xenologer: (everybody's aunt)
I think one reason some kinds of people prefer individual acts of charity to large systematic changes with charitable aims and impacts (such as tax-funded social programs) is that if everybody is giving to a comparable degree, they don't get to feel special anymore.

To someone like me, though, giving to the poor is not something I'm doing above and beyond the call of human duty. It's a baseline of dignity and respect, and I'm not special for doing it. With that mindset, I guess it's natural that I wouldn't understand why some people need to feel like they are making a grand and unexpected benevolent gesture.

Sure, that's probably better for the ego, but my ego wasn't actually involved in the first place. It's just a decent thing to do. Not an extraordinary thing: decent.

What.

Sep. 21st, 2010 01:23 am
xenologer: (objection!)
Why is the city of Montgomery condemning the property of African-Americans along a civil rights trail?
Over the last decade or so, dozens—perhaps hundreds—of homes in Montgomery have been declared blighted and razed in a similar manner. The owners tend to be disproportionately poor and black, and with little means to fight back. And here's the kicker: Many of the homes fall along a federally funded civil rights trail in the neighborhood where Rosa Parks lived. Activists say the weird pattern may not be coincidence. (...)

Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange didn't respond to my request for an interview, but he has insisted in other outlets that the reaction from Jones, Beito, and other critics is overblown. "I want property owners to act responsibly," Strange told an Atlanta Fox News affiliate last month. "If they don't care about their property then I want them to sell it to somebody that does care."

And yet one city resident, Jimmy McCall, was in the process of building a home when the city declared his property a public nuisance in 2008. When the city said the construction wasn't moving fast enough, McCall got restraining orders from both state and federal courts to prevent the city from destroying the building. The city tore it down anyway, then sent McCall a bill for the destruction. McCall won a court judgment for damages. The city is appealing.

Jim Peera, an Atlanta real estate developer, fought the city for six years over eight acres of low-income housing he owned that the city declared a public nuisance. After he won two court victories, two of his buildings mysteriously caught fire. He says the fire department never investigated, though a city official publicly suggested Peera set the fires himself to collect insurance. Peera eventually broke down and sold his land rather than fight the city's appeals. The property now belongs to Summit Housing Group, one of the country's largest developers of subsidized housing. Mayor Strange told ABC News last month that the city of Montgomery's involvement with these properties ends once the rubble is cleared—that the city isn't taking land from residents and selling it to developers. But in Peera's case, the city of Montgomery, not Summit, wrote the check for his land. (...)

Jim Peera filed an open records request for all of Montgomery's demolitions in 2008, then plotted them on a map, which he presented at a rally earlier this month sponsored by the libertarian public interest firm the Institute for Justice. The first thing you notice about Peera's map is that the vast majority of 2008 demolitions were west of Court Street, a part of the city that's mostly black. Within this area, the demolitions seem to fall rather consistently along the Selma to Montgomery Trail route. Hurst speculates that the city is trying to condemn and seize properties along the trail instead of buying them at fair market value—as eminent domain would require. I wasn't able to substantiate that claim (and short of a smoking gun document, I'm not sure how I could). But even if the demolitions are more generally about keeping eyesores out of a tourist area, it's hard to ignore the context: The city of Montgomery is destroying the homes of low-income, African-American residents along a trail commissioned to celebrate the civil rights movement.
xenologer: (Default)
So unusualmusic linked this post on a debate community which has some of the worst faces of humanity laid out in the comments.

The question:

A single mother has a child with a disease that will kill him if he goes without his medicine. She works two full time jobs but they still struggle. Sometimes the kid's prescription does not get filled right away because she has to pay rent or childcare. One day, the mother is rushing from work to get to the pharmacy before it closes because the kid has been without meds for a week. She has no car and her boss did not let her leave early. She misses the bus because the driver was running significantly early and did not wait to get back on schedule. She does not make it to the pharmacy in time. The kid dies in his sleep that night.

Who is at fault?


