I had every intention of writing about poverty in third world countries for this year’s Blog Action Day’s theme of Poverty and about the pain and devastation those millions of people have to deal with every single day. Since our financial system is now collapsing here in America, I think it would be more appropriate for me to address the coming onslaught of many middle class families falling into real poverty over these next few years. I feel many don’t even realize yet how badly they will be affected.
The way many Americans have been living – paycheck to paycheck with credit cards as a backup in total denial that they are spending way more than they bring in so they can have their toys and keep up with the Jones’. When your entire way of living is cut off at the knees and you have not really saved any money in an emergency fund or put away any bulk food or gathered any extra blankets or winter coats to stay warm because heat is now too expensive for your home and everything else one needs to do to prepare for that “just in case” scenario well, these people are in for a rude awakening.
Every single industry will be affected in some way and will feel the effects- even the ones who say they are “recession proof.” A large economic slowdown the likes of which we have never had to deal with is upon us and will get worse before it gets better. What we are now entering is way more than just a recession. I heard it quoted this week as “We are entering a time that will rival the great depression if not surpass it.” That is one serious statement and it was made by a CEO of a Fortune 100 company.
When you lose your job and have to figure out how you will be able to keep your home with no income and no savings, the fact is many won’t be able to and will become homeless. Financial advisers tell you to save up 6-8 months worth of monthly expenses in a savings account just in case this scenario happens. Shelters in America have already seen a large rise in homelessness and people in shock and dismay that they can’t find another job. Many more job layoffs are predicted to happen in many industries over this next year and what happens then? We have millions more falling into poverty right here in America.
It is good to have a network of people you and your family know well in case you lose your job and your home and become truly homeless. Think about who you know, friend or family member that would let you and your kids stay with them until you can find some kind of work again. Families doing this will become more common over the next few years until our economy stabilizes and we can start to turn ourselves around.
Working together with others in a bad economy can help to save at least one home by moving in together and pooling all of your resources and money so you all have someplace warm to sleep at night and some food to eat. Our world is changing and we all will have to rely on each other to rebuild it. Growing food with others will be necessary as will preserving whatever food you can. It’s amazing how much food can be grown on a very small section of land in your backyard.
Children will be really affected by all of this, hopefully attending public school will help give them some sense of normalcy and a rhythm to their day. They would also qualify for the free lunch programs public schools have to feed the low income children breakfast and lunch which may even be the only food they get to eat on those days.
The sooner we can get jobs going here in the green technology and alternative energy sector to save on cost of fuel and create work for the masses, the better. I just hope our next president realizes this and works to get it going right away.
These will be trying times for everyone but for those of us who are lucky enough to keep a job throughout this upheaval, we need to remember to give back – donate food to the food banks, clothes, blankets, winter jackets to the charities that help the homeless, extra money donated on your utilities bill that goes to their program that helps low income families keep the heat and electric on while they still have a home to live in, invite a family that you know is suffering hardship over for a dinner and give them a care package to take with them, etc.
While we of the middle and upper-middle class are not used to living at the poverty level, millions all over the world still have it much worse than we do. We are not being shot at, raped and terrorized like villagers in Somalia, we have homeless shelters and soup kitchens to help us out even a little bit unlike the starving masses in Haiti who resort to eating dirt cookies and we have food stamps especially for women with infants and young children. There are even some programs like Medicare and others where if you are destitute, you can receive free medical care – especially for your children. So our poverty does not rival extreme poverty in third world countries but the emotional pain and physical toll on the body will still be felt just the same.
I hope we can all learn a big lesson from this – don’t live above your means. You can be happy with less and there is a real art and satisfaction to living simply on the Earth in harmony with nature. I hope you all will get to keep your jobs and homes and will help your local community out in whatever way you can.
You need to watch this short video about a man who could be our next leader and the crazy raging temper he’s got. Do we need someone irrational (again) leading our country? So many of his peers went on record to attest to his rage and irrational behavior and several are on this video. Scary stuff.
ING Direct put out a “Declaration Of Financial Independence” and I thought it was so smart that I had to reprint it here for you all to see:
OUR DECLARATION OF FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE
We will spend less than we earn. Saving a little out of every dollar we bring home is the foundation of independence. Without it, we can’t build equity in our home, we can’t invest for the future, and we can’t be ready for challenging times. We promise to pay ourselves first, always.
We will use our home as a savings account. Besides shelter and comfort for our family, the role of a house in our financial life is to build equity. We will have a healthy down payment when we buy. We’ll choose the mortgage that lets us pay down the principal fastest. And then we’ll leave that equity safe where it is instead of spending it on things that don’t last.
We will take care of our money. It’s not enough to have money in a bank. We will put it where it will grow. We’ll keep track of it. And we’ll check every account we have every year to protect ourselves against fraud or escheatment.
