1Lets Go Scott Free in 2014 Scott Doesnt Understand Poverty

. . . Or Care

April 20, 2014 SHARE THIS INFORMATION WITH EVERYONE No. 14-6E

Senator McConnellWhere Are The Jobs?

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[Continued on page 2, Poverty]

What Is Poverty?by Jo Goodwin Parker

The following selection was published in Americas Other Children: Public Schools Outside Suburbs, by George Henderson in 1971 by the University of Oklahoma Press. The author has requested that no biographical information about her be distributed. The essay is a personal account, addressed directly to the reader, about living in poverty.

You ask me what is poverty? Listen to me. Here I am, dirty, smelly, and with no proper underwear on and with the stench of my rotting teeth near you. I will tell you. Listen to me. Listen without pity. I cannot use your pity. Listen with understanding. Put yourself in my dirty, worn out, ill-fitting shoes, and hear me.

Poverty Is getting up every morning from a dirt- and illness-stained mattress. The sheets have long since been used for diapers. Poverty is living in a smell that never leaves. This is a smell of urine, sour milk, and spoiling food sometimes joined with the strong smell of long-cooked onions. Onions are cheap. If you have smelled this smell, you did not

know how it came. It is the smell of the outdoor privy. It is the smell of young children who cannot walk the long dark way in the night. It is the smell of the mattresses where years of accidents have happened. It is the smell of the milk which has gone sour because the refrigerator long has not worked, and it costs money to get it fixed. It is the smell of rotting garbage. I could bury it, but where is the shovel? Shovels cost money.

Poverty Is being tired. I have always been tired. They told me at the hospital when the last baby came that I had chronic anemia caused from poor diet, a bad case of worms, and that I needed a corrective operation. I listened politely the poor are always polite. The poor always listen. They dont say that there is no money for iron pills, or better food, or worm medicine. The idea of an operation is frightening and costs so much that, if I had dared, I would have laughed. Who takes care of my children? Recovery from an operation takes a long time. I have three children. When I left them with Granny the last time I had a job, I came home to find the baby covered with fly specks, and a diaper that had not been changed since I left. When the dried diaper came off, bits of my babys flesh came with it. My other child was playing with a sharp bit of broken glass, and my oldest was playing alone at the edge of a lake. I made twenty-two dollars a week, and a good nursery school costs twenty dollars a week for three children. I quit my job.

2[Poverty, continued from page 1]

[Continued on page 3, Poverty Is]

Poverty Is Dirt You can say in your clean clothes coming from your clean house, Anybody can be clean. Let me explain about housekeeping with no money. For breakfast I give my children grits with no oleo or cornbread without eggs and oleo. This does not use up many dishes. What dishes there are, I wash in cold water and with no soap. Even the cheapest soap has to be saved for the babys diapers. Look at my hands, so cracked and red. Once I saved for two months to buy a jar of Vaseline for my hands and the babys diaper rash. When I had saved enough, I went to buy it and the price had gone up two cents. The baby and I suffered on. I have to decide every day if I can bear to put my cracked sore hands into the cold water and strong soap.

But you ask, why not hot water? Fuel costs money. If you have a wood fire, it costs money. If you burn electricity, it costs money. Hot water is a luxury. I do not have luxuries. I know you will be surprised when I tell you how young I am. I look so much older. My back has been bent over the wash tubs every day for so long, I cannot remember when I ever did anything else. Every night I wash every stitch my school age child has on and just hope her clothes will be dry by morning.

Poverty Is staying up all night on cold nights to watch the fire knowing one spark on the newspaper covering the walls means your sleeping child dies in flames. In summer, poverty is watching gnats and flies devour your babys tears when he cries. The screens are torn and you pay so little rent you know they will never be fixed.

Poverty Means insects in your food, in your nose, in your eyes, and crawling over you when you sleep.

Poverty Is hoping it never rains because diapers wont dry when it rains and soon you are using newspapers.

Poverty Is seeing your children forever with runny noses. Paper handkerchiefs cost money and all your rags you need for other things. Even more costly are antihistamines.

Poverty Is cooking without food and cleaning without soap.

