Morning Christy, that video is a heartbreaker

I thought it was an excellent PSA — one of the best I’ve seen in terms of bringing home the heart of the child homelessness issue for folks who have never had to deal with it firsthand. Having done a lot of abuse and neglect cases through the years, I’m all too familiar with a number of the issues involved. And how tiny the allocation of resources is to try and make any dent in any of this in the best of times.

Ugh, it is now raining to complete the dreary, dripping montage outside my window. The birdies are not pleased.

And meanwhile, these children will be mortgaged to the trillions of dollars being shoveled to the banksters, the use of which the banksters refuse to tell us. Truly, our representative government does not represent us at all. However, it is killing us.

neither am I, I find this weather downright painful. All my cats are nestled snug in their beds

It is foolish to expect capitalism to display generosity of any kind.

And Texas is number one! Yee. Haw.

http://www.dallasnews.com/shar…..a5401.html

Early investment in children and families social programs? Cue the Republics to resume screaming about Socialism.

2%? This is crazy! And, besides abusive now, we can only imagine how this will affect them and all of us in the future.
The other day, I walked into a store just as a mother was yelling at her little girl. As the mother reached out and tweaked her daughter’s ear, I shouted “Ow!” The mother stopped, startled, and stared at me. I stared back at her. I think I made my point, I’m not sure. What a sad world. (even without rain here.)
The other day, a mother with a young son in tow, approached me in the parking lot and asked me if I could give her change for the bus. I did. Then, as I walked toward the store, someone else approached me and gave me a lecture about how I shouldn’t help out “these scammers”. He said God knows what they do with the money.
Yikes.
Oh, btw, Hiya Christy and keep up the good work, dear heart.

No government, regardless of the economic structure of the nation, will support something like this without a full-on push from the populace. Which is why we all have to get off our butts and start bugging the crap out of members of Congress to do better. Or we’ll get better members of Congress who will.

It is foolish to expect capitalism to display generosity of any kind.

Funny you should mention that. Here is one of Glenn Beck’s new “principles” for his loony group getting started Friday:

I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.

Because it’s infinitely more expensive to deal with a lifetime of welfare and/or criminal incarceration and/or various other problems? I’ve found that laying the numbers flat out of cost savings on tackling this early rather than late can be a huge eye-opener for the “socialism” whiners among us.

Fiscal responsibility — it’s not just for sloganeering. *G*

It was in the 80s here yesterday, but now a front is sweeping in. Put my tomato seedlings back inside before I left for work. Hopefully this will be the last of winter.

Oooooh, I bet the ladies are just lining up for a piece of that, aren’t they? Blergh.

All of these families with problems in America but we spend our tax money on families in foreign countries. Let’s educate, feed and house our own. After that we can worry about other countries.

We’ve had a messed up sense of priorities for a long time. I don’t expect it to change any time soon.

Yeah, and I just don’t understand how that “principle” reconciles with the one where they put God at the center of their lives. Pretty warped thinking (or absence of thinking).

Gotta run. Have a nice day, folks.

It was 72 here yesterday and lovely. My daffodils are finally blooming out front — if the rain takes a break, I’ll try and snap a pix for all of you for later. But you can feel the change in air pressure with the cold front pushing in today…

Clearly, they are not putting God at the center of their lives.
Pat the ponies for us Jim.

It’s not quite that simple, though. Given that some of the money we spend on foreign aide goes to nations where extreme poverty and despair can easily turn to flashes of anger, it can make them easy recruiting grounds for folks like al qaeda and other groups whose goal is to cause problems here and elsewhere. By not investing in things like infrastructure, schools, and the like, or by ignoring problems we helped to foster through the Cold War in places like Afghanistan and Iraq (just as two fairly prominent examples), we have made things worse over the last few decades.

