Kinja reply list

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1PompadourHamilton Nolan
6/19/15 12:45pm
I blame Reagan for changing the entire attitude of so many toward the less fortunate. This unqualified so-called leader, already quite demented by his first term, validated and legitimized the most mean-spirited attitudes toward the poor. Whereas the country had formerly gotten behind the war on poverty, after seeing the Appalachian suffering, and actually enacted some humane legislation, Reagan attacked the poor as responsible for their own misfortunes, mocked them, shorted them (even children), and unleashed an animus toward them that has never abated. Most people have ups and downs in their lives; the whole goal of assistance is to help out those down on their luck and give them some nourishment, dignity and hope. Reagan divided the country so profoundly that it reaches across generations and has come to define us as a global shame. The power of skinflint hatred toward the poor in America still astounds me. When I was young and poor in 1970, I injured my leg. I had surgery on Medicaid; I was treated promptly, humanely and competently, and restored to perfect mobility. I worked my way through a top college and have pretty much had a six-figure income ever since. As a taxpayer and an American, I consider it my responsibility to help out my less fortunate brethren, and that apart from charity. I want my taxes to go to the needy, so that I can enjoy the money I earn without ashes in my mouth. Either we’re a family in this country or we’re chopped liver.
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  smokeybailey1Pompadour
  6/19/15 1:10pm
  I wish I had powers to ungrey you.
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  Muscato1Pompadour
  6/19/15 1:17pm
  As a taxpayer and an American, I consider it my responsibility to help out my less fortunate brethren, and that apart from charity. I want my taxes to go to the needy, so that I can enjoy the money I earn without ashes in my mouth.
  
  Thank you. If I had my way we’d be raising our children to say something like this every morning instead of the fucking pledge of allegiance.
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Jennifer C. MartinHamilton Nolan
6/19/15 12:21pm
Hamilton, have you ever received an email, comment, or message that indicated someone had changed their opinions about government assistance because of these stories? I hope so. I link these to every single discussion I see on my Facebook about welfare. People should know what real life is like for these people, instead of just the right wing’s caricature of “entitled” poor.
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  Volante3192Jennifer C. Martin
  6/19/15 12:31pm
  Curious as well, though I wouldn’t hold my breath. In the infamous words of Craig T Nelson:
  
  “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No. No.”
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  Hamilton NolanJennifer C. Martin
  6/19/15 12:41pm
  I don’t tend to get emails from people like that saying they’ve changed their opinions but I do get emails from people who have been in this position and are glad that stories like theirs are getting some attention, which is really the point of this.
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mozhatesmeHamilton Nolan
6/19/15 12:48pm
I was an eligibility worker not too long ago, and I was really conflicted every day going into work. On the one hand, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and wanted to inspire change in people’s lives, no matter how small. Knowing what some of my clients went through pushed me to educate them on their resources, to motivate them, ask them to be proactive. On the the other, this was really hard to do when the majority of my coworkers were really jaded and were constantly going into interviews with clients with the idea that they were defrauding the system just to get more money. This bled over to me as I would often leave for home angry, disappointed, and mulling over all of the interviews that went poorly, because the clients would try to rush me, urge me to give them more than our regulations would allow me to, and generally have a huge sense of entitlement. Anecdotally speaking, there were many instances of single-mothers who were coming into interviews with their children, claiming fathers who were not in the home, and living alone without employment. In the worst case scenarios, when our investigation units went out, the same women answered their doors and requested to withdraw their assistance cases because: a) the father was living in the home, b.) an unrelated adult male was in the home providing financial assistance, c.) the children were not living with the mother, hence no deprivation, and in turn no money. But for every 1 of these instances there are 5 families that have absolutely no recourse. The interview that haunts me to this day is a family of 4, mother is a foreign student with a temp visa until she finishes her program at a nearby institution. Husband is currently unemployable because he is here through his wife’s visa, doesn’t have an SSN, and is not able to work, otherwise he’d be in violation of the terms of the visa. They have two children who are young that they brought with them. The family was living in their apartment, several months of unpaid rent, completely exhausted their savings. Any family assistance that they would’ve potentially received changed when the initially-supportive family decided to cut the daughter off for attempting to make a life in America, and overtake her husband and wasn’t more “traditionally female”. The mother balances school full-time, an internship, being a wife/mother, and a 15-20/week job that pays about $12/hour. For the duration of the 1 and a half hour interview, the mother is inconsolable. She has very little money to pay for food, electricity and water has been shut off, she doesn’t get enough hours at work, and isn’t even able to get another job elsewhere for two reasons: a.) visa restrictions, b.) School restrictions preventing students in the program from working over 20 hours a week. Her children are smiling, and overall too young to fully grasp or understand the gravity of their parents situation. The husband is also in the room, very stoic, reserved. They say that they feel so humiliated that they are in this position when they are trying to better themselves, and seize opportunities they don’t have in their home country. Ultimately, I end up denying the case, because they don’t have eligibility based on our regulations, and I feel like a complete shitbag. Talks with 5 supervisors go nowhere, because they are either inept, retiring, or overall don’t give a shit that our immigration requirements impact eligibility. I get frustrated over the fact that our system of helping other human beings out of poverty is another one of those focusing on Taylorism. We get several intakes a day, and the goal from management is not to help these people, but to work efficiently, solve their problems, and resolve their lives on the first encounter. Needless to say that this is impossible, but it is also heartbreaking that the very people, myself included, who are supposed to help people who are in extremely distressing situations are limited by structures that our out of out control and are of our pay-grade. It is imperfect. Last I recall, she was going to file a hearing for getting denied. I don’t know that an administrative judge would rule differently, but if he does, I know I’ll be happy for her, because among many, she truly needs help.
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  Pangolin_of_Doommozhatesme
  6/19/15 1:15pm
  I have never heard this perspective. Can you write more? I want to know about what it is like to do that job and how people feel about it from the other side of the desk.
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  Selamat Mourirmozhatesme
  6/19/15 1:34pm
  So much of our system assumes an extensive family support network, and completely fails the people who don't have that for one reason or another. Often fails the people who do have that, too. Just plain fails.
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The ever-present football-player rapistHamilton Nolan
6/19/15 12:23pm
People often say those on public assistance are lazy and want free money, but that’s the last thing I want.

