Rep. Kennedy’s bill reads like a Batterers’ Protection Act. He proposes raising the burden of proof in all civil domestic violence cases to make it harder to prove abuse. And, surprise, he wants to make it far harder to remove weapons. His bill would be a comfort to abusers everywhere.
These bills are sour grapes. Some pro-gun legislators did not like the law change requiring removal of weapons if the court finds abuse. Giving a domestic violence abuser a gun makes about as much sense as putting a drunken driver behind the wheel. In this instance, it appears that pro-gun legislators care more about their precious guns than precious lives lost.

For the third time in recent years, there is a legislative effort to raise the minimum wage in New Hampshire.  House Bill 1278, a bill sponsored by Rep. Sandra Keans and Rep. Terie Norelli, is before the Legislature.

The bill proposes to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.65 over a three-year period with 50-cent increases each year.

New Hampshire remains the only state in New Hampshire that has not raised the minimum wage above $5.15, the federal minimum.  Vermont, Rhode Island and Massachusetts increased their state minimums to $6.75.  Maine moved up to $6.25, and Connecticut sets the standard at $7.10, almost two dollars above New Hampshire.

While the economy has not been good, none of these states have experienced any adverse economic effects from raising the minimum wage.

A surprisingly large number of New Hampshire workers are currently paid very low wages.  The Department of Employment Security reports that 31,000 workers in our state earn between $5.15 – $7.15 an hour with 10,000 more earning $5.15 or less.  Many thousands more earn under $9 an hour.

These low-wage workers are a forgotten and invisible constituency.  They have no movement or powerful organization championing their cause.  They are the equivalent of political background furniture.  They merit attention only during primary season among the laundry list of issues.

They do not earn enough to provide for their families and pay for basic necessities of life.  Part of the changing face of homelessness is the reality that more homeless people are employed full-time but cannot afford the high cost of housing.  Many are working at jobs which offer no health insurance, no pension plan, no sick pay and no other benefits.  The lucky have 40-hour-a-week jobs rather than the 24-hour jobs increasingly favored by business.

Pay is so low for these workers that many qualify for government assistance from state or local welfare.  In effect, the government is subsidizing business.  Because workers are paid so little, they must turn to food stamps, Medicaid, fuel assistance and other survival programs.

Is the treatment of low-wage workers considered a scandal?  No.  A scandal is Janet Jackson’s breast at the Super Bowl.  It is Mel Gibson’s movie, Ben and J. Lo’s breakup, Britney’s marriage or Martha’s trial.

Lousy treatment of low-wage workers is not a scandal.  It is business as usual.  It is normalcy.

The House Republican leadership is fighting the increase in the minimum wage.  Rep. Lee Slocum, a Republican member of the House Labor Committee, has introduced an amendment substituting an entirely different bill for the minimum wage bill.  Slocum’s bill proposes a study of tax credits for businesses that hire some minimum wage workers.

The idea of a bill that actually helps workers is apparently too much to fathom.  Possibly there will be other amendments.

Raising the minimum wage will not end poverty.  It will not even create a livable wage.  It is, however, a positive, incremental step.  It will pay more rents, utilities, car payments and food bills.  Even a little more can make a difference.

In all the other New England states, Republicans and Democrats came together because raising the minimum wage was the right thing to do.  This is not a partisan issue.  Surely, the Legislature can do the right thing here too.

When he has not been busy cutting services to poor people and laying off his staff, Health and Human Services Commissioner John Stephen has launched an initiative promoting abstinence.  Stephen has created a New Hampshire Abstinence Education Task Force.

In announcing the creation of this group, Stephen stated that teens who practice abstinence live healthier and more fulfilling lives.  As a former teenager and a child of the 1960s, I protest.  The elevation of abstinence as more fulfilling does not register with me.

