Freedom is priceless: First they came for the homeless…then… we became homeless too.

A city in Florida is making it illegal for homeless people to carry possessions in public places.

My question is, how will they know whether or not a person is homeless? Are they just going to target people who are poorly dressed, assume they are homeless then take away whatever possessions they are carrying with them? If someone is walking home from the grocery store, carrying a bag of groceries and looking poorly dressed, might the police not stop that person and demand he/she give up the groceries? Suppose the police officer is hungry, for example, hasn’t eaten in hours and then this rather homeless-looking person shows up carrying a bag of groceries in a city that doesn’t allow possessions to be displayed on public sidewalks?

https://www.tumblr.com/think-progress/83441673147/florida-city-about-to-make-it-illegal-for-homeless

http://wonkette.com/547183/fort-lauderdale-will-magically-fix-homelessness-by-stealing-homeless-peoples-stuff-basically

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/city-pass-law-allowing-cops-seize-homeless-peoples-belongings

Am I trying to be funny here? Just a tongue-in-cheek little anecdote for today’s Mad Bag Lady blog entry?

Look, I know most Americans don’t care at all about the homeless. Whether you’ll admit to it or not, most of you still believe in the “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” nonsense. You think that if you keep supporting the system, keep working hard at tiny wages for bosses who act more like slaveholders than business owners that one day someone will recognize your good “attitude” (slaves are notorious for having good attitudes toward their situation) and promote you to CEO of corrupt corporate America. So you dare not speak out on behalf of the homeless. After all, they’ve just made “bad choices,” obviously. Otherwise, they’d be temporarily embarrassed millionaires too.

Believe me, I get it. I get it.

But remember this: dictators always choose a scapegoat, deprive them of their civil rights first and convince the rest of the population to support it. But the real agenda is to deprive everyone of their rights. It’s just easier to start with the most unpopular people first. The homeless are just guinea pigs for an overall plan to eliminate our public spaces, privatize everything, and take away all of our rights (unless of course we’re wealthy and can afford to buy the streets and sidewalks so that we can do whatever we want on them.)

So Hitler attacked the Jews, for example. But ultimately, no one was free under Nazi leadership. What many people don’t know is that Hitler went after union leaders too.  Union leaders, communists and democratic socialists–anyone who wanted more civil liberties for the average person (as opposed to the wealthy elite) was the enemy of Hitler and the Nazis.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005686

http://www.johndclare.net/Nazi_Germany1.htm

This might surprise many Americans who’ve been brainwashed into believing that “socialism” is the enemy. In fact, Hitler was strongly against democratic socialism and communism.

Think about that for a moment. Please. Please think, and think for yourself, if only for a moment. Because it’s important to remember that “communism,” “socialism,” “capitalism,” etc., are all just labels. None of those systems are practiced in their purest forms (at least to my knowledge.) Most countries use ideas from all of these systems and combine them to create their own systems. (More about this will be addressed in a future blog.) The Nazis may often be thought of as socialists and may have claimed to be wanting to help the average German (who was struggling during the Great Depression) but the Nazis persecuted union leaders, democratic socialists and communists, threw them in prison or executed them. What the Nazis said publicly and what they actually did were often two different things, as we now know from history. (Oddly, I had a hard time finding any videos online about this. Most were filled with propaganda about the Nazis. However, I’ve read the history of Nazi Germany, and I urge you to do the same, so that you don’t believe the lies being told by people who assume you won’t take the time to actually read about it for yourself.)

 

But back to the point. Laws restricting the rights of the homeless to sleep on “public” sidewalks, to ask for money and now to own possessions of any kind affect all of us. Homeless or not, should you decide to “hang out” in public, you may be accosted by the police. And now, in some cities, you can have your possessions taken from you.

Is this what you want, America?

Perhaps I’m an unusual person because I value freedom over everything, including money. (OMG! OMG! You value something over money!) Yes, people. And I’ll even say it again. Freedom, civil liberties, civil rights–are more important to me than money.

I think we’ve all read about wealthy people who’ve been very unhappy in spite of their material wealth. Marilyn Monroe was a classic example. She was beautiful, wealthy and famous but very, very unhappy. She was not free. That’s right, Marilyn Monroe did not have freedom. As a woman, she was oppressed the way all of us females are. She was a mere sex object. And that’s all she was allowed to be. No matter how often she cried out that she wanted to be taken seriously as an actress, that she didn’t want to be a “joke,” the business people who managed her career would not allow her to be herself. To be herself and a serious actress would have meant speaking in her own authentic voice, not the child-like, false-innocent ingenue voice that had made her famous. Being herself meant not flirting with every man–perhaps there were some men who irritated her. Perhaps there were times when she didn’t feel sexy, when she didn’t want to wear makeup or do her hair. Perhaps there were times when she thought about civil rights issues and politics herself. (From what I’d read, she’d had democratic-socialist ideas. That’s not surprising as she’d grown up poor.) But a sex object does none of those things. A sex object is pretty, mindless and always eager to please.

So tragic. So sad. Ms. Monroe seemed to have it all. But the one thing she didn’t have was that which is priceless, that one thing money cannot buy: freedom. Should she have dropped everything to pursue her own desires, she would have lost all that money, all her connections. And then what? Happiness, maybe. But money? She could have lost it all. Instead she gave up her life. So ultimately she lost it all anyhow.

Personally, I don’t see the point in that. But then who am I? I don’t have a lot of money myself, so I suppose nothing I say really matters, does it? Believe it or not, I was faced with similar choices to Marilyn’s. In some ways, my childhood was similar, and I too–yes, me, the mad bag lady!–was thought of as rather, shall we say, sexy… I could have slept my way to the top…

But I chose a different route. And look where I am today! Woohoo!

I haven’t committed suicide because I chose to be myself and not be commodified, but I, obviously, paid a financial price.

However, it could have been different if I’d had a large following. What I mean is, if millions of Americans had also chosen freedom –and we can do it now, all of us, we can choose freedom today!–if Americans were to choose freedom then the few of us who value freedom wouldn’t be the outcasts, the dregs of society. We’d be the heroes.

But today’s American heroes are sellouts. They live like Marilyn lived. It’s fun for a while until the years go by and you start to find you can’t be a commodity any longer. If you’re an intelligent person, eventually, you’ll start to realize that there are aspects of yourself you’ve had to suppress in order to appease those you’ve allowed to have power over you.

And increasingly, it’s getting dangerous to hold onto our humanity, to be ourselves. We’re all under surveillance. We go to work and our bosses are watching us via cameras all over the building. They watch us as we drive into the parking lot and park our cars. They see us applying that extra dab of lip gloss and straightening out the wrinkles in our clothes before we exit our car. They’re watching while we think we’re alone in the elevator and pulling the crease out of the back of our skirt when we forget someone else is there (behind the surveillance camera.) Even some public restrooms have surveillance cameras in them. But we ignore all that, telling ourselves no one is really watching us, and we adjust our bra strap, maybe remove our blouse to fix our bra, and all the while a man is watching us behind that camera in the restroom where we thought we were alone.

We have no privacy. No time to be ourselves, even when we’re alone. No time to lock ourselves in the bathroom to have a good cry–because they’re watching us there too. But that’s not enough for them.

Now they want the right to stop us and confiscate our belongings–but only if they think we’re homeless.

Well, guess what, Americans? We are homeless! All of us. They’ve taken our country away from us. We grew up living in the Land of the Free and the Brave, the land that claimed, “Give me your tired and your poor…” but our land was taken away from us.

So where do we go now?

