N.Y. Sees Error of Its Ways With Phone ‘Psychics’
- Share via
NEW YORK — They should have seen it coming.
New York City officials have pulled the plug on part of a welfare-to-work program that placed unemployed women in jobs as telephone psychics.
For the last nine months, New York City welfare recipients have been hired for $10 an hour plus bonuses to dispense advice and otherwise minister to people calling a $4.99-a-minute psychic hotline.
The otherworldly aspect of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s program, set up in 1995 to employ out-of-work mothers who must stay home because they have young children, came to light in a report by the New York Times.
At least 15 women who had been on welfare were hired by a company called Psychic Network to work at home as telephone clairvoyants, the city’s welfare department said.
Women on public assistance with a high school degree, a “caring and compassionate personality” who can “read, write and speak English” could apply for the job according to a city brochure.
Psychic ability was not required.
More From the Los Angeles Times
Podcasts
The latest effort is coming from the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. They just announced a $3 million program in conjunction with some nonprofits groups to test and clean the soil at homes still standing in the areas impacted by the Eaton Fire.
California once bet big on offshore wind to help power its clean-energy future, but the Trump administration is now paying developers billions to walk away from their projects. As California’s remaining offshore-wind leases hang in the balance, the state is fighting back in court.
The Hillside Strangler murders terrorized Los Angeles in the late 1970s. The killers were a pair of sadistic cousins. One confessed. The other was set to stand trial—until L.A. prosecutors flinched.
