Monday, July 24, 2006
By the end of the year
Patriarch Alexy hopes the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia reunites with the Moscow Patriarchate towards the end of the year
Moscow, July 24, Interfax - The unity of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia and the Moscow Patriarchate may be completely re-established by the end of 2006, Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia thinks.
In the end of this year a joint liturgy may be celebrated by representatives of the two branches of the Russian Church in the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Moscow Kremlin, he said in his interview to Pervyi canal on Sunday.
According to Church canons that will mean the final overcoming of the schism.
‘We say that communion in prayer is needed. I think, however, it has already been achieved,’ Alexy II remarked.
He recalled that the delegation of Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia headed by its first hierarch had visited Russia last year and attended the three services celebrated by the patriarch, praying at them.
Moscow, July 24, Interfax - The unity of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia and the Moscow Patriarchate may be completely re-established by the end of 2006, Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia thinks.
In the end of this year a joint liturgy may be celebrated by representatives of the two branches of the Russian Church in the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Moscow Kremlin, he said in his interview to Pervyi canal on Sunday.
According to Church canons that will mean the final overcoming of the schism.
‘We say that communion in prayer is needed. I think, however, it has already been achieved,’ Alexy II remarked.
He recalled that the delegation of Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia headed by its first hierarch had visited Russia last year and attended the three services celebrated by the patriarch, praying at them.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Privatized Welfare... Making it easier for the people?
...or just making it easier for private computers to steal tax dollars from Uncle Sucker?
HHSC Employee has a link to a blogger who talks about the new system from the perspective of one who is on the other side of the equation than the State employees who have been commenting on how bad the new system is. This is an important window and what a mess this new "customer friendly" system is, that supposedly was going to increase accessibility for those who need it.
As one who use to work in a state run call center that processed changes people report on their cases, I was incredulous to learn recently that those cases that are already completely in the new system (people in the Austin region, and those whose cases have already been converted to the hapless 300 million dollar computer system (that still doesn't work as well as the old system) who want to report a change on their case (such as that they are now working, or that their husband has returned to the home) are told that they must fill out a form to report the change. This form has to be mailed to them, or they can get one at their local state run office (which this new system is supposed to keep them out of, as much as possible... supposedly) -- however, experience has shown that when they ask for it to be mailed to them, they usually do not get it, and so end up back at the local office. Then they run into the problem of ensuring that this form is actually received by someone who will actually do anything about it. Mind you, they do not act on the change until this form is received... which means most changes are not being acted on at all.
In the state run call center, we would never have told a recipient to fill out a form for us to take the change. We always took the change over the phone, tried to verify the information over the phone if possible... and if not, we would send a letter requesting the information. One reason we always took the change over the phone is that we wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to report their changes, because most people will not bother to try to report a change more than once, particularly if the change is likely to result in a reduction in benefits.
I would not argue that the old system was flawless. Occassionally people dropped the ball. But the difference was that people had a name and a face, they could come into the office, and ask why something had happened or not happened... they could speak to a supervisor if necessary, and at the end of the day, if we had made a mistake, we would fix it. In the new system, they have a first name and no face, and no one to talk to when there is a people, other than another faceless first name, who generally gives them the run around. At the end of the day, their cases are not getting fixed unless they call their state representatives. It literally takes an act of a congressional official to resolves these problems.
This new system is completely dysfunctional. It is not saving the state any money. It is not delivering increased customer service. It is not even delivering the same level of service that was being delivered before this new system was implemented.... which is why it has not been fully implemented. Nevertheless, the powers that be continue to refuse to cut their loses, and acknowledge that this system is a disaster.
This reminds me of some other examples of Bureaucratic Stupidity, in which corrections are not made until the disaster is complete.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Wall Street Journal: The American Biblical Tradition
1st Edition, 1st Printing
h/t Orthodoxy Today
The American Biblical Tradition
The King James Version used to be our common text.
BY MARK A. NOLL
Friday, July 7, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
In 1911 the English-speaking world paused to mark the 300th anniversary of the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, with American political leaders foremost in the chorus of exaltation. To former president Theodore Roosevelt, this Bible translation was "the Magna Carta of the poor and the oppressed . . . the most democratic book in the world." Soon-to-be president Woodrow Wilson said much the same thing: "The Bible (with its individual value of the human soul) is undoubtedly the book that has made democracy and been the source of all progress."
Americans at the time mostly agreed with these sentiments, because the impact of the KJV was everywhere so obvious. It was obvious for business, with major firms like Harper & Brothers having risen to prominence on the back of its Bible publishing. It was obvious in the physical landscape and in many households because of the widespread use of Bible names for American places (95 variations on Salem) and the nation's children (John, James, Sarah, Rebecca). It was obvious in literature, as with the memorable opening of Herman Melville's Moby Dick: "Call me Ishmael." And it was obvious in politics, with no occasion more memorable than March 4, 1865, when four quotations from the KJV framed Abraham Lincoln's incomparable Second Inaugural Address: Genesis 3:19 ("wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces"); Matthew 18:7 ("woe unto the world because of offences!"); Matthew 7:1 ("judge not that we be not judged"); and Psalm 19:9 ("the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether").
Because the KJV was so widely read for religious purposes, it had also become a source of public ideals. Because it was so central in the churches, and because the churches were so central to the culture, the KJV functioned also as a common reservoir for the language. Hundreds of phrases (clear as crystal, powers that be, root of the matter, a perfect Babel, two-edged sword) and thousands of words (arguments, city, conflict, humanity, legacy, network, voiceless, zeal) were in the common speech because they had first been in this translation. Or to be more precise, because they had been in the KJV or in the earlier translations, like those of John Wycliffe's followers (1390s) and William Tyndale (1520s), that King James' translators mined for their own version.
But during the past half-century, we have come into a new situation. For believers who read the Bible because they think it is true, a welter of modern translations compete for the space once dominated by the KJV. For the public at large, the linguistic and narrative place that for more than two centuries had been occupied by the KJV is now substantially filled by the omnipresent electronic media. The domains that have been most successfully popularized by television, the movies and the Internet are sport, crime, pornography, politics, warfare, medicine and the media itself. Within these domains there is minimal place for biblical themes of any sort, much less the ancient language of the KJV.
For some purposes, it is well that the KJV has lost its hold. Roman Catholics and Jews were once victims of coercive discrimination when they were forced to recite this Protestant translation of the Bible in the nation's public schools. And at many moments, like the Civil War, free use of this one version made it all too easy to transgress the boundary between the proper business of the churches and the proper business of the public sphere.
Yet if the KJV was sometimes abused, nearly universal use also meant that its spiritual themes of reproof and liberation, its stories of human sin and divine grace, also exerted a great influence for good. In the 1890s Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other aggrieved feminists published "The Woman's Bible" in an effort to counter interpretations of Scripture that had done women harm. When they asked others to comment, Frances Willard of the Women's Christian Temperance Union made a telling response: "No such woman, as Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with her heart aflame against all forms of injustice and of cruelty . . . has ever been produced in a country where the Bible was not incorporated into the thoughts and the affections of the people and had not been so during many generations."
It was the KJV that Willard meant as the Bible "incorporated" in American consciousness "during many generations." Today the legacy of the KJV remains fixed in the common speech, even if awareness of the language's debt to this translation is fading (another KJV word). Whether any modern translation of the Scriptures, or any other moral guide, can anchor the culture as the KJV once did, is a question worth serious consideration in the run-up to 2011 and the 400th anniversary of this unsurpassed cultural force.
Mr. Noll, professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, recently lectured on "The King James Version in American History" at the Library of Congress.
Monday, July 03, 2006
Gender Neutral Language and the Trinity
Here is a link to a cartoon that sums up the Presbyterian Church's move to come up with alternative names for the Holy Trinity. h/t Southern Appeal.
One thing I have often pointed out about the feminist push for gender neutral language that I have never heard a good answer to: there are two major languages that have no gender distinctions at all, and so the two cultures associated with these languages should have been feminist utopias throughout human history. The two languages are Turkish and Chinese. However, I think one could safely defend the argument that women in European cultures have been treated significantly better in the past two thousand years, despite them having to suffer the indignities of using languages that make gender distinctions. In fact, I think one would be hard pressed to find two literate cultures in which woman have historically been treated worse than that of the Turks and the Chinese -- and I say that as one who otherwise loves Chinese culture, but the way women were (and to a large extent, still are) treated is not the high point of Chinese civilization.
One thing I have often pointed out about the feminist push for gender neutral language that I have never heard a good answer to: there are two major languages that have no gender distinctions at all, and so the two cultures associated with these languages should have been feminist utopias throughout human history. The two languages are Turkish and Chinese. However, I think one could safely defend the argument that women in European cultures have been treated significantly better in the past two thousand years, despite them having to suffer the indignities of using languages that make gender distinctions. In fact, I think one would be hard pressed to find two literate cultures in which woman have historically been treated worse than that of the Turks and the Chinese -- and I say that as one who otherwise loves Chinese culture, but the way women were (and to a large extent, still are) treated is not the high point of Chinese civilization.
Friday, June 30, 2006
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Homily of the Feast of All Saints of Russia
Homily on the Feast of All Saints of Russia, by St. John of Shanghai
The Day commemorating the saints who have shown forth in the Russian land points to that spiritual heaven beneath which the Russian land was founded and lived.
Before the holy Prince Vladimir, there lived on the Russian land separate, pagan tribes that warred with one another. The holy Prince Vladimir brought them a new faith, a new consciousness and meaning of life, a new inner spiritual state; he gave them a new spirit of life that united everyone, and thus a single nation was formed.
The very existence of the Russian nation is tied to the begetting of spiritual life within it, with the assimilation of the fundamentals of a Christian world-view. It is senseless to seek the meaning and purpose of life in earthly life, which ends with death. One must strive to acquire the Divine, grace-filled, eternal life, and then this temporal, earthly life will arrange itself as well: Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you (Matt. 6:33).
