Rant Zone

Poverty is one of the biggest problems facing our country today. But our government’s definition of poverty is too skewed to show how really bad it can be. Based on today’s minimum wage (which hasn’t been raised in over 8 years) a person working full time is making $10,712 that’s $912 more than if you were in poverty. Cheer up! You can afford a new sofa.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/povdef.html

http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/06poverty.shtml

I live in an area where minimum wage is not standard, and most people will be started out making at least $6-7. Unfortunately, this is still too little compared to living expenses for a single person living alone.

Let’s assume you are making $7 an hour. Working full time this is $14,560, minus living expenses for the cheapest apartments (about $500 a month) leaves one with $8,560. Now a reasonable amount to spend on food is about $80-100 a week. $4680 is the middle of those two figures leaving you with $3880. Assuming you can afford a car on this little amount of pay, you can expect to spend more than the remainder on insurance. Paying for gas and upkeep much less enough to pay for your electrical and heating bills in the studio apartment you might be able to furnish with a couch from a dumpster is nearly impossable without a second job.

So you work the second job, say 15 hours a week, still making the $7 an hour like your other job, $5460 will go a long way to help you be able to cover those bills, but, you are spending less time at home and spending more on gas going too and from your two jobs. You are spending close to $2000 on gas alone, then you realize the car that has been reliable for the past two years not has a transmission problem that will cost you more than you paid for the car.

Nevermind not being able to afford new shoes to walk to work, because your car was costing so much for upkeep. You were working 55 hours a week to live in a small hole that has by now been broken into because you can’t afford a nice apartment in a good neighborhood. All your DVD’s and the DVD player, and games are gone. Your father’s watch, you grandmother’s ring, whatever you held dear is being melted down, and it had so much sentamental value to you beyond what the thief can pawn it for.

Don’t worry if the door will not close properly, the maintanence crew will get to it, after a week of the most bitter cold for three winters and most of the heating you are paying for is going out the door. You don’t have to worry about that, because you are now sick and spending all your free time under a pile of blankets. Then you over sleep for your full time job because a neighbor was kind enough to give you a few Ny-Qyl to help you  over come the insomnia that comes from a hacking cough. But you couldn’t go see a doctor or go to the hospital because you don’t have insurance. You are now fired for missing work and have only $105 a week on this crumby part-time job you took just to cover your expenses on a car you no longer have. With a total of $20,020 at the end of the year in wages, after the taxes are taken out would equal $1738.03 not including state and local taxes if there are any.

How can someone make a living or live a full life in this kind of situation?

Imagine making minimum wage and having the same situation.

Some of the richer of us say, you should save some of the money you are making. Alan Greenspan said before he left, Americans aren’t saving enough money. How can we when there is so little being made?

Two things have to go on in this country for us to be able to continue (or in my opinion become stronger) as a country. ONE-Minimum wage must be raised to at least $7 an hour and grow with inflation, like many of our government’s employees. TWO-We must have universal healthcare for all citizens.

My first point was made in the above argument, but healthcare will take much more…

Stay tuned…

A lot has been in the news recently about the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad. I have seen the cartoons and have to say they are pretty tame. One I saw has a turban in the shape of a bomb, the other one has two women standing on either side of the prophet in full burkahs with only their eyes showing through and a black bar mimicing the eye holes of the burkah covering Muhammad’s eyes.

Before I go any further, let me say I have a deep respect for all religions. I don’t consider myself any specific religion, but if I have to choose, I choose to be Buddhist. I have studied many of the world’s religions, and I have a spiritual connection with the earth, and feel since we all come from the earth, it is our most sacred object.

The first cartoon demonstrated how the majority of the Muslim extremists view how the world is theirs to take by violence. How violence dopminates the landscape fo their homelands and is the ultimate answer to any delima they encounter. The second illustrates the repression of the females in Muslim culture. How many of these extremists view women as objects or property. (Some say much like slavery.)

Now these certainly not the fecal smeared versions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus from a few years ago. but it is a pretty strong indictment of the situation in many Muslim countries.

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/csj/991008/madonna.html

What I draw from the reaction of the many Musilms around the world to these CARTOONS, is that they are exactly what Muslims are portraying. The violence exacted on emabssies, the director killed a few weeks ago (Theo Van Gogh), and others including Soloman Rushdie, continue to protray Islam as a violent, repressive and misguided religion. I know this is not true.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3974179.stm

The originations of Islam started back a few hundred years after Jesus died. Muhammad saw the deriliction to God in the actions of early Christians (and Jews) and began hearing voices telling him the right path to salvation. So in all reality, all the three major religions have the same god, but different ways to hold reverence to him.

Think about it for a few seconds.

That’s right, you all worship the same god, but in different ways. If more Muslims, Jews and Christians knew this, there could be more harmony in the world. But because of freewill endowed by our maker, and the need for scapegoats in cultures, each extremist Mullah, Priest, and Rabbi look to the other religions as their source of grief. But each of these religions teach their followers to love their fellow man.

