SSI cut? Not your problem? Think again.

[undergroundpanther]

SSI being cut and you aren't disabled,so it's not your problem? Think again..


The state gave us (disabled people like me) our checks and sometimes when they could afford it our families could put us away from interfering with the smooth operation of their lives with that 'help'.We get our SSI, subsidized housing and we don't become burdens on relatives.And if we are lucky whilke they try to"manage us" we can get helped.

Relatives everywhere may be in for a rude awakening with SSI gets cut..Things will become unmanageable.Fast.

Some relatives balk at having to help house and care for old parents..What will they do with thier sisters or brothers with mental illness,autism,retardation, brain damage,cancer, work related injuries, war damage,or wheelchairs?

Some families are reluctant to care personally about disabled people because they never had to. What if because the money just is not there so they dump the disabled on the unprepared untrained somertimes dysfunctional families?...Masses of disabled people with no help or money will be out in the street (avoidinfg abuse or guilty fearing being burdens, or kill themselves) This will cause an outrage because people that are "normal" can't stand to see and relate to a human being that's handicapped up close, in their own backyard.They certainly don't want to admit they helped them die.. All while the disabled,just like the poor already will become easy scapegoats for the frustated bored neglected sociopath teens until the middle class becomes poor themselves and resent thier disabled relatives rather than resent the wealthy/.
Would there be a great turning away?
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050530/APN/505300582


When you have mental illness for instance and things get hairy at home..your family can send you away to the hospital where "professionals" handle big problems. What if they can't do this anymore and they are barely able to handle thier own dysfunctions?
Imagine what stressed out,overworked dysfunctional families who had to deal with suicidal family members all by themselves would do? Families living pay check to paycheck who cannot afford a disabled persons medication what would they do waching thier child or sister deteriorate? Or a person needing dialysis and no money or Medicaid to pay for it horriblly painfully pitifully dying at home for want of an hour once a day on dialysis machine? Or a person immobilized and unable to buy the medicine or have the state help them to control the pain so they can live? What would they do?

Would Futility of life laws become more tasty ..for a solution?
Rather than deny the wealthy thier fees and the credit companies thier interest and the rich thier stolen wealth gained on the blood sweat tears and broken dreams and lost happiness of billions?.

What if all these stressed out families are forced to deal with a person with disability issues personally all by themselves all of a sudden? How would the cope?What would thier reactions be? Get real! .Families that can function or care will make a stink about it because they still like the idea of the state helping them take care of the more difficult tasks,of a child,mother,or other relative in thier care who's living with a disability..Parents,relatives of disabled people like having the state take up the care and financial slack so they can work without having to stop to tend to crisis's that people go through when they are mentally ill etc.Some families don't care and would rather they just be dead if their disabled relatives have to live in THIER home.
And some dysfunctional families or families with abuse hisoruiers or sociopathic family members will take thier anger at the state out on the disabled family members too,don't pretend this will not happen..

And crisis's happen all the time for normals and the disabled and it's nobody's fault alot of times,. Mental illness and other kinds of disability can strike ANYONE down at ANY time,No one is immune to potential disability..


With SSI being cut.. more families will be forced to get into debt much faster so Bush can fill up all those shiny new debtors prisons that have been built everywhere and he can get people to work for free to work off obscene "interests" that never will get paid down caused by hospital bills etc.from families taking up the slack SSI once took up..


The noose is closing in on the wage slave system .Soon credit lords will create a never ending excuse for continuing debt slavery of the American people. Don't believe me? Why was the bankruptcy law changed for the poor but not corporations? Why have credit card companies been allowed by law to become more predatory and hike fees and charge hidden fees at a whim? It's like they want people to STAY in debt.

Charging up the interest on debts will make sure debts people incur for medicine or medical emergencies are NEVER paid off. And when good Christian liberals too scared to throw away the bible or offend social Darwinists cry slavery is unchristian they will have no place to turn in the bible or in the law code because the bible is OK with slavery and so are the corporate ass sucking cheap labor neocons.

