Category: Class War

The ‘used-to-haves’

~ susie ~ 7 Comments

CIMG0226

A freelance writer on Huffington Post:

We “Used-to-Haves” all used to work in the corporate world for big, wealthy companies. We were discarded in layoffs. I’ve been told, as my employer du jour let me go, what a positive difference I made and the value of my contributions. I agree. I know I made my bosses look brilliant. Fully aware that my contributions built the company’s brand image. Yet, I was expendable.

As a new “Used-to-Have,” I denied my slide. “I’m not poor!” I nervously chuckled to myself. But as I slid more, the smartest thing was finally acknowledging poverty and applying for the benefits available. I’d never been poor before. I didn’t know how to be poor. But finally, I learned. The magnitude of my shame and embarrassment is unspeakable. It’s impossible to explain to people who aren’t poor — “The Haves.” When I’m beseechingly desperate for a check owed to me, the check writer inevitably has no concept of how frighteningly desperate I am for that money. They say, “Next week? or “The accountant says two weeks.” I plead, nicely, sincerely, “Is there no way you could just write me that check?” And the answer is “no.” It’s just putting a pen to paper, but for “The Haves,” I’m just a pain in the neck.

Despite the disappearance of the middle class and the proliferation of the “Used-to-Haves,” Corporate America is as cavalier and unfeeling as they were when I was laid off. I remember working overtime for a New England financial firm on weekends, holidays and New Year’s Eve. Getting my arm stuck in a copier while fixing a paper jam. Wearing matching t-shirts as we moved boxes from one location to another. You name it, I made every sacrifice to keep my job in Corporate America.

Watching John Boehner and the Republican Congress during the past few years has been a stunning confirmation of their seeming disregard for the “Used-to-Haves.” As they pull down salaries of $174,000 a year, unparalleled benefits and the option of voting themselves a raise, their selfishness is unrivaled as they barricade health care reform, knowingly shut down the government, cut SNAP benefits and eliminate extended unemployment payments.

Congress doesn’t have the stones to call up their lobbyist buddies and corporate honchos and insist they hire more unemployed Americans for the American companies they celebrate and boast about.

The press calls it “The Great Recession.” It actually was the “Great Theft.” In the wake of this very public, often-glossed-over theft from the middle class, the perpetrators have been revealed. We know the American corporations without the courage, scruples or heart to help us, the ones responsible for the recession and the politicians who put the toxic policies in place. We “Used-to-Haves” aren’t stupid.

As a “Used-to-Have,” I’m beyond angry. I’m not a “Never Had.” I know what it’s like to pay bills on time and have a little left over. I remember vacations and pedicures and going out to dinner. As a “Used-to-Have,” I know exactly what Corporate America, lobbyists and politicians have taken away from me. The “Used-to-Haves” and the children of the “Used-to-Haves” won’t forget. The “Used-to-Haves” are educated. Many of us and our children have amazing talent and academic honors. We know how to get things done. And though all of the odds appear to be against us, we must refuse to give up hope.

H/t Ben Mann.

Dear corporate media, your class bias is showing

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

0582-01

I can’t tell you how many Democrats tried to explain to me that the Dems had no other choice but to vote for this. I dunno, evil is evil:

Following an initial Senate vote Monday night and a House vote last week, today the Senate is expected to pass a farm bill that cuts food stamps by over $8 billion in the next decade. The White House has signaled that President Obama will sign the bill, ending a two-year fight in which key Democrats and Republican disagreed over how much — but not whether – to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

“Our political system is basically evil versus spineless now,” former Clinton USDA official Joel Berg told Salon following the House’s vote. Berg, the executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger and author of “All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America?,” blasted White House “disingenuousness,” Republican “race-baiting,” media “class bias,” and progressive “weakness” for the ultimate outcome. “There is no mechanism now,” he argued, “to hold people accountable for shafting poor people.” A condensed version of our conversation follows.

The Associated Press described the ultimate deal as having “a mostly symbolic cut in food stamps.” Is that accurate?

It’s not accurate, and shows you in a few words virtually everything wrong with the American media today. It shows you class bias, reporters listing as a fact something that’s an opinion, it shows you lack of empathy.

Good idea

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Way to go, Temple!

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – February 3, 2014 (WPVI) — Temple University hopes to help students graduate on time by offering grants to low-income students who agree to limit their outside work hours.

The $4,000-a-year grants, announced Monday, will be available for incoming students who agree not to work more than 10 hours a week in off-campus jobs. Temple officials hope that students with more time for school will graduate in four years and enter the workforce sooner.

“Temple students must not keep their futures waiting,” school President Neil D. Theobald said in a statement.

Up to 500 incoming students, or 7 percent of the class, will be eligible for the “Fly in 4” grants, school officials said. They will cover more than one-fourth of the approximately $14,000 cost of in-state tuition and fees each year. The program, for low-income and working-class students, is also designed to reduce student debt after graduation.

