Home
Overtime--2004 and 2003 issues
Overtime
OVERTIME--January 2003 issue
timeovertimeovertimeovertimeovertime
Dedicated to reflecting the collective wisdom of enlightened workers.
Linda Featheringill
4651 West 41st Street, Down
Cleveland, OH 44109
(216) 661-0794
lfeatheringill@hotmail.com
January 2003
Volume 3, Number 7
Greetings!
And welcome to 2003. As promised, this issue contains the first of a series of articles and essays about children. The comments here refer to those young people who are clothed and fed and sheltered. I am limited to English language sources of information, but I suspect that the problems described here extend to other countries and cultures. Also, I’d like to welcome a new contributor, whose article begins on page 13. - Linda Featheringill
The Kids Are Not All Right
Historians like to say that when a social system stops meeting the needs of people or when the pain caused is greater than the benefit derived, people find or devise another system and adopt that one. Thus, feudal society was an improvement over the slave states and capitalism was an improvement over feudalism.
So when are we going to turn loose of capitalism and move on to the next stage?
It is the nature of the capitalist system to take more than it gives. That is where profits come from. The system also demands profits today, not yesterday or tomorrow. Members of the very wealthy class, the capitalist class, are willing to “invest” what they absolutely have to in meeting the needs of those individuals in the rest of the human race that can add to the net worth of the upper crust. Anyone who cannot further enrich the very wealthy at the top of the heap is at risk of being ignored at the best of times and poorly treated the rest of the time. In other words, they are used, ignored, or abused.
The most vulnerable segments of society, the young and the old, are not given what they need in order to thrive. According to capitalist morality, children are not yet useful and old folks are no longer useful. In the phrase often used in Nazi Germany, they are “useless consumers of goods.” Capitalism has always been this way. Remember the stories of Charles Dickens and his descriptions of the fate of children and old people. And as the system continues to develop, the situation is getting worse.
In the US, the “most capitalist nation on earth,” the suicide rate among people over age 55 living in Florida is now 10 times what it was in 1988. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the overall suicide rate for each 100,000 people includes 38.6 in Hungary, 33.2 in Sri Lanka, and 21.1 in Russia. Countries with lower suicide rates include India with 8.1, 7.9 in the UK, 5.8 in Thailand, and 2.3 in Mexico.
Depression among children and adolescents is rapidly increasing throughout the world, in both developing and developed countries. Young people, even those whose basic physical needs are being met, are not doing well. In the US, mental health care professionals traditionally believed that 2% of children younger than 13 and 8% of adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 experienced depression. Recent studies, however, place that figure at 28% of all young people who haven’t reached their 19th birthday. Since children 18 and younger make up about 25% of the total population, we have about 70 million kids in this country. If 28% of these are depressed, we have 2 million depressed young people. About 11% of these children or 220,000 try to commit suicide. These numbers represent a lot of misery.
The overall rates of suicide in Canada are lower than in the US, but there are problems here, too. Until recently, the highest suicide rate among young men in their 20s occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Now, however, suicide rate for young men is higher than ever, even though there is a lower rate for middle-aged men and the rate for the elderly men has remained level. A recent study reports that 5-10% of teenaged Canadian boys and twice that number of teenaged girls have contemplated or even attempted suicide within the last 6 months.
In Australia, a recent study reported that 28% of school-aged children are depressed, with no significant differences between children from different socio-economic backgrounds.
Health care professionals in England and Wales have noted a serious increase in mental illness in very young children during recent years. One psychiatrist is now treating more than 4 times as many preschoolers than he did in 1997. Another is now treating 3 times more young children than he did 5 years ago. The “winner” in this horrible race has seen his practice increase to 10 times greater than it was in 1997.
And these aren’t just isolated figures. The study that produced these figures included nearly 10% of all practicing child and adolescent psychologist and psychiatrists in England and Wales.
