Speaking of the work mothers do

So the Kid and I have had a lot of time to talk since he was deprived of internet and television for a few days. It turns out he really does love his dear old mom, but not if there is manga to be read.

He's studying American history this year and they are learning all about the constitution and the civil war, etc. He said "the Civil war wasn't really fought over slavery, it was over state's rights".

And then I gave him the condensed for a 13 year old version of this post

You may have some romantic notion that the Civil War was fought for philosophical reasons over the enslavement of fellow humans. The truth is actually based in the functions of a capitalist society. As the north industrialized and started selling more finished goods that were more capital intensive than agricultural raw goods from the south, slavery became an impediment to the wage system.

Keeping a slave is a fixed cost. The only fluctuation is in the original buying price, after that there is no competition to keep costs down. You could keep your slaves near starvation but when they dropped dead you would have to buy another slave. Replacement was not cheap. So the price of raw goods stays relatively high because labor costs can't be dropped. Paid workers, on the other hand, had no initial cost and since you were not responsible for their well being you could pay starvation wages without a replacement cost. As long as there was a surplus of labor, you could keep dropping the wages lower and lower making the cost of producing your goods cheaper and cheaper. Capitalism at it's finest (oh sense the irony there or you people don't know me well).

And so the very next day (oh providence!) the kid had a group exercise on the Civil war, slavery and economics.

And my darling child just went and rocked the brains of a group of 7th graders.

When I asked him if he understood what I explained to him - he did the typical teenage eyeroll "Of course, Moooooooom." And he thinks the other kids understood it too.

So RQ is not only corrupting her own child with radical ideas, but the precious children of the creative class elites as well. Their parents may have drank the koolaid, but not all hope is lost.

The Obligatory Mother's Day Post

You all know by know that I hate Mother's Day. I hate the schlock. I hate that instead of valuing the real work that women do (for free) we give flowers and cards one day of the year.

So I decided to figure out how much we really value mothers' work. We've all seen the calculators that say if moms were paid for all they do they'd make the same salary as doctors. But we don't actually pay moms like that. In fact, there is only one instance in this country where women are paid to stay home with their children. Welfare.

But welfare is temporary. Women with newborns have to start 40 hours a week of job searching when their child is just 12 weeks old. And Welfare doesn't exactly pay minimum wage.

In WA state the monthly TANF (new term for welfare since welfare to work program started) grant is $440 in cash for two people. And from personal experience that amount has been the same for at least 13 years. If you include food stamps, it's $607.

Let's just assume a mom on welfare works just 40 hours a week caring for her child. 607/ 4.3 (weeks in a month)/40 (hours in a week) and she gets about $3.53 per hour.

(And if you happen to be one of the 30% of custodial parents who receives child support in a timely fashion and you also happen to be on TANF- your child support will go to the state first to pay back your grant money. You *may* receive an extra $50 on top of TANF from your child support but you will not get the whole amount of both child support and TANF)

And WA is in the high middle as far as grant amounts go. Tennessee, at the bottom of the heap gives a family of two $142 in cash and a total of $398 if you include food stamps or about $2.31 per hour.

That is what motherhood is worth in this country, less than minimum wage.

Let's contrast that with the average monthly cost for infant daycare. In WA it's about $754. That's 20% more than the monthly TANF and food stamp grants combined. In TN it's about $412 per month, close but still more than TANF and food stamps.

Why, if mothering is such an important job, do we pay poor mothers so very little to do it?

Because the ideal has been set of the two parent family with a mom who stays home and sacrifices herself for the good of the kids. And sacrifice isn't really looked at as work. Sacrifice is religious term meaning to give up yourself for the good of others. But not just give up, but totally subvert any of your own desires.

And because the sacrificial mom is our ideal, we do not give poor mothers with no other resources as much money as someone who does their same job for fewer hours a day and fewer days per week. We don't expect strangers to sacrifice themselves. Actually, the only people we expect to sacrifice themselves completely are mothers.

But children are work. And the work that a mother puts into her children is not for her benefit. It is partially for her child's benefit, but it is mostly for societies benefit. We need children to grow up and be productive members of society. We need them to grow up to pay the taxes that will pay for social security. And now we need children to grow up and pay the taxes for our massive war debt. If we remove all the sentimentalism that has been attached to motherhood to make the sacrifice more palatable, then mothers are performing a vital function for society to continue. And they aren't paid for it. They are financially punished for it with lower wages ($11,000 less on average than non-mothers), higher expenses and less job security.

