In Dallas Morning New’s story “Texas under fire over processing times for food stamp applications“,
it is reported that:

AUSTIN – The federal agency that oversees food stamps wants Texas to stop fingerprinting applicants as a way to save resources and speed up what the agency says is an unacceptably slow application system. But because Texas law requires the fingerprinting, the state’s Health and Human Services Commission finds itself caught between what the Legislature requires and what federal officials want.

“One of the things I think Texas needs to do is streamline their operations,” said William Ludwig, a regional administrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. “Finger imaging is very time-consuming.”

Texas is one of four states with such a requirement, which supporters – including Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst – say prevents people from collecting benefits under more than one name.

Critics have said it is invasive, a waste of money and seeks to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

The electronic fingerprinting costs $3 million a year: $1.6 million for Cogent Systems’ contract for the imaging and $1.4 million for state workers’ time. The state and federal governments split the cost.

Last year, the fingerprint program led to the state investigating four applicants for fraud. But state officials say it’s impossible to know how many people are deterred from applying multiple times because of the fingerprinting.

Ludwig told Texas officials last week in a letter that the state’s federal funds will be at risk if it doesn’t speed up its application processing. The federal government pays for all the food and splits administrative costs with the state.

Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Commission, said officials will consider eliminating fingerprinting but because it is done relatively quickly, “we really don’t think it helps this particular problem very much.”

[reprinted from the Austin American-Statesman 2009-10-02]

Most of the people posting comments are, of course, Conservative Republicans (I am in Texas, after all). Most of the respondents are of the opinion that because some people (a very few) commit fraud to get benefits, or misuse benefits once they have received them, that the program should be gotten rid of completely. This viewpoint is extremely insensitive to fellow human beings and ignorant of economic realities. I will now explain why…

There are some people who commit fraud to get benefits, or who misuse benefits, but there are a great many more who legitimately need help (more every day), mostly due to inflation caused by the greed of those in power who control the wealth and over time charge more for everything but pay the same or less.

The previous times that I have visited my local Health and Human Services office (in McKinney), there were tables to fill out forms, and a few chairs around each, and a few dozen people (max) waiting to be seen. The last few times (in recent weeks), there are only chairs, and hundreds of people filling the room, hungry, and sick with the flu, and wrapped around the block waiting to get in. It’s not because a lot more people suddenly decided to quit their jobs and let you support them with your precious taxes; it’s because the people that supposedly represent them (local, state, and federal) and the people who employee(d) constantly want and take more for themselves, at the expense of the people whose labor makes them rich.

I’m a single parent (white male) who has worked hard all of my adult life, and due to work-related back injuries and trouble finding full time work with benefits, I have had to use public assistance several times, even while working 2 jobs up to 7 days a week, just to barely be able to feed myself and my son and pay rent and electricity.

Here is my message to the hateful who have no sympathy for those less fortunate than themselves:

Those of you who are privileged enough to sit in luxury in big homes and drive around in gas guzzling trucks and SUVs (polluting and promoting the need for war) and cast judgment should count yourselves lucky, but not superior. A few unfortunate events and/or a few little mistakes in life, and you too could need help. That’s a fact that conservatives (fiscal and social) like to ignore. You are brainwashed by your leaders to think that just because you are white and Christian and racist like they are, that you too will someday get promoted up the ladder, or make your small business a big corporation, or get elected to office, or make it big in some other way (as a football player or country music singer?), so you support their selfish, vicious, imperial capitalism either because you also benefit from it, or because you think that you eventually will.

Those of you who spew hate against food benefits and medicaid and health care reform, decrying them as the evil of “socialism” should keep in mind that public schools and libraries and police and fire departments and paramedics and parks and water districts and the US military are socialist, and not private corporate for-profit entities. Should we dissolve these services and make everything private? It appears we already are with the rise of private prisons, police, and mercenary armies. Those things don’t inspire patriotism for American for me.

