Why I Talk about Money

A few days ago, I wrote a blog post about my frustrating efforts to get information in anticipation of my upcoming switch to Medicare.  In that post I talked dollars and cents regarding the costs of Medicare Part B, and specifically the way our Congress has increased the cost to new recipients, while avoiding the shitstorm they might have had if people already enrolled could see how much the premium and deductible had gone up.

My purpose in writing the blog was not just to describe how difficult it is to maneuver the complexities of Medicare, or even to expose all the unconscionable costs that seniors are now expected to pay for health insurance.  I really wanted to leave readers with the awareness that this is very likely to be the future of Obamacare, which is currently affordable and comprehensive.

Since I wrote the blog, I have had a number of conversations with people where we have actually talked in dollars and cents.  It is amazing how many intelligent and aware people do not know or understand all the various components of their health insurance, who just pay what they are billed and are thankful that they are covered.  Which is just the way Congress and the health care industry want it.

I have found, in my life, that we are more comfortable talking about our sex lives than about money.  I was told when I was in my twenties, by a far more sophisticated friend, that it is impolite to talk about money.  We don't want to brag and we sure don't want to beg.  We don't want sympathy, and we don't want scorn.

So we don't talk about our income.  If we were more comfortable sharing information about money, Lilly Ledbetter might not have been in the dark about being subject to wage discrimination.  We might all learn about bad financial deals and all those scams like car buying and loans.  We might exchange good information about tax breaks and government programs to which we are entitled.  We would be far more aware of how the republican right has worked with corporations and billionaires to manipulate our incomes and expenses.

Actually, not talking about money makes about as much sense to me as not talking about age.  It makes a big secret out of something that should be merely a sharing of information.  Really, who cares that I am 64?  It doesn't mean I'm going to die sooner, or look younger.  I believe people will judge me on far more than my age, and knowing how old I am is just a small piece of information that I provide.

Talking about costs is important to me, not because I need for people to know how much I personally live on, but because we all need to know more about how we all survive in this really bad plutocracy.  Absence of information makes us all vulnerable.  That is why corporations fight so hard to hide financial data; that is also why they are working so hard to collect data from all of us.

Here is another thing.  Since the Post and Courier published an article about serious problems with well water on Wadmalaw Island, a number of concerned people asked me how I was faring.  Fact is, I live in a relatively new development, the well is only about 25 years old, and there are people living with wells that were drilled in the 60's and 70's.  But, I add, there is a low income grant that qualifies me for a new well, so I am fortunate on that account as well.

Most people, I think, are uncomfortable learning that I qualify for a new well based on my income.  None of us really want to know that our friends are struggling financially, do we?  And then there are probably those who get their backs up just a bit over their tax dollars paying for my well.  If I end up with a new well and I am not obviously struggling, isn't that wrong?  After all, it wasn't long ago that the right-wingnuts in Congress were saying that you weren't poor if you had a refrigerator.

It's okay for tax dollars to pay for Boeing's success, and it's okay for corporate farms and pharmaceuticals to get huge subsidies from the government.  I recently heard a building contractor, when asked what he thought about Trump, reply, "If he becomes president, I'll be right there putting in a bid to build that wall."  There are acceptable ways to take government money and having a low income just isn't one of them.

I wrestled with agreeing to have that new well built.  I knew there were people far worse off than me.  But I was also told that if something happened to my current system, it would cost $6,000 to drill that new well.  So I agreed.

A businessman getting offered a good deal by the government would hardly turn it down.  But we individuals are made to feel like beggars and sponges if we accept a good deal.  Many, many people do not apply for financial assistance or food stamps because of the stigma, which our right-wing government is all too happy to magnify, by adding regulations from more frequent income checks to required proof of job-seeking to drug tests.

When the housing market collapsed not too long ago, hard working middle class people who believed in our capitalist system were thrown out on the street.  Congress fought over whether people who were unsuccessful looking for jobs should have their unemployment benefits extended.

There is an enormous myth that persists that if you work hard you will not need to turn to the government for help.  And yet those who are in government and trying to cut the benefits we deserve and depend upon are all to happy to take what the government gives them.  Our right-wing majority in Congress, and in too many of our statehouses, insist that people should work two jobs, mothers should work rather than stay home with children.  Meanwhile, members of the US House of Representatives, with full pay and benefits, are scheduled to work 111 days this year.

