Category Archives: poor

Like the bad penny that keeps resurfacing…

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…Dick Cheney has emerged once again to darken the airwaves…

As Jon Stewart illustrates, you don’t even have to be credible in your assertions to be put on the tube.  You could be wrong about everything and because you’re a conservative hack, you’re given more air time than someone with half a brain who is fair in their assertions.

I was watching a bit of Charlie Rose this morning, and didn’t realize his was conservative-leaning until this program–which was about fixing the economy.  Since I came in on the last part of it, I didn’t catch who the three white guys were who were speaking.  They all seemed to be conservative and wanting to cut “entitlements” (how I am beginning to despise that word–these are programs that people pay into their whole lives!) and they pretty much spewed the conservative lies about how Social Security was going to have to be cut or other programs were going to have to be cut  in order for Social Security to survive.

Paul Krugman’s take on the S.S. program.

From the article:

Social Security has been running surpluses for the last quarter-century, banking those surpluses in a special account, the so-called trust fund. The program won’t have to turn to Congress for help or cut benefits until or unless the trust fund is exhausted, which the program’s actuaries don’t expect to happen until 2037 — and there’s a significant chance, according to their estimates, that that day will never come.

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President Obama mentioned Alan Simpson again last night in his speech….<sigh> …the guy is an ogre who believes he should be blessed while others suffer….

His 310 million teats comments. (hat tip to David Dayen at firedoglake.com)

And then there’s this. Greedy geezers? Seriously?  Does he not know that nobody is rich off of Social Security?  That it’s really not enough to live comfortably?  I suppose they should be happy they’re not eating dog food, but perhaps that is what he would like–that would show those “greedy geezers” for wanting to have enough money for food as well as rent, utilities, gas for the car (if they’re still able to drive, if not, money for a cab or public transportation), and heat in the winter.

(One of the sites I visited made a point that Simpson has been on the public dole for fifty years. )

Sure, I think Social Security and Medicare should be cut…

…let’s start with your benefits first, Alan Simpson (along with all of Congress).

 

A Man’s View

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Continuing along the thoughts on Friday’s blog~~~

I don’t mind telling you that this blog brought tears to my eyes. Really stunning to read such honesty and depth.  And he’s not gay! (meaning that, as Patrick states, most gay guys “get” women and their perspective, but straight guys, especially straight white guys don’t.)

From the interview:

Growing up in my house, feminism was actually a positive word. My mother, who is a strong woman, has always identified as a feminist. Despite this fact, she found herself being mistreated by my father. This just goes to show that even strong women — even feminist-identified women — can find themselves involved with men who treat them badly.

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This was so powerful…because in the finger-pointing department, when blame is being handed out, it’s always the woman’s fault if she is mistreated.

This, too, was powerful:

Seeing the way she was treated, and experiencing mistreatment myself, showed me that boys who grow up in violent households do not have to follow the path of the abuser. Instead, we can follow another path — the path of empathy for our mother, and that we can become allies in the struggle for women’s equality, rather than just another violent enforcer of male supremacy.

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This is the thing that is so hard to understand:  why do some men recognize what was done to them and their mothers, but then go on to abuse others?  Why do some choose that path and others fight against it?

And this reinforces my thoughts on a previous blog on how some folks are abused but do not go on to continue the abuse.  I’m thinking there are more out there than is being acknowledged, because they aren’t the ones being arrested for committing acts of cruelty…they are the ones quietly living their lives without repeating the abuse…

…but that also doesn’t mean that all of those committing acts of cruelty are being dealt with by society…such as men who beat their mates, but the mates refuse to press charges (or never call police to report it.)

Further down the post, Patrick goes into what defines feminism–and how women themselves cannot agree on the definition. I know that I don’t.  As I’ve posted before, I believe in equality, but I don’t think abortions should be performed after six weeks’ gestation.  But feminists don’t see it that way–they feel a woman should be able to have an abortion any time she wants it–right up until birth.  I can’t in good conscience agree with that thinking.  In the feminist world, that automatically excludes me from being called a feminist.  This point of view wasn’t easy to come by, either, as I have seen the photo of the woman dead on a hotel room floor with a hangar protruding from her vagina.  I don’t want to see women in such desperate circumstances that they resort to that–it is much better to have safe, reliable contraceptives available to her. (Yes, men should be responsible for contraception, too, but since she is the one who will be most impacted by a pregnancy, and he could be unreliable, she needs to take responsibility for her own sake.)

Feminists in the 70s were so anti-homemaking that women who chose this route were treated as if they were mindless dummies.

It’s an odd circumstance that things that defined us as women–the home, childbirth and raising children, became so hated.  It’s as if they wanted us to become equal by embracing the stereotyped attributes of men.

In other words, we could only be thought of as valuable and therefore equal….if we became men…

…and the unintended consequences of that is the world tilted even more towards the masculine and diminished the feminine.

What we need to right the world is to once again embrace the feminine as valuable–to recognize that one can be soft as well as strong and that those two attributes don’t have to be mutually exclusive.  That we can prop each other up when one is feeling weak, instead of attacking.  That it’s okay for women to have an opinion different than a man’s and it’s just as valid and valuable. That taking care of the Earth is the feminine that needs to be honored.

There’s more to write, but perhaps for another day.  I’m out of time.

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….

 

 

Freedom town

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Jon Stewart takes a look at the Freedom Towns being promoted by the fundamentalist/conservatives.  Wow.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-29-2013/america-2–now-with-more-freedom—a-glenn-beck-holiday

In the beginning of this segment, when they are just outlining what it is about, I’m thinking….they’re talking Communes?

Well, okay, not exactly communes, where everybody is supposed to share food and chores and stuff, but yeah, this comes pretty close to it, by demanding residents adopt the same narrow view.

The thing is…it’s not that far from Communism, which requires everyone be the same—by discouraging independent thought and creativity and action.  (And I wonder what they do with someone who loses their job and becomes homeless in this Utopia? Or *gasp* someone who develops an independent thought and starts expressing liberal ideals…?)

And to link into the previous post on the Fourth Amendment–it along with the First Amendment are parts of the Constitution that kept us from becoming Communist China, Communist Russia, and Nazi Germany.  Without them, we’re toast.

So…..you would think that the conservatives would be fighting like the despised liberals to preserve them.

Why aren’t they??

Cornel West

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(Oh, how I miss CSPAN…even though it is slowly becoming mostly conservative views.)

Speaks his mind on President Obama using MLK’s bible to be sworn in.  He has strong words about “using King’s fire”  and not following up with actions, such as putting Wall St bankers in jail, putting Bush torturers in jail, getting rid of the drones, doing something about poverty...etc.

 

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)

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Beyond Vietnam

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Susie Madrak has a post up on MLK’s birthday celebration.  This is my view, too, on how everybody brings up “I Have a Dream” speech, and then fail to acknowledge his “Beyond Vietnam” speech (which he gave a year to the day before his murder).

He was expanding from the Civil Rights protests towards protesting the condition of the poor and of the terrible consequences of war.  This was more of a threat to the status quo than anything he had done prior.  Indeed, even his friends that had supported him during the Civil Rights era were abandoning him when he started advocating for the poor and protesting against war.  According to those that knew him, he never felt so alone.

He knew that advocating those positions was dangerous.

And he did it anyway….