Faith and the Orthodox Church united the separate tribes into one nation. Faith in the Kingdom of God and the search for it, the search for righteousness [pravda] became the most salient characteristic of the Russian people.
For the sake of the Kingdom of God, for the sake of participation in it, for the sake of prayer, Russian ascetics left the vanity of the world and went into the forests, onto uninhabited islands. They sought only the Kingdom of God. They did not want to found or build anything; they went away from people, but people followed after them for the sake of the Kingdom of God, which was present on those islands and in those forests around the righteous ones, and thus lavras and monasteries grew up.
The search for righteousness is a basic thread in the life of the Russian people, and it is not by chance that the first written code of laws, which was designed to regulate life, was called "Russian Justice" [Russkaya Pravda ].
It was not only those who withdrew from the world and from the company of men, who thought about heaven and the Kingdom of God; all believing Russian people understood the meaning of life. All who truly contributed to the development of Russia as a nation, likewise considered that their primary concern was to be faithful to the Divine Kingdom and to Divine Truth [Pravda].
In Russia there were princes, military leaders, landowners, people of all ranks and occupations; and all had in common a fundamental understanding and striving, which were the acquisition of the Kingdom of God and participation in it. This was the meaning of life.
Saint Alexander Nevsky spent his entire life in struggles on behalf of the military and the State; he rode on horseback through the whole of Siberia to the Tartar khan in order to establish peace in Russia, and became renowned for his military victories. But when he fell ill and death came, he accepted it as liberation from the labors of earthly life and gave himself over to that which was dearer than everything to his soul and became a monk, in order to enter the longed-for Kingdom of God, not as an earthly warrior, but as a warrior of Christ.
St. Alexander Nevsky
Prince Theodore of Smolensk likewise accepted monasticism before his death. In their striving for the Kingdom of God, such spiritual leaders of the Russian people were the best exponents of the fundamental trait of the nation's spiritual life, of the basic force which guided its historical life.
The assimilation of the Christian faith regenerated the Russian princes as well. Authority is always an expression of consciousness and will. Authority is always guided by one or another philosophy, by one or another understanding of the meaning and purpose of life and its activity. Before Saint Vladimir, Russian princes were leaders of warring tribes and waged wars for the sake of military spoil and glory. Having become Christians, they became the heads of separate parts of one nation. With the acceptance of Christianity came a sense of unity. Righteousness was in the brotherhood of princes, and internecine war became unrighteous.
Prince Vladimir gave the Russian people a new meaning of life and a new vitality. Calamities, failures and defeats are powerless before the main force of life, powerless before spiritual life. The Kingdom of God, the spiritual joy of participating in it remain untouched. The terrible storm passes, and again a man lives. Thus, during the most cruel tortures, the martyrs rejoiced, sensing God's grace.
This is the source of Russia's vitality. Calamities do not strike her heart. The Tartars burned the whole of Russia. Kiev fell, and in the same year Novgorod arose; and that great commander and leader of the Russian people, the Right-believing Prince Alexander Nevsky, roused the Russian people for a struggle, not with the Tartars, who had racked Russia's body, but with the Catholic Swedes, who, taking advantage of Russia's misfortune, wanted to seize the soul of the Russian people and kill the spiritual might of the Russian nation and Russia. For Alexander Nevsky it was necessary above all to preserve that spiritual might.
The history of Moscow's ascendancy is a clear confirmation of this same idea. In its nascence, Moscow was a not very large, local amalgamation. But at its head stood right-believing princes, who had assimilated this Orthodox understanding of righteousness; and therefore, when the holy hierarch, Metropolitan Peter, told the prince that Moscow would rise to prominence and that the hierarch himself would live and be buried there if the prince built a home in Moscow for the Most Holy Mother of God, the prince fulfilled this covenant. In other words, the holy hierarch Peter told him, "If thou wilt be faithful to Orthodoxy to the end and wilt first of all seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, then all these things — everything earthly, everything of this life, everything pertaining to the state — will be added unto thee."
Such was Moscow's intent, and it was faithful to Saint Peter's testament; the night muster of the military watch on the Kremlin's walls took place with the words: "O Most Holy Theo-tokos, save us!"
This does not mean that Russia's life and people were holy. No! Men are always sinful; but when there is an awareness of good and evil, when there is a striving towards righteousness, restoration is possible. This is what is important and soul-saving.
In its historical life, sinful Moscow, the capital of sinful Russia, fell to the bottom, but it arose again because the consciousness of righteousness did not die.
During the Time of Troubles, Russia fell so low that all her enemies were convinced that she was mortally stricken. In Russia there was no tsar, no authority, no army. In Moscow, foreigners were in power. People became "fainthearted" and weak, and they awaited salvation from the foreigners with whom they ingratiated themselves. Destruction was inescapable, and Russia would inevitably have perished had the consciousness of righteousness been completely lost. But the holy hierarch Germogen saved Russia and the Russian people. The enemies of Russia held him in a cellar in the Kremlin, mocked him, tortured him, and tried to force him to submit to them, thereby betraying the Russian understanding of righteousness. Saint Germogen was tortured to death, but spiritually he did not surrender, and he called Russia to her historical path as a Christian state with a Christian authority; he called her to remember the truth and to be faithful to it.
In faith and confession, Saint Germogen spiritually and morally regenerated the Russian nation, and it again started on the path of seeking the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, the righteousness of subordinating the earthly life of the state to spiritual principles. And Russia rose up. In history there is no other example of such a profound fall of a state and such a rapid, miraculous resurgence, within a year's time, when spiritually and morally the people rose up. Such is the history of Russia, such is her path.
After Tsar Peter I, public life turned aside from this path. It did not turn aside completely, but it lost the clarity of the consciousness of righteousness, the clarity of faith in the Gospel Truth, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness."
The heavy sufferings of the Russian people are the results of the betrayal of Russia herself, her path, her calling. But those heavy sufferings and the melancholy of life under the cruel atheists' authority indicate that the Russian people has not completely lost the consciousness of righteousness, that it feels spiritually and morally weighed down by the unrighteousness of the godless state and the godless authority.
Russia will arise, just as she arose before. She will arise when faith will flame up, when people will arise spiritually, when a clear, firm faith in the truth [pravda] of the Saviour's words, Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you, will again be dear to them. Russia will arise when she will come to love the Faith and the confession of Orthodoxy, when she will see and come to love the righteous and the confessors.
Today, on the day of All the Saints Who Have Shown Forth in the Russian Land, the Church points to them, and the faithful spiritually exult on seeing what a multitude of them there are in the Kingdom of God. And there are countless numbers of those not yet glorified! Here Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev goes to his death, quietly, fearlessly. The murderers lead him out from the gates of the Lavra, in order to kill him outside the city, as they killed the Lord and Saviour, and in silence, like a lamb for the slaughter, the hierarch accepts death for Christ, for the Faith, for the Russian Church, because he sought first of all to acquire the Kingdom of God and eternal life.
Lifting his arms to heaven, Metropolitan Vladimir prayed aloud:
"O Lord, forgive my sins, voluntary and involuntary, and accept my spirit in peace."
Then he blessed the murderers with both hands and said:
"My God bless and forgive you."
In the silent night four shots were heard, then two more, then more...
The Hieromartyr Vladimir of Kiev, February 7th, 1918 n.s.
There is a multitude of martyrs and confessors; and again we see God's blessing on their struggle of faith, and again the manifestation of incorrupt relics: the bodies of the righteous, who already live according to the laws of the future life, where there is neither suffering nor corruption, and the incorruption of their relics testify of this. Thus, the incorrupt remains of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, which rest in the Gethsemane convent, testify to us of her righteousness in the eyes of God.
The Holy New-Martyr Grand Duchess Elizabeth
Russia will arise when she will lift up her gaze and see that all the saints who have shown forth in the Russian land are alive in the Kingdom of God, that the spirit of eternal life is in them, and that it is necessary for us to be with them and spiritually touch and communicate of their eternal life. Herein lies the salvation of Russia — and of the whole world.
In Russia today there is no spirit of life, no joy of life. Everyone is afraid of it, as they are afraid of demons. Russia also was terrible to other powers, but because she drew peoples to herself.
Russian humility created faithfulness to the commandment, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." It humbled authority as well, and in the days of its greatest earthly glory, Russian authority, by the lips of Tsar Alexander I, confessed itself as a Christian authority, and on the monument of its glory wrote: "Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name."
The Russian heaven, the Russian saints call us to be with them, as they are with us. They call us to commune of the spirit of eternal life, and the world thirsts for that spirit.
The restoration of Russia is needed by the whole world, from which the spirit of life has departed, and it all shakes in fear, as in the face of an earthquake.
Russia awaits a Christ-loving army, Christ-loving tsars and leaders, who will lead the Russian people, not for earthly glory, but for the sake of faithfulness to the Russian Path of Righteousness.
"Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name."
In repentance, in faith, in purification, may the Russian land be renewed and may Holy Rus' arise.
St. John (Maximovitch) of Shanghai and San Francisco
Dallas Morning News: Transition is tough on state aid workers
Transition is tough on state aid workers
Move to privatization is driving many away, so they're paid to stay
12:08 AM CDT on Saturday, June 24, 2006
By ROBERT T. GARRETT / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – Scores of state workers who help people sign up for public assistance are quitting every month, but not Alec Davis.
As the state turns to private companies to process applications, he stays to help tackle a mountain of daily tasks. The problems with the transition are so extensive that the state recently canceled plans to lay off 1,000 workers and scrambled to keep eligibility workers, offering bonuses of nearly $1,900 each.
As a "senior disposition worker," Mr. Davis helps determine who gets food stamps, Medicaid and welfare. The full range of the state's outsourcing experiment lies beyond his field of vision, though his south Austin office tower houses one of the private call centers.