We will defend our credit worthiness. Good credit is going to be precious in the years to come. We will pay our bills on time. We’ll borrow only when we need to and in amounts we can comfortably pay back. And then we’ll do just that.
We will ignore unsolicited credit card marketing. We decide when we need a credit card, not some marketer. And mostly, we probably don’t need another one at all. We won’t even open those solicitations. We’ll shred them.
We will know the cost of borrowing. The interest lenders charge us is real money, too. When we buy a mortgage or finance a purchase, we’ll figure out what that interest is really going to cost in dollars, add it to the purchase price, and ask ourselves if it’s still worth it.
We will invest for the long term. Futures are built out of patience and prudence, not luck. We will not put off being a saver because we think there’s a lottery win in our future, in Vegas or on Wall Street.
We will take care of the things we have. We work hard for our money, and it’s disrespectful to waste it – or the planet – by treating our possessions as disposable.
We will remember what matters. We are not the things we own. If we have to spend and spend on bigger, more impressive things to keep up with our friends, then they are not our friends at all.
We will be heard. Our representatives in government and the corporations we deal with need to know that we are paying attention. If we’re silent, we’re accepting the status quo, and the business practices that got our country into this situation will continue. We are not going to accept that.
Well this really will show you the level of racism and discrimination still alive and well in the USA. When you see it written out like this, it really makes you wonder why anyone would back a not too bright and low integrity person to be elected as the next leader of the free world. I want an Ivy league intelligent person (and being the editor of the Harvard law review doesn’t hurt, either) to be my next president not someone who graduated at the bottom of his class, thanks. (And just to clarify – I mean ivy league intelligent as in really earned it, took out student loans to pay for it not get in on daddy’s connections and money and still be dumb like Bush did).
From Letters to the Editors @ Fort Worth Star-Telegram 9.17.08
What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said ‘I do’ to? What
if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer
measured up to his standards?
What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain
killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard? What if Obama were a member of
the ‘Keating 5′? What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election
numbers would be as close as they are?
This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive
qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when
there is a color difference.
On this United Nations’ International Day of Peace, may all of your lives be happy and blessed with peace. I really and truly hope that our next president really be committed to serving the betterment of the people and truly believes in peace and peaceful actions first and foremost. Our world really can’t take much more. May they embrace the idea of serving the greatest good for all.
The Child Nutrition Act includes legislation for the National School Lunch Program, which provides federal assistance for school lunches. This act is being reauthorized in 2009, and theUSDA would like your input on what needs to change. Submit your recommendations for improving vegetarian options by fax at 703-305-2879, or online. They are accepting comments until October 15, 2008.
Well you don’t have to twist my arm to get me to give my two cents to the USDA on what needs to change for the school lunch program! I am really hoping that many people will take action and give their comments to the USDA to help all of our children receive better nutrition and more whole, unprocessed foods in every school across America.
If we can get foods with high fructose corn syrup and other additives and preservatives removed from the menu as well as adding more vegetarian food options and non-dairy fortified drink options, our children could only benefit. They would be eating more fiber, vitamins, minerals have stable blood sugar for many hours of the day and will be eating more plant based foods and less processed foods which can only help them. It will also assist in lowering the childhood obesity rate that is skyrocketing here in our country and cutting down on consuming so much pasteurized dairy will reduce congestion issues (sinus, ear infections, sore throats) and constipation, too.
Last year, the PCRM published a “School Lunch Report Card” based on their criteria for healthy, whole foods and non-dairy options in some of the larger school district cafeterias. There is a lot of good information on this report, they did a really thorough job and it’s worth it to check it out.
Another great website on this school lunch issue to check out is also researched by the PCRM and is called Healthy School Lunches.org.
I Tivo the Oprah show and usually watch the shows that interest me when I work out. Yesterday, I watched probably the most difficult episode ever and I wanted to delete it after the first few minutes and not watch because it was so horrific and upsetting. But I didn’t, I made myself watch it to learn what I could do to help stop such heinous acts from repeatedly occurring.
The show was all about pedophiles in America called “Fighting Internet Predators.” It is unbelievable how many there are online (over half a million) and how they network with each other everyday and what they do. Oprah was very explicit in this show, no sugar coating at all. The experts interviewed on the show that work with tracking these men online, seeing the videos and dealing with the abused children -some of who are just INFANTS – well these people said they even need some therapy to deal with all the horribleness they have to witness everyday at their jobs. One man , Flint Waters of the Wyoming Internet Sex Crimes Against Children Task Force created software that is able to track the men who are sending out the images (whether videos or photos) to their homes and go in and arrest them. The problem they are having is they are underfunded so there is not enough police to assign to jobs like this. He said when he goes home at night, the unfinished work on his desk are innocent children that will still be raped by these men and probably that night, too. He has trouble with that everyday. I’m sure some women are involved as well but this show didn’t focus on that.