As a nation, we need to get better at doing a lot of things. Being smarter with where we put our funds — and why — is only one of many of those. But a little compassion and some smarter diplomacy wouldn’t hurt, either. I’m just not betting that we’ve learned the lessons we need to do any of it as well as we ought to be. SIGH

We’re getting some much-needed rain with this front at least. It’s the worst drought here in over 90 years.

Why not revisit the money we spend on illegal immigrants, like tax amnesty, housing, education and welfare. We should be spending that money on citizens.

It would also help if families where parents make minimum wage were actually earning a living wage. The article about Florida linked above says that 40 percent of the homeless population in that state are families with children. And that:

“These are just the kids the schools know about,” Greubel said. “So many families are doubling up or living out of their cars.”

Many of those families are former members of the middle class who never had to ask for help, according to local agencies.

Calls for help are on the rise at Family Promise, a network of local churches that house homeless families in their sanctuaries, reports Bruce Webster, director.

Current economic hard times have created a new landscape of homelessness, Webster says. “It used to be that if a person got a job, they could take care of things and work themselves out of homelessness. That’s not true any longer.”

He identified the lack of a living wage as a major cause of homelessness.

“The jobs that are out there pay only minimum wage, and we know that a minimum wage worker has to work 108 hours a week in order to afford an average two-bedroom apartment,” Webster said.

But even those jobs can be in jeopardy if hours are cut below the minimum needed to qualify for subsidized child care.

“That makes no sense to me,” says Webster. “Where’s the wisdom of taking away services that causes people to lose their jobs.”

Speaking of daffodils…here’s a link for ya:
http://www.daffodilplace.ca/about/index.asp
and
Bullwinkle’s daffodil poem:
http://frazgomeanders.blogspot…..-poem.html

That’s a pretty persistent myth, actually, about illegal immigrants, but it might interest you to know that most pay a fairly hefty chunk of taxes while working in this country. Take a peek here for starters on that.

Among some 2,100 undocumented migrants surveyed by the project, for example, only 4 percent said they used food stamps on their last U.S. trip and just 3 percent said they received government welfare payments. In contrast, 60 percent said they had federal taxes withheld from their pay. Moreover, even though undocumented migrants are legally entitled to send children to U.S. public schools, only 11 percent reported doing so. Immigrants also are entitled to emergency medical care in the United States, but only 26 percent said they used a hospital on their last trip.

We thus observe that a significant gap exists between the rate of tax payment and the rate of service usage among undocumented Mexican migrants, a fact that might surprise many Americans. U.S. citizens might be even more surprised to learn that this gap is widening over time in ways that are increasingly favorable to taxpayers: Rates of tax payment are increasing while rates of service usage are falling.

The usage rate for food stamps and welfare among illegal migrants has remained low at just 3 percent to 4 percent over the past two decades; but the percentage sending children to public schools fell from 12 percent during 1987-92 to just 7 percent between 1997 and 2002. Over the same period, the share using a hospital dropped from 30 percent to 20 percent. On the revenue side of the ledger, however, federal tax withholding rose from 60 percent to 67 percent.

Later in the thread, if you have time, I’d like to hear your response to my #9.
What do we do when we see abuse in public?

Hey there demi !

G’Mornin’ Christy & Firedawgs !

the problem isn’t the very small amounts that are given (paltry really, the usa is one of the most stingy countries), usually with lots of strings attached, to people in need. the problem is the vast sums, trillions of dollars, that go to the politically and economically powerful for no good reason other than they can get away with it.

there has been plenty of money for necessities of shelter, food and clean drinking water. what’s lacking is the political will and generosity of spirit. way to much of “screw you, i want mine” and way too little of “let’s share.”

and here’s the simpliest understanding of left wing vs right wing populism i can find – progressive populism holds the people with power accountable for their actions, right wing populism takes out our fears and insecurities on those with less power than us.

In it present form yes however capitalism by nature isn’t evil. Profits are a positive, a gain. It’s how those profits are used and how the business is conducted to create those profits that is the cause of the problem.

