Category Archives: wages

The reality of austerity

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This will be coming our way if something isn’t done.

Stealing from the poor

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This mother in Saskatoon had apples stolen from her trees.  She said in the story that her son cannot digest food easily, so she was planning on making applesauce with them, when someone came and cleaned her out.  Luckily, there were some good hearted people who gave her not only apples, but other food, as well. …one could say that she was made whole.

That’s what Law was originally about–someone does something wrong to another and is made to do something for that person to make up for it–that’s what they called “making one whole” .

Now it seems the Law—looking at the person stealing as a corporation– is saying that the corporation had a right to take everything. 

Or –she was at fault for not having a guard dog protect her assets.

Or –she should have had a hot fence up. 

I’m thinking of corporate anti-union sentiment; of bankers/finance; of insurance (both health and home); of pretty much anything in this country where the less well-connected or less wealthy are not being treated in a just manner.

Our apples have been stolen and we haven’t enough folks with good hearts and enough resources themselves to come and make us whole again.

The Economic War of Israel

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Edward Teller has one of the best posts up I’ve seen on the situation in Israel. There are ways of waging war that don’t require planes dropping bombs…

Max Blumenthal explains in the 2nd video  how control of food is tantamount to control of people.   A poignant point he makes was the destruction of the herds of Buffalo to starve out the Native Americans.  They were forced to adopt the grain-based diet including fry bread, which we now know is very unhealthy, especially if one is gluten intolerant.  As Blumenthal highlights, the Native Americans now have issues with diabetes.  I would go a step further and say this also may be linked to alcoholism….as I believe there is a link with diet and alcoholism.

Henry Kissinger’s words flashed in my mind as Blumenthal spoke of the Israelis destroying chickens, and other livestock so that the Palestinians could not provide for themselves.   More quotes of Henry Kissinger.

I skipped over the first video to see his take on the market.   When I viewed it, I was stunned, to say the least.  American rightwing talking points about President Obama not being a U.S. citizen, of being a Muslim, and calling him a n***er, etc.  Wow.  Just wow.   And the gal who said she was “politically aware” but didn’t know who Benjamin Netanyahu was? For real?

A ruling as damaging as Citizens United?

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Public Citizen has this up on a case before the U.S. Supreme court that could be as damaging as Citizens United, which made the inane ruling that corporations were people.

Good Grief, we already have the Kochs and Gates of the world whom are buying their kingdoms through crooks masquerading as politicians….and now we have another case of allowing mindboggling sums to campaigns:

In the case, the justices will consider whether to eliminate the limit on the total sum that people can give directly to candidates and political parties in a single election. The current overall limit for an individual making direct contributions to parties, political action committees (PACs) and federal candidates is $123,200 per two-year election cycle, but a win for the challengers in McCutcheon could allow total contributions above $7 million.

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A thought just popped in my mind–and this is in general, not just this lawsuit– what if we made it a rule that for every $7.50 (minimum wage) that a politician accepts in donations, they must work an hour in a soup kitchen/homeless shelter.   This would serve two purposes:  the politicians could no longer pretend they don’t know how bad things are for the poor, and they would see how low $7.50 an hour is…and perhaps raise it to $15.

Additionally, the politician would be less likely to accept the mega bucks in donations….they would think twice before allowing corporations to buy them.

Again, I’m wondering how far that money would go if given to more worthy causes–buying food for the hungry, putting up earthships, creating jobs, etc.

I posed that question towards my political science professor and he shrugged his shoulders and said “It’s really not that much…”

Tell that to someone who skips meals, has no home, no job.  Their perspective might be a little different….but they’re poor and don’t have a voice if campaign contributions are the gauge.

This just made me crack up laughing:

A relatively small number of people use contributions to maximize their leverage over elected officials.

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…not where I come from….the whole point of giving to campaigns is to wield influence over politicians.  I know of people who give to BOTH sides so they have an edge with whomever is elected.

 

Education under fire

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It is really hard to read all the news on Education.  It is depressing to no end.

Some of the bad news:

Disability scandal involving a charter school, with a scheme diverting $$$ towards their own pockets.  What is really sad is these mentally challenged children are viewed by these people with $$ in their eyes–just like the medical profession.  These children will receive the minimal of instruction to optimize the profit margin.

The moral and spiritual bankruptcy of corporate reformers.

The magical Michelle Rhee.

Arne Duncan blasts “armchair pundits”….just like John Kerry…a politician that thinks the public’s opinion doesn’t matter.  Duncan degrades the public as no-nothings not worth his time.  He ignores that educators are among the public who are speaking out against corporate profiteering of public schools.

Here’s a post disputing Bill Gates’ *cough* facts.  (hat tip Diane Ravitch)

Does anybody else see the irony of Gates, a college dropout, deliberately being deceptive on the numbers of college graduates in the U.S.?  Not only is he a hypocrite, but a lying one at that….

And again, it bears repeating over and over that a college degree is no guarantee of a job.  And there are those who do not want a degree but still need to be paid a living wage.

Gates’ money torpedoing public education through devious means.  $173 MILLION.   What a creep.

Heckuva job, reformers!

Indianapolis schools ground zero.  Yep.

This is just too, too ridiculous.  We have no toilet paper, but gee whiz, we have a shiny new sports arena!!

America to the highest bidder

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…while the nooz is busy distracting the American public with “shutting down the government” nonsense….America is quietly being sold to the highest bidder while taxpayers foot the bill.  Warning: probably not the thing to read while you’re eating.

 

Mark Fiore’s Cartoon of the nasty business:

 

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More dark money in government associated with the Kochs.   More here.   Further proof that the rich are not being taxed enough if they have this kind of money to throw around.