 

 

Gone are the Good Old Days of Rebellion

Aside

Gone are the days of rebellion, the days of revolt, the days of speaking out, standing up, standing out, standing for something or someone. We no longer watch each other’s backs. And none of us has the courage to stand alone, completely alone. We can only watch as things just happen. Things just pass us by… ’cause that’s the way it is.

Ya’ know, that’s just the  way it is, so ya’ll had better just accept it.

Why are you such a rebel? You’re going to have trouble in your life because you’re just too rebellious. (That’s what they told me when I was very young.) Guess what?

They were right. I thought I grew up in a conservative city. Little did I know… Now I live in a conservative country–so conservative that I don’t recognize it anymore, and…   Guess what else?

I feel like a foreigner in my own country.

Gone are the days of activism, of activity, of shocking revelations, of refreshing words of wisdom. The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave is not free at all. In fact, it’s scared to death. And it doesn’t even have a home anymore. It’s homeless. And those of us who belonged to that land, that erstwhile land, are homeless along with it. Where shall we go? What shall we do now?

Yes, those of us who remember the USA, the real USA long before surveillance, before outrageously expensive rent, education and health care, before chronic unemployment and jobs with tiny wages that don’t meet the cost of living, before increasing poverty and homeless, those of us who remember will soon grow old. We’ll be replaced by those who won’t remember, those who find surveillance to be the norm. Heck, they might even enjoy being groped by the TSA. But there was a time, and not so long ago, when there was crime but we didn’t believe in fighting it by violating people’s privacy, keeping each other under constant surveillance, and hiring cops so aggressive that they’re more dangerous than the criminals who used to scare us. And we still had the courage to talk to our neighbors in those days. We also had the time and money to socialize, to go out and have fun. (Do you remember this, people?) We weren’t quite as afraid of each other. And odd, unique, rather strange people were all around us. They dressed differently, walked differently, talked differently, had strange ideas and accents we couldn’t quite place. We didn’t know where they were from but we respected their right to exist. And so, even though they were different, they walked among us (without worries of being tasered or beaten up by militarized police forces who can no longer solve problems nonviolently.)

Not anymore. Today, such characters are taken away. Are they jailed? Forced into homeless shelters? Perhaps there’s another Guantanamo secret prison set up especially for people who are just different from the norm so that the rest of us don’t have to deal with them anymore.

Here now are the days of conformity, complacency, and acquiescence at its finest. Today we say nothing that hasn’t been said before. We say nothing.

We say what’s already been said, say what we’re told, do what we’re told, think what we’re told. Over and over again.

The same songs play over and over again on the radio. Slightly different lyrics but the song remains the same.

The same shows play and replay on the same TV stations–all 1000 of them.

The same movies we’ve already seen show in all the theaters all over town. The same actors, the same directors, writers, announcers. It’s always the same. Different screenplay, same story. And all the characters look the same. They’re all pretty. They’re all thin. They’re all glamorous–even after running a marathon, the leading lady isn’t sweating and her makeup isn’t smudged. No one farts or burps… Well, not usually. Sometimes in comedies, but only to keep the audience from thinking serious thoughts.

Heaven forbid we allow anything new. That might make some of us think. Might form new synapses, change our brain chemistry in ways the pharmaceutical industry never dreamed of.

And we don’t want that.

We censor our own thoughts. We cannot think for ourselves. We dare not even think of thinking for ourselves. What will the boss say if he finds out I voted for the Green Party? What will the wife/husband/crazy neighbor think if they find out I’m a socialist? What if I don’t agree with what everyone else is saying? What if I have a different view?

Americans like to talk about diversity. But “diversity” (along with “family values”) is like the weather in America. Everyone talks about it but no one does anything about it. We “embrace diversity” and we’re so “politically correct” yet we see the same ideas, opinions, TV shows, films, songs, rock bands, movie stars, celebrities, experts, newscasters, etc., over and over again. We see cookie-cutter houses being built–each one the same as the other–because it’s more efficient to build them all the same way.

What if someone built a purple house?

Have you ever walked into an office and seen a diverse crew of employees hailing from different races, age groups and genders? Have you ever worked within a truly diverse work environment?

I HAVEn’t. But I have worked for people who claimed to embrace diversity. (I suppose on some level they did: somewhere inside the deep, dark recesses of what little was left of their imagination, they embraced diversity. Hugged it real tight. Real tight. Then they let it go forever.)

I wonder if I’m the only one who gets bored with it all.  In school, my teachers kept repeating the same things over and over again. I suppose some of the other students needed that repetition. Perhaps they hadn’t learned it yet. But I had. And I was bored. Very, very bored. Please, please, teach me something new. But they wouldn’t. They just wanted to repeat the same things over and over again.

Over and over.

Over.

Again.

And if I yawned I was in trouble. If I skipped a class, I was in trouble. A teacher threatened to fail me once because I wasn’t coming to class. “Seriously, why don’t you give me a reason to come to class?” I wanted to say. Sorry to say, I am not so polite anymore. But I wish I could go back to school, a real school where I could actually learn something new. But then maybe my brain would explode from the shock. And since I seem to be the only one who is bored with all this mindless repetition, this endless conformity, this nonsensical drivel that passes for “news” and “entertainment,” I suppose there’s just no point. No point at all. It’s over, folks. Over. (The USA, that is. The rest of the world might survive, but not the USA.) The USA is a goner. Over. Finito. How does one spell “sayonara?”

Over and over.

Over.

Again.

So here’s my drivel for the day. Sorry ’bout the mess. I’ll go grab some tissue and pick up as much of it as I can. Then I’ll be more careful with the next blog entry… and there will be at least one more.

The rich have the means to get mean and meaner… “the Rich are Getting Mean” revisited

I’d written in the past about a poor, struggling man I’d met in a city building. Both of us were there to resolve tickets we’d received by law enforcement, essentially, for being poor. What I mean is, it’s a crime in the US to be poor. Poor people seem to acquire all sorts of legal problems. In Southern California, for example, jaywalking is a serious crime. Mostly only poor people walk over there, of course. And if you can’t afford to pay the jaywalking ticket…well, you can end up in the slammer. Yep, people go to jail for crossing the street in California. I kid you not! A person’s entire life can be ruined by a single act of crossing a street when the walk signal (light flashes an image of a little androgynous human) stops flashing.

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/Dec2006/criminal.htm

But I told myself this blog would be extremely short. So here goes: My little experiment in writing more frequently but shortening the size of each entry…

This poor unfortunate man I’d met had serious health problems and was collecting disability. He was suffering quite a bit and struggling to pay his medical bills. “The rich are getting mean,” he lamented as we’d gotten into a discussion about the social injustice of our needing to constantly defend ourselves legally. (It’s as though we have to defend our very existence. Do the rich want us dead? Why do they hate us so much?) There’s always some ticket to pay, some ordinance or law to be violated, when you’re poor.  My car was ticketed and I had to go to court to defend myself for driving such an old, beat up used car. So I dropped my car off to a junkyard and proceeded to watch my life fall apart, as it was nearly impossible to find a decent job without a car. When I went to court, I had to show proof that I’d given up my car. I wanted to say, “I’m sorry I’d been driving such a stinky car and that it was polluting your fine California air. But I’d drive a much nicer and less stinky car if I could afford it. Really, I would.” But instead, I showed them the proof that I was carless and then began risking getting mugged by taking Southern California’s wonderful and exciting (nearly was assaulted several times!) “public” transportation system. Once I no longer had a car, I found that opportunities diminished for me in so many ways. People looked down on me because they saw me–horror of horrors!–walking in LA.  Basically, a lot of people didn’t want to be my friend. I couldn’t socialize with them anymore as I had no way of getting to the places where they went. (Unless, of course, a friend offered to give me a ride, but that would mean giving, helping, assisting another human being. But, of course, that would involve socialism and most of my friends were against socialism, so they wouldn’t dare help me in any way. I’m very grateful for that, though, because it gave me a chance to see what kind of people they really were. You don’t always get that chance when you have a lot of money and your life is going well.) And, as I said, job opportunities were very limited for me once I had no transportation. Most available jobs these days are not on the bus line and as public transportation increasing gets cut, that problem is increasing. (Hmm… so I wonder how it benefits society to force poor people to give up their cars when their cars don’t meet the strict environmental inspection standards set up by wealthy bureaucrats? But then I’m always wondering how it benefits society to allow the government and big banks to take away people’s homes just because people can’t afford to pay their bills. Yes, people should pay their bills but…do we really want to take away people’s homes and create a new population of homeless people?)