The Neocons are creating the conditions for our system to become one of debt slavery .This is their reason for cutting SSI,tort reform bankruptcy laws,fucking with interest rates etc.. Medical Debt and Credit card Debt will be a tool used to screw us all into slavery.

The illusion of the legitamacy of owing interest ion a loan has created debt slavery.Usury is a sneaky slavery scam that is very effective in getting people to work for longer than the debt itself for nothing in return..Debt slavery has kept generations of Indian families under the yoke of their masters giving them free labor.
If it works in India . It will work here..

Debt slavery is "legitimized" by playing a scam based in interest a scam based in rationalizing why you owe more than you are given..when you borrow. This scam exploits things like basic human decency, misery,the puritan work ethic,desperation,desire,addiction, our self sufficient pride, reinforcing our cultural denial over the non existent work the rich do in gaining their wealth they lord over us,The insane unwillingness people have internalized refusing limit how much others can take and have from society that deprives all for ensuring the obscene power,leisure and wealth the few.. This scam exploits our honesty in deal making and the urge for repaying "kindness" and a blind gratefulness for help in a desperate situattion misdireced to those who help us in desperate times but for a big fee that keeps us paying forever which is a scam..This is how we are being exploited.... among other things ..

I fear a debt slavery scam will dupe us just as bad as it does in India and other places here.How many people DARE to refuse to pay usury? Those interests on loans? How many people seek to improve their"lot in life" and when that lot gets worse will risk everything for their kids? How do you think slave recruiters in disaster areas get people into slavery and human trafficking? What do you think the bait they use to lure people in is? Misery, desperation and the love of family and improving their lot in life with JOBS.

How many Americans have the guts to not pay those sudden interest hikes or hidden fees credit companies put in the fine print to make sure you NEVER pay them off? How many refuse to pay taxes when the government no longer represents us?

Remember the huge protests before Iraq being blown off? That is NOT representation.With this rightwards tilt,the church infiltration, and corporate lobby we have no representation for us in our government anymore,yet we pay taxes out of fear..this is extortion without representation.

And Cutting SSI is just another way this Maladministration is closing the noose on the American people slowly imperceptibly while distracting us with issues like abortion..They seek to create the situations that generate personal debt that cannot be paid off or defaulted(bankruptcy) and send us to work in debt prison or to war to 'work it off'. Ever wonder why the draft has not been issued and the states starved of funds?

Bush wants the south to rise again, only this time it's not racial,it's class based. This Bush mis-administration has passed laws to set the entire country (excepting top 1 or2% of the wealthiest) up to become a debt slave state..

What better way to dupe the over-obedient people already willing to pay this government that don't represent them half their yearly earnings without questioning how it is spent in taxes ,, People who willingly carry and pay outrageous credit card debts to buy shit they don't need today they never get to pay off the debts and they pay without contest.. The addicted American consumer is ripe for accepting the chains of debt slavery,especially when the social safety net is gone.

Bird flu or some other engineered bio weapon from FT Dietrich will hit and nobody except the well off or preferred people will have insurance to help. The poor and working classes we rush the emergency room to get help,they'll go in debt, and soon it will dawn on them they can't pay..Then there is a new "solution" If you work a year in debtors prison,your debt is paid. Fine print says you owe for your own upkeep in prison,where all your wages pay off hospital bills and you are set up to NEVER leave... There will be an outcry for National insurance, but by time we get it we will have become the institutional/slave/prison industry state set up for feeding the wealthy for nothing in return except our slave maintenance' which is very cost effective for the rich much more cost effective than letting us be free disobey and cause uprisings.. People who don't go along with the "program to heal America" and pay up will mysteriously disappear and be found dead.



