Category Archives: economy

Slamming the Poor

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Our local station, at wane.com, had a slam piece on the poor this week (I was just on their website, and there is nothing up for me to reference).  They were running promo ads all last week…and I was dreading what was to come, but I held out hope that the promos were just to draw people in, but the story would present both sides of the issue without judgment.

Ha.

Adam Widener, the reporter, is probably patting himself on the back for the “outstanding” piece of *cough* reporting he did.

Okay, I’ll start from the beginning segment:

Widener doesn’t present himself as a reporter, rather, he walks up with hot cocoa and a fast food bag to these folks who are standing on street corners  holding up signs: at shopping malls:   “Disabled, need money” or something like “unemployed” or other messages.  He gets information out of them without telling them he’s a reporter and there is a concealed camera taping the whole conversation.

Next, he asks them about how much they make in a day, why they’re begging for money, etc.  He also follows them to their homes without their knowledge or consent.

One man claims to be disabled and walks with something of a limp.  He stands out in the rain begging for money from strangers.  Widener follows him as he walks home:  three miles and he walks without a limp as he’s going to his home.  Widener finally identifies himself and asks about the disability and about how many beggers are scamming.  The guy is probably the worst example of those folks–he probably isn’t disabled, and then he characterizes the others as being fakes, with only 5% of people begging being legitimate.   He is the poster child for the repub party, who *love* to point to people like him as a reason not to give to anyone.

Which is what Widener does in his *cough* reporting…even though the other folks he interviews have legitimate reasons for begging:  one guy is unemployed and trying to hold onto his house; another is also unemployed (probably 60 years old) and also in need of money.  He does interview a man who works in a convenience store that one of them frequents and the man says in a sarcastic tone, “He always has wads of cash…I’m going to quit my job and start begging on the corner.” (Widener states during the piece that the most they make is $50 a day…this is while standing for at least three hours and sometimes eight hours in the cold and rain.)

Widener goes to the local Christian Rescue Mission, to one of the coordinators, who—even though she did not meet these people—was quick to judge them and say that beggers use the money for drugs or alcohol.  And to drive the point home, Widener interviews a man staying at the Mission who used to beg and use the money for drugs and also automatically assumes these folks are using the money for things other than food or shelter or other basic needs. Widener repeats many times that these folks are using the money for cigarettes.

The Mission coordinator stated that people should not give money to these folks for the above reasons.

It never ceases to amaze me how people who claim to be rescuing people in Jesus’ name are mean, judgmental and punitive.–which goes against what Jesus taught.

It also never ceases to amaze me how shortsighted folks are—the poor need cash for toilet paper, shampoo, bath soap, dish detergent, trash bags, laundry soap, and even money for the laundry because, and I know this is hard for repubs to believe, but these items are not covered on food stamps.  And even if it did, people still wouldn’t be able to afford them and pay for food on the amount given per month.  (For me, I wash most of my clothes in a bucket in the bathtub to save money–it’s economical and I’ve gotten it down to a science where I do a pretty darn good job.)

But our friend Widener isn’t done yet….

Next he goes to the FW police and talks with the public relations director, who informs him that unless a property owner calls her, the police generally do nothing about it.

Widener can’t get over that.

He goes to a city councilman, Tom Didier, who bless his heart, actually shows compassion and says that there was a law on the books that made begging illegal, but they dissolved the law in 2010.

Widener brought up that another town (forget which one he said) had made it so that a person would have to register in order to beg.

Widener was aghast that Didier laughed when this was told to him.

This story is evil in that it actually twists things around so someone feels self-righteous about not helping the poor–they’re “helping” this person by not contributing to their drug or alcohol problem.

Even alcoholics and druggies need to be warm and safe and dry with food on the table.

This story fell soooo far short of the depth that this story requires.  Why did these people beg?  What circumstances in their life brought them to this place?  Were they working in a job that didn’t pay enough so they could have something to fall back on when hard times hit?  Did they have health issues that contributed to job loss?  How can we help, besides the immediate cash?

Speaking of Scam Artists

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PR Watch.org has this up on the gerrymandering in Wisconsin.

From the article:

In early February of 2012, GOP legislators released multiple documents, but continued to keep around 84 emails confidential. The three judges — two of them appointed by Republican presidents — again criticized the Republican legislators for “an all but shameful attempt” to keep documents secret, writing:  “Without a doubt, the Legislature made a conscious choice to involve private lawyers in what gives every appearance of an attempt — albeit poorly disguised — to cloak the private machinations of Wisconsin’s Republican legislators in the shroud of attorney-client privilege.”

And…incredibly:

According to the documents that were released, Republican legislators signed a pledge of secrecy during the redistricting process and were told to ignore what GOP leaders said publicly about the new election maps.

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What is this, high school or college where you make secret pledges?  Seriously?? Does this mean they get double secret probation?

Note that some emails obtained by Center for Media and Democracy  were not released to the lawyers challenging the maps.  Just incredible!

I think this is why Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the tea partiers are so baffled that they lost the election….how could they lose when they’ve worked so hard against the democratic process??

 

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More on ALEC sponsors here.

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And, lastly, ALEC and the electoral college here.  They just can’t figure out enough ways to demolish the democratic process….

