mntleo2
mntleo2's JournalI Use These Programs
...and it is wonderful for needy families whose kids need it for their schooling and socialization. As an elder 300% below the poverty level, I have been able to attend my religious activities, meetings through Zoom nationally as well as locally with my volunteer work, and keep contact with loved ones. This is not just nice for me, but nice for others. I also use the free phone system.
The Telecommunications Act, passed in 1996, mandates that funding goes to "the digital Divide," for low income individuals and families. Thus the labs in libraries and local computer, labs within schools and communities was a beginning. As the need for this program to further advance and needed, this mandate has made it important to call the Internet become a "utility" meaning that it has to be categorized and funded in order for ALL to partake in order to be a fair and needed resource.
I am not sure if the Internet is now called a "utility" but many have called for it. Telephones have long been subsidized, but now with the need for wireless, this also needs to be called a ":Utility" as well ~ and is funded ,since the beginning of the Obama administration.
I am an activist for the Digital Divide among other issues but it has been a long haul. And never forget that thru the Telecommunications Act this has allocated $millions to the large phone and Internet companies for them to create this service too. If you really want to know how this money was spent you have a right to view the budget and records and then speak to your state, county and city councils.
That greedy people have hacked this funding is beyond evil. IN the 1970s there were greedy construction companies who bilked the government out of $millions. It was called HUD's 235 and it was so the low income could buy their own homes instead of rent. When those S.O.B.s did that, instead of going after them the government shut the whole program down and gave the money to wealthy landlords in order for them to rent these homes for lower cost.
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
Hope this helps
Cat in Seattle
Yes
Statistics like 300% are used all the time by politicians and wonks even though you are correct, there is nothing higher than 100%. But multiply that 100% X those who pay the lowest and that is what I pay. Actually I was low balling this percentage. In my state Bill Gates pays about 2% of his $billions, I pay 18% in our income. I am actually paying 900% more by these numbers. See?
And yes, states pay plenty of revenue to the feds in order to BE a state, a tiny amount through corporate taxes and other resources ~ and yes, paid by We The People. The reason for this is myriad. In my state Boeing, which was founded and paid for by We The People in this state did not pay one cent in corporate taxes for the past 2 decades. Who paid in their place then? Oh yes, cook the books so as not to pay any taxes so where that money comes is ~ from where?
You guessed it, We The People again.
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-sources-revenue-federal-government
Just saying here is where this money comes from ~ And most certainly, it is *not* the rich or their money sucking, polluting, slave laboring corporations. Thus because of this situation the poor pay the highest percentage of their incomers in every single state. Here is my state but you can look up yours there as well. https://itep.org/whopays/washington/
My (way more than) 2 cents
Cat in Seattle
Erm as someone over 300% below the poverty line
I pay upwards of 18% of my meager income in taxes. Http://www.itep.org/whopays. I live in WA State, and two of the richest men in the world live here. They pay less than 2% of their $billions in taxes. If just one of them paid the 18+% I pay, they would still have over $70+billion to "eke" out their living AND would take care of the deficits we have. And anybody who dares to try to tell the poor they don't pay federal taxes just state taxes, well yes we do as state's revenues go to the feds as well. Rick Scott is a GOP tool who needs to pay what the poor pays or STFU!
40+ years smoker
...today I am almost 3 years smoke-free. However, I am not going to pretend I had some magic will power or anything. I got really, really sick with the terrible flu (and I had the flu shot). I was down for the count in bed for a week and a half. I was feeling a little better and decided to go outside to smoke (I did not smoke indoors).
I was coughing so hard it hurt and on the way to the door, I said to myself, "Self, you have gotten through the worst of withdrawal, sooooo do you want to start that back up now? You are going to hurt like hell with all the coughing you will endure. You've been out of it for over a week and over the worst part of recovery is over. If you go out there you will once again restart that habit, and hate yourself for being such a fool."
My answer was, "Errrrmmm no I do not want to start that habit again, thank-you very much!" So I went back to bed for another week of sleep and never touched tobacco again. However many smoke-free people hate the smell of the smoke after quitting. Not me. I still like second-hand smoke for some reason. So I tell my loved ones it is ok if some of their smoke comes to me.
I also went to Tobacco Anonymous online for awhile. That was just to commiserate with other ex-smokers, but most of them were still smoking. I understood the struggling with the habit, I could relate all right, but I still wanted to talk about how much I miss my old friend tobacco with others who might feel the same. BTW they are a nice group of folks to hang out with online if you want to go to people who understand the struggle. Google them if you want some support.