The answers? Some people point out that if she's in America, she lives in a country where health care is a luxury, and if it's not a right, then her kid doesn't have a right to it. This is a fucked up place to raise a child who needs health care. My love to the people who point this out.

Less love to people who reply with shit like this:

I feel bad, but the mom. Letting the meds lapse that long just left her wide open for murphy's law to just align like that. Talk to the landlord for an extension? Mention to the boss ahead of time when you need to leave early instead of trying to dash out the door or ask to take a long lunch break and grab it then? Hell, call the pharmacy or the child's doctor to get permission for a friend to pick the meds up for her if she can. There were lots of routes she could have taken and, though she's not psychic, she shoulda known at least one of those could go wrong. It's unfortunate the fates aligned so badly, but it all started with the rent or meds decision. =(

This does just showcase a lot of holes in society these days, but then again, the people on the other side of the situations are probably put out by more than one person needing more time on the rent or are just late with no notice, or needing time off at the last second and they have to find someone to cover. The mom really needed to cover her bases and it sucks that the whole mess was paid for with her child. =(

No prosecution, though, even though the one week of no meds was pretty terrible. =(
Or this!
If the kid was a week without meds, that's just damn neglectful. It's easy to justify it with "reasons" but they still are just excuses.

Fuck you. Fuck you people for not having any goddamn idea what it means to have less than enough. Fuck you all for bolstering your own desperate hope that this could never happen to you by assuming it must happen to nasty lazy shitty people who are nothing like you.

Lots of people said that she should have done anything--anything, anything--to keep the kid's meds from lapsing for a week.

Do anything? Do anything to ensure her kid gets that medicine? If she's working multiple jobs and is never home to be there with her kid, you'll call her a bad mom who doesn't pay enough attention to her family, and if something goes wrong, she'll be to blame. If she sells drugs to get the money, you'll call her home dangerous and take her child away and throw her in jail. If she sells sex to get it, not only is she a bad woman and a criminal, but she's a dirty whore bad woman as well.

Do anything, they say. Do anything. They have no idea what they're talking about. Agh.
xenologer: (Default)
So unusualmusic linked this post on a debate community which has some of the worst faces of humanity laid out in the comments.

The question:

A single mother has a child with a disease that will kill him if he goes without his medicine. She works two full time jobs but they still struggle. Sometimes the kid's prescription does not get filled right away because she has to pay rent or childcare. One day, the mother is rushing from work to get to the pharmacy before it closes because the kid has been without meds for a week. She has no car and her boss did not let her leave early. She misses the bus because the driver was running significantly early and did not wait to get back on schedule. She does not make it to the pharmacy in time. The kid dies in his sleep that night.

Who is at fault?


The answers? Some people point out that if she's in America, she lives in a country where health care is a luxury, and if it's not a right, then her kid doesn't have a right to it. This is a fucked up place to raise a child who needs health care. My love to the people who point this out.

Less love to people who reply with shit like this:

I feel bad, but the mom. Letting the meds lapse that long just left her wide open for murphy's law to just align like that. Talk to the landlord for an extension? Mention to the boss ahead of time when you need to leave early instead of trying to dash out the door or ask to take a long lunch break and grab it then? Hell, call the pharmacy or the child's doctor to get permission for a friend to pick the meds up for her if she can. There were lots of routes she could have taken and, though she's not psychic, she shoulda known at least one of those could go wrong. It's unfortunate the fates aligned so badly, but it all started with the rent or meds decision. =(

This does just showcase a lot of holes in society these days, but then again, the people on the other side of the situations are probably put out by more than one person needing more time on the rent or are just late with no notice, or needing time off at the last second and they have to find someone to cover. The mom really needed to cover her bases and it sucks that the whole mess was paid for with her child. =(

No prosecution, though, even though the one week of no meds was pretty terrible. =(
Or this!
If the kid was a week without meds, that's just damn neglectful. It's easy to justify it with "reasons" but they still are just excuses.

Fuck you. Fuck you people for not having any goddamn idea what it means to have less than enough. Fuck you all for bolstering your own desperate hope that this could never happen to you by assuming it must happen to nasty lazy shitty people who are nothing like you.