Those of you who say that there should be no welfare or food stamp benefits of any kind should consider that as time goes on, and more people are unemployed or underemployed and uninsured or under insured and losing their cars and homes, you may be joining the ranks of those you see as slackers and leaches. If you someday get downsized, or ill or injured, lose your insurance, lose your jobs, and end up homeless and hungry in the pro-corporate anti-human system that you propose, perhaps only then will you understand how naive your hateful self-righteousness really is. Let’s see if you still support the same corrupt politicians who get millions in campaign contributions and lobbying and secret bribes from big companies to pass and support laws that benefit the rich when you too, are poor.

I sincerely hope that you either take a look at your ideas and realize how hateful and ignorant and arrogant you are, and realize that you are not immune to the conditions of those whom you detest, and stop discriminating against your brothers and sisters who aren’t as successful, or that bad fortune befalls you and teaches you firsthand what it’s like to be one of the have-nots. Only then will karma be served.

The American Dream is over folks. This shows that the Liberal Democrats are just as paid off by corporations as Conservative Republicans, and have just as little desire to represent the people. Maybe now more of you will join me in voting third party (independent, green, libertarian, etc) in the mid-term congressional elections in 2010 and the presidential election in 2012.

I love that this was caught on film. It’s an excellent example of the attitude of our lawmakers. Having been paid off by the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and then making sure that only they are represented in the discussion of health care reform, citizens stand up and demand “their” representatives to represent their needs, and the response is that “we need more police” to shut them up. It’s Animal Farm. “All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.”

YouTube – Protester Delays Senate Committee Opening

See also: Single Payer Action

On My Honor, I Promise To Get Some Poontang

I recently came across a blog entry with scanned pages from the 1965 Boy Scout handbook. Some of those commenting mentioned that the book has a chapter concerning masturbation. One commenter included a quotation of one section of this chapter, which reads as follows:

At times the glands discharge part of their secretions through the sex organ during sleep. This process is called a nocturnal emission or a “wet dream”. It is perfectly natural and healthy and a sign that nature has taken care of the situation in its own manner.

There are boys who do not let nature have its own way with them but cause emissions themselves. This may do no physical harm, but may cause them to worry.

Any real boy knows that anything that causes him to worry should be avoided or overcome. If anything like this worries you, this is not unusual – just about all boys have the same problem. Seek the correct answer to any question which bothers you about your development from boy to man. But be sure to get your information from reliable sources – your parents, your physician, your spiritual adviser.

It’s funny that the writer practically plants a suggestion to the readers that pleasuring themselves will possibly trouble their consciences. I’ve never felt worried about masturbation, nor has any man or woman I’ve ever met who has been willing to discuss the topic with me. Any guilt associated with self-pleasing acts is generally forced onto people by the judgement of others who are less open-minded.

However, what strikes me as strange is that the discussion on the page mentioned above focuses on masturbation, which was important enough to mention in the book, but that there is no mention of homosexuality. I assume that this is because, at the time, gayness was less accepted and less talked about in society, and as such was not a topic deemed necessary for inclusion in the manual. I guess the writers of the book were afraid that mentioning homosexuality might have given sexually frustrated boys ideas about how to work out their issues without resorting to masturbation?  

Wouldn’t the BSA rather have Scouts jerking off in their sleeping bag than playing leap frog in the showers? Perhaps the organization saw masturbation by a boy as gay, because pleasing yourself as a male means that a male is pleasing you, and is therefore somehow a homosexual act?

I was a Scout, and Eagle Scout in fact, and I don’t remember a single Scout leader, event, pep-talk, pledge, or piece of literature that ever mentioned the pursuit of sex or the act of sex, so I therefore assumed that the Scouts was not a group concerned with sexual orientation. It’s not like the Scouts is about getting girls anyway, so why would they care whether you wanted to?

I was in Scouting from 1982 to 1992. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that the topic of homosexuals vs Scouting became a hot button issue in the news, nationally.

My immediate response was twofold: why would gay boys, who are generally more effeminate, want to go rough it in the wild with heteros, who would probably make fun of and bully them, and why would Scouts, who enjoy being clean and doing crafts, not want gay members?

