When everything is said and done, my opinion of poverty here will never change--
When everything is said and done, America does very little to help its poor.
We suppose that food stamps, housing projects, and welfare mgiht help thepoor. We suppose that defining the poverty line helps us to find out who is trapped beneath it. Yet, we subject our poor to economic, social, and psychological slavery. Our new debt-bondage, our delicious indentured slaves....
are the young, the rural, the minimum-wage.
Women have their reproductive choices made for them by men and women in places abstract and removed from their daily lives. Their impact on their reproductive rights is only realized when their physician, mother, or friend mouths the words,"Not in this state, not at your age."
Why do we force our women, subtlely, into ppregnancy and motherhood? Why does the right wing Oppose family planning for the group least able to afford healthcare and food for themselves? Why is it that the right wing supports large families for the poor and uneducated, through "faith-based" initiatives to 'support families' ?
These programs, for whatever little good they may do, cause vast amounts of harm. Morals without thought are ineffectual, and lead to blind funamentalism, hate, and ignorance. Yet this is what the far-right promotes, believes, and wants. Sadly, for many impoverished, this is what surrounds them; blind alleigance to God and state as a result of fundamentalist mantras. The right-wing,bible belt has no room for those who think or believe differently.
In cyclical poverty, who benefits? Those who own the franchises that create McJobs. The clergymen behind abstinence programs. The companies that utilize prison labor while they lobby for 'tougher ennforcement of the laws.'