But what he has seen, he said, is "a horrible mess" – slow computers, long electronic "queues" of applications and mistakes by the private companies' workers that create big hassles for those seeking state aid.
"It's going a lot worse than we thought," he said. "You can't work there and not know it."
Mr. Davis and other veteran state workers face Herculean tasks in helping the state move to privately run call and document processing centers. He agreed to speak candidly about problems that have roiled Texas' revamping of eligibility determination, though he said he speaks only for himself.
State leaders defend the overall privatization project, predicting more efficient services for less cost to taxpayers. And the state's main contractor, a group led by the U.S. unit of Bermuda-based Accenture Ltd., says the transition is smoothing out.
But some of Mr. Davis' colleagues in state field offices also note problems, even though privatization is so far limited to pilot programs in Travis and Hays counties. These workers say job insecurity and changing mandates hurt morale and drive co-workers to quit.
"It's a huge reduction in staff in the last few months," said Bridget Walker, a nine-year caseworker in Dallas. "I have more cases [and] I'm doing longer hours. It is a challenge."
Procedures and plans to roll out the new system change rapidly, causing confusion among applicants and employees, said 16-year caseworker Joan Barasch of San Antonio.
"People's cases are getting shifted around," she said. "It's hard to figure out who belongs to whom. People are having to turn in multiple applications to get taken care of."
State agency chiefs and politicians who defend the new system dismiss critics as shortsighted. The defenders point out that state employee groups have lost members to the outsourcing. They also say advocates of the poor who criticize the changes as poorly planned are overlooking benefits of the call centers, such as fewer trips to a field office and the convenience of applying by phone or Internet.
Mr. Davis, though, quit the Texas State Employees Union a year ago. The 39-year-old, who has spent much of his adult life working for the state, agrees that the old system relied too much on paperwork and in-person interviews. In fact, he jumped into the Austin privatization experiment from a field office in Athens because he wanted to "try something different."
Mr. Davis says that the Legislature's decision three years ago to push privatizing of eligibility services signaled to state workers that "we're expendable," but he still gets "a sense of gratification" from helping the needy.
Anger and guilt over the system's failings have led him to hand out cards urging people with call-center problems to contact state and federal agencies to complain.
"This is just a way to help people tell someone what they've experienced," he said.
Rollout on hold
Start-up problems forced Gov. Rick Perry's administration in April to postpone extending the new system beyond greater Austin-San Marcos. A scheduled start date for the Dallas-Fort Worth area of December is on hold.
If resumed, the rollout would close scores of field offices and shift many signups to four call centers run by Accenture; Maximus Inc. of Reston, Va.; and several subcontractors. The group won the five-year, $899 million contract last summer.
Mr. Davis says a lot of work needs to be done before that happens. He said public debate over the plan has missed key points:
• The Legislature repeatedly slashed funding for the old system. Today, the state has about a third of the 12,000 permanent eligibility workers it had in 1996. Nearly 1,200 temporary workers have been added, but they're poorly trained. Customer service has deteriorated.
• State managers should listen to line workers and fix flaws in an unwieldy computer program called the Texas Integrated Eligibility Redesign System.
• Federally created social safety net programs have very complicated eligibility rules. The vendor's call center operators – some making $8 an hour – can't possibly learn the ropes in just a few weeks of training.
"I'm not against the change," Mr. Davis said. But he said he was shocked by the start-up's tumult.
He said his state unit has lost half its workers in five months. He is just now reviewing food stamp applications made in February and March, though they were supposed to have been processed no later than April. He has spoken with aid applicants who had phoned call centers 20 times and still not gotten answers.
To reduce an applications backlog, the state has adopted a "quota" system, he said. Two weeks ago, Mr. Davis said, he and colleagues were required to sign a paper in which they agreed to decide 15 cases per eight-hour shift and work at least five hours a week of overtime. During overtime work, they must finish at least two cases per hour, he said.
But many cases handed to disposition workers are poorly prepared, and the computer program stalls if he and his colleagues add information. He said disposition workers sit in cubicles, and their phone conversations with applicants – required by federal law to be confidential – easily can be overhead.
'More work to be done'
Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Commission, said the state believes early flaws can be cured. She said the call centers have reduced wait times and how many callers hang up.
"We want to see them sustain that for some time," she said. Training of call center operators has improved "but there's more work to be done," she said. Ms. Goodman said her boss, Commissioner Albert Hawkins, still isn't satisfied with the Accenture group's work.
"If you're judging the system goals by the performance today, then I can understand why he would think that," she said of Mr. Davis. "Because it's not working the way it should."
She said the seven-year-old computer system was not designed for use in call centers but for a face-to-face interview, conducted after all needed information had been brought to a state field office. The state still believes a "long-term solution" will work, she said.
"It's the interim solution we put in place that's causing problems," Ms. Goodman said.
Jill Angelo, a consultant who recently was hired to speak for the Accenture-led group, acknowledged the early difficulties but said "we are making progress."
Ms. Angelo said the contractor is improving customer service and "call quality."
She noted that another company, Deloitte, built the $300 million computer system. And she promised improvements soon.
Back on the fourth floor of the Southfield Building in Austin, Mr. Davis said he is frustrated but can't chuck his $33,000-a-year job. He said he needs employer-based health insurance because he has diabetes and high blood pressure. Even with the state's relatively generous coverage, he said, he shells out nearly $200 a month for medicine.
Mr. Davis, a Tyler native, holds an associate degree in art, drafting and design from Wade College in Dallas. He worked for two years as an unpaid volunteer at the Athens eligibility field office before getting hired. He toiled three years there as a clerk, 10 as a caseworker.
In 12 of his 13 years with the state, he said supervisors gave him the highest job evaluation – "superior." The only other time was an "exceeds expectations," he said.
The good ratings mean he's eligible for the retention bonuses – $930 this month and another $930 at the end of the year.
But Mr. Davis said he would simply settle for less stress.
E-mail rtgarrett@dallasnews.com
Move to privatization is driving many away, so they're paid to stay
12:08 AM CDT on Saturday, June 24, 2006
By ROBERT T. GARRETT / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – Scores of state workers who help people sign up for public assistance are quitting every month, but not Alec Davis.
As the state turns to private companies to process applications, he stays to help tackle a mountain of daily tasks. The problems with the transition are so extensive that the state recently canceled plans to lay off 1,000 workers and scrambled to keep eligibility workers, offering bonuses of nearly $1,900 each.
As a "senior disposition worker," Mr. Davis helps determine who gets food stamps, Medicaid and welfare. The full range of the state's outsourcing experiment lies beyond his field of vision, though his south Austin office tower houses one of the private call centers.
But what he has seen, he said, is "a horrible mess" – slow computers, long electronic "queues" of applications and mistakes by the private companies' workers that create big hassles for those seeking state aid.
"It's going a lot worse than we thought," he said. "You can't work there and not know it."
Mr. Davis and other veteran state workers face Herculean tasks in helping the state move to privately run call and document processing centers. He agreed to speak candidly about problems that have roiled Texas' revamping of eligibility determination, though he said he speaks only for himself.
State leaders defend the overall privatization project, predicting more efficient services for less cost to taxpayers. And the state's main contractor, a group led by the U.S. unit of Bermuda-based Accenture Ltd., says the transition is smoothing out.
But some of Mr. Davis' colleagues in state field offices also note problems, even though privatization is so far limited to pilot programs in Travis and Hays counties. These workers say job insecurity and changing mandates hurt morale and drive co-workers to quit.
"It's a huge reduction in staff in the last few months," said Bridget Walker, a nine-year caseworker in Dallas. "I have more cases [and] I'm doing longer hours. It is a challenge."
Procedures and plans to roll out the new system change rapidly, causing confusion among applicants and employees, said 16-year caseworker Joan Barasch of San Antonio.
"People's cases are getting shifted around," she said. "It's hard to figure out who belongs to whom. People are having to turn in multiple applications to get taken care of."
State agency chiefs and politicians who defend the new system dismiss critics as shortsighted. The defenders point out that state employee groups have lost members to the outsourcing. They also say advocates of the poor who criticize the changes as poorly planned are overlooking benefits of the call centers, such as fewer trips to a field office and the convenience of applying by phone or Internet.
Mr. Davis, though, quit the Texas State Employees Union a year ago. The 39-year-old, who has spent much of his adult life working for the state, agrees that the old system relied too much on paperwork and in-person interviews. In fact, he jumped into the Austin privatization experiment from a field office in Athens because he wanted to "try something different."
Mr. Davis says that the Legislature's decision three years ago to push privatizing of eligibility services signaled to state workers that "we're expendable," but he still gets "a sense of gratification" from helping the needy.
Anger and guilt over the system's failings have led him to hand out cards urging people with call-center problems to contact state and federal agencies to complain.
"This is just a way to help people tell someone what they've experienced," he said.
Rollout on hold
Start-up problems forced Gov. Rick Perry's administration in April to postpone extending the new system beyond greater Austin-San Marcos. A scheduled start date for the Dallas-Fort Worth area of December is on hold.
If resumed, the rollout would close scores of field offices and shift many signups to four call centers run by Accenture; Maximus Inc. of Reston, Va.; and several subcontractors. The group won the five-year, $899 million contract last summer.
Mr. Davis says a lot of work needs to be done before that happens. He said public debate over the plan has missed key points:
• The Legislature repeatedly slashed funding for the old system. Today, the state has about a third of the 12,000 permanent eligibility workers it had in 1996. Nearly 1,200 temporary workers have been added, but they're poorly trained. Customer service has deteriorated.
• State managers should listen to line workers and fix flaws in an unwieldy computer program called the Texas Integrated Eligibility Redesign System.
