Friday, January 23, 2015

They Want to Cut Disability!


Are they insane? The disabled are already struggling. We have had cost of living cuts for years. My check seems so small compared to the bills, if I could go get a job tomorrow, I would. For all the Republicans who whine about people bilking the system, no one is getting rich on social security. Most people's rent is more then a disability check!

People on disability do not live high on the hog. Are there a few cheaters? Maybe so, but they have this propaganda out there where they act like people can just walk into a disability office and say, "My back hurts" and go home and get a check for years and years. They even still review me every three years and I have multiple illnesses that ONE ALONE such as my cardiomyopathy or COPD could be enough to qualify.  Many people do get turned down, if not most.

I do know more people then ever are applying for disability, the whole program is getting a bum rap. I am not healthy enough to work but I worry about how our employment system is openly discriminating against anyone with any minor health problem, difference or even age. They are discriminating openly. They have no mercy for a short term illness. Have any of you noticed this? It is worsening. To get a decent job, you have to be thin and more and more young. Some with an extreme computer or other skill can do better, but not all people are so blessed. I wasn't.

 I  firmly believe the job system needs a massive rehaul, where "at-will" employment would become a thing of the past and where people would not be thrown away for being over 50, or being a little bit fat, or Aspie, or different. I am seeing too many decent people being thrown into permanent poverty because they are not a lithe shark. Bosses should not be able to destroy lives at a flick of a wrist. I believe that firing someone should only be allowed if they cannot do a job--incompetence, or they are willfully breaking the rules or the company is running out of money or going bankrupt. People should not be forced into poverty because they are "not a good fit" and someone "doesn't like someone" or the office backstabbing reaches a narc zenith.

One thing I have learned more about the healthy enough to work disabled, is there are no more job programs for them save for workplaces usually doing simple factory tasks reserved for the developmentally disabled. There is no more job placement. How on earth did that happen? We found this out exploring options for my husband a few years ago.

They also need to realize Globalism is destroying our country and switch to America First policies. Get this, the other day, I was trying to get an Obama phone because I will need one to safely use the bus, and all the people working for them were in the Philippines, so think about that one, for a second, and how these phone programs get government money but that money is going to people overseas instead of Americans! That one made me want to puke! I told the guy, "Everyone in America needs a welfare phone because all the jobs went to your country! Our economy here is really bad." Hey some of them should know the truth.

No one is living it up on disability. It is barely enough to survive on. If I was not married, I would have to live in a subsidized apartment and even now, we may need to move into one as a married couple eventually.  It makes me sick how they have brainwashed this country to hate the disabled and see them as the go-to guys to scrape back money. Maybe because the disabled are the most vulnerable population with little resources to fight back? Hmm that must be it.

We are low on money this month again. Our shared flu early last month had a lot to do with it, since husband's work got reduced.

 I had to cook a bunch of things from scratch and even yesterday recycled 2 cups of left over cabbage soup that had been made with some smoked turkey necks the day before, for lunch. I saved half of the cabbage and some more turkey necks for another meal.

I added some left over frozen vegetables to the mix to make a new vegetable soup. I can cook anything and made biscuits too. I am craving yogurt, some grape leaves, and a good salad right now. I can't afford any of it now. I will be making chicken and rice as a midday meal, with left over celery, some peas, and onions I got last month from a food pantry. So no one is starving in here....YET.

Very little goes to waste in here.

We will be going to the once a month soup kitchen this one church holds. It's supposed to be warmer so I won't be housebound. I sometimes discuss going to the regular daily soup kitchen but it's in a very dangerous neighborhood. My husband told me a friend who volunteered there warned him it's a very sketchy place but if we got hungry enough, we would have to. We will be going to a food pantry on Saturday morning.

I haven't bought stamps, clothes, a magazine--I read those all used and from magazine bins, or anything one would consider luxurious or frivolous in MONTHS. For clothes I have personally bought,  make that one literally YEARS. I don't celebrate Christmas. All the cards I sent everyone was recycled from old cards. I try to live as frugal as possible. The bills still crush us anyway.

