Thursday, February 03, 2011

Concern for the Future

I see articles about tea partiers and Republicans with plans to cut domestic spending by billions of dollars. They claim its to cut back to pre Obama spending levels but in fact, Obamas spending increases were not enacted, so the cuts would be back to 2008 levels, not 2010 levels as claimed.

These cuts would drastically affect the poor. Housing subsidies would be affected. So would energy grants that help low income households pay power bills. This is at a time when rate increases by Pacific Power in our state exceed 10%. While this is allowed, help to low income households to pay these outrageous increases, will be cut.

The rich get richer. The poor struggle to even survive.

The tea partiers say the poor should work more. Many poor people work two jobs already. Elderly poor often cannot work. The disabled are not allowed to work or their disability is dropped. And there are no jobs to work anyhow.

The land is locked up, not only because of expense to buy land where you could live, but also because if you can afford to buy land, its use is terribly regulated and you must pay property taxes. How does this affect the poor? Rents, at least in this area, are skyrocketing. That is because in part of the university expanding with enrollments going up and student housing scarce.

The poor then must seek out the least expensive alternatives often ill maintained rat hole slums and if they cannot afford that, even with government HUD subsidies, then where do the poor live? Where do the poor live if housing subsidies to housing authorities are discontinued or cut back severely?

Regulations disallow private people from renting space on their own land for poor relatives or other poor to tent city it or park RV's or cars to live in. Regulations add to the problem of where poor people can survive especially if housing subsidies are cut. Rentals often limit the number of people who can live in one dwelling, further complicating the issue, so that poor people cannot band together and share rent.

I know harder times are coming for the poor of our country especially. I know government must cut back and live within its intake. I think it's insane our country gives billions in foreign aid and cannot take care of its own. I think it's insane our country is fighting wars we will never win, spending billions doing so, and does not take care of its own first. I think it is insane we have hundreds of foreign soil military bases yet cannot take care of our own citizens.

I think it's insane that paying for some domestic programs actually makes things worse because of the beaucracies created that employ, at taxpayer expense, so many salaried benefited workers to implement the supposedly helpful programs.

I think its insane that schools have had to become babysitters and parents to students who virtually have no sane unaddicted parents at home. I think it's insane the blame goes to schools when all you have to do is peer into the home life of many students to see the problem. I think it's insane to pour money into schools without first taking at look inside the student's home and life there. I think incentives to not reproduce might work and help reduce government costs radically down the line.

Well anyhow. Guess I'm concerned for my own future. I'm one of those government supported scumbags, on SSI. I get very little and refuse food stamps and work hard for my community as a volunteer, but I feel the hatred of the poor every single day out there. I try to be a worthy poor person. I try hard to be that, but I wish I could find a job and get off SSI for good. I've been working on a book. I know now is not a good time to find a publisher or sell books, but it's all I know to do. I have no skills people seek from employees. I might be too old to cultivate employment skills.

Social Security is going to collapse because the government has raided the fund forever, because the worker FICA rate has been slashed by Obama, so the fund will lose whats left rapidly, and because medical costs have skyrocketed due to greed by insurance companies and even by large hospitals that monopolize the market and drive out competition tha might reduce rates.

That is why no one on SS or SSI now can rely on continued coverage with a straight face. There seems to be no common sense in WA or a connection understood by those there, between what they do and the fallout to common people or to the future.

I think change is coming all right and woe to those unprepared. I need to prepare somehow. I am scared, I admit. I'm getting old and don't really know what to do exactly. I do my best. That's about all I can say.

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