Abstinence was never a condition to which I willingly aspired.  Since my teen years, I wanted a satisfying love life, not empty privation and repressed longings.  Turning abstinence into some great virtue smacks of sick religiosity and phony piety.  However, I do not doubt that there are some snake handlers, Bible thumpers and elected officials who agree with Stephen.

While in general sexual pleasure needs no promoting, there is an apparent need in New Hampshire to put in a good word for it.  Unlike the abstinence promoters, I support the right of young people in their later teens to be both sexually active and responsible.

As the father of young men, I believe young people need full information about contraception and safe sex.  They do not need lectures from moralistic adults who are promoting abstinence for others.  I would worry more if my sons went through their teen years without romantic relationships.

The focus on abstinence reflects misguided public health priorities.  New Hampshire is one of 10 states with the lowest birth rates for teenagers 15 and older.  Over the last decade, teen birth rates in our state dropped significantly.  No persuasive case justifies why an abstinency initiative is necessary now.

To the extent public health dollars are available, it would make far more sense to spend money on either anti-smoking or anti-drug and alcohol efforts.  Teen smoking is epidemic, but the geniuses in our Legislature completely raided tobacco settlement dollars in a misdirected effort to boost revenue in the general fund.  Similarly, legislators have just authorized a $500,000 cut to drug and alcohol programs at a time when these programs are already drastically underfunded considering the extent of the problem.

Sadly, Stephen’s initiative is not some isolated effort.  The Bush administration and social conservatives have lobbied for and increased federal funding for abstinence-only education.  If you can believe it, the federal budget contains $137 million in fiscal year 2004 for this purpose.

If New Hampshire wants to access some of this money, it must put up three matching state dollars for every four federal dollars spent.  In light of the painful $20 million cut just experienced by Health and human Services, do we really want to spend state money on this?

Abstinence education is the sexual equivalent of the “Just say no” approach to drug use.  Abstinence educators teach that sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful physical and psychological side effects.

Recipients of federal money may not provide teens with any information inconsistent with the abstinence message.  The result is that recipients of abstinence-only dollars may not advocate contraceptive use or teach contraceptive methods except to emphasize their failure rates.

There is real danger in this remarkably blind approach.  Young people will not get the full and accurate information they need about condoms and other methods of birth control.  Without correct information, young people will not be able to protect themselves from pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.

The abstinence promoters totally erase gays and lesbians from their equation.  If marriage is the only venue for sex, where does that leave the non-straight world?  I suspect the abstinence promoters do not support gay marriage.

Whether social conservatives like it or not, young people are having sex.  By age 18, more than two-thirds of all American teenagers have had sexual intercourse.  Each year, nearly 4 million adolescents are infected with sexually transmitted diseases.  One-half of all new HIV infections occur among people under 25.

It is the abstinence promoters themselves who are dangerous to the health of young people.  They are peddling fear and ignorance in the serve of an ideology.  They actually discourage young people from using contraception and exaggerate failure rates to scare youth into abstinence.

There is no proven evidence that abstinence-only education works.  No peer-reviewed research demonstrates the effectiveness of any abstinence-only program.  I expect it will not come as a surprise that George W. Bush has repeatedly championed abstinence education and has worked to increase such funding.

An objective assessment of the last 20 years shows that the abstinence promoters have had considerable success in promoting their programs while restricting more comprehensive sexuality education, including information about both abstinence and contraception.

Abstinence education is a good example of the dumbing down of America.  It makes our state look stupid.  I safely predict that vast numbers of teenagers will pay no attention.

Recently U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke out about the sentences of criminal offenders being too long.  It was rare and refreshing to hear a conservative jurist speak critically about the harm of mandatory sentencing.

There can be little doubt that as a society we are big on punishment.  We are good at putting people away.

Where we are not so good is thinking rationally about treatment of ex-offenders after they have served their sentences.  This is important because most incarcerated offenders will, at some point, be released.

