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Herckleperckle
Member
11-20-2003
| Monday, January 22, 2007 - 5:50 pm
Kar, I couldn't agree more. I don't understand the lack of empathy. To me, it has always meant the person has a problem with race or class. I don't know anything about the backgrounds of people posting here, but I truly don't understand the lack of charity. No one handed out equal brains, health and circumstances to each of us. So there is no equal footing. And tomorrow could bring about an entirely different circumstance for each of us. Heaven forbid that some of you (who are so critical of those needing help) ever have to depend on outside help to survive. And I would hope the world each of us would fashion if we could would not be one that only allows the strongest and smartest to survive.
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Karuuna
Board Administrator
08-31-2000
| Monday, January 22, 2007 - 6:29 pm
HP, I absolutely agree. We never know when the tide will turn, and we are unable to take care of ourselves. I watch so many elderly people these days, alone in the world, barely able to afford to eat, can't heat their homes. It makes me so sad that we care so little about them. And the same goes for the homeless or poor. In our town, there was a fight forever to keep a homeless shelter from being put anywhere in town. The argument was that it would attract homeless people here. Duh! They were already here! With the weather these past few weeks, it's completely unlivable outside. Now, instead of having slept in a shelter those nights, they are showing up in the emergency room with frostbitten feet, and some with gangrene already. It would have been far better for everyone to provide a place to sleep at night. Finally a downtown church agreed to take them in, and they've been so kind to them, it just makes me cry. Last Friday night I was there and one old gent had finally decided to quit drinking, but instead of seeking medical help, just did it cold turkey. Two days later, he had a seizure at the church/shelter. Thank God he was there and not out sleeping by the river.
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Chiliwilli
Member
09-04-2006
| Monday, January 22, 2007 - 6:37 pm
I don't think that many people thought the levees were unsafe. They had held in hurricanes before. If they didn't they should have. Fairbanks flooded once and I know if the flood project is safe or not and how it operates. Don't you think you should know about your own environment? I know they have tv's in NO. Do they not watch PBS? That's where I learned about the levee system there and that it hasn't been safe for a long time and that it would not survive a level 5 hurricane. That's why I blame the government of NO first and foremost. They knew that level wouldn't handle a big hurricane and they should have been making sure it got fixed. Link Link They did this with a first grade education and without speaking English. Did some of you not see this part. Immigrants come to this country every day and become wealthy because of their hard work and determination. IMO the welfare system was one of the worst things to happen to America. When you give people something for nothing that's exactly what they give back ~ nothing.
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Herckleperckle
Member
11-20-2003
| Monday, January 22, 2007 - 7:22 pm
Chiliwilli, Help given due to a crisis is a different animal than welfare, IMO. If the need for help were due to terrorism instead of a flood, would you feel the same way--that people should have been better prepared? Or that those who 'made' it afterwards, well and good for them; but those who could not, well, sorry, but that's the way it goes? I'd bet if you met 3 random families who still need help due to suffering from this NO mess--and really got to know them, you might change your tune. And perhaps you have an outdated idea of welfare. In Delaware (not sure if this is nationwide), those physically and mentally able to work must accept work (with which they are appropriately matched) before support of any kind is granted. If you were to close your mind to that, you could be compromising the health of young children who have no fault in the situation.
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Karuuna
Board Administrator
08-31-2000
| Monday, January 22, 2007 - 7:34 pm
Chili, as the saying goes, the exception does not prove the rule. Just because a few can make it against difficult odds, does not mean the majority can. This is the same argument that's made against folks who grow up in poverty. Yes, some succeed in spite of poor education, poor nutrition, etc. But many many more would succeed if the education, health care and food needs were met adequately. So, to me, it's no argument that this person here or there made it. To me, it's the fact that there are huge inequities and the *majority* of those who have deprived early lives will not be able to rise above it. They matter too, and our complicity in not providing basic needs can't be ignored.
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Pamy
Member
01-02-2002
| Monday, January 22, 2007 - 7:56 pm
plus the deductable on quake insurance here is something like 20,000....our insurance guy said technically it's the land here that is worth more than the actual house so as long as a quake doesnt make a hole here we could rebuild
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Chiliwilli
Member
09-04-2006
| Monday, January 22, 2007 - 8:02 pm
I don't think the immigrants who make a good life here are the exception. It's odd to me that people who were born and raised here can't make it when people who sneak in from other countries can become wealthy. The same opportunities are out there for anyone who wants them. Terrorism and natural disasters cannot be compared. Of course I wouldn't expect people to be prepared for terrorist acts. Who would? I do expect when you know you are living in a city that is sinking and hurricane prone to be prepared and be insured against what can happen.