Lots of people said that she should have done anything--anything, anything--to keep the kid's meds from lapsing for a week.

Do anything? Do anything to ensure her kid gets that medicine? If she's working multiple jobs and is never home to be there with her kid, you'll call her a bad mom who doesn't pay enough attention to her family, and if something goes wrong, she'll be to blame. If she sells drugs to get the money, you'll call her home dangerous and take her child away and throw her in jail. If she sells sex to get it, not only is she a bad woman and a criminal, but she's a dirty whore bad woman as well.

Do anything, they say. Do anything. They have no idea what they're talking about. Agh.
xenologer: (Default)
So unusualmusic linked this post on a debate community which has some of the worst faces of humanity laid out in the comments.

The question:

A single mother has a child with a disease that will kill him if he goes without his medicine. She works two full time jobs but they still struggle. Sometimes the kid's prescription does not get filled right away because she has to pay rent or childcare. One day, the mother is rushing from work to get to the pharmacy before it closes because the kid has been without meds for a week. She has no car and her boss did not let her leave early. She misses the bus because the driver was running significantly early and did not wait to get back on schedule. She does not make it to the pharmacy in time. The kid dies in his sleep that night.

Who is at fault?


The answers? Some people point out that if she's in America, she lives in a country where health care is a luxury, and if it's not a right, then her kid doesn't have a right to it. This is a fucked up place to raise a child who needs health care. My love to the people who point this out.

Less love to people who reply with shit like this:

I feel bad, but the mom. Letting the meds lapse that long just left her wide open for murphy's law to just align like that. Talk to the landlord for an extension? Mention to the boss ahead of time when you need to leave early instead of trying to dash out the door or ask to take a long lunch break and grab it then? Hell, call the pharmacy or the child's doctor to get permission for a friend to pick the meds up for her if she can. There were lots of routes she could have taken and, though she's not psychic, she shoulda known at least one of those could go wrong. It's unfortunate the fates aligned so badly, but it all started with the rent or meds decision. =(

This does just showcase a lot of holes in society these days, but then again, the people on the other side of the situations are probably put out by more than one person needing more time on the rent or are just late with no notice, or needing time off at the last second and they have to find someone to cover. The mom really needed to cover her bases and it sucks that the whole mess was paid for with her child. =(

No prosecution, though, even though the one week of no meds was pretty terrible. =(
Or this!
If the kid was a week without meds, that's just damn neglectful. It's easy to justify it with "reasons" but they still are just excuses.

Fuck you. Fuck you people for not having any goddamn idea what it means to have less than enough. Fuck you all for bolstering your own desperate hope that this could never happen to you by assuming it must happen to nasty lazy shitty people who are nothing like you.

Lots of people said that she should have done anything--anything, anything--to keep the kid's meds from lapsing for a week.

Do anything? Do anything to ensure her kid gets that medicine? If she's working multiple jobs and is never home to be there with her kid, you'll call her a bad mom who doesn't pay enough attention to her family, and if something goes wrong, she'll be to blame. If she sells drugs to get the money, you'll call her home dangerous and take her child away and throw her in jail. If she sells sex to get it, not only is she a bad woman and a criminal, but she's a dirty whore bad woman as well.

Do anything, they say. Do anything. They have no idea what they're talking about. Agh.
xenologer: (creator destroyer)
I'd just like to say super-quickly that being pro-choice or anti-choice has nothing to do with being pro-abortion or anti-abortion.

Most of the people I know who are pro-choice are personally anti-abortion. However, that's their personal decision, and they respect the right of women to make a different one, even if they disagree.

"Pro-choice" doesn't mean you don't have an opinion on abortion, or that you actually like it. It means that you believe you can only choose for yourself, and other people all have to choose for themselves. If you respect the right of other individuals to make decisions for themselves that you wouldn't make in their place, you're pro-choice. Period dot. You don't have to like abortion.