Instead of encouraging positive approaches to promote a fresh start and reintegration into a community, we have constructed legal barriers that make it harder for ex-offenders to resume a normal life.  In housing, public benefits, employment, parental rights and student loans, the fact of a criminal record is often the basis for a second, civil punishment.

More often than not, judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys are unaware of these collateral consequences.  They do not consider it at sentencing.

The consequences happen after the criminal case is over.  You get denied the job, the apartment, custody of your child or a student loan because of something criminal in your past, even your distant past.  In effect, it is the punishment that keeps punishing.

Here are some routine examples from my law office at New Hampshire Legal Assistance:

●  A public housing authority denied readmission to a husband who
wanted to return to his previous residence, where his wife lived.
The husband had completed his jail time.  Because of his criminal
conviction for drug possession, he was deemed a threat to other
tenants.  Under the Section 8 rules, he was barred readmission for
five years.

●  Fourteen years ago, a mentally disabled woman stole food from a
convenience store in Massachusetts.  She did not show up at her
court hearing on the charge and she had an outstanding warrant.
After moving to New Hampshire to escape domestic violence, she
rebuilt her life.  She qualified for disability benefits, found a modest
apartment and was quietly living her life.

The Social Security Administration cross-matched computer
information about her criminal record.  Based on the assumption
that she was a fleeing felon, Social Security terminated her
benefits and sent her notices that she was liable to repay over
$17,000 in benefits she had received over past years.

She lost her only income, $545 a month, and is now fighting
eviction.

●  A developmentally disabled high school student faced eviction
from the federally subsidized housing project where he lived
with his even more disabled mother.  The young man violated
the terms of his probation by contacting the underage girl with
whom he had been in love and with whom he had previously
engaged in some consensual touching.  The girl had been
writing the young man and he wrote back.

The housing project evicted him because his probation violation
had again landed him in prison.  He and his public defender had
previously plea-bargained a simple assault charge.  Although
popular and well-liked in his home community, has was considered
a risk to other children in the project.  He is now without income,
living in a homeless shelter and trying to finish high school.

In all these situations, a criminal past led to some additional civil punishment.

This makes little sense.  There is no evidence that piling on civil punishments makes us safer in New Hampshire.  They are based on demonizing ex-offenders.

The typical ex-offender is not Hannibal Lecter.  Movies and crime novels give maximum exposure to super-predator psychopaths who kill remorselessly while competing for first prize in the evil department.

These dehumanized stereotypes distort a realistic view of the offender population.

We know a fair amount about this population.  Most prisoners report incomes of less than $8,000 a year in the year before going to prison.  A majority were unemployed at the time of their arrest.  Seventy percent of parents in state prison do not have high school diplomas.

While the government does not keep statistics on pre-incarceration earnings and employment histories, some generalizations seem safe.  Most prisoners are poor with limited education and job skills.  A high percentage have severe mental impairments.  They often have drug and alcohol problems with histories of being physically, psychologically and sexually abused.  Most ex-offenders have convictions for drug-related or property crimes, not violent crimes.

A majority do not have long conviction records.  Almost a quarter of male inmates and 35 percent of female inmates were never previously convicted.

As a new study from the U.S. Department of Justice demonstrates, there are over 5 million people in the United States with experience in state or federal prison.  this does not include those in local jails or those who were arrested and never charged or had charges dropped.  Clearly, the stigma of a record is of great importance to many millions.

A rational public discussion should reconsider whether rehabilitation is served by policies that make it more likely ex-offenders will be without income, employment or a place to live.

●    Americans must unite in the belief that poverty is an unacceptable situation.

Poverty appears to be a permanent fact of life in the United States.  Poverty may be bemoaned, but few question its inevitability.  It is part of the economic and political landscape, a given.

Neither political party stands for the systematic elimination of poverty.  No major American political figure calls for an end to poverty.  If you believe poverty should be attacked and ultimately abolished, you are outside the mainstream.  You are considered unrealistic or utopian.  You might be considered a crackpot.

