I feel overwhelmed, but what else is new? The hubby and I are refinancing our home because I'm working part time now...uhg, I hate working part time. I have this culturally ingrained feeling that i must work an honest day's labor or I have no worth as a human... But I LOVE being there for our kids. I never got that with our daughter, Morrighan. I was back to work immediately after she was born and that destroyed me physically and emotionally...but that's what America is about, right? Life is work, work is life. You live to work and you work until you die. Nothing comes before work, work is all you need. Maybe that mentality is great if you love what you do, but if you're working just to support your family and not your passion, then living to work is hell...it's a hamster on a wheel.
I'm not a political pundit. I don't LOVE politics. I find the whole song and dance of fat cats to be nauseating. But, much like my leading lady in The Raina Kirkland Novels, I am blessed (and damned) with an overly sensitive ability to empathize. I can't help but see everything from multiple points of view. I'm sure it's annoying to the people close to me. No one is alloyed to make broad generalizations or snap judgments without me being all like, "The driver might not be an inconsiderate prick. Maybe he's in a hurry and didn't see you because his wife's in labor, or his kids just got hurt, or some other emergency....then again, he may just be a selfish driver who thinks he owns the road. All things are possible in the magical world of situational thinking..."
For a lot of people, they don't accept ideas unless it directly effects them. For instants, some people hate or dislike gay, lesbian and bisexual people because of religion...until they love someone who is gay, lesbian or bisexual. Then they have a choice. They either grow as a person, and accept that sexual preference between two Adult Humans has no bearing on morality whatsoever. Or they continue to cherry pick the bible and believe that marriage equality between two adult humans is a slippery slope to people marring animals and kids, which is obviously wrong and disgusting.
Many people feel that our health care system is great the way it is, until they or someone they love becomes ill and then they find out that only the rich get the best care in the world. The rest of us get nothing but endless tests and drugs that treat the symptoms and not the sickness, and still receive bills for unthinkable sums of money! Only then do you realize the system is rigged to keep you sick and in debt, not better, not healthy. When doctor's see cancer, they see dollar signs. That is what our country has become. It's all about the money...
When it comes to banks, hospitals, prisons and colleges, you are not a person anymore, you are a dollar amount. You are potential wealth for someone else, nothing more. America.inc is a factory that makes money off the poor through manipulation and trickery.
Here is "life" in America:
When you are born, it costs your mother $50,000 or more just to give birth to you, $20,000 if she has insurance, $0 only if she is living in extreme poverty. Then tax payers foot the bill...I say mother, rather than parents, because more than 50% of children are born to single mothers
(Remember that)
As you grow up you are raised by strangers, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week from birth because most mothers only take two weeks off to recover from giving birth before they are FORCED to go back to work. Not because they don't have maternity leave protection. They do...it's just not paid leave...2 weeks after giving birth is not enough time to heal physically. It takes 6 weeks for your body to heal, and many more for your mind to heal after such a trauma...So there you are, a fragile new born baby in the arms of strangers 50 hours a week, 200 hours a month, 2,400 hours a year, being bottle fed and mostly ignored because most daycares have several children at once... leaving most children with a fear of abandonment and of being unloved that will effect them for the rest of their lives. {Of course, when you turn 13 years old...you know, when you start thinking about drugs, sex and driving...you are left home alone for that time...smart}
Then at 5 years old, you get to go to school. Kids from wealthy families get to go earlier, but preschools are rarely state ran, and therefor can cost a small fortune to send your kids to unless you find a church that runs a school. Since 23% of Americans are not religious, that isn't an option for them... School is early morning to mid afternoons, 5 days a week for several months in a row and then you get 3 long months to forget everything you learned...if you learned anything at all, because school has basically become a series of tests, test, test. nothing but tests...
And it's worth knowing that most school lines are designed so that rich kids get their own school with better funding, better programs, smaller classes...while poor kids get crowded classes, worse food, worse equipment and really no chance at all...
When you finally graduate high school, if you graduate at all! You can either take out a loan and go $50,000 to $100,000 in debt to become the professional you dreamed of being...but
only if your parents have awesome credit and are willing to cosign that huge amount of debt to their name also... Otherwise, you can join the military and hope you don't die or worse in some horrible desert so they will pay for your college and you get to be who you want to be... Or you can forget about the whole, following your dreams thing, and get a Mc-Job at a fast food place or customer service, where people treat you like human-garbage and pay you poverty wages that leave you in massive debt and taking fist fulls of anti depressants...But no matter which you choose you're going to wake up every morning owing more and more money...
