How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise
February 4, 2012 Martha Thomases 1 Comment
My personal life is kind of a mess these days (hence the title of this column), but not an interesting nor an entertaining mess. If only I could find the poetry in modern problems, like some people in this space. Let’s look at the news instead.
• Mitt Romney once again said something stupid and, once again, the media raised a big fuss but missed the point. Romney didn’t mean to say he doesn’t care about the poor. I get that. To me, the damning part of the speech is that he seems to think the very rich and very poor constitute only ten to fifteen percent of the population. In fact, census data shows that there are a lot more poor people than that. Do we, as a people, really want a President who is that out of touch with reality? Excusing the Newt Gingrich supporters, that is.
Oh, and as it says in the article I cite above, Mitt doesn’t want to patch the holes in the safety net. So he was either lying, or he doesn’t know what a safety net is.
• The Susen Komen Foundation cut grants to Planned Parenthood, claiming the foundation had a policy against giving money to groups that were under government investigation. Apparently, they have no such qualms about accepting money from such entities.
There’s a lot of partisan politics involved here, what with this being an election year and all, but the fact remains that, for many poor women (and women one paycheck away from being poor), Planned Parenthood is the only place they can go to get their basic medical needs met. They rely on the support of their communities. If you have breasts, or like breasts, or know anyone who does, consider a donation.
• For all the right-wing insistence that the United States is a Judeo-Christian nation, they seem to read a different bible than the one I was taught in Sabbath School. In Alabama, for example, the bible they read seems to say that teachers are required to live in poverty, while elected officials, paid for from the same public funds, should rake in the big bucks. I’m not as familiar with the New Testament as I am with the Old, but I don’t think that’s what Jesus meant when he talked about rendering unto Caesar.
• If that State Senator does get a raise, I hope he’s subject to the same criteria they may yet require in Indiana. If we’re going to require people who get money from the government to meet a particular criteria, it should apply to all of them.
And, to leave on a high note:
• My favorite story of the week, in this culture war over women’s bodies, comes from Virginia. I am so sick and tired of lawmakers who assume that women and girls are too stupid to understand what it means to be pregnant, and therefore need men to tell them what sacred vessels they are. Of course, the law didn’t pass. Still it’s a step forward.
Happy trails.
On the plus side, Media Goddess Martha Thomases has been spending a lot of quality time with her cat.
Ed
February 4, 2012 - 9:01 am
I bristle more each time I read of the “Judeo-Christian” culture. There is such a culture, you know. That’s why the Jews and Christians tossed the Jews out of Spain; why the Jews and Christians executed pogroms against Jewish shtetls; why the Jews and Christians invented the story that Jews kill Christian children to make matzoh with their blood. Let’s see. What else has the Judeo-Christian culture done in their centuries-long partnership.
I guess they could more accurately called Jews and Christians the People of the Book, but then you know who else they’d have to let in . . .
Howard Cruse
February 4, 2012 - 9:28 am
Since he’s never remotely needed a safety net, I’m sure that Mitt had only a vague concept of what one is.
Mike Gold
February 4, 2012 - 10:00 am
First of all, slaughtering wiggly children and then draining their blood and using it in your favorite matzo recipe is too time consuming and therefore defeats the purpose of matzo in the first place. You might as well bake bread. Unless you use Christian blood there as well.
And why CHRISTIAN blood? Are these assholes purporting Christian blood is any more tasty than anybody else’s blood? I guess that explains Dracula.
Now, to be fair, if fleeing Jews didn’t have time to bake bread then they certainly didn’t have time to make egg matzo, garlic matzo (my favorite and, no, I don’t know how many Christian babies it takes to make a box of it), whole wheat matzo, or chocolate-covered matzo. This is probably why I’m an atheist.
Finally, any Jew who actually buys into the whole “Judeo-Christian” bullshit deserves what he or she gets. Lots of them died in the camps some 70 years ago. “Oh, but we’re Germans!” Idiots.
Jews better watch their backs, and I don’t mean from Christians. Bernie Madoff is not Christian.
