poverty | Floyd, Times Are Changin

Multiple people ask the question and it never really gets answered. And it isn’t the right question anyway. The right question is, why are we all out for blood? It’s like people are fighting the sixties and seventies all over again and everyone expects immediate gratification. But there is a problem with that. First, you get too many issues all at once and you get anarchy. And what problems take precedence over others?
Does the abortion rights conflagration get too much play while beheadings, so-called ‘honor killings’ not get the outrage that it deserves.

The problem is political positioning. Expecting that any concession anywhere will ultimately doom that cause in the long run. The people who say abortion is murder and those who use the topic as a litmus test for civility. So rather than be civil we commit acts of tyranny in the name of a particular cause?

Can anyone tell me that they believe stopping the abuse of women is less important than a political take? Both sides of the debate as it were, are coming chock full of negatives and a language unique to both. Pro-Life, Anti-abortion/choice. Just like just dropping racial slurs is a panacea to change. That only ratchets up doubt and distrust over the motives of each.

We also have seen the mentality of throwing people under the jail and why some might deserve that, we never stop to think that by the grace of god or fate, it might be us. So we take away food stamps and take away healthcare as a way of coping with the cost of healthcare? I am not advocating Obamacare. I am suggesting that we start putting people first when it comes to need.

There is no excuse for a homeless child and even no excuse for a homeless veteran or anyone else. Are we pretending to care for others or are we cherry-picking our own causes as if the others will just disappear? When I hear someone talk about their parent’s choices, that still doesn’t feed the child. It also does not mitigate the hurt and suffering of women around the world. This too could be solved. We talk about how it was when we were kids, but the problem with that is we had our own problems too!

Wheel chair accessible ramps were relatively rare to non-existent. People with disabilities were expected to pull themselves up with our approving eye and endorsement. As if that gets them a job and a place to sleep. Go to any port authority anywhere and you see the same social hubris that becomes a physical blight to the world. Put a mentally ill person on the street and then comment about crime. Send them to jail and you still have to house them at cost. Not only that but we ignore the root of the problem whether it is an aneurysm or some other form of massive head trauma.

And the resultant problems associated with their illness. Moreover they are mentally ill and are at fault for their mental issues? See, that is the problem…. denial. It will go away and trust me that I know about avoidance and carelessness. So do we mentor people and educate them? Do we give people with social problems the middle-finger or do we actually sit down and listen to PEOPLE? Do we get elected to a committee and become detached or do we really advocate for each other?

I saw a movie called ‘South Central Farm’ and I have attached a link to it so you can see what was going on and why hate and lies surround people who were doing a good thing.

Now seeing some of the shows about the Homeless and then the other night about a police officer who helps the homeless, knows their mental issues and treats them humanely. Unfortunately he is retiring and I think the replacement will do well. But the problem is arrogance and the thought that we are impervious to adversity.

Rush Limbaugh maligned the homeless advocate for overstating the numbers but he was and is wrong and even if they were inflated, what about those kids on the streets or our veterans? There is more than enough to feed people and to get them off the streets without arresting them and trust me when I say this, I am a conservative. That doesn’t mean we stomp on the graves of criminals and just put them away and let them feed on each other. I have no problem with getting bad people off the streets but I would wish we get into dysfunctional homes and stop parents from abusing and killing their own kids. What is preferable, education and saving the kids or having the kids die and jail the parents?

We need to make an environment where people can live peaceably without being gunned down by thugs or police officers. Police officers should again be peace officers and respectful of the public without that being unilateral and cops expecting you to kiss their butts. The growing tension and in the world highlights the path we are on. Do we listen or do we mistreat people who have been in prison, jail or a mental institution? Do we find a better way or just imagine all the Billionaires and Millionaires price us right out of our own homes? That can’t happen? Look at gentrification. Look at attempts by homeless to better themselves and why not be the ones who offer hope rather than just talk about it.