If healthy, I would pack up tomorrow, and go join a non-Agenda 21 intentional community or commune or Christian community but none of these places are scrambling to get a member that would come with a hospital bed, a wheelchair, nebulizer and a walker.  Modern American life to me continues to suck. I feel like I am in the bus station of life with only a few close friends sticking around as people come and go. I don't need to be rich, I can have fun without money but you know, some us just get wore down. I and my husband have even asked ourselves if a decent life could be found overseas, but with my disabilities, joint medical needs and our age, this is less possible. I hate this feeling of being "stuck". It's funny me and him are smart people but can't figure out this making money thing or basic survival. That may be the worse thing about Aspergers in my case.

 One thing in the works via Congress and the evil party this time [good cop, bad cop games] is they want to cut disability by 20%.  Will they cut the bills by 20 percent? I doubt it.

Please don't cut my disability check, I am barely making it now! They always GO after the disabled first, have you noticed that?

If they cut disability our pressures will grow even more intense. I have to pray, that sanity will prevail in one of our most insane institutions called Congress.  Caretaking is a hard enough pressure without poverty added to the menu from his side of things. Today, he has been working for hours on his freelance. We struggle even with shared income. What will happen to the disabled people who live alone!? They may be eating a can of dog food for dinner.

I do have nightmares of one day of being behind a shopping cart, in front of my narcissistic mother's 3,000+ square foot house with her two new cars in the drive way, begging for food or a place to sleep. She loves the Tea Party politicians that yell about the disabled and malign them.

I hope they do not cut disability for the disabled or the elderly.  It would impact my life very negatively.

5 comments:

  1. I'm so sorry, Peeps, that you are living this political nightmare when you have high-stress issues to contend with each day. The stress of worrying about providing for one self is something I don't think Tea Partiers are concerned about. Their "individualistic" perspective is crazy-making in a society that claims to be the world's guiding MORAL light. How people can applaud cutting social security and disability is shockingly anti-social and narcissistic.

    There may be freeloaders who take advantage of a system created for the "truly entitled" but I think cheaters are few-and-far between. That's my personal opinion after being initiated to a single mother's reality when her monthly allotment of baby formula ran out. I wish people would look at the "higher ups" and question THEIR excessive waste, rather than picking on people who get free milk and cheese. Good God...what has this nation come to? When people I love complain about "free lunches" for kids, it tells me something about the state of their hearts---no matter what self-congratulatory lies they are telling themselves.

    I know, as do your readers, that narcissists Kick Down. Not Up. People since time immemorial have needed a scapegoat to eat their sins. In a society promoting self-reliance (not inter-reliance, heaven forbid!) the scapegoat is the person who cannot provide for themselves.

    I believe that pushing an agenda like this will backfire. Too many of us have been marginalized, even after following a successful-life-script. Divorce gave me a wake-up call to the precariousness of the American Dream. Then last year, my 40-year old daughter became disabled by multiple sclerosis. Despite her hard-work ethic and years of supporting herself financially, she is now unable to work. Were I not in a position to provide for part of her living expenses (she lives with me now), I don't know what she would do! There is no way on God's green earth (green=money) that she could secure a reasonable standard of living on SSDI. She is in the process of filing (no easy task for those who haven't been through this process!) and she will need an attorney to plead her case to a judge who has total authority to deny or allow a shitty monthly payment that is inadequate to meet her needs. I have adjusted my standard of living to accommodate hers and hope they don't cut my social security (which is lousy since it's 1/2 what my ex gets because of course, HE WORKED and I DIDN'T...gggrrr!!).

    Now if our nation said, "We are the greediest industrialized nation on earth and if you aren't earning a paycheck, we will let you die in our streets", well, I wouldn't have cognitive dissonance when tea partiers pushed their agenda. But when a nation claims to be "all about family" and "all about morals and integrity", well, that makes everyone crazy.

    Thank goodness for the affordable care act which allows my daughter to have her own policy and receive medical treatment.

