Posts filed under ‘poverty’
Health Care ReFAIL
So, I’m gettin’ all déjà vu-ey over this whole health-care reform issue because I gots a bayud feeling whatever version of this pitifully lame mockery of health-care reform initiative makes it to my boyfriend’s desk – it’s not going to end up providing any actual ‘reform’.
I know it. You know it. Reconize.
I mean, no doubt — the needs are there.
You simply can’t argue that something must be done to help the more than 
46 million uninsured Americans.
::: For those keeping score — that’s nearly 15% of all Americans — more people than in all of Canada or Spain and twice as many as Venezuela or Australia. That’s a lot of people, people!!! :::
Nor can you argue that the cost of health care has put those with so-so insurance on the medical skids and those with nice plans think they’re all fine and dandy because they aren’t the ones paying the hidden costs (all you so-sos are) and they’re basically sheilded from the suffering of their poor, uninsured neighbors.
::: And don’t even start. It’s a no-brainer. Yes. You should care about your
neighbors. :::
O’Baby says whatever bill is brought before him must broaden coverage, slow long-term cost increases and be deficit-neutral (mmm hmm) — all of this in spite of an expected price tag of more than $1 trillion over the next decade. And he wants it paid for without increasing taxes on the 95 percent of Americans who earn less than $250,000 a year.
Superbly scary pricetag aside, it might not pinch that other 5% quite as 
much as they think to ante up considering they take in more than one-third of all pay in the U.S.
A new Wall Street Journal analysis of Social Security Administration data from 1979 and 2006 revealed the inflation-adjusted after-tax income of the richest 1% of households increased by a gargantuan 256 percent, compared to measly 21% for families in the middle income quintile.
They received “nearly $2.1 trillion of the $6.4 trillion in total U.S. pay in 2007, the latest figures available,” the report states. And those compensation numbers “don’t include incentive stock options, unexercised stock options, unvested restricted stock units and certain benefits.”
So, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t rush out to get my boo 
hoo on for them right away. This ‘caste’ing of American society is a little too ‘fall of ancient Rome economy’ if you ask me, which you didn’t but it’s my blog so nyah nyah nyah nyah.
Oh but it doesn’t matter anyway.
I mean, for starters, the various and sundry versions of versions of the plans making the rounds through Congress include some of O’Bossyboss’ ‘must haves’, but – according to the Congressional Budget Office — none of them do enough to slow health care cost increases.
SHOCK!
Add to that the harsh reality that nothing will ever change until and unless the government stops pretending that insurance companies are in the healthcare business.
Here’s a lesson kiddies: Insurance companies are in the profit industry. They do not provide health care, they don’t usually pay for some of it.
Bottom line? The whole reform issue is scary. It’s a thorny bush no one’s wanted to prune for, like EVER!
And, while it’s perfectly natural for rank and filers like you and me to fear making a big change like this, it’s also wholly unacceptable for the people representing me you us to flap and squawk and click their heels about the work, the sacrifice, the harship of it all … and in the end do nothing of any consequence.
The current system is rotting the country from the inside like a cancer … and cancer doesn’t discriminate.
Fashion faux pas
Take heart hobos – help is on the way!
And you’ll never guess where from!!
Government job offer? Nope – try again.
Secured bank loan? Negatory! Try again!
Credit card debt forgivess?
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
::: that would be a HELL no :::
No no no you sillies!
Your new friend in the face of this financial crisis isn’t the feds or any of the [many] houses of finance YOU bailed out with all that delicious TARPerificality.
No sir!
It’s Fashion!!
VOGUE fashion to be precise.
See, the magazine’s international pubs are suddenly all ‘poor is the new black’ 
“It seems important to mobilise to celebrate fashion, and show that despite the difficult times we more than ever need the enchantment and pleasure fashion brings,” explained Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld.
Because … OF COURSE … why would anyone hold out for some boring old economic uptick or a sea change of governmental, corporate and personal fiscal responsibility to stop the worried, sleepless nights when they could just watch a fashion show?!?
“From London to New York to Milan and Mumbai, the magazine will invite its readers from different countries as well as others in the Conde Nast group — GQ, Vogue Hommes, Glamour, AD — to join the September 10 event ‘to celebrate the fashion industry.’ ”
The fashion industry?
Wait … they meant ‘to celebrate the spirit of the working person in the face of hardship and sacrifice’ right? Right?
I mean, I don’t know many vagabonds who read Vogue so that has to be a typo.
“In cities involved in the event, luxury stores will remain open to shoppers till late with Vogue writers, models and designers offering lessons in style.”
Umm, luxury stores? Shopping?
How does that speak to the strapped?
Where is the benefit for the beggar?
According to Xavier Romatet, who heads Publications Conde Nast, the idea is “to revive consumers’ taste for fashion and shopping.”
Ohhhh … ok … sooo Vogue is the beggar then …
::: *sigh :::
Back to the breadline, bitches!!
No. Sleep. ‘Till. BROOKLYN!