“When the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.He becomes a sort of hollow,posing dummy,the conventional figure of a sahib.For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives”,and so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him.He wears a mask and his face grows to fit it.”
― George Orwell

I consider myself a liberal when it comes to humans and suffering and since we can spend hundreds of billions on soon retired aircraft, I get annoyed when Veteran’s Benefits are slashed because of the cost factor. Too many are counting on robots and drones and such as a reason but invariably injuries are long-lasting and life-changing. Athletes get richly compensated and their risks are nowhere near a soldier’s.

So the problem is the suffering is also a reflection of us collectively and I am not talking about socialism or worse, I am talking about helping in other ways than just words. And there are those doing and not just saying they are helping.

“There’s a saying that you can’t put a price on a human life, but that saying is a lie because we have. We have, and it’s so much lower than you would think. Yes, human life has its price like anything else, and will continue to do so for as long as it doubles as a commodity.”
― Nenia Campbell, Cease and Desist

I want people to understand this one very important point. If you are a billionaire and in production of some sort then you hire people and those people may be retired or laid off. Their fingers gnarled from the constant abuse of repetition and perhaps an unsavory boss. This boss/owner goes him and for that family season’s greetings are easier. Some hoever lose everything and very few to help out or even care.

It took Unions many times to get safer conditions and better pay. To ward off the improbable accident or misfortune that at one time we never considered. We surely can find fault with something that person has done and so we blindly legislate as a remedy for a symptom.

A 19 year old girl gets notice of her fiance dying in the Middle East and suddenly her life and the life of the parents are shattered. Generals still sleep well and there is never enough compensation to recompence the newly indigent or those whose problems keep them second class citizens. Second by what standard? Poverty, medical bills, Cancer, Mother Nature, Despots?

Not only does the Billionaire have electric all winter but at the expense of the withered hands of a widow or widower.

Does the Mother of a dead soldier see the name on a stocking and smile? Do the generals stop by and offer condolences or send an emissary to pay their respects? And the child dying of cancer, where are those people who own a Nuclear Reactor who poisons for generations. Where are they when a child is born with no legs or arms? Where are the producers Malathion and the congenital birth defects and the toll that takes on a family?

Do we support ‘Make A Wish’, ‘Give Kids the World’ or any other number of agencies who can provide relief? And do we continue to support or grandstand or say we did enough?

http://www.sjbhealth.org/body_childrens.cfm?id=2305

The link above may shock many people but George Steinbrenner was a saint to the kids at the hospital which he paid for.

People who are different or people with a disabling condition. Many tempt fate by a cavalier disregard for others until they are in a supine position counting off moments til the inevitable expiration of ego and all the rest.

We have shows like Criminal Minds or even SVU. It is well and proper to prosecute the guilty but what is the fallout from legislation? It sounds like a good thing until the human cost includes unintended consequences from the actions of well-meaning people. At best legislation and lawsuits can temporarily bring some relief without a healing that is more complete. Support Groups are generally run by lay people and it seems cures defer to treating symptoms but not the cause.

Cases of Irritable Bowel Disease is rampant among the Jewish populations after the Concentration Camps. We have billionaires today still benefitting from the tragic loss of others to which many times there is no resource but a support group that meets once a month.

And felons, from small time hoods to murderers and sex offenders, it seems that sticking it to them also has consequences. Our nation is becoming very self-centered and not aware of the effects of legislation and a lack of housing that follows offenders. But by the grace of God go we.

To the left is a homeless advocate who helps. A private young lady with a heart and the dear young ladies on the right whose elder years are feeding the young and hopeless, the aged and the so-called profane criminals who sully our word? <— being facetious about the felons. Hell, I might be a bad person myself!

But this badness in others and ourselves is no farther away than head trauma in an auto accident to drug abuse and hate crimes. We have offenders who never got treatment or programs to head off their own particular brand of abuse. Stopping the cycle is a humane test. Not silly PSAs by corrupt nabobs in Hollywood or actors who feel an affinity to some cause. Those offenders have families too and those unintended consequences are things they share in and suffer over?

Cops beating up old people and other such abuses are more a product of our own pride. So instead of helping we actually use sentences to get cheap labor and then wonder why the marginally gifted feel alienated, despondent and angry. East to be hard!

The food with Shepard’s Chapel Soup Kitchen is catered and high quality and no one gets refused. Otherwise who are we but jailers of a kind????