• Federally created social safety net programs have very complicated eligibility rules. The vendor's call center operators – some making $8 an hour – can't possibly learn the ropes in just a few weeks of training.
"I'm not against the change," Mr. Davis said. But he said he was shocked by the start-up's tumult.
He said his state unit has lost half its workers in five months. He is just now reviewing food stamp applications made in February and March, though they were supposed to have been processed no later than April. He has spoken with aid applicants who had phoned call centers 20 times and still not gotten answers.
To reduce an applications backlog, the state has adopted a "quota" system, he said. Two weeks ago, Mr. Davis said, he and colleagues were required to sign a paper in which they agreed to decide 15 cases per eight-hour shift and work at least five hours a week of overtime. During overtime work, they must finish at least two cases per hour, he said.
But many cases handed to disposition workers are poorly prepared, and the computer program stalls if he and his colleagues add information. He said disposition workers sit in cubicles, and their phone conversations with applicants – required by federal law to be confidential – easily can be overhead.
'More work to be done'
Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Commission, said the state believes early flaws can be cured. She said the call centers have reduced wait times and how many callers hang up.
"We want to see them sustain that for some time," she said. Training of call center operators has improved "but there's more work to be done," she said. Ms. Goodman said her boss, Commissioner Albert Hawkins, still isn't satisfied with the Accenture group's work.
"If you're judging the system goals by the performance today, then I can understand why he would think that," she said of Mr. Davis. "Because it's not working the way it should."
She said the seven-year-old computer system was not designed for use in call centers but for a face-to-face interview, conducted after all needed information had been brought to a state field office. The state still believes a "long-term solution" will work, she said.
"It's the interim solution we put in place that's causing problems," Ms. Goodman said.
Jill Angelo, a consultant who recently was hired to speak for the Accenture-led group, acknowledged the early difficulties but said "we are making progress."
Ms. Angelo said the contractor is improving customer service and "call quality."
She noted that another company, Deloitte, built the $300 million computer system. And she promised improvements soon.
Back on the fourth floor of the Southfield Building in Austin, Mr. Davis said he is frustrated but can't chuck his $33,000-a-year job. He said he needs employer-based health insurance because he has diabetes and high blood pressure. Even with the state's relatively generous coverage, he said, he shells out nearly $200 a month for medicine.
Mr. Davis, a Tyler native, holds an associate degree in art, drafting and design from Wade College in Dallas. He worked for two years as an unpaid volunteer at the Athens eligibility field office before getting hired. He toiled three years there as a clerk, 10 as a caseworker.
In 12 of his 13 years with the state, he said supervisors gave him the highest job evaluation – "superior." The only other time was an "exceeds expectations," he said.
The good ratings mean he's eligible for the retention bonuses – $930 this month and another $930 at the end of the year.
But Mr. Davis said he would simply settle for less stress.
E-mail rtgarrett@dallasnews.com
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Saturday, June 17, 2006
The Freedom to be Stupid
Here's a helpful hint for hopeful Country groups of the future... if you want to be successful, there is one demographic group that you don't want to offend: conservative white folks. Yes, it is true that one can find country fans who are black, hispanic, asian, etc, but this is the one group that if you hack `em off, your goose is cooked. Likewise, if you are a hip-hop group, you probably wouldn't want to offend black folks, and if you were a Tejano group, you probably would want to pay extra attention to not ticking off hispanics.
The Dixie Chicks didn't get this, until it was too late. However, had they remained apologetic about the comments they made attacking Bush and the war in Iraq overseas, they probably could have been forgiven by most of their fan base, but unfortunately for them, Natalie Maines seems to be suffering from turrets syndrome. Here is the lattest:
"Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country… I don't see why people care about patriotism."
Newsflash for Natalie Maines: Patriotism comes a close second to ones religion on the list of things most important to people in Dixie... and they have little patience for people who thumb their nose at God or Country, even if they are a group of Chicks from Dixie who can carry a nice tune.
Currently the Dixie Chicks are trying to portray themselves as martyrs, and describe those who have been critical of them as being "McCarthyites" who are trying to deprive them of their freedom of speech. Here's another newsflash for the Dixie Chicks: the way freedom of speech works is you get to say what you want, no matter how stupid it might be, and then other people are equally free to tell you how stupid they think you are for having said it. The Dixie Chicks have the freedom to attack Bush, and country fans have the freedom to not buy their records, lobby radio stations to stop playing their music, and to not spend their money on Dixie Chick concert tickets. And the more the Dixie Chicks excercise their right to offend their fan base, the more their fan base is going to turn their backs on the Dixie Chicks.
Just recently the Dixie Chicks had to cancel concerts all over the South and midwest because they weren't selling enough tickets. That's not McCarthyism, that's freedom. Freedom for people to say stupid things, and freedom for people to respond, and to spend their money as they see fit.
Personally, I was never a big fan of the Dixie Chicks... they're about 100 years too modern for my tastes, but I felt sorry for them when they initially started catching flack for what Natalie Maines said about Bush... not because I agreed with what she said, but when they apologized, it seemed to me that they should have been given a break. But this attitude that they have adopted since then, that they should be allowed to say what they want, and no one else should be allowed to respond is far more offensive than the original remarks.
Celebrities in general would be well advised to remember that their fans love them for what ever it is that they do that makes them celebrities. We don't want to know what they think about politics, and if they want to keep their fan base's affections, they would generally be better off to keep their political opinions to themselves.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
How bad is it getting at HHSC?
According to my sources who are still on the inside, it continues to get worse every day. Timeliness is swirling down the toilet, and the corrective action plan is not to change course from an unworkable plan that is doomed to end in disaster, but to make staff take time away from their work to be retrained on Food Stamp timeliness policies... as if the problem was that people didn't know that applications should be worked in less than 5 months.
Also, staff have been working nearly every Saturday, just so as to have a day that they could wrap up cases without the phone ringing off the hook, and people waiting to see them in the lobby... however, it is now being suggested that they make working Saturday mandatory, and that they open up the office and schedule more appointments, thus eliminating the primary reason people have been working on Saturday voluntarily.
What people who have never actually worked cases do not understand (and these seem to be the people making all the decisions) is that you can interview people all day every day, and not certify a single case. To actually issue benefits, you need some time when you are not interviewing people in order to wrap those cases up, make sure that they are correct, and process them. Otherwise you are just spinning your wheels.
It seems that with the election cycle kicking into high gear in the near future, some people are getting nervous about how all of this will affect their chances of re-election. These "solutions" are non-solutions, that only result in giving the appearance of "doing something". It has long been the case that government agencies such as HHSC approach every problem with the assumption that there is no problem that training and a new report cannot fix. However, when you have a complete breakdown, such as we are now seeing, this is something like providing training to the crew of the Titanic on iceberg evasion, after the ship is already sinking. It may make some people feel better to know that someone is "doing something", but the "something" they are "doing" is a complete waste of time.
Also, with HHSC trying desperately to hang on to the staff they still have who actually know how to work a case, it seems a rather short sighted approach to burn those people out by insisting that they work 6 days a week, when this will obviously result in lower morale, more unplanned leave, and more people who simply find another place to work.
Personally, I thank God that I am no longer at HHSC, even though I often miss the way it used to be and the people I used to work with. Until they hit bottom, and start actually "doing something" to fix this problem, I can't see why anyone would want to stay that wasn't just hanging on to retire in the next year or two.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Pinning the Tail on the Anti-Christ
A favorite past time for many, especially in the past century, has been to figure out who the antichrist will be before he appears and to figure out when he will appear before he does.
The fuss over tomorrow's date of 6-06-06 is just the lattest of many examples. Let us not forget the best selling book, "88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in 1988." Sales of that book fell off rather sharply in 1989.
Christ told the Apostles "And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power" (Act 1:7).
And
“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only" (Matthew 24:36).
This, however, has not stopped people from trying. Many have infact made a living off doing so. Hal Lindsey, for example, has made a rather comfortable living off of reading Biblical Prophecies into the headlines, and developing senarios that put the end in the not too distant future... distant enough for him not to give his books away, charge them all to his own Credit Cards, and leave the bill for the Anti-Christ... but not too distant for people to think they don't need to buy a copy and read his lattest predictions.
A particular focus of facination has long been the number 666.
"He [the antichrist] causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666" (Revelation 13:16-18).
In the movie "The Omen", the antichrist is known by a birth mark in the shape of "666". Other movies and book see this as being a bar-code tatoo, or even a computer chip that the servent of the beast have implanted in their right hands and foreheads.
The problem for modern readers is that most people do not realize that Greek and Hebrew Numerals are made from the letters of their respective alphabets, and so each letter has a numerical value... and hence, every name can be calculated.
For example, the numerical value of William J. Clinton (if transliterated as `illiam i kleinton) adds up to 666. In Hebrew, Nero Ceasar adds up to 666.
Here are the Greek numerals:
St. Irenaeus wisely commented in the early 2nd Century:
"It is therefore more certain and less hazardous to await the fulfilment of the prophecy than to be making surmises and casting about for any names that may present themselves, inasmuch as many names can be found possessing the number mentioned: and the same question will, after all, remain unsolved. For if there are many names found possessing this number, it will be asked which among them shall the coming man bear. It is not through a want of names containing the number of that name that I say this, but on account of the fear of God, and zeal for the the truth. For the name Euanthas contains the required number, but I make no allegation regarding it. Then also Lateinos [the Greek word for "Latins" (i.e., the Romans) or one might say "Latinos" if they wanted to be cute] has the number 666; and it is a very probable solution, this being the name of the last kingdom [of the four seen by Daniel]. For the Latins are they who at present bear rule; I will not, however, make any boast over this [coincidence].... We will not, however, incur the rick of pronouncing positively as to the name of the anti-christ; for if it were necessary that his name should be distinctly revealed in this present time, it would have been announced by the one who beheld the apocalyptic vision" (Against Heresies 5:30:3].