Microfinace is a good example of how capitalism can work in a positive way. Also Grameen Danone Foods is an excellent example of the social business model proposed by Professor Yunus.

:: The mission of Grameen Danone Foods speaks for itself: to reduce poverty by bringing health through food to children using a unique community-based business model.

I think the way the current situation has destroyed a way of using capitalism for greed offers a great opportunity to continue capitalism with a change in the focus of how the mechanism is used and what the goals are.

Here is a site for you to check your numbers: http://immigrationcounters.com/

I think it depends on the situation. There’s no one answer on that — but there have been occasions where the conduct was so severe that’s I’ve notified store security and/or spoken to the parent directly myself. It’s impossible to give you any one answer, though, on how to deal with something like that because yelling at your kid when you have had a bad day isn’t quite the same as smacking the shit out of a small child until you fear the kid could have a concussion (had one of those cases once and it was not pleasant to know how easily a small child can suffer sever damage from being punched really hard in the head).

It’s a common sense sort of thing — when you see abuse, you know it for the most part, because it’s outside the realm of appropriate conduct. And if it is something you suspect as being chronic or injury-threatening, then a call to authorities or store security might be in order. But I say “might be” because it’s tough to know always from the outside looking in what you are dealing with, ya know?

I just stepped outside and noticed the gorgeous full moon setting into some low, flat clouds. Really pretty. Sun also rising in the the east. That’s happening for citizens and for folks who don’t have the proper paperwork. Surely, you’re not suggesting that we only feed the hungry babies who were born of proper US parents.

I think this question, which I have not been able to satisfactorily answer, is something that needs to be considered when wrestling with this problem. It is: Do people have the right to have children? Or, alternatively: Should some people be disqualified from having children?

Here’s the thing: like all complex issues with no easy, ready answers, there is no one set of numbers for any one question on these issues. They vary, at any given time, based on the day to day transient population as well as how good one community versus another might be in collecting information and tax payments as well as whether there are taxes on things like food and other consumptive items which can also be collected as state revenue.

Anyone who tells you there is only one answer on this is either an idiot, a liar or both. Because each community response, collection and population numbers are different — but a hefty amount of taxes are collected each year, and CA has been a case study in how that’s been done as well as TX because both states have had long histories of migrant farm workers for the last two centuries.

from wikipedia:

In 2005, an estimated 100 million people worldwide were homeless.[90]

something else that seems to be missing from our conversations (from stiglitz):

This crisis has a very strong made in the USA label and there’s the irony that while we were the source of the global disturbance, money is actually flowing from developing countries back to the United States.

in general, people in developing countries are going to be hurt by the financial crisis far more than we are. millions of innocent victims.

Thanks. And, I do hear ya. Maybe the mother’s mother treated her like that and that’s what she knows as “appropriate”. That’s why I didn’t speak to her, just said ow to let her know that it hurt. Could be an interesting thread topic some time.
We have bill boards here in LA that show a mother screaming at a small child that say’s Be Human. Be Humane.

got yer numbers right here:

Matthew 25.40

Matthew 25.45

for some reason part of my response disappeared when I italicisized – wth ?

see my ‘ numbers’ at 37 above

I agree with Matthew, I would just like to help the American’s first.

I agree something must be done, but I don’t see our representatives doing it no matter what we do. I doubt the efficacy of faxes and phone calls. We the people need to get involved. Exactly how is something we should discuss. In last week’s New Yorker an article discussed the Iceland meltdown. The people there are naturally disturbed. They got the premier or someone high up to resign. Iceland is small, a few hundred thousand population. They had a demonstration of seven thousand people. In the US the same number means a turnout of seven million . We need something certain, not something representatives think can be gamed like on-line petitions, something that demonstrates the will of the people without ambiguity. (One can say the last election did this, but you see what happened) It will not be easy. Jane commented a while back on how difficult it is to get people to leave their computers.