(Okay, I’ve tried to embed the above video of Bryan Stevenson’s talk, but, for some strange reason, it won’t embed on this site. Every time I type in the code, it disappears once I save this blog. Yep, I type it in, hit “save” then open up the blog and everything I typed is gone.  This happened with my previous blog entry also. As you can see, though, the other videos embedded just fine.  Not sure what’s going on here.  A virus on my computer perhaps? A glitch on WordPress? Perhaps it’s the NSA virus? Anyhow, it’s odd. But I’ve got the URL typed up there, so if you’d like to view this wonderful video about poverty and crime, please click on that link.)

But this doesn’t affect the rich or even much of the middle class, so why do I even bring this up?  Yes, the rich are getting  mean, but so, oddly enough, are the middle class. They may not be the so-called “one percent” but they sure do think they’re better when they live in their gated communities far, far away from the riff raff, i.e., the poor.

And yet, perhaps ironically, the word “mean” as a noun refers to money, property or wealth. Yes, the rich have the means to be mean.

( Above video is from youtube.com/user/KafkaWinstonWorld )

So here it is–my first blog of the year!  And an attempt to make it a short blog entry.  Okay, I didn’t do as well on that as I’d hoped, but I’m getting there…  😉

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/149094/february-11-2008/philip-zimbardo

 

2012. It’s here. We’ve done the deed. We’ve allowed time to catch up with us. So now what?

Aside

We Americans, who think we are so much in control over everything (and everyone), cannot control time. We cannot stop it from catching up with us and we cannot prevent the consequences of our actions.

We think, for example, we can abuse our kids and that that will be okay because when they grow up and exhibit all sorts of psychiatric symptoms we’ll just take them to the doctor and have them medicated.

We think we can abuse our fellow Americans by outsourcing jobs to third-world countries then blaming people for not being able to find decent-paying jobs and not being able to pay their bills.

Or by blaming people for getting sick then depriving them of access to good health care.

We think we can abuse women, minorities and poor people by blaming them from suffering from discrimination and social injustice while we refuse to take responsibility for how we choose to treat others.

We don’t need to discriminate against women and people of color when hiring for certain jobs. We don’t need to pay our employees tiny wages. We don’t need to refuse to provide our employees with health insurance.  We don’t need to charge unreasonably high rents to our tenants.  We don’t need to charge unreasonably high prices for items we sell.  But we choose too because that’s a higher profit, more money, for us. And that’s all we care about–US, right?

Us. We think we can pollute the environment and that will be okay because we can just use scientific knowledge and advanced technology to make it all go away when the s**t hits the f*n. (I mean, hey, there are other planets, right?) If we get sick from the processed food and the pollution in our air, food and water, we’ll just take some medication or have the body parts that are damaged inside us surgically removed. Heck, I’ve met people who have rods in their spine.  Some people pick up radio signals, they have so much metal in them. Some people have pacemakers that help keep their heart beating no matter what.  Lots of people have tumors removed, so does it matter if cell phones can cause tumors?  Does your stomach hurt?  Have it removed or surgically modified.

Does your heart bother you?  What about your mind?  Your conscience?  Your soul?  (Hmm… I suspect there are some things we can’t have removed or surgically modified, though I could be perfectly wrong. Am I?)

Oh yeah, we Americans can survive anything. But what’s more important is that we can do anything we want. And no one can do what we can. We’re just better than everyone else in the world, right?   Greatest country in the world, right?

Ehem.

On this day, December 21st, 2012–doomsday or day of transformation, I wanted to share my own personal observations and predictions for the future (if there is one) of this country.  Yes, I’m not so well-known.  If I’m lucky, I’ll get 3-4 readers of my blog per day. (And some of them are mere paid trolls hired out to discourage us “liberals” from uttering dissenting voices on the web. Yep, we’re on to ya’, so don’t even bother.)  That’s okay because I haven’t had the time or the desire to promote this blog, as, like most Americans, financial concerns “occupy” my mind most of the time, unfortunately.  And in a sense, it doesn’t really matter. Famous media personalities such as Michael Moore, Naomi Wolf, Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman have tried and continue to try to inform the American masses. Yet I continue to meet Americans who have never even heard of any of those people despite their collective decades of activism.

So there ya’ go.

A lot of people (quacks in my not-so-humble opinion) have been predicting a transformation on this day. A spiritual transformation. Suddenly human beings will no longer be human beings. We’ll suddenly stop hating, stop war-mongering, stop being selfish, greedy, etc. We’re going to transform into loving, spiritual, god-like creatures no longer capable of social injustice.

In other words, we’ll all cease to exist as humans.

But what is actually happening today in everyday America is exactly the opposite of that.  We’re continuing to hear of layoffs, employees losing their jobs, companies outsourcing labor to third-world countries or downsizing (trying to get more work out of fewer people and for less pay) while we’re also hearing the propaganda–that the economy is getting better, that jobs are being “created,” that poor people are lazy and don’t want to work, that some people are creating their own problems by causing themselves to get sick then complaining they have no access to affordable health care, etc.

Yep, the propaganda machine is alive and well, and we will hear more of it. People will continue to lose their homes, their jobs, their friends and sometimes their families. Without a livelihood and with no hope for a better future, many people are finding themselves isolated in a society that values money over everything else. What, you don’t have a car? You don’t have a computer? You don’t have Internet access at home? You can’t afford to go to the concert?  To eat dinner at au restaurant on the hill?  Heaven forbid, you have no home? No job? Are you collecting public assistance? Horror of horrors! What kind of person are you?

A human person.

But that’s beside the point. Rather than a spiritual transformation that makes us kinder and more loving, I believe the opposite is happening and will continue to do so.  The transformation we’re undergoing is making us less human–that is true, but not in the way the new-agers were expecting.

We are changing, transforming, into drones who care for nothing or no one, who follow orders mindlessly, who never even think of thinking for ourselves. We don’t even ask for permission. We just wait for our orders which we obey without question. Soon the human race (that of thinking, rational, compassionate and empathetic creatures, capable of creativity, imagination and sometimes questioning authority) will be one we might read of in history books or hear tale of from our grandparents–if such history is allowed to be told.

Yes, revolution is possible in some parts of the world. People who suffer for long periods of time are bound to develop some discontent and rebel. But, of course, a mass rebellion requires one thing that we wealthy/formerly wealthy Americans just don’t have: cooperation.

In order for people to rise up and vent their dissatisfaction with the social order of things, people need to be able to cooperate, to work together, to trust in each other, and yes, to help each other. Americans have been conditioned to believe that helping other people makes the people receiving the help lazy and dependent. How many times have we heard about the cycle of dependency, the “nanny state,” or heaven forbid, the dangers of “socialism?”  Your next-door neighbor is just another dog in a dog-eat-dog society who’ll eat you if you don’t eat him/her first. So be glad they lost their house, their job, their car… That’s one more house, job, car, etc., for you!

