When words fail me...

 

Sometimes words fail me when I hear about how heartless, how selfish some people can be in regards to the suffering of their fellow man. How can they turn their backs on starving children, the disabled, and the elderly living on less than $5 a day? Rep. Jackie Speier of California put a lot of my thoughts into words in her address to Congress today. You can read her words or watch a short video of her speech at this link.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/19/rep-speier-holds-up-vodka-and-steak-on-house-floor-to-shame-food-stamp-opponents/

Thanks, Jackie. You put it well. When will we ever learn?

You can join the conversation here or at Facebook at The Mad-as-Hell Party:
http://www.facebook.com/madashellparty
 

Do People Really Matter?

It's been a tough year for a lot of us. We're unemployed, underemployed, without health care, without health insurance and without hope. We're treated as if we don't exist by those in power. Corporations and the mega-rich seem to always get their way. It does make one wonder:


Do people really matter?

By "people" I mean human beings. The reason I ask this is because of an intriguing statement I heard on a radio program this evening. I stopped to listen to it since the show's host said this gentleman had the answers as to why so many of us who are constantly applying to jobs and desperately looking for work can't seem to connect with employers. It's not that employers don't have jobs--this individual assured us they most certainly do. And then the expert stated the reason why more of us don't get hired is this:


"No one qualified applies for the jobs."


Huh? There are millions looking for work. Surely some of these people have some job skills, right?

The expert then gave the example of a corporation that recently needed to hire an engineer--pretty much an entry level position. 25,000 applications were submitted for that one opening. That's the population of many small cities. And guess what? No one qualified applied for the job according to the corporation. Not a one. What are the odds of that happening?


In fact, there were probably many qualified individuals who applied for the position, since the self-same corporation had downsized  recently and had eliminated similar positions. A few  ex-workers probably re-applied to work at their old firm, right? Why were there no "qualified applicants"?

Answer: the computer that scanned the 25,000 applications told the corporate big-wigs that there were no qualified applicants.

Obviously, those that have the power to hire are more apt to believe a machine than their own senses. Because if those corporate types had kept on the human beings who staffed their human resources (as opposed to computer resources) department, the bosses would have been given a large number of qualified applicants to consider for the engineer opening.


But in the end, the big-wigs decided they didn't need human beings to help make hiring decisions. Computers could make these decisions just as well, if not faster. After all, human beings expect to be paid a wage and they might want such horrendous things as medical and dental insurance and sick leave. Can't have that, can we?

So, do people really matter? I guess not--at least not until computers start demanding days off with pay and health insurance.

My Rebuttal to Mitt Romney’s “I'm-not-concerned-about-the-very-poor” comment

My Rebuttal to Mitt Romney’s “I'm-not-concerned-about-the-very-poor” comment:

This is a time people are worried. They're frightened. They want someone who they have confidence in. And I believe I will be able to instill that confidence in the rich American people. And, by the way, I'm in this race because I care about rich Americans.  I'm not concerned about the very rich. They have plenty of safety nets. If any need repair, they’ll be able to effectively lobby Congress to fix them.

I'm not concerned about the very poor; they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of the American people, the 1 to 5 percent of rich Americans who right now are struggling with paying more than 15% in income tax, and I'll continue to take that message across the nation. 

Thank you Mr. Romney for making it oh-so-clear where your political leanings lie… Very near your wallet.

We at the Mad-As-Hell Party are focused on all struggling Americans. We could focus on the rich. But that's not our focus. We focus on the very poor because so many fat cat politicians who make $21 million a year don’t focus on them enough. Maybe it could be they’re too busy making $10,000 bets with each other.

Mr. Romney, I’d like to make a bet with you. I bet you that you will not make it to the White House in 2012. Hmm—how much would you like to bet me, an underemployed, struggling-to-survive American? Ten thousand? Well… let’s see what I have in my wallet to bet… two dollars. I look forward to your two dollars very soon, Mr. Romney. It’ll go a long way to fix my “safety net”.

Sincerely yours, 

Cindy A. Matthews

If you’d like to comment on my rebuttal, please do so in the comments section below.  And you can join the discussion on Facebook at The Mad-as-Hell Party page. Thank you.

It's Official--The Middle Class is No More

It’s official--the middle class is no more.

When the icon-of-middle-class-America starts lowering its prices and changing the lay-outs of their stores, you know that an era is passing.

JC Penney announced that as of February 1, 2012, it will permanently slash all of its prices by at least 40% with what their CEO Ron Johnson said is “a sweeping overhaul of its stores and strategy.” Soon middle-class America will discover that Target and Wal-Mart aren’t the only cheap department stores on the block.

I don’t know whether to be thrilled or sad. I’m thrilled to know I no longer have to wait until the “after Christmas sales” (which, of course, began before Christmas these past few years) to find bargains. But deep down I’m feeling confused and more than a bit sad. It’s sad because, if you add Sears’ recent announcement that it will close many of its retailers, you’ll realize there’s no longer a range of department stores in between the lowbrow of Wally World and its ilk and the upper-crust snobbism of the Lords and Taylor/Saks 5^th  Avenue type of stores. 