What do we do when we see abuse in public?

always, always speak up.

imo what you did was perfect! (((demi)))

two things i keep in mind when the abuse does not rise to the level of “call the police” -

1) this was some years ago, but the info i saw as part of a pretty intensive training for a “safe home” prototype program for victims of domestic violence (child abuse was covered some as well) was that the best way to stop the abuse was to catch it v early with social condemnation (could be as simple as hauling someone off to jail for the night). the idea is to convey the message that it is not appropriate behavior.

2) even if there is no affect on the abuser, you have sent the message to the child that he/she is not to blame and that it is always wrong to treat someone the way he/she is being treated. may seem strange, but kids tend to blame themselves unless they are shown otherwise by another grown up.

like i said. that was perfect.

..and I suppose rethugs think that this is OK or somehow a social good (mass child homelessness), given their expressed view that the best housing policy is one completely without the influence of government. Is this Newt and his penchant for orphanages projected onto a grand scale?

http://author.heritage.org/Res…..bg2247.cfm

official rethug urban development position (in the above piece of trash):
-land use regulation bad
-affordable housing programs bad
-stimulus bad
-mass transit bad

According to the thugs, all of these “big government” programs conspire to keep Americans homeless.

by the way, the “data source” they said, Demographia, is a rethug shill/front organization, not a non-partisan purveyor of numbers.

I just made breakfast here, it’s oatmeal with raisens and apples. Anyone here who is hungry can have some. Card or no card. *g*
And, I’m pretty sure Jesus meant everybody when he said My Sheep.

Hey, I just had some oatmeal, too — with sliced bananas. Am I sensing a trend? *G*

I’m not American, can I have some too ? *g*

We have winds gusting to 50 mph … our sheeple are getting blowed away …

I disagree. I think capitalism is evil, crazy is more like it. What is in it for the capitalist? Distinction? Being a have, rather than a have not? Distinctions we manufacture in this life are pointless (psychotic?) because we all die. Even Donald Trump will die someday and I doubt he will find a Trump resort in the great hereafter. We are human, no matter what we do or how much money we accumulate. That we think we make ourselves “different” is insanity, that is it is divorced from reality.

Cold days like today makes me think of warm Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. *g*

apparently so . . . Mr CBL began taking a box to work this week – have never seen the man eat it in 20 years together :D

Oatmeal for all!
I put brown sugar on my husband’s, but I put a little packet of equal on mine. Started working out at the gym, and yes, I am sore. Totally watching calories and carbs. Gotta get into full-on fighting shape to battle the evils of the world. That and lose two dress sizes for the wedding in October. :)

I’ve been trying to eat more whole grains because they are good for me — so I whipped up a batch of rolled oats mixed with some wheat germ, ground flax seed and oat bran that I keep in a covered container. Now I can just scoop out a half cup, add a cup of water and microwave for breakfast in the morning. Seriously nummy stuff.

You could workout by pretending to shadow box Issa … *g*

Oh this video is so sad. It is heartbreaking and completely wrong that we allow these families to fall through the cracks. And just from a financial standpoint, it makes no sense. We will need to use so much more money and resources to try to prop up and support kids who have that lacked basic support system at an early age – throughout the rest of their school careers, than would be needed to make sure they were protected to begin with. Billions of dollars in bailouts,:how hard could it be to support basic housing, health care, day care, and nourishment for young children?

this issue has hit me personally the last few days (no, we are fine)

**Sacramento is my hometown and has always been somewhat insulated from these problems by high employment (State & Fed Govt, Defense Spending, Agric. etc) – was horrified in late August to see it’s Unemployment Numbers then higher than the national average. So much of it’s current misery can be traced to Big Shitpile

**My current home state is #1 on this list ( about that Culture of Life there Governor !)

** Discovered two of our family ‘regulars’ at the Cafe our now ‘clients’ of the local food bank

of course no, it is not about me, just overwhelming and trying to find a way to help out

I grew up about a half mile from where Oatmeal is made. On still days the smell from the huge Quaker Oats’ processing plant enveloped my yard and neighborhood. So, anytime I eat oatmeal, I am transported back to the safe and magical days of my early childhood.