Because we don't value women, but we really don't value mothers.

Conversations With the Kid about Unity Ponies

Unity is impossible in a democracy. Unity is a tool of dictators and facists.  But for democracy to work there must be vigorous opposition to keep those in power in check.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling glitter and hot air.

We've Got The Power!

Well not exactly. But we will, either tomorrow or Saturday. And in just a very few minutes I will have to shut down my compy at work to install new compys in the whole lab. (New to us anyways, we are th bastard stepchild of the main campus and get their hand me downs).

So I will be computer-less for at least 24 hours. Think of this as an open thread and leave me something nice to read when SCL finally brings me back to the 21st century. I'll take thoughts, musings, haiku, rants, jokes, you name it.

And enjoy this picture. Behind every great woman there isn't necessarily a great man, but this is too cute not to post.

RQ Finally Discovers a way out of poverty

And is looking for investors.

I’m gonna start selling Unity Ponies.

It will be a box

Full of hot air and glitter

And I will be rich

Seattle City Light Forces Me into Gay Marriage

Not so much forces, but you all know my ongoing drama with the power company.

Well after going without power for nearly 2 weeks in January (you all remember hot water bottle babies) Seattle City Light dug up a seven year old bill and attached it to my current bill. It would have been illegal for them to try and collect it in just a few weeks, but since they have attached it to my current bill and told me to pay in 2 days or go (again) without power, they will get their fricken money.

In the meantime, Soopermouse tells me it is illegal to shut off someone's power in England. And that every weekend in May is a 3 day weekend because of bank holidays.

And gay marriage is legal.

So I proposed.

That is the real threat to hetero marriage in this country- Seattle City Light. Now you know.

The coming collapse of the middle class

Via Lambert at Corrente comes this hour long lecture that is required listening (though if you can just listen and not be riveted in front of the screen you are a stronger woman than I am. I was going to listen to this while I cleaned the kitchen. But the sink is still full of dishes)

Pay attention to the end where she talks about the rainbow. My favorite anthropology professor has been saying forever that the idea of a middle class is false. We are all at the bottom of the heap. But we keep this ideal as a way to separate and elevate ourselves into those that have nothing and those that have little. Humans like their hierarchies.

But we, the poor, are not so different from you. We are just luckless.

More on class warfare

It's just sheer dumb luck that I read this article after writing my post below.

This is to give you a taste of what I meant by "I know that poor people aren't lazy (and because I know the other side- I know that despite their nice words the upper class thinks we are)."

So this article at Salon is about the greenwashing of a super lux, environmentally friendly (put air quotes on that) development in Montana. When the locals decided that there was something wrong in Denmark, Wade Dokken, the super wealthy DEMOCRAT who started the project threw a bit of a hissy fit about the lower class

For Dokken, this proved too much. When you cracked on the ultra-wealthy, you were cracking on his people, and he couldn't let such a remark go unchallenged. He fired off a letter to Park County planner Mike Inman in which, among other things, he berated his critics for "class envy," claiming remarks like Feigley's were directed "at people who have had more success in life than the letter writers and blog writers ... Perhaps they were smarter. Perhaps they worked harder. Perhaps they managed their money better ..."

Really, the elites of our own party think we are poor because we are dumb and lazy. How does that make them Democrats exactly?

Class Warfare

First, go read Anglachel's incredible post on class divide that is splitting the Democratic party.

Anglachel brings up something that has been twisting in my head for a while. I am a horrible hybrid of the two halves of the Democratic party. On one side is my father's family, who my mother called "San Francisco intellectuals". They have always had money. They have always been part of the thinking class. They were abolitionists. They are the western version of the WASP, or what happens to white Anglo Saxon protestants when they get some sunshine and a shitload of wealth from good real estate investments.

Then there is my mother's side. Sure, 500 years ago they were minor aristocracy, but they have become the embodiment of southern, working class whites. My mom grew up as a "Detroit street rat", Detroit being a place where many poor southerners (both black and white) went to get decent jobs in the auto industry. My mother's family fought on the side of the North in the civil war, but not for the esoteric idea of equality. They were too poor to own slaves to begin with. They fought for the North because many remembered the Revolutionary war and could not bring themselves to fight against a union that had cost them so much. They are hillfolk in North Carolina and Tennessee.My great uncles all live in trailers circling each other like wagons.

