15. How Politics Affects the Un- and Under- Employed

Nebulous thoughts swirling around the fringes of my mind this evening. They want to come together to form a message. This is something I have been pondering off and on for a while now. Bear with me here, because you will see toward the end that it is significant to the blog's purpose. As someone who has been under-employed with disturbing spurts of unemployment punctuating my calendar, I really have some troubling reassessments to make. I once considered myself to be a Republican. Now I see that Republicans are not at all what I thought they were supposed to be. In fact, I see that our two-party system is not what it is cracked up to be. My staunch GOP contacts (friends and relatives) God Love them one and all, do not share most of my basic beliefs. The Grand Old Party has somehow become full of bigotted fundamentalists who think their way is the only way and demand that their beliefs be embraced by and enforced upon everyone else. How is this different from the Democratic Party? It isn't, except that their issues are different issues. The issues of each party are insignificant to the health and well-being of this nation So here is an excerpt from an email I have received multiple times. There are parts of the thing that make great sense. I have not included them here. This is only that to which I vociferously disagree. And after you read this, I will explain why I disagree. ===============================================

1. You know you live in a country run by idiots if: Hard work and success are rewarded by higher taxes and government intrusion, while slothful, lazy behavior is rewarded with EBT cards, WIC checks, Medicaid and subsidized housing, and free cell phones. ================================================= 2. You know you live in a country run by idiots if: The government's plan for getting people back to work is to provide 99 weeks of unemployment checks (to not work). ================================================= 3. You know you live in a country run by idiots if: You pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big screen TV while your neighbor defaults on his mortgage (while buying iphones, TV's and new cars) and the government forgives his debt and reduces his mortgage (with your tax dollars).

******************************************** (1.) Yes, it is true that hard work and success seems to be followed by higher taxes and more and more government regulation. And that is wrong. And yes, it is true that there are thousands of people who play the system and take advantage of government handouts. But what this fails to address is the fact that in this economy, there are thousands of hard-working Americans who have paid into the system for years and years, but now find themselves out of work and unable to find work. These are the people the system was designed to help. But many of us slip through loopholes and get no aid at all. (2.) Again, their are people who play the system, but then there are those of us who do not qualify for unemployment because we moved to a different state and have not worked six months in the new state so do not qualify. We get nothing. (3.) And there are those who set out to get fancy houses filled with fancy stuff and have actually been able to get Uncle Obama to foot the bill. But then there are those of us who, regardless of our good intentions and efforts to make it all work, lost the ability to pay and none of the government programs fit the situation. Some of us lose our homes because we were convinced that it would work into our financial situation easily, when, in fact, the numbers just didn't add up and the bill of goods we were sold with the house was just a house of cards. Bang goes the gavel. FORECLOSED! It does not pay to be naive or well-meaning. It pays to find good financial advice, listen to it, and then fall back and be even more conservative with your funds. A house is NOT an investment. The Bubble was as fragile and nebulous as any bubble of soap. They all pop sooner or later. And if you are not a minority of some kind, do not expect the government to be of any use to you at all, regardless of how many thousands of dollars in taxes you have paid down through the years. So, because the GOP fundamentalists make no allowances for honest people with legitimate financial crises, but lump them all together with the chronic entitlement-minded recipients, I have no truck with the GOP. They also tend to be the ones who want to cram their particular religious beliefs down everyones' throats, much like the Islamic fundamentalists do. They want to legislate their idea of morality, continue interfering in the governments of other countries, fight so-called wars on drugs, tobacco, diseases, behaviors and lifestyles that are not their own. On the other hand, we have the Democrats, whom we can fondly refer to as the BHL, or Bleeding Heart Liberals. They want to give it all away. Usually to those who have done nothing to earn it. To many who have no desire to learn the language, to fit in, or to contribute in some significant way. As a rule, they want everyone to be careful to not offend anyone else. They are the dark-hearted offspring of Madelyn Murray O'Hare set out to remove any mention of God in our culture, simply because she was an atheist. She thought everyone should be so she would not be offended by the Word. The birth of so-called 'political correctness' is founded in this effort, and has become a virulent rust, eating away at the strong girders underpinning the structure of this nation. It's oxymoronic. To remove anything about God because she is an athiest, is the same as to force a particular religion on everyone. She forced non-religion. The Founding documents specified that Congress shall make no law specifyong a particular form of worship. It stipulated a separation of church and state, not a removal of one or the other. Just a separation. That underscores that there shall be no 'State Religion' not that there should be no religion. The United States was founded on the principal that there would be religious FREEDOM... the freedom to worship how, when and where (or even if) one wanted to. And so, I must discard both parties, because each one is doing fundamental damage to this country. I seek a moderate way. Conservative and strong support of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the principles laid out in Thomas Paine's Common Sense. If you have not read them recently, please do so. And while you're at it, read the Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. 'Tis a cautionary tale, if ever there was one. And so, I will continue at this little part time job as long as it lasts and as I continue to find additional sources of income. Blessings of Abundance to all of you Victoria