Rene
February 4, 2012 - 11:11 am
I realize that I’m looking from the outside, both as a non-American and a non-Christian, but I think it makes sense to speak of “Judeo-Christians” or even the “People of the Book.”
Jews, Christians, and Muslims, despite the infighting, have a whole lot in common in their beliefs. Particularly in how they all gang up to go against us evil hedonists/secularists.
Mike Gold
February 4, 2012 - 1:34 pm
Jews, Christians, Muslims. Happy, happy, joy, joy. Now let’s get together and beat up somefucking heathens.
Martha Thomases
February 4, 2012 - 2:23 pm
@Ed: I, too, hate the term Judeo-Christian. It seems to me that the part about no establishment of religionis in the constitution, whereas neither Jesus nor Moses (or Elijah, or Noah, or Job etc. etc.) is mentioned anywhere.
@Mike: As my mother would say, Bernie Madoff is bad for the Jews.
Mike Gold
February 4, 2012 - 2:54 pm
Martha… your mother is Julie Schwartz???
Job may not in the Constitution, but I think Job IS the Constitution. Where do you think they got the paper?
Rick Oliver
February 4, 2012 - 2:58 pm
Romney didn’t define what he meant by “very poor”, so maybe he meant “a whole shitload poorer than what is commonly defined as the poverty level”; but he made it clear that he wasn’t interested in their votes, who ever they are. He has also made it fairly clear that he thinks we should have considerably less of a “social safety net” for them; so maybe he meant “astronomically poor”. Which brings me to Newt, who is now dissing Mitt for being the “food stamp candidate,” just like he labels Obama the “food stamp president.” I’m somewhat confused by Newt’s contempt for the food stamp program. Is he really upset by a program designed specifically to do nothing but provide food for poor people? Is that what we’ve come to? “Hey, look at those pathetic losers! They’re feeding the poor!” Is some “food stamp queen” driving around in a food stamp Cadillac?
Rene
February 4, 2012 - 3:15 pm
Rick –
I don’t agree with them, but I understand their rationale.
Usually, the more economically right-wing you are, the more you believe private property is sacred and that capitalism is an effective way to reward the deserving.
So having high taxes to finance government programs to feed the poor is very much a sin to them, because it’s the government robbing deserving people of their income and causing the whole system to become less effective too.
Right-wingers will also tell you they’re not actually heartless. They support charity, as long as it is a private operation.
MOTU
February 4, 2012 - 4:02 pm
Er, excuse me, was not Jesus a liberal?
I guess that whole ‘What would Jesus do’ is not something those hard core right wing Christians think about when they are on their soapbox.
Rick Oliver
February 4, 2012 - 4:28 pm
MOTU: Actually, they think about it a lot, and they usually have their cherry-picked Jesus responses ready. And as Rene points out, they don’t officially oppose charity; they just oppose government charity, because, you know, private charity was working out so well.
Rick Oliver
February 4, 2012 - 4:30 pm
But back to my original question: Why food stamps? Welfare as a target I can understand. But food stamps? That seems pretty low to me.
MOTU
February 4, 2012 - 6:09 pm
Rick,
What BURNS me about the Democratic party is they have no attack dog. There are far more white people on food stamps and welfare than black people but the democrats simply let the perception that this a black issue stand.
My family was not on welfare but we did use food stamps on occasion. I can tell you somedays it was the difference between no meal and dinner.
THAT’S what Jesus would do.
Rene
February 4, 2012 - 8:01 pm
Why food stamps? Because they’re a very iconic symbol for the “parasites with a sense of entitlement living off the government” that the Right so despises. After all, if you believe in the effectiveness and justice of capitalism, then something must be wrong with people that seek the government’s largesse.
And yes, a perennial problem of the American Democratic Party is that they don’t seem to have the stomach for direct confrontation in the defense of their supposed ideals. In other words, they’re wimps most of the time. Nothing new in that.