So I grew up with the intellectual values of my father's family coupled with a sure knowledge of the poverty of my mother's (especially since my father's intellectual values didn't extend to him paying child support). I know and treasure things that the working class isn't supposed to, like travel and languages and grand theories of how people should think and act. I know which silverware to use in fancy restaurants and how to conduct myself with people who have a lot more money than I do. I know about the weird foods rich people eat with gusto and how to pretend to like them.

I also know how to pull together with my fellow poor neighbors and share burdens. I know how to navigate the horrible red tape of social services (if anything I could be considered a super-power, my understanding of bureaucrat-ese is it). I know how to juggle bill payments with an "oh but I mailed that check last week, didn't you get it?" I know that you can work you ass off and never make it out of poverty. I know that poor people aren't lazy (and because I know the other side- I know that despite their nice words the upper class thinks we are). I know that we are not dumb, but luckless.

And there, did you notice that. That I started saying "we". I think it is only recently that I picked my side. I still cringe over the trappings of poor white culture. I will never be a lover of Nascar or football or cheap beer. I will still love art and literature and most gourmet foods. But in the basics, I am working class.

Someone once told me that I was a "good representative for poor people" (and then asked me to do an interview in order to get their organization donations). What they meant is that though I am poor, I speak like a member of the educated elite. I was grouchy about that at first. But if I can claim my class and use my vocabulary to better our lot, then so be it. Well spoken poor people have a long history of advancing society. Even Socrates was the son of a midwife and a stonemason.

In the ghetto

So right across from my lab, about 10 minutes ago, there was a shooting. According to the 911 logs, it was an assault with a weapon. We all heard the gun shot then heard (and saw, cause my lab door is open) a bunch of girls go running into the bank for cover.

This is the 3rd shooting in 2 years. This neighborhood hasn't always been quite so violent (despite it's reputation). But the worse the economy gets, the more stressed out people get and the more trigger happy they become. And since this is a poor neighborhood, we are always close to the violence tipping point.

It's not endemic to a certain race. Look at our oil wars. When resources get scarce, people fight and kill. It's part of the anthropological idea of collapse (Jarred Diamond readers will be familiar with the term, so will anyone who has taken a class in anthropology or sociology or looked at the carrying capacity lately).Poor people are war fodder because it is easy to push us into reacting violently over scarce resources. In the shopping center where the shooting just happened is a recruitment office for the army, navy and marines. That is no accident.

UPDATE: The guy who got shot just got grazed (he's the son of a friend of the school janitor) and the shooter got caught. But for the 2 hours of fuel for 5 helicopters and the costs of the 7 police cars, 3 fire engines and 2 ambulances that showed up, we could probably pay for an officer to patrol this neighborhood after school (when most of the trouble happens) and during the summer.

How Barak Fails the Working Class

The media would like us all to think that the working class isn't voting for Obama because he's an arugala eating, latte drinking, non-bitter elitist.

Note to the media- we working class people know about Starbucks. We drink lattes too. We don't think Hillary spends her days shopping at Walmart and eating at MacDonalds. We don't care if our next president is someone we can have a beer with.

And note to Obamabots- it's not just the white working class that doesn't trust Obama. It's the Latinos and the Asians. It's pretty much everyone but the African Americans (and we can't fault them for voting for someone who looks like them).

Obama cannot win the working class because Obama has NO FRICKEN IDEA what we need. His ideas all center on making things easier for business. We know that benefits to businesses usually involve less protection for us. Less job protection, less retirement protection, less wage protection, fewer benefits, more hours, etc.

We, the working class, need wages that will pay our housing, gas, and food costs. We need health insurance that doesn't cripple us. We need a country with a future. We need another industry boom that creates living wage jobs. We need education that is affordable for ourselves and our children. We need a real way to save for retirement. We need options for our young people above and beyond becoming fodder for the war machine. We need schools in our neighborhoods that prepare kids, not warehouse them.