Personally? I am pro-abortion, and this is totally distinct from my identification as pro-choice. I think that there are so many children out there who need good homes that, if I were to bear my own child instead of taking in one of them, I would effectively be taking food out of the mouths of starving kids. If I can afford to care for a child, I want to take care of the ones we've already got before birthing a new one.

Yes, that means if I get pregnant I'm getting an abortion. Hell fucking yes I am. This may seem shocking to you, so if you want to look at me as a baby-hating monster, you go right ahead. I'm not the one who's increasing the human population knowing full well that we aren't feeding all the brothers and sisters and sons and daughters who are already here.

Look at me as a child-hater if you want, but keep in mind that when I see you playing with your own biological child instead of one that you adopted to give them a better chance at life, you keep in mind that if I were that kind of asshole, I could point the finger and be saying the same damn thing about you.

Most people reading probably already understand this, though. I'm pro-abortion because my first duty is to the people who need me who are already living, and this is how I express that. I'm pro-choice because you can decide differently, and that doesn't make either of us a bad person.

Get it?
xenologer: (creator destroyer)
I'd just like to say super-quickly that being pro-choice or anti-choice has nothing to do with being pro-abortion or anti-abortion.

Most of the people I know who are pro-choice are personally anti-abortion. However, that's their personal decision, and they respect the right of women to make a different one, even if they disagree.

"Pro-choice" doesn't mean you don't have an opinion on abortion, or that you actually like it. It means that you believe you can only choose for yourself, and other people all have to choose for themselves. If you respect the right of other individuals to make decisions for themselves that you wouldn't make in their place, you're pro-choice. Period dot. You don't have to like abortion.

Personally? I am pro-abortion, and this is totally distinct from my identification as pro-choice. I think that there are so many children out there who need good homes that, if I were to bear my own child instead of taking in one of them, I would effectively be taking food out of the mouths of starving kids. If I can afford to care for a child, I want to take care of the ones we've already got before birthing a new one.

Yes, that means if I get pregnant I'm getting an abortion. Hell fucking yes I am. This may seem shocking to you, so if you want to look at me as a baby-hating monster, you go right ahead. I'm not the one who's increasing the human population knowing full well that we aren't feeding all the brothers and sisters and sons and daughters who are already here.

Look at me as a child-hater if you want, but keep in mind that when I see you playing with your own biological child instead of one that you adopted to give them a better chance at life, you keep in mind that if I were that kind of asshole, I could point the finger and be saying the same damn thing about you.

Most people reading probably already understand this, though. I'm pro-abortion because my first duty is to the people who need me who are already living, and this is how I express that. I'm pro-choice because you can decide differently, and that doesn't make either of us a bad person.

Get it?
xenologer: (creator destroyer)
I'd just like to say super-quickly that being pro-choice or anti-choice has nothing to do with being pro-abortion or anti-abortion.

Most of the people I know who are pro-choice are personally anti-abortion. However, that's their personal decision, and they respect the right of women to make a different one, even if they disagree.

"Pro-choice" doesn't mean you don't have an opinion on abortion, or that you actually like it. It means that you believe you can only choose for yourself, and other people all have to choose for themselves. If you respect the right of other individuals to make decisions for themselves that you wouldn't make in their place, you're pro-choice. Period dot. You don't have to like abortion.

Personally? I am pro-abortion, and this is totally distinct from my identification as pro-choice. I think that there are so many children out there who need good homes that, if I were to bear my own child instead of taking in one of them, I would effectively be taking food out of the mouths of starving kids. If I can afford to care for a child, I want to take care of the ones we've already got before birthing a new one.

Yes, that means if I get pregnant I'm getting an abortion. Hell fucking yes I am. This may seem shocking to you, so if you want to look at me as a baby-hating monster, you go right ahead. I'm not the one who's increasing the human population knowing full well that we aren't feeding all the brothers and sisters and sons and daughters who are already here.

Look at me as a child-hater if you want, but keep in mind that when I see you playing with your own biological child instead of one that you adopted to give them a better chance at life, you keep in mind that if I were that kind of asshole, I could point the finger and be saying the same damn thing about you.