So let's not be polite about money.  We may think we don't know anyone who is struggling, or we may just think we don't know anyone who is struggling as much as we are.  Fact is, too many of us are in that same shaky boat, while the Koch brothers are in the yacht that is making all the waves. 

It All Comes Back to Politics

On Thursday, Charleston County Democratic Women hosted three young women who spoke about their greatest concerns.  The talks were informative and inspiring.  And most interesting was that they in fact, intertwined.

Savannah Frierson, Ali Titus, Monica Tanouye

Savannah Frierson spoke to issues of racism, and how they are reinforced in our politics and our lives.  She brought up the drinking water in Flint, and in fact, problems with drinking water on our own Wadmalaw Island.  Environmental problems hit the poor and rural areas first.  Monica Tanouye spoke about the environment, not as a "tree hugger," but as someone who sees our environment as a resource that we need to maintain, in order to maintain our lives on earth and in our communities.  Finally, Ali Titus spoke passionately about obesity and the blame-the-victim mentality that is so prevalent in our society.  She pointed out that the same big corporations that made fortunes selling foods that lead to obesity also share in huge profits from the health problems and dieting regimens caused by obesity.

As the women spoke, and for these days afterwards, I have been thinking about how all these issues relate to one:  capitalism as political power, and political power run amok.

With all the Tea Party talk about reducing the deficit, big agra continues to profit from huge government subsidies:  subsidies to grow sugar and corn, the latter used not as a healthy vegetable but as corn syrup.  Meanwhile, our local farmers struggle against the extreme weather conditions of global climate change with little aid that only comes when those extremes cannot be ignored, as with our October floods.  This means healthy produce grown locally is far more expensive than McDonald's or a bag of cookies.  Note that here in South Carolina food stamps cannot be used at many farms or farmers markets.

With all the light shone on Flint's water crisis, it has become more than apparent that decisions were made to cut corners in a town where the poverty rate is the second highest in the country.  It was easy to do this because Michigan has an "emergency manager" law that allows the governor to appoint someone to run the city, bypassing voters' choices.  And as we all know, the main function of government these days is to cut costs, and it is especially easy to do so when the people are too poor to fight back.

It's all politics, and politics has gotten so convoluted that the good guys have to run the same cons as the bad guys.

Take Wadmalaw Island, where I live.  As Savannah spoke Thursday night, someone near me mumbled that that wasn't true that Wadmalaw had bad water.  In fact, it is not true for me, because I live in a development that is only about 25 years old.  A couple of years ago, based on my low income, I even qualified for a new well, which was dug last week.  I know that there were also people who qualified that had bad wells that were fifty years old.

But suppose you don't qualify?  Suppose you work hard enough to fall just above the federal poverty line?  The assumption is that you can pay that $6,000 for the new well.  And whatever other problems there are that need to be corrected for the water to be potable.  Impossible for so many.

And yet, I am fortunate that I qualified for that federal grant.  I imagine I can thank Democrats like US Representative Jim Clyburn, the late Senator Clementa Pinckney and Representative Robert L. Brown.  I imagine County Councilwoman Anna Johnson pulled some strings as well.  There has to be a reason, in fact, that while South Carolina skinflints in the Statehouse refuse to raise the gas tax to repair bad roads, the two main roads on Wadmalaw have been repaved twice in the seventeen years I have lived here.

But for republican strongholds, politics is all about money and influence.  And for wealthy donors, politicians will spend whatever of our tax dollars it takes to keep them happy.  If the air or water gets bad where they are, if a hurricane blows their home away, they move to higher ground, build a bigger newer home with the insurance money.

Meanwhile, the working poor get made promises of more jobs while being sidetracked with messages of refugee and immigrant invasions.  The poor, a high percentage minority, are victimized by government decisions to cut what little aid they get, and by inadequate services.  When you aren't allowed time off from work, or you don't have a car, when getting to a supermarket is a hurtle, not only do you not get out to vote, you don't really see that it makes a difference.

For those who are living in the shaky middle class, they live with financial insecurity that makes them vulnerable to the fearmongers that convince them that the EPA, immigrants and unions will cost them their livelihood.  Financial insecurity for the right wing is political gold.

I would like very much to invite our three speakers back.  I would like for them to maybe be a panel that addresses political solutions to the huge problems that they posed to us.  I would like to keep this conversation going.