Yes, there is part of us that remembers Bill Clinton. But what so many people fail to realize is that the working class has been in a recession since Bush took office in 2001. We have never had an upward swing under Bush. But under Clinton we got raises. When Clinton was president, my income doubled every year that I worked full time. I actually made it to the middle class. I had a house and a car that was paid for and ran. I could pay for childcare and rent and utilities.

Since Bush took office, my income has decreased by 30% every year until it hit half the poverty level. And I've been stuck there since. That is 7.5 years of poverty. That more than half my kid's life.

We trust Hillary not just because we remember Bill, but because we know she actually thinks about our plight. We know that she has the big wonkish brain to find solutions that actually help us.

Hope and change are lovely ideas, but we can't feed our kids hope and change. We can't pay for college with hope and change. We can't by food on hope and change credit. We want solutions. We want to count. We want our kids to have a shot at the American dream, though for the last 8 years it's become obvious that we are the new feudal class. Our Lord and Employer may change, but there is no way for us to improve our lot anymore.

We don't care if the person with the right ideas drinks lattes or coffee regular. We don't care if that person drinks Bud or Burgundy. And we want someone who understands that we aren't just bitter, we are angry. We got promised the American dream only to have our homes foreclosed on. We know we've been fed a load of shit. We want someone to make the promise reachable again. We know Hillary has the not only the chops to do it, but the desire to. Barak is just feeding us another load of hopeful shit, but we know the taste already.

Dis.gus.ting

From How the World Works

The key figure is 2.3 million -- the total number of homes that are empty and for sale. That adds up to a vacancy rate of 2.9 percent, which is the highest, reports Bloomberg, "since the bureau started keeping count in 1956." 2.2 million homes were vacant and for sale one year ago

.According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Second Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, released in March 2008, "the total number of homeless persons reported on a single night in January 2006 was 759,101."

Assuming that number bears some reasonable relation to reality, that would mean there are 24 unoccupied homes for every homeless person in the United States.

The Kid and I, just after Georgie stole the White House in 2000, wound up homeless. For two years we couch surfed with various friends and family and occasionally (but thankfully not often) slept in our car. The only reason we have housing now is that I lucked into a program that fast tracked me into a Section 8 voucher. Those types of programs have been massively cut now. If we were homeless now we would be staying at the tent city (Hooverville) that temporarily set up in a vacant lot down the street. Families live there. Women with children live there. And we have 24 unoccupied homes for every single person in those camps.

I am so ashamed of our country.

The Practical Side of Privilege

I have a deep dark secret to confess. I use my privilege to my advantage and to the advantage of my child. And I have no idea how to fix that without causing harm to one or both of us.

Maybe this would be better explained with examples.

Example One

I live in a poor, working class, mostly black neighborhood. We are not here as part of some early gentrification scouting project. We're here cause we are just as poor as our neighbors. But even though we are equals in poverty, I know that my voice will carry more weight than the voices of my neighbors.

I get harassed on the street a lot. (See here, and here, and here for starters). Some might say that I am getting harassed cause I am a white woman in a black neighborhood, but I think it's more that men use whatever means they can to assert privilege. Wealthy men can do that through economic threats. Poor men do it through violent threats (I am not saying wealthy men aren't also violent, but they generally have better ways of threatening women than with cat calls). I don't think street harassment is a racial problem, in other words. I think it is a class problem. I do know that the black men who harass me in my neighborhood are PISSED cause I'm not afraid of them (more than a few have yelled that I am supposed to be afraid of the big black man when I have gone off on them for their sexist acts).

So back to my own practical bits of privilege. I always feel much better when I confront harassers than when I let it go. And during my tenure in this neighborhood I have gotten much more assertive. Part of that is because I know that as an educated sounding, white, middle class looking (though dirt poor) soccer mom type- the police will always believe me over a black man. Always. If it comes down to violence I know that in those situations I will win. Period. So I get to be a strong angry feminist with an entire racist police force to back me up. But only here. If I were to go north a few miles, my class status and gender would render me as the unbelievable one.

So, how do I give up that little bit of privilege in a world full of violence and anger directed at me? I know it's there like a loaded handgun waiting for the time I need to fire it.