Then life happens. Your car breaks down, you get a traffic ticket, you get sick and suddenly your life is spinning out of control around you. You're paying thousands in car repair bills that you can't afford so you get a credit card you can never pay back. You miss work because you're sick and that just makes things worse because now your paycheck is smaller because your job doesn't offer sick-pay and now you have hospital bills on top of it all, and the traffic ticket that was suppose to be only $50 has ballooned to $300 after all the fees and taxes they tacked onto it, and so you're left owing way more than you make, plus all your regular bills...everything goes on credit cards, but if you miss your deadline to pay the traffic ticket more and more fees are added on until one day you're arrested and put in JAIL!
Once you're in the system you can kiss your life goodbye! 1 in every 100 Americans are in prison right now, and the HUGE majority is for non-violent offensives...meaning, prison is not full of rapists and murders, thieves and assaults. It's full of poor people who couldn't pay their court fines, or poor people who were forced to resort to selling pot to pay their bills.
When you get out, good luck getting a job. Good luck paying your court and probation fees...mostly likely they'll throw you back in jail sooner or later. And they like it like that, because prisons are paid for with our taxes but privately owned...meaning the people in charge of prisons are for profit, the more prisoners the more WE pay them. They have absolutely no incentive to actually rehabilitate anyone. Once you're in the system for anything, they have you in their snare and they wont let go...
America.Inc would have you believe that an honest days work means you pay through the nose for EVERYTHING. Food $$$$, gas $$$, vehicles $$$, vehicle insurance $$, vehicles tabs $$, hospital bills $$$$$, health insurance $$$, electricity $$$, water $$$, garbage $$, school $$$$$$, taxes $$$$. And that is just the essentials. No cable $$$, internet $$$, phone $$$... People who encourage social programs like food stamps and free daycare are EVIL and LAZY and NOT REAL AMERICANS... Real Americans are happy to see their families only 2 days a week, get maybe 1 to 2 weeks of vacation a year. You live to work, work, work. Paying thousands and thousands of dollars a month to just live your life!!! Chances are you will die in debt....Don't worry, your kids will take that inheritance.
But it doesn't have to be this way at all...Think about it. We all pay taxes. Poor, rich, middle class...we all pay...And what do we get for our taxes that we all pay?
- Prisons that are privately run and basically punish and entrap the poor and disadvantaged.
- Tax breaks for extremely wealthy people and corporations that don't NEED or DESERVE them.
- The BIGGEST ARMY IN THE WORLD with bases all over the world, huge depots of rusting tanks and more aircraft carriers than we need several times over
- Corporate subsidies in the billions for meat and dairy that makes us sick and treats animals shamelessly, and sugar and grain which gives us diabetes...
- Paying politicians in DC HUGE paychecks for working part time jobs, while they take bribes from corporations on the side, corporations that force the politicians to screw us over by poisoning our water, destroying our land and paying us poverty wages while at the same time hiking the price of everything! Many of our leading politicians get LIFE-TIME SALARIES IN THE HUNDREDS THOUSANDS! Plus we pay for all their medical needs, as if they can't fucking afford them!
We need to prioritize our spending around building our future and quality of life. The government works for us, that's why we fucking pay them.
- Stop imprisoning non-violent offenders. Prison is to keep the public safe! It should only be meant for murders, rapist, thieves, aggravated assault...
- Cut our military spending. I know people don't like to hear that, but there is sooooo much waste. We can cut our spending without freaking out and cutting corners on safety...
- Stop all government subsidies on farms that do not meat ethical and health standards (our standards should be MUCH higher) and stop all subsidies on oil production!
- Politicians need to take a huge pay cut. What right do these politicians have to demand such high pay for doing a part time job when so many of their hard working tax payers are living in poverty?
I'm sure there are other places we can cut that I'm not thinking of. But seriously...we need better priorities than this. We need to redirect that money toward:
- Better schools all around, not just for the rich neighborhoods
- Universal healthcare
- Paid maternity leave up to 3 months
- Free college up to a Bachelor's degree
And in the mean time, anyone who works full time hours, 40 hours a week, should be able to support their family, two adults and 3 kids. You flip burgers, you support your family! You work construction, you support your family! You are a doctor, you support your family! Minimum wage should raise to today's inflation prices and keep with it. If the price of milk goes up, so should minimum wage! Duh... Families should be able to live on one job, one job...not two or three, but one, because most people are raised by single moms, one NEEDS to be enough! For the safety of the kids if nothing else...