    In my very Republican family, their hearts are broken for my daughter and they were supportive when my ex decided to quit work at fifty and move in with his new smoochie and yet, they hope Obamacare is destroyed? And they hate "entitlements" as if they're a sin against God? Hard for me to understand since the God I grew up learning to love, never said "Hate the poor and blessed be the predators."

    I don't think this approach against the disabled will play out. What it has done (for myself at least) is ignite the political fire beneath my feet. Not caring about anyone but "the self" will destroy our society and our nation.

    Hugs,
    CZ

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks CZBZ, yes I have a lot of high stress issues to deal with. The Tea party types are the ones who are financially secure. There's many poor people out there, who don't even vote anymore. We don't feel represented. The lady who wrote the Bootstrap book I blogged about a few days ago said most of the poor aren't voting anymore. Maybe we feel worn out. The sink or swim ethos is a lie especially in a world where hiring is done via a weed out process--one can't really CHOOSE to have a job nowadays in some important ways if you think about it. My husband would have chose to remain the copy ad editor back in 2007. Funny how they sell everything as a choice and "individualistic" when so people suffer at the decisions of so many others. Too many have been brainwashed by Ayn Rand and her ilk. I hold some libertarian views when it comes to civil liberties, but it didn't escape my notice that woman was in love with a serial killer and preached "social darwinism", let the poor, sick and vulnerable just die in the gutter. Sadly that mentality have taken over the evil party by storm. They are basically scapegoating the poor and disabled as they clean out the till in America. Did you see the NYT article, I have it linked on the Bootstrap article, where it said millions of people especially men under 60 are out of the workforce? I doubt most of them wanted to be poor and unemployed.
    I think we are seeing the direct effects of the narcissists and sociopaths taking over our society.

    I think the cheaters are few and far between too. They do constant reviews and more. Most people now who get disability have to fight for 2 years and that means 2 years of severe poverty and hopefully someone there to help them.
    The "higher ups" waste endless money on their wars and other projects. What is so dumb about them too is if you don't offer options for people and just say a 20 percent cut is it, they are too dumb to realize how that will mean 20 percent less to merchants.
    I agree about the free lunches too. Maybe they should stop outsourcing the jobs or do something about how technology has changed the jobs and limited their number? But with these out of touch sorts, they simply do not care about the life of the average person and only care about filling their pockets.

    I think America is on the edge of the cliff. It makes me very sad. They have marginalized so many people. The social connections that once kept the poor going and helped them share resources to survive have broken down. Many are realizing what we have been fed is a lot of false promises. This is not a good recipe for societal cohesion or progress whether someone is on the right or left. {I'm done with both as you know LOL}

    continuing...

    ReplyDelete

  3. Yes divorce is a hard hit for many women and I feel for what your daughter has faced and praying for her. I am glad you were there to help her too. If I was not married and he is so poor himself, I know I would be going without many needed items. I told my husband today if we did not have each other I would have long ago been dead. Thank God you were and are there for her.

    Many people "do what they are supposed to do" and are not failing through the cracks. It's horrible. I think of the time during my weight gain, and the abuses I had to take just to keep employed, it was terrible and means I needed years of therapy not only for the parental abuse but for the work abuse too.

    I hope your daughter can get disability. Yes those judges have a lot of power over people's lives. Make sure she takes in pictures of herself in wheelchair or any other physical effects you can muster. I sent disability pictures of my swollen legs for one review. I know you have to be worried about your social security too. I do think Congress is mad, what is going to happen when millions can't make their bills. One would think prices would fall, but the "market" is so corrupted, there will be no self-correction.

    I have cognitive dissonance too. Remember I'm in the born again Christian world, I've been telling church members the Republican party is bunk for years and Christians need to stick to what Jesus preached about the poor. Many do and have even helped me, but too many are caught in the Ayn Rand, throw the poor in the gutter, tidal wave.

    I was against Obamacare but mostly because we could not afford it! LOL However I do think something is needed for medical care. NIH like system? The jobs are unloading private insurance like mad. The whole thing is broken. I'm not with the people who think the ill should just go die in the gutter.