Most people reading probably already understand this, though. I'm pro-abortion because my first duty is to the people who need me who are already living, and this is how I express that. I'm pro-choice because you can decide differently, and that doesn't make either of us a bad person.

Get it?
xenologer: (stronger loving world)
The next time someone tells you that poor people don't deserve help because the real problem is that they don't work hard enough to deserve food, health care, and homes, remember how many of them are being deliberately obstructed.

I know that we like to act in America like our culture is a perfect meritocracy, that rich people earned their money and poor people earned their poverty. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that Americans don't need help from the government; they just need to stop being so lazy. They don't need a hand; they need a slap across the face to wake them up and get them moving.

The worst part is, I've heard this from poor people. They don't even know they're being lied to, so they go right ahead and hate themselves because the people who benefit from their poverty tell them they deserve to be hated.

No longer the polarizing, racially tinged political issue it was when Ronald Reagan attacked "welfare queens," the welfare system today is dying a quiet death, neatly chronicled in the pages of academic and policy journals, largely unnoticed by the rest of us. Yet its demise carries significant implications. Among the most serious: the rise of what academics call the "disconnected," people who live well below the poverty line and are neither working nor receiving cash benefits like Social Security disability or tanf. Estimates put this group at roughly 2 million women caring for 4 million children, many dealing with a host of challenges from mental illness to domestic violence. "We don't really know how they survive," says Blank. (...)

In 2006, the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence conducted a survey to figure out why so many women were suddenly failing to get tanf benefits. They discovered that caseworkers were actively talking women out of applying, often using inaccurate information. (Lying to applicants to deny them benefits is a violation of federal law, but the 1996 welfare reform legislation largely stripped the Department of Health and Human Services of its power to punish states for doing it. Meanwhile, county officials have tried to head off lawyers who might take up the issue by pressing applicants to sign waivers saying they voluntarily turned down benefits.) Allison Smith, the economic justice coordinator at the coalition, says the group has gotten reports of caseworkers telling tanf applicants they have to be surgically sterilized before they can apply. Disabled women have been told they can't apply because they can't meet the work requirement. Others have been warned that the state could take their children if they get benefits. (...)

Even as it blocks potential applicants, Georgia is also pushing current tanf recipients off the rolls at a rapid clip. Sandy Bamford runs a federally funded family literacy program in Albany where single mothers can get their geds. tanf allows recipients to attend school, but Bamford says officials routinely tell her clients otherwise: In a single month, one caseworker informed three of her students (incorrectly) that because they had turned 20, they could no longer receive benefits while completing their degrees. One was about to become the first in her family to graduate from high school. She quit and took a job as a dishwasher. Students as young as 16 have been told they must go to work full time or lose benefits. The employee who threatened to drop the students, says Bamford, became "caseworker of the month" for getting so many people off tanf.

So the next time you hear someone--or yourself--grousing about what a problem those useless lazy criminal poor people are... just remember that you probably don't have a safety net anymore, either. And all it takes is one stroke of bad luck before people start lying to you, too. You'd just better hope that someone is around to help you who cares a whole hell of a lot more than they're told to. Or at least someone who'll help you out in exchange for sexual favors which, as it turns out, many unemployed are still not willing to give. Think of the edge you'll have!

The tanf office once sent a client of hers to see a local government official about a job. The official told her he'd be glad to help out if she'd have sex with him. The woman filed a police report, but the man was never prosecuted. (...)

As for people like Clark who can't seem to get and keep a full-time job, Walker responds simply, "Can't? Won't."

Clearly the problem is with their work ethic. If single moms wanted jobs, they'd spread their legs for whomever they could in order to get an interview. Whatever it takes to compete, right? It's all fair, right?

It's not your fault, right? What are you supposed to do about it?

(h/t Feministe)
xenologer: (stronger loving world)
The next time someone tells you that poor people don't deserve help because the real problem is that they don't work hard enough to deserve food, health care, and homes, remember how many of them are being deliberately obstructed.

