Re: Greek Fascists et al

Below are several responses to "Greek Fascists et al" 

Below some I have responded to the responses

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

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From: Francis Yates <kate_the_petal@yahoo.com>
To: Roy Griffin <roygg9@yahoo.com>
Sent: Friday, June 8, 2012 1:02 PM
Subject: Re: Greek Fascists et al

I have no difficulty at all believing that poor houses will someday exist. 

Foodlink used to deliver hundreds of pounds of food to low income highrises like the one I call home and they did so twice a month.  Over the course of a year it dwindled to one delivery consisting of rotten fruit and veggies and a few expired cans of this and that.  Now no food arrives.

Several local churches used to have monthly drop offs of clothes that were in amazing condition and many still had price tags attached.  With the ongoing spread of bedbugs in high rises, the clothing is no longer allowed.

We used to have charitable groups arrange for blood pressure checks once a month, diabetic counseling and yearly flu shots.  That, too, is gone.  If I live another ten years, I expect this place and others like it to effectively become poor houses.  HUD money that once poured in is diminished and consequently so is needed maintenance.  Ceiling panels are missing  in spots throughout the building and rather than being repaired in reasonably good time, buckets are now placed under the leaks for weeks at a time.  Mildew is becoming an issue.  I was told that kitchen fans are no longer being replaced and though rain and snow come in through the windows, no plans are being made to replace them.

At the moment only one of our two elevators is operational with 15 floors to accommodate.  By law only one is required to be operational.  Imagine how long the wait must seem if you need an ambulance crew to get to you.

But all is not lost.  We still have a big screen TV and WII games galore.  I guess that takes some peoples' minds off the fact that they are hungry. 

Yes, there will be poor houses disguised as low income senior buildings.

Did you know that many folks who deal with mental illness are allowed only $20 cash a month?  The last week of every month my next door neighbor borrows $5 to get through the month.  He likes to ride the bus to the downtown library to get a stack of free DVD's and then have a Big Mac.  I give him $10 so he gets fries and a shake too.  He always pays me back and always borrows again. 

There will be poor houses and work houses.  Maybe making minimum wage at WalMart with no benefits and 12 hour shifts is just one step away from ye old work house!  Many, many folks are working 12 hour shifts.  Illegal alien farm workers have done so for decades and their children work right along with them.

Kate

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Wiki has entries on "poorhouses" and "workhouses" that provide detailed information about those institutions.  I believe Kate is right in that the spirit of "lesser eligibility" continues to haunt modern efforts to ameliorate the condition of the poor and the disabled.  "Lesser eligibility" was the principle that any recipient of public aid or resident of a poorhouse would receive less than whatever the lowest prevailing wage was.  In practice,  parishes and local governments found that it was often necessary to go beyond this principle to avoid actively starving people to death--at least in those places where people cared about starving the poor.  

There is a proposal in Congress to raise the minimum wage to $10 per hour on the grounds that the minimum wage in 1968 had the equivalent purchasing power of a $10/hour wage today & was sufficient to raise the recipient above the poverty line--which the current wage of $7.25 does not...In many places, I doubt $10 an hour would do the trick.  

It is clear to me that whatever the minimum "living wage" is, it should also be the floor for income-assistance programs such as social security and disability & should be tied to a realistic cost-of-living index.  

In Texas I believe it is also true that residents of state MHMR facilities only get $20 in spending.  The elderly and disabled who live in the community, and who are not their own payee,  often are also limited in what monies they get for personal care, but they at least have a clearer path for appealing for relief through Adult Protective Services.  

R. 

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Response from Russ Taylor: 

And here's another little noticed story:
(Do the Chilean people know about this?)

What's behind Obama's new military base in Chile?  

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Nevertheless,  when I think about Romney and I want to defend Obama.  What I would like to think is that to the extent that Obama ratifies such expansion, he is doing so to pre-empt attacks from the Right & probably *welcomes* attacks from the Left because they help make his case with the so-called Independents (whom I think are mostly either a) completely mythical  b) unavowed and/or undecided Republicans and Democrats,   c)  really don't know their *ss from a hole in the ground, or d) all of the above (somehow).   

But building such a base, however  innocuous in appearance, continues the long term trend of the U.S. expansion of global military power that has been going on since WW2--I believe Rachel Maddow's book, *Drift* deals with this.   Chalmers Johnson in his work on U.S. imperialism makes the point that U.S. foreign policy since WW2 is de facto expansionist.  It doesn't matter which political party is in power or who is President.  There is some kind of institutional drift toward one sort or another of imperialism and the official centers of power are unable or unwilling to stop it.  I'm not sure the struggle against this tendency can be combated at the level of national electoral politics.  Seems to be a matter of the dark side of the American political id expressing itself through the military bureaucracies...

One difficulty is that the people of the U.S. continue to be convinced of either a)  the consistent moral supremacy of every act taken by the U.S. vis a vis other counties  b) the realpolitik necessity of whatever the U.S. does, or c)  both a and b    (For a "Christian" nation, the people of the U.S. seem oddly unconvinced that the doctrine of Original Sin applies to them...

As far as the Presidency goes, right now I just can't see any alternative to "lesser evilism"--unless you reject electoral politics altogether.   But building a grassroots movement at the level of local government and in some Congressional districts seems possible and practical.  (That is to say, a movement for economic democracy and what I would express as non-imperial internationalism, such as is practiced by the Scandanavian countries...) 

R. 

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