I sometimes have a half thought I want to smoke, but it usually lasts for a sum total of 20 seconds. I sometimes still go out and hang with the smokers during a break or with the family who smokes. I do this because some of the most stimulating conversations goes on there plus i like the smoke. That circle is where you often get the news you would not get otherwise.
Cat in Seattle
All too clear these protesters should ...
...be hopping up on the stage and disrupting the REAL elitists who secretly and not so secretly hate them. Where were these brave souls at the Republican debates where every single one of those standing on the stage are known bigots (including their one black token who is classist himself)? Are they too scared to speak to these elitists but prefer to go and pick on one of their safer allies instead who would not ridicule them, hurt them, or ignore what they are saying as those in that debate last week? What other candidate has the same campaign platform on either side that is almost exactly the same as BLM? NOBODY. Who is hopping on those stages of the ones who are actively destroying them? NOBODY
I get their complaints and believe they are right about the lack of support and respect ~ believe me I have seen and lived it for over 30 years as an activist! My challenge for BLM is to stand up to those who have spent their lives destroying people's lives instead of the ones who are with them. As a long time activist I can tell you they are shooting themselves in the foot. They are losing people like me who has spent my life in the social justice movement, I am the mother to minority kids who has lost jobs, lost friends and even lost family for speaking truth to power. But sorry I think it is rather weak of BLM to attack their allies instead of going after their true enemies.
BLM has allowed only two weeks since Netroots Nation for Senator Sanders to hire more minorities as they requested, which he is doing and they demand that he move faster.
Finally I have to observe if BLM wants real representation it should be noted we have no other black or minioroty candidates running for president this year except a Jewish man. Where are they, there are plenty of very good prospects yet not ONE of them has stepped to the plate. Not enough funding the reason for not running? Neither did Senator Sanders, with no $Billionaire sugar daddies he depends on $5 contributions for his campaign. This could happen the same with ANY qualified minority candidate and there is nothing but crickets.
I am *not* trying to silence these energetic young people who are doing what many of us have tried to do for years. But I am saying they need to stop hurting the ones who support them and instead go after the ones who in some cases literally have actively sought their demise. Believe me they would have lots of support by people who have stood with them for decades, but to attack us is not the answer. Go attack those who have not done one thing for them and who have actively worked to create MORE damage instead. Oh you know who we are that have always been there as support for BLM, people like Senator Sanders who marched with MLK, people like me who raised kids, taught, spoke and worked with people of all cultures, who have family members who I love that are minorities, you know, people who "are not affected" when we see what we have spoken to for decades...
My 2 cents,
Cat in Seattle
Yeah with Mcjobs ~ Cmon!
I can tell you as a fact, Welfare DeFormed forced mostly single mothers in to permanent abject poverty. Do you know who wrote that bill? Robert Rector from the Heritage Foundation. Do you know why? Let me tell you a little story about Mr Rector and his ilk:
In the early 1990s Mr Rector attended a community meeting in DC where some African American women who were graduates of George Washington University kicked his ass in debate. So he ran home crying and wrote "The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Act" (the REAL name of Welfare DeFormed) ~ perhaps the most ironically named bill since it was written and signed into law by some of the most irresponsible white men ever.
After licking his wounds Rector decided the "outrage" was because these women, mostly single African American mothers, had been "using the System" by being on Welfare and attending college and getting a higher education. He had *no* such problem with his rich friends sitting around their pools collecting tax free dividends ~ but these uppity women? This had to be fixed!
Know who those women were? They were women who had fled the Southern countryside from communities where their only hope was to be maids and cooks in "The Big House" for the likes of Rector and his species ~ where Rector thought they belonged. Certainly not Doctors, lawyers and policy makers!
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Act forbids the poor and single moms from attending college. Under its mandates and while HRC was in the Senate, she applauded when Rudy Gulillani undermined good unions jobs by replacing them with "welfare to work" participants who worked for less than 50 cents an hour. This spread to other parts of the country and are in affect to this day. She stood by while her own constituents threw waffles at her NYC office because she "waffled" on the policies harming their families and refused to make a stand for these participants to get decent wages and access to college.
