There are many conflicts in the current Christian Republican thinking concerning the welfare system. It is my understanding that the majority of Christian Republicans (CR) feel that there are too many cheaters on the system, that those on welfare procreate at free will and are creating large numbers of welfare recipients that burden the system, that recipients are lazy and don't want to work nor have they paid enough into the system to receive benefits.
The majority of welfare recipients are women, children, and elderly people. While there is no doubt that you can hunt up a few people that cheat the system, they are not representative of the average recipient, they are VERY FEW! Yet the majority of policy is directed at those very few while undercutting and making miserable the remaining needy.
The women with children that make up the majority of the welfare roles are in a difficult position. They must find a way to work, if possible, while rearing children, generally on a single person's income. If the woman can identify the man that has responsibility towards these children he is brought into the picture through the child maintenance programs. If both parents are minimum wage earners, their paychecks are horribly burdened with child responsibilities. If the parents live apart, the man's full wages can be garnered leaving him no way to support himself until the children have graduated from high school. It is easier for the man to disappear than to try to survive under the load. When this happens, the woman must face the option of giving her children up to the state to support them. However, the chances of the state actually finding a home for individual children above 1 year of age is close to zero, so the state feels that the mother should remain with her children if possible. Yet, if the woman works at a minimum wage job, she is hardly capable of supporting her children with any success because the wages are less than necessary to cover the daily needs of an individual much less a family. AND the woman isn't allowed to receive benefits from welfare because her income is too high!
Take the welfare mom that attempts 2 jobs. Her children are reared by the community or within the family, usually with little intervention and support. Many of these families still live in more hostile environments are are subjected to the goals of the "hood" like drugs, thieving, prostitution. These issues come to mind because they are the most obvious forms of coping with lack of reasonable resources from a society that has turned its back. Children reared in this environment will most likely, though not always succumb to it. Coupled with lesser schools, they have little recourse to find a way out. These children will make their way into the prison system. This IS a goal of Republican spending....we just don't want THAT element tainting OUR society.
I have heard the complaint that the welfare mother should have to work. If she does it will often take two jobs to make enough money to care for the children is a decent environment. Many woman are willing to commit to this kind of labor to provide for their children but who is looking after the kids? Faced with low wages, the remaining parent is most likely going to have to compromise and work one job while giving up nicer low income neighborhoods for a more hostile environment. Although the mother may be able to spend some time with the kids, she will have the alternative issues of dealing with the neighbors of the lower income environment where drugs, poor schools, and prostitution have taken root. AND she does this with less than support from her community; instead the community burdens her with dejection and complaint. Who is she to have children.
Have we forgotten that sex is a biological need? I am an educated woman. I had 3 children taking every precaution to not have them and with the use of birth control methods less than the pill, I became pregnant using 3 separate forms of lesser birth control. Are you saying that welfare recipients have no right to have sex? Perhaps we should hand out welfare checks with a chastity belt? But even that wouldn't work. Some man with needs would find his way around that and since women are considered little more than a masturbation station for men, no woman is safe from the consequences.
Recently, the Republican house voted to stop funding for Planned Parenthood. How are the welfare mothers supposed to get care during and after their pregnancies or for their children? How do they not have children if you have taken away their primary source of condoms and birth control? Expect the welfare population to increase. Take away a welfare woman's ability to get medical care for herself or her children, increase the time spent outside of the workforce and risk losing that minimum wage job.
Last you ask whether these people have paid their dues or taxes that they deserve to receive benefits from society. I assure you that those who have suffered poverty and have ever worked pay a far greater portion of their income to taxes in purchases than does the average citizen and they receive the benefits of society in far smaller portions does the average person. Add to that the costs of poverty: paying more for the same goods and services because of the high price of theft in their communities, paying late fees to bills because their paycheck doesn't arrive conveniently, or by paying interest because they pay for things over time. Being poor carries with it very high fiscal costs that most people never consider. Beyond that there is an even greater cost, that is the cost to society for waning property values and tax income in low income neighborhoods, the cost of inefficient schools, the cost of police services, criminal justice systems, prison systems, the lack of prepared workers in the workforce, the cost of political jockeying to resolve these issues. No one deserves this amount of ridicule, intolerance, and neglect. We all need equally and we all deserve an equal chance at success.