No, but you do want to remain living in a city that you can’t afford to. That $600 a month would go a lot further elsewhere.
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  Flame Princess, Garbage-MongerThe ever-present football-player rapist
  6/19/15 12:25pm
  Yes, but you do realize that moving, especially to another state where you might have no ties whatsoever, is a costly proposition, yes?
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  dontcallmemimiThe ever-present football-player rapist
  6/19/15 12:28pm
  What an asinine comment. Per your suggestion, the wealthy should be able to live where they want, and the poor should be forced to commute for two hours each way to clean their houses. Why is your suggestion essentially “move to Idaho” instead of “affordable housing and food is a valuable thing in our society”?
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ToddMikeSchultzHamilton Nolan
6/19/15 12:16pm
I generally like your stuff HamNo, however, I am starting to think that this is just romanticizing of poverty. Are we supposed to like these people more than, say, Kristin Cavallari?

Essentially Gawker just rips on rich people and places poor people on a pedestal.

Honestly... it’s sites like Gawker that are purely reflective of the poor economic state of the country... which isn’t as poor as I think your writers want to think.
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  baddoggyToddMikeSchultz
  6/19/15 12:29pm
  “places poor people on a pedestal”
  
  Huh? These stories are for dickheads who think it’s all sunshine and roses in life. Some people have it hard and not everyone is blessed with great health and $100K+ jobs. If these stories disturbs you not because of compassion but because of annoyance that says a lot about you.
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  ARP2ToddMikeSchultz
  6/19/15 12:43pm
  You think this is romanticizing poverty? I haven’t seen one story about people riding the rails or living off the land. THAT would be romanticizing poverty. These stories do nothing of the sort.
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Velvet Von BlackHamilton Nolan
6/19/15 1:00pm
Oh, yes. Thrive’s story is SO typical of MediCal. My husband and I were poor as anything when we first married, and when I got pregnant (on my wedding night, while on birth control!), we had no other choice but to go onto MediCal. Neither of our jobs offered health care on any level. So, MediCal it was.

My actually OBGYN was fantastic, but she warned me that unless I was in a dire situation, I’d end up with whoever was on duty when I had the baby. Scary as hell to a young lady who had never had a baby, but okay.

Fast forward to the actual birth. The doctor on duty that night walked into my hospital room, where I am literally howling in pain, takes one look at my husband and I (admittedly, we are not so normal looking), makes a face, then looks at my mother and asks, “Are these two even married?”. Yeah. Classy. After being assured I wasn’t just some whore from the docks, he doesn’t even touch me to examine me, makes an annoyed face at my howling, then shrugs and says that if I want to “be lazy”, I could have an epidural. I wanted the epidural. Ten minutes later, a hospital office lady arrives and demands $350 CASH MONEY for said epidural. You know, because ladies in labor on state aid often just have wads of bills in their purses, amirite? Thank God my mother was there. They agreed to let her use a credit card, and explained they usually demand cash from MediCal patients because of the high rate of non-payment when they were billed after the fact. Mercy! Kindness!