And now more than 20 years later and another generation that has grown up under these ghastly conditions, they are still in affect ~ and HRC nor any of her friends have done a thing about it. They do not have a clue about what happened to these people, the only thing they count is how the welfare rolls have dropped ~ they do not want to see where these people went. Well I know where they went ~ into the ghettos, into chronic homelessness, into dead end McJobs, into early deaths from horrid working conditions, their ghettos with polluted environments infesting their children. I know because I have been attending to these things and speaking about them for over 30 years ~ while it falls on deaf ears.
So sure, "Unemployment plummeted". Yeah right. To flood the market with McJobs that did not even pay the rent.
We tried to tell you people that this law was using the poor as canaries in the mine and that the middle class was next ~ were we heard then? Hell no! Now when the upper classes have been kicked in the ass they are whining, "B-b-b-ut I worked haaard!" Like the poor didn't work hard too? God damn bet they did!
Furthermore Rector did not even know what real "work" is nor will these elitists, including HRC ever get it until they humble themselves and realize the truth about what work is and isn't. Often I hear from people that well, "They shouldn't have to support other people's children..."
I ask them, "Then with your thinking, why should our kids support YOU with the Social Security and Medicare they will pay, with your wars they will fight and die in, with your infrastructure, and with YOU when you can no longer care for yourself? With that thinking then our kids should give all that money coming out of their paychecks to US and to hell with you, since we did all the work and sacrifice raising them without any support, right?" They always slink away with that response because they know it is true... whether or not they choose to have children of their own, these kids from the generations that come after them, WILL support them and they know it. Who the hell do they think is doing the hard work to raise these children for their comforts? Casper The Friendly Ghost?
Furthermore those few well paying "jooooobs" went away with a puff of smoke after all of them were exported overseas ~ and now thanks to "The Personal Responsibilities and Work Opportunist Act (Welfare DeFormed) those in poverty do not have a chance in hell to escape their plight ~ and these conditions are pulling the middle class down with them since now all those "McJooooobs" are the only thing there is.
Just ask HRC's Walmart CEO friends from the board she was on about how much they have profited with tax breaks and all the goodies they have enjoyed from the poverty and suffering they impose on their hard working employees whom they lock into their stores and force them to work for free.
Give. Me. A. Break.
Cat in Seattle long time activist of 30+ years for our Social Safety Net and
Board member of POWER, http://www.mamapower.org
Oh and PeeEss:
Here are some wonky links to give proof of what I am saying. My best and most definitive information was taken from The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. This organization does their homework (Robert Wexler is their Director).
Evidence for keeping Families together: http://nccpr.info/the-evidence-is-in-foster-care-vs-keeping-families-together-the-definitive-studies/
Here is the original study for the above: http://www.mit.edu/~jjdoyle/fostercare_aer.pdf
Child Abuse after being taken: Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare BY Dorothy E Roberts is a in depth study of children who have been removed from their families and the evidence of how badly it fails.
ABC News Report: Foster-Care System Stretched Too Far http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=130266
http://www.buzzfeed.com/aramroston/fostering-profits#.hpRAzpz35
I have lots more info I can give but the facts have been documented for decades ~ and are studiously ignored because of the mega-funding that pays far more to gatekeepers who benefit more if they get funding for removing children from their homes rather than giving the family services that could improve their lives, not destroy them.
My 2 cents (again),
Cat in Seattle
It is also a "solution" to families in poverty
While they keep cutting the "discretionary" budgets like TANF ~ and pouring more money into taking kids as a way to "protect" them. The going philosophy is that, by ripping kids from their families and placing them in upper class homes will then "cure" these children's poverty. But in fact these kids have a 7-10X more likely chance they will be physically, sexually, and emotionally abused in foster care and Adoption than if left with family with services. Adoption and Foster Care system damages children for life ~ even in "good" homes, if they have been taken from birth they often grieve for the rest of their lives because they have no roots. This removal causes a lifelong syndrome called "Reactive Detachment Disorder" (RAD) where they are unable to trust or create loving bonds with others because they have not been given the care all kids need in order to grow up to form healthy relationships as adults. BTW RAD is incurable...
In addition to the $millions they already get from Social Security, CPS actually goes in and leaches more than 30% out of the budgets for TANF, food stamps, housing, and medical budgets as well. This funding is what the poorest of poor have to turn to when they are desperate ~ as being desperate is the *only* way they can get any support. Then governors go in front of the camera and cry because they signed budgets that keep cutting these resources and giving it away to CPS knowing full well they are literally taking food out of the mouths of babes.