JC Penney won’t be able to maintain its high quality of clothing and merchandise, I fear, because with dwindling price tags, how will the executives continue to bring home those big paychecks they’re used to from the profits? They’ll have to start stocking the cheap, made-in-China crap that fills Wally World’s shelves. Possibly JC Penney will be able to keep their quality products available at these discount prices, but the only way is probably by slashing their employees’ rate of pay by 40% and hiring only part-time and seasonal workers (while downsizing the number of full-time Penney’s employees still on the books). Either way, this news doesn’t look like a happy ending for a lot of folks.

Underpaid/underemployed/unemployed Americans will be forced to shop at stores with low quality goods, and the “fat cats” (who live off the interest of their large offshore bank accounts) will continue to shop at their high end designer fashion boutiques. Nothing new there, really, but for a while at least some Americans thought they had the right to be called “the Middle Class”.

Face it folks, most of us reading this blog are in the bottom 99% with no hopes of ever becoming part of the top 1%. Do the math, look at your checkbook, and tell me where you’ll be shopping (if you can afford to) next week.

(For another example of how 99% of Americans have been taken advantage of, read:  Emblematic of 1 Percenters, Cooper Tire Punk’d Workers)

How are you coping with the ever-widening gap between "haves" and "have-nots"? Any tips on where to find a decent paying job? Please share your comments and concerns below... Perhaps if the 99% sticks together we can make the world a better place.

(Please join the discussion on Facebook at the Mad-As-Hell Party page, too.)

2011: The Year Without Health Insurance

In January, I started off 2011 with my blog post 2011: The Year Without Snark, a plea for more civility on the Internet and in all our personal communications. Thanks to all who commented or have taken the pledge seriously and are doing your best to eradicate snark in all its nasty forms.

This month, I’m tackling yet another example of uncivilized behavior apparent in the world today, particularly in the good ol’ U.S.A. You’d be correct in assuming this is a piece about the unfair current state of health care in this country. What you might not have guessed is that I, your dear blogger, am caught in the middle of the whole sordid mess.

Yes, I’m one of those Americans who *gasp!* are currently without decent health insurance.

Since there really is no “emergency back-up plan” for Americans once they’re unemployed (or the family member whose insurance plan included them becomes unemployed) other than the ridiculously expensive COBRA option, we go overnight from being freely allowed in the front door of a doctor’s office if we have a complaint to being told (sometimes politely, sometimes not) to get lost. I think the acronym COBRA says it all—we are transformed into poisonous snakes who aren’t worthy of a fairly priced (or free for those who can’t afford it) health insurance plan. And the fear of snakes is a very common phobia indeed.

So we are forced to choose between health care and food and shelter. After the last month of record setting low-temperatures and snow dumps in the Midwest, guess which items we chose to fund? Well, we didn’t quite freeze and we didn’t eat like kings, but we’re still here.

At the prodding (read: demanding) of my mother, I finally found an overpriced, super-high deductible, temporary health insurance plan we can barely afford to tie us over for at least six months. However, I hold little hope that it will actually help out much should the need arise. If the deductible is more money than you have, and you’re currently unemployed and living on your meager savings, how the heck are you suppose to meet the deductible? Will a surgeon perform emergency surgery knowing you’re only going to pay him a small fraction of the bill? I suspect hospitals routinely use these temporary health insurance cards for toilet paper for all their worth.

To be honest, I carried my defunct insurance card in my wallet around for a while, so overwhelmed was I at the prospect of being denied medical help. I figured if I was in a coma or knocked unconscious, the paramedics or police would rummage around in my purse and find the said lapse insurance card and assume that I was properly insured and would give me the emergency medical care I require. Only after I became conscious and they found out the truth would they have been forced to kick me out of my I.C.U. bed and tell me not to come back until I could afford treatment.

Yes, it is a worse case scenario, and I do have an overactive imagination I’ll admit, but somehow I get the feeling this scenario is based more on fact than on fiction.

Since no one enjoys a whiner, I direct your attention now to a blog written by a friend who expresses her concerns over the current healthcare debacle quite well:
souptonutts.blogspot.com

How can we prevent our fellow unemployed/underemployed citizens from discovering their health isn’t important as those with money and power just because they’re not carrying around a current, decent health insurance card? You do wonder if the darn cards aren’t made of platinum or gold… In some way, perhaps they are.



ADDITIONAL: I'm currently reading Inside WikiLeaks by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former insider who describes the whole WikiLeaks phenomenon. One of the more interesting quotes I've come across has to deal with a leak about a German pharmaceutical company.

...The public didn't take much interest in the files we published in November 2009 concerning a German pharmaceutical company. If I had to name my favorite leaks from that year, these files would definitely be among them. They read like a case study in corruption and can be easily understood by laymen.

The files concerned payments made by pharmaceutical representatives to doctors so that they would prescribe more of the company's medications. We published ninety-six pages of investigations carried out by police and prosecutors. They detailed the practices used by some pharmaceutical company representatives. If doctors prescribed their patients those products, they received a cut of the additional profits. Moreover, there were direct payments. In an internal e-mail, one of the company's regional directors had written, "If a doctor wants money, call me and we'll find a way." Another means of encouraging physicians to prescribe more of the company's products was to give them coupons for expensive seminars.

---from Inside WikiLeaks, pp. 50-51. (Daniel Domscheit-Berg with Tina Klopp, Crown Publishers, NY)

It does make one wonder who really is driving healthcare costs through the roof--the doctors, the insurance companies or the pharmaceutical industry. Of course, we'll blame (and double bill) the patients... After all, they can help it if they get sick or injured, can't they?