And I want to thank them for opening it up for us.  

The Ironic Cherry Reads...

$2.00 a Day:

Living on Almost Nothing in America

by Kathryn J. Edin & H. Luke Shaefer

This is the kind of fraud that occurs among our poor:

* Selling food stamps (@ 50 cents on the dollar) to get the electricity turned on

* Trading sexual "favors" in order to buy food

* Selling a child's social security number to be claimed on someone else's taxes when you have been unemployed in order to pay the rent.

These are some of the ways people survive when they live on $2 (or less) a day.  And yes, that happens in this country, more so since Bill Clinton's heralded welfare reform, which was supposed to be tied to work opportunity.  Alas, all those jobs and training programs failed to materialize, but the small cash subsidies for the poor disappeared as well.

It has become so hard to receive TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which replaced welfare) that many aren't aware that it is available, and many others that are eligible stop trying to apply.  The essence of this failure is that the money goes to the states, as well as the discretion to use the federal funds, often cutting the amount that should be going to the poor.

But they are out there.  Children who sleep in cars or are subject to family or non-family member's sexual abuse in order to have a roof over their heads.  Women who cannot keep a low-wage job because there are no safeguards when she takes a sick day for herself or a child and gets fired.  School failure.  Hunger.  Suicide.

Our legislators have closed their eyes to this national tragedy, preferring to believe that the welfare reforms of the 90's have ridden us of all those welfare cheats and given jobs to any who want to work.

Over the past year the working poor have found their voices.  The absurdity of working full time and not being able to afford housing, living on SNAP benefits while working for the largest and wealthiest corporations, going to work sick, being sent home when business is slow, all those have led to the point where workers will take the risk of organizing and striking.

But that is not the point of this book.  While we see the minimum wage slowly rise, those with no cash at all continue to live a Dickensian nightmare.

I am happy to say that the Charleston County Library has several copies of this book on its shelves, as well as in electronic format.  It's a small but powerful book, and I urge you to read it.

Brave New World

I just heard our own Mark Sanford bloviating on the House floor.  He likes to twist things around, he does.  He called Paul Ryan's proposed budget "brave."  Okay, are you all done doing your double-take?  Because I'm still stunned by the man's nerve.  I'm talking about Ryan.  Sanford's just an idiot.

Jim Clyburn spoke just before Sanford.  Talk about pearls before swine.  He listed all the things that would be cut from Ryan's budget.  For example, seniors would have to pay more for medication -- if you were happy with the donut hole of the Bush prescription boondoggle, it's back.

We know about Paul Ryan's program, because the republicans have been trying to cram it down our throats for years.  Children, that other group of takers, will be denied school programs, food and nutrition programs, health programs.  Working parents as well as the unemployed will see safety nets cut out from under them; in fact, in Ryan's (and Sanford's) ideal world, there would be no minimum wage, no labor regulations at all.  Remember Newt Gingrich's plan to put poor kids to work as school janitors?  And forget about affordable colleges.  In fact, let these guys have at education so that they can privatize it -- more profit for their corporate buddies, less actual quality education for the dollar.

You might wonder what is "brave" about the Paul Ryan budget.  Maybe Sanford's talking about having to face us all after he's cut out support for basic human needs -- what they derisively call "entitlements."  You heard Ryan's former running mate Romney:  he was just appalled that people think they, as Americans, should expect food, a roof over their heads, health care.

I guess it must be "brave" to suggest to 47 percent of the people whose lives you govern that they are unimportant.  Unmotivated.  Undeserving.  Imagine thinking, much less stating, that some of us deserve better schools based on what we earn, that some children should be denied health care and nutrition, that losing a job when the rich have run the economy into the ground is no concern of the government.  Imagine not giving a damn about people who struggle every day to do right by their families.  Quoting Ayn Rand and her mythological capitalist American hero as though it was anything other than right-wing fantasy.

That's Paul Ryan.  Don't even get me started on Mark Sanford.  This is the man who stole from the state government because funding laws were not meant for him.  Who walked away from the governor's office without being responsible enough to let his staff (or his wife) know he was off on an assignation.  Who is happy to let the government pay for any-damn-thing he can get away with, and then deride social programs as pork.  This is the man who just called Paul Ryan's budget "brave."