________________________________________________________________



White House Moves Disability Benefits to The Chopping Block


Washington, DC - A day after the chief White House economist admitted that the Bush plan to privatize Social Security would include cuts to survivor benefits, the Bush administration also acknowledged that it would not protect disability benefits despite earlier assurances that these earned benefits would remain untouched. This is the latest trial balloon in the Bush administration's real plan to dismantle Social Security. The announcement may help explain why a new Harris poll found that only 36 percent of Americans think President Bush's "comments on saving and strengthening Social Security are his real motives for changing the program, while 49% believe his real agenda is to dismantle it."


"For the second day in a row, the Bush administration has admitted that despite past assurances, they never intended to protect Social Security disability and survivor benefits,"said DNC spokesman Josh Earnest. "From steep benefit cuts for the middle class, to risky private accounts, and now no protections for disability or survivor benefits, it's becoming clearer every day that Bush's real plan is to dismantle Social Security.”

THEN

Bush: Disability Benefits Won't Be Cut. " said he has no plans to cut benefits for the approximately 40 percent of Social Security recipients who collect monthly disability and survivor payments as he prepares his plan for partial privatization."

NOW

Bush Administration Won't Protect Disability Benefits. "Future Social Security retirement benefits for disabled workers is a matter for negotiations with Congress as it drafts solvency legislation, the Bush administration said Thursday, declining to say whether they should be raised, lowered or left unchanged. ‘Any plan that maintains current disability benefits will need to address the transition to retirement, and those details will be worked out through the legislative process,' said White House spokesman Trent Duffy."


http://www.democrats.org/ssm/news/200505130004.html

When I think of all this I get so pissed ... All I can say is I hope DC has a tunguska moment.

http://www.psi.edu/projects/siberia/siberia.html

[Midlodemocrat]

1. Great post, UGP!

How are you doing, my friend?

[undergroundpanther]

28. Ahh Ok I guess

Stressed out. But Ok.

[happynewyear]

2. alone, disabled, no family ...

relying on SSI or SSDI? What will happen to people like this? Especially those that haven't lost everything yet?

I suspect they'll be on the streets.

Calcutta here we come!

What a fine country we live in eh?

NOMINATED! Greatest page!!!

Thank you undergroundpanther! Thank you!

:kick:

[Pastiche423]

8. Alone, disabled, no family

(except my 80 year old father), relying on SSDI - that's me!

I paid into SSDI from the age of 16 until my late 30's. A decade ago, the Federal government declared me permanently disabled.

I earned that money in more ways than one and I damn well better keep getting it!

This would mean death to millions of American citizens.

[barbaraann]

3. It's happening.

I have a friend who received a letter from the government that he might be liable for almost $100,000 in medical care for an indigent, disabled relative.

In a million years, I never would have thought that human beings are capable of the evil that we are seeing from the Republican Party. I was wrong.

[LuPeRcALiO]

4. at least the liquor lobby will be happy.

With no rent to pay we can spend all the quarters we panhandle on rotgut.

Great post!!

:kick:

[converted_democrat]

5. This is one of the best posts I've ever read on DU.............

Nominated!!!!! This needs to be seen!!!!!

[zoeb]

6. As a whole, I think the nation is way

to liberal to let the first scenario occur. They'll demand a safety net to help those that can't help themselves and many of those in the 36% category will change their support when they find it could put loved ones in the street.

Real hope lies here: "while 49% believe his real agenda is to dismantle it."
That 49% needs to get the word out!

[elehhhhna]

17. We're also way too selfsh to let Grandma move in with us.

Not gonna do it.
Wouldn't be prudent.

[jaxx]

7. The medicaid and SSI cuts are a huge worry.

I work with the developmentally disabled and 98% of them are on medicaid and/or SSI........and roughly 75% have no family. The facility is a good place and provides a happy life for the residents, but it takes money to feed and clothe them, along with taking them out for some fun. They are wonderful people, and do not deserve to have less. Damn this adm. and their freakin compassion.....they have none.

Thanks so much for the post. More need to be aware of the ones in need who will suffer for the loss of their care needs. We all need to stand up and shout NO!

