A hero for us in the working class

A liberal lioness

 

I would be remiss is I failed to note that Barbara Ehrenreich, one of the great writers and voices for American liberals, passed away last week at the age of 81.  I had the good fortune to read several of her books, a number of which were indictments on the failed promises of the American Dream.  Her book Nickel and Dimed, in which she posed as a working class American and worked a number of minimum wage jobs and juggled a losing battle with expenses just like far too many Americans, should be required reading in every high school in America.

Her compassion for the poor, her anger at the rigged Class War, her questioning of America's myths, and her persistent humor in spite of it all should be beacons for all of us who fight the good fight for a better America for each and every one of us, not just the rich.  

Though her legacy will abide, she will be missed.

Republican = Traitor

Peace,

emaycee

True colors

Not happy with just calling out parents of poor children for not loving their children enough, Rep. Paul Ryan, the man who would not be Vice-President, declared earlier this week that poverty is the result of lazy inner city men.

No shit.

Ryan spokespersons later tried to defend his comments by citing some data that did nothing of the sort (turns out that most of the poverty in America occurs in rural areas), and Ryan later backtracked on his comments saying he did not intend to demean an entire community (read:  African-American).

Yes, yes he did.  The republicans' Southern Strategy is well-documented and this is just another case of a republican assuring the base in an election year that all would be well in American if it just wasn't for those darn colored folks.

As Barbara Ehrenreich has famously noted, poverty is not a character flaw, it is a shortage of money.  But it's a lot easier for republicans to blame somebody than to fix the problem--and blaming people gets them a lot more votes than showing compassion for America's poor.

Peace,
emaycee

Another day older and deeper in debt

At one time in America, there were numerous towns (generally in industries like coal mining and lumber) that were built by corporations in remote areas where their workers shopped in company stores and lived in company owned houses.  They were called company towns, and while a few eventually grew into municipalities, most failed because, well, it was bad enough to get fucked every day by the company you worked for while you were working without letting them fuck you while you were shopping and relaxing at home, too.

The result was that often workers ended up in debt to the companies they worked for and thus were basically forced to continue working to pay off the debt--it was a never ending circle.  I note this because of an article I read recently by Barbara Ehrenreich in which she discussed how expensive it is to be poor.  As an example, if you can't afford a nice car, you have to buy an old beater, which results in expensive repair bills and generally poor gas mileage which raises your transportation costs (and doesn't even include lost work days because said old beater breaks down).  Of, if you can't afford first and last month's rent for an  apartment, you end up living day to day in cheap motels which are more expensive over time than almost any apartment.  Not to mention they usually are without cooking appliances, thus forcing the poor to spend even more money on fast food or pre-cooked meals which are immeasurably more expensive than making your own.

And this is what minimum wage jobs have wrought--low wage workers are basically stuck in their jobs because they don't make enough money to have a chance to get out of them.  In a nutshell, it's an awful lot like the aforementioned company towns--except that now instead of being in a dead-end job and just paying their hard earned money to the company they work for, low pay workers are in a dead-end jobs and pay their hard-earned money to many, many companies.

And, in what should come as surprise to no one, we once again see that the free market ain't so free.

Peace,
emaycee

Brevity is the soul of compassion, too

I've been reading Barbara Ehrenreich's work for many years now and can honestly say she's probably one of the most underrated progressives in the country.  Her work highlights the poor, the working class, and the middle class to great effect and she is a staunch proponent of all three.

She's also very good at keeping her work short and sweet--I'm not sure of the four or five books of hers I've read that any of them top three hundred pages.  But from small things, big things come....

I ran across this piece where Ehrenreich discusses how conservatives created the idea of a culture of poverty but little has been done to actually cure poverty.  There are many theories as to what causes poverty, but Ehrenreich sums it up brilliantly in six words:

                                       "Poverty is a shortage of money."

Pretty much hits the nail on the head.

Peace,
emaycee