We’ve become a nation of rugged individualists with each one of us thinking we are some sort of island or fortress that can stand against the world. Problem is, we can’t.

A society, by definition, is people, a group of people, working together, collaborating together, sharing and helping each other. A society is not a collection of selfish people who don’t like each other, are afraid of each other, are unable to trust each other or to make sacrifices for each other. No, what we have here in the US is not a society at all, and that is what is disturbing.

Because no matter how bad things get, no matter how many surveillance cameras spy on us, no matter how many stories we hear of political activists dying mysterious deaths or finding their careers ruined, we, the people, outnumber the wealthy elitists who’ve taken over our country. We, the people, ultimately prevail, and those in power are afraid of us. Yes, they are very much afraid. That is the reason, after all, for all the surveillance and the taking away of our civil liberties. Attempting to oppress millions of free people is dangerous indeed. But what if the people aren’t free? What if they all hate each other? Are afraid of each other? Can’t trust each other? Can’t cooperate or work on projects with each other? Can’t trust each other? Are completely dependent on authority figures to tell them how and what to think?

We the people could change this entire country in an instant. In fact, the entire world could change in an instant! (Yes, perhaps I could market this idea because I think I’ve just solved the world’s problems just now… Or have I, my dear naive, capitalist friend?)

And yet it is true. Painfully true! Everything could change in a heartbeat. All we have to do is change ourselves. Instead of “waiting for superman” to rescue us, protesting what other people are doing, complaining, crying, lamenting, etc., we just need to stop going along with it. That means becoming the peace, freedom, change or whatever we wish to see in the world. That means stop buying from large corporations. Stop supporting them. We know they are greedy for money and power. Let’s stop giving it to them.

We can stop watching television. We can recognize their propaganda and resist their fear mongering.

We can visit our friends and neighbors and start congregating in public places again. We can have barbecues and invite our neighbors over. We can stop stealing from and assaulting each other. We can start being kind and loving rather than judgmental and vindictive toward each other. We can welcome our differences, for they make us interesting, rather than attack each other and discriminate against each other for them. Men, women, rich people, poor people, red people, brown, black and yellow people, fat people, thin people, smart and not-so-smart people. We are a diverse humanity. Some can run faster, think faster, shoot faster, talk faster than others, but that’s what makes life interesting. Our weaknesses are also our strengths and vice versa. The one who moves slowly might have more patience for solving complex problems. The one who runs faster might have trouble stopping and listening to others and may be slow at understanding.

Once we understand that we realize that no one is really “weaker” or less important as everyone has something to offer to the world. We need the slower among us along with the quicker. Those we label as “weak” might have strengths we’ve ignored. An elderly relative wasting away in a nursing home has tremendous wisdom that is left untapped. Why? Why do we throw away people when we, the people, are all needed so very much? Everyone has inside him or her something great and wonderful, some special form of knowledge or experience that can heal someone else if only it were shared.

Yet we don’t share. We’ve forgotten how to share. And those who still know how to share are often prevented from doing so. We’ve forgotten how to appreciate and show gratitude to those who want to share by preventing them from contributing to our society.  Remember, the person collecting the welfare check may not contribute by working at a regular “job” but contributes to society in many other ways. Raising one’s children properly, lending a kind hand to a neighbor, giving helpful advice to someone who’s lost, inviting someone who’s hungry or lonely over for dinner, being a good listener or just a good friend to another human being in need are only some of the ways in which everyone can contribute, regardless of employment status.

On a certain level, we used to know all this. I’m not saying/writing anything new here. But somehow we’ve lost our way. We’ve forgotten who we are as human beings. We’ve allowed a tiny minority of wealthy aristocrats to manipulate us into becoming like they are: greedy, selfish, egotistical, self-servingly ignorant–instead of giving and selfless, connected as a part of one race, the way we were meant to be as humans.

Why?

We’ll never be like them. Most of us will never become nearly as rich, as social mobility in the USA is not very common. Most Americans  remain in roughly the same socioeconomic class within which they were born. But why do we want to be like them? They’re never happy, never satisfied. We hear them always complain about having to pay taxes. Poor babies–a simple tax return they don’t even fill out themselves (but that their accountants fill out for them) is enough to shatter their entire world. Inner turmoil sets in at the very thought of having to give anything to anyone else. They were born with money, they continue to make more money and yet they hoard their money. Most of it goes nowhere, just sits in bank accounts, trust funds, stocks, bonds, etc. Still they live in constant fear of losing even a mere penny of it. What a sad life they lead. They own several cars, houses, mansions, private planes, servants, etc., but they are never satisfied. It’s just never enough for them. Like the alcoholic who never has enough to drink, the greedy money-hoarder never has enough money and/or power over other people. And for what purpose? To what end? We will all die someday regardless. We can all get sick–rich and poor. We all have to use the bathroom. All of us vomit. All of us pee.

And when you’re alone in a hospital room vomiting nonstop, your makeup, your fancy hairdo, your diamonds and pearls won’t make you any better than human. They won’t save you from dying. In fact, the makeup will smudge, your hair will get messy and the jewelry might need to be removed during surgery. And people who have less money than you (who you think of as inferior) will see you undressed, unadorned–wrinkles, warts, farts, and all.

Sorry, wealthy elite, aristocrats, one-percenters, “illuminati,”reptile peeps, or whatever you prefer to be called, but you aren’t any better than the rest of us. You’re just as human, just as messy, sloppy, oily, smelly, and imperfect as the rest of us.

Except on the inside, you’re much, much uglier.  Often you even lack a soul. When we try to see inside you, we see something dark and evil and sick, or we see nothing at all. It’s very frustrating really. And I truly pity the psychologist who tries this.

But physically, you’re just like the rest of us. Whether you like it or not.

Yet Americans want to be you. Americans think they can be you. Wow, you’ve sure done a great job of brainwashing Americans.  And on a weird sort of level, I admire your ability to control the minds of so many people. Americans really think they can be rich someday, just like you. But what’s even worse, they want to be as cruel as you are too. Where does this come from, this need to be cruel, thoughtless, selfish and to show general disregard for others? Is it a result of anger? A need to feed the ego? If I’m cruel to you it shows how powerful I am?  A sense that others haven’t been fair to us? Or is it just coming from our general disconnection from each other? Okay, I digress here.

Goofy comparison I suppose, but we’ve become a lot like the oppressed humans in the Ann Rice novel “Vittorio, the Vampire.” They are so afraid of the vampire conquerors that they forget that vampires have a weakness humans do not share. Vampires cannot go out in the light. When the light shines on them, they die. And everyday the sun rises. Yet we are afraid to expose them to the light. All we have to do is shine the light on them and they’ll burn out into oblivion.

But instead we continue to try to be like them, those vampires who’ve decimated what was once a great society. (Yes, I do think the US was once a great country that did have the ability to influence the rest of the world in a positive and democratic way.)  But we’ve thrown that all away. Now our country sinks further into fascism.

We could change that, of course, in an instant. I could snap my fingers now–snap!–and make it all go away, but that would require we change ourselves, that we start loving each other and making sacrifices for each other again. We can stop supporting celebrities, CEOs and billionaires and start giving to each other. We can acquire some integrity and decide that a pair of sneakers aren’t worth $100, especially when manufactured by a corporation that put millions of Americans out of work by outsourcing labor to third-world-countries, hiring children to work like slaves for meager wages then stealing from its customers by charging $100 for a pair of sneakers that probably cost 50 cents to make.  We can entertain each other instead of relying on corporate-controlled TV programs or radio stations that play the same songs over and over. Over. And over. Over. Again.  (Before the advent of television and radio people played musical instruments for each other in their homes. People read books to each other. People drew, painted, composed poetry, etc.)