[cap]

16. they have family...

their family has chosen not to be involved with them. Their family has chosen not to be their brother's keeper (or son's/daughter's, sister's, parent's, cousins, niece's/nephew's, etc.)

Someone needs to ask these "Christians" at what point must the be held accountable for their families' needs.

[Bridget Burke]

19. What if their "family" is an elderly widow living on SS?

And why do you assume they are Christians?

Nobody should suffer because their relatives are dead, sick, poor or uncaring.

[cap]

30. You misunderstand me...

I am pointing up the difference between RW evangelical rhetoric and the reality of their own families.

[cornermouse]

9. Cutting SSI will either lead to higher taxes due to the costs

associated with institutionalizing everyone who is not capable of living independently without help or supervision (vastly more expensive than SSI) or it will lead to putting the helpless on the streets as easy meat for the jackals of the world. It will also lead to greater pressure on families and individuals which in turn could lead to abuse.

Due to the fractured state of families not infrequently living great distances from each other, help will be difficult. I don't know what's going to happen to those disabled individuals who are unlucky enough to survive their parents.

I think Bush and the republicans are planning on passing the buck and having or forcing the states to end SSI. It remains to be seen if the people let them get away with it.

[Shallah Kali]

10. Some people will care, others will say 'should have done this years ago'

I am disabled and get SS instead of SSI because my Father died before he could collect SS. I am getting what he should have yet my own sister would love to drop me off the nearest cliff beause she thinks people like me are stealing from people like her. The funny thing is that once she tried to get gov. aid and got turned down because she made a little too much. She went from ranting about the standards for aid being too high to being POed because she didn't qualify. It really makes a difference when the shoe is on the other foot :/

[POAS]

11. When I was 12

my single mother, at 39 years of age, was stricken by a stroke. That was in 1957.

In 1957 there was no disability social security so even though she had paid into Social Security since the day it started in the 1930's she was eligible for nothing.

Mt grandmother looked after both of us while continuing to work a full time job so that we could have enough money for food and utilities. A 68 year old woman raising a teenager, working and caring for a gravely ill daughter, the woman was a saint.

Then in 1961 disability benefits became available and my mother began getting a regular check from social security for her and her minor child (me). That, together with my grandmother's social security check, allowed my grandmother to retire and finally become a stay at home grandmother/mother.

Without that SS disability benefit my grandmother would probably have lost her house and her health. I probably would have ended up in a foster home and my mother in a county nursing home. With the benefit, my grandmother kept her home, I was raised by a wonderful loving grandparent and eventually my mother was able to live independently in her own apartment in a seniors building until her death at age 77.

[NMMNG]

12. Truly frightening

I work with the developmentally disabled and every one of them gets SS, SSI or a combination of the two. Many of them have family but others do not. Even in cases where the individuals have family, it is not likely they could live with the family members should SS/SSI benefits cease. In many instances the family members are elderly or disabled themselves. In other cases they simply want nothing to do with their disabled child/sibling.

So what would become of these people, many of whom require substantial to total care?

And what of the other people I work with--those who have mental illnesses? If their benefits are cut some could live with family members, but undoubtedly many would end up on the streets. From there some would likely find their way into the prison system, as do many people with mental illness, who really should be receiving treatment rather than punishment.

I wonder how the "compassionate conservatives" expect these people to live with no funds to pay for services...

:grr: :grr:

[Karenina]

13. Kick!

:kick:

[jbnow]

14. I can't find the reference to SSI cuts in the links

Not that there could be much of a cut to it, it's already so low. If recipients live on their own you have to have subsidized housing to survive. If you live with family you already get less because you don't have your own household. SSI is so low that only some foster care homes or nursing homes take SSI clients. As cold as this administration is, it's hard to believe they would cut this program. These are the disabled who never were able to work or at least not enough to be able to get SSD. Most are developmentally disabled or have chronic mental illness.