I have often thought it funny that an organization that wears such gay outfits as short shorts with slits in the side, long socks with fuzzy balls on them, scarves, and berets would be so anti-gay. Hmm… Maybe that’s why gay boys would want to be Scouts; for the lovely uniforms?

I later caught on that the real issue is that many parents were concerned more about gay leaders, who they felt might molest or corrupt their boys, than actually about gay boys intermingling with straights. Protecting your child from sexual predators is a valid concern, but I think that most statistics would show that hetero men are far more likely to take advantage of girls than gay men are of boys. So, I think that the uproar against gays in Scouting was kind of overkill.

Maybe we could help to rectify this issue by blending the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts into just the Scouts, the way it is in most countries around the world. But perhaps the USA is still too sexually repressed to let our little boys and little girls play and work and camp together?

I guess as a para-military organization, you want to prepare the men to die in trenches some day defending the flag? I think unless they include some merit badges about boobs and getting nookie, they should just not worry about it.

Parents: teach your kids to tell you if adults take advantage of them sexually or otherwise, in Scouts, or elsewhere, and get over it and stop giving the Boy Scouts of America a hard time.

Scouts: stick to teaching citizenship and survival skills and personal & social responsibility, and let boys decide whether they wanna get with girls or boys or animals or whatever…

WARNING / CAUTION / DISCLAIMER:

The following article contains offensive racial slurs, which I have heard from others and quoted to make a point about the stupidity of racism, and I neither condone, promote, or use these terms myself, as I find them very ignorant and hurtful.

I am a progressive, liberal, compassionate, and logical human being of mixed-race descent (Scotch-Irish and Cherokee) living in Dallas, Texas.

I am often embarrassed to be associated with white people from the southern United States of America. They are, in great part, racists who think that (I quote their offensive slurs, which I do not use myself) “Niggers”, “Spics”, “Chinks”, “Heebs”, and “Sand Niggers” are the reason that they are poor and unsuccessful, instead of blaming the old, rich, white men who claim to be “Christians” while accumulating ungodly sums of money by raising prices of goods and services, lowering wages, salaries, and benefits, and selling our country out from under us, with jobs, roads, and ports going to the highest bidder. If these poor caucasian saps would instead make friends and allies of the African-American AKA Black, Hispanic AKA Latino, Asian AKA Oriental, Jewish AKA Hebrew, and Muslim AKA Arab people living among them, then we could perhaps make some progress in taking back our country from the true terrorists: the Rich! (I use the “AKA”s above to illustrate that it’s hard to be politically correct and not offend anyone these days, because nobody can seem to decide what they want their group to be called from decade to decade.)

In a recent conversation, I expressed a sincere hope that the positive example set by Barack Obama as a person of color who has acheived much and promises to help his country become better might give pause to the more violent and racist elements of the African-American community and inspire some of them to move forward and let go of the past to forgive the whites of the present for the sins of the whites of the past. The person I was talking too said, and I quote, “They were niggers before he was elected, and they’re still niggers after…”  I was offended, and ended the conversation because not only did I think I would be able to change the person’s mind, but my 3 year old son was present, and I didn’t want him to hear another utterance of the word “nigger”, which, when said in a playful way as a term of endearment, I don’t find offensive whether it comes from a black or a white person, but when, used as an insult to dismiss an entire race of people as ignorant or inferior, infuriates me! I later thought of a comeback, which I wish I had responded with at the time: The people who elected Bush were rednecks before he was elected, and they are still rednecks after…

The Conservative media tells me every day that illegal immigrants from Mexico are taking my jobs, even though they are mostly doing  jobs that I don’t want, while the government gets paid by corporations to send the jobs I do want to China, India, The Phillipines, etc. where they can save a few bucks.

I also grow weary of trying to explain to close-minded, racist, hateful, fearful rednecks how not all Muslims are terrorists, just as not all Protestants and Catholics blow each other up in cafes like the Irish and English have done during their spats. For white suburban Texans to assume that all followers of Islam are suicide bombers is just unrealistic and fanatical, and primarily based on poor upbringing. The average John Doe Redneck is as brainwashed by his government, media, parents, friends and coworkers as the many Middle-Eastern Muslims who, after being told by their leaders at the point of a gun that the West is the “Great Devil”, think that all Christians are two-faced, greedy, empire-minded lunatics who go on crusades to convert the world to their faith, although it is true that many of the wealthy and powerful are.