Petro!
mMMmmm
warm oatmeal cookies on a day like this….

priceless

Elliott !

It’d be a shame to bake Cookies and not include a batch o’ Triple Chocolate Chunk Cookies … *g*

Can’t wait for the kiddies to get home so we can whip some up.

Thank you Christy! Keep this on the front burner! Children and families need our help more that the wall street casinos.

You know, too bad food banks won’t accept homemade cookies, nothing better in all the world.
God Bless the Homemade Cookie Bakers.

Good to see you here. A bigbigbig hug for ya!

We get some fairly good store bought cookies – Mrs. Fields for eg. – that we donate from time to time.

Of course, being the health freaks that we are, we donate Peanut Butter & Beans every week, instead of the fun stuff.

Blessed are the cookie bakers, for they shall inherit happy tummies.

Thanks demi.

ahhh, a response yesterday from one of our County Commissioners – a Republican

Lisa Berkman (R – Reality Based) upon the Board’s approval of annual funding for 19 non profits

“I would submit to you that taking care of the poor and the needy is one of our duties as commissioners,” Birkman said. “Providing for these services is way more cost-efficient than us doing it on our own.”

1 ringy-dingy . . .

We are all connected. That’s why we cannot draw a line and say this one gets cared for but not that one. We share each others sorrows, joys, hunger and hurts.
Care globally. Hug locally.
That’s all I’m going to say. Off to matters of my most immediate world.
Later loving dogs.

This is what’s in for me.

I believe that running a business that chooses to use the profits for a social benefit, that uses green energy choices, that promotes progressive benefit and human resoruces policies, that conducts all transactions with ethics, that delivers a sound and positive product, while supporting me and the people I work with, while demonstrating the good that can be accomplished by the choices that I, the capitalist has made, is a viable alternative to what we have seen.

Thank you for writing about this Christy!

As an activist for low income workers and also a mother who was part of the working poor for over 35 years, and who has been homeless with my 3 children 3 times, I can tell you it is devastating for kids and the trauma can last long into adulthood. The trauma is also still with me. The importance of dealing with homelessness is about preventing homelessness so that it does not happen at all., but also being aware of its trauma that can last for the rest of childhood. No matter how protective and loving a parent is during that time, it is not near enough to stave off the fear, anxiety and dislocation. All three of my kids were affected in different ways as they were different people, but they all experienced some sort of trauma. From nightmares, to anger in their teens, to a sense of hopelessness as young adults. I am not saying this is true for every single kid, but I can contest that all three of mine were deeply affected.

I want to also emphasize that, at those times I was a full time working mother. I cannot tell you that, even WITH a home to go to, how many meals I tried to fix on one of those candle stoves. I wish I could describe to someone what it is like to be stuck on the freeway with a broken down car full of hungry kids and trying to figure out not only how to get the darn thing off the freeway and get dinner into them on a candle stove, but how to get home after trying to push it myself with terrified kids in the car ~ and worse, how to figure out for the next day to get kids to daycare and myself to work on time about 6 hours of scrambling to find a ride or help, by the time I managed to get home with them.

I am not making any of this up …

Cat In Seattle

That’s fine, but the way you run your business is the exception, not the rule. I believe the benefits you mention can be more easily obtained in a non-capitalist environment. Speaking of green, how do you explain individuals who contaminate the planet for profit? They diminish the air and water they breathe and drink-forget about me and others they do not know. How crazy is that? What’s their motivation?

Well, apparently, you aren’t familiar with that great American philosopher Daffy Duck:

Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I’m rich.

Do not be mad at the rich, because they have worked hard. The rich are the one who will help you. Let them help you and do not enact laws to take their money away, they earned it by working hard. For some people no matter how much money you give them they still want more. Many people do not want to work for any thing and just want hand outs. That is a shame.
If you work for your money you should decide where your hand out go.