I know that we like to act in America like our culture is a perfect meritocracy, that rich people earned their money and poor people earned their poverty. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that Americans don't need help from the government; they just need to stop being so lazy. They don't need a hand; they need a slap across the face to wake them up and get them moving.

The worst part is, I've heard this from poor people. They don't even know they're being lied to, so they go right ahead and hate themselves because the people who benefit from their poverty tell them they deserve to be hated.

No longer the polarizing, racially tinged political issue it was when Ronald Reagan attacked "welfare queens," the welfare system today is dying a quiet death, neatly chronicled in the pages of academic and policy journals, largely unnoticed by the rest of us. Yet its demise carries significant implications. Among the most serious: the rise of what academics call the "disconnected," people who live well below the poverty line and are neither working nor receiving cash benefits like Social Security disability or tanf. Estimates put this group at roughly 2 million women caring for 4 million children, many dealing with a host of challenges from mental illness to domestic violence. "We don't really know how they survive," says Blank. (...)

In 2006, the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence conducted a survey to figure out why so many women were suddenly failing to get tanf benefits. They discovered that caseworkers were actively talking women out of applying, often using inaccurate information. (Lying to applicants to deny them benefits is a violation of federal law, but the 1996 welfare reform legislation largely stripped the Department of Health and Human Services of its power to punish states for doing it. Meanwhile, county officials have tried to head off lawyers who might take up the issue by pressing applicants to sign waivers saying they voluntarily turned down benefits.) Allison Smith, the economic justice coordinator at the coalition, says the group has gotten reports of caseworkers telling tanf applicants they have to be surgically sterilized before they can apply. Disabled women have been told they can't apply because they can't meet the work requirement. Others have been warned that the state could take their children if they get benefits. (...)

Even as it blocks potential applicants, Georgia is also pushing current tanf recipients off the rolls at a rapid clip. Sandy Bamford runs a federally funded family literacy program in Albany where single mothers can get their geds. tanf allows recipients to attend school, but Bamford says officials routinely tell her clients otherwise: In a single month, one caseworker informed three of her students (incorrectly) that because they had turned 20, they could no longer receive benefits while completing their degrees. One was about to become the first in her family to graduate from high school. She quit and took a job as a dishwasher. Students as young as 16 have been told they must go to work full time or lose benefits. The employee who threatened to drop the students, says Bamford, became "caseworker of the month" for getting so many people off tanf.

So the next time you hear someone--or yourself--grousing about what a problem those useless lazy criminal poor people are... just remember that you probably don't have a safety net anymore, either. And all it takes is one stroke of bad luck before people start lying to you, too. You'd just better hope that someone is around to help you who cares a whole hell of a lot more than they're told to. Or at least someone who'll help you out in exchange for sexual favors which, as it turns out, many unemployed are still not willing to give. Think of the edge you'll have!

The tanf office once sent a client of hers to see a local government official about a job. The official told her he'd be glad to help out if she'd have sex with him. The woman filed a police report, but the man was never prosecuted. (...)

As for people like Clark who can't seem to get and keep a full-time job, Walker responds simply, "Can't? Won't."

Clearly the problem is with their work ethic. If single moms wanted jobs, they'd spread their legs for whomever they could in order to get an interview. Whatever it takes to compete, right? It's all fair, right?

It's not your fault, right? What are you supposed to do about it?

(h/t Feministe)
xenologer: (stronger loving world)
The next time someone tells you that poor people don't deserve help because the real problem is that they don't work hard enough to deserve food, health care, and homes, remember how many of them are being deliberately obstructed.

I know that we like to act in America like our culture is a perfect meritocracy, that rich people earned their money and poor people earned their poverty. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that Americans don't need help from the government; they just need to stop being so lazy. They don't need a hand; they need a slap across the face to wake them up and get them moving.

The worst part is, I've heard this from poor people. They don't even know they're being lied to, so they go right ahead and hate themselves because the people who benefit from their poverty tell them they deserve to be hated.