Teenagers in the UK are also engaging in acts of direct self-harm and more indirect self-destructive behaviors at alarming rates. In a recent study of 5800 young people aged 15-16 years, 7% admitted to acts of self-harm within the past 12 months and 13% during their lifetimes. An eighth of these children sought medical help at a hospital. Since hospitals in the UK report that they treat 25,000 teenagers each year for harming themselves, we can calculate that about 200,000 young people turn their misery inward and take it out on their own bodies. The rate of successful suicide attempts among young people has increased 2½ times since 1970.
As in other countries, more girls try suicide but more boys engage in self-destructive behaviors. In a report published in 2002, 25% of all 15-16 year old boys admit to carrying a weapon in the past 12 months and 19% admit to having attacked someone with intent to do serious bodily harm. In a study done in the US, 17% of all high-school students (male and female) admitted to carrying a weapon during the last 30 days. About 9% of them were threatened or injured by a weapon while on school property during the last year. Ten percent were physically harmed by their boyfriend or girlfriend during the last year and 8% were forced to have sexual intercourse during the last year. Almost a fourth of them admitted to using marijuana during the last 30 days and a third had engaged in binge drinking in the last month.
Half of the kids in the UK study admitted to binge drinking.
Throughout Europe, alcohol consumption in young people is having devastating effects. In the EU states, alcohol is directly related to an eighth of all deaths of 15-29 year old males. In Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, and Estonia, that number is up to a third of all deaths in that age group. The figure for Europe as a whole is a fourth of all deaths of young men. What is going on here? Why don’t our young people have a firmer grip on life?
As to the very young children, one has to wonder if this is a sort of birth defect, brought on by pollution or radiation of some sort, or perhaps caused by something that their mothers didn’t get during pregnancy (security and peace and quiet?). Why school age, preteen children are depressed is a mystery to me.
The misery of adolescent children, those who never were depressed until they got into their teen years, might be due to a number of things. An Australian study reports that teenagers think they will be happy if they gain wealth and/or fame. The chances of a working class child becoming wealthy are, of course, very slim. If this is what it takes to be happy, then such children have very little hope of ever enjoying life. A study conducted in China reports that suicidal young people complain of disappointment in love and family relationships. This could very well be true of children everywhere.
A young person of my acquaintance says that children are plugged into the television and computer games at an early age and spend precious little time actually relating to people. She says that too many of them are woefully lacking in the skills that are necessary to get satisfaction from relationships of any kind. Sex sells and kids in the developed world are bombarded with sex-laden advertising 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But they aren’t ready to bond with a life-long mate, and neither are the objects of their affections. Teen-aged romances are doomed, in general. Sex is wonderful but like a big gun with powerful recoil, sex carries repercussions with it. Even if you disregard pregnancy and disease, there are side effects. Some of these can be very painful.
Teenagers, unfortunately, are plugged into the mass media like an unborn child is plugged into his umbilical cord. In the US, the mass media is used to turn them into consumers [paying customers] so they can be exploited. They are pressured to buy all they can afford and then are made to feel bad because they cannot buy more. They are encouraged to assume sexuality long before they are able to deal with it. The children are, of course, being used.
Capitalism is sucking the life out of our children. When are we going to get rid of it?
[L.F., Ohio, USA.]
Toys for Tots? Children become what they experience.
[Historical Note: Before 1900, 95% of all the casualties of war were soldiers. After 1990, 95% of all war casualties have been civilians - peaceful men, women, and children. L.F.]
The biggest threat to children all over the world is, of course, war. It should not be news that most of the victims of war are children and women. Even worse, children in the “Third World” are dragooned into being soldiers.