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Latest on the Raw Milk Wars.

Again, a person has a right to decide what goes into their body.  Right to Privacy.

A dairy farmer in my area told me that he drank raw milk every morning.  This was before my own education on it, and I was aghast that he would risk his health drinking unpasteurized milk.  Haha.  He was one wise man.

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Blog

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(PERSONAL BLOG)

I haven’t been blogging the past few days (writing, but not publishing) because the utter depravity of the food stamp fight was more than I could bear.  I was truly wondering whether to stop publishing….

Being poor doesn’t usually bother me to the point where I don’t want to blog–but this hit a little too close to home.  I resent being characterized as a no-good bum by people who are no good bums who get free haircuts, free parking, and coffee and complain because someone asks for food on the table….

More here.

And here.

Being poor has taught me so much,  which I know was the intent.  I have let go of the chains of thinking that my self-worth was wrapped up in what clothing I wore, the kind of car I drove, the house I had, or how much money I made.   Those, I discovered, were empty “calories” for want of a better word…that led to an emptiness of life.  Friends who like you because of your status will desert you when that status is lowered.   This was the second time I had gone through it (my first after my parents’ divorce).

It hit me the other day how badly I was treated after my parents’ divorce and the subsequent poverty I found myself in.  It hit me about the kids in school who may not have known their self-worth because they had not obtained the same status that I had previous to the poverty.  Before the divorce, I had people exclaim with delight, “Oh, you’re [popular doctor’s] daughter!”  After the divorce, these same people would treat me coldly.  Had I not known my previous life of self-worth (even if it was false)…had I not known that their treatment of me had nothing to do with me as a human being, but everything to do with my financial and social status….I perhaps would have felt as I imagine people who are poor their entire childhood (and perhaps life) feel when they don’t realize that they are not dirt because some idiot treats them that way–rather the person who treats them like dirt is the one with the problem.  And I’m not in any way trying to diminish how being treated that way affects one, as my opening statement attests to, but you can feel bad for awhile, but then get your second wind, hold your head up, and take a step forward.

It’s a hard lesson to learn–took me until my forties to realize all of that.  I let others define who I was and what worth I had.  Nobody gets to define who I am, what I am about, or what my soul’s worth is……which is really what you’re left when all the material things are stripped away…

 

 

The reality that you don’t hear about…

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…that the folks on food stamps can also be adjunct professors.  This has got to be one of the most sobering stories I’ve heard yet.  What the mainstream media won’t tell you is that college educated WORKING people are also in dire straits because the top 1% are taking it all for themselves, as we see in this case.

Note the comment where some administrator in a hospital gave herself a 90k bonus while paying low wages.

And other comments are blasting the university for her extremely low un-livable wages.   Good God.

Many ask why she didn’t have Medicare/Soc. Security at her age?  The article doesn’t tell us, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say she was probably making too much money as a professor for Social Security.  I don’t know about Medicare, but assuming they also have limits on how much they will pay for certain conditions, and if this was the second time that Margaret Mary had cancer, she had probably reached those limits.

They also ask the question of her being on assistance (food stamps, I presume?) .  Ooookay.  Um, let me explain something to those who think that food stamps are some sort of panacea–they’re NOT.  Even if she got food stamps, which we don’t know by this article, it still would not be enough.   Jaysus H., $10,000 a year?  That is less than a $1,000 per month, before taxes.    Who can survive on that??

Here’s the op-ed from Daniel Kovalik, who may have been the last person to talk to her.  What huge indignity for her (and anyone else who has to beg for food or medical care).

And here again we have the fight against unions for teachers…and a glaring point of why we need unionized teachers, because the administrators have their priorities in the wrong places (themselves and athletics):

While adjuncts at Duquesne overwhelmingly voted to join the United Steelworkers union a year ago, Duquesne has fought unionization, claiming that it should have a religious exemption. Duquesne has claimed that the unionization of adjuncts like Margaret Mary would somehow interfere with its mission to inculcate Catholic values among its students.

This would be news to Georgetown University — one of only two Catholic universities to make U.S. News & World Report’s list of top 25 universities — which just recognized its adjunct professors’ union, citing the Catholic Church’s social justice teachings, which favor labor unions.

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What is truly, truly, incredible was the heartless act of the university in calling the police after it was discovered she was sleeping in her office because her electricity was shut off.  Yeah, because Jesus would have tossed her out on her ass, too. /very snarky.
Lastly, let’s take a moment to acknowledge that Margaret Mary was a woman….women are more likely to be in poverty than men.

Statistically, women in America are more likely to be poor than men in all racial and ethnic backgrounds. With over 37 million people living in poverty, over half of them are adult single women. Surprisingly so, women in the U.S. are further behind in comparison to women in other areas of the world. This could be all connected to the gender wage gap, with women earning less money than their male counterparts, and the often expensive responsibility of raising children.

In a report entitled Living Below the Line: Economic Insecurity and America’s Families, lead authors Shawn McMahon and Jessica Horning found that 45 percent of American families live on incomes that fail to provide the basic economic security required to support their basic needs. In just four years, the overall financial insecurity rate rose from 38 percent to 45 percent with an increase in poverty of White children and unmarried couples. Children of color were also found at risk of economic security with more than three-quarters of Black children and three-quarters of Hispanic children facing poverty in their households.

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NOOOOO!!!!!!

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!!!!!!!!!!

Bill de Blasio is apparently blessed by the Clintons….he is in the circle.

Peter Beinart should do his freaking homework before writing such a long-winded article on politics….especially when it raises the hopes of those of us who are wise to the Clintons and want to see their grip on politics broken.