JosephW
February 5, 2012 - 12:46 am
It would be nice if Newt would spend a little time in cities and towns near military bases. He might be quite surprised to discover that many of our wonderful military families can’t make do WITHOUT the Food Stamp program. It’s somewhat worth noting that I’m not talking about families who live ON base but rather families who–for whatever reason–can’t live on base (in many cases, the bases simply don’t have space for families). But, according to the Defense Commissary Agency, military food stamp purchases amounted to nearly $88 MILLION in 2011 (in 2008, those purchases only amounted a little over $31 million)–and one additional fact about this amount should be remembered: That commissaries essentially sell items AT COST plus a 5% surcharge (compared to double- and even triple-digit markups at regular grocery stores).
Rick Oliver
February 5, 2012 - 7:19 am
Joseph: Can you cite a source? I’d love to make it my Facebook status.
R. Maheras
February 5, 2012 - 3:19 pm
My mom applied for whatever welfare was called circa 1960 and was turned down — despite the fact that she was a single parent, had been abandoned by a deadbeat husband four years earlier, and was raising two small children on what she made at her low-paying secretarial job. Things were so bad she suffered from malnutrition, and without the help of her three sisters who knows what would have happened to her, healthwise.
My sister and I were latchkey kids before such a term was invented, and my mom dreaded coming home from work because she never knew what new mischief we’d gotten into after school — if we went to school at all.
I think one of the reasons my mom began regularly voting Republican was because the Democratic institutions surrounding us in Chicago never gave us squat. That, and the fact that the local Democrat preceinct captain once tried to bribe her once voting Democratic because he knew she was desperate for money.
To this day my mom is one independent and feisty lady.
And actually, I’m glad the bureaucratic safety net didn’t work for her back then. If it had, we all may have become dependent souls, rather than fiercely independent souls — something that is a critical asset in this world.
Mike Gold
February 5, 2012 - 4:12 pm
I’m surprised you didn’t get any help from your ward committeeman or alderman (often the same cat). That’s how Daley the First piled up all those huge votes: “good politics is good government.” You go to the committeeman, you get your curb fixed or the pothole on the street mended or your high school son off of a minor pot bust. And all you have to do is vote in the next few years of elections, which you should do anyway. Hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans understood that — and often the alderman or committeeman would come around and remind you. It didn’t matter who you voted for: Chicago during the Daley the First years was known for stuffing ballots in the Republican box just so the vote didn’t look completely ridiculous.
Mind you, voting was a major commitment in Chicago. Elections were held every couple months. But the ward office would get you a ride. And a turkey for Thanksgiving. And probably Christmas. Maybe a good cigar if you dropped by the office, particularly on one of the frequent election nights.
But it you were applying for welfare or similar services, having your committeeman know about it back then was essential. And if you were homeless, as a potential voter you were even more valuable.
I was also a latchkey kid. There was no stigma associated with it. I usually went home from school by way of the local drug store (for my comics fix), I read my comic book, I did whatever homework I cared to do, and my mother was home at 5:30, my father at 7 PM — he worked six days a week. I rarely got into trouble in school simply because I knew one of my parents would have to take a day off from work, and that wasn’t going to inure to my benefit. I was no saint; I just got clever.
So who sez you don’t learn anything at school?
The safety net is important, but it must be carefully administered. We cannot have freedom unless each of us are free, and our American society cannot turn its back on those people truly in need.
I used to get into a lot of trouble with the commies over that.
Whitney
February 6, 2012 - 2:21 pm
Divine Ms. M –
I am convinced that one of the most significant reasons why poverty and injustice continue to be entrenched plagues is that the people who call themselves after the name of the Lord – like myself – have failed to be diligent. We have no excuse because we have gone to sleep in the piles of comfort. We’re not even hot or cold.
That secular systems have needed to develop to answer the cry of widows and orphans is our fault. That those systems aren’t world-changingly successful shouldn’t be a surprise. How could they be, when they don’t have access to the resources that we purport to believe in?
Everyone who gets props and power from getting a label of GOOD needs to be scrutinized for the truth of it. ‘Greeks bearing gifts’ have modern iterations.
And, Martha…wow. Thank you for letting me be a part of your circle.
Mike Gold
February 6, 2012 - 2:44 pm
Well put, Whitney.
As for Greeks bearing gifts — not in the EU these days, but conceptually — that horse would make for one hell of a planter.