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#246473 by DainNobody
Thu Aug 13, 2015 8:01 pm
http://www.liberalamerica.org/2013/11/2 ... o-be-poor/

If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. – Malcolm X
Reading these words one cannot overlook the?relevance they have today in 2013.? According to a Rasmussen Reports poll,?conducted in July of 2012, 47 percent of Americans surveyed, not only think the government overspends on poverty programs, but also these programs enable poverty.? In comparison, 38 percent polled just one year prior shared these same sentiments.? And according to another survey a mere 11 percent actually favored the government increasing food stamp allocation, whereas 69 percent opposed.? But a poll, which showed 53 percent of Americans who believe food stamp recipients should be finger printed,?truly?indicates how most Americans view those in need.

Although finger printing has become increasingly used as a means of identification, there still is the underlying association of the act with criminality.? But the criminalization of the impoverished is nothing new.? More than a century ago Mark Twain had the audacity to attack this issue head on in many of his writings.

However,?the increasing criminalization of the less fortunate in our society, and the notion that these individuals lack of ambition, is the sole?basis for their condition becoming more and more propagated.? This attitude was reflected in the last presidential campaign by Republican candidate Mitt Romney when he stated:

?There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them…..I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
Two years ago Florida Governor Rick Scott implemented drug testing for welfare recipients, a move which panned out to be a colossal waste of time, money and resources.? In fact during the four month period of testing a paltry 2.6 percent of applicants tested, actually failed.? Moreover, the costs of implementing such tests outweighed the amount in benefits which would have been paid out to those recipients.? And despite all of this, many other states are following in Florida’s footsteps; which begs the question why?

Why is it when we feel?our tax dollars are being?misappropriated to benefit unworthy moochers,?the picture that conjures in our mind is that of a young African-American woman with acrylic nails, a designer hand bag, IPhone?in one hand, and food stamp card in the other?? Or a Mexican immigrant who?s English is less than par, as well as her slew of children receiving Medicaid?? The truth of the matter is, corporate welfare accounts for?50 percent more of government spending than social welfare programs.

That’s right, the real welfare queens, or rather kings, are those great “job creators,”? i.e.?BP Oil, Wal-Mart, Goldman Sachs, General Electric,?Dow Chemical, and so on; $10 billion, $1 billion, $12.9 billion, $32.2 million and $24.9 million respectively.

Yet somehow, we?seldom, if ever,?read or hear about the misdeeds and looting by Bob Dudley and Company.? When was the idea of drug testing the execs at Goldman Sachs ever entertained?? Albeit, a rather valid one, one which I’m quite certain would yield greater results than Governor Scott’s failed attempt.? But the notion of doing so seems almost preposterous to us, even insulting because these individuals somehow earned their wealth.

The media has carefully?crafted this perception in our minds and perception in the absence of truth has become reality.? But the stark reality is there has been, as Chris Hedges aptly states, a corporate?coup d’?tat of our democracy and our liberties.

In spite of?the incessant?corporate malfeasance?we continuously praise these marauders while scorning the unfortunate among us.? We buy into this notion that those who are poor are, thus so, because of their own choosing.? That if they worked a little harder, studied a little harder,?pulled themselves?up by their bootstraps, they could improve their lot.? And if they refuse, well let’s just show them some Christianly tough love by cutting off their resources.? Let’s remove all those safety nets,?government assistance, and food stamps.

Those who advocate such positions clearly have not studied history.? Ask the French and Russians how well starving the poor went over for them.

Edited by SS
#246478 by MikeTalbot
Fri Aug 14, 2015 1:13 am
if we have so many poor why are we allowing millions to jump our borders and suck down the same 'safety nets' in place for American poor? We have finite resources, and are 18 trillion in debt.

The more productive of the illegals take the low end and laboring jobs as well squeezing out the American poor whose work ethics are often not competitive.

The uniparty is united in flooding us with unskilled immigrants. Let's see, which wing of the uniparty cares about the poor?