So it is not our job to pin the tail on the antichrist. When the antichrist comes, those who know the real Christ will have no trouble figuring out who he is, and in fact St. John tells us elsewhere (1 John 2:18) that many antichrists had already come in his own time. Nero was an antichrist. Hitler was an antichrist. Stalin was an antichrist. And one could name a few in our own time who stand against the real Christ, and persecute those who follow him. A final antichrist will come before the end... this we know, but we just need to make sure that we are following the Lamb, and not riding the goat, and we'll be OK.
See also
Devil Day To-do List
"Other Marks of
the Beast"
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Da Vinci Code Hogwash
You can read Orthodox responses to the Da Vinci Code posted on the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese web page, by clicking here.
Archpriest Nicholas Dalinkiewicz of Melbourne gave a talk at the 2004 Syezd (Russian Orthodox Youth Conference) in Canberra, Australia, which can be read by clicking here.
Fr. Joseph Huneycutt's Responses can be read by clicking here.
Other responses from Antiochion Orthodox writers can be read by clicking here.
New Testament Scholar, N. T. Wright delivers a lecture you can watch by clicking here.
The White Horse Inn (a Reformed Protestant Radio Show) had a good discussion about the Da Vinci Code with Dr. Paul Maier, which you can listen to by clicking here.
Dr. R.C. Sproul addresses the claims of the Da Vinci Code in an interview linked here.
Update:
This was written by Jim Royal, a member of the "Orthodox Convert" list and posted on that list earlier today.
Dr Suess reveiws the Da Vinci code
I would not watch it on TV,
I would not watch on DVD.
I would not watch on VHS,
I would not watch on CBS.
I would not watch it in a car,
I would not watch it in a bar.
I would not watch it with my dad,
I would not watch it when I'm sad.
I would not watch it in my bed,
I would not watch with my friend Fred.
I would not watch it on a box,
I would not watch it shown on FOX.
I would not watch it on a table,
I would not watch when it's on cable.
I would not watch it in a chair,
I would not watch it anywhere.
I wish I had not paid eight bucks,
This movie really really sucks.
Update! More Ridicule:
The Internet Theologian Explains the Da Vinci Code
Pope Admits to Secret Code
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Taking Accenture's "Success" on the Road
Today Molly Ivins (whom I am not generally a fan of) wrote:
"Naturally, in Texas, national laboratory for bad government, we do it all first and worst. We started with this dandy plan to outsource applications and enrollment for social service programs such as food stamps and Medicaid. In theory, we were to save millions - though I never could understand it myself. You see, Texas has one of the cheapest state governments on the continent, but when we hire outside contractors, they expect to make a profit. Add profit, add cost. Oh well.
So the state hired this firm based in Bermuda on an $899 million five-year contract. So far, the health and human services commissioner has been forced to ask 1,000 state employees who were scheduled to be laid off by the end of the year not to leave after all - and to offer each of them a $1,800 bonus to stay. Oops.
Among other errors, the private consortium mistakenly dropped 6,000 children from the children's health insurance program. The state comptroller says the program is "a perfect storm of wasted dollars, reduced access to services and profiteering at the expense of Texas taxpayers."
With a record like that, of course, Republicans want more outsourcing.
When she's right, she's right, even if she is a lefty. To support her point, news continues to roll in about how bad the mess is here in Texas' welfare system. Texas HHSC commissioner Albert Hawkins has received a "Dear Al..." letter from the agency that funds the Food Stamp program informing him that since HHSC did not follow the rules by getting prior approval of their new privatized call centers, and since that program does not follow federal guidelines, that Texas will be footing the bill alone, thus losing a huge amount of federal money that they were counting on as part of their plan to save the state hundreds of millions of dollars.
Despite the incredible mess we are seeing unfold, if you can believe it, politicians in Indiana are suggesting that they privatize their welfare system too, and guess who one of the two bidders are for the contract? Accenture... the same Bermuda based company that has done such a fine job here in Texas. Privatization has it's place, but it is not the cure to all government problems... it can be a cure that is far worse than the disease.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
My Da Vinci Code Boycott
Many people have argued that boycotting a movie is futile. They have short memories. The Last Temptation of Christ was another Hollywood attack on Christ, but it was a box office bomb because of a well organized boycott... and it was a sorry movie too.
This movie is based on a book that is fictional, but claims to be based on real history... though no real historian supports it's ridiculous thesis. As Pat Buchanan pointed out, making this movie is analogous to making a movie that claims that the Jews are plotting to take over the world, based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Based on the early reviews of the Da Vinci code, this may well turn out to be a bomb, even without a boycott, but regardless of what anyone else does, here's what I'm going to do:
1) Any theatre that runs the Da Vinci Code is not going to see my money for three years. The Prophet Elijah taught Ahab a lesson by praying that it would not rain for three years, and so that seems like a good time-frame for an economic drought.
I realize that this may mean that I won't have a theatre to go to for the next three years. One could suffer far worse things.
However, a dispensation may have to be granted for Mel Gibson movies during this period of time.
2) I will also boycott all Sony Pictures movies for the next three years.
3) Tom Hanks and Ron Howard are never going to see my money again, unless they show signs of sincere remorse for this attack on my faith. I hate to do this, because I have generally liked the work of both of these guys, but Aunt Bee's curse be upon them both, until they say they're sorry.
4) Sir Ian McKellen is on my dirty dog list for good, for his comments today... barring a really sincere apology... but that's a tricky one, because he's such a good actor, how would you know? And to think I had nominated him to be the next Dumbledore.
The bottom line here is this: Hollywood has no respect for our faith, or for us, but they do pay attention when it comes to money, and so I say hit 'em where it hurts. If you look down on people of faith, keep it to yourself, if you expect us to continue to patronize your work.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
The Resolution of the IV All-Diaspora Sobor of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia
SAN FRANCISCO: May 11, 2006
We, the participants of the IV All-Diaspora Council, having gathered in the God-preserved city of San Francisco, in the blessed presence of the Protectress of the Russian Diaspora, the Kursk-Root Icon of the Mother of God, and the holy relics of Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco, in trembling recognition of the duty laid upon us, in obedience to our Archpastor, Christ, with complete trust and love of the pastors and laity to our First Hierarch, His Eminence Metropolitan Laurus, and the Council of Bishops, attest that as loyal children of the Holy Church, we shall submit to Divine will and obey the decisions of the forthcoming Council of Bishops.
We archpastors, pastors and laymen, members of the IV All-Diaspora Council, unanimously express our resoluteness to heal the wounds of division within the Russian Church—between her parts in the Fatherland and abroad. Our Paschal joy is joined by the great hope that in the appropriate time, the unity of the Russian Church will be restored upon the foundation of the Truth of Christ, opening for us the possibility to serve together and to commune from one Chalice.
Hearing the lectures read at the Council, the reports made by the Commission on negotiations with the corresponding Commission of the Moscow Patriarchate, and the various points of view expressed during the discussions, we express our conciliar consent that it is necessary to confirm the canonical status of the Russian Church Abroad for the future as a self-governing part of the Local Russian Church, in accordance with the Regulations of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia currently in force.
From discussions at the Council it is apparent that the participation of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate in the World Council of Churches evokes confusion among our clergy and flock. With heartfelt pain we ask the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate to heed the plea of our flock to expediently remove this temptation.
We hope that the forthcoming Local Council of One Russian Church will settle remaining unresolved church problems.
Bowing down before the podvig [spiritual feats] of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, glorified both by the Russian Church Abroad and by the Russian Church in the Fatherland, we see within them the spiritual bridge which rises above the abyss of the lethal division in the Russian Church and makes possible the restoration of that unity which is desired by all.
And we, the members of the IV All-Diaspora Council, address our brothers and sisters in the faith in our renascent Homeland with the Paschal hymns: "Pascha! Let us embrace each other joyously!"
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Pravoslavie.ru: AN INTERVIEW WITH PRIEST ANDREW PHILLIPS
Priest Andrew Phillips
— How did you, as an Englishman, come to Orthodoxy? How did you become a priest?
— I was born into an average English family, the youngest of three brothers. I had a happy childhood in the country. At school I was interested in early English history and at home I used to listen with great interest to the war stories of my father who had spent five years in the Army until 1945. My parents did not practise any religion.
When I was 12 I began to think: Who created all this beauty around me? Where do I come from? Where am I going? Why am I here? I felt some sort of splendour and mysterious presence, very near, just beyond the fields, the trees, the clouds…At that time I began to read the Gospels and for some reason became interested in Russian. I bought myself a Russian book and began to learn Russian on my own.
When I was 14, I visited a number of Protestant and Catholic churches, but I did not feel at home in them. I discovered that there was another Church – the Orthodox. I managed to visit one when I was 16 and at once I felt at home in that Russian Orthodox church. I had the feeling that I had always been there, as if I had always been Orthodox. My future became clear to me at that moment and I understood that even if I were to be the only Orthodox Englishman in the world, then so be it. In the end my parents allowed me to join the Russian Orthodox Church when I was 18.
After University I worked in Greece and went as a pilgrim to the Holy Mountain. After theological studies at the St Sergius Institute in Paris, I was ordained deacon in 1985. In 1991 the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva ordained me to the priesthood. I served in France and in Portugal, and wrote books about the Western saints of the first millennium, when Western Europe had not yet cut itself off from Orthodoxy.
Now I serve in England, in a small Orthodox parish named after St John of Shanghai. This is in the small town of Felixstowe in the English ‘Far East’, as Archbishop Mark calls it. We have just had our Easter in three languages, Church Slavonic, Romanian and English. We publish an English-language journal ‘Orthodox England’ and we have a website: www.orthodoxengland.org.uk.