This is especially true in New Hampshire.  Our perennial animating issue is taxes, not poverty.  There is a list of labels to dismiss anyone who challenges the New Hampshire status quo:  tax-and-spender, big-government liberal, socialist.

Rather than address poverty, our state government stands posed to cut essential human services, using the pretext of a fiscally responsible budget.  It is hard to imagine ending poverty when your state is gearing up to further shred the safety net.

Thirty-six years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached that America’s greatest problem and contradiction was that it harbored 35 million poor people at a time when its resources were so vast that the existence of poverty should be an anachronism.  We have not heeded King.  He was right then and he is right now.  We have not followed through with a persistent war on poverty.

Instead, we have witnessed a huge backward step – an explosion of economic inequality.  It is not simply that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  A declining share of income is going to middle-class families while the richest of the rich hog ever more.

The evidence for this assertion does not come from some left-wing think tank.  A recent study by the Congressional Budget Office found that between 1979 and 1997, the after-tax income of the top 1 percent of families rose 157 percent compared with only a 10 percent gain for middle-class families.

There has been a dramatic shift in income to the super-rich.  The total income of the wealthiest 1 percent equals that of the bottom 40 percent.  Even among the very wealthy, riches are concentrating so that the very richest have more.

The writer and economist Paul Krugman says we are living in a new Gilded Age.  He argues that few people are aware of how much the gap between the very rich and everyone else has widened over a short period.  Krugman says America has the highest per capita income in the world because our rich are much richer, not because the middle class has done well.

In fact, the middle class and the poor have been hammered.  Massive job loss, prolonged unemployment, increasing numbers without health insurance – it is all too familiar.

History’s Examples

We need a new abolitionism to end poverty.  We must persuade our fellow citizens that poverty, homelessness and gross wage inequality are unacceptable in the 21st century.

I am not advocating any brand of extremism or fanaticism.  We have seen more than enough of that.  We need a long-term historical perspective.

In the early 19th century, slavery was a settled institution.  Leaders of all political stripes agreed that it could not be ended.  Business leaders argued that the property rights of slaveholders had to be respected.  The only people who believed slavery could be abolished were a handful of despised reformers.

Abolitionists were denounced for decades before the Civil War.  It was politically safe to abhor abolitionists, and polite society made accommodation with slavery.

Hatred for the abolitionists went far beyond vitriolic newspaper criticism.  In 1835, a mob seized and bound the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and dragged him through the streets of Boston.  In 1837, another mob killed abolitionist preacher-editor Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois.

Yet somehow abolitionists did the impossible.  In roughly 30 years, they reversed the verdict on slavery.  It took a civil way, constitutional amendments and Reconstruction, but slavery was ultimately abolished because a group of citizens decided they would not accept it.

American Apartheid

The fight to end racial segregation parallels the struggle against slavery.  Again, an overwhelming majority accepted segregation.  Business leaders invoked their sacred property rights.  Owners of restaurants, hotels and stores claimed the right to serve and do business with whomever they wanted – white people only.

Segregation was the law of the land.  For more than 50 years, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld “separate but equal.”  A long history of disgraceful laws and court decisions reinforced American apartheid.  For example, in 1908 the Supreme Court upheld a Kentucky statute prohibiting the education of blacks and whites in the same place.  In 1926, the Supreme Court upheld racially restrictive covenants.

As the Trent Lott debacle has reminded us, this was a world in which Congress refused to pass a law to make lynching illegal.

Who would have believed in 1950 that segregation was on its last legs?  In a relatively short historical span, the civil rights movement emerged and overcame segregation.  People of remarkable courage and moral fervor stepped forward and waged campaigns of direct action.

Inspiring Words

These heroes faced a far bleaker reality than present-day opponents of poverty.  Abolishing poverty should not be as difficult as overcoming slavery or segregation.  Activists today do not face the threats to personal safety experienced by the abolitionists and civil rights workers.