************
I would like to make two side notes to the parties I am directing this discussion toward as you are an anomaly of great conflict: the Republicans and the Christians. It is pure anathema that you have joined forces.
Republicans:
Your interest has never been to reduce government control, it has been to high jack the budget and place the money into the hands of your cronies, friends and family so that you can control government and reap the benefits of the money. You wrongly believe that promoting the economy is the way to maximize the monetary system, promote free trade but all you do is promote greed within the system and create an inefficient government an new form of aristocracy. The old guard knew something that you don't understand- that they had to provide for everyone and that it was their obligation to do so as a trustee for society.
Christians:
I wonder everyday how anyone of you can call yourselves Christians. Wasn't Jesus the one out feeding bread to the downtrodden? Did he threaten and despise the poor? Where does all this shame, ridicule, and intolerance reside? Don't you have an imperative within your own sects to help one another? Have you considered just how many welfare recipients ARE Christian? You should be ashamed of yourselves.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
how do we release pressure on the lid of a political pressure cooker?
There is an incredible amount of interesting revolutions taking place across the globe! Egypt has peacefully removed it's leader by simply demanding that their leader leave. Tunisians rioted until the prime minister took control of the country from their leader and his strong arm. Libyans are protesting for the removal of their violent dictator, Gaddafy. Wisconsin is rioting over the loss of teacher and emergency support retirement pay. American governments and government entities are struggling to find ways to pay for their services. Many governments and individuals are faced with inevitable insolvency and bankruptcy.
A new development concerning the handling of former leaders and their massed fortunes seems to be that they are freezing the assets of these individuals recognizing that the money may actually belong to someone else and that it was taken unlawfully. Additionally, the UN and individual countries are scrambling to decide how they will approach new leadership and old. I'm sure those countries with the largest oil reserves will get the most and quickest attention.
The Governor of Wisconsin has been accused of bringing in agitators attempting to break down the unity of protesters. Not only does that bring to mind Pinkerton Security forces historically known to infiltrate labor union disputes in the 1800s during the western expansion of this country, but it causes me to question the potential of any group to manipulate political opportunities during periods of unrest like we are experiencing globally. Groups like this have long been dismantling African attempts at peace or political direction while the first world reaps the benefit of harvesting Africa's resources. It also brings to mind the fear of a potential for corporate mercenary armies to become the new political force operating in politically unstable areas.
Among all of these conflicts, economic instability, unemployment, and political corruption have contributed to the downfall of political forces. An unusually high number of youth, out of work and uncared for, has contributed to more than one of these revolts.
In the United States, monopolization of media sources (news reporting, editorial commentary, and I shudder to think- reality tv) create new buzz words while focusing on historical sore points to increase political splintering. Hate groups are a burgeoning new force. We are simultaneously kept ignorant of many facts like the actual number of people unemployed because statistics have become a shell game. Many people have simply fallen off the statistical radar, and outside of political discussion, because the driving force of assessment has become strictly political and is no longer a tool of simple inventory.
Political parties have thrown political civility out the window in favor of exposing, often creating, wrong doing while capitalizing on hate campaigns. More unfortunate is the lack of one side to speak the other side's issues in honest and direct ways. New parties are moving in to compensate for the lack of political leverage or productive movement. These parties add to the level of frustration for individuals but because they are ideologically formed from the existing political arm to address government issues, they completely miss addressing a primary concern, that of a capitalist economy.
Capitalist forces of industry, large corporations, labor forces and unions, banks, stock market, have left the American industrial market in favor of third world labor forces, without paying any tariff or tax to this country, because they seek what they call unregulated manufacturing. In essence, they have stiffed their primary purchasing market leaving the American worker with no job, and no salary to purchase the coveted items that industry hopes to sell. America is an abandoned market. Newly manufactured goods reach the world without the promise of health and safety, and without a stable market as they are substandard and simply eat up resources without having longevity.
Subsequently, the forces of industry have been found to have failed in self regulation. Resting on government bailouts, they continue to be self serving and care little for the taxpayer that aided them when in need. The economy is highly volatile.