I have compiled services to ancient local saints and also to All the Saints Who Shone Forth in the Isles. We especially venerate St Felix (7 c.) and his spiritual daughter St Audrey. We have quite a number of icons of local saints and small particles of the holy relics of St Augustine of Canterbury, St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne and the Venerable Bede. All the liturgical books have been translated into English. The English liturgical language has beauty, we use the language of the seventeenth century, the language of Shakespeare.
Unfortunately, like virtually all our priests, I have to work in a secular job. Matushka grew up with Russian émigrés in Paris. We have six children and they all either serve in the altar or sing in the choir. Matushka’s parents live with us.
— What do the Russian Church and Russian culture signify for you?
— For me the Russian Church is both my spiritual home and the centre of World Orthodoxy, although spiritually the centre of Orthodoxy is Jerusalem. The Russian Church is multinational and multilingual. As the largest Local Church, in my view, She has a great responsibility – to keep the purity of Holy Orthodoxy and support it everywhere. After all only Rus is called Holy. The Russian Church is our Mother Church. Unfortunately, during the Cold War the government in Russia did all they could to create the impression that the Church there is not our Mother, but rather a stepmother. If I was 20 years old now, I would go to Russia. When I was 20 that was impossible. A pity! But God’s Will is everything.
All the best in Russian culture is deeply penetrated by Orthodoxy. Pure Russian speech has a spiritual music which the soul can hear, even in works of such unchurchly figures like Turgenev and Rachmaninov.
— Have you been to Russia and did you meet simple believers? Are there differences between the views of believers in Russia, those of émigrés and those who have chosen Orthodoxy despite their surroundings and upbringing?
— I went to Russia twice, in the 1970s. It was difficult to meet people, but I still managed to do so. And babushki were not afraid of the government. In Russia I saw the faithfulness and piety of the faithful and the spiritual feat of ordinary clergy.
As regards émigré Orthodoxy, émigrés naturally recall Russia as it was when they left it. They often live in the past. Sometimes they have a dreamy nostalgia for that which has vanished for ever. This has both positive and negative sides. The values of the past were often deeply Church values, but we do not live in the past, we live in the here and the now and we have to take into account both the past and the future, for the sake of our children and grandchildren.
Regarding the choice of Holy Orthodoxy, it must be said that nowadays all of us who have consciously accepted Orthodoxy, whether in the West or in Russia, choose Orthodoxy, regardless of our nationality, surroundings and upbringing. Therefore, it is easy to find things in common with those who have become Orthodox in Russia. It is not surprising that Fr Seraphim (Rose) is a popular author in Russia: like a great many contemporary Russians, he consciously became Orthodox.
— In your view, are there still any reasons for the continuing division between the two parts of the Russian Orthodox Church?
— In my view the division was inevitable until the Glorification of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors in Moscow in 2000. The Glorification of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors by the Church Outside Russia 25 years ago was a spiritual exploit of our Church. The whole world mocked our Church then, including, alas! many representatives of other Local Churches. Since then the whole course of world, and especially Russian, history has changed. There are still people who do not understand the profound significance of this Glorification.
In 1988 I wrote an article ‘Who is Rebuilding Russia’. I wrote that the true Pascha, which St Seraphim of Sarov prophesied, will be when the Glorification of the New Martyrs in New York is completed in Moscow. This is exactly what happened in 2000. Since August 2000, through the prayers of the Mew Martyrs and Confessors, we, outside Russia, have been destined, sooner or later, to enter into eucharistic communion with the Church in Russia and, in general, work together. Indeed, the only point of debate is sooner or later. Glory to God, it is not us, but our hierarchs, who will decide this question at the Council. We will listen to the conciliar voice of the Church, not the personal opinions of groups on the fringes of the Church and of extremists.
Nevertheless, I should explain that if there is resistance inside our Church to the restoration of eucharistic communion, then it is because our Church is persecuted and we too have lived and live in a sort of catacombs. And the source of the persecutions against our Church was Moscow. Of course, this is not today’s Moscow, but the Soviet Moscow of the past. The Revolution led not only to mass persecution in Russia, but also to jurisdictional chaos in the emigration. The time has come to untie the knots of this chaos.
Recently I read an article on this subject by Fr Valentin Asmus. There is a lot of truth in it, nothing new, but he simply does not understand that in the Russian Church outside Russia, precisely outside Russia, we live in very difficult circumstances. We ordinary believers and clergy are not at all politically-minded and have nothing in common with certain trends in the emigration of latter years. Why does the world hate our Church? Because, ‘I shall not die, but live and declare the works of the Lord’. We are persecuted, maligned, slandered, isolated. My personal experience of Orthodoxy is persecution. Since I became Orthodox, I have been persecuted from all sides, from the most unexpected quarters. When we are under attack, then it is possible either to support the cause of the Confessors of our Church or else side with our persecutors. If you want both parts of the Russian Church to work together, then we need support. Our life here is a bloodless martyrdom, or as the late Metropolitan Pitirim of Volokalamsk said during the Cold War, when I met him, ‘a daily martryrdom’.
You know, there is an English proverb: ‘It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness’. I have always tried to do that – to light a great many candles, precisely because there is a great deal of darkness here. I call contemporary Western Europe ‘the Northern Sahara’, because we live in a spiritual desert. Our modest ROCOR churches with our Orthodox faith are often the only oases in this huge Western desert and darkness. Now, instead of the atheist Soviet Union, there has appeared the atheist European Union. We have no illusions about this. Either the West will return to its spiritual roots of the first millennium, and those roots are Orthodox, or else it will disappear from the face of the Earth.
— Many would like to see in the pre-Revolutionary Russian Church a model for a Local Church. To what extent are such views justified?
— Of course there was much that was good, remarkable and holy at that time, but the whole Petrine structure of the Church was uncanonical, decadent, Protestant. This was the tragedy of the pre-Revolutionary Church. In my view, the Revolution became inevitable precisely because the Church had become a department of the State.
It is not surprising that the Soviet authorities adored Peter I. It was only thanks to the untiring efforts of a great universal hierarch, Metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky), that the Patriarchate was restored. I have a dream that the time will come when both parts of the Russian Church will together canonize Metropolitan Antony of Kiev. All the mistakes of both parts of the Russian Church in recent years have happened because we have not lived according to the admonitions of Metropolitan Antony.
— What forces, both inside and outside the Church are impeding unity?
— Apart from the well-known problems of mutual lack of knowledge, mutual misunderstandings and prejudices, there are also forces of this world which are preventing eucharistic communion. These forces exist in ROCOR and in the Moscow Patriarchate. Sometimes these are political forces – the spectres of the Cold War which refuse to recognize reality, either through a lack of trust or else through inertia. Sometimes these forces are those of Renovationism, the forces of Western liberalism, modernism and ecumenism, which have always set themselves against both parts of the Russian Church, both in Russia and, with a particular fury, outside Russia. To this day, Renovationism infects parts, or rather former parts, of the Russian Church in the emigration.
— How could the two parts of the Russian Church mutually enrich one another?
— I would like to answer by giving one concrete example, which cries out to heaven – the catastrophic pastoral situation in London. There are only two Russian churches for a population of between 150,00 and 250,000 Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians. My soul simply aches for them. But, it seems, there are just not the resources to deal with this. Together, both parts of the Russian Church could do something. Just recently a good priest from Russia, Fr Andrei Teterin, was serving there, but he was forced to return to Russia. That was a tragedy. They need to open another five Russian churches in London in order to feed and console these people. The churches could be stavropegic, directly under the Patriarch.
The time of the martyrs has gone, for the moment, now is the time of the confessors. We need the common witness of both St John of Shanghai and St Luke of Simferopol, of St Jonah of Manchuria and St Sebastian of Karaganda, of Abbess Rufina (of Harbin) and the Elder John (Krestiankin), and all the saints and righteous of both sides. The saints unite us; people of this world disunite us. In the face of the threats of the contemporary, post-Christian world, we Orthodox Christians must stand together, sturdy spiritual warriors. This became clear during the war against Serbia, when the West bombed our Serbian brothers. Of all the Local Churches the Serbian is especially close to us. We have always concelebrated.
— How could the reunion of the Russian Church influence Orthodoxy worldwide, especially the former parts of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, such as the Russian Exarchate in Europe, the Orthodox Church in America and others?
— All parts of the pre-Revolutionary Russian Orthodox Church must return to the father’s house, in other words, to the fullness of Holy Orthodoxy. This is important both in Russia and in the diaspora, with all its ‘jurisdictional’ problems. All they former parts of of the Russian Church must return to the Mother-Tradition, only then can we talk about the Mother-Church.
In my opinion, the Russian Exarchate and the Orthodox Church in America are only temporary formations. Look at the major problems with the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in America – other Orthodox simply do not recognize it. The situation in the Russian Exarchate in France seems to me to be even worse. There is something schizophrenic there – are they Russians or Greeks? We have many acquaintances there, both laypeople and clergy – they have nearly all gone over to the Moscow Patriarchate. One priest now lives in Moscow, another has taken out a Russian passport, he suffered a great deal in Paris from the lack of love for Russia. We have to contend these anti-Orthodox and anti-Russian forces.
Of course the Russian Church outside the Russian Federation must keep its self-governing, internal status, its local languages. But language is a secondary question. The main thing is Holy Orthodoxy, as it has been kept in Russia, as ROCOR has kept it. The other groups must return to the sources of Holy Orthodoxy, we have to get away from the murk of the contemporary Western-oriented world. I can speak about this to Western people because the first victim of contemporary Western secularism was the West itself. Only by fully returning to its spiritual roots will the Russian Exarchate and the Orthodox Church in America be able to show faithfulness to the ideals of Holy Russia in all languages and in all cultures. It is not languages and cultures which in themselves hamper Orthodoxy, only lies hamper the Truth of Christ.