For children in the USA, the crushing effect of advertising propaganda is destroying childhood. “All they do is whine for more, more!” cry distressed parents. But who is responsible for this? Do children run television networks? Do children run the sweatshops that manufacture war toys? Do high school students make the decision to have heavily ad-laden Channel One in their classrooms? War toys have no doubt existed since the first time Daddy picked up a rock but this Christmas this profitable business was carried to new depths. The department store chain J.C. Penney sold (for only $50!) a toy called “Forward Command Post” that featured an “action figure” (do not call it a doll) standing triumphantly atop a bombed-out house. I am not making this up.
Parents, harassed to be perfect while keeping the bills paid, sigh plaintively, “But what can I do? All the other kids ….” And it is tough. Before the advent of TV, parents were certainly plied with guilt via print (an sometimes radio) if they didn’t buy this or that for the kiddies - but advertising was not directly aimed at children. Now, kids are being targeted from infancy.
“Forward Command Post” is advertised as “suitable” for children 5 years old. Another toy, “World Peace Keeper Battle Station,” features a cannon with “lights and sound” and is designated as “suitable” for children 3 YEARS OLD and up.
You might want to go to the J.C. Penney website, where I found this stuff, and email them what you think about this.
Something that has struck me for decades now is the increased dichotomy and contradiction between what younger children are fed and what they are taught from junior high and high school onward. Schools, trying to cope with violent children and teens, tell them, “Hold hands, share, and work out your problems without fighting.” But outside of school and before they go to school, they are bombarded with propaganda that tells them to “COMPETE!!” They are fed a steady diet of an unspoken text that everyone is a potential enemy and destroying enemies is okay.
Even in training a dog, it’s well known that confusing commands can drive the animal crazy. What are we, as a society, doing to our children? [J.F., New Mexico, USA.]
AIDS Orphans
A study was conducted in Zimbabwe recently that looked the impact of AIDS on older people. It also turned out to provide a look at the impact of the disease on children, since the lives of these two groups are often intertwined. Most people living (and dying) with HIV/AIDS are in the most productive years, aged 15 to 49. These are also the childbearing years for women and the age at which most men father children. When these people become ill, they cannot support their families and when they day, they deprive their children of a parent.
The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies a child as an AIDS orphan when its mother dies of the disease. This is based on the assumption that when a father drops out of the picture, the mother can usually keep the family together but when a mother is gone, the children are passed off to relatives and may be left to shift for themselves. [Sounds like the US, doesn’t it?] By the WHO definition, there are 14 million AIDS orphans in the world, all less than 15 years of age, and 90% of them live in sub-Saharan Africa. These orphans represent a huge burden on already-poor societies and their care often falls to their extended families. In practice, this burden is most often taken up by grandparents, although older children may take over the care of their younger brothers and sisters.
In the Zimbabwe study, 810 households (including a total of 4540 people) with AIDS-orphaned children were surveyed. In 80% of these homes, the caregivers were over the age of 50 and most were over 60 years old. Two-thirds of these elderly caregivers were women. The typical household is headed by an older woman with a world of problems: death of her own children, loss of financial support, often lack of food and clothing, inability to pay for medical care, inability to pay for clothing and school fees for the orphans she has have taken in, and limited physical ability to work for money (either by farming or hiring out for wage labor). A household such as this is filled with people who are weak and vulnerable, who are desperately clinging to each other, and who are trying to stay alive.
The study also reported that these women are further burdened with physical violence, stigma, and abuse that result from witchcraft accusations. I’m not sure about the source of these accusations. If I applied the psychology of European witch-hunts (and this might be a mistake), I’d assume that fear of the AIDS disease is the main cause. Such fear might result in violence-enforced isolation, such as what used to happen to lepers. It might give rise to a blame-the-victim way of thinking. It might also produce the idea that when good people die, the survivors are to blame. Perhaps someone can enlighten me on this question.
I am sure about one thing, though: There are enough resources in the world to help these people, to shore up these households, to help them put their lives back together after the loss of the generation between the young and the old. It is not a worldwide lack of resources that keeps these families in the worst poverty, it is worldwide capitalism that operates for profits rather than for fulfilling needs that is the culprit. This is another example of capitalism not meeting the needs of our children.