We need to make lists, as did Clyburn today, extensive lists, and let everyone know what they will lose if Paul Ryan and Mark Sanford get the government they have dreamed of.  Because there is something in there that affects all of us.  We need to document each benefit that will be lost, because for example, just saying Obamacare will be cut is not the same as telling people they will no longer be protected if they have a pre-existing condition, they will no longer be able to keep children on their health plans till they are 26, they will no longer have free preventive health care.

And we need to tally up the huge costs of Paul Ryan's budget as he continues to give fistfuls of money to the biggest and wealthiest corporations, tax breaks to billionaires. And does away with regulations that will end up costing us dearly whenever a bridge collapses or a food-borne pathogen creates an epidemic of illness or Wall Street is allowed to play wildly with mortgages and retirement funds.

If Paul Ryan and Mark Sanford are allowed to enact their plans for the future of America, then we will truly see a brave new world.

Saving the Future -- for Paul Ryan's Kids

I had the misfortune to happen to turn on the television, which for some reason I can't fathom, I have tuned to C-Span.  They were pounding out rhetoric about that twit Paul Ryan's budget, but at the moment it was the Democrats' turn so I left it on while I looked at the Guide, so I could see what movies I could watch during the weekend's free HBO preview.  But then, as would happen, it became the republicans' turn at the podium, and that hot-airbag Louis Gohmert stepped up.

You certainly can't accuse Gohmert of not enjoying hearing himself speak, because he seems to be on the floor spouting nonsense most of the time I turn the TV on.  I imagine he does not have much of a home life.

Anyway, who knows why I didn't immediately turn the volume down, so I had the great bad luck to hear him thanking -- profusely -- his friend on the other side of the aisle for agreeing with him.  His "friend" had been talking about the future of our children, and how we need to provide the foundation for our children to build on (my words, but you know what I mean, or, I mean, he meant).  Gohmert of course was talking out of the seat of his pants.  He was not at all in agreement, but was twisting the words around so bad that they were not recognizable.  Gohmert was saying that it is irresponsible for the government to spend money to help people by providing them with social services.  That this was actually denying our children a future.  By "our children" of course, he meant his children -- his and Paul Ryan's.

This is the way it works.  If the government does not spend money on social services, like education, health care, nutrition, unemployment benefits, then my kids and maybe yours, will have less with which to get a fair start in their lives.  But Louis Gohmert's kids will do great.  And so will his grandkids.  And that's what he and Paul Ryan are talking about it.

I wish I could say that even that was at all accurate.  Most of our Senators and Representatives are pretty well off, in fact, the majority are millionaires.  So unless they take a family member out of their will, or figure out how to take it with them when they go (always a possibility), their kids will do just fine even if they pay a lot more in taxes than the amount they are currently whining about.

On the other hand, the kids whose parents have to sacrifice to provide a college education will have to count on some good fortune as well as brains and hard work.  Even more so for those living in poverty, where hard work often doesn't even result in a living wage.  And when parents have to work two jobs to make ends meet and aren't there with the kids when they get home from school, or lose a job and have to scrape by on a miserly amount of food stamps, and a child goes to a "minimally adequate" school without the books, technology, or extracurricular activities that would motivate a kid to hope for college and a future, well, I don't think we have to worry about spending their future wealth.

And that's just it.  You could go into how spending money to improve lives now improves everybody's future, but you can't convince Paul Ryan that spending any of his "hard-earned" income so that our kids will have a chance at a good future makes economic sense for the country.  Because his rationalizations don't go any farther than his wallet.  And his own kids' future.  He can't hear your worry about paying your bills, or about your child's health.  And he doesn't have to.

Pope Frank

When a priest in Italy tried to convince my imprisoned father to fight for Mussolini, he quit the Catholic Church.  My own break with the Church was far less dramatic and had to do with my father's insistence that I attend Mass even though he refused, and my unwillingness to get up early on Sunday morning.  I was also becoming more conscious of the hypocrisy that works its way through just about every aspect of the Church, most obviously the conspicuous wealth and power that seems to bang right up against the teachings of Jesus Christ at every turn.

The aspect of the Catholic Church that I am most proud of in fact is the ability of so many practitioners to reject what makes no sense.  Birth control?  Homosexuality?  Racial equality and integration?  The Church has been wrong before, and will be wrong again.  I think I'll deal with this on my own, thanks anyway.