No longer the polarizing, racially tinged political issue it was when Ronald Reagan attacked "welfare queens," the welfare system today is dying a quiet death, neatly chronicled in the pages of academic and policy journals, largely unnoticed by the rest of us. Yet its demise carries significant implications. Among the most serious: the rise of what academics call the "disconnected," people who live well below the poverty line and are neither working nor receiving cash benefits like Social Security disability or tanf. Estimates put this group at roughly 2 million women caring for 4 million children, many dealing with a host of challenges from mental illness to domestic violence. "We don't really know how they survive," says Blank. (...)

In 2006, the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence conducted a survey to figure out why so many women were suddenly failing to get tanf benefits. They discovered that caseworkers were actively talking women out of applying, often using inaccurate information. (Lying to applicants to deny them benefits is a violation of federal law, but the 1996 welfare reform legislation largely stripped the Department of Health and Human Services of its power to punish states for doing it. Meanwhile, county officials have tried to head off lawyers who might take up the issue by pressing applicants to sign waivers saying they voluntarily turned down benefits.) Allison Smith, the economic justice coordinator at the coalition, says the group has gotten reports of caseworkers telling tanf applicants they have to be surgically sterilized before they can apply. Disabled women have been told they can't apply because they can't meet the work requirement. Others have been warned that the state could take their children if they get benefits. (...)

Even as it blocks potential applicants, Georgia is also pushing current tanf recipients off the rolls at a rapid clip. Sandy Bamford runs a federally funded family literacy program in Albany where single mothers can get their geds. tanf allows recipients to attend school, but Bamford says officials routinely tell her clients otherwise: In a single month, one caseworker informed three of her students (incorrectly) that because they had turned 20, they could no longer receive benefits while completing their degrees. One was about to become the first in her family to graduate from high school. She quit and took a job as a dishwasher. Students as young as 16 have been told they must go to work full time or lose benefits. The employee who threatened to drop the students, says Bamford, became "caseworker of the month" for getting so many people off tanf.

So the next time you hear someone--or yourself--grousing about what a problem those useless lazy criminal poor people are... just remember that you probably don't have a safety net anymore, either. And all it takes is one stroke of bad luck before people start lying to you, too. You'd just better hope that someone is around to help you who cares a whole hell of a lot more than they're told to. Or at least someone who'll help you out in exchange for sexual favors which, as it turns out, many unemployed are still not willing to give. Think of the edge you'll have!

The tanf office once sent a client of hers to see a local government official about a job. The official told her he'd be glad to help out if she'd have sex with him. The woman filed a police report, but the man was never prosecuted. (...)

As for people like Clark who can't seem to get and keep a full-time job, Walker responds simply, "Can't? Won't."

Clearly the problem is with their work ethic. If single moms wanted jobs, they'd spread their legs for whomever they could in order to get an interview. Whatever it takes to compete, right? It's all fair, right?

It's not your fault, right? What are you supposed to do about it?

(h/t Feministe)
xenologer: (end of the world)
Louisiana Republican Backs Poor Sterilization

The idea is to pay poor women $1000 dollars to go in and get spayed. Now, you know me. I love the idea of lots of people getting spayed and neutered, because if we care enough for the pet population to adopt instead of letting them breed like crazy, I feel like this should apply to humans as well. If it didn't come with serious hormonal consequences, I'd have had the surgery long ago. But here's the problem: LaBruzzo thinks he can eliminate generational poverty by simply keeping them from eventually outnumbering rich people (and passing on their defective poor-people genes into our otherwise-wholesome American gene pool). Seriously. That's what he wants.
LaBruzzo acknowledges that some prefer tackling poverty through education reforms and family planning programs, but he says he's looked into this, and found these traditional approaches to be ineffective. It's led him to think the whole pay-for-poor-women's-sterilization tack might be a good idea.

Point the first: Why are we sterilizing the women? [insert detailed explanation of women as vessels of culture to be protected or destroyed accordingly] Vasectomies are cheaper and less invasive, so you can do more of them. When you want to use tax dollars for this, shouldn't efficiency factor in?