I am complaining here mostly about racism by white people, which is what I have witnessed the most where I grew up and now live, but I am in no way trying to ignore racism by other cultures. It’s just not much of an issue for me. Even when I’ve been places like downtown Dallas, Oak Cliff, and Pleasant Grove, here in D/FW, and also in poor black neighborhoods in Jackson, MS and Los Angeles, CA, I have barely ever had a black person, even among groups of imposing looking young men, ever be rude to me. On the contrary, I have stopped and asked young black men comparing guns and cars for directions and had them call me brother. In contrast, I have had many unintelligent, undereducated, ignorant whites, especially in Mississippi, Lousiana, and Texas, who have started fights with me for no apparent reason. And I look white. Go figure… I guess they can smell intelligence and open-mindedness and it scares them. Babies, kids, elderly folks, and animals love me, so it’s the rednecks at fault here, not me!

I think the best preventative medicine against future racism is to talk to groups of young kids of various races in groups in school, and let them openly discuss how their parents talk about people of other races, and how it makes them feel, and then let the kids of other races tell them how it makes them feel. Then show the kids how much they have in common. I bet most of them will make friends. Kids learn faster than adults.

As for curative measures for people presently already infected with the deadly (in some cases) affliction of racism, I figure until we figure out how to re-program their brains or make a pill or injection to fix them, we should release all non-violent drug offenders from the prisons and put the racists in there instead.

Let them hate and fear and insult and fight and kill each other where the rest of us don’t have to deal with it anymore.

Maybe early on in evolution, racism helped a herd of tribe of people survive and protected them from other competing groups, but racist people are now as obsolete as fossil fuels. Too bad we are still having to put up with both of them.

  

 

 

Iqbal, my friend, R.I.P.

Yesterday, I attended a beautiful memorial ceremony for a good friend of mine who recently passed away.

His name was Iqbal, and he was 66 years old and from Pakistan. He is survived by his wife, Shar, who is a Buddhist from Texas, and 7 kids who live in Denmark, Norway, and Pakistan. Iqbal was a big guy, and quite a wrestler, and had fought battles against India as a soldier in the Pakistani army in the 1960s. He later lived in New York, Vancouver, Canada, and Chicago before coming to Texas.

Iqbal was a compassionate, honest, and funny man. We became friends quickly upon first meeting, both being outsiders, although he looked the part more than I in a predominately white neighborhood. He owned and operated a convenience store next to a coffee house where I worked and across the street from a cafe where I worked later. We shared many great conversations, laughs, quiet watching of the world going by, and smokes on his hookah. We helped each other through many rough work days and trying personal issues.

My friendship with Iqbal, despite our being born of different generations, races, faiths, and sides of the Earth, serves as an outstanding example to me and people I know of how open minded, compassionate people can co-exist peacefully despite their differences.

Iqbal’s mother passed away recently, so he traveled home to Pakistan to pay his respects. While there, he was riding a friend’s horse (something he had not done in many years), but fell off and was injured. While laid up with his injury, he fell ill, and a few days later, passed away during the night. Iqbal was a very progressive and open-minded Muslim, but was buried on the day he died in Pakistan, in accordance with the traditions of Islam.

Iqbal’s memorial was performed in a Buddhist style, although there were Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Atheists in attendance. It was a wonderful gathering of multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-national love, peace, and happiness, not so much to mourn a death but to celebrate a life, which is what life is supposed to be about.

I would guess that Iqbal is watching the world with concern, curiosity, and insight from wherever he is now, and is having a good laugh with friends.

Apparently I’m not the only one pissed off about the new Red Scare started by RepuliNazis:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg_2ypr18NE]

thanks to Sandra for passing me this link…

this sucks and blows! but it’s funny as shit!