As regards other Local Churches, let us hope that the example of the Russian Church will be able to influence the new-calendar Churches, they must reconcile themselves with their old calendarists. It is time to finish both with the totally unnecessary persecutions of pious old calendarists and, at the same time, with the endless divisions and schisms of the old calendarists. The situation in Bulgaria is especially complex. The Bulgarian old calendarists are very good people and I sympathize with them. Perhaps the faithfulness to the old calendar of both parts of the Russian Church will serve as an example for the return of the new calendarists to the old calendar.
— What role can Russia and her Orthodox Church play in the world?
— Together, and only together, we are called to witness to Divine Truth. Globalism, in other words, planetary secularisation, rules in the contemporary world. Only the Orthodox Church, and especially the Russian Church with its host of many millions of New Martyrs and Confessors, can take up the challenge of globalism. The holiness of all ages and of all peoples – this is Orthodox globalism. The Russian Church can play a special role here, because she is a missionary Church. In general, unlike the Russian Church, the other Local Churches play only a very limited role in the missionary field. Most Western Orthodox are in the jurisdiction of the Russian Church.
— Let us return to your pastoral experience. How easy is it to preach the Gospel of Christ in the contemporary secular world without playing with it, without compromising your conscience and the dogmas of the faith?
— There are matters of principle, in which it is simply impossible to make concessions. The conscience is the voice of God and it must not be resisted. But there are matters where we must show condescension towards human weaknesses. This requires discernment in many cases. For example joint prayer with heterodox is impossible, but on the other hand we can, and must, set out our Orthodox faith before the heterodox world with love, as St John of Shanghai did. We have to have sympathy with all, suffer with them with compassion. There is so much suffering in this world!
— Have there been cases in your pastoral experience which have strengthened your faith in God and His Divine Providence?
— Of course, there have been many such cases. Glory to God! Especially cases of repentance. For example we had two cases of Russian prostitutes who repented and now live exemplary and edifying lives.
Then, of course, the confessions of children brought up in Orthodoxy. Such transparency, innocence, piety…
And then the confessions of the dying. The Lord granted me the opportunity to baptize both of my parents on their death-beds. My father was not baptized at all. May God grant me to make such confessions.
— What would you wish all Orthodox Christians during these holy days?
— Light, and yet more light! And that the light should shine though our souls and minds, not only in Bright Week, not only until the leavetaking of Pascha, but the whole year round, all our life. We live at a time when dark clouds are gathering. Antichrist is ‘near’, almost ‘at the doors’, and before the end we must all stand together. We can live only in the Light of Christ: ‘In Thy light we shall see light’.
Dear Readers, Christ is Risen!
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Shazam! Reality Begins to Dawn on the Leaders of HHSC
This just in from Commissioner Hawkins... they now concede they will need an additional 1,000 State employees in there new system (which they still haven't rolled out, because things are falling apart. That is a 35% increase from the original number of staff that they said they would need. Shazam! (as Gomer Pyle would say)
UPDATE!!! HHSC Employee, albeit an anonymous author, took down the aforementioned post, because apparently someone advised him or her that this could be hazardous to his or her continued employment. However, Samm Almaguer posts the Union's Account of this change of position here.
I wonder when they figured this out. I recall asking one of the big shots who came to the Houston region to sell staff on this new plan how many case actions they assumed each worker would be able to produce per day in the new system. She didn't know. I asked how she could know that the new system would be cost effective, if she didn't know how much work the new system could produce with less than 1/2 the staff. She didn't know that either. I think they still don't know.
Click here to read a memo in which State staff in Houston are being informed that they will have to work applications that Accenture has not worked... some of which are as much as 4 months old. This fits the usual pattern of private contractors shifting work back to the reduced number of State employees.
The meltdown continues.
By the way... HHSC Employee and Samm Almaguer have both been posting great stuff as this train wreck unfolds. Stay tuned.
One Flew Over The Onion Dome
This is a new book by my friend, Fr. Joseph Huneycutt. I highly recommend it.
Click here to purchase a copy.
Converts to the Orthodox Church are sometimes stunned by the ethnic ghetto they seem to have landed in. Cradle Orthodox are no less amazed by these zealous sometimes apparently nutty converts. And priests seem to often not have a clue as to how to deal with the mixed blessing of newcomers. How on earth can we all understand each other? More importantly what can we learn from each other?
Now at last a NEW book that will bring us all together in love and understanding:
ONE FLEW OVER THE ONION DOME -- American Orthodox Converts, Retreads & Reverts Fr. Joseph David Huneycutt
“The Convert experience is full of surprises, not only for the pilgrims involved but for those who attempt to pastor and teach them. One Flew Over the Onion Dome tackles these challenges with up-front honesty, good humor, and steadfast faith.”
Frederica Mathewes-Green NPR commentator and author
This is a must read for Cradles who might need to re-appreciate the Truth, for Seekers who have found the way but must patiently walk it while waiting for that blessed life which is to come and especially for hierarchs under whose omophorions the Good Shepherd has led these sheep for pastoring and who will be called to account for their eternal well-being.
+ NATHANIEL, Archbishop of Detroit (OCA)
Includes...
The Handicapped Convert
Convert Frustration
Who’s Converting to Orthodoxy and Why
Convert Baggage / Struggles
Convert Strengths
Convert Burnout
Culture Wars
“The Convert experience is full of surprises... One Flew tackles these challenges with up-front honesty, good humor, and steadfast faith.”
Frederica Mathewes-Green NPR commentator and author
“...The reader will find a reasoned explanation, formed through both personal experience and observation, that tells not only stories but provides a much needed guide for the clergy.”
The Very Rev. Dr. Chad Hatfield, Dean St. Herman Seminary, Kodiak, Alaska
“Fr Joseph Huneycutt's book is reminiscent of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, in that it details the pitfalls, traps and snares that so easily entrap those who set out to travel the narrow Way... Thanks be to God he offers helpful pastoral counsel to those who must guide others in this difficult path.”
+ MARK, Bishop of Toledo and the Diocese of the Midwest (Antiochian)
"We have found the Pearl of Great Price," could be a subtitle to this gem, One Flew. It is a precious collection of heart-beats reflecting the various facets of the same pilgrimage that St Paul made when called by Christ... This is a must read for Cradles...”
+ NATHANIEL, Archbishop of Detroit (OCA)
“...A map for the new Convert... A helpful tool in diagnosing common convert ailments before they become spiritually terminal.”
Fr. John Whiteford, author of Sola Scriptura and a Priest of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad
Fr. Joseph David Huneycutt, a Convert to Orthodox Christianity, has pastored Missions in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. He is currently Associate Pastor of St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church, Houston, Texas.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Houston Chronicle: Lawmakers skeptical of benefits screening
Lawmakers skeptical of benefits screening
Privatization plan for deciding eligibility has cut qualified children, not saved money
By POLLY ROSS HUGHES
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
AUSTIN - Cash-strapped lawmakers had high hopes three years ago of saving hundreds of millions in tax dollars by privatizing the state's eligibility screening of social services for children, the disabled, the poor and the elderly.
Four million Texans — more than the population of Harris County — on food stamps, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families could apply through an $899 million system of smarter computers connected to privately run call centers.
Modern technology, lawmakers believed, would ferret out fraud and save needy Texans the inconvenience of taking off work and showing up at government offices for face-to-face interviews.
Yet the tangled reality since the state began its transition to privatized screening four months ago has left that utopian dream in doubt: Thousands of children were erroneously cut from health insurance, the state delayed the fast-tracked statewide expansion of call centers with a pilot project in disarray, the expected savings have not been seen and complaints from clients and lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle abound.
Problems include:
•State officials on Friday abandoned plans to drop 28,000 more children from the Children's Health Insurance Program, admitting they'd put in place unfair bureaucratic burdens that need revamping.
•A state computer designed for one-stop shopping when checking eligibility for multiple programs is seven years in the making but remains incompatible with the private contractors' systems.
•The federal government's independent checks and the state's official records have shown high rates of abandoned calls and long hold times as the initial call center in Midland started up.
•Clients, their advocates and state lawmakers say they've documented instances of no response to applications submitted, call center operators unable to locate submitted applications, notices of missing information when the requested information was not needed and incorrect denials or delays of benefits.
•State officials acknowledge problems with staffing shortages and loss of expertise in state eligibility offices and too few and inadequately trained staff at a privately run call center.
"This process we're going through is historic. No other state has tried this," Texas Health and Human Services Commission spokeswoman Gail Randall said. "The rest of the country is looking at us. It should rise or fall on its own strength or weakness. The state could either successfully end up with a good, cutting-edge service model or it doesn't work. We're going to find out. It's a tough thing."
The commission has estimated that over five years Texas could save $646 million in state and federal funds by relying more on the Internet and call centers for screening applicants for social services.
So far, because of repeated delays in rolling out the program, the plan has yet to save the state a penny.
Skeptical politicians
Problems during a pilot phase of one portion of the project have proved so daunting that Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins announced earlier this month that an aggressive statewide rollout of the call centers to be completed by December has been put on hold until the system performs efficiently and meets contract terms.
Meanwhile, as evidence also mounts that thousands of eligible children and other Texans have either lost benefits or faced delays in getting them because of the dramatic changes, a political backlash has set in.
Liberal Democrats have long opposed the project, some of them fearing a nefarious hidden agenda to knock the poor and disabled out of social services.
And, as tough questions in legislative hearings and letters to Hawkins make clear, conservative Republicans are growing increasingly worried and skeptical about the economic implications of the state's $899 million, five-year privatization plan as well.
"I don't think anybody, regardless of party affiliation, wants to spend money on something that doesn't work," said Mary Katherine Stout, a health policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which advocates for limited government.
"The important thing in all of this is how expeditiously you act to solve the problems. The problems are serious," she said.
Concern for children
So far, the commission and a call center in Midland run by Texas Access Alliance, a business consortium headed by outsourcing giant Accenture LLP, have taken a two-pronged approach.