It indisputably costs 1000% less to support families than it does to take these kids ~ and believe me policy makers, legislators and executive people well know it ~ and do not care. But as you may see, with the "more kids you take" mandates, well who cares about destroying thousands of kids a year and devastating their families when DFS and the courts will get far more money if they take kids instead of "enabling" these kids and their families?
If anyone wants change for this travesty, then they can write to the US Congress Ways and Means Committee Human Services subcommittee responsible for allocating this money and changing those mandates. Tell them that you are well aware that less than 85% of the children are truly abused and that it works far better to support families with services than bankrolling $10,000s per month to the agencies and corporations spending all their resources and time in destroying families. Tell them that only in the most dire of cases should children be removed from their families and this casual and very hostile treatment of those 85% only destroys their families and makes things worse for these kids.
Here is the website with contact information as to how to contact them: http://waysandmeans.house.gov/subcommittee/human-resources/
My 2 cents
Cat in Seattle
This is not just about cops, it is about CPS funding
Been writing about this for awhile. it was unbelievable to me ~ until I heard the truth straight from legislators and policy makers, both state and federal who admitted the truth. I know it sounds like something out of an Alex Jones story but believe me I have been a witness in the US Congress, an attendee at policy meetings both in states and US DSHS meetings, obtained FOIA budget and policy information, and am also a winner of a lawsuit proving that CPS and CASA workers lied through their teeth with false allegations and fraudulent actions, and intentional infliction of pain in order to cause more damage.
Follow the money as they say ... Let me tell you how this budgeting works that translates into why this woman's kids were taken:
Title 1V funding, which comes out of Social Security, is about taking children for cash ~ not making this up. In order to to get this money the mandates for any state's Family Service departments, for-profit contractors, the medical industry mega-nonprofits, family courts, and adoption agencies says in essence: "...The more kids you take, the more money you will make and if you return these children to their families you with lose any and present and future funding for those returned kids..." . Social Security will grant these people between $8000-$10,000 per child per month. I am not making this up ~ I wish I were!
What these mandates mean on the ground is that every department involved including the police, the courts, DFS agencies and their contracted minions, non-profits, adoption agencies, they have a financial interest in taking taking children and putting them in foster care because they get bucco bucks for it.
Children's services and their cohorts have been taking advantage of people's preoccupation with child abuse ~ when they know for a fact that less than 15% of these children they take are truly bused ~ the other 85% are taken for profit based on their "concern". They will give money and resources to anyone and everyone BUT these children's families ~ pretending that if they support them they are "enabling" the family and that in order not to do that, they say taking them is "in the best interest of the child" ~ a broad term liberally used every day successfully in court. They also know that if they returned these children back to their homes and gave services, that returned children have a far better chance of succeeding than if left in foster care or are adopted even when the parents have substance abuse issues.
This woman was a prime target and they know whether it is ridiculous or not, this is fine with them just as long as they get their "more kids you take" funding. I could write so much more and have about the sordid details I have discovered ~ but I am not a "real" journalist with credentials. Still, let me tell you there have been hours and many difficulties I have been through to get this documentation and it is as ardent as any journalist as far as discovering the truth.
PM me if anyone wants to know more ...
My 2 cents,
Cat in Seattle
They do not know how to define real "WORK"
What is "work"? Is it sitting on your ass by your pool while collecting your tax free dividends? No!
Raising children IS "work" and it contributes to our communities in many ways. Often as an activist when I speak about poverty, someone will inevitably say with a great deal of self righteousness, "Why should I support somebody else's kids? Here is my answer:
"Let's turn this around Hon. You think you should not have any concern about other people's kids? With all the labor and 24/7 unpaid work raising my kids, then why should my kids support YOU? My kids are going to pay YOUR Social Security, YOUR Medicare, they will fight in YOUR wars, and take care of YOUR infrastructure, and if you have no children of your own perhaps they will even take care of YOU when you are no longer able to care for yourself. Maybe with your thinking, since I put in all that work into raising them without your support, then all they are paying into the System should come back to ME ~ not YOU, right?"
They have nothing to say about that lol ...