Christians started in the 1000’s to go back to the Middle East (before it was called that) and conquer the "Holy Land" and fight tooth and nail for relics and property that was virtually valuless sand. God doesn’t appear in these places more than anywhere else. It was all for the vainglorious egotism of  Pope Urban II who issued a decree that anyone who fought in the Crusades would be pardoned of all their sins and would go to heaven. This began a "colonizing" of the Middle Eastern states that is still carried in mental scars of the inhabitants.

This colonizing has stretched through to the 1960’s and inthe minds of some Arabs, today with the American invasion of Iraq. Is is any wonder that they don’t like us? they have been through over 900 years of oppression and masterhood of white men who claim superiority. But we have to bring democracy to the Middle East according to the president. The way to do that is to allow free and open elections.

Look what has happened to Hammas. Free and open elections put a group that is considered a terrorist organization into power. It just goes to show, not everyone wants to be free. I heard a news bite that one Palestinian said, "They shed their blood for us, now we give them the power."

Sounds kinda like something that happened 230 years ago on the North American contenent. Some guys were pissed at the way things were being ran and began using terrorist tacticts to make their point. One of the proudest moments of our history is the Boston Tea Party. There were alos public revolts in Boston square.

I am not condoning violence. I served in the Army for eight years, I would gladly lay my life down for my freedoms and your freedoms still. But there is no way we to fight a "war" for others who don’t want those freedoms we hold dear.

I’ve though about this for a while and I just can’t seem to come to a good conclusion.  The Transportation Administration has not required cars to have better fuel efficiency since I was in diapers. (For those of you unaware, that’s the 70’s) Not only that, but cars today are basically getting the same MPG as cars made in the 1920’s. I’m not talking about hybrids, which are a smarter way to go, but if they really wanted to improve efficiency in those, they’d make them deisel and electric. And by switching to diesel, these cars can run on ethanol which is much more environmentally friendly than petroleum. Rudolf Diesel developed his engine to run on biofuel, and demonstrated it during the 1900 Worlds Fair using peanut oil. Plus having a diesel engine improves reliability over an electronic ignition internal combustion engine.

One thing that is going for the automotive industry is Bill Ford, the new president of Ford Motor. I have had a few Ford vehicles and they have been highly reliable. But, as I see it Bill Ford is the saviour (or will be) of the American automotive industry. Despite layoffs recently, I believe Bill will not only turn his company around with more research into hybrid vehicles and alternate fuels, but he is a Buddhist and strongly cares about the environment and the lives of all things. He may well return Ford to it’s former glory of Henry Ford Sr.’s innovative assembly line, and the time when Ford Sr. build cars for the working man and paid his employees enough to buy his cars.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2005-02-27-ford-ceo-usat_x.htm

I don’t mean to preach about how good the Ford Motor Company is, and I’m sure there are many other companies leading and working to fuel efficient cars, like Toyota and Honda, but as I see it, Bill Ford is the best shot America has at being competitive in auto sales.

Here recently President Bush called for a reduction in Saudi and Middle Eastern imports of oil to be reduced by 75% in a little less than 20 years. I don’t see how he can accomplish this with his massive cuts in education and decreases in clean energy research. Over $2billion next year alone in education, and decreases in energy research programs of $50million. How can we reduce the dependence of foreign oil and fuel when we aren’t spending money on educating the future engineers and scientist to develop new alternate fuel sources? Not only this, but he is reducing the budget of the EPA to protect the smog filled, greenhouse effected climate we live in now.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,184005,00.html

http://www.energybulletin.net/4545.html

But who is Bush kidding? He’s an oil man and has made money off his friends in the industry since he was born. He has never ran a successful business, why did so many people think he could run the country? He has run the country to the ground by increasing our debits to foreign governments to over $600billion a year. Due to his borrowing, the dollar is devalued all over the world. No wonder America cannot compete. By the way, the government owes each citizen more than $27,000 for it’s debit, and rising. (But the tax cuts are going to people making more than $100,000 or more. I don’t know about you, but it took me five years to make that much.)

http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/issuebrief203

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Since I’m spending about half the money I make in energy costs; gas for my car, electricity and oil for my apartment, I think it is about time you all out there write to you Congressman and/or Senators to tell them you want your tax dollars spent on energy research and education. It is your future, not theirs you have to be worried about.

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

http://www.house.gov/writerep/

I would like to welcome anyone reading this to give me feed back. I fully believe in the fourth estate, the First Amendment and free speech, unfortunately our elected (some may say unfairly) president is trying to stifle anything that is not for his position. I have fought and will continue to fight anyone opposed to free speech. Look forward to being pissed about something I say, as I’m sure I will say something that pisses someone off. I even look forward to hearing from those who support my positions.

I just need to vent sometimes, and you’ll see the results here.