Statewide, the call center began processing applicants for CHIP and children's Medicaid on Nov. 28. In January, it also began screening applicants for food stamps, adult Medicaid, cash welfare and long-term care in a pilot area stretching from Austin to San Marcos.
The pilot was set to expand to 17 Hill Country counties this month and to Houston by August, but that schedule has been scrapped for now.
The goal eventually is for the privately run call centers and a reduced number of state-run eligibility offices to serve all clients in the statewide programs.
Yet advocates for Texas children say sharply reduced CHIP rolls — 30,000 fewer are now enrolled since December, the first full month the call center was in operation — coincided not only with stricter state rules requiring proof of income and assets but also with documented cases in which eligible children were bumped from CHIP through no fault of their parents.
When Accenture discovered it hadn't properly informed families of the new enrollment and renewal fees, for example, the state restored CHIP coverage to 6,000 children.
Other families say the call center had no record of applications they repeatedly mailed, or failed to duly note information sent in by parents to clear up misunderstandings.
Children's Medicaid rolls are falling precipitously as well: 79,000 fewer children were enrolled in February — the last month the agency released numbers — than in November.
Shorter rolls prompt study
Hawkins said the state has commissioned an independent study by the Institute for Child Health Policy at the University of Florida. It is surveying 1,800 families — half of them whose children are or have been enrolled in CHIP and the other half whose children are or have been enrolled in Medicaid — to find out why so many are dropping off the rolls.
The health commission also announced a $3 million outreach and education campaign to help families navigate the new rules and application forms.
Meanwhile, a corrective action plan is under way at the call center consortium, Texas Access Alliance. It has beefed up its Midland customer service staff from 210 to 360 and started training them better, said Stephanie Goodman, of the Health and Human Services Commission. The private contractors intend to add 160 more customer service staff during May. Last week, Accenture senior executive Dave McCurley cited dramatic improvements with the call center.
Fewer abandoned calls
Official performance reports to the state confirm that a nearly 72 percent rate of abandoned phone calls on March 20 had been reduced to almost 10 percent on April 24.
Callers who waited more than 40 minutes on hold last month were waiting just over two minutes, the records show.
"We are confident we will deliver value and results for the citizens of Texas," said McCurley, who also is executive director of Texas Access Alliance.
Such assurances have not proved enough to calm the nerves of a growing number of lawmakers, although they are happy the project has been slowed down.
Rep. Elliott Naishtat, D-Austin, sent a letter to every member of the House and Senate in March, warning them that if problems weren't fixed now they'd be hearing from angry constituents, including doctors and health plans, when their own districts began relying on call centers. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, said lawmakers should have considered transition costs before approving the privatization plan.
"There's plenty of blame to go around," he said. "My goal as chairman of finance is to make sure it's a system that an objective observer can say, 'This is a competently run system and it's fair to the people who are eligible or not eligible.' "
State Rep. Martha Wong, R-Houston, wrote to Hawkins about her concerns that some children were unfairly bumped from CHIP.
"Thousands of children have been dropped from the CHIP rolls, and I am not at all convinced that it is for a good reason," she wrote.
"Is Accenture at fault? Are they mismanaging their duties? Is HHSC failing to provide the necessary level of oversight?" she asked.
"These issues are too important to the well-being of children in Texas to be ignored or politicized."
polly.hughes@chron.com
Privatization plan for deciding eligibility has cut qualified children, not saved money
By POLLY ROSS HUGHES
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
AUSTIN - Cash-strapped lawmakers had high hopes three years ago of saving hundreds of millions in tax dollars by privatizing the state's eligibility screening of social services for children, the disabled, the poor and the elderly.
Four million Texans — more than the population of Harris County — on food stamps, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families could apply through an $899 million system of smarter computers connected to privately run call centers.
Modern technology, lawmakers believed, would ferret out fraud and save needy Texans the inconvenience of taking off work and showing up at government offices for face-to-face interviews.
Yet the tangled reality since the state began its transition to privatized screening four months ago has left that utopian dream in doubt: Thousands of children were erroneously cut from health insurance, the state delayed the fast-tracked statewide expansion of call centers with a pilot project in disarray, the expected savings have not been seen and complaints from clients and lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle abound.
Problems include:
•State officials on Friday abandoned plans to drop 28,000 more children from the Children's Health Insurance Program, admitting they'd put in place unfair bureaucratic burdens that need revamping.
•A state computer designed for one-stop shopping when checking eligibility for multiple programs is seven years in the making but remains incompatible with the private contractors' systems.
•The federal government's independent checks and the state's official records have shown high rates of abandoned calls and long hold times as the initial call center in Midland started up.
•Clients, their advocates and state lawmakers say they've documented instances of no response to applications submitted, call center operators unable to locate submitted applications, notices of missing information when the requested information was not needed and incorrect denials or delays of benefits.
•State officials acknowledge problems with staffing shortages and loss of expertise in state eligibility offices and too few and inadequately trained staff at a privately run call center.
"This process we're going through is historic. No other state has tried this," Texas Health and Human Services Commission spokeswoman Gail Randall said. "The rest of the country is looking at us. It should rise or fall on its own strength or weakness. The state could either successfully end up with a good, cutting-edge service model or it doesn't work. We're going to find out. It's a tough thing."
The commission has estimated that over five years Texas could save $646 million in state and federal funds by relying more on the Internet and call centers for screening applicants for social services.
So far, because of repeated delays in rolling out the program, the plan has yet to save the state a penny.
Skeptical politicians
Problems during a pilot phase of one portion of the project have proved so daunting that Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins announced earlier this month that an aggressive statewide rollout of the call centers to be completed by December has been put on hold until the system performs efficiently and meets contract terms.
Meanwhile, as evidence also mounts that thousands of eligible children and other Texans have either lost benefits or faced delays in getting them because of the dramatic changes, a political backlash has set in.
Liberal Democrats have long opposed the project, some of them fearing a nefarious hidden agenda to knock the poor and disabled out of social services.
And, as tough questions in legislative hearings and letters to Hawkins make clear, conservative Republicans are growing increasingly worried and skeptical about the economic implications of the state's $899 million, five-year privatization plan as well.
"I don't think anybody, regardless of party affiliation, wants to spend money on something that doesn't work," said Mary Katherine Stout, a health policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which advocates for limited government.
"The important thing in all of this is how expeditiously you act to solve the problems. The problems are serious," she said.
Concern for children
So far, the commission and a call center in Midland run by Texas Access Alliance, a business consortium headed by outsourcing giant Accenture LLP, have taken a two-pronged approach.
Statewide, the call center began processing applicants for CHIP and children's Medicaid on Nov. 28. In January, it also began screening applicants for food stamps, adult Medicaid, cash welfare and long-term care in a pilot area stretching from Austin to San Marcos.
The pilot was set to expand to 17 Hill Country counties this month and to Houston by August, but that schedule has been scrapped for now.
The goal eventually is for the privately run call centers and a reduced number of state-run eligibility offices to serve all clients in the statewide programs.
Yet advocates for Texas children say sharply reduced CHIP rolls — 30,000 fewer are now enrolled since December, the first full month the call center was in operation — coincided not only with stricter state rules requiring proof of income and assets but also with documented cases in which eligible children were bumped from CHIP through no fault of their parents.
When Accenture discovered it hadn't properly informed families of the new enrollment and renewal fees, for example, the state restored CHIP coverage to 6,000 children.
Other families say the call center had no record of applications they repeatedly mailed, or failed to duly note information sent in by parents to clear up misunderstandings.
Children's Medicaid rolls are falling precipitously as well: 79,000 fewer children were enrolled in February — the last month the agency released numbers — than in November.
Shorter rolls prompt study
Hawkins said the state has commissioned an independent study by the Institute for Child Health Policy at the University of Florida. It is surveying 1,800 families — half of them whose children are or have been enrolled in CHIP and the other half whose children are or have been enrolled in Medicaid — to find out why so many are dropping off the rolls.
The health commission also announced a $3 million outreach and education campaign to help families navigate the new rules and application forms.
Meanwhile, a corrective action plan is under way at the call center consortium, Texas Access Alliance. It has beefed up its Midland customer service staff from 210 to 360 and started training them better, said Stephanie Goodman, of the Health and Human Services Commission. The private contractors intend to add 160 more customer service staff during May. Last week, Accenture senior executive Dave McCurley cited dramatic improvements with the call center.
Fewer abandoned calls
Official performance reports to the state confirm that a nearly 72 percent rate of abandoned phone calls on March 20 had been reduced to almost 10 percent on April 24.
Callers who waited more than 40 minutes on hold last month were waiting just over two minutes, the records show.
"We are confident we will deliver value and results for the citizens of Texas," said McCurley, who also is executive director of Texas Access Alliance.
Such assurances have not proved enough to calm the nerves of a growing number of lawmakers, although they are happy the project has been slowed down.
Rep. Elliott Naishtat, D-Austin, sent a letter to every member of the House and Senate in March, warning them that if problems weren't fixed now they'd be hearing from angry constituents, including doctors and health plans, when their own districts began relying on call centers. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, said lawmakers should have considered transition costs before approving the privatization plan.
"There's plenty of blame to go around," he said. "My goal as chairman of finance is to make sure it's a system that an objective observer can say, 'This is a competently run system and it's fair to the people who are eligible or not eligible.' "
State Rep. Martha Wong, R-Houston, wrote to Hawkins about her concerns that some children were unfairly bumped from CHIP.
"Thousands of children have been dropped from the CHIP rolls, and I am not at all convinced that it is for a good reason," she wrote.
"Is Accenture at fault? Are they mismanaging their duties? Is HHSC failing to provide the necessary level of oversight?" she asked.
"These issues are too important to the well-being of children in Texas to be ignored or politicized."
polly.hughes@chron.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)