But I’m speaking into the wind. A wind that’s blowing in my face. (And it smells like the aftermath of a forest fire.)

Sadly, the American people just aren’t going to change anything. Perhaps there is hope for the rest of the world, but the hope is not here in the USA.

I predict for 2013 and beyond that there will be no revolt, no revolution in the US, because Americans can’t come together and work with each other on anything anymore. We’ve been fragmented, disconnected, disconcerted, discombobulated by fear, selfishness, greed, the human ego, and worship of the very wealthy, whom we’ve decided are better than us simply because they have more money.  (Americans worship money, and so it is ironic that our country is losing just that very thing we “love” so much.)

Right now, many Americans are getting assistance from friends and relatives. College students, aged 22, are graduating with massive debt that sometimes amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars. But their parents and grandparents had better lives, so they often have the money to provide them assistance. A few decades from now, those students will be parents and grandparents themselves. They will not have social security or pensions. They will not have life savings, as all the money they’ve earned from working will have gone toward paying off the massive student loan and/or credit card debt.

So what then? What happens when the future generations of struggling Americans are faced with not only the lack of government safety nets but the lack of social safety nets as well? What happens when kids ask their parents for money only to find their parents ask them in return? ‘Have no money to lend you, son, ’cause I’m struggling myself. Sorry, grandkids, can’t celebrate Christmas this year.’

What happens when families lose their homes but their parents and grandparents are also homeless? There will be no sister, brother, mother, father, cousin, aunt or uncle to move in with. No living room floor to sleep on. No extra room in the basement or attic. No friend/relative to help you get a job at his company. No $1000 we can borrow from Grandma to help us catch up on the rent or mortgage. At the same time, we’ll continue to hear the propaganda: if you’re poor, it’s your own fault. Get a job! So our friends and acquaintances who are doing better than us won’t loan us the money, won’t put us up for a few weeks–or perhaps years!–while we search for a better job, a job that may not even exist–won’t help us to survive.   No, more than likely they will shun us because everything they hear on the “news” tells them the economy is getting better, jobs are being created, and poor people are lazy and just choosing not to work. They won’t want to “enable” us and our “dependency” by helping us. Dear me, no! Jamais de la vie!

You bum! Why don’t you get a job?!

That’s what we’ll hear. Until they lose their jobs. Then they’ll understand. But of course, we won’t be able to help them ’cause they weren’t there to help us so… Oh yeah, it’s a lot like that famous poem, a poem that haunts me frequently these days as I watch Americans get meaner and meaner toward each other: “when they came for the communists, I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist…”

Oh yeah, history repeating itself. Again. What else is new?

I guess what is new here in the US is fascism. Don’t think we’ve experienced it before. So it’s almost impossible to get the average American to recognize the obvious symptoms of it.  (I’m sure if we traveled to Europe and talked with people about fascism, most would agree that that is something to be concerned about. But Americans seem to think we’re immune only because it hasn’t happened here…yet. A young country, we forget that it has just taken time for fascism to catch up with us, that there is a Hitler in every country, everywhere in the world just waiting for the right, fertile environment to let him grow into the great dictator he intends to be.)

So yes, we will continue to deteriorate. Ignorance is bliss, but only temporarily. Many people will suffer here in the US. As we’re unable to cooperate with and trust each other, Americans will not come together and revolt but will instead begin attacking each other, and the country will implode. We’ll kill ourselves really.  When people lose their jobs and cannot find another means of supporting themselves they will have to find some other way of feeding themselves and their children. If they can’t do it legally, they’ll do it illegally. If there is no friend, relative or anyone to help them, to show them kindness, they will learn that it is a dog-eat-dog society and each one of us must fend for him or herself. That means, I can’t care about you because, after all, you don’t care about me. If I am hungry, painfully hungry, and I need to eat, I know that you won’t feed me. You’ll judge me. You’ll attack me for being hungry. You’ll accuse me of being some sort of lazy bum because I don’t have a job. There is no government assistance for me and no one in my life to help me. So what am I going to do?

For most people the answer will be crime or violence. People will be forced to steal their food, to break into each other’s homes, to hack each other’s computers, to steal credit card numbers, or to somehow find a way to survive outside of the normally acceptable means of earning a living (as those normal means–i.e., jobs–have been taken away.)  We’ll be able to trust each other less and less, become even more disconnected and fearful, and this will result in more policing, more military force being used against us as the American people become increasing violent and dangerous to each other. And the more threatening we are to each other, the less threatening we’ll be to the wealthy elite who’ve created this mess in the first place. Of course, that’s exactly how they’ve planned it. (Yes, I’m a conspiracy theorist on this one, babe.)

Now, I’m running out of time. Aren’t we all? Perhaps I’ll have time later to edit and to elaborate.

But what I’ll say now (to the air blowing back at my words) is this: the future is bleak in the US.  It is too late to turn things around.

But…

if you really are a diehard activist who refuses to give up then please, take a look at the power and strength of community: Bringing people together, getting people to work together and to help each other again, to feel connected with each other again. If we the people could start loving each other…if we could trust each other…then, yes, a revolution would be possible.

That is why the US government dislikes the hippie Rainbow gatherings so much. People coming together and loving each other is too reminiscent of the 60s movement–a worldwide movement in which people began disobeying authority (heavens to Betsy!) People were empowered, united, and striving for peace, kindness and love. (Or at least they claimed to be.)

My, how times have changed. In these days, when peaceful, loving people are seen as ‘weak’ while aggressive,  violent people are seen as ‘strong,’ political activists would have a difficult time changing the mindset of the average American, but I, for one, would love to see the effort made.

Protect the Rich and Famous! …Er…Protect IP ACT, PIPA/SOPA This is urgent!

What are PIPA/SOPA? Well, the letters stand for Protect IP Act (PIPA) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).  (Interesting Orwellian terminology, non? PIPA gives the impression that our IP addresses are somehow in danger and they need protection. Sounds like one of those feminine hygiene commercials we used to laugh at when I was a kid. SOPA’s terminology gives the impression that there is some sort of violence online–pirates that need to be stopped, riding online the wireless waves, their swords pointed toward wifi towers as they shout, “Arrgh, arrgh, I’ll surf the web, matey!”) Yes, there’s fear in the words chosen. We need to protect our IPs and stop those pirates just as we need to defend ourselves nationally (with the National Defense Authorization Act) and be more patriotic, or else (Patriot Act.)

Essentially, our Congress will be voting on January 24th (yep, it’s comin’ up quick. That’s why, even though it’s 2a.m., I felt compelled to write about this. No, I won’t have time to write about everything or to proofread anything, but if I’m able to inform even one more person of the importance of this then I’ve done my job!) Please, everyone, write, call, email your congressperson and let him/her know you are against this bill. Even if you learn about this after January 24th–it’s never too late! I believe that Jan. 2th’s vote is a “test vote,” whatever that means. But we must let those…uh…people in congress know that we’re paying attention and we won’t just sit back and let this draconian law be passed against us. And it is very much against us, against Americans and everything this country stands for. Just remember how television and radio were once free and available to everyone. The reason for this is that we are supposed to have access to information in a democratic society. It is necessary for people to have easy access to information. In order for people to participate adequately in a democracy, people must be well-informed. In a fascist or tyrannical society, however, it is necessary that the people are kept ignorant. Otherwise,  they might protest against injustice and unfairness.