Eventually, these elderly caretakers will die and leave the children to their own resources. In a few years, there will be millions of young adults in the world who don’t think they owe anything to society or other people or the world. What will they do? Will they be angry and violent? Will they try to destroy the civilizations they live in? Will they become the next generation of terrorists?
[L. F., Ohio, USA. Information supplied by World Health Organization, internet address: www.who.int/hpr/ageing/hivimpact ]
Global Warming
Global warming will mean more health problems for Australians, according to a report released today. The report says global warming is already affecting Australia’s public health. It says increases in food and water-borne diseases such as salmonella are likely, especially in the summer months. Increases in infectious diseases such as ross river virus and barmah forest virus are also likely, especially in temperate areas. Hotter and drying climate conditions will lead to more air pollution and result in more asthma. The report says that Aboriginals, poor people, and the elderly will be more vulnerable to the health effects of global warming.
Queensland Conservation Council coordinator Felicity Wishart said that Australians had to move away from the use of fossil fuels, looking at ways to reform the electricity industry, and reduce land clearing. She said it was difficult to get people to realize that global warming could have a big effect on health. People need to be educated about the problems because the more they know, the more likely they would be to support governments when they make changes designed to address the problems.
[K. Watts, The West Australian, November 4, 2002.]
Comment
Ms. Wishart of Australia, quoted in the article above, is undoubtedly correct about health problems coming along with global warming. But she is wrong about how important it is to drum up support among the population for “changes designed to address the problems.” The vast majority of people are not in control, don’t have the power to make changes, and are not being consulted by those who do have power.
In the US, two-thirds to three-quarters of the people questioned in several different opinion polls are willing to spend “whatever is necessary” to preserve the environment and fight global warming. They say they are willing to bear increased taxes and higher prices for goods and services. They are willing to live with fewer amenities. Still, we can all see what the US government is doing.
Public education is good and we need to be warned about dangers so we can take steps to protect ourselves. But there is precious little we can do about the situation. - L.F.
Microbes live again. [I wonder: Are they all harmless?]
In ice that has sealed a salty Antarctic lake for more than 2800 years, scientists have found frozen bacteria and algae that returned to life after thawing. The research may help I the search for life on Mars, which is thought to have subsurface lakes of ice. A research team led by Peter Doran of the University of Illinois at Chicago drilled through more than 39 feet [about 12 meters] of ice to collect samples of microscopic bacteria and algae.
[The Plain Dealer, December 17, 2002.]
Global warming is good?
That there are substantial drawbacks to global warming is unarguable. Certain low-lying areas such as Bangladesh and various Pacific islands may well be flooded. It will be the responsibility of the developed nations to find ways to assist those people most affected. But it is not only the developing world that will be inundated. For example, most of Florida, rather than just the Everglades, may become a swamp. In 100 years’ time, Miami might be submerged, but a century ago, there was almost nothing there.
Such change - slow change, on the scale of the human lifetime - causing the shifting of people has been a continuing feature of history. In Britain, the coastlines have never been constant. As Beachy Head erodes, it produces shingle that banks up to the east. The place where William the Conqueror landed in 1066 is now inland.
Status quo is the exception, not the norm. For the human utility of the planet as a whole, some regions may need to be abandoned, while new zones of habitability will become available as plan Earth warms slightly. It is a natural function of humankind to move on and search for new opportunities and horizons.
Global warming, then, is great because it protects us from the unpredictable big freeze that would be far, far worse.
[D. Steel, from an article for The Guardian, December 5, 2002. Contributed by P.E.N., Colchester, England.]