Talbot
#246493 by Badstrat
Fri Aug 14, 2015 2:53 pm
Illegals DO take the jobs Americans Want.. For less money

http://www.vdare.com/articles/view-from ... ed-to-have

Miguel told me he had just gotten a job on a construction crew earning $22 an hour. Miguel receives full benefits,
too. Miguel was one of the best students I ever had. He came to class every night and studied hard. Although it
was a struggle for him, Miguel always made an effort to speak English. And his hard work paid off. Today,
Miguel`s English is pretty good.

After he first arrived in the United States, Miguel worked in the fields. Then he was hired at the cannery and worked the swing and graveyard shifts. But Miguel always wanted more and now he`s found it. If it weren`t for the fact that Miguel entered the U.S. illegally, I wouldn`t have one bad thing to say
about him.

Now that an amnesty for illegal aliens is back on Bush administration`s front burner, you`ll be reading
story after story about how illegal immigrants only take jobs Americans don`t want. This falsehood has
been written so often that it goes unchallenged.

But with the country knee deep in pink slips, no one can convince me that Miguel`s job isn`t coveted.
Thousands of the 800,000 Americans who lost their jobs in the last two months would be happy to earn
$22 an hour.

What makes Miguel`s story so timely is the AFL-CIO vote to support President Bush`s amnesty plan. For
the first time in its 46-year history, the federation adopted amnesty as its official policy.

Even the Teamsters union, which opposes Mexican truckers delivering goods in the U.S. because it knows American drivers will lose jobs, backed amnesty.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeny said, “We are now a beacon of hope to millions of workers who`ve come to our country seeking a better life.”

But AFL-CIO spokeswoman Kathy Roeder revealed the sub-rosa reason for the endorsement. Said Ms. Roeder, “We`re always looking for opportunities for people to join unions. That`s our number one reason for working with immigrants.”

Union membership has been steadily declining over the last decade. The union share of the American work force fell to 13.5% last year, the lowest in more than a quarter of a century. The unions need members to survive. What better pool of prospective new members than the millions of illegal aliens who have come to the U.S. during the last decade?

But when Ms. Roeder claims that there is no evidence that “immigrants take away American jobs,” she is
spouting the company line. All across America, illegal immigrants are doing jobs once held by Americans.

My student, Miguel, has a job once done by an American. For decades, hotel, restaurant and janitorial jobs were entry-level jobs held by black Americans. And while some might discount the significance of a janitorial job, such positions were eagerly pursued as recently as the early 1980s. In his book,

“The Case Against Immigration,” Roy Beck wrote that in the period from 1945 to 1980, janitors earned excellent wages because of their strong union. But in the early 1980s, when an abundant supply of immigrant workers became available, non-union firms hired them at half the going wage. Now, you rarely see a black hotel or restaurant worker.

Meatpacking is another job that Americans supposedly “won`t do.” But author Eric Schlosser, whose recent “Fast Food Nation” had a long run on the New York Times best seller list, wrote that 20 years ago jobs in packing plants were among the most well paid and highest skilled in America. What happened?

In an interview with “The Atlantic” Schlosser provided the
answer:

Until the late 1970s, meatpacking was one of thehighest paid industrial jobs in the United States. And
then the Reagan and Bush administrations stood aside and allowed the meatpacking industry to bust unions,
to hire strike breakers and scabs, to not only hire illegal immigrants but to transport them here from
Mexico in company buses.

The result said Schlosser is that meatpacking is now one of the country`s lowest paying and most dangerous
jobs. [VDARE.COM NOTE: The Centers for Disease Control has been forced to provide Spanish translations of all its worker safety posters, since there is no longer a reasonable expectation that workers can read and write English.]

And, more ominously, Schlosser claims that while we`ve had a migrant agricultural workforce for over a century, we are now developing a migrant industrial workforce. For the AFL-CIO to embrace amnesty can only mean disaster for America`s blue-collar wage earners.

As we saw in the late 1980s, amnesty begets more immigration. And new waves of immigrants will always be willing to work for less money.

As long as the job market has an inexhaustible supply of cheap labor, wages will remain stagnant. And the low-skilled native workers who are replaced by immigrants with equally limited skills have few places to turn.