Really? All of the rich worked hard for their money? And all of the poor are lazy and want hand-outs? Wow. Who knew…

btw, fresh posty goodness if anyone wants some…

I write again:
MANY PEOPLE do not want to work for any thing and just want hand outs. That is a shame.
If you work for your money you should decide where your hand out go.

I see you’ve met bmaz’s fav troll … *g*

Full moon this week. No particular reason, why do you ask?

Cookies ‘n’ scream … *g*

thought so…

Well what’s worse is schools, healthcare and all kinds of programming are being cut away by the state in the areas where kids are most vulnerable, like Bridgeport CT. And then after listing the number of cuts to kids programs, the news anchors will say: cuts will not affect the number of police officers on the street (or something similiar). Dandy. Ghost town-police town.

I believe the benefits you mention can be more easily obtained in a non-capitalist environment.

How so?

Medina said the requested increase is the smallest the school district has ever asked for — and the smallest he could request and still sleep at night.

“This is as cut and dry as it can be … People are sadly mistaken if they think they can make Bridgeport more prosperous and stronger and healthier with an under-educated populous,” he said. “You can talk economic development all you want … if you want to ignore kids you’ve signed a death penalty for city of Bridgeport.”

I’ve been asking Ian why money isn’t pushed directly to people in danger of losing their homes, on the (probably flawed — I’m no economist) theory that it would de-tox previously toxic assets, PLUS reduce the societal misery (and great expense, in the long run) of having families without shelter or stable day-to-day lives.

Why we as a nation favor giveaways to the mega-rich over assistance to the needy is beyond me.

As economies go global and what were known as skilled labors (ie tool and die makers) are replaced by computer programs, clearly there will not be enough jobs for everyone who needs a job to survive. If you eliminate jobs that serve no purpose other than to keep track of who owns what (bookkeeperss, bankers, lawyers, accountants and their ilk), jobs as a means to a livlihood get less possible. Furthermore, capitalism ties us to the status quo. Where your living and your sense of self depend on your job, you fight to retain it even though it involves clear cutting forests, building internal combustion engines, or manufacturing freon. You get the picture-I hope.

As for my society of choice, I choose utopia, moneyless, classless societies. I know you consider utopia unbridled idealism and hopelessly naive, so rather than describe utopia, our time would be better spent trying to understand the psychology of capitalism. What’s in it for the greedy or the people who say I’ve got mine and the rest, those lazy neer do wells, can take a long walk off a short pier? Why do people on the low end want the game (and it is a nasty game) to continue so they can, they think, get theirs?

I know you consider utopia unbridled idealism and hopelessly naive, so rather than describe utopia, our time would be better spent trying to understand the psychology of capitalism.

I never stated anything about utopia and you’re making a rather broad assumption about my views with nothing to back it up. Please don’t do this.

I have a different view of what capitalism could be then what it has been. I have not defended what others have done with it. I present an alternative about what it could be with demonstrated examples to support it. I tend to think in terms of possibilites, and learn from the mistakes of the past. Then I take some action to support it.

Excuse me. Most people assume utopia is preposterous and I assumed, incorrectly it turns out, you went with the multitude. You say you tend to think in terms of possibilities, which leads me to believe you don’t think in terms of utopia, but again, I may be wrong.

Philosophically speaking, we have a choice. We can blame present circumstance on a nasty genetic inheritance from hunter-gatherer ancestors, or we can see our difficulty as psychological in which case we can change our circumstance as quickly as we can change our minds (it sounds easier than it is). My contribution to the debate is a theory I call “collective image psychology”, the notion that our negative perception of human nature (the collective image) generates hierarchy as those who hate humanity most strive to distinguish themselves by attaining power, money or both. If I am correct, and there is no way of telling, we can, like anyone with a compulsive behavior disorder, change our behavior by changing our minds. On an individual behavioral level it’s like a drug addict cleaning him or herself up. I see the psychological explanation for our difficulties as our only hope.