The Anti-War Movement in the US
A lot of people in the world think people in the US support a war with Iraq. Some do but not all, not by a long shot. Most folks in the US think that war is inevitable, but that’s not the same as supporting the war. There is an anti-war movement and it’s growing. During the Vietnam War, the movement was made up largely of college students. This time, it seems that the college kids are not involved and the average activist is somewhat older. The movement is not as noisy and energetic but it is spreading, nonetheless. Below are a couple of newspaper clippings that will give you an idea of what is going on. -- L.F
Newspaper clipping
Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark returned from Iraq September 4 to join a broad coalition of Americans in calling for massive war protests. Clark, a pacifist since the Vietnam War who served under President Lyndon Johnson, said Americans support the plan for attacking Iraq because they lack “access to information.” In stressing his opposition to President Bush’s planned invasion, Clark noted US’s war on Iraq has persisted since Bush the Elder’s Desert Storm. “We attack Iraq every day and scores are killed, sometimes hundreds,” Clark said.
Clark told of viewing the result of America’s embargo on Iraq: high mortality in the entire population - especially the young and old - and widespread disease due to the lack of medicine and hunger. Especially chilling was Clark’s report that virtually all surgery in Iraq is performed without anesthesia. Patients scream in pain until they pass out or lapse into often-fatal comas.
Art Laffin, a Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, said that the impending war is “about controlling oil.”
Mahdi Bray, of Act Now to Stop the War and End Racism, said, “The drumbeat of war is driven by profits and politics.”
[Fred Lingel, American Free Press. Contributed by A.J., Alabama, USA.]
Newspaper clipping
A recent Los Angeles Times poll showed decreasingsupport for George W. Bush’s plans for war on Iraq. Seventy-two percent felt the president has not provided enough evidence to justify starting a war with Iraq. Plain Dealer readers should also know of the legion of religious, labor and environmental groups in opposition to war.
On December 11, the Cleveland AFL-CIO Federation of Labor unanimously adopted a resolution against war with Iraq. It voices concern at the lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction and calls on the administration to suspend its plan for war and instead “intensively seek a peaceful resolution of our differences within the framework of the United Nations.” On the same day, leaders of major religious, civic and environmental organizations announced the formation of a new coalition - Win Without War - in support of a peaceful, diplomatic solution of the crisis in Iraq.
In September, 48 main-stream church leaders signed a letter to Bush, making a strong case against military action. These included leaders of the National Council of Churches, General Assembly Presbyterian Church, Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church, Alliance of Baptists, National Council of the Churches of Christ and the Mennonite Central Committee. The Catholic bishops have also spoken clearly for peaceful solutions.
Protest is on the rise everywhere. We appreciate the Plain Dealer’s coverage of the growing local anti-war movement.
[F.C., letter to the editor, The Plain Dealer, December 22, 2002.]
Intermission -- This and That
Fred and Harry were hunting when suddenly Fed collapsed and stopped breathing. Harry stooped over and tried to find a pulse but couldn’t find one. In a panic, he grabbed his mobile phone and calls the emergency number.
When the calm voice at the other end answered, Harry blurted out, “My pal Fred is dead - I can’t find a pulse! What do I do? What do I do?”
“Don’t panic and try to stay calm,” instructed the operator. “The first thing you have to do is make absolutely sure that your friend really is dead.”
“Right!” responded Harry. “Hold on a moment.” Harry put the phone down. A few seconds later, a shot rang out. Harry came back to the phone and said, “OK, I’ve done that. What do I do next?”
[Gogglesworth, West Australia, Australia.]
Same Song, Just Another Verse
As well as dealing with angry customers on a daily basis, the staff at Australia’s big four banks are putting in one million hours of overtime a week, research has found. Finance Sector Union researchers found the amount of overtime worked by bank staff had increased three-fold in the pat 14 years.www.worldincommon.org.
Even worse, union national secretary Tony Beck said nearly 40% of the weekly million hours of overtime was unpaid, giving banks an estimated $10 million discount on their weekly wages bill. The overtime is a result of job cuts since 1993 in which more than 55,000 workers were retrenched. The profits of Australia’s big four banks increased 350%, up to $10.55 billion last year.
