The Bitter Fruit of Welfare Reform contains a review of the studies an data on caseload decline and post-aid employment. Much of the 2/3’s caseload reduction is from declines in participation by eligible families, often due to procedural barriers (or in Georgia, anecdotally, by outright lies and threats). Extreme poverty has increased, and the majority of post-time-limit families remain below poverty, with 30-50% of families being unemployed. Since welfare reform, the caseload closings based increased earnings has actually decline.

The U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary has posted a 173-page version of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomajor’s responses to the Committee’s questionnaire. And that’s not counting the appendix, supplement, supporting public record related to her responses, as well as the documents related to her 1992 and 1997 hearings and questionnaires from her earlier district court and circuit court nominations, also posted there.

A few weeks ago the Washington Post gave us all a course in Poverty Economics 101, explaining why “you have to be rich to be poor.” The bad news in California is that it looks like the poor will need to be even “richer” than they are now, as the budget crisis in California deepens and proposals are on the table to eliminate the entire CalWORKs (TANF) program.

The consequences of such a decision, if made? The non-partisan California Budget Project (CBP) continues to cut through the economic babel and in recent days has published several focused fact sheets about the practical, economic consequences of the budget proposals being considered. One includes a simple but pointed summary that the proposal to eliminate CalWORKs in California would affect more than 1.4 million low-income children and their parents.

Real consequences for real people.

For those interested in more about Sonia Sotomayor than the prevailing high-carb media burn-off for those with short attention spans, you may be interested to know the Library of Congress has long had a Supreme Court Nominations page, which has posted research resources about nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Your tax dollars at work.

It’s hard to argue with free. But you need to act by June 1.

LSC has arranged with Practising Law Institute (PLI) to provide free memberships to all attorneys at LSC-funded programs. “Members will have unlimited access to the Institute’s upcoming and archived ‘CLE Now’ web-based and audio trainings, many of which provide CLE credit. To take advantage of this offer, program attorneys must individually express their interest by completing an online application, which must be submitted no later than June 1. Please direct any questions to Cynthia Schneider in LSC’s Office of Program Performance.”

Did we mention, you need to fill out the application by June 1?

A quick video shout-out to the prolific Legal Aid Association of California. You can find a steady stream (pun intended) of the newest additions to their online training archive, regularly posted at Vimeo. Among the recent additions: Ethics Issues for Community Lawyers and Alphabet Soup I: An Intro to Benefits for Children in Foster Care.

Google search has added a new “wow” feature: Adding search power to public data. It’s an embryonic example of where Google is going, to make it easier to search for and compare select types of public data. In this current feature, you can search for population or unemployment data by geographical location, and then select to compare that data with another geographic area. For example, need to know the population of Sacramento County, California? Search for population sacramento, then click on the link at the top of the Google search results and you get a graph illustrating the population growth over time. Want to compare that data with another county or state? Select the corresponding check box on the left.

Ya gotta love the Google!

Hidden Impact:  California Renters in the Foreclosure Crisis, released by renters’ advocacy organization Tenants Together on March 31 is now posted on Legal Services of Northern California’s housing webpage.  The report estimates, conservatively, that 1 in 3 residential units in foreclosure in California are rentals.  The report also contains a useful summary of existing California law and procedure regarding the rights of tenants renting homes in foreclosure and a number of recommendations for strengthening renter protections.

Social Security Disability Insurance: A Primer is a newly published, 24-page primer by the AARP Public Policy Institute (April 2009), with an informative overview of the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program, including who is covered, what benefits they receive, how the program is administered, and how it is financed.

California Budget Bites has a timely and topical post today, a reality tonic, if you will, entitled Taxes Are What We Pay for a Civilized Society, by Jean Ross of the non-partisan California Budget Project. (The title of the post originates from Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.) Her post about taxes sets the record straight about the relative impact of overall taxes on the low-income, who pay the largest share of their income in state and local taxes. Among other reality checks are her explanation that California is a moderate, not high, tax state when all state and local taxes and fees are taken into account; and high-income Californians are not leaving the state due to higher taxes. Don’t miss the closing observations about the Boston Tea Party.