Poverty Is asking for help. Have you ever had to ask for help, knowing your children will suffer unless you get it? Think about asking for a loan from a relative, if this is the only way you can imagine asking for help. I will tell you how it feels. You find out where the office is that you are supposed to visit. You circle that block four or

five times. Thinking of your children, you go in. Everyone is very busy. Finally, someone comes out and you tell her that you need help. That never is the person you need to see. You go see another person, and after spilling the whole shame of your poverty all over the desk between you, you find that this isnt the right office after all you must repeat the whole process, and it never is any easier at the next place.

You have asked for help, and after all it has a cost. You are again told to wait. You are told why, but you dont really hear because of the red cloud of shame and the rising cloud of despair.

Poverty Is Remembering It is remembering quitting school in junior high because nice children had been so cruel about my clothes and my smell. The attendance officer came. My mother told him I was pregnant. I wasnt, but she thought that I could get a job and help out. I had jobs off and on, but never long enough to learn anything. Mostly I remember being married. I was so young then. I am still young.

For a time, we had all the things you have. There was a little house in another town, with hot water and everything. Then my husband lost his job. There was unemployment insurance for a while and what few jobs I could get. Soon, all our nice things were repossessed and we moved back here. I was pregnant then. This house didnt look so bad when we first moved in. Every week it gets worse.

3[Poverty Is, continued from page 2]

[Continued on page 4, An Acid]

Nothing Is Ever Fixed We now had no money. There were a few odd jobs for my husband, but everything went for food then, as it does now. I dont know how we lived through three years and three babies, but we did. Ill tell you something, after the last baby I destroyed my marriage. It had been a good one, but could you keep on bringing children in this dirt? Did you ever think how much it costs for any kind of birth control? I knew my husband was leaving the day he left, but there were no goodbyes between us. I hope he has been able to climb out of this mess somewhere. He never could hope with us to drag him down.

Thats When I Asked For Help When I got it, you know how much it was? It was, and is, seventy-eight dollars a month for the four of us; that is all I ever can get. Now you know why there is no soap, no needles and thread, no hot water, no aspirin, no worm medicine, no hand cream, no shampoo. None of these things forever and ever and ever.

So That You Can See Clearly I pay twenty dollars a month rent, and most of the rest goes for food. For grits and cornmeal, and rice and milk and beans. I try my best to use only the minimum electricity. If I use more, there is that much less for food.

Poverty Is Looking Into A Black Future Your children wont play with my boys. They will turn to other boys who steal to get what they want. I can already see them behind the bars of their prison instead of behind the bars of my poverty. Or they will turn to the freedom of alcohol or drugs, and find themselves enslaved. And my daughter? At best, there is for her a life like mine.

But You Say To Me, There Are Schools Yes, there are schools. My children have no extra books, no magazines, no extra pencils, or crayons, or paper, and most important of all, they do not have health. They have worms, they have infections, they have pink-eye all summer. They do not sleep well on the floor, or with me in my one bed. They do not suffer from hunger, my seventy-eight dollars keeps us alive, but they do suffer from malnutrition. Oh yes, I do remember what

I was taught about health in school. It doesnt do much good.

In Some Places there is a surplus commodities program. Not here. The country said it cost too much. There is a school lunch program. But I have two children who will already be damaged by the time they get to school.

Health Clinics But, you say to me, there are health clinics. Yes, there are health clinics and they are in the towns. I live out here eight miles from town. I can walk that far (even if it is sixteen miles both ways), but can my little children? My neighbor will take me when he goes; but he expects to get paid, one way or another. I bet you know my neighbor. He is that large man who spends his time at the gas station, the barbershop, and the corner store complaining about the government spending money on the immoral mothers of illegitimate children.

Poverty Is An Acid that drips on pride until all pride is worn away. Poverty is a chisel that chips on honor until honor is worn away. Some of you say that you would do something in my situation, and maybe you would, for the first week or the first month, but for year after year after year?

Even The Poor Can Dream A dream of a time when there is money. Money for the right kinds of food, for worm medicine, for iron pills, for toothbrushes, for hand cream, for a hammer

4Bill Mahers New RulesOn The Minimum Wage

When it comes to raising the minimum wage, Conservatives always say it is a non-starter because it cuts into profits . . . You might think that paying people enough to live is so self-evident that even crazy people could understand it. But you would be wrong.

Michele Bachmann is not only against raising the minimum wage, she is against having one at all. She said, . . . if we took away the minimum wage . . . we could . . . virtually wipe out unemployment . . . because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.