This bill will greatly restrict our creativity and freedom to use the Internet. As a musican/writer/filmmaker, I can tell you that the people who will be harmed the most are us artists! Of course, in its Orwellian fashion, our government is doing the usual and trying to convince us that we are “stealing” from artists when we watch their films or listen to their music on the Internet. Nothing could be further than the truth! Do you think I spend hours writing these blogs free of charge because I’m hoping to get some money out of you? Certainly, we artists would like to get paid for our work but we give away our creations freely and we hope that if our work is of value that, eventually, the money will come. Of course, the money, recognition and appreciation will never come to us if we are not allowed to display our work publicly. This is even true of the wealthy, famous, celebrity artists (yes, the only few who will benefit from this USSR-like law.) They too must give away some of their work in order to get noticed. This is why there is radio and television. But I don’t care about them. I care about the starving artists, those who aren’t famous or rich yet who rely on the Internet as a platform that has helped democratize the Arts & Entertainment industry (an industry that’s notorious for NOT being democratic but for relying on nepotism, on people using other people as stepping stones.) But don’t even get me started on that one. Point is, this bill (SOPA/PIPA) will damage art, creativity, innovation and freedom of speech. Do we need to do more damage to our Constitution and Bill of Rights than has already been done by the Patriot Act and the NDAA?

From http://www.FightFortheFuture.org and http://www.AmericanCensorship.org as well as our very own WordPress.org I was led to a petition that began as follows. Beneath the quotes, you’ll see what I added to my own petition. I urge you to please write, email or call your senator or representative (or both) and let them know you’re against SOPA/PIPA

http://vimeo.com/33845671

“I am writing to you as a voter in your district. I urge you to vote “no” on cloture for S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act, on Jan. 24th. The PROTECT IP Act is dangerous, ineffective, and short-sighted. It does not deserve floor consideration.  I urge my representative to vote “no” on SOPA, the corresponding House bill.

Over the next coming days, you’ll be hearing from the many businesses, advocacy organizations, and ordinary Americans who oppose this legislation because of the myriad ways in which it will stifle free speech and innovation.  We hope you’ll take our concerns to heart and oppose this legislation by voting “no” on cloture. ”

(my words added to the petition are below:)

By the way, I myself am a musician, filmmaker and writer. My work has been available for people to view for free on the Internet for several years. Most of us artists want our work to be seen and are grateful for the chance to present our work to the world via the Internet. Creative people of all types, musicians, photographers, fine artists, actors and filmmakers who are not yet wealthy and famous will suffer as a result of PIPA and SOPA. Only a tiny percentage of people (perhaps the 1%?) will benefit from this fascist, undemocratic and unAmerican bill. Many of us Americans have gotten the impression that you folks in Congress do not care about us at all. Please show us that you do not support draconian or tyrannical laws such as this one. What had made America great was our freedom of expression. This time in history (if future historians have the freedom to accurately record it) will be reported as a dark time in which there was very little innovation or creativity thanks to draconian laws such as PIPA/SOPA.

But maybe you don’t care about that, nor do you care about the many artists and creative people who’ll be harmed by this Soviet-like bill. Nor do you seem to care about the Constitution or Bill of Rights and the fact that the US is beginning to resemble the USSR. My guess is, though, that you do care a great deal about yourself and your money. So how about this:

This bill will not help you (or your wealthy donors) to make more money. It will not make you happy. Most Americans, particularly young people, spend a lot of time on the Internet. Americans will notice this censorship. This bill will cause tremendous discontent among Americans. Americans will not ignore this attack on their civil liberties.

We cannot afford to pay for everything. This will prevent people from listening to music, watching films, reading literature.  As someone who has spent years writing books, producing films, creating music, I know how much hard work artists put into our work. We don’t want to prevent others from having access to our creations. We just want to get credit for our work. Most of us don’t get paid for our work. Only a wealthy, privileged few typically earn a living as artists. Obviously, this bill is targeted toward helping those wealthy few to greedily attempt to get more.

It will only backfire, as most Americans are struggling financially right now. We cannot afford to buy all the movies and CDs you want us to buy. The mean-spirited greed and selfishness behind SOPA/PIPA will result in more dissatisfaction with the government and corporate America, less buying of CDs and DVDs, less innovation and artistic expression and less freedom and democracy and more tyranny, more resemblance to the USSR. This is both scary and sad.

Petition to tax the rich…

A grassroots organization called MoveOn(dot)org asked people to write their own petitions they’d like to see sent to politicians.  Here is my own:

Petition:
We need to put a cap on extreme wealth in this country.  Extreme wealth leads to extreme poverty.  An analysis of the richest people in the world reveals that most come from wealthy families to begin with (they did not go from “rags to riches”) and most hail from countries that have a large division between the rich and the poor.  In fact, the richest man in the world (according to Forbes Magazine) hails from Mexico, a country that claims over a 50% poverty rate.  So we need to curtail the widening gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. now!  With 1/8th of Americans collecting food stamps, we cannot afford to allow the poor to continue to grow poorer while the rich grow richer.  This rapid increase in poverty is causing too many problems in our society.

We keep hearing that there isn’t enough money to provide social security for the elderly (who already struggle financially with the few benefits they currently receive), health care for the uninsured, financial aid for needy students, unemployment benefits for the unemployed, etc., and we’re seeing libraries, schools, police and fire departments, etc., shutting down!  What’s worse is that we have hunger and homelessness and people who are dying prematurely because they can’t afford the health care they need.  We believe it is irresponsible of our current government to not provide health care for everyone as this can lead to the spread of disease.  This is not the Middle Ages.  We do not want a plague to result from millions of uninsured Americans unable to receive medical care.  This is unacceptable.

Despite the fact that the rich are getting richer–or perhaps because of that fact–we are unable to take care of our own people yet we are constantly called upon to help other people–the victims in Japan or in Haiti, for example, while we did not help our own people who suffered from Hurricane Katrina.  This is an outrage that we the American people refuse to allow to continue.

Therefore, we demand that the rich begin paying taxes at much higher levels, as they once were taxed back in the 1950s, a time when our country was much more prosperous and when even the poor and newly-arrived immigrants held some hope of achieving success someday.

We insist that the U.S.A. return to the wealthy, prosperous, democratic, land of opportunity that it once was.

We need to stop the attacks on the poor and the middle class, coinciding with the attacks on our freedom and democracy.  The way to do this is to limit extreme wealth.  Money is power, so when we allow a minority of people to accumulate extreme wealth, we allow them to buy our politicians, our media, our schools, the companies we work for, the land we live on, and, essentially, our entire lives.  In fact, the wealthy elite have taken over our entire country.

Therefore, given that:
most wealth in the U.S. is inherited wealth–not wealth that was earned through the hard work and diligence of one person–but wealth that was built upon the foundation of one’s parents’ wealth and prosperity, and

that back in 1950, when our middle class was more prosperous, those who earned over $200,000 per year paid 91% of their earnings in taxes, and

that Reaganomics (“trickle-down economics”) has led the U.S. to now have the greatest division between the rich and the poor of any other wealthy, industrialized nation in the world, and

that this has resulted in our loss of civil liberties and democracy and all of the early warning signs of fascism fulfilled, and

that this has led us to become the nation that now imprisons more of its own people than any other nation in the world (and most of those imprisoned are the poor), and

that the U.S. government has determined that $7.25 per hour (and 40 hours of work per week, adding up to $290 per week and a whopping $15,080 per year!) is all a single person needs to be living above the poverty line in the U.S.,

we need to tax the rich at the equivalent of 1950s tax rates.

