Linkkickysnana (1000+ posts) Mon Mar-21-11 06:52 PM
Original message
Why oh why America?
A child who's parents are unable to take care of him is taken away and given to foster parents who in several states have no oversight and in a lot more little oversight. That child is dumped on his own on his 18th birthday without the $200 prisoners are given.
So the kid manages to get a job at a local gas station but the manager has sticky fingers and fires people to cover it up so the kid has not job and no reference. Kid runs out of friends and swipes a box of trail mix bars to keep from starving gets caught, gets charged now has a record and no chance of a job.
Kid turns to prostitution, kid gets pregnant or if it is a guy gets AIDS. No abortion young woman! She does get welfare for a few years and help (haha) finding a job and hep (haha) with daycare and struggles on but then reaches the limit and you can repeat the above and her kids are taken away and you start at my first sentence. Over, and over and over.
That is if they are not killed by a pimp or drugs used to numb them to their life of hell with no support or move in with someone who gets busted for drugs and has nobody to turn in to get a plea deal. In that case I think every social security is gone.
They are cutting everything and it is swallowing not only the poor but the middle class youngsters. Many kids get into trouble before finally straightening themselves out but that requires some way to get food and shelter and the jobs they can get do not pay for food and shelter and they are stuck day after day, year after year.
The American dream is dead and this slow motion fascism started with Reagan and is pretty well ending now. Japan has to and China is going to dump US Bonds and they printed way more dollars than could keep the dollar stable. We have a jobless recovery and no reform of that recovery nor has there been any punishment, or accountability for those who have caused this.
I have nieces and nephews who even with parental assistance are floundering and yoyoing back home dejected and broke. We grew up upper middle class. My siblings and I are educated and have held jobs until now. They are planning to cut SS because they spent it all and cannot replace it and being low income disabled I was not allowed to put anything aside for other retirement while I worked a few hours to pay for my ever increasing copays and disallowed medical costs.
How long can this go on before all the people but the top 5% say enough and try to turn things around? Obama had a choice he could have saved the economy by giving back to the people who would recycle the money and rebuild the economy or give it to "save" the banks who have done nothing to improve the lives of Americans and spend millions to lobby for more fees from us.
I am tempted to write up a flyer to put on all the cars I see out my window at the Fitness Club. How can you spend money to exercise when babies are dying from no milk under the new reformed budget? Would I change any minds?
I'm going to tell my friend's story now, changing his name.
Jay was abandoned by his mother in a town in South Dakota. She just couldn't afford to feed both him and his younger sisters anymore, and couldn't bring herself to tell him he was being left behind, so life dealt him a blow when he was the ripe old age of eleven.
He was afraid of the state, and didn't want to be in foster care. So after school he started finding any odd job someone would pay him for. The man that owned the trailer he was living in turned a blind eye to the situation for as long as he could since Jay was well behaved. He told me of the late winters when work was hard to find and his food ran short.
When he turned fourteen, a young man apprached him with an offer to "take this bag to these people and I'll pay you $50" it was easy money and he took it knowing damn well what was in it. But it made the difference between food and hunger. He did that sort of thing until he turned eighteen, when the penalties got much higher.
He took some money he had saved and went to welding school, and then went to work for Caterpillar. He got married, found god, and tried to settle down. He worked for Caterpillar until he was twenty three. The plant moved. I met Jay in AIT in the army.
I can't defend every choice he made, though I can't say I wouldn't have made them in the same circumstances. On the other hand he didn't become a junkie, he was determined to survive, and his love for his wife and children are marked by that same determination to make sure it doesn't happen to them.
Kickysnana would take away free choice, and to what end? What would she guarantee them but misery?