They said that it’s such a big market for these addicts that they are now going into filming live, on demand videos of the rapes happening and it’s becoming increasingly more brutal. One expert said you would hear the little girls giggling from the man tickling and playing and then she’d start screaming from the pain of the rape &/or torture. Some of the perps were the fathers, a close relative, family friends, the child’s friend’s father or a coach or teacher. Only a very small percentage were stranger abductions.
There are now instruction manuals these pedophiles put out teaching the men on how to groom both the family as well as the child you want to molest to get away with it and “desensitize” them. One part Oprah read said to use the pacifier for the under 2 year olds or a pencil for the 3-5 year olds and have them try to draw or write with it in them to make it go in further. There are also animated and cartoon videos using familiar characters produced by the child predators to show to the kids to teach them about molestation and “keeping it a secret.”
Needless to say, I was horrified and angry and bawling my eyes out. I want to do as much as I can to help save these kids from being subjected to further abuse and torture for no other reason than for mentally sick men to get off on.
Here is what we all can do right now to help these innocent victims – contact our senators who will be voting on this act on September 26th, 2008. We don’t have much time so please call both of your senators and just ask them to vote “YES” on passing Senate Bill 1738—The PROTECT Our Children Act. We can also spread this message to everyone we know to help get this act passed and stop these brutal attacks on children.
Here is some more info from Oprah.com about this Act:
The PROTECT Our Children Act will:
Authorize over $320 million over the next five years in desperately needed funding for law enforcement to investigate child exploitation.
Mandate that child rescue be a top priority for law enforcement receiving federal funding.
Allocate funds for high-tech computer software that can track down Internet predators.
Act Now!
Your U.S. senators will be voting on the bill soon, so it is crucial you contact them immediately.
Go to www.senate.gov to find contact information for the senators in your state. Search for your senator by name or state by clicking on the arrow from either dropdown menu. Contact information is provided here. To send an e-mail, click on “Web Form” below his or her name, and e-mail your letter to make a difference!
Call Your Senators
If you choose to contact your senators by phone, be sure to tell them, “Vote yes on Senate Bill 1738—The PROTECT Our Children Act.”
Write to Your Senators
If you choose to write a letter, fax, telegram or e-mail, you may use the following sample letter—and modify it how you see fit.
Dear Senator:
I know that you believe, like I do, that we must do everything possible to protect children from sexual predators. That is why I am asking for your help.
Last year alone, U.S. law enforcement identified over 300,000 criminals who were trafficking in movies and pictures of young children being raped and tortured. Experts say that one in every three of these criminals has local child victims. Child pornography trafficking over the Internet has given us a trail of evidence that leads straight to their doorsteps, but the vast majority of these children will never be rescued because investigators are overwhelmed, outnumbered and underfunded.
As your constituent, I urge you to do everything in your power to pass the PROTECT Our Children Act (S. 1738, Biden-Hatch). This bipartisan legislation passed the House 415-2, but it is now the victim of petty partisan politics.
Now that we know where these children are and how to protect them, there is no excuse for the Senate to fail to take action this session.
(Your name here)
Instructions for How to Copy and Paste the Letter
To copy and paste the letter into your senator’s web form at www.senate.gov, point your mouse arrow at the beginning of the text that you want to copy. Click your left mouse button and hold it down. While holding the left mouse button, drag your arrow to the end of the text that you want to copy. Release the button. The text should be highlighted. Place your mouse arrow over the highlighted text, click your right mouse button once and let go. A new menu should appear. Select Copy from the drop down menu. When you get to the message form field for your senator at www.senate.gov, point your arrow at the beginning of the message field that you want to copy your text to and right click with your mouse. Click Paste from this menu. Submit your form and help our children!
Defenders of Wildlife, a non-profit organization that I’ve been a member of for many years came out with this commercial recently regarding Sarah Palin’s record as governor regarding wildlife in her state. Mind you, the wolves were still on the endangered species list when she approved this. What I want to know is – Why???
As governor, Sarah Palin…
Proposed paying a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf.
Approved a $400,000 state-funded propaganda campaign to promote aerial hunting.
Introduced legislation to make it even easier to use aircraft to hunt wolves and bears.
Please consider helping Defenders of Wildlife get this powerful TV ad shown in more swing states by donating even a small amount. Every bit can help save the lives of many animals.
I must admit, I’ve been having issues with blogging this week because every time I sit down to write a post about anything, all that I really feel like doing is ripping into Sarah Palin and John McCain. So, I’ve decided to not post until I could get over it. My friend Jyoti sent me this piece written by Eve Ensler for the Huffington Post and it really got at how I felt and being that she’s a playwright and a feminist – she summed it up better than I ever could.