I could continue on in the historical disadvantages of being an American at this point it time but i am ready to retch this far into the discussion.
------------------
I am not knowledgeable enough in the individual histories of these rioting places or their individual fights to speak about nuances and possible outcomes. But under the common pressure cooker of economic instability, unemployment, and corruption I find myself wanting to look more deeply into the failures of our systems that currently leave us on this doorstep and to examine what it is that all human beings need to unify peacefully and cooperatively. So in favor of a creative process instead of a the destructive process that is going on, I want to work toward an understanding of the need for government and creating the political and economic forces that will rely on it.
And knowing that I just can't shut myself up on certain smaller skirmishes, I suppose I have to acknowledge that I will continue to rail about what I perceive as injustices in our current situation . . .but it's MY soapbox.
A new development concerning the handling of former leaders and their massed fortunes seems to be that they are freezing the assets of these individuals recognizing that the money may actually belong to someone else and that it was taken unlawfully. Additionally, the UN and individual countries are scrambling to decide how they will approach new leadership and old. I'm sure those countries with the largest oil reserves will get the most and quickest attention.
The Governor of Wisconsin has been accused of bringing in agitators attempting to break down the unity of protesters. Not only does that bring to mind Pinkerton Security forces historically known to infiltrate labor union disputes in the 1800s during the western expansion of this country, but it causes me to question the potential of any group to manipulate political opportunities during periods of unrest like we are experiencing globally. Groups like this have long been dismantling African attempts at peace or political direction while the first world reaps the benefit of harvesting Africa's resources. It also brings to mind the fear of a potential for corporate mercenary armies to become the new political force operating in politically unstable areas.
Among all of these conflicts, economic instability, unemployment, and political corruption have contributed to the downfall of political forces. An unusually high number of youth, out of work and uncared for, has contributed to more than one of these revolts.
In the United States, monopolization of media sources (news reporting, editorial commentary, and I shudder to think- reality tv) create new buzz words while focusing on historical sore points to increase political splintering. Hate groups are a burgeoning new force. We are simultaneously kept ignorant of many facts like the actual number of people unemployed because statistics have become a shell game. Many people have simply fallen off the statistical radar, and outside of political discussion, because the driving force of assessment has become strictly political and is no longer a tool of simple inventory.
Political parties have thrown political civility out the window in favor of exposing, often creating, wrong doing while capitalizing on hate campaigns. More unfortunate is the lack of one side to speak the other side's issues in honest and direct ways. New parties are moving in to compensate for the lack of political leverage or productive movement. These parties add to the level of frustration for individuals but because they are ideologically formed from the existing political arm to address government issues, they completely miss addressing a primary concern, that of a capitalist economy.
Capitalist forces of industry, large corporations, labor forces and unions, banks, stock market, have left the American industrial market in favor of third world labor forces, without paying any tariff or tax to this country, because they seek what they call unregulated manufacturing. In essence, they have stiffed their primary purchasing market leaving the American worker with no job, and no salary to purchase the coveted items that industry hopes to sell. America is an abandoned market. Newly manufactured goods reach the world without the promise of health and safety, and without a stable market as they are substandard and simply eat up resources without having longevity.
Subsequently, the forces of industry have been found to have failed in self regulation. Resting on government bailouts, they continue to be self serving and care little for the taxpayer that aided them when in need. The economy is highly volatile.
I could continue on in the historical disadvantages of being an American at this point it time but i am ready to retch this far into the discussion.
------------------
I am not knowledgeable enough in the individual histories of these rioting places or their individual fights to speak about nuances and possible outcomes. But under the common pressure cooker of economic instability, unemployment, and corruption I find myself wanting to look more deeply into the failures of our systems that currently leave us on this doorstep and to examine what it is that all human beings need to unify peacefully and cooperatively. So in favor of a creative process instead of a the destructive process that is going on, I want to work toward an understanding of the need for government and creating the political and economic forces that will rely on it.
And knowing that I just can't shut myself up on certain smaller skirmishes, I suppose I have to acknowledge that I will continue to rail about what I perceive as injustices in our current situation . . .but it's MY soapbox.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)