Income levels were different back in 1950 when those who earned over $200,000 paid 91% in taxes.  $200,000 is a very different figure today in 2011, so we propose the following which we believe to be fair (keeping in mind that, again, according to the U.S. government’s own standards, a person earning over $16,000 per year is living  above the poverty line and, therefore, not poor).

And so, we, the non-wealthy majority of Americans, propose:

that those who earn $1 million or more be taxed at the rate of only 60% (leaving them an income of $400,000 per year.  This is much, much more than what the average American earns in a year and about 25 times over the poverty line.  This is also a lower tax rate than they paid back in 1950);

that those who earn $2 million per year begin paying 70% of their taxes (leaving them with $600,000);

those who earn $5 million begin paying 80% in taxes (leaving them an earnings of $1 million per year);

those who earn $15 million begin paying 85% (leaving them with $2.25 million per year);

those who earn $50 million or more begin paying 90% (leaving them with $5 million per year);

those who earn $100 million begin paying 91% (leaving them with $8.1 million);

those who earn $1 billion begin paying 95% (leaving them with with $50 million per year in earnings.)

Since it is the wealthy elite themselves who frequently insist that the U.S. is the land of opportunity where anyone can strike it rich and move up the ladder, we understand that the rich will find a way to continue moving up that ladder despite these higher taxes.  In fact, raising taxes on the rich will provide the rich with the incentive to work harder to work up that ladder!  We don’t want them to become lazy; we want them to understand the value of hard work.

The wealthy elite have made it clear over and over again that they are capable of picking themselves up by their bootstraps and can overcome any obstacle to obtain wealth.  This is their chance to prove that point.

The wealthy elite believe that those of us who are homeless or living in poverty are capable of working our way out of poverty and picking ourselves up by our bootstraps, but we need the wealthy elite to show us how it is done.  Here is their opportunity to work their way out of mere wealth and back up to the extreme, mega-wealth they achieved as a result of Reagan&Bushanomics.

This is a challenge to the wealthy in the U.S.!  We know you can do it!  You can pay 95% of your income in taxes and still pick yourselves up by those bootstraps and accumulate even more wealth.  We have faith in you.  We know you can still earn millions–even billions–of unneeded dollars each year in spite of our raising taxes on you.  We know you’re up for the challenge.

We also know how much you want to give back to society and to pull us out of this recession.  This tax increase is very modest compared to the levels of 1950.  It enables the very rich to remain very rich but limits the amount of wealth they can keep out of circulation.  When the wealthy hoard the wealth, they keep money in bank accounts or investments.  The money doesn’t circulate, doesn’t give back to our communities.  However, when the poor and middle class earn money, they tend to spend it on necessities, so their money circulates and feeds our economy.

I requested this petition be sent to Obama, Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders in Congress (don’t know if it was.)

Water Story:..:Sweating the small stuff is just a waste of water

Went to buy a sandwich today and thought I’d do something a little radical.

“May I have a glass of water while I’m waiting?” I asked.  Yep, I asked for a FREE glass of water.  I wasn’t paying for it, not requesting the bottled variety, and I don’t drink soda pop.  I just wanted real water–from the tap.  And I did NOT want to pay for it.

I felt a twinge of apprehension.  Would the cashier cringe, throw me a “look,” glare at me from the bottom up to view my attire and thus determine my socioeconomic status, inform me I must pay 15 cents for the cup, or just attempt to sell me something more expensive?

I waited.

To my surprise, the cashier simply rung up my order for a free cup of water then gave me an empty cup.  No questions were asked.  No intimidating stare.  I felt redeemed. Relieved. Grateful. Thirsty.  I grabbed the cup, filled it up with water, and took a sip of that precious resource that someday will only be available to a wealthy few.  (Lots of political ramifications here.  How hard will any of us be able to fight for our rights, to express our opinions, to participate in the management of this country, to care about anything or anyone greater than ourselves, when we no longer have access to that basic resource–water?  When we are painfully thirsty and all of our time and energy is spent up each day by our efforts to just quench our thirst?)

Being the introspective person I am, I questioned my apprehension.  Why did I hesitate to ask for the glass of water?  Why the (albeit tiny) spark of worry associated with a request for a mere glass of water?  The cashier would either say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’  So what is my problem?

And I am reminded of previously requested waters.  The waters of times past.  Taco Bell cashiers who told me I would have to pay for the water, even after I’d purchased food.  And efforts of other cashiers to encourage me to pay for water.  “We have bottled water.  Would you like that instead?” The embarrassment of being watched suspiciously by an employee as I filled the see-through cup (made see-through so that staff would notice if you poured soda pop you didn’t pay for into the cup instead of the water you’d claimed you wanted).

Oh yes, and most interesting water gathering experience of all (and this is fodder for a future blog):  the time when I asked for a glass of water and was refused it because the cashier was worried I might give it to a homeless man.  “Are you going to give that glass of water to that homeless man?” she asked critically. Seemed she didn’t want that poor man to have a glass of water–even if I, a customer who had purchased food from her store, wanted to give my own glass of water to him.  (Again, that story will be expanded upon in a future blog…)

Why so much fuss over water?

Is giving a cup of water to a paying customer such a big loss?  What if I weren’t a customer?  What if I swaggered into that fast-food joint and asked for a glass of water just because…just because I was human and thirsty…just because we humans can live longer without food than we can without water…just because I’m one of your brothers or sisters on this planet and I’m just in need of a little refreshment…

Okay, so does giving a free glass of water cost companies a tremendous amount of money?  I mean, seriously, if someone “stole” that little plastic cup and filled it up with soda pop they didn’t pay for would Taco Bell go out of business?  Doesn’t it cost more money to hire an employee to stand by the soda pop machine and watch customers to make sure they are pouring water and not soda pop into their little plastic cups?  Don’t the surveillance cameras hung all over the ceilings of these restaurants cost a pretty penny?  How much is all this security, this fear of being “taken advantage of,” of “being ripped off,” costing us?  Financially?  Socially?  Spiritually?

I’ve seen restaurants charge a fee, yes A FEE, to allow use of their restrooms.  Any of us who lives or works in a major city knows how hard it is to find a public bathroom in a major urban area these days.  Yet we all need to use the bathroom several times a day.  All of us–rich and poor.  And most of us don’t stay home all day.  Most of us go out and while we are out we are going to need, sooner or later, the use of such facilities.  Yet we are creating a society that requires we pay for that, to pay a fee to do what we must do as humans, to fulfill our human needs.  My question is this:

Why?

Are stores and restaurants really losing money by allowing people to use their bathrooms and drink their tap water for free?  At this time, we are seeing the greatest division between the rich and the poor than has ever been seen in the U.S. in recent history.  And the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer.  Yet we are also seeing basic resources and services diminishing as the rich cry poverty, claiming they just can’t afford to give.  They can’t afford to pay taxes (thus giving back to their community), they can’t afford to pay their employees decent living wages, they can’t afford to provide benefits to their employees, and they can’t even afford to give a glass of water or a free trip to a restroom to people who live and work in their communities.  (Then they claim that if we raise their taxes, they’ll stop hiring employees but they’re doing that anyway–outsourcing labor to third-world countries and downsizing by requiring more work from fewer employees and at smaller wages.  So whom do they think they’re kidding?  I’m not so hungry and thirsty right now (not yet) that I’ve lost my ability to think and reason.)

Greed really has broken through the glass ceiling and hit an all-time high.  I never thought I’d see the day when it would become practically illegal to be human, when we’d have to feel shame and embarrassment for asking another human being for anything, even a mere cup of water.  Yes, I am referring to the need for a glass of water and to go to the bathroom–often at inopportune moments–as “human” needs.

