The Republican War on the Poor Rages On

[mntleo2]

2. They do not know how to define real "WORK"

Last edited Wed Jun 10, 2015, 08:09 AM - Edit history (2)

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