 

 

Un-Charted waters…

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Ball State is no longer supporting the charter schools in Indiana.  (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun for the title)

One of them is the Imagine Schools here in FW.  They’re not holding up under the test of time and students.

Here’s a story on it. (Side note~the Indiana Dunes/Lake Michigan is at the top of the webpage.  It’s so cool that Indiana has this.)

Here’s the local take: http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20130123/EDIT07/301239992/1147/EDIT07

Related to this, high school graduates are not graduating on time.

I reeeeeallly hate to turn to faux news, but it’s the one with the most info: http://www.kfoxtv.com/news/news/students-not-graduating-on-time-high-school-dropou/nJ8dZ/

Notice how they immediately put the blame on the teachers, and then the parents.  While both could be at fault, I take a longer look at this–

The No Child Left A Mind Act.  It has now been torturing children since 2002, when W. signed it into law. (Note that speaker Boehner was a co-author)

From the site:

NCLB’s main focus is on skills in reading, writing and mathematics, which are areas related to economic success. Combined with the budget crises in the Late-2000s recession, some schools have cut or eliminated classes and resources for many subject areas that are not part of NCLB’s accountability standards.[32] Since 2007, almost 71% of schools have reduced some instruction time in subjects such as history, arts, language and music, in order to give more time and resources to mathematics and English.[33][34]

(italics are mine)

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The children graduating now and in the next year would have been subjected to this mind-numbing, controlling, micro-managing of schools and teachers for all of their education careers.  This system has FAILED miserably, as the inability of these students to graduate on time and with the skills of life (not of business, mind you, but of life–schools are waaaay too influenced by the corporate “needs” instead of the country’s needs of an educated populace that can ask questions and analyze information in a way that is helpful towards sustaining a democracy.)

Another point of the above link was that they were saying the kids didn’t care and were disrespectful.  The kids want out of school.  This should be a red flag that something is terribly wrong when so many children hate school.  We’re born with the natural curiosity in order to learn about our world and how to go about in it.  Most kids love to learn, so if they’re not interested in it, then the fault is on the system, not the kids.  And I believe the kids are disrespectful because they are repeatedly subjected to boring school days that don’t stimulate their creativity, don’t encourage them to think outside the box, subject them to endless tests, reading, math, reading, tests, reading, math, tests…you get the idea….they become angry because they know they’re being screwed.  And they perceive the teachers as being at fault when the teacher is only doing what has been required of her–she cannot teach in a creative way while using her own intuition to conduct the class–she has a guide book that she must follow with little room for any creative expression either by her or her students.

When I was a substitute teacher, on one of the first assignments I got behind in class because we were doing Math and a student was having difficulty understanding the concept.  The class day was so unbelievably structured that it didn’t allow for extra time, and I soon fell far behind and couldn’t get everything done that the teacher had outlined.  She hit the roof when she came back to class later that day, because it meant she had to add everything I did not get done to the next day, which is also as structured with no time for extra.  I never subbed for her again.

 

 

Failure to prosecute Wall St.

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…because we’d much rather go after computer wizzes who have legal access to files and download them for the public so that the public knows what their government is doing…

link here.

bgrothus has this link in the comments section.  Remember, folks, the derivatives were the cause of the meltdown.  They were betting on people losing their mortgages….these scumbags were betting on people like me losing their houses. 

…and not only betting on people losing their houses, but on people dying.  It’s amazing how they can make it seem….normal.  Just coldly predict how long someone lives and apply a monetary value to it, i.e., insurance $$.

(crap, I have to go, and I wanted to explore this more….argh)

Who revoked the dream?

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I’ve been reading this entry on barlett and steele’s website.  It was written in 1996, and was so prophetic of what was happening and now we see the ripple effect.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but I feel like I was sleepwalking through the 80s and early 90s and am now Rip Van Winkle-ing–re-learning what was…

I was busy getting married, having babies, and going along with the babbling of the Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush years….well, maybe not W.’s years, but still…the country was being demolished, stick by stick…

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American made stuff (I haven’t purchased these items, so I can’t speak to their quality or the companies’ treatment of employees):

Diamond Gusset Jeans

Union label

All USA clothing

Here’s a site that encompasses many different products.

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A bright note here.  I think it’s a good sign that small business owners are giving bonuses.  Now if they could hire more people at living wages…

Pay us enough…

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…so we can raise our own families….

It’s now too common that workers in stores are paid so little that they can’t even afford to shop in the store they work for…

I’ve had a friend who shopped at Walmart and when I raised concerns about how they treated their employees, she was upset because she couldn’t afford to shop anywhere else.  I avoid it like the plague–only going there if no other option is available (i.e., I’m in another town or the item I want is not in what few independent stores are left).

Another person remarked about how a national chain grocery store that paid its employees a decent wage was “gouging them with high prices” when Walmart had so much lower prices…the national chain store eventually went out of business, naturally, so now they’re stuck with only Walmart to shop for groceries in their small town.  Wanna take bets on how long that lasts–either they’ll raise prices with no  competition or the folks in town will find yet another mega-store in a nearby town that has even lower prices so they’ll shop there, driving miles out of the way…buying more crap made out of China in sweatshops…God, this depresses me even writing it…

When is Congress going to raise the minimum wage to a living wage of $11.00 an hour?  Oh, wait, we can’t do that…because that will…what are the excuses again…?