And naturally, Ted Cruz agrees. Ted Cruz thinks its a good thing that when his Cuban father came to America he was paid fifty cents an hour to work as a dishwasher.

When did the American dream become this pathway to indentured s e r v i t u d e , this economic death spiral where workers get paid next to nothing, so they can only afford to buy next to nothing, so businesses are forced to sell cheaper and cheaper [stuff].

Consider the fact that most fast food workers, whose average age by the way is 29 . . . are on some form of public assistance which is not surprising. When even working people cant make enough to live they take money from the government.

This is the question the Right has to answer. Do you want smaller government with less handouts or do you want a low minimum wage because you cannot have both. If Colonel Sanders isnt going to pay the lady behind the counter enough to live on, then Uncle Sam has to. And I, for one, am getting a little tired of helping highly profitable companies pay their workers.

And Governor ScottJust . . . Doesnt . . Care.

and nails and a bit of screening, for a shovel, for a bit of paint, for some sheeting, for needles and thread. Money to pay in money for a trip to town. And, oh, money for hot water and money for soap. A dream of when asking for help does not eat away the last bit of pride. When the office you visit is as nice as the offices of other governmental agencies, when there are enough workers to help you quickly, when workers do not quit in defeat and despair. When you have to tell your story to only one person, and that person can send you for other help and you dont have to prove your poverty over and over and over again.

I have come out of my despair to tell you this. Remember I did not come from another place or another time. Others like me are all around you. Look at us with an angry heart, anger that will help.

And Governor ScottJust . . . Doesnt . . Care.

[An Acid, continued from page 3]

Scott Doesnt Understand Minimum Wage Poverty

Andrew Lloyd cleans airplanes between flights at JFK Airport. With a wife and 1-year-old, he relies on food stamps to help stock the refrigerator and his $8 an hour paychecks barely cover diapers and other needs of his daughter. He said he cant afford a new pair of socks for himself.

Its not enough. What were making is not enough to support us, Lloyd said. Theres just no way they can justify what is going on is right.

Opponents, many of them Republicans, argue that the higher wages translate into fewer jobs and higher consumer costs. So wage hike bills in Republican-controlled legislatures, like Florida, are not expected to pass. In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott said the claim that working families need the boost to make ends meet makes him cringe, because I know that statement is a lie.

Even if we did raise the minimum wage, working families will still not be able to make ends meet on those jobs, Scott said. We need good jobs that lead to good careers for our families, and thats what I am focused on.

5[Continued on page 6, Hijacking]

Sleepwalking Toward PlutocracyMarshall C. Whitfield (1935-2012)

for Buzzflash At Truthout

Chapter 5The Hijackings Alchemy

[Continued from Issue 14-4]

Libertarian Philosophy Without Libertari-anism as a philosophy, the hijacking could never have happened. Its the rarely acknowledged but indispensable swiss army knife of right-wing ide-ology. Its fiercely anti-Government, anti-tax doc-trine gives Republicans a rationale for prostitut-ing themselves to the Plutocrats. It provides an excuse for their shameful unwillingness to pay for wars and government services.

Plutocrats Demands Libertarian worship of free market capitalism has proved tailor-made to justify the Plutocrats demands for deregulation (the root cause of the Wall Street crash, the BP oil spill, and countless other disasters).

An Overview Any coherent understanding of American politics today requires some knowledge of Libertarianism a knowledge most Americans lack. Heres a quick overview.

Definition of Libertarian According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, a Libertarian is one who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.

... maximizing individual rights refers to civil liberties, which sounds good to most Americans. Thats what makes Libertarianism so seductive, especially to young people. What makes it dangerous is how maximizing individual rights is coupled with minimizing the role of the state, as if the state was the enemy of individual rights rather than the guarantor.

Ayn Rand This upside-down view of reality was popularized in the 1950s by Ayn Rand, charismatic author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. She portrayed the real producers in society as independent, wealthy and talented heroes, burdened and oppressed by government.

30 People Were Killed By A Gun Yesterday And Every Day%HFDXVH7RGD\V5HSXEOLFDQV-XVW'RQW&DUH

I Never KnewGee, I never knew that:

everyone in society was able-bodied and disease-free,

that discrimination never existed, that what impacts one person has

absolutely no bearing on the rest of us, that everyone with money attained

all of it in an honest manner, that all welfare programs such as

corporate subsidies were bad, and that we did not need

stop signs, sewage systems, airports, courts, police protection, schools, a standing military, postal delivery,

and all those other horrible government programs that only the richest among us pay for and only the poorest among us use!