    I definitely agree with you that the narcissism and only caring about "self" is killing our nation.Our communities are being decimated by this stuff. This every man is an island stuff simply is not true. The elite benefit from all these lies, and they have fooled far too many as they rake in the cash.

    Thanks CZ

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, we lived in "socialized medicine" France for many years and the experience shook my concertized beliefs about "the greatest nation on Earth". I love the USA, don't get me wrong---but our individualism has become pathological. Like everything else, a little individualism is healthy---too much and we've isolated ourselves. Despite insults and misinformation about Obamacare, it's not socialism. Insurance lobbyists have strong hold over the options we can even consider as American citizens.

      France had a tiered system requiring more $$ from people who made more $$, and no $$ from people who didn't have $$. In other words, the people in my income-tier paid full price for school lunches and childcare; the people who made less $$, paid less or none at all. I was totally fine with the system and thought it was fair. When returning to the states and talking with people about the way human needs were being met by a tiered system, well........I almost got myself tied to a stake and lit on fire. Why should they (making $200K+ a year) pay full-price for daycare when the housemaid didn't pay anything for her kids to attend the same care center?

      See what I mean?! The false notion of a "meritocracy". In other words, the rich deserve to have more than others and they're not about to share their money with people who don't work as hard (or whatever other reason they come up with as to why they deserve money more than others).

      I realize you are part of the born again Christian world. I used to be quite active in my christian faith but these days, church gives me ptsd. The cognitive dissonance makes me faint and I fear being ostracized as wicked old feminist or something. ha! When I saw Ayn Rand's books in our local Christian bookstore, well---that threw me for a loop, I can tell you! I think my head spun around. haha...at least a double-take!!

      It sickens me the way religion and politics have been merged together. My grandfather used to be Democrat and so were many other relatives and they all went to church together and they granted each other political differences without getting huffy or taking it personally if they disagreed. It's truly weird to me, how religion-and-politics are today...being a Democrat is like saying we need an exorcism. ha!!

      Hugs,
      CZ

      Delete
    2. HI CZ, yes living in France one could see the differences there. I don't mind some program for people in my mind one without the insurance as a middleman would have been better. Politically I don't fit anywhere. It's the fact of the matter, I think the individualism is destroying this place, but then all the collectivism our leaders tout is more about control and profit then spontaneous connections. We really are paying a high price in this country for the decline of social connections. I think the individualism has become pathological and Ayn Rand and her poisonous ethos has taken over far too much. Yeah I can see some going nuts over you wanting more fairness. I do not mind the rich having their own private day cares, but charging a woman that makes 1500 a month, 1,000 dollar for day care is insanity and well this country has LOST IT'S COMMON SENSE.
      People don't remember that corporations in the so called "conservative" 50s, were paying 30% or more in taxes and now via tax breaks, and laws they have written through THEIR LOBBYISTS, that part of the tax base is GONE and one reason the country is in trouble, but you won't hear about that reality from any of the tax brokers.

      For all the conservatives who cry about welfare, there is far more bail-outs and cash going to big business.

      I do okay in my churches but all of them know where I stand. I am in independent type churches, some of which you may consider fundamentalist but if they require I be a Republican to be there, it wouldn't last too long.

      The church world isn't easy for me too, my Christian faith comes above any preacher but the Dominionism is scary, marriage of church and state. Pushing wars via false religious teachings.

      One church I visited put the fighter jets up on the screens during Memorial Day and I was kind of sickened and did not return. I think in the church I am in now, given one of the pastors sons was in combat in Iraq I think he sees through more of what is going on and the limitation of politics. Before I started going to this church, I told him my political beliefs and what I thought of both parties. I wanted to make sure I would not be tossed out before hand or would not sit there and find out they were full blown Dominionists. LOL I know I am independent but I miss the days where one could go to church and not get the political litmus tests. People could have political differences back then. I worry because everything is so delineated now. I like how things used to be back then. So we definitely agree there.

      Delete