As Bush`s amnesty plan moves relentlessly forward, newspaper stories will be chock full of sentences like this one:

An unprecedented coalition of labor and business
has joined the rising chorus of voices across America
who want to regularize millions of undocumented
workers. These workers, who do jobs Americans refuse
to do, are a vital cog in our economic machine.

Read as follows:

Labor, desperate for new members, has added
itself to a growing list of institutions across
America that support amnesty to illegal aliens for its
own narrow interests. The list includes but is not
limited to craven politicians, greedy businesses big
and small, universities and the mainstream media. Such
an amnesty would insure the never-ending flow of
low-skilled, poorly educated workers. Through the laws
of supply and demand, these new workers will continue
to replace American workers.
#246514 by Planetguy
Fri Aug 14, 2015 6:54 pm
why is it that those who bitch and moan loudest about illegals "taking jobs away" from americans are so quiet and have so little to say about the big corps shipping gazillions of jobs (that americans USED TO DO) overseas????

the only time you conservatives weigh in on that is to complain about how the govt has made it sooooooo hard on poor ol' big business that they've been left no choice but to raise their middle finger to american workers and go overseas.

yeah, right...i mean how else could they afford to bankroll their CEO's generous salaries, incentives, and bonuses.
#246516 by DainNobody
Fri Aug 14, 2015 7:15 pm
Planetguy wrote:why is it that those who bitch and moan loudest about illegals "taking jobs away" from americans are so quiet and have so little to say about the big corps shipping gazillions of jobs (that americans USED TO DO) overseas????

the only time you conservatives weigh in on that is to complain about how the govt has made it sooooooo hard on poor ol' big business that they've been left no choice but to raise their middle finger to american workers and go overseas.

yeah, right...i mean how else could they afford to bankroll their CEO's generous salaries, incentives, and bonuses.

exactly Mark, you are spot on.. many here could perform those jobs if they were back here in the U.S. .. jimmie made a point in another thread about thousands of high tech jobs here in the U.S. went unfilled, and I know that's true, but many Americans don't necessarily have the mental aptitude to perform those un-filled positions.. not just anybody has the capacity to learn calculus and comprehend it, and you need to grasp higher mathematics to perform those well paid jobs.. in the mean time, we need to bring factory production jobs back to give everybody a means to support themselves and their families no matter their mental capacity.. most could be come a machine operator, but everybody is not cut out to be a math whiz, so they can become an engineer or computer scientist..bring ALL THE JOBS BACK HOME you capitalists! ..
#246520 by Planetguy
Fri Aug 14, 2015 8:12 pm
Dayne Nobody IV wrote: ..... in the mean time, we need to bring factory production jobs back to give everybody a means to support themselves and their families no matter their mental capacity.. most could be come a machine operator....


or a bass player in truck stop house band!!!!!
#246526 by MikeTalbot
Fri Aug 14, 2015 11:29 pm
i hate to hear that jobs 'that Americans won't do' stuff. We did 'em when I was coming up because there was no alternative - not much in the way of govt programs then.

I learned to cuss and fight when I was twelve. And under achiever by current standards.

There is a hard fact this country needs to address and we better do it soon. Have most of the people sharp enough to get out of the ghettos and barrios done so? And if so, what are the low IQ / low initiative types going to do when the programs go away which is pretty much an economic certainty I should think? And they are already having to share the goodies with the illegals not working and they also number in the millions.

JimmyD -

I worked in IT for a long time as both programmer and project manager plus I started out working network admin on a multi-tasking system - learning that stuff was harder than boot-camp. Hardly slept for 3 months and had nightmares when I did. I learned it though.

I went in the opposite direction as your son. I didn't find hardware / network stuff as interested as writing code. Only failed at one job due to my lack of education - it was just like you said, "Calculus." Never encountered it again or it I did I didn't recognize it for that.

H1Bs are an issue and I found that many of them were much better educated but not really as sharp as one would anticipate.

Problem is - what kind of dumbass wants to grow up and slave away in Corporate America. I got so sick of it I told my last boss to get f**k and walked out the door. Nobody seems to be wanting to learn that stuff like we did. Of course, it used to be a lot of fun before the suits screwed it up.

Talbot

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