A new mayor in town

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Bill de Blasio

I’m sure Bill DeBlasio will disappoint us at some point, but damn, I’m pretty happy about this:

The image is surreal. Newly elected New York mayor Bill de Blasio, wearing a broad and slightly goofy smile, dwarfs the infinitely vilified outgoing mayor Michael Bloomberg, who seems somewhat bemused himself.

For 12 years it was Mayor Bloomberg, standing at the forefront of a national education reform movement, who overshadowed Bill de Blasio and his progressive ilk. Bloomberg considered New York the “ poster child” of free-market education reform as he seized mayoral control of the district, closed nearly 200 “failing schools” and opened about that many charters.

But as de Blasio settles into office, his administration has already dealt major blows to one of Bloomberg’s sacred cows. Late last week, newly appointed schools chancellor Carmen Fariña announced that the Department of Education would redirect $210 million from charter schools and independent nonprofits to fund de Blasio’s pre-kindergarten initiative.

The surprise announcement reflects educational priorities in upheaval. The millions in question had been earmarked by the former administration to help clear space for new and expanding charter schools in the coming five years. Instead, Fariña plans to divert the funds to priorities like de Blasio’s flagship initiative, the pre-kindergarten programs sold largely as a remedy for inequality.

News flash: CNN anchor discovers heroin can kill people she likes

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

I had this black friend, and her father just loved me. (He used to call me his Polish princess.) When we’d watch the news, and someone would say something he thought was bullshit, he’d roll his eyes and say, “You know, Susan, white people are crazy.”

“Hey, come on, I’m sitting right here,” I’d protest.

“No, no, no, you’re not white. They are.”

And you know, I know what he means. Professional White People, people with power, people who don’t have a clue about the world the rest of us live in. People who make pronouncements when they get worked up about a perceived wrong, and have crazy ideas about how to right it.

CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield is all worked up about the death of the extraordinarily gifted Philip Seymour Hoffman. She’s so worked up, it’s almost as if someone took her favorite toy and she wants them to pay — with their lives.

Because he was “special.” He wasn’t “just” an addict.

The fact that heroin is such news to the white elite proves how completely out of touch they are. (In fact, I’ll bet they have at least one closet junkie in their workplaces.) Heroin (and the related prescription drug Oxycontin, also known as “hillbilly heroin”) has ruined, and continues to ruin, huge swaths of our nation.

Heroin and Oxy and prescription drugs got their foothold in my own section of white Philadelphia when the factories shut down. People started selling drugs to stay afloat. And while you may find that despicable, I find it pragmatic. Seriously: with no jobs, no money, and a threadbare safety net, how else do you stay alive?
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The difference between Democrats and Republicans

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Is that Democrats will at least throw the occasional bone to poor and working people:

Keeping people like Alphonse off the Medicaid rolls doesn’t shield American or Floridian taxpayers from the cost of whatever treatments he eventually may receive, like at a hospital emergency room or a government-funded community health center. Unpaid medical bills totaled $57.4 billion in 2008 — and taxpayers picked up about three-quarters of the tab, according to a study published in the journal Health Affairs. Expanding health coverage via Obamacare was supposed to reduce that burden, but the patchwork Medicaid expansion limits the law’s reach.

And if Alphonse’s condition deteriorates into what’s known as end-stage renal disease, or permanent kidney failure, he automatically would qualify for Medicare coverage paid for by the federal government. Although Medicare mainly is for people over 65 or those with disabilities, people who need dialysis or a kidney transplant are eligible under a special rule enacted in 1972.

For those too poor for Obamacare in Miami, watching neighbors who make more money receive subsidized health insurance makes the experience even more painful, said Mayte Canino, a field and volunteer coordinator for Planned Parenthood of South Florida and the Treasure Coast. Uninsured people are skeptical of Obamacare and unaware of many provisions, and only 49 percent know that states have the option to expand Medicaid, according to a poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation this month.

“That even affects them more, when they see that other people are getting help and they’re not,” said Canino, who helps people sign up for insurance. “Many of them are very unhappy. They blame the law, some of them, for it. They just walk away from it, and they think that’s it. They’re defeated.”

A certain familiarity

~ susie ~ 7 Comments

thoughtful Abe

Paul Krugman points out something familiar about the thin skin of the wealthy to any criticism:

For throughout the piece the Journal equates criticism with persecution. If you say that the one percent is taking an excessive share of the pie, or that the Kochs exert undue influence on American politics, you’re engaged in vile persecution — OK, maybe not as bad as Hitler, but in the same ballpark.

May I say that if being criticized is a form of unjust persecution, every day of my life is a pogrom?

And what about freedom of speech? Hey, that’s only for corporations, I guess.

Slightly more seriously: the attitude of that WSJ editorial brought to mind Lincoln’s description of the attitude of Southern politicians in his Cooper Union speech. Obligatory declaration: I am not saying that a high income share for the top one percent is anything like slavery. The similarity lies not in what is being defended, but in the demands of those feeling insecure — namely, that any form of criticism be banned. Lincoln:

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them … The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

Yep. Until we all declare that the one percent is the source of all good, until all mention of inequality as a potentially troubling thing is expunged from public discussion, the rich are being persecuted by totalitarian liberals.