Example Two

And then there is my child. My brilliant but poor white male child. Because of the neighborhood we are in and because my child is so white he makes paper jealous, he's nearly been robbed on at least 3 occasions by neighborhood kids. They think (mistakenly) that cause he's white he must have money. On one occasion the Kid was pushed around pretty brutally and I called the police. The kids that did it were my kid's age and because they were trying to rob him while threatening him with violence, these three 10 year old black kids could have been charged with felony assault. Because we are white, our complaints would have been taken seriously. But these were kids being brats, not felons. I told the officer we didn't want to press charges but we did want to scare the shit out of these kids and their parents. He went to their house and did just that. It was sobering, to say the least, to think that these kids who did something thoughtless and stupid and bullying, could have their lives ruined for it at 10. (None of this means to diminish my own kid's pain- bullying is wrong regardless of skin color).

In that case, had I let anger and vengeance overtake me instead of reason, those kids would have been seriously harmed by my privilege. And I know that the officer took a case of extreme child bullying more seriously because it was reported by an educated sounding, middle class looking white mom. If I had been black and the bullies were white, that wouldn't happen. If I had been any shade of brown that wouldn't have happened.

But how can I give up that privilege when it works towards protecting my child?

Example Three

I've written about the problems of race and class divide at my son's school before. The Kid has a mild motor skills problem that has made him eligible for special education assistance at school. Last year he started middle school and was supposed to have one hour a day of a special study skills class as part of our IEP (individual education plan, basically a contract between the school and I saying what services they will provide). He didn't get study skills class until May, and then only because I threatened to sue. Last year he faltered hard in his classes. When they did put him into a study skills class , he was ignored because he is quiet and will hide in a corner reading a book. The things that were supposed to happen like homework help and time management planning were ignored. It was more a free hour of nothing time for him.

This year, he is in a different study skills class, one created especially for the gifted (mostly white) kids. He has a teacher who actually pays attention to him and he is improving this year. His counselor has apologized over and over because they just didn't have the Advanced Placement Study Skills class last year.

I know that he is actually getting help this year because he is in the mostly white class with children from wealthy families. I know that the black and brown kids in his study skills class from last year deserve just as much help and attention as my kid does but they aren't getting it. And I am afraid to complain about it. I am afraid that if I call them out on this that my kid will go back to being warehoused instead of taught.

So how do I give up that bit of privilege when it will ruin my child's education?

This is what is meant by systemic ___ism. We can work in bits and pieces to make changes, but until you break the entire privilege system it won't do any good. Practical necessity will interrupt. Now with those cat callers on the street, if we did away with sexism and racism and classism, then they wouldn't be yelling to begin with. And those kids picking on my Kid, well they wouldn't have singled him out for his skin color (this is not a reverse racism rant- it's the reality of being a minority in your neighborhood) and that police officer would have taken our complaint seriously because it deserved serious treatment and not because of my race and class. And the Kid's school, well all the kids would have access to all the help they need regardless of whether they are gifted and white or poor and brown.

In the mean time, I can acknowledge my privilege. I can try to give up any non-necessary ways my privilege is used. But it's always there, like a magic security blanket, keeping me from the worst of it.

Wait- Hoovervilles are already here!

For those of you unfamiliar with the term Hoovervilles, give thanks to the Wiki gods.

Though these would more properly be called called Bush Towns.

For Jovial- The Seesaw Power Structure Myth

Here's why your "But what about the menzzzzzzzzzzzz!" whine don't fly.

Imagine our current power structure is a seesaw. On one side you have those with power, on the other side you have those without power. There are fewer people with power than without, so that side is always up. And what the powerful fear most is that enough of the other people will make their way over to the other side, and tip the balance in the opposite direction.

This idea can be applied to all sorts of isms- sexism, racism, classism, ageism, ableism, etc.

In regards to sexism, on one side are men, the other women. The fear from the men is that feminists want to swing the seesaw in their favor. That they want to create a matriarchal society to replace the patriarchy. If they didn't have some idea of how crappy they treat women in this scenario, then they wouldn't be so afraid of being on the receiving end of that treatment.

The same thing is true with blacks and whites, hence fear of the angry black man.

But that is not what we want. What we want is to do away with the fulcrum, the structure that keeps the seesaw seesawing. Once that fulcrum comes down, guess what? We are all on a level playing ground. That is what we want. We want the lines between groups dissolved so that what matters is the individual, not the sex or race or whatever of the person.