Dr.Robert Watson

And Governor ScottJust . . . Doesnt . . Care.

Her biographer Jennifer Burns called her a gateway drug to life on the right.

By 1972 Rands extremist anti-government philosophy merged with older Libertarian thinking and free-market ideology into the American Libertarian Party, which has fielded a presidential candidate every election year since 1972. Twice this candidate has been Ron Paul, whose mild-mannered country doctor charm has put a friendly, almost reasonable face on Libertarianism. By 2006, polls showed that 15 percent of American voters identified themselves as Libertarian.

Libertarianisms Fatal Flaws All these people either fail to grasp, or are in denial about, Libertarianisms fatal flaws:

Sells A Mirage It sells a cruel mirage by flattering Americans as rugged individualists, self-sufficient and contemptuous of Medicare, Social Security, etc. Sadly, that arrogant self-image dissolves in the face of sickness, disability, and old age. Ive never met a Libertarian who wasnt either wealthy or young and healthy.

6[Hijacking, continued from page 5]

Instead of No New Taxes say

End Socialism for the Rich.

Rejects Empathy It rejects the long human struggle to develop civilized societies with empathy for those who need help. It defies Judeo-Christian traditions about being our brothers keeper, and scorns Mahatma Gandhis belief that A nations greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.

Ignores Societys Needs Its outrage over government growth ignores societys obvious need to protect the planet and cope with the worlds growing complexities. Environmental regulations never entered our forefathers thoughts when we were four million people in a mostly unexplored wilderness; now, with 311 million creating garbage, controls are desperately needed. We didnt need the FAA until our skies got crowded; now we do.

Believes Government Is The Prime Evil It cites wasteful spending as a prime evil of government, as if bureaucracy and waste were not universal in all human endeavors. Even well-run small businesses have human problems and make mistakes. So the FDA is not perfectly efficient? Instead of trying to fix it, Libertarians would dismantle it, trusting the capitalist profit motive to somehow keep our food safe.

Believes Blindly Its blind belief in a free-market economy is a triumph of theory over real-world experience. If we learned nothing else from the Bush years, when runaway U.S. banks almost destroyed the worlds economy, we should have learned that capitalism simply cant be trusted to regulate itself.

Libertarianism Has Never Worked Libertarianism has never worked in any country because it denies basic human needs and is far too simplistic to provide practical governance. In the words of one bright young Republican, Meghan McCain, Libertarianism is logical in the classroom and not necessarily applicable in real life.

Catnip Nevertheless, in its contempt for government and celebration of individual self-sufficiency, Libertarianism is absolute catnip for Americans who yearn for the simpler times of our pioneer ancestors. These are the zealous True Believers. How can you distinguish them

from those who cynically claim Libertarian beliefs merely to mask their greed and lack of social conscience? It doesnt really matter; theyre both equally dangerous.

This is the cornerstone ideology of the hijacking.

[In our next issue, 14-7, Mr. Whitfield looks at how the Plutocratic Republican machinery works.]

The Lessons of History Are Clear.

Liberals Fought for an End to Slavery. Conservatives Opposed Them.

Liberals Promoted Mine Safety.Conservatives Opposed Them.

Liberals Promoted Child Labor Laws. Conservatives Opposed Them.

Liberals Fought for a Womans Right to Vote. Conservatives Opposed Them.

Liberals Created Social Security. Conservatives Opposed Them.

Liberals Established Quality Infrastructure Programs Across the Country.

Conservatives Opposed Them. Liberals Gave the Country Medicare.

Conservatives Opposed Them. Liberals Passed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights

Acts. Conservatives Opposed Them.

Liberals Passed Clean Air and Clean Water Legislation.

Conservatives Opposed Them. Liberals Passed the Endangered Species Act.

Conservatives Opposed Them. Liberals Expanded Affordable Health Care

Coverage.Conservatives Opposed Them.

Liberals Fought for Same Sex Equality. Conservatives Opposed Them.

See a Trend Here?Liberals Have Been on the Right Side of History

. . . on Every Issue. Dr. Robert Watson

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