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Puzzled
Member
08-27-2001
| Monday, January 22, 2007 - 8:51 pm
the *majority* of those who have deprived early lives will not be able to rise above it. They matter too, and our complicity in not providing basic needs can't be ignored. Exactly!
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Chiliwilli
Member
09-04-2006
| Monday, January 22, 2007 - 9:04 pm
All I'm saying is it's out there for anyone who wants it and is willing to put in the time and effort to pursue it.
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Herckleperckle
Member
11-20-2003
| Monday, January 22, 2007 - 9:33 pm
Katrina's Window Thinking some of you may find the 3rd and 4th bullets in this article enlightening.
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Herckleperckle
Member
11-20-2003
| Monday, January 22, 2007 - 9:44 pm
The Other America-Newsweek I recommend you read page 3, in particular.
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Maris
Member
03-28-2002
| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 8:35 am
As I recall the army corps of engineers shored up the levies back in the 50s and it turns out they made mistakes. The Army Corp of engineers has always been held up as the uncontested experts when it comes to designing levees, damns, and other infrastructures. Guess what? they make mistakes, like that damn in Kentucky that is in danger of collapsing and by the way, is now in danger of flooding Nashville among other cities. Nobody knew about this a week ago? The seriousnesss of the situation is not getting much airplay despite the army corp of engineers saying that Nashville should make evacuation plans. Let's say that dam breaks before they can lower the water levels in lake cumberland who do you blame? It is easy to blame the mayor of New Orleans for not evacuating quickly enough but nobody really believed that New Orleans would go under, despite decades of knowledge that the levee system might not hold up under a direct hit. Who will be blamed if Nashville goes under, despite the fact that they knew for years that water was seeping under that dam? Seems to me people ought to be questioning the army corp of engineers and looking at their plans with much more careful eyes. It isnt all about adding pork to bills in congress. I am sure that they were thrilled in kentucky to get a nice expensive dam, now the price will be paid for redirecting water and going against nature. It cant be done.
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Rehtse
Member
08-17-2005
| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 8:39 am
the *majority* of those who have deprived early lives will not be able to rise above it. They matter too, and our complicity in not providing basic needs can't be ignored. What basic needs are not being provided??? Welfare? Food stamps? Subsidized housing? Public education? Subsidized day care? Job training? Last time I checked, all of the above were available.
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Karuuna
Board Administrator
08-31-2000
| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 8:55 am
Rehtse, I don't know how it is where you are, but where I am, these needs are not being met. I've met with many folks who are living below the poverty line, and it's not happening. And they are working, they just are working at minimum wage type jobs which simply do not cover the normal expenses of living, even in modest ways. Subsidized day care is not available any more to welfare recipients, that was eliminated with Clinton's welfare reform. Health care and basic vaccinations have to be provided at no cost or low cost clinics, since health insurance is prohibitively high for low income workers. Subsidized housing has long waiting lists, often years. Where does someone live in the meantime? Job training is minimal and inadequate. We had someone who was trying to get such training through a county program. She was paid $5 an hour! And was limited to 20 hours a week. Who can live on that?? Public education in low income areas is substandard. When I worked with gangs in urban Denver, I visited their schools. The roofs leaked, the toilets didn't work, they had few textbooks; and the teachers paid out of their own pockets for basic needs like pencils and papers for the kids, because their families couldn't affford it. So, as far as I can see, no, basic needs are not being provided at all to our most vulnerable populations.