Y’all know I don’t really ‘do’ follow-ups, but since I also don’t really ‘do’ rules or structure or anything resembling something one would consider organized in any way whatsoever – I can ‘do’ whatever I want!
::: yes, it’s great to be me :::
Remember when the NYC powers that be went all ‘full bag of ass’ on the homeless recently?
Well, take a seat kids because those gub’mint windbags found some pity for the poors and are now baby-steppin’ toward benevolence!
Big Apple big shots are backing agreements to house homeless families in unsold luxury condos in Brooklyn.
The apartments are in the in Crown Heights section, have amenities that include granite countertops, terraces, marble bathrooms and walk-in closets and were supposed to sell for $250,000 to $350,000 … you know, back in the olden times when people actually had cool shit like cash monies and credit so they could BUY a place of their own …
::: mem-reez … light the corners of my mind … :::
But times are hard and pretty much every third person on the planet is out of work, out of luck and out on the street — so hobo housing is where it’s at!
The city is paying about $2,700 a month for each apartment, which includes awesomeness like social services and job counseling.
This is goodness — straight UP!
And you asshats who try to get your comment on and go all ‘Get a job, ya bums’ with your high-and-mightiness?
Step back, get a clue and REKONIZE that homelessness is a national problem that’s growing to epidemic proportions due to the economy, foreclosures, the economy, job losses, the economy and so on AND that one in every 50 children in our fair land will be homeless at some point.
So those ‘lazy fucking bums’ you’re always bitching about?
Ya, they don’t even rank in the top 100 anymore, ‘kay judgmentals?
THIS is goodness. This is a start …
No pay no stay
It’s just all-out hostility against the hobos and the poors these days!
Even after getting serious stimulus money, states are still cutting jobs, bull-dozing benefits and — as of this month — one city (NYC) will begin charging rent to working families staying in public homeless shelters.
::: What’s next?!? Tipping the breadline soup scooper??? :::
This latest societal bitchslap to the bereft is made possible by a 1997 state law allowing shelter managers to force flat-broke fams to fork over a portion of their income, depending on the shelter and family size.
For some of the strapped, this could mean handing over up to half their earnings.
PHILANTHROPY
FAIL!!!
(for serious!!!!)
How is a family supposed to save enough to get out of the shelter when they’re coughing up more than 50% of their take-home cash to the shelter?
Huh?
HUH, MR. GUY IN CHARGE?!?
::: rhetorical question, Bub — no one believes you care … :::
“I think it’s hard to argue that families that can contribute to their shelter cost shouldn’t,” commented one callous commish. “I don’t see this playing out in an adverse way.”
Really?
You sure about that??
Because I’m thinking that a state that eagerly earmarks
and
– would probably enjoy some pretty sweet PR if it found a way to pinch off a few pennies for the penniless, right?
Right?!?
I hope so, ‘cuz you gotta know it would take a ginormous truckload of NOTHIN’ for me to instigate an uprising of the impovrished when I visit New York in two weeks!
War on welfare?
Pennsylvania lawmakers are considering a bill that would stick a big ol’ brick wall of “NEGATORY WINOS!” between welfare recipients and their state-funded boozy times.
This is so wrong!
In this The Great Depression 2.0 ™ – the ONE thing the hopeless and downtrodden can cling to … the ONE thing they truly gotta have – is their hooch!!!
Seriously!
A tummy full of Tequila or Tangueray smoothes the harsh edges of a chilly winter’s night alfresco like nobody’s business!
But just try telling that to State Rep. Dave Reed, R[eally MEAN]-Indiana, and you’ll get a steaming cuppa ‘screw you, deadbeat’!
Reed submitted his ‘No Booze for Beggars’ bill after discovering it was actually, like, legal and shit for the poors to buy their Boone’s using taxpayer-backed benefit cards, which look and can be used much like a common credit card.
“I had no idea at the time that such a loophole existed,” he shouted to the little people from high atop his ivory tower.
::: Get ready for a MAJOR huffy when he finds out what they do at the needle exchange!! :::
Reed’s bitter pill of a bill would bar Pennsylvania’s 619 state liquor stores and private beer distributors from accepting the Department of Public Welfare’s electronic benefit cards from the approximately 2 million Keystone Staters who get cash assistance, food stamps or medical aid of some kind.
And I know all of the assholes out there hatin’ on the homeless and dusgusted by the destitute are ALL FOR this shit!
‘Cuz it sounds good; it feels right – right?
Yeah … too bad it won’t work.
Oh shuddit!
It won’t.
Because — aside from the fact that Scaggy Maggie will flat out cut a bitch for blockin’ her Bud — Reed forgot that little bit about the bennie badges behaving like credit cards.
So who’s to stop the vagabond horde from gettin’ their ATM on?
That’s riiiight hobo haters … a steaming cuppa ‘No one’ – that’s who!
Ahhhh government!
Oh well — better luck with the druggies, Dave!
Life Is A Cookie 
This is the shit you bitches are saying