Let me give you a little sordid history about Welfare Reform (The ironically named "Personal Responsibility And Work Opportunities Act)" written and signed into law by some of the most irresponsible MEN in power: This little story was told to me by a woman who was there:
In the early 1990s Washington DC was having some public forums about how to improve the Department of Social and Health System where welfare or at the time called AFDC (Aid For Dependent Children) was funded (DSHS at the time used about 4% of the budget, compared to around 47% the military took during peacetime then, btw). Present at these forums were some women who were from George Washington University, including Robert Rector from the Heritage Foundation and others. A little background about these women: Many of them were women of color who had fled the Southern countrysides to come to DC and get a higher education while on welfare. The reason they fled was because their only hope of getting any paid work or advancement was to aspire to leave the terrible backbreaking endless toil of the cotton fields and work in the 'Big House" as maids for rich white people. The woman who told me this story was one of them from a rural Virginia where slavery had survived for over 300 years and where the expectation low wage work was her fate ~ and so she was at the time a doctoral candidate for her Phd.
Rector was outraged that these women were "using" the System while being on welfare and going to college. But these intelligent women kicked his ass in debates. So Rector ran home crying and wrote the Welfare Reform Act which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton, verbatim from the Heritage Foundations and Rector's composition.
Now Robert Rector had *no* problem with he and his rich white friends collecting tax free dividends, oh no siree! But an uppity black women who should be cleaning his house instead of earning her post graduate college degree while on welfare? Oh. My. God! The nerve! Since Rector has no respect for hard work, for the results that these women were working towards, becoming middle class professionals and (OMG) ~ additionally working their asses off 24/7 raising kids who would contribute to his coffers for all their "doing nothing" to raise them, well hey let's pass legislation to demean those women and for anyone "doing nothing" while raising kids even more! Let's also add to this bill a clause making it virtually impossible for anyone raising kids to also go to college too!
I hate to say it but President Clinton and his cronies including his wife were eager supporters of this endeavor. They only counted as any "success" all the families they were able to kick off any family support ~ to hell with where they went or what happened to them. Just as long as they were working on the fields, being maids, gardeners, cooks and sometimes sex slaves in the "Big Houses" or laboring for nothing with their corporate buddies (like WalMart and McDonalds who also got huge tax breaks for "being so nice" to hire someone for 50 cents an hour) then hey keeping them down and poor why that makes them "successful" doncha know...
And again I hate to tell you this but HRC while a senator eagerly supported Mayor Rudiani's undermining of the NYC unions by forcing welfare recipients to work off their welfare benefits for less than $.50 cents per hour by replacing union workers who made livable wages. I know some of the people in NYC who were and are to this day adversely affected by this slave labor and those policies. It also created so-called "non profits" that are mega-entities raking in the dough with their demeaning shelter systems where they extract any income their clients make while paying 6 figures to their "Executive Directors" that are rich bored spouses, and who use these "non-profits" as their private Cayman Islands for their $millions in tax breaks.
This "right to work" and mega- non profits has extended to many states and counties red and blue, with other poverty haters who legislate and make policy solely with the attitude that raising children is "doing nothing", that going to any decent college and getting degrees for advancement is "using the System", but leaving these kids with strangers before they are even weaned to work for nothing is "successful". So hey, making rich men richer saying "Do you want fries with that?" is so wonderful! Thanks to Rector and his ilk now, THAT is what they want Americans to aspire to be along with HRC and her ilk.
Believe me at the time Welfare Reform was enacted there were activists like me who tried to tell the middle class they were next as far as not being able to work for decent wages. Because we knew as they always do there would be no outcry for those "useless eaters (A Nazi term used to justify death camps) ~ at least nothing will be said from anyone "important" enough to hear anyway, and for God's sake ignore the ones protesting who are affected. We knew they were using the poor as "canaries in the mine" to see if it would fly for their next steps in demeaning the 99%. But we were not heard, indeed we were laughed off the stage for having the nerve to warn them of what we saw coming for them.
Now as an activist I hear from the fallen middle class, those who lost their homes, their jobs, their dignity wailing and wringing their hands, "B-b-b-but I worked haaaard! I did everything right!" Like the poor didn't work hard and try to do everything right too? I want to scream because they were the same ones right there with their torches and pitchforks demeaning the poor themselves before they get the treatment they imposed on those who struggle. They actually think they deserve those services more because they were once middle class with the privileges they once had that the poor who worked as hard if not harder, could never dream to have.
I could never forgive HRC for all the support she gave to those who have devastated entire communities and families because of what she has participated in doing. I was asked to be her delegate in 2008 and at the time I declined and told them why. Yes, I will vote for this corporate prostitute if I have to ~ however although I do not drink or indulge ~ first I will have to pull a few from a bottle and get high on pot before I pull that lever ...
My 2 cents tho I could write more, indeed a book about what I have seen
Cat in Seattle
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