So much to my surprise and wonder, this most conservative group of men select a pope that is very nearly an anti-pope.  The world -- my cynical self included -- is enthralled with this pope who does not just preach peace and love but walks the walk.  Fellow atheist Bill Maher fondly calls him "Pope Frank."

In a world in which reaching out is seen as weakness, inclusion as the work of the devil, and the poor and meek merely deserving of their bad fortunes, Pope Francis humbly disagrees.  He reminds us that he is not God, but attempts to represent God; perhaps the Church is infallible, but the man who represents the Church should not be one to judge.

So this new world leader rolls out some amazing comments.  Not only the predictable ones about the poor and war, but about gays and abortion.

That said, let me not appear unrealistically optimistic.  Pope Francis will not be likely to ever support a woman's right to choose to terminate a pregnancy.  But he will not presume to support laws punishing women for having an abortion.  He will not be likely to condemn gay men and women for marrying but won't in the near future offer to perform the ceremony.

In fact, hot off the presses, the Pope has just excommunicated a priest for advocating gay marriage and female clergy.  Apparently the wheels of the Catholic Church move slowly and this has been in the works for years.  Even so, he's the Pope, he could have figured out how to put the brakes on this.  But he's said he was fallible, so maybe this is the proof.  I don't know, this is a little too much like Obama not being willing to run up against the bad boys in Congress.

So here we are, lapsed and intact Catholics all excited about having a Pope who seems to really care about people and not just perpetuating the power and the holdings of the Vatican.  I'm going to keep my eye on him though.  The most difficult job he is likely to have will be retraining those who work under him.  Centuries of greed and narcissism don't evolve easily into, well, Christianity.

Trial By Food Stamps

A Day In the Life

I was heartened to hear that some members of Congress had taken the "food stamp challenge" in order to experience life on the federally funded supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP).  While most of the members of Congress who took this challenge affirmed that eating on $4.50 a day was difficult, Texas congressman Steve Stockman was unconvinced.

No, he did not himself try to live on that food stamp budget, but had spokesman Donny Ferguson do it for him.  Predictably, this dude said after two days that it was "a breeze."  Well, I have to say that I have been fighting a losing battle with my weight all my life, and I can diet easily for two days.

So let me just say that I believe, Mr. Ferguson, congratulations, and you are now ready for the next level of the Poverty Game.

You work 40 hours a week -- that's 8 to 5 because you don't get paid for lunch.  You are earning a lush $10.00 an hour, well above minimum wage, but with a spouse looking for work and two school-aged children your Food Stamp Challenge is exactly that.  Your spouse drops you off at work with your one car in order to get the kids to school, limiting where and how often you shop for groceries.  Nice that the big box stores are now accepting that EBT card but you can rarely make the trip.

It's also nice that there are incentives for buying fresh fruits and vegetables, but that means getting the kids to eat the fruit and finding time to make that salad and find palatable ways to cook that broccoli.

And when you get home it's 6:00 and the kids are tired and hungry, unless your spouse has bought a frozen pizza and a bag of cookies.

A glass of wine would be nice when you can budget it in, and sometimes a glass of wine just won't do the trick.

Hey, Ferguson?  How about sharing with us what you eat (and drink) when you're not making that two-day sacrifice?

And Representative Stockman?  You've argued with your wife over the need to get the car repaired, which you've been trying to budget in for a year now along with the increasing price of gas.  And you've decided that that pain in your stomach will have to wait just a little longer before you can take the time off to see a doctor (You know after the co-pays and deductibles there are just going to be more costs and time off for tests and medications, if not appointments with specialists.).

Still feeling like you're living on "easy street?"

How about those looks you get from people like you when they see you load that cart up with those frozen pizzas?  Did you know that SNAP doesn't cover the fried chicken at your supermarket's deli counter?  So if you are in the mood for a little greasy relief, you are just going to have to cook it yourself.

And that birthday cake you bought with that EBT card?  There are some including my own South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley that concur with you that life should just not be that easy for those forced to accept government dollars.  Bake that cake your own self.  Your kids may not have seen you all day, you're asleep on your feet and still have a load of laundry to do, but that bit of extra effort will make you a better person. 

You may think you've taken the Food Stamp Challenge, Mr. Ferguson, but you haven't got a clue until you've done it day in and day out, along with all the other special experiences of living at poverty level in the US.