It seems that to ask anyone for anything these days is just an inappropriate thing to do.  Heaven forbid you are walking down a busy street and suddenly find that you must need to…uh…well, pee. The condition gets worse as you mosey on down the street and yet you discover that no one–no one!–will allow you to legally pee in their premises unless you have some money to spend.

It’s getting awfully expensive to be a human being these days.  And I just wonder how does this serve us?  I mean, is this really the way we want to conduct business?  Why are we “sweating the small stuff”?  Why are we counting the water cups and monitoring how many free glasses of water were given away in a day when there are more serious matters at hand–like whether or not you are loved and respected by members of your community, or whether or not you are contributing to that community in such a way that makes it a better (not worse) place to be…

Okay, I’m going off on a tangent here.  But you know, we as a people create the society we live in.  Do we really want to get stressed out over little things like water?  Give the guy the water already.  Let the lady use the “non-public” restroom.  Show a  little humanity, America.  You used to back in the 1930s during the Great Depression.

I have faith in you.  I know you can bring back empathy and compassion–even in the United States.  Come on America, let’s start thinking as humans (not robots) again.  And let’s start thinking about giving instead of worrying about what we can get out of every interaction.

When Poor People Cheat

Why do poor people cheat?  It’s an age-old question.  Yet we hear about it all the time:

The homeless guy who spends the dollar you gave him on a beer.  The welfare mom who works (secretly) as a babysitter on the side and makes an extra $20 (or more!)  yet doesn’t report it to the welfare office.  The man who is physically fit and able-bodied yet is begging for spare change on the street.  Doesn’t he know that there are lots of great jobs out there?  Why doesn’t he just go out and get one?  Or what about the woman who “chooses” to live in a shelter even though she has a nice house somewhere because she likes hanging out with all the fun, homeless folks at the shelter?  “All my friends are here!” she says happily.

Oh, if only rich people could be so happy.

With all the horror stories you may have heard of poor people cheating on us and our system by collecting public assistance then working on the side and not reporting it, or  worse, begging for money then mismanaging it by spending it on things we don’t think they should—like beer, for example—you might be sitting back in your comfortable chair, sipping your own beer, watching your flat screen TV and wondering…

Why do poor people cheat?

Is it out of jealousy?  Are they purposely earning an extra $50 per week (or more!) by begging for money or working “under the table” so that we end up supporting them with our taxes because they want to prevent us from having the extra cash we need to buy that brand new car, iPhone, or flat-screen plasma TV?

Maybe they’re jealous of us because while we’re driving around in our car, they’re standing on the street waiting for a bus in the rain.  Or maybe they’re jealous because while we’re in our house asking these important questions, they’re renting out a tiny room and sharing a house or apartment with a bunch of strangers, waiting for the kitchen space to become available so they can eat.  And while we’re eating healthy, nutritious food of our own choosing, they’re eating stale, moldy food they’d gotten from a food shelf or processed food that lacks both flavor and nutrition they bought cheaply at the dollar store.

Or maybe they’re mad at us because when we get sick we can afford to see specialists, have testing done, get treatment, surgery, or whatever we need in order to heal the illness or injury, while they go to free health clinics where they wait for hours, then are seen by a nurse for five minutes, told they’re not really sick, that they should just go home and get some rest and maybe just take a pill if they’re still uncomfortable.   (Ironically, many of them don’t have a comfortable home to go to, and they can’t rest because they have to work so much just to afford what little they have.)  Sometimes there’s no free clinic available to them or the free clinic is unable to provide the treatment they need so some of them get worse.  Some become permanently disabled by maladies not treated on time.  Some might even die without treatment they need.  One friend-of-a-friend has diabetes and can’t afford the insulin.  She may very well die one of these days.  Or end up in the hospital and then with bills she can’t afford to pay which will cause her to end up homeless.  Sure, she may qualify for Medicaid but that’ll make her homeless too because the government might take her house.  (People who collect Medicaid aren’t allowed to own homes in the U.S.)

Is that why they’re jealous of us?

Maybe they’re jealous because we spend a lot of our money on beer and drugs and some of us party way too much, but no one seems to notice how we mismanage our money.  Because we have so much money, everyone just assumes we manage it well.  Even when we waste a million dollars a year on stuff we don’t need, society doesn’t notice.  Besides, we don’t “mooch” off the government because we don’t need to, right?

But wait–maybe that’s why they resent us.  We do ask for assistance from the U.S. government whenever our businesses fail or our homes are damaged from natural or other disasters.  We also get tax breaks and tax cuts that poor people can’t get.  In fact, no one even suggests that poor people be able to write off the cost of their bus fare to and from work, for example, but a millionaire can write off the cost of his company car on his tax form.  And no one questions that.  Tax breaks for the poor would only cost this country a fraction of what the tax breaks given to the rich are costing—yet no one ever talks about this.  Because no one is even thinking about the fact that the rich get assistance from the U.S. government all the time and often waste that extra money on drugs, parties, more big houses, more big cars, etc., and no one notices their waste.

We notice it as a waste of money when a poor person spends a few dollars on a beer but we don’t notice when a millionaire wastes thousands of dollars on cocaine, homes not lived in, cars not driven, clothes never worn–or only worn once then thrown out, or the myriad of material things not needed but just purchased to pass the time away or perhaps just to show everyone how rich someone is.

We notice it when a poor person “cheats” by collecting a few hundred dollars a month from welfare then makes a few dollars more by working “under the table” but we don’t notice when a millionaire takes thousands of dollars per month in tax breaks he or she doesn’t need (which costs our country a lot more) then wastes it by spending it on cocaine, trips around the world, buying another bowling alley, tennis court or another building—not because he needs it but just to make himself look more rich to the outside world.  Nor do we feel “ripped off” by a millionaire manufacturer who over charges us by sometimes several hundred percent of the manufacturing cost when their products are made by children in third world countries who work for pennies a day, all day.

And really, isn’t it a form of stealing to pay your employees half (or less) than what they’re worth?  So that they can’t afford to buy their own homes or cars, to get married and have children of their own–even while they are, in good faith, working hard for you?

Isn’t it a form of stealing to manufacture a product and charge your customers 100 times (or more!) for what it cost to manufacture that product–especially when you are already an overpaid multimillionaire yourself?

Hmm…  Why do poor people cheat?  And what should we do to stop them?  Should we raise their taxes?  Lower the minimum wage even more so that they have to work twice as many hours per week?  Eliminate more jobs by downsizing and outsourcing to third world countries?  Prevent them from getting an education by making college costs outrageously expensive so that they lose all hope of ever advancing and creating a better future for themselves?  Prevent them from getting health care when they get sick so that they get sicker and just spread disease as their health deteriorates to the point where they become permanently disabled and unable to work anymore?

No, that’s already been done.  Yet the poor continue to ask for our help.  Some of them are continuing to get married and have children too, and they’re expecting us to help them do that.  Many of these poor children are disabled by the age of five and already collecting social security checks as a result of the rampant pollution in poor neighborhoods as well as the malnutrition they suffer from years of eating processed or stale food their parents can barely afford to serve them.  Yet the poor want to continue to live their lives at our expense!  So what can we do to stop poor people from cheating?

I suppose the question is timeless, from the days when a homeless man named Jesus walked the earth in sandals preaching that we should not be attached to money and material things, that those “who have not sinned should cast the first stone,” that the “meek shall inherit the earth,” and that it is harder for a rich man to go to heaven than it is to “stick a camel through the eye of a needle,” to our current era when we spend thousands of dollars on things we don’t need, complain our houses and cars aren’t big enough yet worry about giving a dollar to a homeless person.