Money doesn’t kill people, Austerity kills people

In most any civilized space-time that headline would be unassailable. Remove or reduce food, shelter, and medical care, and more people die. Some get so depressed by facing all of that, they choose the only way out they see. But we live in interesting times, where facts don’t count for a huge chunk of the purportedly most prosperous and best educated nation on earth. Expect the usual hand waving and cold-blooded denial from them.

For the rest of us, data linking depression and suicide with the sudden onset of homelessness, medical bankruptcy, or hopeless grinding poverty comes as no surprise at all. Austerity kills, it really is that simple and everyone knows it. In Greece, where Austerians have rammed through ledge penalizing the least affluent and most vulnerable for the greedy sins of the super rich, the healthcare system is collapsing along with what’s left of the economy. But in other places equally hard hit or worse, where the Austerians have been held at bay, the data shows exactly what you’d expect: [Read more…]

Mission accomplished and then some, no further help needed!

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DONE, FINISHED, NO MONEY NEEDED!

Should take you to my paypal page, if not my paypal email is darksydothemoon [break-remove]-‘at’-aol-dot-com name Steve Andrew. Physical address available on request in comments.

I’m well beyond halfway almost three-quarters of the way there in only 24 hours, because of godless often demonized fellow atheist who themselves often have almost nothing to spare (Believe me, the five bucks some chipped in, they mattered and I was so grateful because I know how bad things must be for those folks!) Thanks to readers things are looking much better. I’d get all blubbery on you, but I’m gonna save that for a Daily Kos post where I compare and contrast the generosity of atheists with so-called followers of  Republican Jesus for all the world to see.

In fact I just did exactly that!

At first I felt worthless for even having to ask for help, and it’s not the first time either, virtually panhandling is not how I envisioned my golden years. Then this morning I realized, here I am, up at 3 AM working on my second job ( I guess FTB counts a third, part time job, but it’s more a labor of love and my one stop for sanity). A few hours from now I’ll put that aside and go work from 10 AM to 11 PM tonight, where incidentally I am the highest producer out of about 300 people. Like millions of working poor, one of the 47% of the moochers Romney was referring to, it’s not lack of work or unwillingness to work that is killing me, it’s the rate of pay and the bad planning to suffer a massive heart attack.

After three raises over three years for a few pennies each raise, I make about 12 bucks an hour at my main job, where I trouble shoot PCs and Macs down to the component and network level over the phone to suppport the most complex software this side of the DoD,  and via web ticket and chat. It used to be each of those raises was a buck or two, and our healthcare copays were much lower, but even though my company is very profitable, they put an end to that right after I got hired. I can’t even apply for an internal job because I have not reached level three in my current role, and I haven’t reached it because they keep taking down the leveling system and fooling with the requirements for months on end. Even when it is up and running, the end token raise you get has to bottleneck through one guy far away, and in my case it took months after I already met the stated requirements. This is what class warfare looks like, from inside the bunker. So that Bill Lumberg’s stock would go up a quarter point. Actually I worked it out, all those raises combined for all my coworkers add up to less one tenth of one cent for one quarter’s earnings on the stock.

The thought of being homeless terrifies me — it’s not that I’m suicidal, my whole problem is I love life! But the thought of a lingering death from untreated heart failure and untreated Anklyosing spondilitis had me toying with ideas about what would be a more merciful way to go. I know plenty of good people deal with it, and sure I’d get by for a few weeks surfing on friends’ couches. But with an eviction on my record I’d have a hard time getting another place to live; it’s about as far away from the no stress my cardiologist recommended as it can be. Living in a car or shelters would mean, sooner or later, I wouldn’t be able to hold down at least one of those jobs, and I’m not sure what would happen after that. I live in Texas, th social safety net here is a bed of sharpened spikes for the unfortunate to land on.

The day is going to come when I lose that main job or move on to bigger and better things, there are signs we could be looking at a layoff in the next few weeks. On the day, I’ll provide more details about just how unethical that company has become when treating — or imo opinion pickpocketing — its lowest paid, least influential workers. Suffice it to say it was the worst career decision of my life. And by the worst, I mean it was a signficant factor is almost causing to lose everything.

Nice diary on capitalism

I enjoyed this diary because it had two important info age features: it was short and informative. This part was well written especially and it brings up something — a way corporations are exploiting employees at every level except, of course, the very tippy-top — I may do a full feature article on in the next month or two: [Read more…]

Marx’s revenge

I’ve always thought the communists made a big mistake, especially the Soviets. Well, they made a bunch of mistakes in retrospect, not the least of which included the transfer of power. That was never worked out very well, paving the way for allegories like Animal Farm and real-world tyrants like Stalin. But another mistake — purely from an experiemtnal history view mind you — was the exclusion of religion. Suppose, instead of becoming the global face of a perverse form of atheism, Lenin and Marx had embraced those elements of religion that supported their ideology in the same way fundamentalists here and elsewhere have done for capitalism? Suppose, instead a state sponsored link had been established and heavily hyped between the Sermon on the Mount or analogous words found in the Koran, uniting the teachings of Jesus and Mohammed, bearing on the benefits of socialism as seen by down trodden peasants, promising social justice and economic equality for all? It might have been a very different cold war, leading to a very different outcome.

We’ll never know … or will we? [Read more…]

Another conservative switches teams on marriage equality

It’s funny how knowing someone affected by your laws and traditions, and your bigoted prejudicial medieval mindset, makes all the difference eh? Sen. Rob Portmam (R-OH) found out recently he had a son that was affected. And boy howdy did the Senator’s former ‘heartfelt moral principles’ fall faster in the face of that familial reality than the walls at Jericho cleaved and tumbled — we are told — when blown by the mighty horn of God-eh: [Read more…]

The Village on the Beltway

Unlike most of my progressive digital riff-raff buddies, I generally give the Beltway media a pass. Yes the news celebrity centered part of it can be annoying or worse, but the bulk of “the beltway media” is gum shoe reporters and editors busting their asses for dwindling market share and job security. Nevertheless, now and then a spectacle of such dismal import comes along that even I can’t look the other way. So it was with Meet the Press yesterday morning: [Read more…]

The People’s Insurance Company & the Great Bailout Caper

We the People have sold our last shares in the American Insurance Group or AIG. While there were many firms that contributed to the Great Recession, AIG was arguably the number one culprit in sinking the economy and throwing millions of hard-working middle class taxpayers into the misery and chaos of unemployment. Including by the way, your humble blogger.  [Read more…]