bwahahahaha

One of the tv preachers populating my non-cable television this
morning (1 news show, pbs doing cartoons, a fishing show, 2 paid
programs and 8 fucking tv preachers) has decreed that bed bugs are an
obvious sign of the apocalypse.

Dies this mean that we need to smear lamb's blood on our apartment
doors until the rapture so we can gaurantee ourselves pest free sleep?
Are bed bugs repelled by the act of kneeling bedside to say prayers?
have the beds of therighteous been sparred or must they suffer with us
heathens untill paradise beckons?

--
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

The measure of a person is not what they would kill for

but what the would die for. i keep thinking about the difference
between the murdering douchenozzle in Arizona and the protests in
Tunisia and EGypt, protests started by people so frustrated by
government corruption that the literally became the spark that ignites
revolution by lighting themselves on fire. It should make us all feel
a wee bit better about the violent rhetoric of the right. we know that
when they turn that rhetoric into action they lose legitimacy. they
aren't willing to sacrifice themselves for a better world, but they
are willing to sacrifice others. becuase of that, we know their
measure and it is too small to matter in the grand scheme.

--
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

Balancing Budgets on the Backs of Poor Women and Chilldren

Every day, I check the child support enforcement website to see if maybe, just maybe, a payment has been made. I am like one of those button pushing monkeys who only get food occasionally instead of consistently. I push the button way more often than is needed in the hopes that today is the day. But alas. It rarely is. I got child support for about 8 weeks in the fall. That was the first time I'd seen any money since 2008. And in 2008 I got child support for about 6 months, which was the first time I'd seen any money since 2005. You get the picture.

When I logged in today I was greeted with a happy little message. "As of May 1, 2011, parents receiving TANF pass throughs will no longer receive them due to state budget constraints".

For those of you who don't know what this means, lemme explain. TANF (the portion of welfare that provides actual money instead of food stamps or medicaid) isn't free. Thanks to Bill Clinton and Welfare reform, TANF grants are supposed to be paid for by child support. If you aren't getting child support, but you are getting TANF, then you accrue a debt against the past due child support that gets paid to the state. If you are receiving TANF, as an incentive to get you to help track down non-paying parents, TANF will "pass through" a little of the child support money if you also start receiving child support. Not much, like $50 a month. But an extra $50 when your TANF grant is only $440 is a huge help.

In order to balance the budget, they are taking away $50 a month from poor parents and their kids. $50 that is supposed to pay for the health and welfare of those kids is instead going to pay for the state. I should also explain that Washington is one of those lovely, super-regressive all sales tax states, so poor people, even those on Welfare, are already paying a higher percentage of their income to fix the state's woes.

There is a whole shitload of talk about the kind of burden we are leaving our children, but I don't hear those same asshats talking about the kind of sacrifice we are making our children perform today.

The Way We Live Now

I've got, $2.18 in the bank, a pile of dirty towels and no laundry quarters, and $18 in food stamps until the 8th of February.

It's more than a dollar a day, so not exactly 3rd world, yet. Of course we've "turned the corner" and everything is sunshine and rainbows and ponies for everyone willing to "compete" for them.

Perhaps us poor folks would be better off if the government just threw stacks of cash into an arena and had us death battle each other over ones and fives.

Oh Cry Me a Fucking River

You all know what's going on this week? It's Davos* week, where super wealthy, mostly dudes, get together to come up with new ways to rob us all blind in the name of progress. Wankstains.

But they aren't just there to reinforce the kleptocracy. They are also there to whinge about how mean us peasants are. It is "unproductive" for us to call them on their shit.

For the record- it's not "bankers, bankers, bankers". It's "bankSters, bankSters, bankSters". And people are pissed because we're all going to be eating actual garbage and living in tents because of banksters.

*Davos week is just one more reason why I really hate Switzerland. Other reasons include having actually been to Switzerland and decided it is what fascism aspires to be, the rampant xenophobia, the half-assery that is the International Committee of the Red Cross and all the assistance the Swiss so helpfully gave the Nazis in looting from Jews.

Why does it always have to be my left hand?

I'm a lefty, not just politically. I am severely left-handed. I joke that my right hand is vestigial.

So of course it's always my left hand that gets injured. Tonight I managed to cover it in scalding oil while making yet another round of pork chops. The Kid finished cooking and I've had my hand wrapped up in a frozen towel for hours now. Everytime I let the hand get near room temp the pain is excruciating. I made a 'put your hand in the box young Atriedes' joke that went totally over the Kid's head. I'm typing this one-handed, and not in the fun way.

The last time I burnt myself this badly I had whiskey and valium. Now all I can do is repeat "fear is the mind killer" and pretend the 5 advil I took will actually do something.

What I'd like to know is

How much money does the fed put towards defense for poor defendants?

Of course I'm conflating the criminal trials of the poor with the civil trials of the rich. But there is no right to council in civil trials. Unless you're rich. Then 30 plus million per defendant, at tax payer expense, is totally reasonable.

Now let's just imagine I'm poor (wait, I am!) and got in trouble for "overstating my profits" by writing a bad check (alas, I am unbanked, no bad checks for me). Would I get the same kind of legal defense? What does one have to do to get the federal government to pony up 30 million bucks? I want to be that kind of crook.