Now Jovial, I know you are just chomping at the bit (crossed arms comment- puh -lease! You do know that kind of stance is a position of weakness right? It's a way to mimic aggression while protecting your heart. ) for me to say "OMG- you're right, I'm a total misandrist and I have been all wrong this whole time. Not all men are part of the patriarchy."

Yeah, that's not gonna happen.

You think that by calling out sexist behavior I am stereotyping men. Nope, society stereotypes you for me. I am just telling you that it's just as stupid for you all to fall into those stereotypes as it is for us. I am also trying to tell you that what you think is a set in stone biological difference between the sexes is a giant crock of shit. But you are so busy holding on to your man-power and crossing your arms like an angry frat boy that you can't see YOU'RE FALLING INTO THOSE STUPID STEREOTYPES.

Subprime Meltdown

For all of us non-money wonks out there, an awesome explanation of the subprime mortgage meltdown done in the best artistic style ever- Stick Figures!

You say recession while we say depression

What does it mean when the Fed and the bankers work over the weekend to lower interest rates and to keep a major investment back from going under?

That we are up shit creek my friends, without a paddle. We are just a few Bush idiocies from Hoovervilles my friends. Hang on to your hats, it's going to be a bumpy ride into poverty for a lot of folks. Those of us who are frequent poverty fliers will say that this is the worst we've ever seen it. And there is no help on the way us, for banks yes, but for us, no.

So my little chickadees, since this is becoming the all Hillary all the time blog, do we really want a president with little experience in handling a major crisis? Who likes to use Republican economic ideas (cause yeah- they got us this far RIGHT?)

Nope, I want Hillary. And I want her to come out swinging for social programs like the second coming of Roosevelt. She already has a long history of working to improve the lives of women and children, the people hit hardest and most often with poverty. And we're all familiar with what the economy was like under the other Clinton (Your's truly was actually a member of the middle class AND could afford dental work. Shocking I know).

Poverty is not a game for the faint hearted

Via Shakes comes the story of an over privileged doochenozzel who thought he would prove to the world that poor people really are poor because they are lazy and don't understand the value of hard work and savings.

Let's start with a few things the asswipe forgot on his way to playing poor.

1) He's a dude, a young, single white dude with no children. When looking at the census numbers, women between 18 & 64 with children are 30% more likely to be poor than a man in the exact same situation. Elderly women are are 2.7 times more likely to be poor than elderly men.

The numbers are even more disturbing when looking at race. Overall, 22% of Black men and 26% of Black women live in poverty. For whites, only 9.1% of white men are poor.

So before we even look at things like education, he starts out with a greater likelihood of being able to earn a living than virtually everybody else in the country.

But that's not all folks. He starts with a college education. Some of us (me, hello) have been working on a college education for about 12 years now because we do not have the funds to both support ourselves and attend school full time. Financial aid, for the poorest of us, barely covers tuition and books. It is not uncommon for students to work full time (or more) and attend school full time. And when that is the situation and somethings gotta give (like say your boss threatens to fire you because your class schedule is interfering with his work scheduling) it is usually school that goes first. An education is great but it's damn hard to get an education while homeless, so basic needs get met first. That's simple human psychology. I would love to introduce the doochnozzle to Maslov's pyramid, but since he already has a college education I am sure he knows about it.

So he's a young single white dude with an education. And he's healthy, in no small part due to the fact that he probably had things like health care and good dental work up until he decided playing at poverty was a solid plan. Do you know how many days of work I have missed because of an abscessed tooth? More than a week. If I had dental coverage I could get it root canaled and crowned, or even just pulled. But I don't have it. And neither do most people in poverty.

And let's not forget, it's not like he's really poor. He had a credit card with him for emergencies. He had a way out of awful anytime he chose. He could quit a job if his boss was a dick. Some of us don't have that option, especially poor women who are sexually harassed (oh that's another one I have experience with multiple time over). And if worse came to worse, say if he didn't have the money to pay his car insurance and it lapsed and he got pulled over and arrested for it, well he still has Mom and Dad and his credit card to bail him out.