Point the second: We should sterilize rich people instead. That way the people who're in the best position to support children have to adopt all these kids that have no parents. Because really, it kinda sucks that the people most likely to insist that women give up unwanted babies for adoption are pretty likely to be having so many kids of their own that they don't actually take in any of these kids they wanted to be available for adoption.

So yeah. Give all the rich men vasectomies. Give the ones who go along with it another tax cut to console them for the ones Obama is going to allow to expire. If wealthy folk want to sterilize one group for economic reasons, I wonder if they've ever considered putting their own organs on the metaphorical chopping block.
xenologer: (end of the world)
Louisiana Republican Backs Poor Sterilization

The idea is to pay poor women $1000 dollars to go in and get spayed. Now, you know me. I love the idea of lots of people getting spayed and neutered, because if we care enough for the pet population to adopt instead of letting them breed like crazy, I feel like this should apply to humans as well. If it didn't come with serious hormonal consequences, I'd have had the surgery long ago. But here's the problem: LaBruzzo thinks he can eliminate generational poverty by simply keeping them from eventually outnumbering rich people (and passing on their defective poor-people genes into our otherwise-wholesome American gene pool). Seriously. That's what he wants.
LaBruzzo acknowledges that some prefer tackling poverty through education reforms and family planning programs, but he says he's looked into this, and found these traditional approaches to be ineffective. It's led him to think the whole pay-for-poor-women's-sterilization tack might be a good idea.

Point the first: Why are we sterilizing the women? [insert detailed explanation of women as vessels of culture to be protected or destroyed accordingly] Vasectomies are cheaper and less invasive, so you can do more of them. When you want to use tax dollars for this, shouldn't efficiency factor in?

Point the second: We should sterilize rich people instead. That way the people who're in the best position to support children have to adopt all these kids that have no parents. Because really, it kinda sucks that the people most likely to insist that women give up unwanted babies for adoption are pretty likely to be having so many kids of their own that they don't actually take in any of these kids they wanted to be available for adoption.

So yeah. Give all the rich men vasectomies. Give the ones who go along with it another tax cut to console them for the ones Obama is going to allow to expire. If wealthy folk want to sterilize one group for economic reasons, I wonder if they've ever considered putting their own organs on the metaphorical chopping block.
xenologer: (end of the world)
Louisiana Republican Backs Poor Sterilization

The idea is to pay poor women $1000 dollars to go in and get spayed. Now, you know me. I love the idea of lots of people getting spayed and neutered, because if we care enough for the pet population to adopt instead of letting them breed like crazy, I feel like this should apply to humans as well. If it didn't come with serious hormonal consequences, I'd have had the surgery long ago. But here's the problem: LaBruzzo thinks he can eliminate generational poverty by simply keeping them from eventually outnumbering rich people (and passing on their defective poor-people genes into our otherwise-wholesome American gene pool). Seriously. That's what he wants.
LaBruzzo acknowledges that some prefer tackling poverty through education reforms and family planning programs, but he says he's looked into this, and found these traditional approaches to be ineffective. It's led him to think the whole pay-for-poor-women's-sterilization tack might be a good idea.

Point the first: Why are we sterilizing the women? [insert detailed explanation of women as vessels of culture to be protected or destroyed accordingly] Vasectomies are cheaper and less invasive, so you can do more of them. When you want to use tax dollars for this, shouldn't efficiency factor in?

Point the second: We should sterilize rich people instead. That way the people who're in the best position to support children have to adopt all these kids that have no parents. Because really, it kinda sucks that the people most likely to insist that women give up unwanted babies for adoption are pretty likely to be having so many kids of their own that they don't actually take in any of these kids they wanted to be available for adoption.

So yeah. Give all the rich men vasectomies. Give the ones who go along with it another tax cut to console them for the ones Obama is going to allow to expire. If wealthy folk want to sterilize one group for economic reasons, I wonder if they've ever considered putting their own organs on the metaphorical chopping block.

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