Commonwealth Bank manager Bryan Fitzgerald disputed the size of workers’ overtime and said his bank did not encourage the staff to work unpaid overtime.
[Australian Associated Press, November 25, 2002.]
Water - Farms versus Cities
The Interior Department said that it would cut California’s share of water from the Colorado River next year to ensure allocations for six other Western states. The reduction would be enough to supply roughly 1.4 million people, the government said.
Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton warned of a cutback earlier this month, after the collapse of a long-term agreement that sought to curb California’s overuse of the river. The state can avoid the cutback if water agencies in Southern California revive the agreement, for 75 years, to transfer Colorado water from desert farms to cities. It collapsed on December 9, when the Imperial Valley refused to sell any of its huge share of Colorado River water to coastal cities. If no agreement is reached, the cuts will fall hardest on Los Angeles and San Diego, the nation’s second- and seventh-most-populous cities, and on farmers in California’s far southeast corner.
The metropolitan Water District, supplier of water to 17 million people in Southern California, would lose enough water for more than 800,000 people in 2003. The district has said it has enough in reserve to make up any shortages for at least two years. Farmers in Imperial County would lose enough water to supply 400,000 people, about 7 percent of the trillion gallons of water they use to grow food worth $1 billion each year. The reduction would be made by holding water behind Hoover Dam. In rejecting the 75-year agreement, Imperial County officials said it did not address concerns about the Salton Sea, California’s largest lake, which would quickly become too salty for fish and birds if water did not run off fields.
For years, California has used excess water from the Colorado because other states didn’t use the full amount they were entitled to under a 1929 accord. The other states that draw on the river are Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada.
[Associated Press, The New York Times, December 28, 2002.]
REAPING THE FRUITS OF CAPITALISM
Where people are burdened by their own everyday problems, it is difficult to have much concern for foreign events or even current events at home. But the massacres of people by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda in the months of October 2002 and even the more atrocities that have been committed by this rebel armed force and the Government soldiers (in the name of wiping out rebellion in this region of Uganda) since this civil war begun 16 years ago, deserve comment.
The soldiers who are taking part in the destruction, killing, being killed are mainly from the poorest families. They are hired by the Government or the rebels and in most cases forced or conditioned to take part in these wars. The innocent civilians, who have nothing to do with the causes of this war, are the ones taking part in the dying.
This war which have led to some babies suckling their dead mothers, left others physically and mentally handicapped, and some dying out of starvation because they cannot get or even grow their own food, unlike in the parts of the country where there is no such insurgency. Instead of the inhabitants of this region attending to their crops and animals and reaping the increase from them, they are reaping the fruits of this market system - killing and being killed.
People in this region have been compelled to live in so-called protected camps, which at times are also not secure as the rebels also invade them, overpowering the Government soldiers. In fact, as a scientific socialist, I wonder how many people put it to them to question whether a sane society needs soldiers and the Government. The soldiers are there for the good of those who rule us and serve to protect them and their interests, not our interests. It is the rich and the rulers who have a country. The common people, the poor don’t have a country - otherwise they would not be suffering in ‘their' country.
As in any other war, the war and the propaganda of war in this region of Uganda have caused many people in this region and even other parts of this country to lose that which is at the center of our humanity: our ability to think critically and intelligently, to choose to cooperate and be social. It is hard to accept that people who otherwise kind and caring can under certain circumstances, support (and even take
part in) deliberately causing death and destruction, even to strangers they have never met.
This civil war is caused, like any other wars that have ever been fought, by power and class struggle, competition for profits, trade routes and other related causes that are associated with the capitalistic system the world over.