I finally get my epidural, which gets taken away from me after a few hours, when the doctor decides I am, “too lazy to push hard enough”. I’m convinced I’m going to actually die at this point. Fourteen hours of trying later, they finally notice something is wrong when the baby’s heart monitor starts just dropping like a stone down a well. Then, everyone goes from disinterest to full on Keystone Cops chaos. Action finally happens, a nurse arrives and preps me, slicing into me with the razor (still have the scar), shit just kept going wrong, I end up whisked off, bleeding all over the OR while they seriously do probably the worst c-section ever. Not to mention the baby was desperately stuck and could never have been born naturally. Once I know the baby is okay, I start passing out, only to be jolted awake by them stapling me shut with the cheapest ass staples available, and snapping at me to, “stop being a baby and be still”. Thankfully, I passed out again after that.

I had insurance when I had my second child, and was treated like a princess. MediCal is just awful. So awful. Had I not been such a “pain in their ass”, my son and I both would have died. They gave no fucks, and actively went out of their way to shame me. I’m still angry, nineteen years later. MediCal is the worst.
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  samanticsVelvet Von Black
  6/19/15 2:12pm
  GOOD GOD.
  
  So glad you and the baby made it. That was the worst thing to read.
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  0bsessionsVelvet Von Black
  6/19/15 4:32pm
  All due respect, but Itisounds to me like the problem here is a shit ass awful hospital, not MediCal.
  
  Yes, Medicaid programs are cheap as shit when it comes to paying doctors, but that’s because they have razor thin margins to work with with politicians constantly trying to slash their budgets. On the other hand, these hospitals tend to get massive tax incentives for taking Medicaid.
  
  But any doctor or hospital with even a semblance of a conscience should not be treating ANYONE the way you were apparently treated. Do no harm, and all.
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Alice has a vagenda of manocide.Hamilton Nolan
6/19/15 12:51pm
“Nobody would have predicted that a tiny blind girl in foster care would have made it as far I have.”

Your story gave me chills.
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JonezBeechyHamilton Nolan
6/19/15 1:31pm
90% of these stories are about illnesses/medical issues bankrupting people, and deadbeat fathers never paying their child support.

Basically, Republicans and men can all go fuck themselves.
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  1PompadourJonezBeechy
  6/19/15 2:11pm
  Let me jump in here. Everybody has their own struggles. My own dad was a WWII pilot and my hero, a kind, funny, musical man. He had started a business after the war, and while it did well at first, it fell on hard times. We sank. My dad, losing sleep and still with PTSD (undiagnosed in those days) from wartime, became addicted to sleeping pills. What did he know? He basically lost it all, including his family and home, went on the streets in Minneapolis, a bitter place to be on the streets. He didn’t pay his child support. He was a deadbeat dad, my own dad who would have happily laid down his life for his kids. Who would hire him? He was in his forties, half nuts obsessing over who had screwed him over in his long dead business. My mother worked like a dog to raise us, and bitter doesn’t describe her. I got the point of her shoe as a teenager and went off on my own. I can't blame my dad or even "men" for this. As Tolstoy said, something like happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
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HelpfulCornHamilton Nolan
6/19/15 12:26pm
These are always painful to read, and they’re all so close, especially the student living in Brooklyn with chronic pain. That and the woman with double set of ribs...excruciating to read.

Even the “happy ending” story came in spite of the welfare system.

if you adopt your siblings out of foster care...aren’t you guaranteed benefits for their care (not that it might matter)?
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  GrilledCheeseonSourdoughHelpfulCorn
  6/19/15 1:57pm
  You’d sure think so. You are taking the burden off the state, seems like you should be compensated.
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  Mrs hHelpfulCorn
  6/19/15 2:22pm
  Many government benefits for care-givers and the like don’t apply if relatives are providing care. For example, an elderly person might qualify for home care visits that are paid for, but if his or her adult child provides the care there’s no payment.
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killfertwofishwannabeHamilton Nolan
6/19/15 12:46pm
The thing about those folks who never shut up about “welfare” is that they don’t realize we’re talking about relatively miniscule amounts of “tax dollars” here. When billions and billions of dollars end up “missing” they don’t have boo to say, but give some poor hapless person a few dollars for medical care or food and suddenly we’re a socialist paradise. There’s just so much hatred in this country and IMO 99% of it tracks right back to the fact that the president has dark skin.
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  Hello_Madam_Presidentkillfertwofishwannabe
  6/19/15 3:16pm
  This this this. It literally, LITERALLY would not be a noticeable difference in your taxes if all public assistance was suddenly discontinued and the taxpayers directly saved all that money (which, let’s face it, is not how that’s going to work).
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