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I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it’s their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.
I don’t like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.
But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story — connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.
I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.
Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God’s plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin’s view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, “It was a task from God.”
Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist’s baby or not.
She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.
Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.
Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.
Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God’s name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.
I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.
If the Polar Bears don’t move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, “Drill Drill Drill.” I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.
Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?
This has been quite the whirlwind past week. Living outside of Denver where all the hoopla for the greenest and largest! Democratic National Convention that ever took place, we avoided going near the city until my local blogging friends – Amy from Crunchy Domestic Goddess, Heather from A Mama’s Blog and Julie from ChezArtz – and I ventured out to “The Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash” held in a wine bar in downtown Denver the night Obama gave his rock star speech. Needless to say, we all had a great time meeting other bloggers and were buzzing all night off all of the good energy of the city and the convention and all of us have real hope for ourselves and our children’s future.
I think you can tell from my blog that I’m a pretty liberal person. I feel in America we all should be equal and have equal rights. All this oppressive crap that the extreme right wants to inflict on everyone is really tiring and quite boring and childish to me. Some of my oldest and very best friends in the world are gay and all of them have known it (known they were different and felt differently than their friends) since they were around 5 years old. They have huge hearts and do good things for others in the world. Should they not have the same legal rights as I do just because I prefer to be with men? Should I ostracize them and not be their friend because the bible infers being gay is wrong? It’s actually been proven to be passed on in families genetically – should we blame their mothers then? It’s just illogical and stupid to me, frankly to deny them the same legal rights that I get to have as an American. Honestly, the ONLY difference between them and me is who we prefer our life partners to be.
How about the issue about a women’s right to choose what is best for her body? If you dislike it, that is YOUR CHOICE, don’t do it. Pro-choice people feel that birth control and education are the best defenses against an unwanted pregnancy. If we stop funding organizations that provide such services and make them illegal, we will have massive amounts of unwanted pregnancies that could have been avoided and not by abortion, but by educating women to learn about their bodies and when they are fertile and ovulating, birth control options, as well as other programs that also educate the men, too.
The “Morning After Pill” after a rape or incest against women also prevents an abortion as well as an unwanted child conceived from an act of violence. Some women have life threatening medical reasons to have an abortion, too. So, to get government involved in having control over a woman’s right to choose what is best for her unique body and situation, well that is so wrong on so many levels to me I can’t even begin.
The foster care system in our country is so overburdened with unwanted or abused and neglected children that desperately need homes already, how is taking away our only chance of helping more women at least educate themselves on how to prevent an unwanted and unplanned for child from coming in and disrupting their lives going to turn that situation around? I think every person that is anti-choice should be required to adopt at least one child from the foster care system to put their money where their vote mouth is. Talk is cheap and action is needed right now.
Basically for me as an American Woman and Mother, it’s seems very logical for what kind of country I want to live in. I want to live in a country that values all of it’s inhabitants equally and that includes paying women equally, too. A country that provides quality and very affordable (or free!) care for our health and the health of our families, leaves the decision making of what to do with my own body up to me and me alone, good schools and teachers (that are paid well for performing such an important job), affordable college to make our workforce competitive with the rest of the world, keep the nasty chemicals away from our food, water, bodycare and cosmetic products, safe toys and products for my child, respect for the Earth and the animals that live here, working towards reversing global warming, building towards implementing renewable energies instead of only using dirty fossil fuels, creating more jobs here so people can easily pay their bills every month and a government that is not gun and war happy like a bully but one that values diplomacy and maturity until that doesn’t work anymore then logical action to be taken only when necessary.
Is that really asking too much? Is it more important to you to take away the rights of other law abiding, tax paying Americans who live differently than what you value? Is that fair? Maybe you can just not pay attention to the Americans that are in relationships with the same sex or those who have been raped and need the morning after pill.
Remember one of the main energetic laws of the Universe – “What goes around, comes around.” Maybe we can all focus on implementing the policies that will be beneficial for us all instead of nitpicking over what you feel another law abiding person is doing is right or wrong. Because really, it’s none of your business. Pay attention to what can be better for all of us in terms of the bigger picture already.
Focusing on what is for “The highest and best good for ALL concerned” is really the way we should be thinking and living all the time. It brings about peace and abundance for all. Don’t you want that?
Which candidate do you think is trying to do just that??
Well you don’t have to twist my arm to get me to give my two cents to the USDA on what needs to change for the school lunch program! I am really hoping that many people will take action and give their comments to the USDA to help all of our children receive better nutrition and more whole, unprocessed foods in every school across America.