Our task is to make poverty an unacceptable condition.  History shows that poverty can be ameliorated and wage inequality can be decreased.

As New Englanders, we have the wonderful tradition of Thoreau and Emerson to emulate.  go back and read Thoreau’s essays “Slavery in Massachusetts” and “A Plea for John Brown.”  The inspiration and intensity of conviction are right there.

If you don’t speak English around here, you’re out of luck.

The face of New Hampshire is changing.  Although little discussed, the 2000 census figures show more than 84,000 people in New Hampshire speak a language other than English at home.  Almost 24,000 speak English less than very well.  These are surprising numbers.

Particularly in the southern tier of our state, the demographic shifts are dramatic.  Yet the subject of how well our New Hampshire institutions, public and private, are accommodating non-English speakers has received little attention.

Sadly, New Hampshire has done poorly both in recognition of language accessibility issues and in implementation of change.  In practice, the state clings to a mythology that it is homogeneous and white only.

The state has not coordinated data-gathering about immigrants across agencies.  Nor has it studied the need for translation services even though the population of non-English speakers is growing.

The harm is that people who lack proficiency in English are frequently unable to obtain basic knowledge of how to access various services and benefits for which they are eligible.  Whether health care, social services or public benefits like Medicaid and unemployment insurance, the lack of language assistance leads to denial of help.

State agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Employment Security have largely failed to provide translated materials in Spanish or other languages.  Application forms, notices and determinations are typically not translated.  The lack of bilingual staff in state offices is a barrier to both applications and appeals.

Let me illustrate with a story.  Mr. Chan worked as a cook at a Chinese restaurant in a southern New Hampshire city.  He took an approved leave of absence to care for a newborn child.  Upon his return to work, his employer advised him he no longer had a job.

Mr. Chan went to Employment Security to apply for unemployment benefits.  Mr. Chan is Chinese and did not speak, read, or understand English.  His employer told Employment Security that Mr. Chan had voluntarily left his job to accept other work.  Employment Security tried to obtain more information, but Mr. Chan did not respond.  The agency did not know he failed to respond to notices because he could not read English.

Mr. Chan was denied unemployment benefits.  He did not make a timely appeal because he did not understand he had been denied.  The notices from Employment Security were in English.  He sought out a person who translated the notice, but the interpreter did not explain he had been denied.

When Mr. Chan finally understood he had been denied about two months later, he asked Employment Security to allow a late appeal.  The agency refused, saying his grounds were insufficient.  It did not explain.

At a loss about what to do, Mr. Chan sought legal help at Greater Boston Legal Services, where he found an attorney who spoke Chinese.  That attorney contacted New Hampshire Legal Assistance.

As Mr. Chan’s counsel, I argued that his inability to understand the notice justified his late appeal and that the agency’s English-only notice violated his right to due process of law.  Once Employment Security understood what had happened, it quickly agreed he should be allowed a hearing on the merits of the case.

At the hearing, a qualified interpreter came, and Mr. Chan was able to tell his side.  The hearing officer found Mr. Chan was discharged while on an approved leave of absence.  The decision meant over $2,000 in back benefits to Mr. Chan.

This story demonstrates both the importance of translated written materials and qualified interpreter services.  New Hampshire’s need to provide such service is not based on some abstract moral good.  The law requires it.

Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act requires that recipients of federal money serve people of limited English proficiency.  There is extensive case law during the last 30 years supporting this proposition.

Contrary to possible expectation that language accessibility is a partisan political obligation, recent history demonstrates it is not.  Both the Clinton White House and the Bush Department of Justice have supported guidance to federally funded agencies about how to comply with this legal obligation.

Certainly, there is room to disagree about the extent of the obligation.  But the mandate is clear.

The United States remains the ultimate melting pot society.  We are a nation of immigrants.  New Hampshire is now catching up and joining the melting pot.  By taking steps to be more language accessible, we are only acknowledging the changes that have already happened.  We will also put ourselves on the right side of a civil rights issue.  There is no going back to the good old days.