So perhaps you can stop feeling so smug, and perhaps you can pause a moment before you judge those whose lives are not quite so cushy as yours.

And don't forget, they may not pay a lot of income tax, but the taxes they do pay support your life on "easy street."

Where Are the Poor?

You have to admit, we Americans hide our poor well.  That, plus the fact that when you're tired, cold and hungry you just don't make it a priority to write to your congressional representative, much less get out and vote, making the ever-increasing number of poor in this country quite unheard from, and even less talked about.


The right-wing-nut Heritage Foundation, stranger to empathy that it is, published on July 19th, an article that smugly asserts that the poor in this country are far better off than most third world countries.  Thankfully, when FOX "News" leaped on this report, Colbert was not far behind.


In fact, if you search the web for "poor America refrigerator" you will find an abundance of appalled responses to the Heritage nonsense.  In July and August.  Here we are in September and I am afraid that all we are left with is Tea Partiers and other assorted right-wing-nuts that now know for a fact that poor people in America are living high.


And, if you look closely at that search -- wait!  Robert Rector, the Heritage Foundation dude that wrote that article, actually rewrote it from an article he wrote in 2007.  He did make some crucial changes, though.


In 2007, in his chart showing just how much stuff the poor really own, he listed homes first (42.6%).  In a clever marketing-type strategy, in his reworked 2011 chart, he drops home ownership entirely; hmm, could that be because a whole lot more "poor" don't own homes anymore.  No, that's not it,  because he's using the exact same data from 2005.  Must  be because that figure of 99.9% that own a refrigerator is far more impressive.  Like, all poor people own refrigerators!


As a matter of fact, 99.9 is such an impressive number, that he changed it from the 2007 article, using the same data, from 99.2.  Not to be picky.  Because Rector is so good at slinging charts and poll numbers around that the whole thing gave me a headache.


Bottom line, though, is that the Heritage Foundation is claiming that most Americans should not be considered poor if they own a refrigerator.  And they have been at it for years.


Deja vu all over again, if you are old enough to recall Ronald Reagan's presidency-winning nonsense about the black welfare queen.


Or if Rector reheats this data and serves it up again in a couple more years.

A Deficit of Morals and of Will

I find myself yelling at God, and I don't even believe in God.  I listen to fat, smug politicians spouting with cocky confidence their simplistic laissez-faire philosophies of government, that the problem is with spending, and in this time of joblessness, we need more of what has already not worked:  tax cuts.  No taxes on the important people in this country.  Corporations that paid 0 in 2010 would not be able to create jobs if they had to pay taxes in 2011.


If you are listening to any of this bullshit, it is making you crazy.  Unless you are wealthy and corporate, because you are the criminals that our Congress is representing.


So I try, I really try, not to listen so much to this bullshit, this travesty of government that is going on.  But when I do, I find myself screaming at the TV, and I, who does not believe that there is a God, is screaming at God:  "Why the fuck don't you do something???  Why don't you put these assholes on Medicaid???  Why don't you fire their asses and put them on unemployment, without health insurance, without unemployment benefits, and let them pay their mortgages on their million dollar homes by their ownselves???"


I admit, I am fit to be tied about the stupidity, the greed and the hypocrisy.  I can't even blame the politicians.  They are greedy assholes, but why not???  The middle class voters in this country listen to their horseshit, and they nod their empty heads, and they say, "Yeah, we can't let them (poor people, hispanics, old people...) take our money."  You idiots, the millionaires are taking your money, and laughing at you as they bring up votes on gay marriage and gun control and abortion.  You idiots are letting them rape and plunder us and our country.  These jerks that you voted in to office are screaming about the deficit and refusing to pay a penny more to invest in this country:  in education, technology, infrastructure, JOBS.  They all scream about jobs while voting to end the jobs that run our government, that teach our children, that build our roads.  AREN'T YOU LISTENING???


Thank you.  I feel better now.  I will probably survive, although I will never be financially secure.  Our children will suffer more than us, so that the wealthy fraction of a percent can hoard their gold and their power.


We are complacent enough.  It will take the pain of our children and their children to change the course of this country.  My grandparents fought for rights that my generation takes for granted, and that my children are just now beginning to realize are not there for them.


It appears that that battle will have to be fought, and fought bloodily, all over again.


My heart is broken.