The present society (capitalism) is an insane society. To do nothing about it also looks to be insane. The horrors caused by this war and all other wars are not enough in themselves to rouse sufficient opposition to all wars. Sufficient opposition to wars can only be aroused by the mental realization of the need to change the society we are presently living in, which depends on competition, class struggle and conflicts, to a social order that will depend on common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments of producing and distributing for the sole purpose of satisfying human needs, where every one will contribute to the well-being of society according to everyone’s ability and take from society according to one’s self determined needs.
This is socialism. The need for socialism is always urgent and now more so than before. Presently there is enough suffering even without wars and because capitalism with its wars has become impossible to live under with its mass destruction of human life, that is why we want to establish socialism.
I request you, if you have not joined the campaign against capitalism and for the establishment of socialism, to join us and give your physical, mental and or material support so that we build a sane society that dignifies the human race.
[Weijagye Justus, Kabale, Uganda.]
Damn right!
This year was no exception: Every Christmas season brings a spate of heart-warming stories about how the charitable gestures of well-meaning folks have made the holiday just a bit brighter for people who in a hard way. An every year, I find that those stories annoy me a bit more.
In one place, the homeless, by the auditorium load, are being fed and in some places even shaved, showered and clothed anew. In another spot, long lines of tykes are queued up with their mothers for the toy dole from a hearty Santa. Fresh-faced suburban teens are seen holding (choose one: bake sales, car washes) to make money and then delivering (choose one: dinners, Christmas packages) to poor families in the (choose one: barrio, ghetto, reservation, poor white trash section of town). Newspapers and TV are ripe with such tales and television is especially lush with them.
The people who are putting themselves out to help are good people and they are doing good things. Bless each and every one, but the fact remains that the day after this happy lightning strikes them, the recipients of all this effort and all these good intentions are just as poor as they were the day before it hit. The turkey dinner or the toy fire truck or the doll didn’t change their lives. Even though we are individually generous and personally caring when it dawns on us, we really don’t give much of a damn about the poor.
They have fallen out of political favor and even to suggest that something might be amiss in a country that’s this rich and still suffers so much poverty is to be accused of socialism and inciting class warfare. Yet the mayors of our cities report a shocking increase in numbers of homeless this year, by as much as 20% in many places. And the rapidly increasing population among the homeless are working families - folks with full-time jobs, usually single women with children, who nonetheless can’t afford the jacked-up prices for which even supposedly low-income housing is going.
The poor are the detritus of a dead-still economy that’s entering its third year of layoffs and of a tough-love welfare reform that has left us smug about stripping down the benefits given and oblivious of the consequences.
We will spare no amount of money to hold Saddam Hussein to the deal he cut to stop the Gulf War. We enact tax cuts that, in gross disproportion, mostly benefit our most affluent citizens. And we are told more such tax cuts are in the works for the year 2003. That voice of privilege, the Wall Street Journal, laments that the poor are unfairly getting away without paying income taxes and calls them “lucky duckies” because of it.
We have indeed slipped into class warfare in our country but it’s being fought from the top down, as the well off harvest new gains, even while diverting even more from the powerless poor. And no number of charitable gestures, admirable and welcome as they may be, can make up the difference.
[Tom Teepen, Cox Newspapers, December 27, 2002.]
Next month: We’d love to know what you think. These are our usual classifications:
-- Open - questions, comments, tirades, etc.
-- RSVP. React to previous statements.
-- The ecology.
-- Clippings from newspapers, etc
Money. Overtime is free, but there are expenses and any help with these would be appreciated. Please make checks payable to Linda Featheringill and mail to me at 4651 West 41st Street, Down, Cleveland, OH 44109. Contributions will be acknowledged in the next issue, or you can remain anonymous if you wish.
Finances at the end of November/December 2002:
Balance 21.26
Contributions 40.00
Supplies and stationary -0-
Copying 27.90
Postage 23.01
Total expenses 50.91
Balance 10.35
Contributions: S. Brooks, 20.00. Anon., 15.00. E.A.M., 5.00
And, to Everyone, thank you, thank you, thank you. Linda Featheringill.