Poverty means there is no out. There is no back up plan, there is no benevolent savior, there is no way to save for a rainy day when you're $300 in the hole every month for just basic living expenses. Poverty is awful because it is finite for the individual in it. The myth of the bootstrap is just that. The tokens of exceptionalism that are occasionally trotted out in front of us are no different from the Catholic church telling feudal peasants that if they were good they'd get rewarded in heaven. Poverty is not an individual disease, it is a cancer on the society that creates it. Only massive changes to that society will cure it.

So Mr. Doochnozzle, you start out with a shit ton of privilege and you end with no real knowledge of what poverty looks like.

RQ Cooks plus how the poor get their party on

So payday isn't till Thursday and the fridge still hasn't been restocked since our little electricity debacle. I'm scrounging around to keep us fed this week and resorted to the poor man's meat- beans!

I have this awesome recipe for Cuban black bean soup, but I was missing one key ingredient- a large can of tomatoes. So I did what any good cook will do and improvised. I used a large can of enchilada sauce instead and it turned out quite tasty. I also skipped the sherry vinegar and a few other things cause I don't follow directions well. Sue me.

So Cuban Black Bean Soup (spicy and vegan till you add the cheese- woot)

vegetable oil
1 pound black turtle beans, washed and picked over but not soaked
2 stalks of celery, diced
1 large yellow onion
2 carrots, diced
1 28oz can of enchilada sauce
2 bay leaves
pepper
salt
dash of favorite hot sauce (I like Tapatillo)
cheese, sour cream and/or chopped scallions for garnish

Preheat oven to 325. In a stock pot, sweat onions, celery and carrots in oil for about 3 minutes. Throw in enchilada sauce, beans, bay leaves and dash of hot sauce. Bring to boil. Cover pot and braise in oven for 2 hours.

Puree about 1/3 of the soup in a food processor (or if you have one of those handy immersion blenders, use that and know that I am JEALOUS AS ALL GET OUT)

Add salt and pepper to taste, garnish with cheese and scallions.

Now- how the poor get their party on.

Being friends with a whole bunch of poor struggling artsy types, we've decided to have a Soup Swap Party at my house next Saturday. Everyone brings a big pot of their fav soup and some take home containers. Then we all get together with some wine (okay a shitload of wine) and taste soups and take leftovers home so for the price of one meal we get many. I think I'm going to do Cheddar Chowder. It's equal parts cheese, potatoes and bechamel sauce and 100 percent rich yummy goodness. I'll post the recipe next week.

Fuck You Nancy Pelosi!

Thanks for once again shafting the poor in a rush to agree with the preznit. (Even more details here)

Thanks to a temp job last summer, our income for the year is at a whole whopping 69 percent of the poverty level. Who Hoo! Last year is was less than half the poverty level for 2 people, so I guess this is a step up.

People who make up to 130 percent of the poverty level are usually eligible for food stamps. You would think that anyone under the poverty level would just be eligible for the whole amount. It's not like we can go spend food stamp money on beer and cigarettes or even toilet paper, it only pays for food.

So I am about 5000 dollars a year below the poverty line, or I am 416 dollars short every month of what the government says I need just to sustain basic life quality. They could just give that amount to me in food stamps. We could certainly use it and with some extra money we'd try these organics and whole grains everyone keeps talking about :).

But we don't get that much.

Actually, for a family of 2 the maximum amount of food stamps we could get per month is 278. that would be nice, it might actually cover almost a months worth of groceries if we eat nothing but crap.

But we don't get that much either.

We get 228 per month. It lasts about 2 weeks if we eat things like fruits and vegetables, whole grains and lean meats, nothing organic or expensive, just healthy. It lasts about 3 weeks if we eat processed crap and hamburger. The price of milk is over 4 bucks a gallon here most of the time, so things like cereal have become a luxury. While food prices rise with the cost of gasoline, food stamp allotments have remained stagnant.

I had a few hopes in the last week or so that the Dems were really going to stick to it and get help for the poor (since we are the first and last victims of recession, we see it coming way before anyone else and we feel it's effects much longer) while getting a boost for the economy.

But nah. I guess it's really easy to throw hungry children under the bus in the name of cooperation and bipartisanship. Nice work Nancy. When milk hits 5 bucks a gallon I'm telling my kid that you're the reason a box of cereal is now as much of a rarity as lobster in our house. I hope the next time you bring a bite of either to you lips, you choke on it you disingenuous fuck wad.