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Rehtse
Member
08-17-2005
| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 9:21 am
Karuuna, I am not trying to be mean-spirited, but I just don't "understand" how people could be so down and out and that not be their fault. In my family, when we were at most "dirt poor" stage (roughly 14 years in that hell hole), my parents each worked at times two jobs apiece. We never received day care, welfare, food stamps, health care (except vaccinations for school and subsidized prescription eye glasses). Out of 6 siblings, four of us have graduated from college and the my youngest sibling is in college now. We all attended inner-city schools. In my opinion, you can either die fighting or not fight at all. I know I sound elitist, but if people can't put food on the table for their kids to eat, then maybe they should use birth control. (I saw a show last night on TLC "Kids by the Dozen". This is a family with 16 kids. I gathered from the show that these people were doing alright without a fat check from the USA.) So, frankly I just flat out don't get it. When there is a will there is a way. I will say this: it is easy for me to sit here in my ivory tower and say this because I don't personally work with these people on a daily basis nor do I personally know anyone who is going through something like this. Perhaps if I worked in social services I might be sympathetic.
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Julieboo
Member
02-05-2002
| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 9:27 am
if people can't put food on the table for their kids to eat, then maybe they should use birth control. I always wondered that. I know when I was young and struggling and really really wanted children, I knew I would not be able to support them, so I made sure not to have them...
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Julieboo
Member
02-05-2002
| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 9:30 am
Is it fair to say that people who can't provide for children and then have them anyways, are just not educated enough?
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Karuuna
Board Administrator
08-31-2000
| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 10:06 am
Rehtse, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I can give you dozens of examples of how people end up down and out, but I'm not sure how it would help. I worked with women who left abusive spouses. They had children because they were married and thought they would stay married. Many of them did not have a college education, or job experience. They couldn't get a job for more than minimum wage without training. And no minimum wage job will pay rent, buy food and health insurance and car expenses and school expenses or day care etc for a single parent family. We use to be able to put them on welfare for two years, get them enrolled in an associate degree program, with welfare subsidized child care. When they came out, they could get jobs that were self supporting. But during the Clinton reform, that all went away. No child care, welfare for only two years. It made things worse in trying to get folks to be self supporting, not better. I have a friend who wanted to work; but he was struggling. He got free treatment for depression, but it turns out he was a latent bipolar. The antidepressants brought on full bipolar disease, and he was hospitalized for a week. He lost job after job because he was unable to work. He has no family. When he came out of the hospital, he had nowhere to go, and no money. It took years to find the right combo of drugs for him to be able to just function, let alone hold down a job. For the vast majority of that time, he was homeless. For some period of time he got disability, but it was not enough to pay rent and buy food. Eventually our church took him on as a project and helped him get back on his feet. Without help, who knows where he would have ended up. Sometimes the deck is just stacked against people. Health problems, substandard education, a life of poverty, no family, the list goes on and on. My parents were immigrants too. They made well of their lives on only an eighth grade education. I was lucky that they could live in a nice neighborhood. But they had issues of their own, mental illness and alcoholism. My brother died of alcoholism at only 39. Some people can rise above their circumstances on their own. Some people need help. I guess I just don't understand why it's so hard to understand that?
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Beachcomber
Member
08-26-2003
| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 10:25 am
Why can't the government come up with a WPA program again? It did a lot of good for starving poor people and created some beautiful and useful works, such as the Blue Ridge Parkway and transcriptions/indexes of old census records. I hope that each and everyone of us who can contributes to a charity that supports the elderly and children. Meals on Wheels is a wonderful one since it takes meals daily to elderly shutins. We need more individual charitable giving in our communities since the government cannot address all of the needs of poor individuals.
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Chiliwilli
Member
09-04-2006
| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 10:26 am
I know I sound elitist, but if people can't put food on the table for their kids to eat, then maybe they should use birth control. Amen to that. The year my oldest son was 1 I made a grand total of $6,500. Without welfare or any other help I managed to support the both of us. The IRS in their ultimate wisdom audited me because they said I was cheating. They said there was no way I could have possibly supported the both of us on that amount without help. They said I took the earned income credit fraudulently and could not deduct my child care costs because I had to have other income somewhere that was undeclared or I had help and therefore was not the head of household. I had a room mate in a two bedroom apartment who paid half the rent. They tried to use that against me also. To make a long story short I finally told them the federal government allows $750 deduction for each dependent so therefore they are saying that's all I need to make to support a child plus $750 for myself. We must have been living high on the hog. They dropped the audit. My point is I've been there and done it without costing the tax payers a dime of their hard earned money. Others can too if they want to bad enough or they can just take the easy way out. I realize there are some who can't but the majority can.
