Thursday, December 21, 2017

Things That Have Been On My Mind

Settle in, dear reader. This is going to be a long post. I'm going to cover a lot of ground, as the expression goes.

The tax reform bill is now the law of the land. As is repeal of net neutrality regulations. These won't actually go into effect for a little while, but the deals are done, the votes have been cast. The CHIP program that provides health insurance for 9 million children is out of money, more or less. There are no more funds to be dispersed to the individual states at this time. Each state has its own date at which its current funds will run out. The program has been in existence for twenty years and funding it has never been an issue in the halls of Congress.

But, as I and so many others predicted would happen, the Trump presidency is taking almost everything we've long taken for granted and putting it all back on the table. Even as they happily blow a trillion and a half dollar hole in the budget, the Republicans are already talking about what they call "entitlement reform". Because, they say, we need to be fiscally responsible.

I believe that no later than late January or early February, they'll be attacking Social Security, Medicare, SNAP (the program formerly known as food stamps), H.E.A.P.,  and anything else they can set their sights on. They might, just might, leave regular Social Security untouched, but they will, I believe, brutally attack Social Security Disability.

Which, though it's par for the course, is still morally sickening. I have a lot to lose if this goes badly because S.S.D. is my only source of income. My monthly check of $834 (don't spend it all at once!) puts me at 80% of the poverty level. My SNAP benefits bring me all the way to a dead even 100%.

Think that over, for a minute. That monthly payment, which I can spend on food and nothing else, lifts me out of poverty. 

Changing the subject, have you read, or at least, heard about the report issued by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights? He recently completed a two week tour of the United States and finds our conditions to be "appalling". He details conditions in parts of Alabama, where raw sewage backs up in people's yards because the systems to handle it are in such bad shape. He talks about children who are suffering from hookworm and ringworm, diseases not seen in this country since the mid-to-late 1960s. Those diseases result from lack of clean drinking water, the right to which should be formally codified as a fundamental right. He talks about seeing police officers in San Francisco harassing the homeless, telling them to move along. 

Think all that over, if you can force yourself to do it.

Back to politics, for a bit. If you need a quick break, take it, please. Get up and stretch for a few minutes. Get yourself something to drink.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The extreme right wingers in this country are morally disgusting people. They're sick, twisted individuals whose beliefs, words and actions have long bordered on and now fully qualify as pathological. They really do believe every word they say, which is kind of scary.

Their rise to power began in the late 1960s, with the election of Richard Nixon. They've spent close to half a century piecing together their agenda. Every time that the rest of us could have and should have risen up to stop them, to say "No" to them, we failed for one reason or another.

When Ronald Reagan illegally fired thousands of air traffic controllers who were striking, did we stop it? We did not. Yes, the strike itself was not legal, but Reagan's actions was the first shot across the bow against organized labor. That was, many believe, the defining moment, the moment when the right wing said to itself, "What else can we get away with?".

They can get away with a whole hell of a lot, as we've seen. They can ship millions of jobs to third world nations. They can eliminate millions more by making us check ourselves out at the supermarket, and by turning ATM machines into automated bank tellers, and by using robotics to manufacture automobiles and by...well, you get the idea, I'm sure.

They can close hundreds of post offices. They can reduce the number of hours that Social Security offices are open. They can impose draconian restrictions on voting. They can turn our society into a hellish nightmare where privacy is no longer protected as it should be. Indeed, they can even make privacy damn near obsolete. You are being watched, in just about every public place you can think of.

All in the name of security. Safety. Order. You may know these words as the words that the Nazis used in Germany in the 1930s.

Because we don't want another 9-11 on our hands. Of course, we're losing people, our people, to an opioid crisis that's killing as many people as we lost on 9-11, every three weeks.

Every three weeks! And what price has been demanded of those who deal in death?

Okay. I'm almost done, honest. This post hasn't come out quite the way I first intended it to. It's quite a bit shorter. It's a bit more restrained. Yeah, I held back, a little. But I'm satisfied with it.

Of course, I just might be back at it again in an hour or two. Or not. I have other things to discuss, but I want, as always, to treat each and every subject with the care and respect it deserves.

Thank you for reading this.










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