Katrina was a wakeup call but people are still pretending about poverty

[FlavaKreemSnak]

This started out as a reply to a person in one of the threads about Katrina saying that it was a defining moment for people and if we will just win in November they hope it will turn the tide.

I know it makes people feel better to think that and I guess depending on your point of view, maybe those people are the lucky ones because one of the things we get taught is to always be positive but one of the things that got defined for me was that the reason we get taught to be positive is so we will be like Barbara Bush that said oh well it is working out really good for them, and she was saying it about people that had lost their house and a bunch of them had relatives that had been killed and they took the ones who didn't die and put them in that other stadium and everybody was supposed to say oh good that stadium is so much better they have cots and bathrooms.

And that was supposed to make everybody agree with Barbara Bush etc. And I know there were some famous people who went but I think the more important thing is when regular people went and there were some who did, but when you think about ok what per cent was that compared to the per cent that said oh ok those people can just die because they are just low income people and most of them are black and immigrants and things and there were actually people I saw on other message boards saying it is about time New Orleans got cleaned up that Katrina was a blessing because now they can make it all nice like a place where you can take your family and it will be other people there we have more in common with etc.

And then there were a bunch of other people that started to feel guilty and said oh I will send a check to the Red Cross but then there were some articles asking some questions about how much the Red Cross was really helping the people that had the worst situations, like people who were already really low income to begin with, like people who couldn't really afford to live anywhere and the only reason they did was because it was their grandparents or somebody's house but now it was gone.

And even though there were all these articles talking about how it was a wake up call about how bad it has gotten with so many low income people like that all over the USA and they had gotten more and more far apart in their economic situation from what we would call normal, not even rich people, just people that aren't that worried about being homeless and we have computers and can mess around on the internet etc.

And a lot of people said yes it really is a problem but I don't think that some of them know it is an even worse problem than they think.

Because we all want to think that like the Democrats can fix it and there are lots of them that would like to but it has gotten to be just the kind of economy we have, and if you read about it you can see that any of them that even make suggestions will become not taken seriously and called extremists.

Even people who say that the minimum wage should be enough to keep people from being homeless! There is no way that anything like that is going to happen, even with Democrats. I mean we all like to pretend that will happen but when you read around you see that even something like health care like other countries have, the only thing they can say is that well it should be affordable, or let's give it to children.

But if you are low income the only thing affordable would cost zero and there are lots and lots of people like that, and that is health care. Stuff like apartments or the thing of having a minimum wage that would be enough for one is just considered to be playing the class war card and too extremist, and for the kind of economy we have they are right abot the second part.

I mean this is a really big problem that people either want to pretend isn't true or that the Democrats will fix it, because to think about how bad it really is is just too scary.

And it is also true that one of the reasons it is SO going to get worse is because the war on terror is so expensive but it goes back way before the war on terror. And it is the problem that is extremist. It is so big that even if we had Democrats in all the offices all passing programs and things, it would still not really help except to make people feel better.

Because it has just gotten too far out of hand. I am not saying I am against programs, and yes it is better to help a few people than zero people, but it is really so bad now that helping those few people is not going to change the big picture or make us a country where everybody that has a job can afford to live someplace and everybody that is sick can go to the doctor.

And then there are the people who will say we have to take baby steps but the problem with that is that we are not a baby any more and neither is the poverty problem.

It might make people feel better to say well those baby steps mean that we might have health care in 10 or 20 years. But the main people it makes feel better are the ones that can afford to go to the doctor THIS year. And it is the same with the minimum wage. The people who feel better when somebody says that in 10 pr 20 yrs, if you have a job you will be able to afford someplace to live are the people whose jobs pay enough for that NOW.

I know most people will not like this message because it is not positive, but I can't read and hear about people who a year after Katrina still don't have a place to live, and they have gone from being a Katrina victim to being just one more person who can't afford to live anywhere.

So anyway, I agree that Katrina was a wakeup call for a lot of people, but they hung up on it because really waking up would just be too scary.

[sui generis]

1. wanting to uplift our fellow Americans

(regardless of where they or you stand on the socio-economic scale) is not a plan or a goal but a value that our society has to have before it can consolidate its will into action.

Likewise, bringing universal healthcare means we have to make it available to everyone whether they choose to use it or not, and changing our priorities away from paying over 70 percent of our national budget into war infrastructure by staying engaged in permanent war will keep our Treasury as a nation from hemorrhaging directly into the coffers of Halliburton and Exxon.

Our values as a nation have to be represented by our party platform. If they don't mesh, we lose. Our values as a nation in the past appeared to be security and "insulation" from fear at any cost.

That cost is now becoming more than apparent.

On this very site I argued with a gentleman about building for future disasters rather than cleaning up what we missed, and the idea that 30 billion dollars was far far far too much to spend on an area like New Orleans is now underscored by the REAL postmortem cost of over 120 Billion dollars, most of which could really have gone to building stable national healthcare initiatives, educational initiatives and a reshaping of our national priorities and values.

That did not happen, and will not happen on a republican watch.

There will always be poor people. There will always be people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time, who suffer inordinate ill luck, who are born to it and live in it such that no other possibility intrudes on it, and who even choose it, through mental defect or comfort.

Even if you could cure every bit of poverty in the real world, it could only happen in steady economic growth - and that could only happen in a fully competitive global economy, or a fully isolated U.S. economy - one extreme or the other quite unlikely to exist, and only temporarily if so.

The plan has to be to give the most options to the greatest number of people, but to subtract the things that drive us to make bad decisions more often than good. If we aren't putting up with abuse at work to ensure that our children have medical services and health insurance, we suddenly become a commodity that employers must compete for as well as us competing for jobs. If somebody wants to work a 40 hour a week hourly job instead of 70 or 80 hours a week, we should be able to "get by". If our children want the chance at an advanced degree, it should be available to them without mortgaging half their remaining working years, and we should all be allowed to retire while we still have cartilage in our joints to enjoy a walk on the beach or in a park with our grandchildren instead of flipping burgers at McDonalds and "greeting guests" and cleaning toilets at Wal-Mart.

It has to be a value that we all agree on for anything to change.