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Wargod
Moderator
07-16-2001
| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 10:33 am
Not everyones poor before they have kids. I didn't know what the word poor meant til I was five and we left my father. She immediately started working two part time jobs and going to nursing school full time. About the only time we saw her was standing in line for cheese from the government To this day I can't buy cheese unless it's shredded or sliced, but we sure didn't complain because sometimes that's all there was to eat. I was 9 when she graduated nursing school and things got a little better, but still plenty of struggling for a single mom with two kids making $9 an hour who had student loans to pay off. When step dad entered the picture the next year, things got good for a while. Of course he worked in the areospace industry in the 80's and 90's so that didn't last too long. He worked for Lockheed, got laid off, worked for Lockheed, got laid off. Work for a couple years, then be laid off. At that time around here most the kids i knew were in the same situation, some having both parents working for aerospace. During lay offs jobs were scarce and those were minimum wage. Families didn't have a chance to catch a break because even when they got rehired, they were still paying for the time they'd been laid off and running up debt. I remember my childhood being one of laughing and fun, but I also remember the darker times, going to bed hungry cuz it was either food for the week or electricity and the only food we were getting was what the school gave us for free. Or having my uncle, who was also a nurse, stitching up my finger in the living room because we didn't have medical insurance. It wasn't just us, I have a group of old, old friends and when we get together we can still play the 1,001 ways to eat top ramen game as we trade I was so poor that stories. Some people are born into poverty and some are forced into it and its not always as easy as if they can't afford kids don't have them. It absolutely amazes me that its 2007 and people still have to make the decision between medical insurance and rent, paying the utilities or putting food on the table. In some ways I think we were lucky. We usually had a place to live, when step dad was working a job that paid well we sometimes had extra money to do fun stuff, and crappy or not, we had government cheese and top ramen to eat during the bad times, might not have been good food but it was food. Even when he was laid off, mom was always working, which kept us from outright starving to death or being homeless. When we first moved out here, Welfare allowed her to pay bills so she was able to take crappy part time jobs to go to school while my grandmother grudgingly let us live with her and friends/family watched my sister and I for free. She wouldn't have been able to complete school without that help. Alot of people aren't that lucky and have to make do with less than what we had. They don't have the option of moving in with family or free child care. Alot of people are just stuck, before and after kids, with very few options and just trying to make it through life without their kids starving and having no where to live.
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Rehtse
Member
08-17-2005
| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 10:54 am
It is hard because I have worked for the things I have. I have been beat down by society too, but every time I have been knocked down I get up. I don't think that I am more intelligent than others, I just work hard. Fear of working in factories and breaking my back kept me motivated. (Incidentally, just as I was a victim of child abuse at the hands of a stranger, my mother from time to time would beat the heck out of us. I know she did this because this was all that she knew and because poverty sometimes brings out the worst in people. However, I don't stand around and say, "Oh please help me because I've had a tough life." The examples that you list are heart-warming (especially the VAWA person), but what of the woman who's on welfare and has five children from five baby daddys? I am just advocating personal accountability.
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Karuuna
Board Administrator
08-31-2000
| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 11:05 am
Rehtse, I have no problem with advocating personal responsibility either. As Wargod eloquently pointed out, often people who are working very hard have a hard time getting ahead, and even making ends meet for the barest of necessities. I have no doubt that there are some folks who abuse the system, and need some heavy motivation to get off and get self sufficient. I've met some. But the majority of the people that I see that are struggling are trying. It was amazing to me that when i worked with some of those moms that they couldn't balance a checkbook and even after several lessons, they still had a very difficult time of it. Imagine running a household, living within a budget, navigating the myriad of government regulations etc, if you can't even add and subtract reliably. They couldn't fill out, let alone read lease agreements. I do think you are far more intelligent than most. In my experience, many many of the people I've worked with could not even construct a simple sentence in writing.
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Zachsmom
Member
07-13-2000
| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 11:07 am
Then I think men should step up and pay child support so the woman doesn't have to collect welfare. If none of those 5 men are helping her, then by all means we as a society should help her. I do believe the woman in your example is very rare. There are many reason why people fall on hard times. Shit happens. It's called life.
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Scooterrific
Member
07-08-2005
| Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 11:11 am
ZM, when a woman is on welfare the state finds the men and they do pay child support. Don't even get me started on this! <runs screaming>
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