It is estimated that 4 million Americans have been infected.  This is four times more people than have been infected by HIV.

Before I met Ira, I did not know about Hepatitis C.  Ira came to me for legal representation after he was denied Social Security Disability benefits.  He had been diagnosed with chronic Hepatitis C in 1997.

Ira initially went to the doctor with complaints of fatigue and dizziness.  He did not feel well and was no longer able to work at his job as a landscaper.  After lab tests and a liver biopsy, his doctors recommended treatment with Interferon, a highly toxic medicine.

The treatment was rugged.  Even though Ira was young and strong, he experience profound fatigue and incapacitating headaches.  He quickly lost 30 pounds.  He said it was like he had a flue that never went away.  He described many days in which he lay exhausted on his couch holding a pillow over his head to stem the headaches.  It was too much effort to do dishes or walk the dog.

In spite of how lousy the medicine made him feel, it was Ira’s only hope.  Fortunately, the Interferon has helped Ira function better.  After 18 months of total disability, he is still struggling with fatigue but is back to work.

Ira is not alone in battling Hepatitis C.  It is estimated that 4 million Americans have been infected.  This is four times more people than have been infected by HIV.   Yet AIDS has been a far bigger story.

If you were a science fiction writer dreaming up spooky plots, you would be hard put to come up with a more sinister virus and epidemic.  Imagine a virus that infects you without any sign or symptom.  Then imagine that you may not even be aware you have been attacked for 10 years until after your liver has been severely damaged.

Doctors do not know why a person can be infected and have no symptoms while the virus destroys his or her liver.  That is why Hepatitis C has been widely described as both a clandestine and insidious virus.  It spreads under the radar.

It is believed that only one-quarter of all cases in the United States have been diagnosed.  that means 3 million Americans do not know they have been infected with the virus or that they could be passing it on to others even though blood tests could be done to determine the infection.

There is not a lot medically known about Hepatitis C.  Data is scant, and the ability to predict the virus’s effect on a patient is poor.  Some people with the infection escape entirely.  Others develop irreversible liver disease.  About 20 percent  of Hepatitis C patients progress to cirrhosis of the liver, liver cancer or both.

Hepatitis C is spread when blood or body fluids from an infected person enter the body of a person who is not infected.  The most common route of transmission has been injection-drug use.

Sharing contaminated needles and syringes increases the chance of infection dramatically.  Body piercing and tattooing are another possible route of transmission.  You can be infected if the tattoo artist’s tools have someone else’s blood on them or if the artist or piercer does not follow good health practices such as washing hands and using disposable gloves.  Ira has multiple tattoos.  His doctor believed that was the source of his infection.

Hepatitis C can also be spread by sex, but this is rare.  There is no evidence that the virus is spread by kissing, hugging, sneezing or drinking from an infected person’s cup.  It is wise not to share personal care items that might have blood on them like razors or toothbrushes.

Once the disease advances to cirrhosis, the symptoms are horrible.  When the liver is severely damaged, its ability to clean blood of toxins and clot properly is compromised.  Death can result from uncontrolled bleeding.

At present, no vaccine exists to prevent Hepatitis C, and it is unlikely there will be one soon.  Due to the shadowy nature of the disease, no powerful lobby has stepped forward to advocate for more research money or better public education.  In 1997, The National Institute of Health spent $1.5 billion on AIDS research.  At the same time, $25 million dollars was spent on Hepatitis C research.

Hepatitis C is not a far-off medical problem about people in some distant ghetto.  It is a New Hampshire story.  Ira is from the Upper Valley.  An informal poll I did of New Hampshire Legal Assistance paralegals and lawyers revealed that we are representing at least 10 disability clients around the state with this diagnosis.

We ignore this epidemic at our peril.  Without better efforts to contain Hepatitis C, its death rate will surpass that of AIDS.