I am seeing where they refer to SSD, which is for people who had enough work quarters before they became disabled. The threat to that disability and survivors benefits were obvious from the start with private accounts. If someone chose that option and became disabled young (or died young with minor children) there would be little money in that private account so all they or their children would get would be the reduced portion through the government. That was a great concern to me because younger people rarely have substantial savings or much in IRAs. Even if you get SSD (after a long, humiliating fight) it is a huge drop in income. If you got just the reduced portion it would be a nightmare.

I never understood or believed private accounts would not affect those programs, they never said how the gap would be covered.

Today bush said something about taking care of "the least" of us (surely referring to the biblical passage) and went on to talk about other countries. I have thought about that passage a lot with these pseudo-christians...how do we treat those who are hungry, sick, homeless, imprisoned? If they listen to Jesus they would treat them well, the quote says what we do to the least of our brethren we do to him. That in the end those who give food and care and comfort will be welcomed into heaven and those who treat them badly will be sent away. So how is it republicans think they are the moral group? And this group more then others. Do these "christians" ever read anything Jesus said? How do they begin to justify the contradiction?

[Karenina]

15. Welcome to DU, Jbnow!

:hug:

[DanCa]

18. Panther

I hear you its coming thru loud and a clear. Its time that we start playing offense with these creepos. I am thirty six with young onset pd and it is no fun living at home. Especially in a family that is half fundie. Anyhow I appreciate your post. If you have any ideas how to go on the offensive pm me Danny.

[Ladyhawk]

21. DanCa, I feel for you. My dream of living family-free has been

temporarily trashed. At least, I hope it's temporary. I tried to get by on disability alone. After surgery, it was either get back in touch with family or starve. I chose not to starve.

This thread has me scared out of my wits. How am I supposed to get better when the economy is a shambles and the pubbies are threatening to cut off my only source of income? How can I contribute to society if my basic needs are not met? I can't turn it around completely on my own!

DU: there are a lot of us here. Can't we secede from the Union and form the United Democratic Underground? These murderers, liars and thieves in office are scaring the shit out of me.

[DanCa]

23. Hang in there

I know how you feel lady hawk. Its rough especialy when my sister starts preaching about the culture of life crap. There other day my sister -selene- says that I should be thanking the chimp for giving me any money whatsover instead of constantly criticing him. I tell you i was about to hit the roof. We havent spoken since.

[Ladyhawk]

24. Disability pays way below the poverty line.

I tried and couldn't make ends meet. I have too much credit card debt and the credit card company doubled my payments.

You hang in there, too. Hopefully, this whole thing can still be turned around. The GOP got its ass handed to it on some of the stem cell research stuff and don't forget, other countries are researching with stem cells, aren't they? Perhaps someday we can sneak you into Canada for the cure. :)

[Ladyhawk]

20. SSI Disability = the only thing keeping me alive.

If it's cut, I'm toast. :cry:

[cornermouse]

22. Don't give up.

I know its hard, but you have to keep fighting.

[Ladyhawk]

25. I'm trying, but those of us who are disabled in one way or another

really need the help of the healthy. We can only handle so much because of our various conditions.

But hey, I signed Conyers' letter and I keep writing to the only California representative who might listen to me: Barbara Boxer. Our other senator is Feinstein, a worthless DINO. My rep in Congress is Radanovich: worthlesser. :D

I never write Radanovich (R) because I feel it's a waste of time. He's a neocon. What do you think? Do you think writing to Rethuglicans is a waste of time and effort?

[cornermouse]

27. I know its a waste of time talking to them.

I've tried. I think if you can just find a way to ride it out till 2008, or if we're lucky and people are mad enough by then, 2006, I'm hoping they'll get voted out.

[Bryn]

26. Republican Party was started because they opposed Slavery

Now look at them today!! Unbelievable!

By the way, what a great post. Everyone should read your post.

:hug:

[REP]

29. Social Security Disability and Social Security Supplemental Income

SSD and SSI are different things. SSI is VERY hard to get; SSD is not so hard to get, providing one can afford to wait and can either write their own appeal or hire someone to do it.